Google Gadgets for salesforce.com – The Power of “Open Market” Product Management and the IdeaExchange

On March 14^th, a salesforce.com employee named “JG” had an idea to extend the reach and power of salesforce.com for the casual user. As an avid Google personal homepage fan, he suggested a new product, Salesforce Widgets for Your Google personalized homepage. This idea was not on any Salesforce.com product roadmap, so he decided to post the idea to IdeaExchange for community feedback:


Just six weeks after his posting, and following just a single discussion with salesforce.com, Appirio has brought his idea to life, formally launching four new Google Gadgets for salesforce.com.

Designed to provide essential and customizable info directly to your Google homepage – like a “stock ticker” of your company's data – the Gadgets are the perfect tool for the executive or other light user. It gives you constant streaming information (they update themselves automatically), and you can just click to drill down right into salesforce.com.

These lightweight applications are surprisingly powerful in promoting adoption of Salesforce.com as the corporate system of record for customer data. They represent a proof point illustrating a dramatic shift in the way software is developed and deployed - via community collaboration. The intersection of “open market” product management through the IdeaExchange, a scalable SaaS platform, and a vibrant partner and customer ecosystem enables rapid product development like never before. Ideas, features, functions and even full-blown applications will come to market in weeks or months in an on-demand world, vs. years, decades…or never – in the waning world of on-premise software.

Visit Appirio’s downloads page to get the Gadgets on your Google homepage (they install with 1 click, too!).