If your organization has to schedule resources of any kind—people, equipment, vehicles, buildings, and so forth—it’s a daily chore of your service manager to make sure these limited resources are used to best effect and that customer needs are met promptly. When this dispatching function is performed on paper by multiple people, mistakes that hurt customer service are virtually unavoidable.

Your service manager’s CRM priority: Centralized, intelligent scheduling
The service manager is focused on quickly and cost-effectively delivering services to customers and wants a system that can:

• Show at a glance the availability of every service resource companywide.
• Allow centralized service scheduling.
• Give multiple people access to the scheduling resource from any location.
• Intelligently apply your business rules to service scheduling (for example, “Bob and Sally are our only Xwidget experts”).
• Monitor the use of resources.
• Generate a history of which customers have received which services at which times.
• Automatically record service requests (both open and closed) associated with specific customer records.
   

Questions for your service manager

• Who schedules service appointments today?
• How is it done? How do you wish it could be done?
• How does your scheduler know which resources can deliver a service and when they are available?
• Are the dispatchers a bottleneck in scheduling service for customers?
• What are your most common customer complaints relating to service scheduling?
• What kind of reporting do you need on your service team and on the services you’re delivering?
   

Conclusion

Scheduling services promptly and following through with excellent service when promised can go a long way toward enhancing customer relationships. A CRM solution with built-in service scheduling capabilities that work the way your business works can improve customer service and lower your service costs.

By NextCorp, Ltd., Dallas Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partner

To effectively design compelling marketing campaigns that present new products and services to customers and new prospects, your marketing manager needs powerful, easy-to-use tools with which to analyze your customer and lead base. He or she then needs a way to quickly and easily pull together targeted lists, launch campaigns, track results, perform follow-up, and pass responses to the most suitable sales people.

Your marketing manager’s CRM priority: Increasing awareness

The marketing manager wants easier, less expensive ways to help your company sell the right products and services to the right people at the right time. To do this, he or she needs to:

• Know which products and services your customers are using and your leads are pursuing.
• Easily segment customers and leads.
• Quickly create new lead lists.
• Send personalized e-mail messages to groups of leads or customers.
• Track which customers have been targeted with past marketing campaigns.
• Quantify new sales associated with various lead sources and marketing activities.
• Monitor the progress, cost, and success of marketing campaigns.
   

Questions for your marketing manager

• How do you manage lead lists today? How would you like to manage them?
• How much work is involved in identifying target customers and prospects for marketing campaigns?
• How do you track marketing campaigns?
• How do you judge whether a marketing campaign has been successful?
• Do you know how much revenue a campaign generates?
• How do you compare the success of multiple campaigns?
• How are new leads distributed to sales?
   

Conclusion

Your marketing staff has probably been underserved by sales automation or CRM solutions you may be using now. A CRM solution with built-in marketing capabilities can dramatically enhance your marketing staff’s ability to reach leads promptly with compelling messages—and up-sell existing customers through new offers.

By NextCorp, Ltd., Dallas Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partner

When evaluating the technical implications of CRM deployment, remember that CRM is foremost a technology that can help propel your business, instead of a tool that dictates your business processes. Discuss with your IT manager the business value of CRM, and get vital input on the technical corollaries of CRM implementation. The IT manager is your partner in ensuring that your CRM solution is up and running so it can support the business strategy as you planned.

Talking tactics: Your IT manager’s concerns about CRM

The IT manager keeps your organization’s information technologies running smoothly 24/7, and considers the following when evaluating new systems:

• Wants technology that involve minimal interruption in your employees’ work
• Looks for systems that are easy to set up and maintain while offering high availability and performance
• Avoids deploying untried technology
• Seeks scalable solutions that easily grow with the business
• Wants technology that is highly secure and easy to restore after an adverse event
• Looks for new solutions that take full advantage of existing IT resources as well as other company investments
• Wants new technology that synchronizes and integrates well other applications, data sources, and systems.

Questions for the IT manager

Your IT manager can detail the essential technical considerations of a CRM implementation:

• What proof do we have that the CRM system will enhance infrastructure?
• What kind of deployment downtime can be expected?
• How can a CRM system keep IT aligned with business goals?
• What kinds of facts and referrals can assure product benefits and quality?
• What are our data backup policies, and how do we ensure CRM data is protected?
• What type of technical support is need after implementing CRM?

Conclusion

Your IT manager supports business goals by keeping the enterprise running, and by implementing tools that allow the company to pursue new opportunities and protect customer relationships. This guide will help you get the IT perspective on CRM so you can make a technology investment that will reinforce your competitive edge.

By NextCorp, Ltd., Dallas Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partner

To ensure that sales representatives meet their objectives, your sales manager continually needs information from them about leads and active prospects. Here’s how you can work with your sales manager to find out how CRM can best support sales goals.

Your sales manager’s CRM priority: pursuing revenue

The sales manager is focused on moving your product and targets the following CRM evaluation issues:

• Supporting sales staff’s efforts to secure business
• Avoiding the disruption of a complete systems replacement
• Obtaining personalized vendor support for new systems
• Providing the data necessary to support sales goals
• Integrating new solutions with existing data systems
• Tracking leads with minimal data entry and paperwork
• Helping sales force accept and adopt new CRM processes

Questions for your sales manager

Get the details you need on how CRM can support revenue-generating activities:

• What kinds of sales history and forecasting data are now available?
• What kinds of new CRM tools would help the team sell?
• How much training do you foresee your team needing?
• How are we currently tracking the competition?

Conclusion

The sales manager is your best ally for initiating a CRM project. Champion the CRM selection process with sales input to gain compliance when the sales division uses the new tools. Investing in the right CRM solution supports your sales team’s best practices, resulting in the optimal outcome: closing more deals.

By NextCorp, Ltd., Dallas Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partner

In a recent (2009) conference, hosted by Computerworld, it became clear that SaaS is now mainstream.  To quote some of the attendees:

• “SaaS adoption has moved past the ‘tipping point’”
• “A new ecosystem is forming around Cloud computing that will transform the IT sector.”
• “SaaS is not an optional disruptive technology.”
• “Cloud, SaaS and Mobility are helping to make the “boundary-free enterprise”

In a nutshell, subscription-based software and services are getting stronger and stronger, offering more and more benefits to businesses.  For example, nine out of ten companies plan to grow their use of “Software as a Service,” according to the Gartner Group.  Should you be on this list?  Consider the following:

Business Drivers

Businesses of all sizes are moving to SaaS because of lower upfront costs, shorter implementation times, less implementation risk, reduced need for hard-to-find in-house technical resources and more flexibility to right size systems (up or down).  SaaS has a proven track record of reducing ongoing IT operations costs, freeing up capital and resource to focus on driving the business forward to new advantage and competitiveness.

Businesses are adopting SaaS as ‘insurance’ against business disruption and security threats.  They’re doing this by taking advantage of the most advanced, comprehensive, and easy to use data backup/restore, virus/spam protection, device recovery services – all automatically and without having to purchase a single piece of software.

Businesses are using SaaS tools to run their businesses better.  Whereas in the past, small and medium businesses would lag behind the technology advantages that larger businesses could afford. SaaS levels the playing field for customer management, manufacturing and distribution, HR/payroll, accounting, banking, collaboration, and productivity.  Small and medium businesses, through SaaS, have access to the latest, most powerful, and cost effective technology without any capital investment or the need for ‘in-house’ technical expertise.

The adage that ‘old is new again’ is true.  Return on investment, risk mitigation, total cost of ownership, and a focus on the business remain central to technology discussions.  SaaS has proved it’s worth using these traditional criteria.

Where is the fit?

An additional, recent survey pointed to collaboration products of all sorts as the top application area for SaaS based solutions, with human resources and customer service next on the list. Finance and accounting moved up from 10^th place to 5^th place in 2010 – one indicator that SaaS is on the move from the edges to the core of the business as the technology continues to mature.

For mid-sized companies, a mix of in-house and SaaS based solutions has been demonstrated by True Religion jeans. True Religion Jeans found that vendor experience and the ability to “try before you buy” testing of potential SaaS solutions improved operation and avoided common adoption mistakes.  True Religion also realized the benefit of being able to spend more time focusing on the business needs instead of on technology.

For small companies, the savings are even more pronounced.  In a recent presentation, Tom Kelly CFO/CIO at Kardia Healthcare discussed his experience with SaaS applications when he was with 2^nd Wind.  As an exercise equipment company, 2^nd Wind was able to replace virtually all the in-house systems with SaaS solutions and reduced costs by 61%.

The bottom line:

More and more businesses are exploring, understanding, and implementing Software as a Service to drive their bottom line. Isn’t time to explore if SaaS is right for your business?

SaaS is no longer a theory, but is a viable reality that has demonstrated business and financial benefits.  Small and medium business, today, benefit the most through the elimination of capital spend, reduction in technical resource requirement, increased business continuity and safety, and lowered overall IT cost.

By NextCorp, Ltd., Microsoft Dynamics GP Partner for Texas

Successful Accounting Partnerships

Trusting your accounting processes and information to an ‘outsider’ is a big step for any small and medium sized business owner.  After all, the ability to track inventory, place orders, send out bills, and collect and managing cash is core to every business and something that every business owner should take very seriously.

But, you’re at the point where your ‘in-house’ accounting option – be it spreadsheets, QuickBooks, or other – just isn’t meeting the needs of the business any more.  You’re exploring options and some of those options include subscribing to accounting software.  How do you make sure you don’t get ‘stung’ by your accounting software partner?  Here are eleven things to look out for as you narrow the choices and make your decision:

1. Know your requirements:  undertaking an evaluation of accounting solutions and potential partners can’t be done casually.  At least have a good grasp of your high-level requirements for tracking and managing your business, customers, and cash.

2. Experience:  determine what types of projects the potential partner has done in the past. Have they done any accounting projects that are similar to your business; and, who from their team will be working with you?

3. Solution options:  seek out those potential partners that have multiple solutions available for evaluation.  Your business has some unique characteristics that may not ‘fit’ into a single solution.  Also, look for solutions that are configurable, open to changes, and have migration tools for ease of setup and transition.

4. References:  require that any potential partner provide references for their solutions, their company, and their people.  Make sure that you’re able to determine the ‘good, bad, and ugly’ before you make a decision.  Remember, whoever you end up choosing, you’ll be partners for some time to come.

5. Partner characteristics:  get the company details.  Length of time in business, office locations, employees, employee experience, number of customers, industries served, best successes and worst failures.

6. Delivery successes:  determine the processes that the potential partner uses to increase success rates.  Find out how often the potential partner has been successful.  Don’t use the potential partner’s success criteria;  judge success by the customer’s criteria.  Become confident that if the partner undertakes your project, they will be able to deliver — on-time and on-budget.

7. Automated tools:  does the potential partner have automated tools that will smooth out, speed up, or lower the cost of your transition and implementation?  Or, is most of the work going to be done by people?  What are the limits of their tools and what is their overall plan to fill in the gaps to successful project completion.

8. Hidden costs:  find out up front what the potential ‘hidden costs’ of the solution are. Are they in the assessment, configuration, implementation, testing, roll-out, support, additional licenses, or other items?  Strive for a ‘no surprises’ environment when understanding the cost of the solution, before, during, and after the implementation.

9. Business impact:  every time a business adopts new technology or undertakes a new project there is an impact on the business.  Ideally, the impact is minimal.  Find out from the potential partner what they expect from you and your people through the process.  Determine the time, information, and technology impact to your business ahead of time and calculate the financial cost.  Remember that the cost of the accounting solution is only one part of the cost.  A disruption in your business is also a cost to be considered.

10. Risk mitigation:  every project has risks.  Ask the potential partner their process for mitigating risks such as project slippage, cost escalation, and data loss.  Make sure they have your success at the heart of the project.

11. Partnership/communication:  Remember that the potential partner is in full ‘sales mode’ at the beginning.  Once they have your business, make sure they continue to value you as a customer.  Understand their communication methods, vehicles, problem escalation path options, who you will be dealing with, and how you can remain a priority to them.

By NextCorp, Ltd., Microsoft Dynamics GP Partner for Texas

Doesn’t it seem like everywhere you turn there is a new technology to evaluate?  These technologies promise new levels of productivity, better communication, new ways to market and sell, or simply communicate. It is easy to get overwhelmed or accidentally become a ‘manager of technology’ instead of a manager of the business.

Small and medium businesses are faced with a built-in tension that you don’t have in larger businesses.  That is, how to do ‘everything’ with limited resources and how to level the playing field and compete with larger, more sophisticated businesses.  What is a small businessperson to do?

Business owners are faced with a choice.  Do I focus my efforts and resources on what I do best – taking care of my customer – or do I try to do everything?  How the businessperson answers this question will, at some level, determine future success.  Allowing your organization to become distracted in the evaluation, implementation, support, upgrade, migration, and recovery of technology takes away from achieving the next breakthrough in growth, customer service/care, and revenue and profit.

Instead, think about how you can identify a ‘technology partner’ that can take on these critical aspects of your business – allowing you to get back to running your business – and, getting access to the very best in technology with a minimum of capital expenditure.  Make sure your business is always up and running and never held back by the technology.  It’s easier than you think.

Technology outsourcing is not a new concept.  To the small and medium business, the advantages are many:

1.  Improved Cost Management:  Technology costs become more visible and accountable; technology services are utilized as needed, eliminating overbuying; the business can reallocate, reduce, or eliminate technology-focused resources.

2.  Improved Technology Service Quality:  You can get reports on overall performance and availability of the technology; there are extended support hours – ensuring your business has the support it needs, when it needs it; you benefit through proactive technology planning aligned with your business needs or goals; and, you can establish measurable ‘services level agreements’ to ensure your business technology is always available.

3. Best Equipment, Software, and Tools:  Your business is kept on the latest versions, the fastest platforms and network connections without you having to evaluate, test, implement, or support the technology.  Your business benefits from increased cost savings, better process automation, and higher productivity, keeping you ahead of the competition.

4.  Flexibility/Scalability:  As your business grows or changes, you’re never under-or over-invested in technology. 

5.  Accountability:  Like every other asset in your business, you will know the contribution it makes to the business.  No fuzzy thinking or assumptions of contribution.  The technology becomes accountable to you.

By NextCorp, Ltd., Microsoft Dynamics GP Partner for Texas

Getting the most out of your customer data and business information

Customer relationships matter.  Period.  In an era of fast business transactions, immediate need gratification, and tight budgets, the relationship you have with your customer brings revenue and profitability to your business.

Today, however, many businesses don’t proactively behave as if customer relationships matter.  In the quest for ‘new’ revenue, most businesses look to new customers – often ignoring the single best source of incremental revenue, their past and current customers.

So how does a business reap the rewards of greater revenue and profitability from their customers?  By paying close attention to ensuring their customers are satisfied and continue to do business with them.  In short, businesses that reap the revenue and profitability rewards are those businesses that have learned and formalized their customer relationship management.

Let’s take a look at how you can ‘power up’ your customer satisfaction and retention – leading to more revenue and profit.

1. Mine existing information to uncover new opportunity:  This activity results in two outcomes.  First, you will quickly identify new areas where you can meet your customer needs while also uncovering any lingering or open satisfaction challenges.  Look into your customer databases, purchasing trends, contact information, and cataloged customer needs/requirements.  Chances are you’re not done selling to them yet.  Use this information to introduce new solutions to their existing and anticipated problems.

2.  Formalize your customer satisfaction and retention processes:  Identify, acquire, and implement technology that returns to you specific customer ‘insight’ and trends that help you anticipate needs; this allows you to focus your selling effort for maximum return.

3.  Utilize online collaborative and survey tools:  Don’t assume that you know what the customer is looking for or needs, ask them.  Make it easy to uncover new opportunity areas while also giving your customers an opportunity to ‘speak out’ on where you can serve them better.

4.  Integrate your customers into your business:  Using common collaboration-based tools, bring your customers into your business strategy, decision, and planning.  Link your customer to your business so that it is easier to do business with you and harder to ‘decouple’ you from their business.

5.  Increase your responsiveness to your customer:  Surprise and/or delight your customers by having the ability to immediately respond to your customer’s requirements, customer order status, available inventory, and pricing/quote inquiries.  Accomplish this by allowing your customers the ability to access your company information that is important to them doing business with you.  As you increase your responsiveness, watch your loyalty grow and the revenue and profitability benefits follow.

6.  Drive your customer’s business forward:  Using your business data, you can give your customers the visibility they need into market, purchasing, product, and business trends.  You, in turn, can position your products and services as advantages to your customer in capitalizing on these trends.

7.  Streamline and simplify your internal processes:  Use common productivity tools to streamline and automate processes that face the customer.  Simplify your processes to speed up transaction and response times – getting you ahead of the competition.

8.  Align your company culture to your customer:  It is all too easy for a company to become inwardly focused.  Fight this tendency by instilling values and behavior that is driven to customer responsiveness, satisfaction, and loyalty.

9.  Empower your people:  As overused as the term may be, the concept and result are profound.  Give your employees the ‘power’ to identify, qualify, close, support, and manage customer interactions across the entire company.  Likewise, make sure your employees have the right tools and access to important business information to continually improve your customer’s satisfaction with your organization.

10.  Don’t view customer satisfaction and loyalty as a ‘fad’:  Despite economic or business conditions drive constant improvement of satisfaction and loyalty as inviolable values.  Build these values into every existing and new employee and communicate them to your customers.

By NextCorp, Ltd., Dallas Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partner

Everyone can recall horror stories about mishaps that occur when workers aren’t on the same page. Collaborating effectively to keep business running smoothly and productively.  But, should collaboration break down the consequences can be serious.

Efficient collaboration is rarely simple and it can take many forms. Some needs are internally focused, for instance, keeping employees current on corporate policies and procedures. Others require collaboration with external constituents, such as partners, suppliers or customers. Some needs are short term, as when people need to come together to manage a project, while other requirements are ongoing, like when groups need to access, share and update documents, databases, calendars and directories. And, businesses may need to collaborate within one physical location, or with others at numerous locations around the world.

Because effective internal and external collaboration is vital to a successful business, larger businesses build or buy collaboration solutions that are managed in-house. While this model may work for some, these solutions rarely meet the needs of smaller businesses that often lack the resources necessary to deploy, manage and maintain them. The costs involved, for example, from upfront licenses, hardware and integration expenses, to ongoing expenses for maintenance, upgrades and support are often prohibitive for most small business owners.

Software-as-a-Service – The Small Business Alternative

SaaS allows businesses to subscribe to software over the Web and pay for it on a monthly basis. The services can be accessed online from anywhere with an Internet connection, so remote and mobile workers can always be connected to the home office. Furthermore, because the solutions are hosted, many of the upgrades and maintenance requirements can be automated – a big benefit for small businesses with limited IT resources.

Compared with a traditional licensed software model, software-as-a-service offers businesses many distinct advantages that are quickly driving adoption:

·         Rapid Deployment: Rather than taking months to implement, businesses can be using the solution in a matter of minutes.

·         Less Expensive and More Predictable Costs: Companies pay a set monthly or annual subscription fee, typically based on the number of users. In addition to drastically reducing upfront hardware and software purchases, SaaS also eliminates the need for specialized IT talent, and reduces ongoing costs for maintenance, upgrades and support.

·         Faster ROI: By reducing deployment time as well as initial and ongoing capital investments and staffing costs, small business customers can reduce risk and achieve a faster return on investment.

·         Low or No Risk Trials: Business can test-drive online services over the Internet, enabling a small business to try the application and see if it fits their needs before making a broader commitment.

·         Ease-of-Use: Web-based applications use familiar Web interfaces that are easy for administrators and users to navigate, resulting in higher user adoption and reduced training costs.

·         More Responsive Service and Support: Using a “one-to-many” model, SaaS providers can more easily support, manage and upgrade their solutions. They can see how customers use their services in real-time, get live feedback and fix problems once – for all the customers benefit.

The benefits of SaaS become even more apparent for applications specific to collaboration. Because users can access the service via any Web browser, access is not dependent on using a specific personal computer or mobile device.  All users can access information from anytime, from different locations and desktops.  And because the solutions are scalable and expandable, businesses can start collaborating right away, and then fine-tune processes and functionality as they learn what works and what doesn’t.

So, where is the hidden opportunity?  It is in the ability for your small and medium business to gain the power and functionality of collaborative technologies without the risk and costs normally associated with such solutions. 

By NextCorp, Ltd., Dallas Microsoft Dynamics Patner

Small and medium businesses focus on understanding all they can in order to identify and exploit opportunity in the market.  Doing so makes sense as the business seeks new revenue and profit.

Unfortunately, small and medium businesses don’t have the same focus in their adoption, integration, and management of technology.  Most often SMBs take a reactionary approach to their technology – creating disruption and additional cost to the business.

Avoid falling into this trap by understanding and working toward overcoming the following common mistakes:

• Weak Internal Technical Support:  Often technical support is assigned to the employee who is the ‘computer geek’-type.  They perform these duties in addition to their regular job responsibilities.
• Keeping Older Technology Too Long:  It is a well known fact that older technology needs more repair and fails more often – leading to business downtime. It doesn’t accommodate new, lower cost features and functions designed to increase productivity and lower expense.
• Not Keeping Software Licenses Current:  When a business doesn’t keep their software licenses current they miss out on critical updates, don’t have access to technical support and hold their people back from being as productive as possible.
• Training as a Last Resort:  SMBs often assume an employee knows how to use the technology or that the employee will ‘figure it out.’  Instead, you should offer training to your users as a mechanism to increase productivity – especially when you introduce new technology or applications.
• Poor Technology or Information Security:  Most businesses use passwords to access networks and email.  But, often they don’t have policies or tools to ensure the right level of information and technology security needed to adequately protect the business from external intrusion, theft, or disaster recovery.
• Sporadic Data Backup:  Many SMBs back up their critical applications and information right after they have had a failure.  At this point, it is too late.  Having the right policies and tools to regularly backup business information will keep you out of future trouble.
• Inadequate Virus/Spam Protection:  Viruses and spam represent a large problem for SMBs.  Both rob the business of productivity, time and money.  SMBs must go beyond simple PC-based tools to ensure the best protection of your systems, information, people, and budget.
• Allowing “Personal” Applications on Business Equipment:  Because most SMBs don’t manage their technology, individual employees are free to add their own personal images, software applications and information – often leading to poorly performing systems and security breaches.
• Open Wireless Networks:  With the ease and proliferation of wireless networking, many SMBs accidentally leave their wireless access points open and available for anyone to access.  This huge vulnerability puts your systems, information, and business at risk.
• No Laptop Security:  As employees work at home or travel, they take critical business information with them.  SMBs often forget to encrypt or protect critical information from accidental theft or loss when the laptop is lost or stolen.

By NextCorp, Ltd., Dallas Microsoft Dynamics Partner