LinkPoint Connect: Works So Well I Don't Even Know it's There
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
LinkPoint is being deployed across our entire organization, as a way to be more efficient and thorough with our email and Salesforce integration and documentation. It is being rolled out in waves and I am in initial the pilot/test group. So far my experience has been pain free and encouraging.
Pros
- Setup is pretty seamless, at least from an end-user point of view. Essentially you open both Outlook and Salesforce, and then click on the LinkPoint Connect button in Outlook. You are then asked to sign in (provide username/password) to Salesforce. That's all--once my login information was accepted it was set up and syncing emails and calendar items from Outlook to Salesforce. Pretty painless!
- Recording/syncing emails to client records is, from my standpoint at least, the core functionality, and LinkPoint does this pretty much flawlessly and with little to no effort or input on my part. This is incredibly important to me as it creates the documentation record I need in Salesforce to provide excellent service to my clients as well as for compliance reasons.
- The LinkPoint interface also makes it very easy and efficient to perform additional actions in Salesforce without ever leaving Outlook. New Salesforce tasks, events, follow up reminders, etc. are all easy to set up from the LinkPoint sidebar directly in Outlook with just a few clicks of the mouse. And, in those cases where you need to go a little deeper there is a link in the sidebar that will open up the client record directly in Salesforce in a single action, bypassing the multi-step process normally required (i.e. open the program, search for the client, select and open the record, etc.). This ease of interaction between the two programs has removed barriers and has helped me be more consistent in fully utilizing what Salesforce has to offer. No longer do I move on to the next item on my to-do list with scribbled note that will hopefully remind me to update Salesforce later, when I have a chance...
Cons
- I don't really have any areas where I think LinkPoint as room for improvement. Perhaps this is because I've only been using it a couple of months and haven't yet experienced anything problematic.
Likelihood to Recommend
LinkPoint is well suited to any situation where Outlook is used for email correspondence and calendar items and there is need to have a record of those items and/or perform connected actions (schedule tasks, follow up reminders, etc.) in Salesforce. Automating this process and removing as much duplication of work as possible is the primary goal and the primary benefit that LinkPoint provides. In addition to efficiency, automating the process also provides a pretty substantial increase in accuracy, removing ca. 50% of the chance for human error. It's pretty simple functionality in concept, but extremely valuable in execution.