Drawloop Blog

Salesforce users rely on Drawloop to help them automate the creation of proposals, sales quotes, presentations and many other document packages critical to selling or servicing their products. Our on-demand services will allow you to deliver a one-click process for the creation of Dynamic Document Packages (DDPs).

We’re proud to have launched the most recent version of our document merge, automation and packaging service within Salesforce. We’re launching the latest version (v4.5) of LOOP Document Services today. The following is a summary of the new features available with LOOP Document Services:

Dynamic Ordering of Attachments
A powerful new feature is your ability to add and order any static or dynamic (doc contains merge fields) documents that have been uploaded to Notes & Attachments on an Object.

Dynamic ordering of attachments allows “ad hoc” or “custom” docs to be added to a DDP at run time.

Parameter Based Sections
All DDP Admins will love this new feature — parameter based DDP sections. In addition to making sections (pages) of a DDP optional to the user at run time, you can now quickly and easily have sections (pages) included or excluded based on field values.

Example: You want to include the Quote section of the DDP only when Account Level field value = Enterprise

Product Addendums
If you use Products and Product Line Items, you will appreciate the ability to dynamically add Product Addendums to DDPs. This new feature simplifies administration of DDPs while you are utilizing product line items in Word or Excel files.

Example: Sales rep has just added Product A, F and M to his new Opportunity. He clicks a button on the Opportunity to run his customized Sales Proposal. The DDP delivers to him a merged and customized Sales Proposal as a single PDF that also includes the addendums for the products he selected (A, F and M).

Mass DDPs
This new feature is extremely valuable a business use case where you need to send a DDP to hundreds of customers at the same time. DDPs can now be emailed, attached, downloaded, printed, and e-signed en masse with Mass DDPs.

Example: Tim needs to email a DDP to hundreds of Salesforce Contacts in a list view. He selects the contacts to be emailed, clicks Mass LOOPlus, selects the DDP he wants to send, and clicks Run. When the emails have finished being sent, Tim receives the Mass DDP results via email.

DDPs with DocuSign Embed Signing
This new feature was added to take advantage of business use cases where DDPs are created and delivered directly to DocuSign’s embedded signing process within a Force.com application or a Customer Portal.

We have just updated our LOOP Storage Services which now offers multiple upload functionality. LOOP Storage Services is an efficient document storage solution for Salesforce.com which leverages Amazon S3 pricing . . . document storage from within a document tab or within an object in Salesforce.

Multiple Upload Demo

How To Get Started with LOOP Storage:

1) Install LOOP Storage Services from AppExchange

2) Sign-up for an Amazon S3 account

Contact us today with any questions.

Our on-demand document creation service within Salesforce.com continues to grow. We have added some awesome new features for Dynamic Document Packages (DDPs) with our latest update (LOOP Document Services Version: 3.4.2).

This post focuses on a new feature we believe will help virtually all Salesforce users. This feature allows a company to automate the creation of custom PowerPoint presentations with any Salesforce.com data. In other words, you can dynamically create custom PowerPoint presentations to update graphs, data and any other items within your PowerPoint file(s).

Let’s say your company needs to update managers on sales numbers, by region, each week. We have found that many people like to report this data in a PowerPoint presentation to be shared internally or shared via online meetings. Right now, you are probably spending a lot of time manually updating your PowerPoint to prepare for these weekly update meetings. With our latest update, you can automate this entire process leveraging your data that already exists in Salesforce.

It’s Simple:

1) Create your Salesforce Reports
2) Create your DDP (links Salesforce data with PowerPoint)
3) Click run to create your customized PowerPoint*

*Delivery Options: The customized PowerPoint can be (a) returned as an original PowerPoint file to be emailed, downloaded or attached back to Salesforce or (b) returned as a PDF to be emailed, downloaded or attached back to Salesforce.

Contact us today to schedule a time to learn more.

We are pleased to announce that Dawson Cole Fine Art, KONE, LI-COR, LinkedIn and Salmat have chosen Drawloop as part of their Salesforce.com application. Like all of our customers, they were looking to improve efficiency, do “more with less” and increase revenue by automating document creation for all users. With our LOOPlus service, document creation is generated from within Salesforce merging data from any Objects (including Custom Objects and Product Line Items) into the required document or set of documents. The document packages, or DDPs, range from proposals to sales contracts to product data sheets.

Learn how to increase your success in challenging times.

Our LOOPlus service remains simple . . . all you need is your documents and you are ready to deploy LOOPlus! Our team is committed to continually expand our service and accommodate customer requirements around the creation and delivery of DDPs. This includes thousands of workflows, approvals, force applications and mashups with other services like electronic signatures from DocuSign.

Originally established in 1993, Dawson Cole Fine Art specializes in Contemporary and Modern sculpture, drawings, prints, and unique works on paper by American and European Masters.

KONE’s objective is to offer the best People Flow™ experience by developing and delivering solutions that enable people to move smoothly, safely, comfortably and without waiting in buildings in an increasingly urbanizing environment.

LI-COR Biosciences is a leader in the design and manufacture of instrument systems for biotechnology and environmental research.

LinkedIn is an interconnected network of experienced professionals from around the world, representing 170 industries and 200 countries. You can find, be introduced to, and collaborate with qualified professionals that you need to work with to accomplish your goals.

There are millions of people out there. We’re talking to them one to one. Through its four divisions, Salmat assists consumers and enhances businesses every day, with the force of one to one communication. Salmat is communicating one to one with individuals in Australia, New Zealand and around the world.

We wanted to highlight a new DDP delivery option, “Download”, in our latest Salesforce.com release. With the Download delivery option, you can now create custom Download delivery options that include:

1) Deliver DDP as a one combined PDF for download

2) Deliver each separate merged file as a PDF for download

3) Deliver original merged files for download (.doc, .xls, and/or .ppt)

4) Deliver originals and PDFs (#2 and #3 above)

Watch a quick 30 second video on how to add this new delivery option to your DDPs in Salesforce.com – watch now.

We’ve recently launched the newest version of our document merge and automation services within Salesforce – LOOP Document Services 3.1. The following is a summary of cool new features, new integrations and a brief glimpse into our next releases.

Cool New Features

• LOOP Reports can now use dynamic values for advanced filtering
• LOOP Reports date last sent is now being tracked at the DDP level
• Developer and Sandbox accounts can now be authorized with the click of a button
• Mass Merge and automatically send emails to records (contacts, leads, opportunities, etc.) with LOOP Merge
• LOOP Merge now allows users to select an email template
• LOOPlus and LOOP Merge allow users to attach a DDP back to a record
• LOOPlus: specify related objects to be used in a DDP
• LOOPlus excluded standard delivery options are now hidden instead of disabled

New Integrations

• DocuSign Recipients can now be specified as required or not required.
• DocuSign Recipient Secure Fields and Envelope Custom Fields are now supported

Upcoming Releases

• Download PDF, original documents, or both
• Deployment Wizard

It has long been discussed that one of the critical elements of CRM success is adoption. This reality is nothing new or even original, but a recent article published by CIO Magazine titled “Why Do 70% of CRM Projects Fail?” addressed many reasons which still boil down to adoption. We believe automating document creation can insure adoption and help companies avoid many of the pitfalls that plague the failed 70%.

The technical or sales reasons may describe other factors for failure, but at the heart is lack of adoption. CRM solutions with proven best practices have been around for many years, but why do so many companies still fail on adoption?

Let’s start by assuming a company is committed to all the basic elements required for CRM success. So then, what technology component has been missing to help CRM acceptance? The answer is document automation.

Document Automation
Automating document creation impacts every aspect of a business team – from sales reps to support reps to managers to executives. A commitment to automating document creation will identify missing fields, missing business processes, missing work flows and other critical elements required to achieve enterprise-wide CRM adoption.

Quality of Data
Ironically, sales people tend to be risk takers and are often open to try new things. However, they can also be the guilty party when it comes to the quality of data within a CRM. Bad data can kill any CRM solution. Think about the impact on the quality of CRM data if all document creation (sales proposals, quotes and contracts) had to be generated directly from your CRM? Any errors in data or missing information would be captured and fixed at the time of document creation, and therefore, improve the quality and accuracy of your data. No more “after the fact” data entry by sales reps, or worse, the “I forgot” to enter all of the required information mistake.

Usability
CRM usability requires ease of use. We believe ease of use must also translate into saved time for sales and service reps. By automating document creation, you have created an incentive to enter the correct information on a Lead, Contact or Opportunity within the CRM because the user understands that all he or she needs to do at the end of the process is click a button to create the document or set of documents required to complete the proposal, quote, or sales contract.

Integrate Document Creation into Your Sales Methodology
We are amazed at how many companies have spent countless hours on solutions, activities and work flows around what drives closing and renewing business, but virtually no time evaluating how document creation should be incorporated. Combining document creation with other sales methods is extremely powerful. For example, a company could capture critical prospective customer data on a web form and then have the submission of the form trigger a work flow to create an outbound email message with a customized document package automatically attached.

Training
By incorporating document creation into your CRM Solution, you can more easily train users on processes and work flows. Again, if a user must update required fields in your CRM to close the sale or renew a service, you have insured CRM adoption.

Business Intelligence
Marrying your CRM solution with document creation will improve your business intelligence for managers and executives. Automating document creation now allows you to incorporate other work flows, integration with other services like e-signatures, and delivery of key data back into your CRM. For example, you may be using calculations in Excel to capture profit margins or other internal metrics that you want to store back in your CRM for every sales proposal generated. This becomes possible through complete document automation.

Our Recommendation
Take the time to add document creation to your CRM solution and allow Drawloop to help you gain 100% adoption.

Do you use Salesforce? Check us out on AppExchange.

Now is a great time to implement tangible solutions to increase profitability for 2009. In the current economic environment, everyone is looking to do more with less. Document creation can be one of the more expensive and labor intensive business tasks. Sales reps and other critical team members often spend hours each day customizing the documents required to respond to customers.

Let Drawloop help you reduce costs and do more with less! We encourage you to take a look at our document automation services and add document automation as one of your priorities for 2009. Take a look at what our customers have to say.

Through December 31st, we are offering all Salesforce.com customers LOOP Merge at $0.00 per user / month in 2009. Yes, that means it’s FREE for a year! Simply have your Salesforce Administrator install now from AppExchange to take advantage of the LOOP Merge offer.

Click here to learn more about LOOP Merge.

So what are you waiting for? Install LOOP Merge today!

LOOP Document Services 3.0 went live on AppExchange today. As an active user of Salesforce, we often find ourselves looking for help within the Salesforce community or posting feature requests on the Salesforce Idea Exchange. While participating in this amazing community, we kept seeing ideas shared that related to documents (our expertise). Those ideas presented an opportunity for us to review our current document services (LOOP, LOOPlus and LOOP Reports) and see how we could incorporate real solutions to posts on Idea Exchange.

We are pleased to officially announce LOOP Merge – the answer to over thirty (30) Salesforce Ideas. LOOP Merge significantly enhances, compliments and extends the out-of-the-box Salesforce Mail Merge functionality.

Our Objectives:

Enhance the current Salesforce merge process

Improve maintenance and organization of merge templates

Support multiple browsers and operating systems

Extend merge to other applications and file types

Pricing: $4 per user/month (no minimum users)

Enhancements (11 ideas)

1. Increase File Size Limitation of 1MB: LOOP Merge allows you to upload your merge templates into the Salesforce documents tab which has a file size limit of 5MB. Like LOOPlus, you can also work with publicly accessible URL based documents which allow you to go beyond the 5MB limit if needed.
2. Date Formatting: All dates used by any of LOOP Document Service format the date using the long date format by locale.
3. Empty Fields: All fields that do not have values pass as a blank instead of “______”.
4. Ability to Select a Contact: Accounts, Cases, Opportunities and Contracts allow you to select contacts related to the object.
5. Customize the Button: You can easily deploy your own buttons and point to the LOOP Merge s-control.
6. Additional Delivery Options: You can Email, Email and Attach, Attach Only or send the Mail Merge Document to our free LOOP service where you can download or add any additional documents to the final merged PDF file.

Maintenance and Organization (7 ideas)

1. Folder Support: LOOP Merge allows you to upload your merge templates into the documents tab and store in any document folder – any security established within document folders will control access for available LOOP Merge documents.
2. Update and Tracking: Deploying templates in the documents tab also allows you to update and track templates.
3. Filter by Object: Document keyword tags allow you to limit documents by object.

Browser and OS Support (4 ideas)

1. Web Browsers: Our LOOP Document Services support Firefox, IE, Safari and Chrome.
2. OS: Our LOOP Document Services support any OS that can run Firefox, IE, Safari or Chrome.

Applications and Document Types (11 ideas)

1. Additional Application Support: LOOP Merge works with Google Docs and Spreadsheets as well as OpenOffice. Although we work with the Saleforce Office Plugin, this is not a requirement for any of our services. Any document that can be saved as an Microsoft Office document can be used with our document services.
2. Additional Document Types: Works with Mail Merge Templates or any Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel (up to 2007 versions) or PDF file.

LOOPlus and DocuSign Mashup on AppExchange

We are pleased to announce our latest DDP integration partner – DocuSign. DocuSign has combined its e-signature service with our LOOPlus document creation service within Salesforce.com. A Salesforce.com user can now deliver DDPs for e-signature with enhanced features like dynamic placement of initials and signatures, powerful routing, workflow options and data capture back to Salesforce.com at the time of signature.

“The combined power of Drawloop and DocuSign on the Salesforce platform enables companies to achieve efficiencies, reduce costs and speed time to revenue like never before,” says Bob DeSantis, Vice President of Sales & Business Development at DocuSign. “Our joint solution completes the vision of straight through processing (STP) in a cloud computing environment with zero upfront capital expenditures. The combined solution enhances our customer’s ability to increase pipeline velocity, achieve greater agreement visibility throughout the sales lifecycle, and realize massive efficiencies from the reduction of paper, shipping and data entry costs. LOOPlus with DocuSign agreements will be consistent and remain digital during the entire sales process. In essence our joint customers will immediately execute leaner, greener, faster and more profitably.”

“Our partnership with Drawloop Technologies represents a very strategic relationship and tremendous value for Salesforce users,” commented Ken Cavallon, Business Development Manager, DocuSign. “Together we offer a powerful solution that provides the ability to originate, manage and complete sales contracts through a single work space, which in turn simplifies and expedites the entire contract execution process and helps businesses close deals faster, increase revenue and improve productivity.”

Please visit our LOOP Document Services on AppExchange.