It is interesting to read users’ impressions about Salesforce’s upcoming Spring ’12 release. Users will now at last be able to create exception reports with outer joins, report on multiple children and other analytics features, satisfying a very common request on IdeaExchange. However, the word is that all these features will come with a price tag.
The new analytics edition seems to include high-end features similar to those found in the more expensive BI tools such as BIRST or GoodData. These are a good fit for enterprises and large organizations which can afford the higher cost. But if you are a smaller company or a non-profit, or if your needs are more toward quick-and-easy reporting rather than full-fledged analytics, you might find these offerings less of a fit for you.
In such a situation, Apsona for Salesforce might be a better fit. With Apsona for Salesforce, you can quickly create, edit and run reports with outer joins spanning multiple child objects, and export the data for further analysis. Apsona’s reports also include charting and graphing facilities for simple visualizations.
We are constantly improving our product to fit your needs. Partners love Apsona and refer to it as a Swiss Army knife as it is so diverse in its offering – importing, exporting, updating, exception filtering and reporting. It supports all editions of Salesforce and comes in a snappy web 2.0 interface. We at Apsona routinely incorporate new features into that are suggested by you – our partners and end users. You are obviously the domain experts, and the enhancements benefit all of us. Many of the newer features that you see in Apsona for Salesforce today owe their existence to inputs from all of you. Should you need some Apsona customizations that is very specific to you we get involved in the development for a fee. We are able to create customizations that will appear in just the one specific installation.
When someone wants Apsona for Salesforce in their non-profit org, we simply ask for a copy of their 501(c)3 letter (or their country’s equivalent that certifies that they are non-profit) to be e-mailed to us. Once we get the letter, we enable the 10 free licenses. All these licenses get the same functionality as our paid users do.
In 2012 we hope to bring out many more features to suit your needs. Your feedback is very important to us so please keep it coming. The Apsona team wishes all its users A Happy New Year!