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 The TAS Group, a company that helps progressive sales organizations like Akamai Technologies, Box, Concur HP, Level 3, Virgin Media Business, and more, to deliver smart sales transformation in the cloud and on mobile devices. Their customers use the Dealmaker smart software platform to maximize revenue in key accounts, increase win rates, and uncover sales vulnerabilities. The sales methodology and sales insight apps are smart, context aware, and knowledge based, making it easy for sellers, their managers and sales executives to accelerate revenue growth – predictably. More than one million sales professionals around the world use the TAS methodology to increase their sales effectiveness.

Dealmaker

Dealmaker is a smart sales performance application that runs in a web browser and on your phone. It guides salespeople to win important sales opportunities, grow revenue in their largest accounts, and uncover vulnerabilities in their forecast and pipeline. It provides sales leadership with tools to manage the behavior and performance of their sales teams. Incorporating deep sales methodology expertise, it uses smart reasoning to advise the salesperson on what they should do next, based on the data entered by the salesperson and the context of the opportunity or account.

Speed to Build

Their first applications on the Salesforce Platform were Dealmaker Smart Opportunity Manager, Dealmaker Smart Account Manager, and Dealmaker Smart Sales Playbook. This was because they were moving the apps from their own stack and infrastructure onto the Salesforce1 Platform and had to migrate all of their customers as well. Development time was amazingly fast. It took just 10 weeks from start to first deliverable, and as they got more familiar with the Platform, they benefitted from a single code line for multiple devices, web browser, iPad, and smartphone.

Though they have a very experienced engineering team, they did not have a lot of experience in developing on the Platform before they started. They received assistance from the Technical Evangelists at salesforce.com as well as from a Salesforce Product Development Organization (PDO), Code Science, both of whom were very helpful in guiding them to get the architecture right from the outset.

Integrated in Customers’ Workflow

Because everything is native, their customers view Dealmaker as part of their Salesforce deployment. Being native on the Platform gives them the same security, performance, and reliability that they have with Salesforce. They can also integrate all of the Dealmaker data with their reports and dashboards within Salesforce and embed Dealmaker in their processes on the web and phone.

Marketing Opportunities with Salesforce

By building on the Platform, many doors were opened for The TAS Group. They were invited to be part of the Salesforce1 launch last year and now have many mobile apps available on the AppExchange. At Deamforce 2013, they participated in 11 different sessions – either with customers, or with the various product management/marketing teams for Sales Cloud, Work.com Analytics, as well as being part of the Salesforce Campground. And CEO, Donal Daly, wrote the Amazon #1 Bestseller – Account Planning in Salesforce.

For more information on The TAS Group, please go to: http://www.thetasgroup.com/index.php