How to Get the Maximum Out of Your Ad Spends using Programmatic Ad Buying
Advertising is a sphere that changes as soon as a new technology arrives. From the early days of door-to-door advertising to personalized notifications on smartphones, consumers have only become more demanding. Each and every development has created new ways of meeting business needs and capitalizing on marketing and ad spends. The adoption of customer-centric technology has been large scale. Now, technology is trustworthy and increasing in popularity among marketers as they look to simplify their jobs to be able to do more. The advertising and digital arena is scaling up faster than ever. You have to keep pace with such changes in order to get the maximum out of your ad spend and emerge successfully. Programmatic ad buying The technology lets you interact with sellers directly and administer automatic and real-time bidding. Programmatic ad buying makes ad buying a transparent process where you are level with all competitors and can buy spaces that don’t cross your budget. Besides, the automated solution empowers marketers to buy the right ad spaces to reach the right audiences. Make the most out of data The more targeted your ad campaigns, the more you can capitalize on ad spending. And customer data is vital to guide marketers to strategize and create specific ads targeted to specific audiences. Big data has given the power to businesses to reach audiences that are ‘categorically’ relevant. To make most of the data, brands should be able to extract insightful readings from bare content. Integration is indispensable Consumers browse quickly and they enjoy the liberty to use multiple devices and varied platforms. Advertisers should accept the challenge and make ads visible and responsive for all screens. At the same time, try to optimize your ad spend by integrating the content seamlessly across channels. The scalability factor Buy ad spaces from advertisers who offer viewable metrics of ads and know if your strategies are working. Viewable impressions give you a fair idea about fraud clicks and the quality of online spaces. Viewability is the answer to measuring the effectiveness of ads more lucidly, and it helps advertisers choose better ad spaces each time a campaign is launched. These steps ensure that money spent on ads is used effectively. Programmatic advertising is a solution that takes care of all such tenets. The automated technology simplifies the tasks of marketers and advertisers, reaps the most out of ad spends in a hassle-free manner, and creates better ROIs.
The New World of Ad Ops
Advertising does well in environments that allow employees to show in-depth focus, creativity, and value addition, and leave the hard-nosed number crunching to a capable technology. Automation is the key in this new world, which is driven by years of data insights and machines in self-learning mode. The good new world The ad ops world has definitely become more hospitable after the internet. Ad-tech solutions have eliminated the need for advertisers to maintain supercilious media connections. The process of spend optimization has also become smooth-sailing and more professional. The labyrinth of advertising Organizations hiring ad agencies must realize that advertising is about proving to be valuable and useful. Ads should make customers feel they have someone to turn to. Interestingly, a simple line of text describing your offer can win you great ROI, but only if it reaches the right people. That said, your ad will work only when those right people are in need of your offer. Technology enables decision-makers to identify that too. A programmatic ad-tech solution will connect you with vast ad inventories, from which you can identify the ad spaces frequented by your prospects. Search histories reveal what their needs are, and you get to know all about it! Surety and anxiety Technology makes guess-work unnecessary and helps you know what kind of ads should be targeted at which people, and when. It leads to a more conclusive picture about the possible return on investment. That is the reason why doing ad ops the modern way eliminates the need for bickering arguments on whose market analysis is better. The needs you need to feel the need for Ad-tech software solutions can deliver value to your organization because it simplifies three things – budgeting, ad-buying, and testing. However, every industry has those processes differently structured. The objectives are also different. In a world where programmatic advertising itself is new, it is hard for decision-makers to imagine the necessity of customized programmatic advertising solutions. However, it is necessary. Without customized ad-tech, there is little meaning in automation. Experts in technology have realized that they can benefit organizations only by treating each organization differently. IT approaches change as per which legacy systems have been in use, the latest integration requirements, and market access capabilities. On the other hand, IT implementation needs to be flexible, and adopt algorithmic refinement patterns. It will help identify your target ad spaces through the quick-paced evolution of the digital world.
Four Reasons Why Programmatic Advertising is a Must
While programmatic advertising is stretching the realms of marketing today, there are many businesses yet to catch up with the technology. Here’s programmatic advertising in simple terms: “Programmatic” is synonymous with automated. That makes programmatic advertising a solution that automates advertising functions, from the initial task of ad buying to results tracking. The technology might be prevalent in digital but has equal benefits for traditional media as well. To know some interesting facts about programmatic advertising, read: “Go Mobile to Keep Up with the Fast-Changing World of Advertising” Technology that handles advertising – totally automated, scalable, and efficient eMarketer has found that 55% of all digital display ads will be bought programmatically in 2015 in the US. The activity will be worth nearly $15 billion! Automation alone can minimize efforts, eliminate errors, and mitigate risks in advertising. The efficiency aspect has witnessed remarkable improvement with the adoption of programmatic advertising. The technology is flexible to adapt to the needs of consumers. At the same time, it is equipped to scale at a high speed. Automated sales processes, target-identifying algorithms, campaign management, integration with third-party services, real-time analytics, and batch reporting have made programmatic advertising a highly efficient ad-ops technology. In a nutshell, programmatic advertising is a cost and time-effective solution. Real-time bidding (RTB) makes programmatic advertising & ad buying more competitive Adweek recently published that by 2016, programmatic direct will be worth $8.57 billion compared to $11.84 billion for real-time bidding. Programmatic ad buying has increased transparency in ad buying. Advertisers can view inventories and have the liberty to choose ad spaces as per their needs. Buyers take part in real-time auctions and get access to quality spaces irrespective of their sizes. Buyers can focus on targeted impressions while transparency in pricing is maintained throughout the process, unlike in traditional ad buying. Advertisers and sellers have direct interactions and RTB eliminates the scope of tightfisted negotiations. The solution provides greater power to advertisers in campaign performance, and at later stages, enables them to streamline their ad spending. Know your consumers and act – time to optimize big data the bigger way A recent Forbes report states that about 65% of marketers are using 40% of their ad spends on programmatic advertising with a high dependency on data and a quarter of the marketers are in fact allocating almost 80% of their ad spend on this . With the entry of programmatic advertising, the scope of targeted campaigns has broadened immensely. Advertisers can draw consumer-related and creative insights to create the best possible campaigns. Tracking the diverse attributes of consumers and real-time feeds helps increase clicks and conversions. Programmatic advertising enables automated and multiple tests to identify the best creative. It provides solutions to complex questions like, “Which creative is suitable for which segment?” Identifying the ideal prospect group and creating tailored ads become possible through automation technology. Programmatic advertising doesn’t just produce big data on a large scale, but puts it to optimum use . The solution has enhanced reach to audiences like never before. Handle any digital space and screen, anywhere, anytime! Programmatic Advertising enables you to manage digital ads across platforms. Reaching consumers at their preferred interfaces fuels higher returns. Be it customers browsing the web through PCs or laptops, using an app on smart-phones and tablets, or watching TV, you can track their buying journey and influence their decision-making extensively. At a time when cost, time, efficiency, and transparency are the looming concerns, programmatic advertising is paving inroads to better marketing. The integration of data and technology was a pleasing development for the digital world and with programmatic advertising; the next stage is already here!
Go Mobile to Keep Up with the Fast-Changing World of Advertising
People across the world started using mobile gadgets for online search only a few years ago. This trend caught on after smartphones became affordable and people found them useful for surfing. In the early stages, people used mobile phones to surf when not around their desktops. But today, they choose mobile over the desktop as it gives them access to high-speed internet and a range of functionalities on the go. They can find the information they need, and shop what they want. And they can do it anytime from anywhere. Already, there has been a steady decline in the number of searches made through desktops. The prediction that it will decrease by one-third between 2012 and 2018 is turning out to be true. Marketing budgets have increased in the mobile segment in almost every organization. Those investments are working, leading to a steady increase in mobile marketing budgets as a proportion of digital marketing spends. It is predicted that 75% of digital marketing budgets will be dedicated to mobile advertising by 2018. The need of the hour Dependence on data cannot be avoided. Investing in data is the need of the hour because it will help keep your mobile targeting strategies relevant. However, that is easier said than done. In order to capture the interest of your targets, advertising with the support of data is just the beginning. Click-worthy calls-to-action, quick data retrieval and audience connect, design optimization, and A/B testing are all required for you to be able to tap into digital opportunities successfully. It is also worthwhile to focus on native advertising strategies, as they fetch 50% more clicks on average. For better engagement, using videos may not be wise all the time, but they can be extremely effective if you are able to reach your audience while they travel or in their free time. Undeniably, mobile advertising is mostly about timing. Getting it right will solve many problems. And remember, nothing beats good app functionality. You can reach mobile users in two ways: Through your brand app, which the users have already downloaded Through platforms, which your targets audience to use in everyday life the first case, you will have to make sure that your app delivers some value. There is no reason for someone to download it otherwise. Here’s what makes an app worth downloading for customers: Seamless interactivity – for getting across the right messages and enabling convenient communication Easy functionality – for making the customers’ life easy and preserving their inclination to use your app Flexible technology – for changes or upgrades to your app, which should be easy and involve minimal or no downtime The second way of reaching mobile users involves recurrent planning for the right programmatic advertising platform and the right publishers. For mobile ads, here are some “always remember” strategies: Just let your ad viewers call you directly if you are having trouble converting them. Although it sounds simpler than it really is, displaying your phone number works. If your targeting is strong enough and you’ve done all the hard work, maybe your audience thinks literally one click should be enough to reach you. When targeting audience segments, don’t forget about conversion. You can let the ad viewers call you on the phone directly, ask them to submit their contact info, follow you on social media, subscribe to emails and newsletters, or register for an event. Put the right conversion button for the right purpose for better conversion. Use Dayparting, which is a technique to program your ad reach differently for different parts of the day. Everyone likes to be notified about something relevant. For example, reaching parents in Miami during the afternoon with an ad for a children’s waterproof will definitely help them remember about it! You can also time your ads to match when they go for shopping. Consider shifting a part of your budget to desktop when mobile CPCs feel too expensive. This can be implemented by accessing the “Devices” tab under “Settings” in AdWords. Programmatic advertising technology has proved to be the latest asset for experienced marketers, and the returns are proving to be worth the effort. Third-party advertising requires a team specializing in ad-ops. It should be able to strategize for profitable online advertising. That said, a sufficiently capable ad-tech software solution will help optimize your mobile ad expenses and assess your activities with advanced analytics on a real-time basis.
Five Ways to Raise Aftermarket Fleet Revenues with a Small Cloud Investment
Aftermarket revenues from fleet operators are not something manufacturers hope for. The usual feeling is that fleets handle damages, and it’s more cost-effective once the parts are availed. The challenge for techies was to provide the warranty business a technology that enables manufacturers to provide maintenance as conveniently as the in-house “service” fleet operators prefer. Enterprise software systems can help manufacturers achieve high proximity to fleet personnel at a low cost. Previously, systems were known to shrink profits, but, these days, the acceptance of cloud systems benefit manufacturers with great aftermarket revenues from fleet, especially if the right development strategies are used. So here we will give you five ways to judge a warranty management system, which can benefit fleet operators with unprecedented convenience; and you, with steady aftermarket revenues and customer satisfaction. #1 Cloud-based systems can collate data and provide insights for decisions on vehicle investments and cost optimization. Try to deploy a software service which integrates fleet services, manufacturers like you, and service units on the cloud. It will let you develop a database of performance, parts quality, and improve on them. #2 The cloud solution should also let you use GPS to deploy services at a win-win cost. An added benefit can sometimes be the RFID detection in cases of road emergencies. It proves when vehicle damages can be detected and signaled to manufacturers, who can send immediate help and medical assistance if the need is felt. #3 Since manufacturing companies have service stations across the globe, what remains is a technology that puts them and new parts at the fingertips of fleet operators. There is no need to outsource the repair otherwise. Manufacturers like you must deploy a user-friendly interface where fleet personnel can update you and get real-time feedback on complaints. #4 Rules-based warranty modules on the cloud will let operators access an interface and submit claims. On the same interface, the fleet operator can interact in real-time with the manufacturer on the issue. As a manufacturing company dealing with fleet personnel, you should be able to provide to-the-point explanations on claims processing. #5 Go for agile development software service. If a certain warranty claims management policy is proving to be unfavorable, be it for the OEM, supplier or vehicle user, changes in the rules will prove extremely satisfying. And that is where agility in the software will prove profitable. Fleet management operations, when supported with such cloud-based IT capability, can be implemented through smartphones. Mobile versions are becoming increasingly common these days. With software that is truly agile and flexible, fleet warranties can become cost efficient and simple to process. Understanding the needs of fleet operators is important, because a large potential of aftermarket revenues lies there. Vehicle utilization and equipment optimization are some decisions which have to be made extra carefully by fleet operators. Everyday logistics are also a challenge to achieve. Calling up manufacturers to do the repairs, and then claiming warranty, are low on priority. The whole process needs to be as if manufacturers are where the fleets are.
Five Improvements Required for Warranty Revenue in Vehicle Manufacturing
Vehicle problems arise out of parts manufactured either by the automobile company or a parts supplier. The process of warranty inspection involves a validation process and communication protocols. The manufacturer should be able to validate, or turn down the warranty claim, and revert to the distributor with the right message and reasoning. And, at the same time, ensure customer satisfaction so that no complaints ensue. Transparency and turnarounds are the key factors behind customer satisfaction. Besides offering user-friendly interfaces for different players in the value chain, technology can save time and costs with real-time communication and a rules-based claims validation module. The latest systems also allow manufacturers to deal with supplier recoveries and shipment within short turnarounds in an inexpensive way. (Image credit: en.wikipedia.org) Simply improve these processes for better warranty revenue: Validation – When the customer routes a warranty claim (through a dealer and/or distributor) to the automobile manufacturer, it should determine the liability. In order for the automobile company to avoid a long turnaround, it needs an integrated cloud system to receive the claim details, identify the cause, notify the liable party, and revert to the customer, all within minutes. Service dispatch – Once the manufacturer is able to verify the claim and prepare a service team for repairs, the step involves shipment of parts and/or the vehicle. The service teams require mobile devices to access information, and do the required job. The service team should also be able update the manufacturer on the possibility of misuse, if any, and get further directions through the integrated mobile interface. Parts tracking – If required, the manufacturer should track the liable supplier for parts replacement, and inform the right supplier personnel on the issue. Technology should enable accurate identification with secure user IDs, as well as process and product IDs. Identifying the nature of the customer’s problem becomes easy with a technology which uses claims history to help identify fraudulent claims. Communication – The service team has to resolve the problem within quick turnarounds, and allow the KPI data to be appropriately filled. For this, the manufacturer should be able to measure customer satisfaction accurately. Issues like minor delays and dissatisfactory results should be taken into account through a real-time reporting system. Continuous improvement – Repair costs are difficult to control on the ground, and manufacturing improvements over the future are a must. Software technology can develop a claims history to let manufacturers identify areas of improvement in the manufacturing phase. This will enhance brand value and improve reliability over the long run. Vehicle manufacturers must not only check for technical issues related to the customer’s problem, but ensure that replacement and repair services are dispatched cost and time-effectively. That is when customers will stop thinking about going to the local mechanic to avoid the warranty rigmarole. Technology can make quick communication a completely transparent process. With globally distributed service stations of manufacturing companies, what’s required is a solution that uses GPS to identify cost-effective ways of dispatching services, and a transparent system that allows the customer to know everything from claim to billing. Technological support for such purposes requires integration over cloud: be it for the dealer, the special-parts supplier, the distributor, or the automobile warranty unit. As the need for improvement in such a vast value chain is bound to be felt, agile software development is a highly suitable practice for vehicle warranty management.
How to Ensure Customer Satisfaction with Technology in the Warranty Business
Software development efforts are usually directed at reducing overheads and increasing ROIs, but when technology is used to improve the value chain through better customer satisfaction, the approach required is essentially number driven. The need to improve customer satisfaction can be met if operational complexity was lower and measurability was easier for manufacturing personnel. Technology can make business performance measurable. The improvement brought about by such technology has to be persistently felt across the warranty chain. The need for measurability Experience improvement across the value chain occurs as the result of integration and transparency, which can be brought about by a user-friendly and integrated technology. However, without KPIs or measurability in it, personnel will remain in the dark about improvements. Error-free and time-effective processes involving dealers and special-parts suppliers are necessary as well. Manufacturers should detect inefficiencies and production defects, and consequently, make modifications that improve customer experiences. What are the software requirements? 1.OEMs first need an integrated system in order to obtain relevant data from the value chain. Access to data that lets managers use customer satisfaction as a KPI is only possible when a real-time system involving telematics, simple user interfaces, and the cloud can update the warranty system at the manufacturer’s end. 2.A capable technology must also use warranty data for internal calculations. Warranty intelligence helps identify patterns and leads to higher measurability, easing the process of operational control and performance scoring. When the data is real-time, pre-emptive corrections can lead to long-term profitability and brand value. 3.Warranty spends are contained within appropriate limits as the result of fraud detection. Data intelligence can help detect frauds by identifying customers’ behavior over time, and create transparency between OEMs, dealers, and suppliers on fraud issues. The need for agile software development Imitating the dynamism in any given business environment is understandably a difficult challenge in enterprise software development. IT suites for warranty management should feature user-friendly interfaces, which can be used by OEM personnel without technical expertise. While they should be able to set their warranty rules without the assistance of a software developer, algorithmic changes should be available from a software provider instantly. A capable provider should be able to deploy the changes within days or weeks by the virtue of Software as a Service (SaaS). Similar changes from legacy system providers can take months and overheads easily eat into profits. A vast scope of improvement lies in warranty intelligence. As your system gathers a massive source of cumulative data, algorithmic refinements can identify profitable distribution points, unproductive policies, scopes of fraud, supplier-recovery risks and let you score them regularly and accurately. Remember, refinement in algorithms helps organizations to improve continuously. In a nutshell Your warranty management system must drive your organization towards being better informed, so that you can avoid misunderstandings, take the right decisions, and deploy the right investments after quantifying performances. Moreover, a good software system is one that enables clarity and predictability in the value chain with ease.
Four Steps to Have an Efficient Reverse Logistics Process
According to studies, an average of 4% to 6% of all retail purchases is returned, costing the industry about $40 billion per year. Every industry is facing a challenge today in managing goods return and use this as a key differentiator for their business. Without having a proper reverse logistics process in place, it is difficult for an enterprise to stay competitive in the Ecommerce industry as today is all about providing quality service along with quality products. A renowned Ecommerce company having an amazing reverse logistics process built on the lines of flexibility and responsiveness; will first provide a new product to the customer and then take the defective / damaged product within 3 to 4 working days – from the date of return request. Without a reverse logistics process in place, organizations are not able to manage returns and channelize goods. This situation makes it difficult to understand whether the returned goods need to: go to the warehouse for resale or to the manufacturing unit for re-manufacturing or be recycled. The customer satisfaction levels continuously decrease as they find it cumbersome to return the goods. Organizations are losing a lot of money to get these returned goods back to the warehouse. According to Harris Interactive, “85% of customers WILL NOT shop with you again; if the return process is not convenient, and 95% of customers WILL shop with you again; if the returns process is convenient.” With a good reverse logistics process in place, companies can not only track returns but also get the value from returned products. They can provide quality service to the customers. While outsourcing the processes to 3PLs, providers will be able to help organizations save a lot of money in the return process. According to the Aberdeen Group, “very few companies are more than marginally satisfied with their current reverse logistics approach, with nearly 60% reporting that they are somewhat or not satisfied.” To implement a successful Reverse Logistics process, we can follow the below points: Have a clear visible system in place for real-time monitoring and tracking. OEMs should have a proper process for the products that customers would want to return. The first point is when the customer calls customer care to request a return. The official should be able to differentiate the queries based on different scenarios like: damaged, defective, not available and want a different product. The people in charge of the transportation can then screen the products with respect to the different reasons and ship them back to the places determined for each scenario. Outsource your logistics to the 3PL vendors. Reverse logistics itself is a very complex process and to do it effectively one needs to have a separate department with skilled human resources. Reverse logistics requires a huge investment, and it is not possible to do it properly from Day1.OEMs tend to outsource this process instead of setting up a department. 3rd Party Logistics vendors like Blue-dart, FedEx, etc. have developed systems through which the OEMs can keep a real time track of their reverse shipments while the actual job is being performed by the outsiders. This not only helps the OEMs to reduce investments but also in attaining an effective return management process. Figure out your distribution centers and warehouses to manage reverse logistics. This is the most important part of the reverse logistics process. To have an effective RL process in place, OEMs needs to decide strategically on the return/ collection centers. Locations will have to be based on the cost of the products and the reason for return. For example, a damaged / defective product will go to the inspection plant where it would get inspected, and actions would be taken accordingly. On the other hand, if it is in a state of re-use then it would go to the distribution centers for resale. Communicate with customers during the return process. This helps in building a trustworthy relationship between customers and industries. Communication is one of the deciding factors for an OEMs sustainability in the long term. This era is of providing quality service. To get trustworthy, OEMs need to communicate continuously with customers. They need to listen and understand the queries placed by their customers and provide the best possible solution which will delight them. In case of returns, they need to interact with their customers and let them know the status of their returns. They should follow an interactive approach rather than a reactive approach. After understanding the efficient ways to implement a successful reverse logistic process, the following steps can be incorporated to get the maximum value of a returned product. Disassemble – Once the returned product reaches to the DC/ Warehouse, try to disassemble it to view the parts that malfunctioned and the parts that can be used. Sort – Segregate those into two groups like the malfunctioned parts and usable parts. Reuse – Reuse the usable parts to manufacture new products so that the daily wastage reduces. Repair – In case if there is a need for small repairs, the OEMs can fix them, and the same product can be re-sold. Recycle – Recycle the parts that malfunctioned and cannot be re-used by taking proper safety measures towards the society.
Hit the Bull’s Eye with RTB
Real-Time Bidding (RTB) is emerging as one of the most exciting developments in online advertising. It has helped improve transparency and targeting efficiency in the display advertising ecosystem and completely changed the media buying and pricing dynamics that have prevailed for over the last two decades. RTB is empowering a healthy growth of the overall advertising industry. In the year 2009 RTB was introduced to sell unsold impressions in real time to a large pool of advertisers and was considered a backup option for a long time. With the rise in the number of RTB exchanges and technological advancements, advertisers and publishers realized the monetization opportunities that RTB provides. RTB now fulfills more than 65% of online advertising demands. To evaluate and understand the value RTB adds to online advertising- let’s compare how the system works under traditional online and RTB advertising approaches. In a traditional approach, a publisher P enters into a direct deal with an advertiser A, to display ads on its portal. All the impressions shown, are charged the same price. The unsold impressions are either offered at a lower price band or remain unsold. This approach lacks efficiency and dynamic pricing. There is no role of user-profiles in pricing. The traditional approach assumes that all impressions carry equal value, which doesn’t hold true anymore. Each impression is unique! Let’s glance through a few facts that researchers have found during a study on internet access behavior. Though more pages are getting browsed between 8 AM and 11 AM, ad click rates are very low during this time slot Conversion and click rates are higher between 6 PM and 10 PM Conversion rates during sleep hours are significantly lower than what we have during the daytime Most of the websites have fewer visitors on the weekends Ad campaigns with well-defined target segments receive higher click rates than non-targeted ones Above facts echo my view- “Every Impression Is Unique!” Impressions shown at a specific point in time to a specific persona are more valuable to an ad campaign than the impressions at any other time of the day. Similarly, an ad shown to a closely matched target profile holds more value and should be priced at a higher rate. RTB overcomes all the shortcomings of the traditional approach. In RTB approach, dynamic content is chosen real-time at a dynamic price through the following steps: A web page is getting browsed on the publisher’s site While loading the page, the site sends the entire information it has about the page, the user and the user demographics to third party exchanges called RTB exchange or Ad-exchange The exchange sends this information to their partner agencies (called Demand Side Platform – DSP) in the form of a bid request Each DSP evaluates and weighs various parameters associated with the impression in question and chooses an ad that best suits the given parameters Each DSP responds back with a bid price and an ad-markup URL for that unique impression on behalf of the advertiser Ad exchange (RTB exchange) compares all the bids received from different partners and notifies the publisher site with the ad-URL of the highest bidder (the winner) The publisher site displays the winning ad This process happens within just 300 milliseconds and thus doesn’t hit the page performance or load time. Both publishers and advertisers equally benefit by aligning themselves with the RTB ecosystem. Publishers can better monetize each impression they show to the end user. At the same time, advertisers make informed decisions on how much they want to pay to deliver their message to the right person at the right time. Apart from Advertisers and publishers, there are many other players involved in the RTB ecosystem. Demand Side Platforms (DSP), Supply Side Platforms (SSP), ad exchanges are the few important ones. Market players need to re-strategize their media buying/selling approaches to succeed in online advertising that requires considerable investments in technology and training. In my view, investment shouldn’t be a roadblock given the value addition and benefits a sophisticated RTB implementation brings back to the table. It’s time to hit the bull’s eye with RTB.
Is ‘Declarative’ Always the Best Way to Go?
About a year ago, I was asked to create a POC for an address validation automation in SFDC. This job required an automated process to send mortgage address data from SFDC to a 3rd party web service, and parse a response back into SFDC. An aggressive 30 day deadline was included, and there was no appetite for on-premise hardware. The 3rd party spec followed MISMO standards (Mortgage Industry standards for electronic interchanges), which though extremely well put together, are not really standard. For example, the specs required parsing a complex DTD (Document Type Definition) for XML messaging [eXtended Markup Language – think envelopes for web data]. There was no WSDL service [Web Service Definition Language – a standard and useful web service nowadays], which would have eased the coding. This was not to be a run-off-the-mill project. The Salesforce API collection [Application Programming Interface -think USB, Video and Audio ports in your computer] provides customers with the integration capabilities to connect to nearly any data, and in many ways. However, SFDC customers are responsible for building such customizations on top of the provided APIs, in this case, using custom Javascript or Apex (coded) , or a cloud-based, third-party ETL app or tool [Extract, Transform, Load -declarative]. I compared cost estimates between coding in SFDC, the required messaging from the ground up, or using any of the advertised declarative ETL systems. As there is sparse SFDC documentation on how to code this particular requirement by following a DTD; I initially thought using one of the several available ETL tools would be cheaper and quicker. I must also add that the customer’s CIO had twice previously attempted to get this customization coded, and was not satisfied with the outcome. He was not too keen on a 3rd coding attempt, but had never heard of SFDC ETLs. As the popular saying goes; “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome” – Attributed to Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, and several others. Though well versed in MSSQL and Oracle transformations, this was my first experience with SFDC ETL tools. ETL sounded like a very good proposition at first. Integrations were advertised to be as easy as dragging and dropping readily available flow components into a design environment, and 80% declarative. The cost was a bit scary, as most of these tools were billed as yearly subscription contracts, including just a couple integrations into the first billing tier. You can expect to pay about $1000 /month (and more, depending on the product) for your first tier contract. -Note: Up to 50% discounts are offered to Non-Profit organizations. The customers were informed and they stated the proposed benefits surpassed the costs estimate. So business case was validated, project chartered, and costs scoped. – or so I thought… While the selected product is excellent, and has received rave reviews from the SFDC community, the documentation for doing anything other than standard WSDL connections was non-existent. The procedures for the transformation of the ETL were described hastily without any details. It took more than 3 days to get a company representative to answer my request for information. Once I had the ETL provider’s attention, service was excellent. They admitted that proper documentation was in progress and assigned developers to explain the procedures of the transformations (letter of intent non-withstanding). It was not until then that I learned that the ETL provider does not process any response messaging. This was not documented anywhere. So the customer must provide a web server to run their agent software, which basically is a web listener, if you will. Considering our on-premise related hardware constraints, I selected cloud web server from a well-known provider to install the ETL response listener, and configured the minimum requirement resources the ETL provider listed. And that’s where it hit me. – Too many parts… – 4 different monthly bills… (SFDC, Data Provider, ETL Provider & Well Known Provider)! This was deviating from the initial scope. It was time to bite the proverbial bullet, knuckle down, and code directly into SFDC. Leveraging the SFDC DOM class (Document Object Model- an XML parsing tool) was not nearly as difficult as expected – it ended up costing about a quarter of the estimated yearly ETL. Also, the customer would only receive 2 monthly bills. A successful POC was Apex built within a week. Needless to say, the customer’s CIO was only too happy to accept the proposed changes. I used to be absolutely biased in favor of declarative methods whenever such were possible. Though Apex and VF coding can certainly become troublesome to maintain, such methods can sometimes be much more convenient than declarative tools for the customer, and should never be dismissed without careful consideration.