At the risk of using the most cliché word of the year, we’ll say it: 2020 was unprecedented. Change was on everyone’s docket on January 1st, but nobody foresaw the events that would upend the world in a matter of months.

For S-Docs, the pandemic meant office shutdowns, video calls, and lots of virtual team lunches. Yet despite the challenges of the year, 2020 saw us helping more customers streamline their Salesforce document and e-signature workflows than ever before. The year was packed with new product innovations, UI upgrades, record-breaking growth, and giving back to the community.

As the year draws to a close, we’re reflecting on S-Docs’s leading highlights for 2020. Let’s see how our product’s strength and our team’s resilience enabled us to support our customers through adversity and continue giving back to the amazing Trailblazer community surrounding us.

A Record-Breaking Year (In More Ways Than One)

Above all else, S-Docs is committed to trust, transparency, and first-rate security. Although the pandemic has turned the idea of long-term planning upside down, S-Docs was able to drive growth and support our customers this year through our unwavering commitment to our values. We are thrilled to report that we were able to shatter growth records every quarter, meaning that 2020 is our most successful year to date. This is a testament to our customers’ trust in the security, speed, and ease of use of our 100% native solutions.

As the pandemic has shown, broken records aren’t always a good thing. This year has also seen record high numbers of unemployment, virus cases, and businesses struggling to convert to remote work. That’s why S-Docs has also taken 2020 to ensure that our resources are helping wherever they can.

For one, our document generation and e-signature solutions are built to facilitate working from anywhere. These vital functions have helped our customers maintain “business as usual” throughout the turbulent year. Additionally, our many partners in the healthcare industry have made use of S-Docs for safe contactless document processing.

S-Docs is also committed to the health and safety of every employee. That’s why we implemented a wellness program that ensures the team is equipped with the necessary resources to stay active and maintain optimum health while working from home.

Finally, we’ve also pledged to match employee donations to nonprofit organizations throughout the world in an effort to give back to the community, both during this trying year and in years to come.

Welcoming New Customers and Partners

From continuous product improvement to giving back through the Pledge 1% program, none of our successes in 2020 would have been possible without our incredible customers. We had the opportunity to partner with new organizations in industries across the board this year, and saw massive developments in the government, healthcare, and financial service industries. Our native Salesforce architecture makes us a trusted solution for businesses that value data security highly, since S-Docs never sends data outside of the Salesforce cloud.

As we onboarded new customers, we also saw many existing S-Docs users expand their accounts as the ROI that document automation and e-signature achieved spoke for itself. S-Docs is able to create and e-sign any type of business document you can think of, meaning that multiple departments across an organization can benefit from its abilities.

In addition, we brought on several new partners this year, allowing us to expand our resources and help even more businesses with their Salesforce document and e-signature needs.

Introducing New Product Innovations

As we continue to grow, our products continue to get better and better. Our product teams were hard at work this year on optimizations, improvements, and new functionality aimed at satisfying our customers’ current needs and adapting to their unmet and emerging challenges.

You can read a full list of changes in our quarterly release notes, but here are a few of our favorite updates:

• Revamped User Interface: We dove into the UI of our template editor and gave it a fresh coat of paint, making it easier to use while preserving the workflows that customers are used to. Take a look at more details in this blog post!
• Drag & Drop: You can now upload any PDF to the S-Docs template editor and drag & drop merge fields and signature tags onto the document. This adds even more flexibility to the template-building experience.
• Heightened Security: Security is our top priority at S-Docs. We put our application through rigorous testing to ensure it’s always employing first-rate data security standards on top of its secure native architecture. This has resulted in improved app functionality and continues to differentiate S-Docs as the most secure solution for document generation & e-signature for Salesforce.

These are just a few of the exciting updates from 2020, and we’re not losing steam now. There’s plenty more to come in 2021, including further UI enhancements and lots of great new features, so stay tuned!

Growing Our Team & Getting Involved In The Community

Ensuring the success of our customers is only possible with a strong team of passionate individuals who champion our values. That’s why we expanded nearly every department around the globe with talented individuals committed to perfecting our product offerings and continually improving the customer experience.

Although it wasn’t the year for in-person events, we still found ways to get involved in the Salesforce Trailblazer community. We started the year by collecting the expert advice of Salesforce MVPs and publishing their tips for the community on Salesforce best practices, productivity, and career growth. We also hosted several lunch & learns aimed at educating businesses on how to navigate remote work and get connected to the right solutions to help with business continuity.

As a proud member of the Pledge 1% program, we also sought to help and give back to the community wherever we could. Along with matching employee donations to nonprofit organizations, S-Docs organized a toy drive this holiday season to help families in need. We look forward to continuously doing our part as we move into the new year.

Get In Contact In 2021!

After a year like 2020, one thing’s become clear: no matter what 2021 has in store for us, we’re ready to meet those challenges head on and continue helping businesses digitalize, automate, and e-sign their Salesforce documents faster & more securely. Don’t want to miss out on the exciting innovations to come? Reach out to us! You can always request a demo or contact sales@sdocs.com.

For product updates, news, and leading developments in the document automation and e-signature worlds, you can also follow us on Twitter or LinkedIn. We’ll see you in 2021!

How much did the device you’re using to read these words cost? Seems like a simple question -- just dig up the receipt and you have your answer.

The thing is, the price you paid for the desktop, laptop, or mobile device that’s displaying this article probably isn’t equal to what it actually costs in the long run.

Sure, you might’ve taken home your laptop for $1000. But what about the time you spent setting it up, transferring files, and maybe even learning a new system? What if you run out of storage space and need an external hard drive? What happens when it requires repair after a hardware malfunction?

All of these are examples of additional costs taken on after you purchased your device, which can be factored into its total cost of ownership (TCO). TCO is an important consideration when making any type of business asset investment, from laptops to AppExchange solutions.

What is Total Cost of Ownership?

Total cost of ownership, sometimes called total lifecycle cost, is the total cost incurred during the useful life of an asset. The most obvious of these costs is purchase price -- the hard number listed on your invoice. But depending on the product or service that you’re evaluating, the purchase price is just the tip of the iceberg. Underneath are the hidden costs that aren’t always tangible from the get-go, but ultimately reveal themselves as you begin using the product.

Overall, the total cost of ownership covers short and long term costs of using a particular product. If you can find a product with a lower total cost of ownership, you’ll get more value and higher ROI out of that product in the long-run.

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How Do Native Salesforce Apps Reduce Total Cost of Ownership?

Total cost of ownership is especially important when it comes to evaluating different Salesforce AppExchange apps. Salesforce is a complex and incredibly powerful tool. The solutions you choose to extend and enhance its functionality should increase the ROI you already get from it -- in other words, you don’t want to commit to an app that ends up being more of a burden than a solution.

Luckily, native Salesforce apps like S-Docs are in the best position to minimize your total cost of ownership since they’re built directly on the Salesforce platform. Because of this, most traditional TCO considerations are shared with Salesforce and don’t apply to native apps like they would to off-platform solutions.

Let’s examine why native apps are the smart choice when it comes to maximizing value and minimizing the hidden costs underneath the iceberg.

Pre-Acquisition Costs

Total cost of ownership starts accumulating before you even sign an agreement. Time spent on research, security analysis, and trials must all be factored into the total cost of ownership for any solution. For larger enterprises, this process can take months and consume thousands of valuable hours.

When a business evaluates a native app, however, things can be expedited significantly. Native apps are architected on the Salesforce Lightning platform, meaning that they’re built on a platform that anyone using Salesforce has already approved. They automatically inherit Salesforce’s first-class data security standards.

There’s no need to pour months of time into evaluating whether or not a native app will keep your company’s data safe -- you can be sure from the beginning that your data will remain within the Salesforce cloud. However, be on the lookout for apps that claim to be native because their user interface lives in Salesforce -- oftentimes, they still send data outside of Salesforce on the backend for processing. Ensure you have the facts on what being native really means.

Setup and Deployment

The implementation process for native Salesforce applications is typically much quicker and easier than that for off-platform solutions, saving time for admins and avoiding disrupting production.

Since native solutions are really just an extension of your existing Salesforce setup, they blend more seamlessly with your environment -- no matter how many custom configurations you have. Setting them up is easier because they’re built using the tools that you’re already familiar with, as well as the same nomenclature and styling as Salesforce.

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Training and User Adoption

Training and user adoption are important factors to consider when calculating your app’s total cost of ownership. How long will it take to skill up your users on the new application? Once they’ve been trained, will the application fit into their workflows, or will adoption be a constant struggle?

Like we said before, native apps are built to be an extension of your org, not a clunky integration. There’s no foreign system or syntax to learn. Users that already understand Salesforce will have a much easier time learning and using a native application over a non-native one.

Maintenance

Any business solution will require maintenance from time to time, whether due to minor issues or adapting to application upgrades. This can affect the total cost of ownership in the long run if time spent maintaining an app is exceeding the ROI gained from it.

Native apps are engineered by Salesforce experts who know how to optimize their solution to work with your favorite CRM. In other words, when you invest in a native app, you’re receiving a solution that’s tailored to the platform you use to carry out fundamental business activities. As a result, maintenance is required less frequently, and can often be carried out in-house. And if you ever get stuck, native apps provide support teams that are trained to work with Salesforce.

This also means that your native app will adapt as Salesforce does, and stay on top of its updates and latest features.

Licensing

By now, you know that native Salesforce apps are built on the Salesforce platform, run on Salesforce servers, and don’t work without Salesforce. So how does this relate to licensing costs?

Since native app providers aren’t paying for their own infrastructure to host and maintain their applications, they’re able to pass those savings along to their customers. You can be confident that you aren’t paying twice for infrastructure when you purchase a native app.

Data Security

When you hire a new employee and give them access to your company data, you’re taking on some level of risk. That’s why you use permission sets and sharing rules to control what different users can see and interact with.

Implementing a new application into your Salesforce org is no different. You’re bringing on a system that interacts with your data, meaning you’re taking on similar data security risks. Depending on your industry, the cost of a data breach could skyrocket your total cost of ownership and nullify any ROI achieved.

Native Salesforce applications process your data entirely on Salesforce servers. Your data is never required to leave your org, and native app providers aren’t able to see it. Your existing Salesforce security setup applies even when your data is being processed by a native app. And since data is never in transit between clouds, the surface area for breaches is greatly diminished.

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Downtime

When you invest in a new business solution, you expect it to be up and running when you need it. Downtime can cause anything from a day of unnecessary manual work to thousands of dollars in lost productivity. And when you rely on applications hosted on other clouds, downtime can be unpredictable.

Understanding downtime for native Salesforce apps is much simpler: if Salesforce is up and running, so is your native app. And because Salesforce publishes their system performance and security status in real time, you’ll never be left guessing.

Scalability

Any good business solution will add value to your company and help you grow and meet your goals. But if your solutions can’t scale with your business, they may hinder you in the long run and increase the total cost of ownership.

As your Salesforce system grows and increases in complexity, native apps are ready to scale alongside your business. They’re made for the Salesforce platform and match Salesforce’s platform elasticity. Adding thousands of additional users won’t hamper any existing workflow -- the Salesforce Lightning platform infrastructure can handle it all.

In addition, native apps don’t count against your Salesforce org’s daily API limits, meaning that increased utilization of your native app won’t affect other processes in your org, or require purchasing additional API calls. By contrast, non-native applications may require multiple calls per invocation.

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Choose Native Salesforce Apps First

Native Salesforce applications are not a cure-all for every business challenge, but when you do find a fit, you’re likely to achieve a vastly higher ROI because your total cost of ownership will be lowered in so many areas. Native apps are generally faster, more scalable, and much more secure than their alternatives. In short, they’re built to be partners in growth and innovation with the businesses that use them.

Get Started with 100% Native Document Generation & E-Signature Today

S-Docs is the only 100% native document generation and e-signature solution available on the Salesforce AppExchange. S-Docs allows you to generate and e-sign sophisticated documents in seconds, with data merged in from anywhere in Salesforce. Since it’s built and hosted on the Salesforce Lightning platform, that data is processed entirely within Salesforce -- no whitelisting external IPs, approving third-party web connectors, or API calls involved.

When it comes to total cost of ownership, S-Docs is here to help you skyrocket your ROI and reduce lifetime expenses. In just a few minutes, you can download S-Docs from the AppExchange and build your first template. And if you’re itching to get started immediately, we’ve got you covered -- you can download premade templates from our extensive library and begin generating documents right away. S-Docs doesn’t charge fees per document or e-signature request, reducing your TCO even more and maximizing your lifetime value.

To find out more about what S-Docs can do for your business, get in touch with us! Our product experts would love to hear from you. Request a demo today or contact sales@sdocs.com. 

A good document automation strategy is crucial for scalable business operations. But you can't automate everything - so what documents should you really be focusing on? Great candidates for automation meet four key criteria. These documents:

• Are created frequently on a regular schedule
• Take lots of time to put together manually
• Require little to medium amounts of customization
• Use data housed in a single source of truth (like Salesforce)

Now it’s time to look at three key documents that you can start automating today to increase efficiency, reduce errors, and make your business processes more secure:

1. Invoices
2. Customer Correspondence
3. Account & Opportunity Summaries

Click here if you missed part one - and learn about 3 more key business documents to automate in Salesforce today.

Invoices

Once proposals are sent, quotes approved, and contracts signed, invoices ensure that you get rewarded for your efforts. All you have to do is put together a list of prices and payment terms, then send out the document and wait for the money to roll in...right?

If you’ve already read part 1 of this series, you’re probably picking up a pattern here -- creating these common documents is never as simple as it sounds, and invoices are no exception. Manually created invoices are prone to errors and tedious to get right (who would’ve guessed?), especially if there are multiple different ones to keep track of. It’s also difficult to maintain the same branding and style across multiple invoices, which can make you look unprofessional. Furthermore, invoices themselves aren’t the only problem -- when you leave payment reminders up to memory, you open the door to missed payments and much more work for your team.

Luckily, automation can save the day when it comes to invoices, too. Automating your invoice process is a step towards faster revenue attainment and a much smoother prospect-customer transition. When you generate your invoices with the click of a button or a field change, you ensure that the data is correct and the customer receives it as soon as it’s necessary, upping the chances of fast payment.

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If your new customers aren’t exactly jumping at the opportunity to respond to your invoices, document automation solutions have you covered there, too. You can configure payment reminders to be automatically sent at regular intervals or when deadlines approach, freeing up valuable time for sales and accounting. If you need to set up recurring invoices, that’s no problem, either.

With automated invoices, you’ll get paid faster, make your customers happier, and be confident that you are always sending polished, error-free documents. No matter where your team is, invoice automation ensures you’re running “business as usual” no matter how unusual things may get. Check out the S-Docs template library for pre-built invoices and other finance templates to start using today.

Customer Correspondence

Regular communication with your customers lets them know that they are valued by your organization, which increases their chances of renewing their account or recommending your products or services to others. Customer correspondence is key to maintaining positive customer relationships and a good reputation in your industry.

Creating personalized assets to send to customers is incredibly important, but it’s also extremely time consuming -- and when you have thousands of customers to communicate with, it quickly becomes impossible to handle manually.

Automating your customer correspondence documents -- whether it’s account welcome letters, Thank-Yous, invitations, vouchers, or anything else -- can be a lifesaver for small and large teams alike. The word “automation” might not immediately make you think “personalized,” but don’t let it fool you -- using templates that pull data from Salesforce and leverage the power of conditional logic, document automation solutions can create complex, highly personalized documents that make your customers feel valued.

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We’re not the only ones who think you should be automating customer correspondence. Nestle, the world’s largest food and beverage company, sends and receives millions of types of customer correspondence on a daily basis -- think coupons, vouchers, giveaways, discounts, and more. When their initial automation system relied too much on manual efforts, they turned to S-Docs to fully automate the creation and execution of all customer communication. With the help of S-Docs, they’re now able to generate, print, and fulfill customer letters using a vastly improved workflow. Along with saved time and energy, S-Docs enables Nestle to maintain their brand promise and keep millions of customers happy.

Download these customer correspondence templates from our library to get started and spark your own automation ideas.

Account & Opportunity Summaries

Account and opportunity summary documents provide valuable information about the state of new business, current customers, and opportunities for expansion. Sales managers and executives often need the insights that these documents provide to make operational decisions and ensure goals are being met.

The problem with account and opportunity summaries is that getting them right requires digging up lots of data and then making it easy to understand. In an ideal world, all of the necessary information would reside on individual account or opportunity records, but this isn’t usually the case. Data is often scattered across objects, meaning that tracking it down can waste valuable time. And once you have it, it needs to be cleanly formatted, which can eat up just as much time.

Here’s the solution: build your account and opportunity summary documents with a document automation app, and never worry about getting them right again. Let’s say a sales manager requests an opportunity summary once opportunities reach a certain stage -- this is no problem with a document automation solution. Once a few pre-built templates are set up and automated, everything is done in the background.

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What’s more, document automation solutions that are built specifically for Salesforce don’t limit you to gathering data from one record, or even related records. Using a native solution like S-Docs, you can build powerful documents that query information across your entire Salesforce org and merge in things like Dashboards charts to provide clean, actionable insights in seconds.

You can also easily aggregate data to create sophisticated pipeline reports that go far beyond out-of-box Salesforce functionality. As long as the information is in Salesforce, it can be pulled together and customized to fit your business needs. Experience the power of document automation for reporting with these free templates.

Optimize Efficiency with Document Automation

The business landscape has been changing for quite some time, and if you’re aiming to gain an edge over the competition, slow and manual workflows just don’t cut it anymore.

The benefits of automating your documents are clear: productivity spikes, errors take a nosedive, and both employees and customers are happier as a result. Your team will be afforded the time to focus on higher-value work, which will translate to innumerable advantages down the road.

Document automation may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think “digital transformation,” but it’s key to modernizing traditional business processes. The sooner it’s implemented, the sooner you’ll be set up for long-term business success, no matter what the world throws at you.

Get Started Today

S-Docs is the only 100% native document automation and e-signature solution available for the Salesforce platform. For over ten years, S-Docs has been helping businesses around the world automate their mission-critical documents and save thousands of hours of productivity.

It’s built entirely on the Salesforce platform -- that means no API calls, no network traffic between clouds, and no transporting your data anywhere. When you automate your documents with S-Docs, everything is 100% generated, delivered, and stored on Salesforce servers. Because of this, S-Docs is faster, much more secure, and easier to use than non-native alternatives.

Being native also means that S-Docs is powerful -- generate complex documents with data merged in from anywhere in Salesforce, multiple SOQL queries, conditional logic, nested templates, and much, much more.

Thousands of businesses rely on S-Docs every day to accomplish the tedious work in the background while they focus on what matters most. If you’re ready to join leading businesses around the world in automating and e-signing documents with S-Docs, request a demo today, or email us at sales@sdocs.com.