ec4u is a consulting company focusing in the area of CRM and digitization along the customer journey. ec4u is, amongst other things, providing services to its clients in the process of migrating from their old CRM systems to Salesforce. Their objective is to be able to send instant messages to customers from the Salesforce platform stack in the future. ec4u's client is considering to integrate IM Apps into Salesforce in order to use it as an additional communication channel to their customers. ec4u passed this task on to our project team in the context of the practical project.

When enabling sending instant messages through Salesforce, multiple aspects of the IM APPs and the related use cases need to be defined prior to diving deep into the possible solutions. Iterative milestone meetings and workshops with ec4u formed a substantial part of supporting decision making of ec4u's client to choose applicable IM APPs. Custom solutions and third-party solutions for an implementation as well as a technical architecture and related use cases of the chosen IM APPs were provided to ec4u. Furthermore, an effort estimation and implementation roadmap as well as recommended next steps were provided to ec4u's client.

During the milestone meeting and workshop, ec4u and their client had the opportunity to gain insight into IM APPs and the technical architecture of different implementation methods. This helped ec4u to understand different usage possibilities, limitations, functionalities and the general use cases for the presented IM APPs. Further, ec4u can benefit from the market research and use cases as it can use support its business with other clients in the future. Moreover, added value has been provided to ec4u's client. By choosing the right IM APP and planning the implementation roadmap with the support of a technical architecture, ec4u's client can benefit from the project. First of all, ec4u's client can increase efficiency through simultaneous support of several customers in real time with the integration of an IM APP in Salesforce. The IM APP supports automated instant messages over Salesforce which can support customer service and build closer customer relationship to increase its customer satisfaction. On the long run, the data collected can be used for data analysis and to understand their customers through their customers journey.