Better Your Business

Is your CRM leaking productivity? It may be time for a CRM Tune-Up.

Kelly McKeown — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 17:28:00 GMT

As we know, businesses have their own set of individual characteristics. However, the need for a regular inspection and tweaking of CRM systems is something they have in common. You may consider your CRM process to be running like a finely tuned Ferrari, or as reliably as a used Honda Civic but there is always good reason to take a peek under the hood.

If your company is due for a CRM tune-up but you're not sure how to begin, a great place to start is by asking questions. Reach out to key stakeholders in your organization to help identify which areas they need to improve. Talk to your end user to establish a list of common concerns and time wasting activities. Or chat to your customers ... they will be quick to draw attention to areas in your customer service process they feel could be better. Most likely, everyone you speak with will appreciate your proactive approach.

Now that you have identified some key areas to develop, you may ask yourself "How do we compare to our peers?" You will be happy to find out you are not alone in your problems. Unveiled in the "Time for a CRM tune-up?" e-book are poll results from the 'Navigating Roadblocks with CRM' webinar series. It's a great way to see how your business challenges stack up against your peers. Here's a preview...

What challenge(s) are you facing in measuring business performance?

Inconsistent reporting requirements 45%
Time consuming analysis 25%
Inaccurate data included 40%
Lack of customized reports 65%
Analysis not relevant to my role 5%
Other 10%

If your mind is now racing with CRM adjustment ideas ... minor attention here, full overhaul there ... to make your business more efficient, you will find the interactive checklists included in the "Time for a CRM tune-up?" e-book especially helpful. By rating your sales, marketing, customer service and business intelligence ability you can easily identify areas to focus your efforts.

How CRM Savvy is Your Business?

SteveJan — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 16:12:00 GMT

Have you ever wondered if the software you use day-after-day could do more, but you just don’t know how to make the most of it? Take your CRM (customer relationship management) software for instance, are you using it simply to store contact information or are you taking advantage of all of the its features and functionalities to improve your business?

For example:

Is your staff able to access your CRM software from a variety of platforms (desktop, web, mobile device)?

Is management able to easily access Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) and dashboards?

Have you set up your CRM software to integrate with key programs like Outlook?

These are the kinds of questions that you can ask about your small business CRM software to determine what areas need to be improved on.

To make it easy, we’ve created a short quiz that zeros in on the kinds of information you need to ask to find out if you’re fully optimizing your CRM software and how ‘CRM savvy’ is your business. After you’ve discovered where your business’ CRM strengths rank, you can learn how to improve your score by downloading the CRM Proficiency Kit. The kit includes the resources and tools you need to make your software give you more insight into your business, streamline processes and increase revenue.

Take the Quiz!

Small Business CRM Software Comparison by Software Advice

Kelly McKeown — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 21:47:00 GMT

From Lauren Carlson, CRM Analyst at Software Advice:

Customer relationship management (CRM) software is no longer optional. It's imperative. Regardless of size, almost every business needs a CRM system to help manage sales, marketing and customer service operations.

Today's most popular CRM systems are extremely sophisticated, but costly, which is why many small businesses are wary of investing in CRM. However, there are plenty of CRM systems on the market targeted specifically at small business owners, offering them the right mix of features and functionality. Many CRM solutions are now offered in a web-based, software-as-a-service (SaaS) model - providing simplified access at a subscription price that is digestible for the budget conscious.

Most small business CRM systems offer the same core functionality, including contact management, lead management and basic reporting, but there are other features to consider.

Take a look at Software Advice's side-by-side comparison of the primary features of five CRM software solutions for small businesses, including Maximizer CRM.

What CRM Can Do For Your Business

Margarita Orlov — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 23:40:00 GMT

From PC Today.com – August 2011

Read Full Article (page 32-33)

Is your business debating whether purchasing a Customer Relationship Management system is the right step to take? The article "What CRM Can Do For Your Business" in the August 2011 issue of PC Today.com looks at what your business will gain and how best to make use of a CRM system.

Perhaps you have the notion that CRM is not for your business, but did you know that "SMBs can use CRM to boost revenues by better analyzing and reacting to existing and potential customers’ needs, while greatly simplifying their marketing, service, and sales operations, whether they are a one-person operation or a 1,000-employee enterprise." This means that even small-scale entrepreneurial operations have an opportunity to boost sales with the help of a CRM system.

Pre-conceived notions of CRM exist and it "has a reputation as being expensive and geared for large-scale industrial operations. But today, developers have honed and crafted CRM’s power in such a way that it has become simple to use and very applicable to the needs of SMBs." No longer do you need to fear the intricacies of the settings tab and how to navigate through a complex set-up. The ideal CRM that can benefit your business the most should include "your enterprises contacts, business leads, customer data and calendar data, along with word processing, order status or anything else that merits your attention relating to your customers in a single screen."

The data in a CRM system is "constantly updated in such a way that it is also accessible to enterprise users so they know what is going on with accounts on an as-needed basis". By having all of your customer information available to everyone in your organization your staff can really zero in on what matters to your customers so your customers always feel like they are your most important client. "Mark Sippola, CEO and owner of Vancouver-based Corporate Cleaning Services, says his firm uses Maximizer to ensure that every employee can check on the status of a customer at any time." This means that once you have a CRM system implemented you can make sure that "the ball [is] never dropped along the way" and customer satisfaction is always within your reach.

Cloud CRM is beneficial for a business whose staff benefit from customer data information on-the-fly. "Using cloud-based CRM, salespersons, for example, can access comprehensive customer data from a cloud server with a smartphone, which they can also update in real time."

More information can be found in the full article in PCToday.com (page 32-33)

Get More Subscribers to Take Action When Receiving Email via Mobile Device

Margarita Orlov — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 16:49:00 GMT

Another good post by Runaware on their Marketing & Web Blog, view more posts HERE

Runaware hosts the Maximizer CRM Free Test Drive, where you can try Maximizer CRM through online access with no software download required!

Get more subscribers to take action when receiving email via mobile device

Here are some best practices that help ensure your content is received in the best possible light when on a mobile device. If you want subscribers to take action on the emails they open via mobile devices consider using the following...

Keep the subject short and sweet.
Mobile devices display a limited number of characters in the subject line, so title the email in as few words as possible. Your recipients can't take action on your emails if they don't open them first.

Trim the fat.
Mobile Internet connections run slower than desktop connections, so avoid extremely data-heavy content. You don't want your recipients abandoning the email before the content loads so take down that file size.

Get to the point quickly.
If content via mobile is not easy to read and respond to, your customers will most likely delete or ignore the email. Get to the point quickly; your recipients are probably on the move and exposed to all sorts of distractions throughout their day.

Optimize landing pages for mobile devices.
Mobile landing pages should have brief, direct copy that gets the point across. Those who want more information can return to your site later from a desktop and explore deeper links for more detailed content.

Encourage sharing.
Social media sharing buttons should be available and easy for your mobile audience to use. Instead of placing these buttons all the way at the bottom or top of the email, insert them near the middle, next to content that recipients most likely will want to share.

Create a sense of urgency.
Hinting, not screaming, a sense of urgency is a good idea. Make it clear when your sale or special offer expires, so that recipients have more incentive to take action immediately on their mobile devices rather than waiting to view the content on a computer.

Make sure to test and review results to determine what percentage of your subscribers are opening messages on mobile devices and use the results to adjust your message and layout to cater to your mobile users.

Cool and Useful Twitter Tools To Start Using Today

Margarita Orlov — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 15:40:00 GMT

Great Blog Post by Runaware on their Marketing & Web Blog, view more posts HERE

Runaware hosts the Maximizer CRM Free Test Drive, where you can try Maximizer CRM through online access with no software download required!

Cool and Useful Twitter Tools To Start Using Today

If you are one of the many folks out there using Twitter these days, whether it be for personal or business reasons, you know that managing all your outgoing and incoming content can get overwhelming at times. Not to mention if you are doing any kind of tracking on your tweets its always great to find the latest resources out there that can help you see who is sharing your posts and which individuals are interested in a similar topic as you.

To make connecting and managing life in the Twittersphere even easier here a few tools you may want to start taking advantage of.

Tweet Everywhere
These Twitter tools help you to not only post tweets but also to other social networking and social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, etc...
• Ping.fm
• Hellotxt

Contact Management
These Twitter tools help to manage your contacts, those who you follow and those who follow you. You can also search for new followers, analyze those following you, find out who they are following and more.
• Twerpscan
• TwitterCounter

Twitter Directories and Search

These Twitter tools are directories where you can search for new followers or find who is following you via certain parameters and keywords. They are a really helpful set of tools to increase followers relevant to your niche.
• Twitter Search
• Twellow
• WeFollow
• Twitterholic

Tweet Schedulers and Productivity and Auto Tweets
With these Twitter tools you can schedule tweets for later as well as tweet blog entries. Don't over-do it though or you could appear to be a "bot", a spammer, rather than a person. Use wisely my friends.
• PostLater
• Twitterfeed
• Twitresponse

Twitter Statistics, Graphs, Analysis and Evaluators

These twitter tools allow you to evaluate your twitter profile, run analysis on your twitter reach and popularity, with all sorts of stats and graphs.
• Twitter Grader
• Tweet Value
• Tweetstats

Toolbars and Firefox Add-ons

Twitter tools to make tweeting from within your browser easy.
• HootBar
• Twitizer
• Echofon

Personal Branding and CRM

Kelly McKeown — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 16:46:00 GMT

Whether you are a lawyer, accountant, financial services professional, realtor, or health and wellness professional you know how important developing a positive personal brand can be for your business. In an environment where services appear similar this is what makes you stand out from the crowd. It is a way to reflect your values, personality and expertise, and increase your credibility by providing exceptional client experience.

When building a personal brand Robin Fisher Roffer; author, speaker, personal branding expert and strategist, and CEO of Big Fish Marketing, starts with what she calls "the Holy Trinity of Branding: consistency, clarity and authenticity".

Consistency makes you look like a brand leader. This is about staying on message - synchronizing agreement and action -- walking the walk and talking the talk. Think about Verizon's "Can You Hear Me Now?" campaign. Is there anyone in American that doesn't know that Verizon delivers the most consistent and dependable cell phone service?

Clarity tells the world why your brand matters. The best brands edit their communication down to its essence and speak to their audience in a language they can understand and emotionally connect with. Think about how much Nike communicates with the simple tagline, "Just Do It."

Authenticity gives your brand staying power. Great brands come across as real. They don't manipulate the truth to get what they want. What they say about themselves comes directly from their true essence. Think of fast-growing brands like Zappos, Google and Apple. Not only do they have authenticity at their core, their visual image syncs up with what they say they can do.

So what does this have to do with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software?

As your business evolves and your client and prospect database grows it becomes more and more difficult to deliver a consistent message, maintain a high standard of service and stay on top of your sales and marketing activities. With CRM you can deliver a customized, high-value and consistent experience to each client or prospect every time to build and maintain your positive personal brand.

Maximizer CRM not only stores client contact information but also their complete history with you, account history, product and service profiles and even their favorite sports teams and life events like birthdays and anniversaries, to build a 360-degree view of your client.

Organize resources and coordinate a series of activities (such as emails, calls, meeting preparation and appointments) around a client or prospect with an action plan. Maximizer CRM allows these plans to be reused so you can stay on track no matter who you are engaging. Clients will notice your attention to detail and the consistent, dedicated experience that you deliver.

If you are a Financial Services Professional you may find this recorded webcast of interest - "Maximizer CRM - A Personal Branding Tool for Financial Advisors".

Gain a Competitive Edge by Mobilizing Your CRM

Kelly McKeown — Tue, 10 May 2011 16:56:00 GMT

Competition is fiercer than ever to acquire and retain customers so quite often the customer experience becomes the battleground for competitive advantage. With customers being a company's most valuable asset it is imperative that customer relationships are managed and nurtured effectively. Many businesses are realizing the need for more efficient ways for their teams to do this, and are taking customer relationship management (CRM) software implementation to the next level; mobilizing their frontline teams and arming them with CRM enabled mobile devices.

A longtime customer of Maximizer Software, Corporate Cleaning Services (CSS) is one such company. With Maximizer® CRM 11 enabled on their smartphones they were able to more effectively monitor and resolve service issues as well as manage sales opportunities. Utilizing the Customer Service module, supervisors are able to create customer service cases, enter notes from inspections, and access files in real-time from the client site eliminating the time consuming, slow and unreliable manual processes that were previously in place. Founder and CEO, Mark Sippola envisioned using information and data effectively to help provide a high level of customer service and to distinguish CCS from its competition. Sippola saw Maximizer CRM as key in helping them realize that vision. "I have been waiting for the day when the technology caught up with my vision of providing my staff with real time reporting and monitoring of customer relationships. This latest version of Maximizer has hit the nail on the head as far as my vision is concerned."

Advantages of mobilizing staff with CRM include:

More efficient and effective collaboration and communication across your organization with departments working together on closing sales or resolving customer issues anywhere, anytime.
Reduced reliance on staff being in the office, providing flexibility to spend more time in the field in front of customers.
Ability to manage and update customer information on the road so opportunities aren't missed and colleagues can act on the latest information.
Helps maintain momentum with your teams to achieve higher levels of performance.
Streamlined sales and services processes resulting in improved response time to customer inquiries.
Visibility into up-to-date customer profiles and history moments before a meeting so sales and service reps can walk in prepared and with confidence they have all the information they need to succeed.
Providing a consistent experience for the customer whether they are interacting with staff in the field or in the office.

If positive customer experiences and long-term loyalty is what you are looking for, mobilize your sales and service teams with Maximizer® CRM!

If you would like to learn more, watch the "Mobilizing with CRM... Your Cometitive Advantage" webcast which includes guest speaker Mark Sippola, CEO of Corporate Cleaning Services, sharing his story about how MaxMobile improved workflow and efficiencies for both his sales and customer service teams.

Why Outlook is not a CRM?

Céline Côté — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 16:13:00 GMT

If you think Outlook is the equivalent of a CRM, think again… allow me!

written by Céline Côté

Read more about CRM on Céline's blog "A CRM User's Thoughts and Tips"

No doubt Outlook is an excellent electronic mail manager with an address book, calendar and tasks list and a CRM has an address book, calendar and to-do list. The resemblance stops there, so what’s the dif?

A good Customer Relationship Management system, like Maximizer CRM, will integrate Outlook as one of it’s windows to view and make even better use of Outlook, without reinventing it but extending it.

Here’s how:

The Flexibility of Personalization
The most powerful function in Maximizer is it’s ‘list view’. From the beginning Maximizer works like we do, it shows people or companies in a list view rather than a form for each contact. This form is called the Basic Information sheet and contains, well the basics, name, address, phone numbers, which we don’t need to look at all the time. This is a major difference as in the Address Book window you can view the exact information you need as a view into the database that can be changed at will for what you need at the time you need it. You can create a list view with specific information/fields for prospects, clients, buyers, sellers, opportunities and tasks. Each piece of information is put in a column, and each column can be the sorting column, so you can put the list in alphabetical order, postal code order, city order, the choice is as you wish. You can even put more than one piece of information in the same column, not too many CRM will do that. Each column setup that you create is saved in a list to be reused in a snap! That’s flexibility in my book!

Now Maximizer goes further by having ‘following windows’, that means when you click on a person or company in the list, it displays the related information such as other contacts for that individual or company, notes, the list of User Fields that give at-a-glance a portrait of who the contact is in relationship to you. How about having your Ideal Client Profile, where does the person fit compared to your ICP!, you can also tell then how the entry is qualified and where he/she in the sales process!

These fields are not just to know who you are dealing with; every field can be searched and grouped. Can you say ‘target marketing’! All those that meet a set of your criteria, can be searched and appear in a list you can save as a Favorite List and send a mass letter, fax or email with your latest marketing info. With Maximizer you can even narrow a list or add to a list you are building. And this is so easily done!

Speaking of user fields, for Maximizer CRM we call them UDFs (User Defined Fields) and they are so very powerful and flexible. These fields can be used to profile, categorize, differentiate all your companies and people/contacts, you can arrange them in the order you need or want as a directory down to 3 levels! There are no limits to the number of UDF’s in Maximizer CRM. Impossible to do this with Outlook! In it, you can have category names per contact, but you have to go into the address book, choose the tab for fields and then select a category of fields… too cumbersome.

Maximizer CRM UDFs used in the Address Book window is so easy to see in a tree (directory view) on the tab that you view at the same time that you view the contacts and with the flexibility of choosing which fields you want to see in the main window - you can use any UDFs or basic fields to sort your contacts or companies for example: by amount ‘sold this month’, plus ‘year to date’ to easily find and cater to your 20% that brings in 80% of your sales/revenue. It can be used to do target marketing or segmenting for promotion by classifying/sorting by industries, regions, city, postal codes, etc… There is no limit to the number of views and uses you can have on your information. I have used Maximizer CRM to assist me superbly and efficiently to manage lists for whatever purpose I need or can think of. Not possible with just Outlook…

Usability
When using the address book, calendar and to-do list (called Hotlist in Maximizer) of Maximizer CRM, you will make everything more efficient because an appointment is attached to a contact, person or company, and is cross-referenced as a note entered automatically for the contact. You never have to reenter a name, address or phone number.

Same thing with tasks (to-dos or Hotlist), they are attached and cross referenced to a contact or as a personal task if it doesn’t involve any contacts.

Considering the fact that contacts are entered either for a company or for an individual, so a company has all the employees/staff all together, an individual is a professional without a company name but has a few assistants or is self-employed. Then all the notes for the company and for each individual are easy to view, what has happened in the past, any appointment set in the future, any tasks past and future, this is not possible with Outlook since it is a basic address book name by name in alphabetical order.

Then consider before emails. People were sending letters, faxes, thank you notes, real Christmas cards… and some still do. This is so easily done in Maximizer CRM as a merge between names, UDF and an integrated editor or using Microsoft Word. I would not thing of using anything else to help me be efficient. For each contact and company, you have a document tab, this is a real document manager as it’s an area to keep together all the correspondence. Now with emails being more used than letters, you save significant emails that are important for the history of the relationship in that same section, they are saved with 2 clicks: right click on the email to get the drop down menu then select ‘save to …name of person…’ and the email is now a document inside Maximizer CRM and can be shared, viewed and even responded to by others if you are in a company with whom you need to share information.

There is an advanced function in Maximizer called ‘Global Edit’ that can be used in both the Address Book or in the Opportunity Management section, it makes tasks for mass editing easy and a real time saver for the user. When group of people, customers, prospects or sales opportunities need to be reassigned to a new account manager, or a note needs to be added to several entries at one time, this function makes it so simple and fast, it even allows modifying multiple UDFs at the same time!

I’ll quickly tell about the creation of Action Plans since I have another post entirely on that subject, this is the scheduling of a string of appointments and/or Hotlist tasks that is set up as a reusable template and you can chose which company or person to apply a different Action Plan template for. Is it that you want to keep in touch once a month, every two months, quarterly, etc… Or is it that you want to handle a project like organizing an exhibit and things need to be planned and executed in a timely manner, and that are consistent every time you are an exhibitor at trade shows… Maximizer CRM is your full time assistant!

Did I mention how easy it is to keep the emails in each contact documents section for history, how easy it is to have email templates…

One other thing you have in Maximizer that’s so neat, your library! This is document management that’s so very useful, all the documentation that you have for business correspondence and are not attached to a contact as they are in each individual’s documents section, this is a area to keep the latest versions of forms, catalogs, price lists, and other reusable documents, ready to be emailed to a contact.

Upgrade and scalability
If you start with either the Entrepreneur or the Team Editions, that are contact and sales management applications, it is simple and seamless to have an upgrade path to the full CRM Editions of Group and Enterprise, so that your CRM grows with you with full featured Sales, Marketing and Customer Service and Support and can synchronize with people working on the road or at another location.

Maximizer already synchronizes contacts, calendar and tasks with Outlook.

This is not an either/or, it’s both!
Finally, the integration between Outlook and Maximizer CRM is seamless.

A CRM like Maximizer provides customers/prospects/contacts/suppliers/partners management; sales opportunity management; marketing campaign management and customer service and support management (those last two are in Group and Enterprise Editions) with many functionalities both basic and advanced that Outlook doesn’t have. And it is not an either/or, it’s best using both Maximizer CRM with Outlook! May I say that they are like Batman and Robin, they work together!

Any questions anyone on this subject?

Don’t let your CRM Business Intelligence (BI) be Dash-boring...

Margarita Orlov — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 16:51:00 GMT

If there is anything sexy about CRM, it would have to be the emergence of dashboards to deliver Business Intelligence (BI). In a short time, I have seen dashboards go from “hot button” to just plain hot.

Nothing can completely replace your reliable old reports. However there are situations where there is no time to go through all the steps to manually prepare a report, especially when your primary interest is a distilled end result. Dashboards are visually pleasing, easy to access and offer instant visibility into critical metrics.

With dashboards, BI is not just something you receive from your report once a week before the Friday sales meeting. On the contrary, dashboards allow BI to become part of the normal workday—You will find yourself glancing at your dashboard regularly, checking figures and getting overviews of key indicators at intervals not attainable through traditional reporting. My dashboard is available with the press of button on my phone so I can obtain my BI at any time—at home, on the train or in the boardroom just before a meeting.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Excel and Crystal (I can’t live without them), but they are not always there when you need them. Dashboards, on the other hand, are always accessible via my phone, on the web and on my desktop in the office.

By Byron Heath

Reporting and Backwards-Engineering a Data Structure: A True Story

Byron Heath — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 04:46:00 GMT

Reporting and Backwards-Engineering a Data Structure: A True Story

Many years ago, in a land far, far away (it was India), my good friend Steve and I were brought in for a large upgrade of 185 users (Steve has since transitioned to pre-sales where he passes his wisdom to those considering purchasing Maximizer).

A company in India had an installation of Maximizer. The fact was they had not been utilizing Maximizer very well. There were issues in motivating people to do the data entry, Head Office had designed the database structure which did not fit their local needs, and most of all they were not generating any reports from the database.

On our first day we met with the Project Manager and the CRM committee. Their idea to improve the acceptance and use of Maximizer was to stop the manual generation of six very time consuming and important Excel reports, and generate them from the Maximizer database.

What we discussed with the project managers in India revolutionized how I approach implementation of Maximizer anywhere in the world today.

The process they were using with Excel may be a familiar for many of you: the six Excel spread sheets were, in fact, reports, but just happened to be used for data entry as well.

The existing process was:

185 users all had a copy of each of the 6 Excel sheets
Each filled in the data from customers and projects during the week
The users sent the excel spread sheets to their manager
The middle manager consolidated the Excel sheets and sent a single sheet to the Regional Manager
The Regional Manager consolidated the Excel sheets he received and sent them to the VP of Sales
The VP of sales consolidated the Excel sheets into a single final report
Sound familiar?

They saw the consolidation of the reports as the issue or waste of time in this process.

We saw more then just the consolidation of databases as their issue:

Excel could still be used as the reporting tool, updated with the press of a button
Maximizer being far superior tool for data entry as compared to Excel would also save the users time and effort
We should use them as they were intended using Maximizer as the single data entry point and a single “live” Excel report.

It was like in a cartoon when a light bulb appears over your head: we all got it.

We went to work with what is now a process I go through for every new site and every new process or report:

Starting with the Excel sheets we mapped back each field in the report to the appropriate module and field in Maximizer
- Where there were gaps and fields did not exist we created them in Maximizer
After the field creation we worked on a custom training document for data entry
- For each report a process for data entry was created
Next, we recreated each report that would pull data live from Maximizer
- We created queries to extract the data
- Excel spread sheets were formatted to look like the original sheets they had used for data entry and connected to the query
The result was a streamlined data entry process, a single data entry point in Maximizer and 6 “live” Reports in excel format
- Data entry was reduced
- Data at the central database was far more up to date as compared to multiple Excel sheets method
- Reports could be run from any office or manager with the press of a button
- It was a win-win situation for users and management

This was the turning point for this company, and they never looked back. They now have tens of reports on which they rely in multiple formats: Excel, Access, and Crystal Reports. Each created using the same “backwards engineering” procedure we designed above.

Backwards engineering approach revolutionized my approach to new databases, reports or business processes and is something you will hear from me a great deal. It ensures the “core” needs of your CRM project are met and your data structure has a solid foundation from which to continue to build.

Lessons:

Never build your database structure and then say ‘lets build a report”. Design your report and build the database structure based on the report or process
Backwards Engineering ensures the “core” needs of your CRM project are met and your data structure has a solid foundation from which to continue to build.
Don’t get caught up in how you have done things in the past. Map out your processes and reports and data entry process in what would be the “ideal” way not “this is how we used to enter our projects in ….”

Executive Involvement during Implementation

Byron Heath — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 22:36:00 GMT

It has been a while since I have had a moment to write down my thoughts and post a new entry. I have been on the road for most of this year and even when I have been back home, there have been many long days working on projects.

But with all my time spent on planes and sitting around airport lounges (and once my laptop batteries died), it gave me an opportunity to reflect on my projects over the last 12 months; which ones stood out as being successful and why. (My definition of a successful implementation will be another blog for another day)

When I consider what made some one project more successful over another there was one point that always stands out - the involvement of the visionaries and decision makers not only in the planning stages but during the implementation itself.

There are 2 ends of this scale of customer involvement during implementation:

1) Implementations where I am locked in the server room and on my own to complete the implementation, database structure and processes with only the project scope as a guide.

2) Implementations where I am surrounded by the visionaries, decision makers and Power Users. These can be the VP of sales, IT staff, influential sales people.

Guess which method generates the best results? (Hint: It's not #1)

In one of my last implementations, I found I was never on my own. There was the VP of Sales (who had gone through this 3 times before at other companies), the head of IT (CRM Process Guru), the Power User and sales people (Customer and existing processes experts). There was a never-ending discussion between all of us.

Using the VP's vision and required reports as a framework, we built the data structure and processes - getting consensus from the group on each step, testing, tweaking and locking in a field and process. IT was there as CRM experts and available to implement server level changes on the fly.

I can say we accomplished more in 5 days with this type of active involvement than I see others accomplish in a month or more.

At the end of my week, they were left with a fully functioning CRM system, ready for their sales reps to hit the ground running, with several reports for the VP and a strong foundation to build on.

The other benefit is the project leaders now have a deeper understanding of Maximizer CRM: what can be done, how it will be done, and where to focus on phase 2 (this should be a never ending process - Phase 1, 2, 3, 4...).

On the other end of the scale, I have built amazing database structures and reports on my own, but without focus or involvement from the project team (if one even existed!) few are prepared to roll this out to the sales people at the end of a week.

While I don’t expect every VP/Director can take 5 days out of their schedule to lead every discussion during implementation, I can’t stress enough having the right people available to spend time with your CRM consultant during implementation is of great importance to the success of your project.

Best Practices: Keep it Simple

Byron Heath — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 21:35:00 GMT

In the beginning…

This may sound blindingly obvious, but the most important place to start with best practices is at the beginning, the start of a new project, new process, or new report needed in Maximizer.

When it comes to planning business processes and the database field structures many companies do not start with a solid foundation upon which to build. People tend to jump in, adding fields and building processes in an as-needed, disjointed method that will eventually lead to trouble.

Building a house without a blueprint usually results with the city inspector telling you to tear it down and you have to start over. I can’t tell you how many databases I have had to tell people to tear down and start over in the past 11 years.

The first thing I ask my clients to do is to forget about the Maximizer interface and just focus on what it is they are trying to achieve working in a media they are familiar with, like Microsoft Excel or even a pen and piece of paper.

What pains or problems do you want to solve, what reports do you need or want, what processes do you want to track and what processes need to be streamlined?

Some common things I hear my customers are looking for are:

Better reporting
- In many cases, ANY reporting
Improved overview of sales process
- Win/loss analysis, competitor analysis, customer development programs
Introduction of a new business processes or management requirements
Improvements in customer service
Identification and analysis of the top customers on whom resources should be focussed

Whatever the method you use to get your ideas down, you need to include as much detail as possible.

Projects I help my customers with I find there is the general overview of issues or needs but not enough concrete details to build with. “I want a house with lots of bedrooms…” does not give a contractor what they need to build your house.

My suggestion is to have enough detail so a person unfamiliar with your company can understand what business process you are trying to achieve or the report you are trying to create. The initial call I have with clients usually involves me asking questions to extract the details for what they are planning.

Databases created without a clear vision of your processes or what you are trying to achieve result in a database that few employees understand and fewer will use.

Once you have your reports and processes planned out it is time to map them into Maximizer.

Lessons:

Make a blueprint for the report or process and what you want to achieve.
Limit the right to add fields to your database to ONE or TWO people
Have a process in place to handle new requests

Introducing Best Practices with Byron Heath, Senior Solutions Consultant

Byron Heath — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 22:28:00 GMT

My name is Byron Heath and my official title is Senior Solutions Consultant in Professional Services at Maximizer Software. I’m excited for the opportunity to share best practices through my “real world” experiences and lessons from implementations of Maximizer Software around the world.

During a time when companies are trying to do more with less, properly implementing and utilizing your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software has never been more important.

I hope you find my future updates useful and thought provoking. I invite you to post comments on how to improve my delivery, make the content more relevant, and request topics you would like me to cover. Although the written word is not normally my preferred method of communication, they tell me sharing information through blogging may be right up my alley: I write like I speak – take one of my classes and see for yourself!

So, who am I to offer best practices on Maximizer? I like to say that I’m the guy who knows where to put the X in your Maximizer Implementation. I reference the following story quite often.

Once upon a time, there was a steam generating plant that was not producing much steam. After a lengthy and frustrating search for the cause, the plant manager, in desperation, called in an expert. After only two hours on site, the expert found the problem and placed “X’s” on two pipes that were causing the problem, saying that they had to be removed.

When presented with the bill, the plant manager asked the consultant how he could charge $5000 for only two hours of work. When he asked for an itemized bill, this is what he got:

1. Placing “X’s” on two pipes $400

2. Knowing where to place the “X’s” $4600

Total amount due $5000

While I don’t charge $2500 per hour, I have put a lot of X’s on various Maximizer implementations over the years, and I believe the ideas I present will save you time, frustration, and money.

To give you some background:

After working with Maximizer 97is in a former career I fell in love with the application, I made a decision I wanted to work for the company and pursued a career at what was then MultiActive Software.
Maximizer Software has now been my employer for 11 years, but in reality I work for my clients.
I put my time in working in tech support for a year which was a tremendous training ground for my career in Professional Services.
Now on average I travel over 100,000 miles a year working with customers on business and process consulting, implementing Maximizer, training, reporting and more.
I am the Maximizer Global Account Manager for Maximizer Software’s largest customer with 2300+ users worldwide.
My background (originally non technical), skill set and experience help me communicate with customers on their level, and together we map their business processes into Maximizer.