ZDNet
Salesforce.com has one of the most established partner ecosystems of any cloud application provider, and Forrester periodically conducts a Wave ranking that evaluates which ones are doing the best job.
This week, the research firm updated its assessment, identifying the 10 companies that it feels are best-equipped to handle integrations, customizations and migrations related to the CRM platform (and all the various other applications, cloud or otherwise, that plug into it).
...Here are the 10 next-gen partners that Forrester ranks, along with where they fit. (The list is in the order that Forrester offers.)
Strong Performers
Appirio - The boutique services firm has 250 Salesforce.com-skilled resources, almost all of which are certified. (The company requires certification within 90 days of hiring.) It has two other differentiators: access to more than 70,000 developers through the CloudSpokes platform and relationships with other cloud providers, including Marketo, Workday, Google, Box and Jobvite...
Read more
Appirio in the News
Thursday, June 20, 2013
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Paid volunteer time increasingly common employee benefit
MPR News
...Boosting employee engagement also can save companies money. Low employee engagement levels mean high turnover, which is costly for employers, said consultant Jason Averbook of Appirio, a company that offers services to help its business clients develop better relationships with their customers and workforce.
Replacing an employee who earns $50,000 can cost a company about that much in time and expense, he said.
Human resources experts say letting workers use company time to volunteer is a pretty inexpensive way to drive engagement higher and keep workers around. It also may be more fulfilling for employees than a pay raise, as an enjoyable experience outweighs pay in many organizations, Averbook said.
Read more
...Boosting employee engagement also can save companies money. Low employee engagement levels mean high turnover, which is costly for employers, said consultant Jason Averbook of Appirio, a company that offers services to help its business clients develop better relationships with their customers and workforce.
Replacing an employee who earns $50,000 can cost a company about that much in time and expense, he said.
Human resources experts say letting workers use company time to volunteer is a pretty inexpensive way to drive engagement higher and keep workers around. It also may be more fulfilling for employees than a pay raise, as an enjoyable experience outweighs pay in many organizations, Averbook said.
Read more
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Jawbone's UP Band Saves Appirio Healthcare Dollars
NBC Bay Area News
You may already wear one, to help your health. It turns out that cool high-tech band on your wrist may also save your company big money.
Jawbone, the San Francisco company that makes the popular UP band (full disclosure, one is dangling on my right wrist as I type these words...), just signed a deal to team up with Alliance for a Healthier Generation, a group that helps kids avoid obesity, by living healthy lives.
Yes, the guess here is that the plan will include bands worn, and data checked - In fact, the plan is to sell special orange bands, and donate $20 from each sale to Alliance. If you get one, you'll be helping yourself, and donating money to a good cause.
The band/healthcare plan is already in place at San Francisco's Appirio. The company says that, thanks to employees wearing the UP bands, they were able to negotiate a $20,000 reduction in their health insurance.
It's one thing to have a band lead you to more walking, or better sleeping. It's another to save a company lots of money. Look for the band/healthcare trend to catch on soon.
You may already wear one, to help your health. It turns out that cool high-tech band on your wrist may also save your company big money.
Jawbone, the San Francisco company that makes the popular UP band (full disclosure, one is dangling on my right wrist as I type these words...), just signed a deal to team up with Alliance for a Healthier Generation, a group that helps kids avoid obesity, by living healthy lives.
Yes, the guess here is that the plan will include bands worn, and data checked - In fact, the plan is to sell special orange bands, and donate $20 from each sale to Alliance. If you get one, you'll be helping yourself, and donating money to a good cause.
The band/healthcare plan is already in place at San Francisco's Appirio. The company says that, thanks to employees wearing the UP bands, they were able to negotiate a $20,000 reduction in their health insurance.
It's one thing to have a band lead you to more walking, or better sleeping. It's another to save a company lots of money. Look for the band/healthcare trend to catch on soon.
View more videos at: http://nbcbayarea.com.
Friday, June 14, 2013
Successful Bay Area companies serve their communities in myriad ways
San Jose Mercury News
...Appirio's CEO Chris Barbin is passionate about community programs that give back via employee time and talent. When the San Francisco-based company was still young, Barbin brought on an expert to lead the company's community outreach through the Silver Lining Program. Each employee has eight hours of volunteer time off annually to use as they wish. In 2012, Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Clara and San Mateo counties recognized the company's contributions. Appirio is 25th in the Small Companies category...
Read more
...Appirio's CEO Chris Barbin is passionate about community programs that give back via employee time and talent. When the San Francisco-based company was still young, Barbin brought on an expert to lead the company's community outreach through the Silver Lining Program. Each employee has eight hours of volunteer time off annually to use as they wish. In 2012, Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Clara and San Mateo counties recognized the company's contributions. Appirio is 25th in the Small Companies category...
Read more
Friday, June 7, 2013
Why Appirio issued Jawbone fitness monitors to employees
CITE World
There are plenty of consumer tools that jump to mind as useful for boosting productivity at work. Smartphones, tablets, and apps like Evernote and DropBox.
How about fitness monitors? Appirio thinks so.
It has issued Jawbone UP monitors to 200 employees as part of an internal fitness and wellness program and said that benefits include increased productivity and employee satisfaction as well as the more tangible insurance savings.
Appirio is working with Jawbone on new features that will let it aggregate user data as well as tie corporate information into the Jawbone dashboard. In about a month it expects to have completed integration that will feed Jawbone data into Salesforce and Chatter, also.
The roots of the initiative go back to the very start of the company.
“We’ve always had an athletic and competitive culture,” said Chris Barbin, co-founder and CEO of Appirio, a seven-year-old business with around 700 employees who help enterprises migrate to public cloud services. From the start, the company would coordinate activities like working toward marathons.
Earlier this year, however, the company decided to formalize its fitness activities into a new program. Dubbed CloudFit, it includes offering employees Jawbone UP fitness monitors and hiring a “virtual trainer” who uses Chatter to set workouts, offer advice on nutrition and offer encouragement...
Read more
There are plenty of consumer tools that jump to mind as useful for boosting productivity at work. Smartphones, tablets, and apps like Evernote and DropBox.
How about fitness monitors? Appirio thinks so.
It has issued Jawbone UP monitors to 200 employees as part of an internal fitness and wellness program and said that benefits include increased productivity and employee satisfaction as well as the more tangible insurance savings.
Appirio is working with Jawbone on new features that will let it aggregate user data as well as tie corporate information into the Jawbone dashboard. In about a month it expects to have completed integration that will feed Jawbone data into Salesforce and Chatter, also.
The roots of the initiative go back to the very start of the company.
“We’ve always had an athletic and competitive culture,” said Chris Barbin, co-founder and CEO of Appirio, a seven-year-old business with around 700 employees who help enterprises migrate to public cloud services. From the start, the company would coordinate activities like working toward marathons.
Earlier this year, however, the company decided to formalize its fitness activities into a new program. Dubbed CloudFit, it includes offering employees Jawbone UP fitness monitors and hiring a “virtual trainer” who uses Chatter to set workouts, offer advice on nutrition and offer encouragement...
Read more
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
One in five people think Google Glass should be banned
CITE World
...It sounds like wearable devices aren’t being very widely used in the enterprise, yet. The study found that 6 percent of respondent businesses in the U.S. and U.K. are providing wearable technology devices for employees. It only gave one example of how though – Appirio, a cloud services provider, has an opt-in program where employees can track health information using the Jawbone UP. Surely there will be additional applications that could be useful to businesses as new devices hit the market...
Read more
...It sounds like wearable devices aren’t being very widely used in the enterprise, yet. The study found that 6 percent of respondent businesses in the U.S. and U.K. are providing wearable technology devices for employees. It only gave one example of how though – Appirio, a cloud services provider, has an opt-in program where employees can track health information using the Jawbone UP. Surely there will be additional applications that could be useful to businesses as new devices hit the market...
Read more
Monday, June 3, 2013
Logging our lives with wearable tech
BBC News
...The cloud technology firm Appirio has issued many of its staff with the UP wristband, tracking everything from their food intake to their sleep patterns. It is a voluntary scheme, and Lori Williams who runs the European division of the American business says it's already proving valuable for employees and the firm.
"We've had about a hundred employees that have lost a stone or more in the last several months. Last month alone, we collectively walked about 17,000km (10,563 miles). So it's making us not just better employees but I think better people. And I think that's the benefit."
The company has also managed to cut its health insurance costs in the United States by showing its insurer the impact of this life-logging plan.
But, although the scheme is voluntary at this company, there are bound to be concerns that this kind of monitoring will become standard. Ten years from now, how will an employer using life-logging technology view those who choose to opt out?...
Read more
...The cloud technology firm Appirio has issued many of its staff with the UP wristband, tracking everything from their food intake to their sleep patterns. It is a voluntary scheme, and Lori Williams who runs the European division of the American business says it's already proving valuable for employees and the firm.
"We've had about a hundred employees that have lost a stone or more in the last several months. Last month alone, we collectively walked about 17,000km (10,563 miles). So it's making us not just better employees but I think better people. And I think that's the benefit."
The company has also managed to cut its health insurance costs in the United States by showing its insurer the impact of this life-logging plan.
But, although the scheme is voluntary at this company, there are bound to be concerns that this kind of monitoring will become standard. Ten years from now, how will an employer using life-logging technology view those who choose to opt out?...
Read more
With data gleaned from workers, companies hope to improve bottom line
MPR News
...Consultant Jason Averbook of Appirio, a company that offers services to help its business clients develop better relationships with their customers and workforce, helps employers use these systems. He said when one of his clients in the financial industry used analytic software to identify its top performing money managers, it found that the best were former real estate agents; they had great people skills. Averbook said that insight then shaped recruiting efforts.
"They went out in the housing crash of 2008, targeted the markets that were hit hardest in the real estate bust, went out and did massive recruiting efforts [and] turned real estate agents into these money managers," he said. "And those have been the most successful money managers."...
Read more
...Consultant Jason Averbook of Appirio, a company that offers services to help its business clients develop better relationships with their customers and workforce, helps employers use these systems. He said when one of his clients in the financial industry used analytic software to identify its top performing money managers, it found that the best were former real estate agents; they had great people skills. Averbook said that insight then shaped recruiting efforts.
"They went out in the housing crash of 2008, targeted the markets that were hit hardest in the real estate bust, went out and did massive recruiting efforts [and] turned real estate agents into these money managers," he said. "And those have been the most successful money managers."...
Read more
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Appirio at a glance
Introduction to Appirio
pr@appirio.com
