March 13, 2014
By Sarah Sluis,

Brainshark Integrates with Salesforce's Work.com

Business presentation solution provider Brainshark has expanded the reach of its platform by integrating its product with Salesforce.com's Work.com, creating a specific tab for Brainshark's content and capabilities. The app is available on the Salesforce1 AppExchange.

The integration with Work.com occurs within a user's Salesforce.com Chatter profile. "To be able to integrate with that part of the application, the Chatter module, is pretty new," explains Andy Zimmerman, Brainshark's chief marketing officer, as Salesforce.com has expanded its APIs and custom objects that allow these more specific integrations. "We partnered with them strategically to build this specifically on their platform. This is in conjunction with a deeper partnership with Salesforce.com."

While looking at their own Chatter profiles, reps can perform a number of actions, including creating presentations, accessing training tools, and checking views on their presentations.

The capabilities of Brainshark for Work.com include:

Customized course catalogs. Sales reps can see their courses in progress, courses they still need to take, and popular open courses. They can also see their overall progress, making it easier to track their completion of onboarding or sales training materials.

Tools to create a presentation from Salesforce.com. Users can create presentations without having to toggle to the Brainshark interface.

Video business cards. Within a company-wide network, anyone can browse through Chatter profiles and see a Brainshark-created video business card that lists a rep's capabilities. "I could get a taste of what your expertise is without bothering you," Zimmerman says. A sidebar allows users to create their own video business cards to be attached to their Chatter profiles.

Viewing content performance. Sales reps or other users who have created content for training or their prospects can see who is viewing their content, and which presentations have the most views. It includes a breakdown that shows how many views came from mobile devices. In addition to a quick-view graph, there are advanced reports and access to a reporting dashboard.

There will be two versions of the integrated product. Brainshark Learning for Work.com will include sales training and performance features. The more robust Brainshark Enterprise for Work.com will include those features as well as external prospecting and social selling features designed for the needs of a sales representative.

The Brainshark for Work.com product will complement two other existing integrations with Salesforce.com: the Brainshark Connector and an integration with Salesforce.com Identity. The product will be immediately available for download. "We have a high percentage of customers that use Salesforce.com, and many use our existing integration. We're expecting a pretty good penetration rate," Zimmerman predicts.