It’s been my pleasure in the last month to be staffing the CODA 2go booth at the salesforce.com Tour de Force events in Atlanta, Chicago, New York and Boston. Its been great to field questions, discuss customer requirements and demo an early, pre-release version of the CODA 2go on-demand accounting application.

CODA 2go is a brand new on-demand accounting system developed from scratch on the Force.com platform - the salesforce.com development platform.

We’ve been quizzed on all aspects of CODA’s history, product development process and functionality but for sure a recurring question has been ‘Is CODA2go integrated with salesforce.com’s CRM?’. The answer of course is ‘Yes’, but somehow somehow integration in my mind conjures up images of shuffling data to and from separate databases or maybe providing hot links between separate applications.

So rather than just ‘integration’ between CODA2go and CRM I think a better description is ‘co-existence’ : the two applications share the same data, security model, reporting tools, workflow engine, etc and as such act as modules of a common suite rather than as separate applications.

You’ll see this co-existence evident throughout the CODA2go application and this will provide huge benefits to existing salesforce.com CRM users. For example:

• Providing a complete 360^o view of an Account: CRM users can not only see sales, marketing and call center history, they can also view invoices and full payment history from the familiar salesforce.com Account tab.
• Tasks, events and approval processes relating to accounting functions can be managed and viewed in exactly the same way of those activities in CRM
• Users can create and manage reports, search lists and filters using their existing knowledge of the CRM application.

So I’ve changed my answer to the question ‘Does CODA integrate to salesforce CRM?’. The answer is ‘No, other applications may integrate with CRM but CODA2go co-exists”!

After my last post, I got a note from Kevin Roberts, our VP Business Development in the US:

“Yes, the ‘Tour de Force’ salesforce.com roadshow commenced last week with events in Atlanta and Chicago and we were there. At both events, there was a packed audience (standing room only!) at the keynote presentations by Marc Benioff and Polly Sumner of salesforce.com, where CODA’s Jeremy Roche discussed the benefits of the Force.com platform for professional developers and ISVs. Salesforce.com’s Adam Gross conducted a live demonstration of a pre-release  version of CODA2go on stage on our behalf, where he walked through the order-to-cash process showing all the neat features we’ve been building into the software. 

CODA also had a stand in the ‘Developer Zone’ where attendees could see close up a pre-release version of CODA2go in action and chat with Jeremy, Steve Pugh and myself. Huge interest and genuine excitement from analysts, potential partners, existing salesforce.com customers and companies large and small.

We’re expecting an even larger turnout this week in New York (Wednesday 16th) before we visit Boston on April 22nd.”

Less than four weeks until the official launch of CODA 2go at Dreamforce Europe, the Salesforce.com user event in London, and the level of excitement is growing, both internally and externally.

This week our CEO Jeremy has been in the US, appearing on stage with Marc Benioff at the Tour de Force events in Atlanta and Chicago. Next week he’s back on stage again in New York. The level of interest in CODA 2go has been massive, with Salesforce users excited by the opportunity for a finance system not just integrated with their CRM but on the same technology platform.

In the first of a series of planned interviews and briefings, Jeremy spoke with Business Week in the States on Thursday; the press coverage will only grow as we get closer to the launch.

As for the launch… well, ‘watch this space’ as they say. Not only is the software looking great, but we’re developing some stunning videos and materials to help people to better understand the solution….