One of the undeniable trends of the 21st century has been "data is king". Our ability to collect and store data is reaching new heights every year. In 2000, companies knew who their customers were and how to contact them by phone, fax, or e-mail. In 2015, we have the technology to not only know who our customers are, but what each customer is doing with our products. Customers can submit feedback and help with requests with the click of a button, and there are "service needed" alerts built into products and equipment in nearly all industries. The "Internet of Things" allows a level of data collection that far exceeds our ability to review and respond.

Successful businesses know that the only thing worse than not knowing what your customers and products need is knowing but not doing anything about it. Data interpretation and response are just as important as collection and analysis. One of the most effective ways to ensure an appropriate and timely response is to let our business technology systems react to the data using the same business rules we would apply if we had the time to review the data ourselves.

This book, Learning Salesforce Visual Workflow, teaches Salesforce administrators how to use the business process automation features available in Salesforce to do just that—detect and react to data as it's being collected by your employees, your customers, and your products. These powerful tools can be configured by admins (no development teams and custom coding needed), maintained by admins, and be quickly modified to meet the ongoing needs of your business.

Salesforce, a leading global business technology platform, knows that the key to their customers' success is the ability to understand and interact with data. With three releases each year, Salesforce consistently adds and enhances features that help maximize the value of each piece of data and customer contact. The Spring '15 release was no exception. Enhancements to Visual Flow and the introduction of the powerful new Process Builder put even complex business process automation into the hands of non-programming system administrators.

The author, Rakesh Gupta, is a long-time veteran of the IT industry and has been part of the evolution, from raw data collection to information analysis. His previous books explain how to collect and share data using the Salesforce platform and also how to report and analyze that data. With this book, Rakesh adds another key piece to the data–to-information cycle: data interpretation and response.

Using the techniques explained in this book, Salesforce administrators will be able to provide truly responsive business processes to their operational teams—putting data in the right format, in front of the right people, and at the right time—all without developing custom code.

Jeff May

Salesforce MVP and Partner @ Miss The Iceberg