When it comes to SaaS products, the idea is to make business life easier.  That’s not always the case–sometimes the learning curve behind a new product is just as much of an obstacle as the issue it’s trying to address.  Other times the product itself doesn’t fully solve the issue, but further complicates matters.  And as companies grow larger in their virtual offerings, remaining nimble and providing an interface that works well with existing user needs is a tricky balance to achieve.

Salesforce, for instance, has been a big player in the SaaS industry, and has slightly shifted focus as it finds more data-driven initiatives to incorporate into its cloud-based services.  The constant layering has left Salesforce a massive tool that can be tiresome to break down for individual business needs, especially when it comes to management and customization.  As more services take to the cloud, the broader its potential user base.  That means thousands of potential users that may not be well-versed in SaaS programs, many of which don’t have the time or resources to fully customize their own Salesforce experience based on their needs.

Looking to break down some of these obstacles is a new product from Active Endpoints, with an aim at boosting sales team productivity with a few Salesforce add-ons that even non-IT professionals can manage.  Called Cloud Extend, this new Salesforce tool is a native app that offers features for organizing Salesforce functions for an entire team, while also capturing sales knowledge, replicating the right sales patterns and helping users adhere to data consistency.

Cloud Extend works by offering a tool for creating and modifying custom interactive sales guides.  This tool skips the drag-n-drop approach, with a dynamic board that scales sizes and positions as you build out your guide.  These guides can then be shared with the team, where Active Endpoints can readily collect the data necessary for your analytics, promoting a steady methodology beyond Salesforce’s own offerings.

“The way we’ve done it is to embed the tool right in Salesforce– very clean, natural integrated guidance is enscripted for sales managers,” says Mark Taber, CEO of Active Endpoints.  “It’s a straightforward approach for the salesperson, and the end result is that the information collected through Salesforce activity is a lot better, so analytics is a lot better.”

It’s all part of SaaS’s consumerization, where Cloud Extend wants to make Salesforce as simple to use as PowerPoint.  Taking advantage of the industry trend around simplifying virtualized services, Active Endpoints is broadening its tools to this much wider user base.    This should enables users to skip the IT department, not having to bother third-party system integrators at all.

In line with Cloud Extend’s helpful goals for individual users and their sales teams, Active Endpoints also hopes to make these user-generated guides available for others to utilize.  This will expand on the simplified approach towards custom sales tools designed for Salesforce, generating an exchange market for these highly integrated tools.  On the data analysis side, a collective approach would also benefit Active Endpoints, providing data that can be used to improve its new tools, as well as benefitting the end users.