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15 Reasons Formstack Is Lighting Up the AppExchange

Zak Pines
May 19, 2021
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Min Read

Formstack is a one-stop shop for Salesforce data management.

If that tagline peaks your interest, there’s even more good news. Formstack for Salesforce offers a native data collection, document automation, and eSigning experience. In fact, Formstack is an independent software vendor (ISV) partner. This means that Salesforce system integrators (SI) can work with Formstack and other ISV partners to help customers maximize their impact and Salesforce adoption.

At Formstack, we back up powerful software with cross functional teams. Our partner, customer success, sales, product, and engineering teams all maintain strong understandings of Salesforce  in order to assist customers as they take their Salesforce investments to the next level. 

While we offer a platform experience, many customers and partners appreciate the modularity and adaptability of our individual solutions, as well. The flexibility of our products allows customers and partners to do everything from spinning up super quick solutions in a couple of hours to taking on enterprise-wide digital transformation initiatives. We’ve seen industries such as healthcare, financial services, higher education, government, non-profit, and manufacturing use the Formstack platform to empower their teams to make sweeping changes to their workflows. 

After a wild year of change amidst uncertainty, we have been busy growing and updating the Formstack partner ecosystem. We’re proud to serve our partners and customers as a single-source solution for Salesforce data management. 

Today, let’s look at 15 reasons why Formstack is the best solution for your Salesforce data management needs.  

#1 Solve Several Problems with a Single Solution

Formstack for Salesforce enables customers to rapidly deploy processes that improve experiences for both customers and employees. For example, when TriCounties Bank needed to deploy a paycheck protection program (PPP) loan application process, Formstack for Salesforce allowed them to set up a dynamic application workflow. They were then able to use Forms for Salesforce to collect application data and Documents for Salesforce to format the data into automated documents. The combined power of Formstack and Salesforce enabled TriCounties Bank to launch its PPP loan application in one week which ultimately funded 2,908 loans totalling $436.7 million.  

#2 Collaborate with a Consulting Partner Community 

LearnWell needed to transform their paper-based referral, intake, and billing process to a digital process that integrated with Salesforce for revenue visibility. It had to be done in one month Due to business priorities, they needed to revamp and revitalize this workflow in a single month. This was the time to shine for Formstack’s flexible, easy-to-use platform.

Formstack partner Soliant Consulting used Formstack for Salesforce to deliver HIPAA-compliant patient referral forms and digital signature functionality—all without code. The new process helped Learnwell extend their services and provide ongoing counseling for their patients. 

#3 Even Salesforce uses Formstack for Salesforce

As I shared on LinkedIn, the Salesforce Real Estate Technology team recently adopted Formstack for Salesforce to run their global building operations process. Now all forms for maintenance requests, building rentals, service requests, conference room reservations, and more are completed using Formstack for Salesforce forms. 

Formstack for Salesforce empowers the Salesforce Real Estate Technology to adjust and evolve their workflows using the drag-and-drop form builder that’s native to their Salesforce org. Formstack’s NativeCloud architecture ensures all data is processed and managed directly within their Salesforce org which was vital for security and compliance. 

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#4 5-Star Reviews on the AppExchange 

I’m often sharing Formstack for Salesforce AppExchange reviews with our consulting partners and customers. I always find these reviews so valuable because they often recognize the amazing work being done across our customer success, support, product, and engineering teams. These teams spend their days developing and maintaining our products and customer experience. As an organization, we strive to curate the best possible products and experiences for our partners and customers—all within Salesforce. 

There are many meaningful reviews that I could call out, but today, I’ll highlight one from from Formstack certified Salesforce consultant from SOLVD, John Turner:

“My initial interaction with Formstack was through configuring it for a client. I was skeptical at first that it could live up to the hype. I'm very happy to say that I was mistaken.

Formstack for Salesforce is incredibly easy to set up, gives Admins great power when configuring forms for data ingestion, and has been flexible enough to meet all of my other clients' use cases. The ability to pre-fill forms off of records in Salesforce, and create / update multiple different object records upon submission has been a killer feature. Plus, they allow for custom Javascript or CSS for those that are more technically inclined.

11/10 I would recommend this product to anyone that needs a simple, effective way to collect data online and store it in Salesforce.”

#5 Build Flexible Use Cases that Power Your Entire Enterprise

Formstack for Salesforce is a truly one-of-a-kind product for managing forms directly out of your Salesforce org. No integrations or data syncing is required to create powerful prefilled forms that allow you to progressively capture data from customers or constituents, as well as deploy forms tied to users in your Salesforce Digital Experience and Community Cloud forms. 

The transformational value of these use cases is the experience for your customers or constituents. Instead of a hollow “blank form” experience, your customers can review, verify, and update existing data using our Dynamic Prefill feature. This creates a personalized experience for customers that lets them know your business cares and makes it easier for your business to maintain an up-to-date and accurate record of customers. 

Formstack for Salesforce can be used alone or paired with our Formstack Forms Salesforce integration to build a variety of specialized workflows, such as: 

  • Marketing Website Forms: A/B test fields, capture partial submissions, and identify field bottlenecks to improve form conversions
  • Ad Hoc Data Capture: Formstack makes it easy to quickly spin up a survey, review the results, and then upload a subset of data to Salesforce later. 
  • Offline Data Capture: Through our Formstack Go app, users can quickly collect data offline and sync to Salesforce when they are able to reconnect to the internet. 

#6 Get So Much More Than Forms

It's pretty obvious that Formstack is great at forms. Most people know us first because of our powerful data capture product.  So, if you didn’t already know, we also offer document generation and eSignature collection. 

When we started working with the Salesforce team, we were able to share powerful document generation use cases that showed how Formstack automates document workflows with far less complexity. Our partners now tell us it takes on average one-third of the time to set up document automation using Formstack Documents vs. alternative products. 

Our Director of Technology Partnerships Gabe Caldwell was interviewed in this video by Salesforce MVP Jeff Grosse on our top Formstack Documents use cases for Salesforce customers, which include:

  • A digital forms process that connects to other business processes by outputting a customized document, such as loan applications, college applications, patient intake forms, or government forms.
  • Creation of a document from a button on any Salesforce object, such as proposals, quotes, presentations, invoices with full flexibility for output format. 
  • Automation of a document generation process via Process Builder. This may be a workflow such as the generation of letters triggered by a specific account stage in Salesforce. 

#7 An Enablement-First Approach to Working with SI Partners

Due to the modular nature of our products and the types of solutions customers and partners can create, we’ve taken an enablement-first approach to collaborating with SI partners. Our method is to offer up enablement sessions with sales engineering, consulting, and delivery teams where we cover relevant demos and use cases with a vertical focus specific to the SI’s customer base. We invite teams to throw any use cases at us for feedback and workflow ideation. Our team is made up of Salesforce and Formstack experts so they’re always ready to brainstorm on solutions.

After an enablement session, we follow-up with a break-out meeting to dive deeper into use cases and offer complimentary partner licenses for SI partners to build out use cases in their own Salesforce orgs. 

#8 Our Partner Certification Program Is on Fire 

Closely tied to our enablement-first approach is the fact that our partner team provides a lot of support as partners to work to become Formstack-certified. We have several principles around partner certification:

  • Partner certification should be practical. In the Formstack Certification Program, we encourage partners to create Formstack solutions based on real-life scenarios they are trying to solve for themselves or their customers. 
  • Partner certification should be celebrated. Our newly certified partners are presented with their own partner certificate (created using Formstack Documents, of course) and are shouted out on LinkedIn by our partner certification manager, Justin Jackson. Some recent examples of Justin’s certification shout-outs include Fatima Yahiaoui from SOLJIT (based in Montreal, Quebec), Cameron Stradeski from Marketing Logic (based in London), Ellen Scully and Anna Bailey from akaCRM (based in Colorado Springs, CO), and Sjaak Hoogstraaten from Intigris (based in Amsterdam). Congratulations to all! 
  • Partner certification should ignite new opportunities. Once a partner is certified, we look to showcase that partner in a variety of ways including getting the word out for how customers can benefit from that partners’ expertise. 

Speaking of Justin & LinkedIn, he has quite the Salesforce following on LinkedIn. Check out one of his most popular posts which currently has 90 comments and 1,220 likes! 

#9 Our Salesforce Alliance Manager, Michael Griffin Crushes It at Salesforce Demo Jams 

We extend our enablement-first approach to working with Salesforce. We founded a Salesforce alliance manager role on our partner team last October with Michael Griffin, who moved over from being a top performer on our account management team. 

Michael spends all day collaborating with Salesforce AEs, SEs and industry so they know how Formstack can help their customers, and when to recommend Formstack to customers or SI partners. 

Michael’s work was recently recognized by the Salesforce SE team by awarding Michael’s Formstack for Salesforce demo as the winner of the April 2 DemoJam against some tough competition. 

#10 Showcase Your Solutions on Our Builders Blog

Given the ways customers and partners are building great solutions using Formstack for Salesforce, we created a platform to share their stories and encouraged our partners to submit their best use cases to be featured as part of this series.

For example Gus Melendez from Relay inspired this Builders Blog post on how to build a touchless patient check-in process, with Salesforce QR codes. The solution that Gus created allows a patient to scan a QR code to load a pre-filled Formstack for Salesforce form with their patient information to review, verify and complete. A far better patient experience than most of us are used to, and one that fits incredibly well with how many healthcare institutions are trying to transform their experience for patients and how they manage patient data across the patient lifecycle in Salesforce. 

The Builder’s Blog has also served as a medium for our SI partners to share industry best practices out to the market. Recently, we featured a use case from Formstack partner Lev which covered how to engage prospects following a content download. That resulted in content from the Lev team titled 11 Ways Forms Enhance the Digital Journey in Sports Entertainment. This post shared how sports and entertainment teams could use forms to interact with their customers from a thought leader in that space. 

#11 Our Partner Interview Series Is a Who’s Who of Salesforce Innovators 

My first trip after starting in my role on the Formstack partner team was Midwest Dreamin’ 2019. During that trip, I met Stevan Simich, CEO and Founder of Formstack partner Mogli. Stevan had such amazing stories! I thought to myself, "we need to create a forum to share out the world the stories from our Formstack partners." And so, the Formstack Partner Interview Series was born. 

Stevan was the first profiled, followed by John Receveur of Coastal Cloud, one of our longtime power users. 

Today the series has evolved into a who’s who of Salesforce and Formstack SI partners founders, entrepreneurs and leaders, including: 

#12 Our Formstack for Salesforce partners are Practically Genius! 

Our Formstack for Salesforce partners are Practically Genius! Don’t take our word for us, hear about the genius solutions they've been able to create! 

#13 Salesforce ISVs Love Formstack for Salesforce 

Since Formstack for Salesforce is native to Salesforce, more and more Salesforce ISVs are seeing value in how Formstack can be packaged alongside their own products. either for data collection or document generation. This is further testament to Formstack for Salesforce's ability to create value rapidly for Salesforce customers and the greater ecosystem. Some examples include:

  • Rules-driven partner applications deployed through Magenrix portals 
  • Litify’s law firm customers using Formstack for rules-driven legal intake forms 
  • Salesvue customers using Formstack to capture data from their customers using pre-filled forms 
  • Mogli customers sending text messages linking to prefilled Formstack for Salesforce customers - for example building maintenance requests to mobile workers, or universities texting prospective students 
  • Full Skope using Formstack Documents to automate document generation for lending processes 
  • TaskRay customers using prefilled Formstack forms to capture data tied to their TaskRay driven processes 

And the most recent example which is worthy of a video walkthrough come from Ryan Hichler, the CEO and co-founder of Centro and former VP, Engineering from Conga. In this video, he shares how how Centro and Formstack for Salesforce are used to deploy pre-filled forms for Slack. 

#14 Creating Packaged Solutions Has Never Been Easier  

The no-code, drag-and-drop functionality of Formstack for Salesforce also creates opportunities for Salesforce SIs to create pre-packaged solutions for customers. 

Attain set out to create a customizable admissions template as part of Salesforce’s Admissions Connect, and selected Formstack for Salesforce as its solution of choice for supporting this initiative. 

This type of approach allows SI partners to leverage their vertical expertise and know-how, while reducing time to value for solution deployment. In a rapidly changing world, it’s more important than ever to deploy solutions quickly that can evolve and iterate over time. 

#15 Join a Thriving Partner Slack Community 

Our partner Slack community started as an idea from our solutions engineer, Francis Pereira and turned into a bustling space with daily collaboration between Formstack partners. 

We are especially energized when we see interactions with partners helping partners (as Justin noted here). On any given day we may see solution engineer, Chris Ball’s tips of the week, partner growth manager, Bryce DeHart collaborating 1:1 with partners, or partner community lead Amanda Nielsen planning our next partner community event. 

The Single-Source for Salesforce Data Management

There is no better evidence that Formstack is the single-source for Salesforce data management than the Formstack team. Across every department in organization, you'll find Salesforce experts:

  • Sales: Asad Azfal and Jarred Young’s sales teams are well-versed on Salesforce and Formstack and how we help Salesforce customers and partners.
  • Sales Engineering: Francis Pereira’s sales engineering team advises Salesforce customers and partners on their toughest questions and use cases.
  • Customer Support: Adam Chandler, James Allen, and Ricky Perez’s support teams help Salesforce customers every day to build solutions.
  • Professional Services: Steve Horn’s professional services team offers both customers and partners expert resources to deliver great solutions
  • Product: Ennis Al-Asaeed heads up a focused product management approach backed up by a dedicated team of engineers who know Formstack and Salesforce
  • Marketing: Our marketing team, lead by Kathryn Loheide, is dedicated to spreading the word about the value of Formstack and Formstack for Salesforce.

To close, I'll leave you with this final quote Joe Ondrejcka, Principal ISV Partner Account Manager for Salesforce, added this perspective:

“Last year in the heart of the pandemic, Formstack leaned into their Salesforce partnership and technology to drive growth and the results were amazing. By aligning with the Salesforce's  partner program, field teams, and corporate messaging, Formstack was able to stand apart from other ISVs with a whopping 42% growth in its Salesforce business, and is on target to to surpass that this year. Furthermore, by leveraging Salesforce App Analytics, Formstack was able to redefine their product strategy and increase their average deal size by 150%. Other ISVs, please take note!”

If you are a Salesforce customer or partner and have questions or ideas spurring from this article here, please reach out to me directly on Linkedin to connect.

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Zak Pines
Zak is the VP of Partnerships at Formstack, where he focuses on growing agency, consultant, and technology partnerships for the company. He's been creating, marketing, and selling SaaS products for two decades.
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