Why did you join the military?  I was 19 years old, working at a local pizza shop in my hometown of San Bernardino, CA, when I had an epiphany about where my life would go. I went from having a track record for a promising future up to dropping out of two colleges by this Learn More »

I joined the Army to be a stable provider for my family and for better employment prospects when I got out.

More than 125 Merivis alumni and their families, recruiters, past and current sponsors, friends and supporters gathered in Austin, TX to celebrate three years of Merivis.

Merivis has helped veterans and spouses transition from military life to corporate America as a VSP in the Salesforce Vetforce program.

As Merivis continues to grow its alumni over the years, VetForce has been kind to invite each of the last two years a few of our alumni to Salesforce’s TrailheaDX conference in San Francisco. TrailheaDX is Salesforce’s developer conference and a great way for attendees to take a few trails, get a certification or two Learn More »

Merivis was at SXSW in full force this year. Both Merivis and Vetforce presented on a panel discussion and we hosted a Merivis community mixer with all our friends and supporters in Austin. 

Sheldon was in the Merivis inaugural cohort 1 back in the Fall of 2015. Since then Sheldon has stayed the course, become Salesforce certified and has been an example of whats possible when you connect the dots of Salesforce, the community and drive. We are proud of you Sheldon and thanks for sharing your story Learn More »

Earlier this month over 170,000 people descended onto San Francisco for the annual pilgrimage called Dreamforce.  Over time, this Dreamforce has taken a life of its own and is always is a great opportunity to reconnect with friends, colleagues and be inspired by the Salesforce non-profit community. The Merivis Foundation was fortunate to be a Learn More »

  Accenture first partnered with Merivis in 2016 and is now the proud sponsor of our fourth Cohort for Fall 2017.  Amy Flamenbaum, our guest Blogger, is a Merivis Foundation board member and Senior Manager at Accenture. Accenture prides itself on leadership, discipline, management, and partnership. It’s no coincidence that our organization, right up to Learn More »

    It’s been a busy few weeks over at the Merivis Foundation. Between SXSW panelpicker, planning for Dreamforce 2017 and most importantly, the launch of our next Salesforce training program starting this fall! Since starting the organization two years ago the program has evolved so we wanted to provide a quick overview of what Learn More »

Glenn is a U.S. Army veteran and member of the Merivis Foundation Cohort III Salesforce training program. He is currently a Salesforce System Admin for a small energy company, Elect Energy based in Plano, Texas. Through the Merivis Foundation in partnership with Vetforce, I have recently gone through the Salesforce Admin 201 training program in Learn More »

Merivis Grads Get to Experience TrailheaDX! This blog post was written by Merivis cohort II grad Chrissy Wojtewicz who recently attended TrailheaDX in San Francisco with fellow grads Yann and Sheldon. Attending TrailheaDX, two words come to mind: the first is ‘whirlwind’, the second is ‘blessed’. I got a call that along with Yann and Sheldon, Learn More »

Recently, I finished reading General Stanley McChrystal’s book entitled “Team of Teams” which outlines a massive strategic change in how the U.S. Special Forces operates overseas. These changes reflect much of what is happening in the software development world today and within many teams working on Salesforce delivery teams. McChrystal outlines how working in smaller, nimble teams Learn More »

Merivis Foundation programs are supported entirely by individual and corporate donations; because of that we’re proud to have the support of Capgemni as our program sponsor for Cohort III. Our guest blog written by Nolan Melson, Merivis Foundation board member and senior consultant at Capgemni shares more about their commitment to supporting and hiring military Learn More »

Once again Dreamforce 2016 is upon us next week and we are looking forward to the new product announcements, keynotes and so much more. For those of you who are new to Dreamforce or simply want a few tips on how best to tackle the massive event, check out this video blog of me and Learn More »

As you can probably tell, its been a while since I have posted anything on the Merivis Blog, almost 6 months to be exact. I started this blog as a passion project of mine to share knowledge about technology, process and most things related to Salesforce. Over the last six months, I have moved, started a new Learn More »

  (Credit and contributing material for this post goes to Adam Olshansky, Jayvin Arora and Nicole Alford – THANK YOU!) This blog post will focus on passing the Salesforce advanced admin exam using Trailhead and is really a continuation from a post back in January.  I want to thank Adam, Jayvin and Nicole again for allowing me to share some of their content from Learn More »

South by Southwest is here again, and for several days in March, Austin will transform itself into the media, technology, movie, and music capital of the world. I have had the opportunity to attend South by Southwest for a few years now and mostly as an observer and party goer. The energy and shared creative Learn More »

(Credit and contributing material for this post goes to Adam Olshansky, Jayvin Arora and Nicole Alford – THANK YOU!) My Dreamforce 2015 was focused entirely around VetForce and supporting that great organization, so I did not have time catch a lot of Dreamforce sessions. When Dreamforce 2015 wrapped up last September, I did my usual routine of reviewing sessions/keynotes I had missed. About the time, Learn More »

First, I would like to apologize for the long delay between my last blog post and now. There has been a whirlwind of things happening with the Merivis Foundation and I have been focused on our first class. With that in mind, I wanted post a blog on developing new talent within the Salesforce ecosystem. Developing new Learn More »

  Another Dreamforce is done and as we rest our feet from all the walking, standing and being inspired, I wanted to share with you some of my highlights from the event this month. This was my seventh Dreamforce and never have I seen so much energy, inspiration and people all in one place. Salesforce knows Learn More »

As we head out to San Francisco next week for Dreamforce 2015, we have some exciting news to share with you. Our support of the Salesforce technology is being extended to veterans through the launch of the Merivis Foundation, a nonprofit that connects Texas veterans to the growing ecosystem of Salesforce careers. At a Dreamforce Learn More »

  Dreamforce is back! Better than ever!  September 15th – the first full day will be focusing on all aspects related to our military veterans. I am honored to be a part of several VetForce events this year at Dreamforce.  As you already know, Dreamforce is all about networking. You will hear about new product announcements, Learn More »

    If you ever wanted to capture critical customer lead information from your website, the Salesforce Web to Lead functionality is the way to go. This blog will cover Salesforce Web to Lead best practices and what I have seen works best if you simply need to get this functionality set up.  This blog Learn More »

Over the last several years I have been asked what type of Salesforce jobs and career paths exist for someone just starting or wanting to make a move into the hot Salesforce job market. My short answer is it really depends on what you are good at and what you like to do. There are several Learn More »

“How to Study for the Salesforce Sales Cloud Exam” is a blog post I have been wanting to write for about a year now. Yes, its been about a year since I officially took this exam, but do remember it like it was yesterday. This exam is quite different than the Salesforce admin or developer Learn More »

Joint Blog Post – Scott Thomas/Hector Perez Jr Sales and Marketing as a function is charged with maintaining and growing a company’s brand and ultimately, its revenue. Due to the unpredictable nature of consumer and business behavior, these functions have typically required more flexibility than historically more structured IT functions. However, now that sales and Learn More »

  After the last few weeks, I feel quite prepared to discuss “How To Study For The Salesforce Advanced Admin Exam” in that I have now taken the exam twice this month. Also, I was fortunate enough to attend the official Salesforce advance admin class in Denver as well about three weeks ago.  This is not an Learn More »

At some time in the distant future or maybe even now, your company will  need a Salesforce org strategy.  Eventually most larger (>500 employees) companies get to a point in where one Salesforce org (or instance) is not quite enough to run their business operations.  I have seen companies small and large struggle with the following Learn More »

As some of you may know, I have had the privilege to attend South By Southwest in Austin, Texas for the last several years and there is really nothing else like it anywhere. With that background, I thought a post  about “South by Southwest 2015 and Military Veterans” would be a great area for me to cover personally Learn More »

This week’s blog will cover top 3 Salesforce user management tips for admins looking to get a bit more efficiency out of their Salesforce org. Whether you are are provisioning a new Salesforce org or simply looking to ensure your current users are set up right, a review of user management is a must. Salesforce admins can Learn More »

  I decided to re-write this from a post last year with new updates and a focus on “How to Study for the Salesforce Admin Exam”.  One of the biggest reasons for this re-write was the Salesforce admin exam is the most difficult and most sought after by people looking to sharpen their Salesforce technical Learn More »

  I was wondering how to end the year with this blog and knew a year end review would be really a cool way to ring out 2014.  I have alot to be thankful for in my life both professionally and personally and this blog, “Merivis Blog Year End Review 2014” is all about giving thanks Learn More »

Resource planning for cloud applications can be tricky for some organizations. In the old client/service world, companies had to plan for staffing on multiple levels. However with the advent of “the cloud”, resource planning for cloud applications is quite different. Before, organizations planned for staffing an IT/business ops team had to consider resources for network, hardware, security and Learn More »

Referenced in the previous blog post on “Center of Excellence Model for Salesforce”, critical to accomplishing a solid global deployment of Salesforce, it is important to understand release management in the cloud  and how best to execute in this model. This blog will focus on a modern way of handling release management in the cloud Learn More »

Recently,  I  had the opportunity to work with customers that realized they needed to set up a “center of excellence” (COE) and did not know where to start. A center of excellence model for Salesforce can provide a structure and base to help deploy a large global roll-out of the tool and process. You can use a Learn More »

As most of you are aware by now, next week is Dreamforce 2014 will be upon us.  You hear about it all year, but the time now and over 100,000 people will descend on San Francisco looking to be inspired, motivated and quite frankly for some, to party. Dreamforce is more than just a vendor conference. It grown so Learn More »

Technology needs new role models.  It has been almost 100 years since women were granted the right to vote in the United States but we are still lagging behind in so many ways.  In IT, women are still very much in the minority.  In Infrastructure, it is not uncommon to see ratios as low as Learn More »

Often times, I meet customers who have been using Salesforce for their business and still have questions or struggle with the basics of using application (CRM, Force.com, Marketing Cloud ect).  Even as a former customer prior to joining Salesforce, I never fully took advantage of all the online courses and tools SalesforceU publishes for its customers. Currently, Learn More »

Having recently visited London and a bit of the countryside of the UK, I thought this would be a great time to discuss a bit about the Salesforce EMEA expansion and their big moves of late in this critical global market.  I had the opportunity to both live and help deploy Salesforce in EMEA for a Fortune Learn More »

  How to study for the Salesforce Service Cloud Consultant Exam ……I thought was a perfect blog post for this week considering what has happened recently.  First, Sanjoy did a great guest blog last week on the Salesforce Service Cloud and this month I just passed the Salesforce Service Cloud exam. With that, it made perfect sense to Learn More »

I have wanted to write about “Salesforce for nonprofits” for some time now. As you many of you know, I have had the privilege to volunteer for several nonprofits over the years and have enjoyed giving back to the community. Whether you are a novice Salesforce user or an expert with multiple certifications, there are so many Learn More »

Hello everyone and welcome to the Merivis Blog!  This is my new re-branded technology blog I am excited to debut this week after a bit of rework to the site. As you probably know, I have been blogging about insights into emerging technologies and in particular cloud computing and Salesforce.com for over 2 years now and Learn More »

“The Tech Sector Needs More Women” is the title of  Bruce Upbin’s article last month from Forbes. Being in the tech world over the last 15 years,  I could not AGREE more. This article is a great read and and why have we not heard more about this? In my professional tech career, I have been fortunate to work with Learn More »

This post will focus on helping you get your first Salesforce.com Certification and what worked for me. As you know from my recent blog posts, I went through the Salesforce.com Admin Essentials  (certification) class back in March in San Francisco and since then have procured 3 Salesforce.com certifications (Admin 201, Dev 401 and Sales Cloud Consultant). Learn More »

What an amazing two weeks in March it was in San Francisco.  Salesforce.com along with Veterans2Work brought together 12 US veterans (myself included) to partake in a rigorous formal technical two week class on “Salesforce.com Admin Certification” (ADM 201) .  This was the second class (‘Cohort’) of veterans to come through Salesforce.com training and it Learn More »

This week I embark on a new adventure partnering and volunteering with a great non-profit called Veterans2Work. I first met John Reynolds (Founder & Executive Director) of Veterans2Work in November 2013 at Salesforce.com’s annual Dreamforce conference in San Francisco in which John was interviewed on the big stage during the conference.  John is a passionate, driven and hard Learn More »

Over the last several years I have had the opportunity to work on various global IT projects. One subject that comes into play and is critical to success is an effective release management strategy.  I have witnessed release management strategies which work well and at times not so well. Most if not all  of the Learn More »

I was able to attend a Salesforce1 Elevate class this week at the AT&T Executive conference center on the University of Texas at Austin campus. The big message at the beginning of the day which resonated with me quite a bit was “Salesforce.com is a platform company. Period.”.  Now while this was a statement from Learn More »

I really like this article by Zach Rodgers from Ad Exhanger on ‘Twitter Marketing’ (@zachrodgers). This article captures where marketing lead generation is going right now in the industry. If you can find a more qualified lead on Twitter instead of blasting the social media web-sphere, marketers will be ecstatic.  Imagine marketing in which you Learn More »

              Happy New Years Friends, Hope you enjoyed the time off with family and friends. I know I did. This is a new year and new opportunities are all over the place. Will share more as information can be released. At this point, both professionally and personally I will Learn More »

Its been well close to a month since the grand event that was Dreamforce 2013 in San Francisco has ended. I really wanted to let a bit more time pass to allow everyone including myself to absorb all the great keynotes, presentations and after parties that took place last month. Below are a few closing Learn More »

Day one at Dreamforce 2013 has been pretty incredible with more people attending this year than ever before (estimated to be 120,000 people!). We all found out late Sunday evening about Salesforce1, which will be elaborated on a bit more today in Marc’s keynote. Basically Salesforce took a step back when putting together the Salesforce1 Learn More »

  So, you have registered from Dreamforce and have been inundated with lots of party requests from vendors looking to get some time with you. Or perhaps you are one of those vendors yourself.  Either way, it’s very easy to get distracted at Salesforce.com’s annual conference in San Francisco.  Well no worries, I have inspected the Learn More »

I really like this article by Howard Baldwin (Forbes) about IT Innovation and the tips offered. My take is should not only happen for companies who build technology products, but should be applied the IT teams that support and build out tools for corporations no matter what sector they are in. Corp IT* has always had Learn More »

I figured this would be a fitting title for my blog post this week since this is the title one of the Dreamforce 2013 presentations I am honored to give this year in San Francisco.  “Chatter: Rock star Roll-outs” (See details below) is the name of the session, be sure to check it out.  In Learn More »

One of the critical elements of any enterprise wide IT system is the ability to know when once important data is really no longer used and can either be purged or archived. I have the honor of speaking at Salesforce’s Dreamforce  2013 on three different subjects and of of them is about “Managing Large Data Learn More »

http://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2013/10/07/why-salesforce-is-winning-the-cloud-platform-war/ I like this article that came out this week on Forbes.com. The article captures what I witnessed about 3 years ago with Salesforce.com really becoming a platform vs an application in the marketplace and how Salesforce.com is winning the cloud wars so to speak. The power of what Force.com can do for a large Learn More »

Dreamforce is coming again this year and as usual, it will be over the top with good stuff to see, learn and take in as Salesforce.com has its yearly convention in San Francisco November 18-21. I have been fortunate to have attended at least five Dreamforce’s in a row and each year they get bigger, Learn More »

Hi everyone, Well I have officially moved to WordPress. I really like the flexibility and options that are offered on WordPress vs Tumblr and Blogger  Its been a about a month since my last post, I have been busy porting over my Tumblr account over to WordPress. The look and feel may still change a Learn More »

  Bring Out the Brooms: Salesforce.com Sweeps the CRM Market Awards      Nice win for SFDC. This is pretty impressive given their reach in the global CRM marketplace. Overall the Salesforce.com platform is serving various markets with effectiveness. The platform allows for a lot of flexibility, weather its related to Sales, Service, Social Media or Learn More »

Inside The Operating Room With Google Glass Rafael Grossmann, MD, FACS at Google Glass’s first surgical appearance One small step for surgery… Yesterday, history was made by Rafael Grossmann, MD, FACS.  He’s a surgeon—and a Google Explorer.  He’s an innovator and has an informative TEDxDirigo 2001 talk where he also discusses more surgical innovations. His Google Learn More »

As referenced in my last blog, social media and CRM  at an enterprise company can be an effective tool for collaboration. This blog entry will focus on the tangibles in how to use Salesforce Chatter, track it and finally some lessons learned for your company that may apply in your space. Basics of Chatter Salesforce.com Learn More »

Sales and Marketing Alignment I like this article calling out more alignment for Sales and Marketing. I have seen in time and time again, that when your sales ops, sales teams and sales leadership are tied off with marketing…..inefficiencies are reduced, collaboration is at its best and close rates get better, which ultimately helps the Learn More »

As most us of know, social media has blown up over the last seven years or so and specifically Social Media and CRM. Whether you are checking out posts from Reddit, Twitter, Facebook or following cool blogs on Tumblr, and WordPress, social media has really taken root in our society & culture. Social media even Learn More »

adamhonig: salesforce, siebel, cobol Job Trends Salesforce jobs – Siebel jobs – Cobol 

I realize it’s been a while since a post has been since I last posted to my technology blog. A lot has happened since my last post. I was actually in a new role that took me a little away from CRM, but certainly exposed me other parts of IT related to resource management, headcount Learn More »

Depending on your company’s size, you may have partners (resellers) that sell your product in various markets around the world and its critical you know your partners (Howdy Partner).  When talking about an enterprise CRM, you really want a tool that will allow your partners to be an extension of your direct sales teams internally. Learn More »

CRM data governance, specifically account/customer data is a key variable for a successful deployment of your CRM tool . CRM data governance is often times ignored by companies or an after-thought of an  CRM application roll-out. I have seen in the past where key customer data is duplicated, wrongly entered simply does not show up as expected in Learn More »

     I have wanted to create this blog for some time now.   I realized of late, a lot of my experience in CRM *(Customer Relationship Management) software may be of use to a larger general audience.  I do not pretend to be an expert in every area of this subject, but certainly there are areas Learn More »