In hindsight, it almost feels inevitable that after countless anti-trust lawsuits and reticence towards third-party developers, Microsoft has opened up its major APIs. Following the likes of Google, a company that strongly encourages community development on its products, Microsoft's move seems a bit overdue but ultimately quite logical.
More and more software focus is turning away from desktop computing towards web applications and services. The SaaS phenomenon is one example, as is the increasingly visible open source movement.
Now that Microsoft has opened up its API developers will be able to work on applications that can be more closely integrated with MS Office and Exchange Server, not to mention the ability to work with the Windows OS not just work on the Windows OS. We recognize that Windows is the most popular OS, and that's why we created an Outlook plugin (PDF warning) to make it easy to coordinate contacts, appointments and messages between ConcourseSuite and Outlook. With the newly opened API, we hope to further our integration efforts. For the record, though, ConcourseSuite has been running atop Windows and SQL Server for 6 years.
Citing similar reasoning for Microsoft's announcement, Matt Aslett of the 451 Group wrote, "It's an acknowledgment that in today's world, many more flowers bloom when platform companies make their APIs completely open for developers to write to." As a founding member of the Open Solutions Alliance, Concursive has always followed this theory and been dedicated to cooperative development for increased interoperability.
Not everyone is entirely convinced of Microsoft's motives; the Linux-Watch blog posted this piece citing numerous flaws in this story, along with the WSJ blog which hints at the opening up as a way to appease the EU before the potential Yahoo! acquisition.
But I agree with Linus Torvalds, that this announcement is far from perfect, but it's a "step in the right direction" for open software. Then again, how "open" do you consider 30,000 pages of documentation…
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Friday, February 22, 2008
Connecting Franchises: The Extended Enterprise
In conjunction with a recent piece of Concursive news, today I wanted to talk about franchise operations to discuss the importance CRM solutions can make in connecting such "extended enterprise." It is no secret that a franchise company's brand and reputation among its customers can often be measured in the sum, strength, and consistency of messaging throughout its stores.
Yet relying on each individual franchise to implement a solution consistently is probably unrealistic.
Without consistent messaging, sales, and data management, a single franchise may can be isolated from other franchise locations as well as its corporate headquarters. But with proper connection to the larger corporate hub, any franchise can be as strong as the company it represents. It is important, by the very nature of a franchise operation, to provide a standard set of tools across the network for customer relationship management, sales, and marketing. So what's the solution? Connecting the extended enterprise and tackling multiple issues in one fell swoop.
Allowing the corporate entity to host an on-demand deployment that provides each franchisee an independent system delivers an effective solution of consistency, and ease of deployment for the franchisees. Creating an easy to use system through the extended enterprise means high adoption which means valuable information gets put into the system resulting in overall benefits for the corporate headquarters. This same adoption of the extended enterprise also benefits the franchisees since it allows each location to benchmark their location against other franchise operators in a standardized way.
As I alluded to earlier, AlphaGraphics, a customer of ours with over 260+ independently owned franchise locations, was looking to solve one main problem of consistency throughout the business.
By implementing our easy to use ConcourseSuite 5.0, AlphaGraphics has guaranteed a high adoption rate amongst franchises. Franchise operations which function independently from each other need to project a consistent brand image to its customers in each market where the company is located. What could be more important to an enterprise than a sales and marketing tool that allows the consistent management of independent franchises and a standardized online presence.
Michael
Yet relying on each individual franchise to implement a solution consistently is probably unrealistic.
Without consistent messaging, sales, and data management, a single franchise may can be isolated from other franchise locations as well as its corporate headquarters. But with proper connection to the larger corporate hub, any franchise can be as strong as the company it represents. It is important, by the very nature of a franchise operation, to provide a standard set of tools across the network for customer relationship management, sales, and marketing. So what's the solution? Connecting the extended enterprise and tackling multiple issues in one fell swoop.
Allowing the corporate entity to host an on-demand deployment that provides each franchisee an independent system delivers an effective solution of consistency, and ease of deployment for the franchisees. Creating an easy to use system through the extended enterprise means high adoption which means valuable information gets put into the system resulting in overall benefits for the corporate headquarters. This same adoption of the extended enterprise also benefits the franchisees since it allows each location to benchmark their location against other franchise operators in a standardized way.
As I alluded to earlier, AlphaGraphics, a customer of ours with over 260+ independently owned franchise locations, was looking to solve one main problem of consistency throughout the business.
By implementing our easy to use ConcourseSuite 5.0, AlphaGraphics has guaranteed a high adoption rate amongst franchises. Franchise operations which function independently from each other need to project a consistent brand image to its customers in each market where the company is located. What could be more important to an enterprise than a sales and marketing tool that allows the consistent management of independent franchises and a standardized online presence.
Michael
Friday, February 8, 2008
Introducing a New Blog Contributor
I want to take time today to introduce my colleague, Jeff Hershey, VP of Business Development at Concursive, who will be posting here regularly beginning next week.
Jeff joined us last fall after a successful run as VP of Business Development for a tech company in Pennsylvania. As you will see in our updated “About the Authors” section, Jeff has broad experience with both technical and non-technical companies of all sizes. His background will help expand the topic range on this blog; he will be posting some of his views/opinions on the importance of customer relationships, growing your customer base, and other general thoughts on relationship management.
He has already proven to be a great addition to the Concursive team and I am delighted to have him join forces with me on this blog.
Michael
Jeff joined us last fall after a successful run as VP of Business Development for a tech company in Pennsylvania. As you will see in our updated “About the Authors” section, Jeff has broad experience with both technical and non-technical companies of all sizes. His background will help expand the topic range on this blog; he will be posting some of his views/opinions on the importance of customer relationships, growing your customer base, and other general thoughts on relationship management.
He has already proven to be a great addition to the Concursive team and I am delighted to have him join forces with me on this blog.
Michael
Monday, February 4, 2008
Use CRM to Identify Customers for Better Service, Not Zero Service
David Sims ran an insightful article in TMCnet a few weeks ago, discussing why "Firing customers is a bad idea". Sims cites a study from the Wharton school that disproves the common, and in my opinion incorrect, philosophy of shedding your less valuable customers to increase profitability.
Many of the business-minded CRM professionals will argue that low spending customers take up too much time and effort to make up for the smaller percentage of profit they bring in, in comparison to the high spending customers, which take up the same amount of resources but return much more. The argument is that getting rid of the less profitable customers provides more time and resources for the more profitable ones.
Although I understand the basis for this concept, it has never completely worked in my mind. Instead of changing your customer base, why not change the way you work with your customers? Reallocating resources to more effectively manage all of your relationships will help improve profitability with high value customers, without sacrificing all of the lower value customers.
Sims brings up the point that CRM technology can be utilized to analyze and segment your customer base to determine which type of customers are which. In the old model this function could be used to shed the unwanted customers, but I agree with the Wharton study, that segmenting your customers can have a much more beneficial purpose: targeted and specialized relationship management.
Once you are able to identify the high-end customers from the low-end, you can tailor your sales and support more directly to each, enabling growth of both segments towards greater profitability.
There are two obvious reasons that you may not want to sacrifice your lower value customers: first, ridding yourself of any customers gives your competitors an opportunity to pick them up. If a customer needs your service and you won't provide it for them, they will easily switch to your competitors. Second, any good business relies heavily on word-of-mouth to fuel sales. What are these lower value customers going to be saying about your company if, instead of adjusting your service, you give them the axe?
The way I see it, CRM software should be used to get and grow customers, not classify and shed them.
Many of the business-minded CRM professionals will argue that low spending customers take up too much time and effort to make up for the smaller percentage of profit they bring in, in comparison to the high spending customers, which take up the same amount of resources but return much more. The argument is that getting rid of the less profitable customers provides more time and resources for the more profitable ones.
Although I understand the basis for this concept, it has never completely worked in my mind. Instead of changing your customer base, why not change the way you work with your customers? Reallocating resources to more effectively manage all of your relationships will help improve profitability with high value customers, without sacrificing all of the lower value customers.
Sims brings up the point that CRM technology can be utilized to analyze and segment your customer base to determine which type of customers are which. In the old model this function could be used to shed the unwanted customers, but I agree with the Wharton study, that segmenting your customers can have a much more beneficial purpose: targeted and specialized relationship management.
Once you are able to identify the high-end customers from the low-end, you can tailor your sales and support more directly to each, enabling growth of both segments towards greater profitability.
There are two obvious reasons that you may not want to sacrifice your lower value customers: first, ridding yourself of any customers gives your competitors an opportunity to pick them up. If a customer needs your service and you won't provide it for them, they will easily switch to your competitors. Second, any good business relies heavily on word-of-mouth to fuel sales. What are these lower value customers going to be saying about your company if, instead of adjusting your service, you give them the axe?
The way I see it, CRM software should be used to get and grow customers, not classify and shed them.
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