The Savvy CIO

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Welcome to Highland Solutions TV!  We’re going to share highly valuable information from Highland Solutions executives, channel partners, and other subject matter experts. You’ll discover educational information on how to increase sales and track return on investment for your marketing campaigns through SugarCRM, how to reduce cost with custom web development applications, and increase productivity through process automation. We’ll also give you real world examples on how we’ve been able to increase sales and reduce costs for companies similar to yours. Please subscribe here and share with your friends and colleagues.

A solution challenge that impacts a lot of different companies that have organized
sales forces is the need for integrated customer data. This challenge comes from
the existence of multiple available systems that have a partial picture of what
customers do in their lifecycle. As a company, a key element in delivering
solutions to your customers and to their satisfaction is having a consistent view of
the customer. Traditional CRM solutions manage the sales cycle, but not the
delivery cycle, and traditional ERP solutions manage delivery, but not sales.
Bringing the two together consistently is the holy grail to customer care and
satisfaction, and is something that companies have been trying to tackle for a
long time. Let’s talk about a solution that tackles this problem.

SugarCRM and Compiere are great leaders in open source solutions. We all
know what SugarCRM is capable of, if you need more information, please visit
highlandsolutions.com. Compiere is a leading provider of commercial open
source ERP solutions. It delivers highly adaptable, modern, enterprise-class
business solution that’s’ available on-premise or on the Cloud and leverages a
unique applications platform.

Here’s an example of how the two can work together- Let’s say you sell a
licensed product that needs to be tracked with a mobile sales team. Compiere
has the ability to interface data with legacy systems to reduce risk and enable a
controlled deployment. Now with this, you can use SugarCRM to consolidate
customer touch points, import prospect lists, and integrate a mobile sales force.
Your team can have data at their fingertips even when they’re on road and use
everything with ease.

The old days of direct mail marketing have taken a back seat to the new
generation of businesses that require instant access. They know what they want,
and they want it right away. That is why the internet has become such an
invaluable resource for marketing efforts. Outbound marketing has been replaced
with inbound marketing methods, which are set to you bring you people quickly,
and as cost effectively as possible. This post will discuss how to increase your
web traffic with free online tools as well as Pay Per Click Advertising, grading
your website and your competitors and utilizing SugarCRM for your inbound
marketing campaign.

So let’s start with increasing your web traffic with free online tools. One of the
best things about inbound marketing on the internet is that you can reach
thousands and thousands of prospects utilizing the vast resources on the internet
with little to no cost. The areas that you can start working on now at no cost are
putting your existing site to work and maximize its effectiveness. Also, utilizing
social media such as Facebook and Linkedin, creating a blog and backlinks,
having a YouTube channel, and website directories can dramatically change your
web traffic. Start by taking a look at your current website to make sure you’re
utilizing search engine optimization by updating keywords, adding page titles and
tags. Also, making sure your content is updated and fresh will ensure your page
is reindexed by Google or other search engines.

There are also options for increasing your web traffic for a small fee. These
include online press releases, where you can create small press releases for a
nominal fee. Just make sure it is succinct, informative and contains your
company’s name and product name multiple times. Pay Per Click Advertising is
another tool, however this will require that you set a budget and follow it very
closely to see which ads work for your business and are cost effective. Paid
online directory advertising is also available, where you can search online for
directories that serve your specific business.

Then, there’s grading your website. It’s a great way to see how your website
compares to your competitors. Go to websitegrader.com and check the grade of
your website and where your competitors stand compared to yours. It will also
give you information on how to improve your site. After implementing some tips
and tricks, you can go back to see how your website grade has changed. There’s
also Google Analytics, which can track where visitors of your site came from and
how long they spent on your site. You can set up reports for metrics as often as
you like. Both are great tools to help you market your website as effectively as
possible.

So now that there is all this new traffic driving to your website, what do you do
with it? This is where SugarCRM comes in. SugarCRM can help you capture new
leads generated from your SEO, determine which marketing campaigns are

successful, and analyze the data with SugarCRM reporting to see the true results
of your inbound marketing campaign. SugarCRM is a great, simple tool to help
you do all of this. For example, if you were to create a YouTube video, you could
track it in the campaign wizard, create track back links for each channel it was
distributed (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, etc.) and see where it got the most views,
helping you determine the effectiveness of every campaign.

After you’ve utilized all the upfront tools to help your inbound marketing
campaign, SugarCRM can help you manage and identify which campaigns are
most effective quickly and easily. To learn more about how SugarCRM can help
your internet marketing campaigns, visit HighlandSolutions.com.

All of you are familiar with SugarCRM and its capabilities. However, for those of you unfamiliar with Drupal, it’s the world’s leading, free open source CMS solution. It’s a web content management system and with SugarCRM, both leading products in the Open Source space that when combined can give you the biggest bang for your business investment.

So how can SugarCRM and Drupal work together to build end-to-end solutions for your business? There are an unlimited number of ways that the two can work together, but here are a few examples that could be relevant to your business:

• End-to-end lead management including lead capture, lead scoring, lead routing, lead assignment, lead response.
• Customer and partner portals which allow you to identify and capture customer service issues regardless of what channel they come in through and solve them in the web. Features include web self-service and support, customer support case capture, customer support case statusing, knowledge management solutions, partner lead distribution, partner and customer content management.
• Front-end interface for event management solutions such as event calendaring, event registration capture, event registration workflow, event attendee management, event capacity management.
• Management membership systems  that allow member application capture, application processing workflow, member profile management, member portal security.

Again, these are just a few of the examples of how Drupal is used as a front-end interface and can be combined with SugarCRM on the back-end to help build seamless end-to-end solutions for your business. For more information on how you can use both programs, please visit www.HighlandSolutions.com.

We’re sure that you’ve been looking to the cloud as a way to simplify your IT environments with lower costs and more scalable growth. Recently, SugarCRM decided to address the demand in the market for CRM that can scale through the cloud and announced that IBM’s SmartCloud Enterprise is now integrated with Sugar 6 product family and is available immediately through SugarCRM and its channel partners.

For those unfamiliar, IBM has helped thousands of clients adopt cloud models and manages millions of cloud-based transactions every day. IBM assists clients in a variety of diverse business areas to build their own clouds or securely tap into IBM cloud-based business and infrastructure services. IBM is unique in bringing together key cloud technologies, deep process knowledge, a broad portfolio of cloud solutions, and a network of global delivery centers. For more information about IBM cloud solutions, visit www.ibm.com/smartcloud. For more information about IBM WebSphere Cast Iron, visit: http://www.01.ibm.com/software/integration/cast-iron-cloud-integration/.

With Sugar for IBM SmartCloud Enterprise, you can expect to benefit from the quality, reliability and security gained from IBM’s years of managing and operating data centers for enterprises and public institutions around the world. Sugar is the only CRM application currently available on IBM SmartCloud Enterprise, and will enable your business to have quicker access to sales, marketing and support to deliver the optimal customer experience, something that we all need to make more informed business decisions. With SugarCRM, SmartCloud is ideal for enterprise level cloud deployments, and provides the needed functionality for global deployments, including native language support for 25 languages.

Overall, the open and flexible design of the Sugar platform, coupled with IBM’s global services and support channel means end users and business partners have more choices and more options to help them gain and retain new and existing customers. For more information on Sugar on IBM SmartCloud enterprise, please visit http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/ibm/smartcloud.

It’s getting harder to find and keep customers. And, it’s being found that account managers and sales people are suffering from information overload. More and more information is now available, leading to consumers consuming more information and having unprecedented access to the CRM products available on the market. With this, members of your team simply do not have time to sort through the myriad of information available in the market to make smart, pertinent business decisions.

Relationships are changing, and it’s harder to build customer relationships as most interaction now takes place electronically or via the phone, rather than face to face as it was in the past, and business is adapting to these changes. When it comes to leads, InsideView can quickly and easily help you find and qualify leads, engage and convert opportunities and renew and upsell customers. This is done by providing you real-time, comprehensive and relevant information about companies, individuals and events and aggregating news, blogs, company information, and social media. All this information is kept in one area that can be accessed to members of your team when needed.

When InsideView is supplemented into your Sugar product, it can help you generate competitive info, generate and enrich leads, gather information on prospects, negotiate contracts, build meaningful relationships and so much more.

InsideView helps you not just retain contacts, but intelligence about your customers and companies. You not only have their contact information, you are also armed with Twitter feeds, Linked in information and other important information that helps you build rich relationships and get to know your customers better. You can also set up notifications that will alert you about pertinent information related to your customers that can be used to target them, so your service can be offered to them at the right time. To learn more about InsideView and SugarCRM, visit http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/insideview.

As half of the country was digging out from under a record snowfall a few weeks ago, the inaugural Imagine eCommerce conference was unfolding in beautiful, sunny, snowless Los Angeles.  I had the good fortune of being one of the 650 attendees at this sold-out momentous conference. Highlights included a new release of the “Magento Community Edition” platform, the entirely new cloud-based “Magento Go” platform, and a food truck in the parking lot with three of my favorite words on it: “In-N-Out.”

Hot Topics at Imagine:

Application Program Interface (API)

• An API is a set of interfaces providing an increasingly rich set of services offered by web applications.
• They allow developers to communicate between independent platforms.
• They are used to enter a customer’s order from your eCommerce platform into your CRM platform.
• API’s allow an ERP system to look up data on customers in your B2B store
• Developers are able to create meaningful data to merchants and better experiences for buyers.
• They provide a simple and secure layer to perform high-level operations.

Magento “Go”

• Since its release, Magento’s range of APIs has grown steadily over the years, and with this latest release, it takes a giant leap forward.
• SaaS platforms like “Go” are some of the biggest beneficiaries of APIs as its core code is not readily accessible.

Magento’s Appeal to Merchants

• Its combination of scalability and ease with which customizations can be applied
• Small-scale merchants can tap into the extension marketplace for a colorful assortment of pre-written customizations.
• Multinational companies, like Samsung, utilize it for complex backend customizations.
• If a merchant launches a store on the “Go” platform and in six months has so much business he needs to scale up to “Enterprise,” they can rest easy knowing that their custom store will function exactly the same.

Magento’s Appeal to Developers

• It’s an easily scalable system.
• Developers don’t have to rewrite the customizations every time the client needs more bandwidth.
• Developers don’t have to explain to the client why it’s going to take as long to upgrade as it did to design the original site.

Lastly, I was surprised by the number of business owners present at Imagine in relation to developers.  The fact that so many business minds help create, define, and lead Magento’s vision is an integral part to why it is the most successful eCommerce platform in the market.  We as developers are indubitably creative and brilliant, but we’re also less business-minded than our business counterparts are. The fact that this platform engages both cross-spectrum users is what makes the Magento work exciting.

By Highland Developer, Brad Zasada

Highland Solutions will be attending this year’s IT Leadership Conference to forget IT-business alignments of the past and witness how business and IT are becoming virtually indistinguishable in some of today’s future companies. Computerworld’s annual Premier 100 conference will be showcasing an all new kind of business that sets the stage for innovation and revenue growth of a fully engaged organization. They have five big changes on the horizon for IT and success stories from FedEx Services, The Boeing Co. and CARFAX, Inc. to back them up.

Highland will be exploring the “future IT organization of 2020″ to support clients as they reinvent and re-envision their businesses using:

• Mobility and Social Media
• Pervasive BI and Analytics
• Cloud Computing
• Legacy Systems in a Changing World
• Virtualization to Private Clouds

Fellow thought leaders from some of the best and the brightest organizations will be sharing the secrets that drive a singular enterprise vision. Highland will be in the middle of it all.

Learn more about the IT Leaders Conference March 6-8, 2011 here.

At the 2010 TechExpo held in Chicago, Highland Solutions unveiled the Perfect Solution Fusion to several hundred attendees. The booth showcased how Highland’s technical know-how in combination with Winsby’s marketing and business development savvy can supercharge businesses by simply plugging into the SugarCRM platform.  The “Fusion booth” resonated with visitors by offering a holistic solution, making the connections for start-up, second stage and even mature businesses to decrease operational costs and bend up revenue.

“It was great to see so many Chicago based companies, both exhibitors and attendees, gather to support growth of commerce and capability among the local communities.” Brian Sutherland, Highland Solutions president, stresses Chicago still remains a powerhouse for both start-up and second stage companies working with local technology partners to help reduce operational costs and bend revenue up. “I was particularly proud of how our Highland Team worked alongside California based SugarCRM and Evanston based Winsby to engage with hundreds of attendees interested in the integration of CRM, business process automation, e-commerce and marketing. I’m certain we’ll be back next year as increased attendance and participation this year demonstrates local venues like this are catching on.”

And he was not alone.

Erin Fetsko - SugarCRM, Sales Engineer & Solutions Architect – North American Channel enjoyed how many of the attendees left the booth with their eyes open to the impact that having a well-defined sales database can have on their success as they grow their business. “Having a team available to deliver a complete solution: software, implementation and marketing manpower positioned us uniquely to offer the attendees great value. “

Jon Berbaum - Highland Solutions Client Engagement Manager’s big takeaway from the Expo was how CRM is generating so much interest in companies of very diverse sizes. “I spoke with companies ranging from a startup business with three staff members to established companies with hundreds of employees, and virtually all of them immediately connected with how a CRM solution could help their business. Gaining efficiencies, controlling valuable lead and client lists, extending data to the fingertips of mobile staff–a CRM has become a trusted, go-to solution for challenges companies of all sizes share.”

Erin Stoel – Highland Solutions Innovation Coordinator noticed whether or not people were familiar with Customer Relationship Management systems, most of them were interested in learning more about it. “I saw a lot of wheels turning while talking about SugarCRM and how companies could benefit from it.”

Elizabeth Neumaier – White Gazelle Creative and Branding Consultant enjoyed watching guests drawn to the booth, attracted to IT solutions that put people first. “Technology today should support, automate and celebrate the greatest asset businesses have  – people. That’s true innovation.”

The Perfect Solution Fusion offered attendees a fresh perspective on IT by not selling boxed products and focusing on the larger business goals for real world decision-makers.

Learn more about Highland Partnerships and Professional Allies.

For additional information contact Highland Solutions.