The Savvy CIO

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.

This is the second in a multi-post series on Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems in manufacturing – based on our recent work and analysis of our various clients in the industry.

What are some unique problems in the manufacturing industry and some examples of solutions?

Here are three interesting problems that we solved using the availability of information from our construction and off-road equipment manufacturers to help dealers/resellers leverage their standard CRM account information:

1. Equipment Sales History
   Manufacturers have records of all new equipment sales, including owner information, options provided and location at the time of purchase. These records were easily synced with dealer CRM systems in the customer’s sales territory and are updated on a regular basis with the account records so information is current.

2. Equipment Rental Inventory
   In this application the accounts in a dealer’s CRM are updated from back-end ERP data to show monthly counts by type of equipment rented, equipment turned in, and current rentals outstanding. Those accounts without new rentals for a defined period are automatically escalated to sales call activity, and those who have turned in all rentals and have no new rental activity for a defined period are set to Win Back status with appropriate email and sales call activities automatically launched.

3. Equipment Operating History
   Manufacturers who provide GPS-enabled system monitoring transceivers typically have a centralized service for viewing and downloading usage data by dealers. Rather than relying on infrequent manual data mining sessions, we have automated the integration of this data with the CRM accounts for dealers in the equipment’s current geographic location. This data provides valuable equipment usage information, including location, operating hours (load and idle), alerts and warning indications, etc. All of this is useful to trigger contact for field service and preventative maintenance opportunities.

Critical to the success of these sales automation features is the ability to quickly and effectively integrate manufacturer data sources to the dealer CRM instances to provide regular and current access to this useful information.

Know of other unique realities and innovate solutions in the manufacturing industry and CRM systems? Share your thoughts below.

If you’d like to know more about a CRM, visit our CRM page or give us a call at (312) 863-7500.

This is the first in a multi-post series on Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems in manufacturing – based on our recent work and analysis of our various clients in the industry.

What is unique about a manufacturing industry CRM deployment compared to other industries?

CRM deployments for manufacturers are unique in that selling their products requires a network of dealers and representatives that usually are not directly employed by the manufacturer. The challenge for the manufacturer is to know whether a consistent effort is being made to move their products into the marketplace, either through their own sales force or through their distribution network? Metrics can easily be developed by implementing a CRM process at each level of sales and distribution.

Recent deployments of CRM we’ve performed - along with valued Highland Solutions partner Winsby, Inc., a business development firm - for manufacturers and their sales networks indicate that information and details that are retained in ERP systems are invariably not in a usable format for the sales and customer service groups. Details like descriptions, dimensions, fitment, weight, images and selling points are inconsistent, unavailable or not flowing properly into dealership inventory systems, web sites and ERP systems. CRM systems usually have not been adopted or are not integrated with other systems.

Our partner Winsby, Inc. routinely conducts market research to verify customer preferences, habits and expectations. The results of this research for manufacturers have indicated that there is a rapid acceleration in moving toward websites to conduct any type of business, both research for products and services and purchases. Any manufacturer that is not in a position to offer comprehensive services on the web is in jeopardy of surviving. A CRM system offers a way to monitor activity in order to expand active accounts systematically and build the contact list while keeping an eye on metrics and increasing opportunities for sales. CRM modules are added to manage and track activities, contacts and touch points cost effectively and seamlessly both for the manufacturer and its sales organizations.

Know of other unique realities of the manufacturing industry and CRM systems? Share your thoughts below.

If you’d like to know more about a CRM, visit our CRM page or give us a call at (312) 863-7500.

Some months ago we did a breakdown of the costs of Zimbra versus Microsoft Exchange. I’ve long been negative about the costs of Exchange. The price doesn’t scale down at all for small companies, and scales up far too quickly for larger ones. But the previous breakdown was a hypothetical scenario. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s what we all do when making a purchasing decision. But now there’s some real life data to turn to.

The University of Pennsylvania runs both Exchange and Zimbra. They have nearly 1,000 users on Exchange and over 6,200 users on Zimbra, and the same technical support team takes care of both systems and their respective user bases.

My primary complaint with Exchange is how time-intensive and difficult it is to support and maintain. Support and maintenance are entirely hidden costs at the point of purchase, and many unsuspecting buyers have been lured in with steep license discounts only to discover the ongoing costs were far more than they bargained for.

The data from Penn agrees. For Penn, supporting an Exchange user is over 9 times more time consuming than supporting a Zimbra user.

For 1,000 users, Exchange requires 3.2 full-time equivalent staff members to support. With over 6,200 users, Zimbra requires 2.2 full-time staff members to report. That’s right, 33% less time spent on support for six times the users.

When Penn analyzed the total cost of ownership for Exchange and Zimbra (licensing, hardware, maintenance, support, etc.), Exchange came out at $7.50 per user. Zimbra was under half the cost at $3.00 per user.

Adam Preset, an IT technical director at Penn, discusses their deployment: read more »

It’s the classic CRM problem.

Management puts massive amounts of time, energy, money, resources and excitement into a new CRM system. They’re giddy with the possibilities of sales forecasting, reporting, customer satisfaction, and all sorts of information that will help marketing and sales to be more effective.

The big training and launch take place, there’s a flurry of activity…and a week later 20% of the sales reps aren’t even using the thing.

CRMs don’t work unless sales reps use them. And sales reps won’t use them unless there is something in it for them. Entering call reports at the end of each day doesn’t exactly get a sales rep fired up, and there’s no direct line between that thankless work and the next commission check.

When deploying a CRM, you need to keep your end users in mind.

The system has to be easy to use and valuable for reaching the goals of the reps (not just the goals of the company).

Here are some ways we’ve seen it done in our work with SugarCRM:

read more »

Every business person knows it is cheaper to keep your current customers than to gain new ones. Customer support is often thought of as a necessary cost of business, and a cost that grows as your business grows. But good customer support is also the lowest cost means available for gaining additional sales of any form.

To do customer support well, your support reps need reliable, current information about your customers and any outstanding problems. Without good data requests are missed, responses are duplicated, and your company ends up looking incompetent at best and uncaring at worst.

A CRM can empower your staff to make your customers truly satisfied and help lower the cost of doing so.

Here are six ways a CRM can help customer support: read more »