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 ClickSoftware, a global company of approximately 700 employees and a recognized leader for mobile workforce management by Gartner. ClickSoftware maximizes the productive use of human resources, asset uptime, and customer satisfaction with end-to-end enterprise workforce optimization for every role.
Effortlessly Mobile
ClickSoftware developed the Salesforce1 Mobile App, ShiftExpert, to effectively plan, manage, and communicate a team’s shifts. It incorporates rules, regulations, absences, demand, and company policies to schedule shifts that maximize the efficiency of staff. It has been designed to run everywhere: from home or in the office, on the web or using a smartphone, employees can manage their working shifts, trade shifts with other employees, request vacation time, clock in, and view timesheet summaries. They knew they had domain expertise and a strong competitive advantage, so it was a short amount of time for them to see they could create something special on the Salesforce1 Platform. They developed an app that is strong, flexible and on a mobile ready platform. The Salesforce1 Platform allowed them to focus on the app’s business flows and functionality so they could dive right in and quickly model & remodel, develop & recycle as much as they needed. ClickSoftware also wanted the design of their app to be effortlessly mobile. The Salesforce1 Mobile App fit right in with almost all of the configuration, permissions, and code. Everything was relevant for both web and mobile users without needing to distinguish between them at runtime.
Excitement Leads to Wearables
The development team consisted of two developers who worked on a proof of concept (POC) on the Salesforce1 Mobile Platform when it was first launched last year. The POC caused a lot of excitement with the team and created a yearning to learn more. A few team members attended the Salesforce Developer 401 course and started playing around with the app during the course and in their downtime. They decided it would be cool to run a POC on something they felt they already knew how to solve better than anyone in the market – Shift Scheduling. So they experimented with the application and developed a very simple and easy-to-use product.
When Salesforce announced the new Wearable API, the team had to try it. It took only three days and they had a working app on the Samsung Gear II Smartwatch for employee clock in/out and measuring the distance travelled per shift. All of this information is saved on the employee’s daily timesheet.
Secret Sauce
ClickSoftware knew a real long-lasting competitive advantage is not common in today’s world of apps. The ShiftExpert app runs as a native Salesforce1 Mobile App, but they added a secret sauce. It is the ability to call optimization services from their state-of-the-art optimization cloud. This allows planners to quickly plan and schedule shifts for weeks and months in advance with the click of a button, while taking into consideration complex work rules, employee availability and skill sets, and even coverage. They found this brings incredible value to any organization and will grow to be one the of most impressive cloud capabilities in the SaaS world today.
It’s now time for ClickSoftware to see their hard work in action. They understand only time and the marketplace will tell their success, but they know one thing is clear: it was a great pleasure to produce the app and their enthusiasm to enrich it is stronger than ever.
For more information on ClickSoftware, please go to: http://www.clicksoftware.com/
Download the Salesforce1 Mobile App, ShiftExpert: https://appexchange.salesforce.com/listingDetail?listingId=a0N3000000B5IdaEAF
To learn how to get your app on the AppExchange, please visit: https://appexchange.salesforce.com/