Mansa Systems thinks big by focusing on small business with Force.com

Mansa Systems was founded in 2006 by Siva Devaki, who named the fledgling company after another favorite newborn—his daughter. At first, the company worked primarily with on-premises solutions but Devaki—who has a Masters in computer science and experience in consulting and enterprise product development—soon refocused the company on cloud computing. With special emphasis on filling the small to midsized business niche, Mansa continues to think big by focusing on small.

Starting small in the cloud

From the beginning, Mansa Systems focused on systems integration for small to midsized businesses (SMB). According to Devaki, “It didn’t make sense to butt heads with the Big Five, so we targeted the SMB area where there was less competition.” In the early days, Mansa employees worked mainly with on-premises ERP and CRM solutions from Oracle, Siebel, and others.
 

Two years after starting the company, Devaki refocused Mansa on cloud computing and began working exclusively on integration, development, and deployment of salesforce.com and related partners (including Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Twilio). “I’d seen the migration from mainframes to client/server to Internet,” he explains. “After working on a couple of projects with Salesforce CRM, I could see that the natural progression would be to cloud computing and that salesforce.com would be an ideal partner.”
 

Devaki also thought that the move to cloud computing would help position Mansa for the future. Eventually his competitors would move to the cloud—but by the time they got there, Mansa would already be well established, with a highly developed skill set, partnerships, and some success stories. His foresight seems to be paying off.

Small business is big business

Today, Mansa has 29 global employees and plans to double in size within the next year. Although headquarters are in the San Francisco Bay Area, the company also has developers working in India and China.
 

Mansa has customers in Australia, Canada, China, the European Union, South Africa, and the United States. “We don’t have an overseas sales force,” says Devaki, “but clients have found us on Google or through salesforce.com partner listings—so now we’re a global company.” Mansa’s clients hail from a wide range of industries, including nonprofit, education, entertainment, professional services, semi-conductor, clean energy, real estate, and more.
 

Mansa’s customers typically have fewer than 100 users. “Our approach is much different from some of the bigger systems integrators—their rates are much higher, for one thing. For small and mid-range customers, it’s really tough to pay heavy dollars for a small implementation task. But our rapid turnaround times make many projects feasible. The last two quarters have been great, and we have at least 30 new engagements.”
 

Moving at “cloud speed”

Mansa readily adjusted to the cloud mindset. “Implementing cloud apps is totally different from working in the on-premises world,” says Devaki. “Oracle is a huge beast. Applications can take 2–3 years to implement, and require the involvement of 50–100 people. We’ve implemented salesforce.com projects for clients in just a few weeks—in some cases, in just a few hours.”
 

Devaki attributes the speed—in part—to the out-of-the-box features included with Force.com. He says, “If you want to develop a database in Oracle, you need an Oracle expert who knows database modeling, an administrator who can set up and maintain the system, and a Java developer for the front end. With Force.com, instead of three people for development, maintenance, and front end, you just need one administrator who can use a browser. A couple of clicks later, you’re ready to go. Using Force.com takes about ¼ the time of a traditional platform.”
 

Another reason behind Mansa’s rapid implementation times is salesforce.com’s ability to seamlessly integrate with other solutions. Devaki explains, “With Siebel, the data is not all in one place and the process is confusing. I always need to log into other systems. Salesforce.com made it simple with an integration platform—Web services—and out-of-the-box implementations.”
 

Fast tracking to the cloud

To help clients with fewer than 50 users deploy new solutions quickly and cost-effectively, Mansa launched Fast Track implementation and integration packages. Mansa can implement business-critical sales, marketing, and customer service functionality with data migration from legacy systems in just 3–5 business days. Integration projects can be completed in 8–10 days.
 

The Force.com VAR program is another tool that helps Mansa support its small clients. Devaki explains, “The VAR program benefits both the customer and the systems integrator. Many of our customers have heard of Force.com, but don’t understand it. They want to get educated through their consulting partner and work through their consulting partner. It’s easy for them, and easy for us.”
 

After deployment, Mansa’s client users can get up and running quickly, often with minimal training. “The salesforce.com interface is so user friendly that people adopt it in no time—unlike other products for which just the training may take a few weeks. For even a simple feature in Oracle, the training might take a few hours. With salesforce.com, the training requirements are minimal.”
 

Good things come in small packages

In addition to assisting small businesses, Mansa is using its Force.com expertise to help individuals in San Francisco’s Mission District. Mansa has been working with the Mission Asset Fund, a nonprofit working to expand access to financial services, savings, and investment opportunities for low-income and immigrant district residents. Mansa built La RED, which stands for “resources for economic development,” an online screening and referral system.
 

La RED matches individuals with the appropriate community services, government programs, and financial products. The system was built with the Salesforce CRM partner portal as well as Force.com code, sites, custom objects, and standard security and sharing features. XHTML and CSS also were used. According to Devaki, “If you wrote it in Java, built the database and the matching items, figured out hosting and partner access—it would have taken 4–6 months at a minimum. With Force.com, it took a couple of developers just a little over 1 month.”
 

According to the Mission Loc@l, a neighborhood news site, more than 20 nonprofits are already working with La RED. Devaki is excited about the system’s ability to help Mission residents. He says, “As we continue to grow, we’re continuing to look at ways that we can use our skills and expertise to help the little guy.”

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