Halton Region – Bridges to Better Business – Mind your E-Business seminar.

I had a chance to speak/present this past week at a seminar for small business.  Halton Region – Bridges to Better Business – Mind your E-Business seminar. The event highlighted how small businesses across the Region can use technology to drive their growth. Topics included: website design; business management; e-commerce; e-security; social media marketing; and much more. It was an awesome event and very well organized.

The Halton Region Business Development Centre is an amazing organization in Halton that does a great job of supporting our small business community. They access to government programs and services, information on Halton’s business environment and services to help you establish, expand or consolidate a business within Halton’s borders. If you have not had the opportunity to check out this organization and you’re starting or currently running a small/medium size business in Halton be sure to check them out: http://www.halton.ca/business/

Regards,

Richard Bolton

Centricity360

www.centricity360.com

Respecting your customer data

As I have mentioned in previous blog entries your customer data can increase the value of your business, don’t under estimate this value add, no matter how big or small your business is.

I recently read yet another blog posting (The Customer World blog worth reading, Treat Data With Respect) that reviewed a research article released by Royal Mail. Within the article it stated “an estimated 90 per cent of companies fail to exploit data they already hold on their customers!”

Here are some of the top findings from that report:

• Only 15 per cent of companies declare their data as an intangible asset on their balance sheets.
• Data is proven to be a fundamental asset. A firm understanding of a customer database can significantly bolster the bottom line and add value to the company itself, potentially adding millions to a sale price.
• Most companies are getting less than half of the potential value from their customer data.

By addressing the data problem, enterprises could potentially increase their value by up to 30 per cent. It is imperative that enterprises look at ways and means to design a customer data strategy road map and extract value from it.

However, for data to be trusted, it must be accurate, timely and reliable.

An awesome, awesome posting! Let me reiterate one key phrase from this finding “By addressing the data problem, enterprises could potentially increase their value (business value) by up to 30 per cent”.

Take that to the bank.

Richard Bolton

C³⁶⁰

LinkedIn – Top 10 Startups Worth Watching in 2008

Some of the big movers and shakers in the CRM addon functionality business in 2008 will be around incorporating social networking into CRM applications. Why? It adds a completely new way of generating business. My favourite – LinkedIn.

Watch for it, if your not on it, get on it!

Wired mag includes LinkedIn in it’s Top 10 Startups worth watching in 2008:

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/startups/news/2007/12/YE_10_startups

LinkedIn, a career-oriented social networking site, found 16 million users, yet until recently has been eclipsed by much larger, livelier competitors. Now, a much-needed upgrade has the 4-year-old startup looking pretty good after all. A new developer platform aims to bring LinkedIn networks to the web at large, starting with Business Week’s website, which will show your connections to any companies mentioned in news articles you’re reading. LinkedIn still emphasizes utility over frivolity, and that’s just the way we like it. Instead of virtual hugs and stripper name generators, expect the site to add “modules” that gather news and events from your industry. The dull-but-useful strategy seems to be working: LinkedIn projects revenues of nearly $100 million in 2008 — not too shabby compared to much larger Facebook’s estimated $150 million for 2007.

• Founders: Reid Hoffman, Allen Blue, Konstantin Guericke, Eric Ly, Jean-Luc Valliant
• Funding: $27.5 million from Sequoia Capital, Greylock, the European Founders Fund, Bessemer Venture Partners, and numerous individual angel investors
• Employees: 200

Happy New Year to all and to a most profitable 2008!

Cheers.

Richard Bolton

Centricity360

Mold CRM to fit your business

I was reading an article today on itbusiness.ca and the initial situational analysis really captures some key business pains that typical Canadian companies have and it sets up a really good case for implementing a CRM application to improve business processes:

 

“John Brooks Company Ltd. was a mid-sized Canadian supplier with a serious problem: it didn’t really know what its salespeople were up to. To make matters worse, with the technology the company was using, there really wasn’t any way of finding out.

John Brooks, which supplies pumps, spray nozzles, filtration equipment and engineered systems to customers across Canada, tried two customer relationship management (CRM) solutions implementations. They both failed. The company ended up with islands of data across its seven Canadian offices.

Mike Sandor, director of IT for the Toronto company, says the lack of a centralized data store was a major threat to customer intelligence. The company would have situations where a sales rep would leave a territory and his notebook would come back displaying only a command prompt. “Everything’s just gone,” says Sandor. “So the new sales guy would walk in and say, ‘I’m from John Brooks,’ and the guy would just look at him and say, ‘Well, you were just here last month,’ and he’d have to say, ‘Well, I’m starting over.’ It was very embarrassing.”

In addition, every Friday, regional sales managers would get a stack of paper with “spreadsheets and God only knows what else” they had to make sense of, so they could coach and mentor their sales teams. The national quoting system data could not be understood either — a serious problem when you’re dealing with about 20,000 customers. And there was no sales activity management because some salespeople were working with Maximizer, some with Outlook and some with GoldMine.”

 

Here are some of the business pains that I see in this situation and how a CRM solution can easily solve them:

• “it didn’t really know what its salespeople were up to” and “there really wasn’t any way of finding out”. By implementing a CRM application that is accessible to key personnel throughout your organization it effectively opens communication on all account information. C level managers and sales managers can review accounts online and work with field sales people to close accounts. Open communication leads to great close rates.
• “The company ended up with islands of data across its seven Canadian offices” and “some salespeople were working with Maximizer, some with Outlook and some with GoldMine.” Consolidating the entire company onto one CRM application platform with one centralized database can negate any threat of salespeople leaving with critical information in their possession, prevent embarrassing situation like starting over with existing accounts and improve accessibility to critical customer intelligence. The more customer information to mine in your company database the better you know your customers, the greater chance of selling and up selling even more. “That’s gold. Jerry! Gold!” 
• “regional sales managers would get a stack of paper with “spreadsheets and God only knows what else”. After implementing a CRM application the sales reporting process becomes much easier to maintain for everyone involved. Stacks of paper and spreadsheets get replaced with online visibility into sales funnels, opportunity and account management, forecasting, quotes and contracts etc. A truly more efficient way of doing business resulting in more pure selling time and customer service.

 

 

 

Think CRM!

Richard Bolton

Centricity360

 

Source:

Itbusiness.ca

Mold CRM to fit your business Ensure workflow for users is eased, not complicated

 by Adam Pletsch

 

Top Ten Software Selection Mistakes

I first met Michael Burns when I was working for Blue Link in Toronto. His articles in CA magazine are a must read for any Canadian business interest in keep up with current software technology. His latest article “Top ten software selection mistakes” is an important read. All of these items are critically important to understand and implement before choosing your next software solution:

Top 10 software selection mistakes By Michael Burns For many companies, replacing a system is like going to the dentist: necessary, but potentially painful. Often, you can stave off the need for replacement with preventive action such as upgrades. But if the system is no longer supported, or if there has been a change in the business that renders it inadequate, you have no choice but to go to market. And when you do, it’s easy to make big mistakes. Here are the biggest ones. 1. Requirements not defined properly: you will run into nasty surprises if your requirements are not defined clearly. Prioritizing is key; otherwise, you could end up with more than you bargained for in terms of cost and complexity. You should ask vendors to tell you how well their system meets each requirement. Vendors will not usually mislead you if your requirements have been defined without ambiguity. They realize your decision will be based primarily on trust and they will lose your trust if they don’t tell the truth. 2. Scope not defined: scope has a nasty habit of creeping or growing unless you define it early and stay focused. It is fine to change the scope but only after the impact has been understood and approved. 3. Lack of buy-in: if the people who are going to use the system are not motivated to make it a success, you’re headed for trouble. You need to get employees involved from the beginning. Not only will you do a better job in defining requirements, but also in gaining buy-in. You need to make sure senior management agrees to the methodology used, the time frame and the budget. One very effective tool is to have senior management define measurements of success prior to the selection, then show these measurements were achieved. 4. Involving the wrong people: without highly motivated and knowledgeable people, your project will go nowhere. At least one champion should be assigned to act as a dedicated resource during implementation. You will also need subject-matter experts who can represent the business processes in scope. They may need to allocate 25% of their time during the implementation. 5. Feature myopia: many companies spend too much time assessing the features of the system and not enough on the implementers. 6. The implementers need industry knowledge, project management skills and product expertise. Finding the right implementer can be a challenge, partly because there is no good source for finding the right one. As well, the people assigned by the software developer to divvy out the leads may be recommending a particular company for reasons that have more to do with politics than with the right fit. 7. Disregarding smaller vendors: there are very good companies that support specific industries. These companies are small but not necessarily risky. They don’t need lots of new sales to be profitable. 8. Not improving business process: implementing a new system is the best opportunity you will ever have to improve your business processes. All the problems with the existing system are in fact opportunities for improvement. So make sure that you are aware of the problems and that the new system will help resolve them. 9. No script: vendors will naturally want to show their strengths during their demonstrations. You should provide them with a script that documents your business processes, problems to resolve, scenarios and requirements, and that includes sample forms and reports (see the November issue or visit www.camagazine.com/gap). 10. Lack of risk management: don’t avoid the naysayers. Seek them out and ask what could go wrong and what should be done about it. You should also consider getting some outside help to reduce risk. Lack of project management: most people learn project management through the school of hard knocks. Yet there is plenty of help out there. For example, check out the Project Management Institute (http://www.pmi.org) for methodology. In subsequent articles, we will discuss project management concepts and tools. Michael Burns, MBA, CA, is president of 180 Systems (www.180systems.com/), which provides independent consulting services, including business process review, system selection and IT audit. Contact: 416-485-2200 or mburns@180systems.com.

Profit Magazine “The 7 Best Ways to Build your Business Now!”

In last months Profit magazine there was an article that really helps me when I’m consulting companies on the real value of a CRM solution. In the business strategies section the article on “The 7 Best Ways to Build your Business Now!”, adopting CRM software is one of the big reasons they give to help businesses grow now. In the article they cover some key CRM value statements like:

• “Most entrepreneurs now recognize that “building deep customer relations will lead to sustainable long-term grow”"
• “CRM software can help you centralize client data, automate customer service processes such as status reports or email campaigns, and alert you when you’re behind schedule”
• “(CRM) it’s cheaper and easier to use than ever before, making it an attractive investment for entrepreneurs”
• “Two-thirds of Canada’s Fastest Growing Companies use CRM software”

Good food for thought!

Richard Bolton

Source: Profit Magazine November 2007 “The 7 Best Ways to Build your Business Now!” by Kim Shiffman

Is there real value in centralized customer data? There certainly is……

I had the chance to attend a seminar last month featuring Donald Cooper (a la Cooper Hockey Equipment, www.donaldcooper.com). It was a fantastic presentation, with examples of Donald’s real world retail experience. The seminar was geared to focus SMB’s on “How to sell more, manage smarter, grow your bottom line….and have a life!”. One keeper that I took away from Donald’s presentation was, when you’re creating a new business, “What are you committed to create?”. Donald’s answer, your creating “a growing, sustainable, profitable and ultimately saleable business”. The reason I think this is a powerful statement is the end result “ultimately saleable business”. So circling back to the value of customer data in any size business, if your creating an ultimately saleable business, then your centralized customer/client data has huge value. When ultimately selling your business any business evaluation process will ultimately review the goodwill relations with your customers/clients, your number one asset. Conclusion, keep a well manage customer/client database that tracks all interactions = CRM!

Richard Bolton

Centricity³⁶⁰ Software Consulting

Donald’s “Quote of the Month”

“If the place that you order pizza delivery from over the telephone knows more about you, your buying habits and your preferences than you know about your customers, you don’t know enough about your customers.”

Source: Donald Cooper’s October 2007 Business Newsletter

I could not have said it better myself! The key to solving low CRM user adoption is……..

Centricity³⁶⁰
Customer-Focused Strategies. Simplified.

Often I get feedback from clients saying, “My salespeople don’t use the CRM! if they don’t use the CRM how can I get a reasonable snapshot of my sales pipeline!”. The question I often pose is “Is it really the CRM or a symptom of another problem?”.

I was reading an article today about CRM user adoption:

http://searchcio.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid19_gci1277542,00.html

In the article they interview Jim Prevo, CIO of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Inc. and that’s exactly what he talks about.

Jim says, “Poor user adoption is a symptom of a problem, not the root cause of CRM failure.

“You need to have enough value in the system for end users to make it irresistible for them to use it,” Prevo said. “If you put in a system that is primarily about monitoring their behaviour rather than putting in a tool that is about maximizing their behaviour, they are not going to see those tools as absolutely essential. Once you do that, you’ll get adoption. And adoption is critical.”

Jim goes on to mention how he worked with his CRM vendor together with his sales force in meetings he referred to as  “business process intervention”(a la the Seinfeld Intervention episode, “what you don’t wanna be a polar bear anymore, were to good for you”) I absolutely love that term, business process intervention!

So what’s the takeaway from this? There has to be real value for the user to adopt a CRM solution and not just another tool for management to track employees. Excellent!

Richard Bolton

Centricity Now! Lol!

Source:

CRM PROJECTS FAIL BECAUSE USERS SAY ‘NO THANKS’
By Shamus McGillicuddy, News Writer

10.18.2007 | SearchCIO.com

 

 

 

Deal with your customers from the inside – out. It all starts with kneading the cookie dough.

How you treat your internal resources, i.e. your valuable employees, can have a profound impact on the growth of your business. Particularly, if your customers are watching and admiring how you manage your company. Being socially responsible internally can have huge paybacks in as far as business growth. I was reviewing my weekly podcasts and watched this video podcast from BusinessWeek – Entrepreneurs Notebook:

http://www.businessweek.com/mediacenter/podcasts/ent_notebook/current.html

Centricity360 CRM Blog

Welcome to Centricity360’s CRM blog. This blog presents the opportunity for us to relate information to organization’s wishing to become more customer focused. We invite you to send comments. The principal at Centricity360, Richard Bolton, can be reached by emailing him at rbolton@centricity360.com.

This blog is dedicated to the number one asset in any company, it’s valuable customers! Read on!