Over the holidays, instead of purchasing gifts for clients and staff, Traction decided to donate $ to a charity of the staff and clients choice.  After going through an internal and client-voting process, four charities were selected to receive Traction’s annual donations: The BC Cancer Foundation received the most votes, followed by the Covenant House Vancouver, Big Brothers Big Sisters, and the BC Children’s Hospital Foundation. We were happy to support the great work these organizations too, while at the same time supporting causes that are close to our teams hearts.

Next up for Traction For Good (Traction’s community involvement program) was a group volunteer shift at the Greater Vancouver Food Bank Society on January 31st 2012. A great opportunity to bond and do good at the same time! Seeing the incredible amount of food came with mixed emotion: on the positive side, there are a lot of generous people out there donating food for those in need, however, the fact that our most basic need is not available to so many (the food bank feeds approx. 25,000 people per week),  invokes a feeling of sadness and sympathy. While the part we did was small in comparison to the task at hand of ending the need for food banks, every little bit helps.

Do you have any questions, feedback, or ideas on what else the Traction team could get involved with?

MY ROLE: When I tell people my title is Manager of Office Happiness, I usually get a smile and a comment on how it must be hard to make an office HAPPY (like it’s a strange concept). Because of the people here, it’s not that difficult at all. I’ve only been here 3 months, but like everyone else here, it certainly feels like a lot longer.

LEADERSHIP: We really believe in the work we’re doing. One of the reasons for this is that we greatly admire our President, Greg Malpass. We appreciate the responsibility and trust he gives us. While Greg has a pulse on what’s going on with employees and clients, he doesn’t micro-manage. This provides us with ownership of our projects and the ability to take initiative. Every morning we have a staff huddle where we review good news, our top 3 daily goals and/or roadblocks, and who can help us overcome them.

PERKS & FUN: We relish in some employee perks, such as:

• iPads for every employee for note taking and sharing apps to increase efficiency.
• A fitness allowance every quarter (from purchasing running shoes to a gym pass).
• Our endless supply of drinks, snacks, and fruit – and last minute lunch orders, among many other things.
• A wakeboard boat at our disposal in the summers. When the sun is out and the water is flat, our “team meetings” occasionally end up in the ocean.

LEARNING: Traction encourages learning and development.  Every Friday a different employee presents a SalesForce application that they’ve discovered or created. This exercise promotes discovery and discussion. We also have an expanding office library. I am currently reading “Delivering Happiness” by Zappos CEO, Tony Hsieh and look forward to applying my learning’s. We have already implemented Zappos “the offer”: Every new employee is offered $2,000 to leave Traction within the 3-month probationary period. So far no one has taken it! A good representation of our dedication.

VALUES: Traction has grown quickly, from 3 employees 18 months ago to 17 today.  Greg knows that retaining quality employees and building a positive culture will drive our success. We recently had a facilitated “Core Value session” to discuss our personal values, how they align with Traction’s, and how we can achieve them as a team (not a lot of bosses would do this on company time in fear of loss of profitability). During the session, we were a little shy at first, but slowly realized that we have similar and complimentary core values, which brought the team even closer.

Traction also launched a community program called Traction for Good, which supports non-profit organizations that align with our values.

GOALS: My goal for the new year is to kick start Wellness Wednesdays and Fitness Fridays to encourage the healthy lifestyle we all value. I also want to become Salesforce “certified” so I can maximize support for our team. And, I’d like to do my part in ensuring Traction is recognized as a “top employer” as it certainly deserves to be! I write this as I sit in my Traction holiday gift, a cozy logo’d lulu lemon hoodie.

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about our products, services or corporate culture. Stay tuned for monthly blogs of what is going on here.

Sincerely,

Jennifer Mitchell, Manager of Office Happiness

This further proves why Traction is your expert provider of Salesforce, the leading enterprise customer relationship platform.  Here are some findings in preparing and successfully passing the exam.

Why Become Certified?

Over the past few years, Salesforce.com has gone from being simply a participant in the overall sales automation market to becoming a leading solution.  Opportunities for administrators, consultants and developers are everywhere.  No matter what track you decide to follow, earning a credential from Salesforce.com shows that you have the ability and understanding to implement your Salesforce knowledge.

How to Become a Salesforce.com Certified Professional:

The good news, all you have to do is pass an exam.  The bad news, you will need to study and become an expert in the subject matter.  The exam had 60 multiple choice questions with a 60% passing grade and 90 minutes were allotted to complete the exam.  As I understand it, there was a pool of questions and 60 were picked at random.  Things such as, security, object customization and reporting and analytics are common themes on the exam.  As you progress up the Salesforce.com certification ladder, the material gets more difficult and the passing score increases.  To read more about how to become a Salesforce.com certified professional, visit the Salesforce certification website.

Certification Preparation:

Don’t wait until the last minute (unless you’re one of those people who can breeze through multiple choice formats with no problem)!  Give yourself a month and prepare a study plan.

One way to prepare is to register for an official Salesforce.com preparation course.  This is a good choice for individuals who do not have extensive exposure to the overall platform.  Another way is to leverage the wide array of preparation material available online.  I have listed several websites that I used to prepare below.

1. Salesforce.com Certified Administrator Notes –This is a great mindmap that displays all of the categories on the exam.  It provides granular details to help you understand everything and anything that you possibly need to know.  For those that learn better through written material, this is a great place to start.
2. Salesforce.com practice exams This will provide you with some sample questions before writing the exam.  It has a several practice tests that cover a significant portion of the exam material.
3.  Blogs and Social Media – There are countless blogs of Salesforce.com professionals that have passed certification exams.  I found this site particularly helpful even though it is more catered to developers.  YouTube is also a good resource for videos on general Salesforce.com functionality.

Final Thoughts:

Take your time studying and schedule a date that suits your schedule.  A big congratulation’s to the Traction team members who passed their respective certification exams:

• Chris Peacock, Certified Salesforce.com Administrator
• Grant Adamson, Certified Salesforce.com Developer
• Emily Beach, Certified Advanced Salesforce.com Administrator
• Arnold Bernardo, Certified Salesforce.com Administrator
• Mike LaVinge, Certified Salesforce.com Developer
• Vince Liu, Certified Salesforce.com Administrator
• Viet Nguyen, Certification Salesforce.com Administrator
• Imran Chatur, Certified Salesforce.com Administrator (yes, I had to congratulate myself!)

Good Luck!

August 30th 2011 marked day 1 of Dreamforce, the largest cloud computing event of the year.  The Traction office was buzzing before Dreamforce and is exciting to share some of the key highlights of the conference now that it’s over.

Day 1

Walking to the Moscone Center we began to realize that this Dreamforce would be bigger and better then ever before.  With more then 45,000 attendees, an amazing line-up of keynote speakers and Metallica bringing down the house, we couldn’t wait.  The Moscone center was split up into four different sections.  The geek zone (developers…),  registration area, conference area and breakout area.  In addition, the Intercontinental and Marriott hotels were fully booked.  With all the excitement, Oracle couldn’t even stay away from the expo (clearly not the #1 CRM).

After registering (not an easy feat) and getting our hands on the ‘swag bag’ we were all set for a busy week.

Day 2:

Day 2 opened with Marc Benioff giving an amazing opening keynote on how ‘social’ technologies are revolutionizing business.  The’ Social Enterprise’  is here to stay and it is creating huge opportunities for those that embrace it (see the embedded video below for the first 20 minutes of M. Benioff’s  keynote).

Traction’s founder and CEO, Greg Malpass also spoke to a group of about 1000 Salesforce.com professionals.  His session on clean data was one of the most attended breakouts of the entire conference.  Congratulations Greg!  Another highlight for Traction during Dreamforce was the Metallica and Will I Am concert.  Although it took some work to get inside, it was well worth it.  We managed to get really close to the action thanks to our friends at the Yellow Pages Group.

   Day 3:

By day 3, the long nights and early mornings were starting to wear on us (especially after the Metallica concert).  At the same time, we were still hearing about the countless Salesforce.com enhancements coming out in the next couple releases.  The two that stood out to me the most were the data.com announcement (read more here) and the ability to invite external parties into a Chatter group.  Salesforce also announced that they were publicly releasing database.com along with a visual process tool (known as Visual Process Manager) that will make implementations and administration much easier.  The day ended off with Eric Schmidt’s closing keynote (check it out here) and ensuring we didn’t leave Dreamforce without a picture with Sassy.

Before we left San Fran, Traction invited close to 100 of our clients and partners to join us for a cocktail party at the Red Room in the Clift Hotel.  It was great to put names to faces and connect with everyone outside of project deadlines amongst other things.  Thanks to everyone who came and see you at Dreamforce 2012!