This week I caught up with Jason Reichl, Director of Bluewolf Beyond for cloud applications. As the post go-live expert he explained his thoughts on what people can do after they implement salesforce.com, some common mistakes and insight into what is the Bluewolf Beyond managed services program.

What are the most common mistakes people make post go-live with Salesforce CRM?
To get complacent and lose the momentum the project team had to bring the tool live. Bringing a tool live in an organization is very exciting but often keeping the tool up to date against the business needs gets labeled as less exciting so organizations slack in that area. I believe, one hundred percent, that what you do after you go-live with salesforce.com is more important and exciting than anything that happens in the initial project cycle.

So how does Bluewolf Beyond actually help?
After post go-live companies leverage Bluewolf Beyond to focus on several projects over the course of a 12-month contract.  So instead of being focused on one major deliverable, we focus on many projects over the course of the year.  Essentially it’s agile consulting delivered on a monthly release cycle over the course of the year.

What are some of the most important things to be cognizant of when engaging in a program like this?

• Link projects to ROI.  Everything that clients do should be linked to performance indicators so you can clearly measure ROI.
   
• Collaboration is essential.  Clients shouldn’t engage in a body shop mentality where you can send your car and get it back fixed – clients should stay engaged in the process to get the result they want.
   
• Make sure that you don’t get whoever is available for the project.  Request someone who is best suited for the project. This helps for the long-term vision.  At Bluewolf we try and make sure resources are matched to the skill and more importantly the cultural fit that is required.
   
• Embrace the agile process since it’s available to you so you can transform your company’s approach.

What’s so great about the agile process at Bluewolf?
I believe that in business we’ve been taught that everything must take a long time.  But I don’t think that is true – it’s businesses that have bureaucracy that take a long time.  I truly believe any business can be fast, can increase quality, and increase rapid turnaround time if they implement the agile process.

Isn’t it easier to apply agile processes to smaller orgs rather than larger orgs?
Ask Google or Facebook.

Does your team practice what you preach?
One thing that makes Bluewolf Beyond unique is that it is very collaborative.  We start off with scrums every morning and we end with wind-downs.  All our members are paired and there are always two eyes on everything we do which allows us to cross-pollinate.  That includes developers and account managers. Everyone has their functions, but they are aware of what other people are doing.  It’s not like going to a series of specialists, where you get passed on from one person to the next – everyone is always aware of what is happening with every aspect of the project.  So the answer is yes.