In a recent piece for Destination CRM on the benefits of personalization within marketing, Marshall Lager wrote that “personalization provides marketing communications with the means to deliver real value to customers”. Lager cites recent research suggesting that although CMOs understand this potential value of personalized marketing a majority are having troubles putting it into practice.
As the CMO for a CRM software company, this article seemed especially relevant to discuss. At Concursive, it has always been a focus of ours to make software that will help maximize the value of relationships - starting from the beginning of a sales cycle. For our software, personalization is a goal in every stage, especially when marketing to new leads.
This is the approach we had with ConcourseSuite 5.0: to increase value in the sales cycle, our tool aids in capturing information from multiple sources, including websites/contact forms, and drop it right into the Leads Management module. Then using the integrated Marketing module, we can create groups based on granular filtering of various criteria and message in a variety of formats.
We’ve also worked to make it easy to build complex email campaigns that generate specific messages based on certain responses, timelines or behavior patterns - i.e. using intelligence and rules to automate the personalization.
The tool also provides for the delivery of surveys to ensure feedback is being captured and used to refine messaging, etc. the next time around - closing the loop and ensuring each cycle is better than the last.
To put it simply: ConcourseSuite helps take out the difficult organization and cumbersome time required to personalize each lead and deliver real value to every potential customer. The more personal interactions you have with customers, the more customers will feel actively involved in the message you are communicating and the greater connection they will feel with your organization. Once you can make that valuable connection with your customers, your customers will become more valuable to you by being more loyal, buying more products and spreading word of mouth.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Concursive joins the ZipTie Open Network Alliance (ZONA)
Today Concursive is proud to announce that it has become a part of the ZipTie Open Network Alliance (ZONA). ZONA is an alliance committed to several key areas which we have been continually dedicated to, including interoperability, standardization, best practices and the creation of value-added tools. In November 2006, many of these same reasons fueled our drive to become a founding member of the Open Solutions Alliance, a group dedicated to those very ideals in open source software.
ZONA is an alliance for the network monitoring and management community. How does Concursive, best known as a CRM vendor fit in? In addition to traditional CRM capabilities, our software, ConcourseSuite, also provides enterprise class help desk capabilities. (In fact, companies like The Weather Channel use our system to manage their internal IT help desk operations.) When something goes wrong in a network, in addition to setting off alarms and people's pagers and providing diagnostic information, and so forth, it is often helpful to open a trouble-ticket, for example. ConcourseSuite provides a method for creating such tickets automatically, and creating a workflow for resolving the issue. We also provide asset inventory tracking so that information about particular devices in a network--routers, switches, servers, etc.--can be maintained within the same system that is used for troubleshooting those assets.
The ZipTie open source project’s goal is to simplify network inventory and configuration management, and ZipForge is a collaborative effort where users can download and develop innovations in network management. In any area where we can participate in increasing interoperability, developing standards, and producing disruptive technologies, we look to do so. We are excited to be on the cutting-edge in this field through ZONA, and look forward to collaborating with the other members that joined this week, as well as the existing community.
Michael
ZONA is an alliance for the network monitoring and management community. How does Concursive, best known as a CRM vendor fit in? In addition to traditional CRM capabilities, our software, ConcourseSuite, also provides enterprise class help desk capabilities. (In fact, companies like The Weather Channel use our system to manage their internal IT help desk operations.) When something goes wrong in a network, in addition to setting off alarms and people's pagers and providing diagnostic information, and so forth, it is often helpful to open a trouble-ticket, for example. ConcourseSuite provides a method for creating such tickets automatically, and creating a workflow for resolving the issue. We also provide asset inventory tracking so that information about particular devices in a network--routers, switches, servers, etc.--can be maintained within the same system that is used for troubleshooting those assets.
The ZipTie open source project’s goal is to simplify network inventory and configuration management, and ZipForge is a collaborative effort where users can download and develop innovations in network management. In any area where we can participate in increasing interoperability, developing standards, and producing disruptive technologies, we look to do so. We are excited to be on the cutting-edge in this field through ZONA, and look forward to collaborating with the other members that joined this week, as well as the existing community.
Michael
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Social networking and CRM: Are you engaging with your customers correctly?
As social networking becomes more commonplace, it is steadily creeping into the business environment. Companies have their own Facebook networks, MySpace groups, and use LinkedIn and Plaxo for recruiting and business networking. However, linking together social networks and managing business relationships is still a work in progress.
Previously, we talked about how to better serve customers in our blog by segmenting them better, and building relationships. Today I wanted to explore how to handle this in a new environment created by current technology trends. In a recent article, the O’Reilly Radar called “Release 2.0,” by Jimmy Guterman (here’s a link to his blog post on it) he describes the increasing need for a “universal inbox” to bring together all of a person’s separate lives, including aspects like email, contacts and personal and professional social networking profiles.
The future of CRM is in bringing together all of these seemingly disparate areas and giving users tools to separate and control their data as much or as little as they would like to. Concursive recognizes this trend and its importance to the customer. Web 2.0 and social media features such as blogs, wikis and RSS make CRM more collaborative and more in tune with business growth. The end goal would be to simplify users lives professionally, to make it easier for a company to get and grow customers by building closer relationships with customers and interested parties and to fuel as many one-to-one relationships as possible; in other words, to both turn friends into sales and sales into friends.
Other recent articles in support of using social media and Web 2.0 tools in business are Paul Greenberg’s piece “Everything is Social” in destinationCRM, as well as “Web 2.0: Just say yes” by Sandra Gittlen in Computerworld Australia.
Jeff Hershey
Previously, we talked about how to better serve customers in our blog by segmenting them better, and building relationships. Today I wanted to explore how to handle this in a new environment created by current technology trends. In a recent article, the O’Reilly Radar called “Release 2.0,” by Jimmy Guterman (here’s a link to his blog post on it) he describes the increasing need for a “universal inbox” to bring together all of a person’s separate lives, including aspects like email, contacts and personal and professional social networking profiles.
The future of CRM is in bringing together all of these seemingly disparate areas and giving users tools to separate and control their data as much or as little as they would like to. Concursive recognizes this trend and its importance to the customer. Web 2.0 and social media features such as blogs, wikis and RSS make CRM more collaborative and more in tune with business growth. The end goal would be to simplify users lives professionally, to make it easier for a company to get and grow customers by building closer relationships with customers and interested parties and to fuel as many one-to-one relationships as possible; in other words, to both turn friends into sales and sales into friends.
Other recent articles in support of using social media and Web 2.0 tools in business are Paul Greenberg’s piece “Everything is Social” in destinationCRM, as well as “Web 2.0: Just say yes” by Sandra Gittlen in Computerworld Australia.
Jeff Hershey
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Microsoft Opens Up--Maybe the Open Solutions Alliance is onto something after all
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…
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…
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.
Friday, January 25, 2008
Want to grow your business? Think beyond the sale
The other day I was speaking to a small business owner. They told me that using Concourse Suite was helping them manage sales leads, and I was asking them about the steps beyond the sale and how they were using the CRM and other capabilities, and what processes they had introduced.
"Beyond the sale? We're just looking to grow," was the response. I was stunned.
I'm not undermining the importance of the sale. Nothing happens until someone sells something, that's business. But good businesses look beyond the sale and to a longer-term relationship. Relationships should be a top concern for any business that wants to grow. It doesn't matter if you have 10 employees or 10,000.
It's about knowing your customers. After you've sold them something, get working on the relationship. Talk to them, ask them what they like about your product or service, and what brought them to you. Get feedback. Listen.
Here are several great questions for small business owners to ask themselves, courtesy of a great post at Duct Tape Marketing from earlier this week, which is all about making sure you are attracting the right type of customer.
Relationships are key: when a company opens a two-way conversation, they learn a great deal not just about that customer but also about their own company. We call this 'Get and Grow'.
Technology plays its role in this strategy. It ensures that you have the right processes, allowing the consistent tracking of what customers have bought, all contact they have had with the company and any actions required. It's all about knowledge: knowing who your customers are and how/when they want to be reached - but tracking these things on Post-Its, spreadsheets and desktops is not the way to share this vital knowledge.
If you're not thinking beyond the sale, you're not thinking abut long-term business - no matter how much you sell.
"Beyond the sale? We're just looking to grow," was the response. I was stunned.
I'm not undermining the importance of the sale. Nothing happens until someone sells something, that's business. But good businesses look beyond the sale and to a longer-term relationship. Relationships should be a top concern for any business that wants to grow. It doesn't matter if you have 10 employees or 10,000.
It's about knowing your customers. After you've sold them something, get working on the relationship. Talk to them, ask them what they like about your product or service, and what brought them to you. Get feedback. Listen.
Here are several great questions for small business owners to ask themselves, courtesy of a great post at Duct Tape Marketing from earlier this week, which is all about making sure you are attracting the right type of customer.
Relationships are key: when a company opens a two-way conversation, they learn a great deal not just about that customer but also about their own company. We call this 'Get and Grow'.
Technology plays its role in this strategy. It ensures that you have the right processes, allowing the consistent tracking of what customers have bought, all contact they have had with the company and any actions required. It's all about knowledge: knowing who your customers are and how/when they want to be reached - but tracking these things on Post-Its, spreadsheets and desktops is not the way to share this vital knowledge.
If you're not thinking beyond the sale, you're not thinking abut long-term business - no matter how much you sell.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Sun Shines $1B on Open Source Database MySQL
Huge news in the Open Source world today: Sun Microsystems announced that it will spend $1B to acquire the Open Source database MySQL. MySQL is the back-end of the LAMP stack (Linux OS, Apache server, MySQL database, and PHP programming language), on which many web applications are based, not to mention web giants like Facebook and Google. The press release can be read here, which contains the following paragraph:
There are two big themes that I took away from this quote. First is that Sun will be able to pick up a large, pre-existing customer base through MySQL's broad deployment (which was made even more broad late last week when Virgin Mobile announced its SMS database would be based on MySQL). One of the biggest benefits of Open Source software is that it can spread very quickly to gain a large hold of the market. The second note I see in this article is that Open Source is getting the publicity it deserves for being flexible and easy to use.
To me, this announcement also indicates that open source is going upscale. This deal represents the largest acquisition of an open source company to date and continues a trend that increased in scope throughout 2007 with the Zimbra acquisition by Yahoo!. It seems that big companies are seeing Open Source as a completely viable option and I think that we should anticipate more Open Source applications gaining the interest of a broader marketplace. I'll be intently watching to see how this shapes the open source landscape in 2008.
"This broad penetration coupled with MySQL's strength in Web 2.0, Software as a Service (SaaS), enterprise, telecom and the OEM embedded market make it an important fit for Sun. With MySQL, Sun will have the ability to deepen its existing customer relationships and create new opportunities with companies seeking the flexibility and ease-of-use of open source systems. With MySQL, Sun will have the ability to deepen its existing customer relationships and create new opportunities with companies seeking the flexibility and ease-of-use of open source systems."
There are two big themes that I took away from this quote. First is that Sun will be able to pick up a large, pre-existing customer base through MySQL's broad deployment (which was made even more broad late last week when Virgin Mobile announced its SMS database would be based on MySQL). One of the biggest benefits of Open Source software is that it can spread very quickly to gain a large hold of the market. The second note I see in this article is that Open Source is getting the publicity it deserves for being flexible and easy to use.
To me, this announcement also indicates that open source is going upscale. This deal represents the largest acquisition of an open source company to date and continues a trend that increased in scope throughout 2007 with the Zimbra acquisition by Yahoo!. It seems that big companies are seeing Open Source as a completely viable option and I think that we should anticipate more Open Source applications gaining the interest of a broader marketplace. I'll be intently watching to see how this shapes the open source landscape in 2008.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Increased Security through Open Source
On Friday I wrote about the debate going on around Open Source software bugs. Let me restate: bugs in software are not related to the fact that the source code is freely available. In fact, open source software has fewer bugs due to the constant scrutinization and programming skills of its development community.
On the topic of security this article in ZDNet Asia, uses an Open Source adoption study from IDC as its reference point and states that: "Security was the top reason for deploying open source technology". This alternative view just shows how different the press can approach one facet of technology. The article cites an IDC analyst, Prianka Srinivasan, who talks about how Open Source is seen by its advocates as providing more secure software than closed source alternatives.
The article also talks about how companies are taking an interest in open source versions of CRM, and so they should be. The combination of innovation, security and the ability to connect with customers, partners and stakeholders across the extended enterprise is something that any business should at least explore.
On the topic of security this article in ZDNet Asia, uses an Open Source adoption study from IDC as its reference point and states that: "Security was the top reason for deploying open source technology". This alternative view just shows how different the press can approach one facet of technology. The article cites an IDC analyst, Prianka Srinivasan, who talks about how Open Source is seen by its advocates as providing more secure software than closed source alternatives.
The article also talks about how companies are taking an interest in open source versions of CRM, and so they should be. The combination of innovation, security and the ability to connect with customers, partners and stakeholders across the extended enterprise is something that any business should at least explore.
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