Each week we chat with an AppExchange Partner about their experience of building an app on the Salesforce1 Platform. This week, the spotlight is on Cloudbilt. Originally founded in 2009 as Saber Solutions, the company initially provided managed services and custom app development to Salesforce users. In later 2012, co-founders John Stewart and Ben Brantly decided to move away from consulting and concentrate solely on selling business applications on the Salesforce AppExchange. To support the new business model, Saber rebranded as Cloudbilt in May of 2013. Today, Cloudbilt is an AppExchange Program Partner with over 300 customers.
Evolving the App
Cloudbilt’s flagship MapAnything solution (a saleforce.com native app) provides mapping, territory management, data visualization, route planning, and analytics. Its proprietary cross object query engine traverses the data structure and allows users to join data objects and fields (standard and custom) into saved map layers.
MapAnything Nearby is a natural and seamless extension of MapAnything. It streamlines tasks, saves time and drives productivity by enabling field professionals to:
- Know where nearby leads, accounts, opportunities, and contacts are at all times
- View their saved routes
- Check in and out of appointments
- Log calls and update Salesforce records
Build Once for All Devices
Prior to Salesforce1, Cloudbilt thought developing their own native applications for iOS and Android was going to be a necessary evil. Having one platform to concentrate on moving forward is a huge benefit for them and the quick adoption by the Salesforce community has been great.
MapAnything Nearby empowers professionals to be more productive in the field, capture more business and drive more top line revenue. According to CTO Ben Brantly:
“The ability to ‘build once’ and deploy to all devices enabled Cloudbilt to become mobile in a matter of weeks instead of months. Our Salesforce1 Mobile App is very customized as it mirrors our existing AppExchange product. To achieve our goals with the app, we used a combination of Visualforce and Apex to build it.”
They always kept the end user in mind while designing the app and their goal was to make the interface easy enough for someone to use with just his or her thumb.
Marketing Opportunities
According to CEO, John Stewart:
“We have received a great deal of additional exposure from salesforce.com as a result of MapAnything Nearby. This includes being referenced in customer presentations as well as receiving added visibility at events, including the Salesforce1 World Tour.”
Being able to leverage the “Salesforce1 Mobile” sash on their AppExchange icon and appearing on the Salesforce1 Collection web page has increased their visibility – and ultimately, this has translated into more downloads of their solution. Cloudbilt recently closed it’s fourth round of funding with Lighter Capital, bringing the total amount of financing to $1m.
To learn more about Cloudbilt, please go to: http://cloudbilt.com/
For information on Lighter Capital and funding options, please go to: http://www.lightercapital.com/
To learn how you can get on the AppExchange, please go to: http://appexchange.salesforce.com/