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 this blog post below, I wanted to give a sneak peak on some key areas within this session that will be sure to be packed. As of right now this session is #2 on the “Sessions you must check out” list for SFDC admins”

What does it mean to have a Chatter rock star roll out? Well first, as with anything in life (rock stars included) you have to prep for the show or in this case, prep for the roll out of Chatter to your organization. Prepping (educating) for a Chatter roll out should mean using the ENGAGE model. See diagram below:

Using the “ENGAGE” model is a great way to consider all the variable involved in a chatter roll out. One of the key questions you will surely get from stakeholders as you consider a rollout of Chatter is “Why do I need Chatter over email” or something similar. Be prepared with ‘challengers’ as you get ready for the roll-out. We know by now Chatter is better than email, can reduce the clutter in your inbox, allow you to follow deals, people and other objects in SFDC  and collaborate (remember though lots of people may not know this).  What will help with a rock star roll out is, educate your new users that Chatter can be used for collaboration, recognizing accomplishments (deals won) and really helps streamline communications in a way email was never designed to. Once this more widely understood within your organization, adoption and roll out becomes easier.

After education of your stakeholders and prep for the deployment is complete, make sure you can measure and weigh the impact of your chatter deployment.  It is tremendously difficult to measure success and adoption of the SFDC Chatter tool if you can’t measure usage and monitor the tool post deployment.  There are several tools within the SFDC app exchange ( https://appexchange.salesforce.com/ ) that can help you measure success with your Chatter deployment and two specifically I would recommend are:

• Chatter Usage Dashboards – this tool allows you to track top users, topics and really allows for great measurement of your chatter rollout post deployment
• Chatter Blacklist – this is a great add on that allows your chatter instance to stay clean of badwords or profanity that can happen in large organizations. One item of note for this one is to make sure your technical teams know how to use this and install it properly, there are a few defects with this tool out of the box.

Once you have educated your user base on Chatter and have the ability to measure your Chatter instance post deployment, one critical piece that can’t be missed is to ensure you have leadership bought in on the tool. Having leadership bought in on Chatter will allow you to garner higher adoption rates overall and solidify its use for your company. Check out my previous post back in July of 2013 on this area (leadership buy in) of Chatter and the importance of securing leadership support.

In summary, as you consider rolling out Chatter to your organization, a few simple lessons learned I would offer and are covered above that really summarize a rock star roll out:

1. Educate
2. Measure
3. Leadership buy in.

If you have these 3 locked down, the likelihood of having a “rock start roll out” with your SFDC Chatter deployment will be great! Good luck and hope to see you at my session at Dreamforce 2013 on this subject.

Hector

Details on the SFDC Dreamforce Session:

Chatter: Rockstar Roll-outs
Looking for Chatter deployment best practices? You’re in the right place. Join us as we discuss the most effective strategies for rolling out Chatter, while highlighting customer deployment success stories, and helping you avoid common pitfalls. In just 60 minutes, this session will ultimately ensure that your Chatter roll out is wildly successful.

Time & Location
Hilton San Francisco Union Square, Golden Gate 6/7/8 | Monday, November 18th: 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM

• Tags: Chatter, Dreamforce, SFDC