Salesforce, based in San Fransisco, was the first large company to develop a product in what we now call “The Cloud”. The product manages off site sales teams. Unions are often struggling in a parallel universe. Most staff work away from the local office and need to share and access data about their current and future members remotely. There are also hierarchies of staff, and the need to design extensive data sharing rules based on peoples roles within the organization. Evaluating and communicating with contacts, whether they are customers or union members share many similar workflows and requirements.
Over the years, Salesforce has moved from being a product to a development platform. Many of the tools organizing unions need are built into Salesforce.
Here are just a few:

•  Dashboards- to allow managers at every level get a birds eye view of real time data through customized graphs, charts, and tables.
•  Mobile Apps- even custom fields are available on your iphone or android immediately without any additional development.
•  Calendar/Task management- baked in along with tickelers/reminders for tasks
•  Email integration¬ with Outlook and/or Gmail.
•  Documentation Library- to store, index and make easily searchable and retrievable, everything from union contracts, expense forms, workplace leaflets
•  Chatter and Communities- which will allow the union to have it’s own private “facebook” designed for efficient staff communications and peer support.
•  Customizable fields and tables to build tools that speak union’s language and have not yet been designed.

S.O.S. is developing a variety of products on the Salesforce platform to improve the way union staff communicate with each other, manage projects and workflows, and continue to build a strong activists union with close ties to current and future members.