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It Takes a Community to Raise a Customer

Brent Leary — 2009-11-19T14:16:24-05:00

A recent survey commissioned by e-mail marketing provider Campaigner found the top challenge facing small business owners today is customer acquisition and retention -- by a landslide. The 2009 State of Small Business Online Marketing Survey questioned over 250 North American small business owners with 20 employees or less. And customer acquisition/retention was the top business challenge of 50 percent of those surveyed. Growing revenue was a distant second with 15 percent, followed by improving cash flow and maintaining profitability -- at 9 percent and 8 percent respectively.

The numbers in this survey seems to be on point with other studies I’ve seen over the past year. While revenue growth, cash flow, and profitability are extremely important to any business, they are all driven by the most important asset businesses can have -- good customers. And many small businesses do not have enough of those good customers to fuel the other three top challenges they’re faced with.

Small businesses are looking for ways to build better, stronger relationships with customers. And many need to bring on new customers before they can even worry about retaining them. But with the rise of the social customer, this mean it’s critical to connect with them in a way that builds trust.

A recent EdelmanTrust survey found that trust is key to building and extending business relationships. But the most trusted people customers and prospects turn to for product information are not company employees or management -- in fact, these are among the least likely people tend they’ll turn to at first. Instead, people tend to trust academic researchers, industry experts, and people like them. They are also relying more and more on their social networks, industry bloggers, and opinion sites to determine what vendors to engage. And these interactions with trusted entities are creating organic communities that can help companies create good customers, and business longevity. Below are some ways for companies to communitize their efforts to engage socially-empowered customers.

Participate

Before we can really expect communities to form around our companies, we need to add value to the communities that have already formed around our customers and prospects. This means finding out what social networks they hang out on, what subjects interest them, which bloggers they listen to, and anything else that will help us understand what makes them tick. This calls for a lot of listening. Listening is a form of participating that gets overlooked by many, but is the most important step in engagement. Without listening and understanding what’s important to your target, your attempts to add value to the communities important to them will not be as successful, which in turn will sabotage your trust-building efforts.

Facilitate

Listening and participating in trusted communities can show customers and prospects that you are sincerely interested in them -- beyond the transaction. Showing a genuine interest in what’s important to these current or potential customers can help you facilitate activities that will help them find solutions to what’s currently on their minds. You may be able to help connect them to trusted resources -- and it's okay if these resources are not necessarily directly related to your business.

A great example of this is BatchBlue, a small business that provides an online customer relationship management (CRM) solution aimed at the small business market. They started facilitating a weekly Twitter chat called the SBBUZZ, which discusses topics of importance to startups and entrepreneurs. They bring in experts in different areas to interact with the people who participate in these two-hour weekly sessions. And they post the transcripts of these chats up on a blog for people who weren’t able to attend to access the content. They do not promote their product or service. Instead, they facilitate the opportunity for small businesses to share information, connect with experts, and to engage each other. So what started at the beginning of the year with no followers on Twitter, now has over 13,000 followers -- with hundreds of active participants each week. And this community of small businesses continues to sing the praises of BatchBlue for understanding their need for this type of interaction. It has helped the company become a trusted, valued company to small businesses looking for CRM services.

If customer acquisition and retention is important to you, than using online channels to build trust is key to the survival of your business. Customers are looking for much more than a transaction from vendors today. The customer experience has to touch them in ways that may not have mattered before, but are crucial in the Social Era we're now in. It’s too easy to switch vendors because your competitor is just a click away. So take the time to thoroughly understand what is important to the customers. And it’s growing more apparent that interacting with each other, influential experts, and other trusted entities are an important component to the customer experience.

So improving the community experience should go a long way towards improving the customer experience, which should help with the biggest challenge facing small businesses. Community can raise customers, and your business.

Brent Leary is a small-business technology analyst, adviser, and award-winning blogger. He is the co-author of Barack 2.0: Social Media Lessons for Small Business. His blog can be found at http://brentleary.com, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/brentleary.

Visibility: The Strongest Link in the Supply Chain

Mike Gorsage — 2009-11-19T14:09:40-05:00

For many organizations, the supply chain is their very lifeblood. Its impact is massive, affecting business processes at every level -- from manufacturing to packaging, distribution, and customer relations. As companies grow larger and more global, their supply chains become more complex. Greater complexity leads to vulnerability.

The key to reducing risk and mastering supply chain management is visibility. It’s a complex, yet critical component that helps to reduce costs and improve efficiencies across the organization. The technologies to gain supply chain visibility are out there, but they must be chosen with great care.

The case for visibility

With today’s technology and ease of communication, the world certainly seems like a much smaller place. But for businesses, adapting their supply chains to a global marketplace can lead to sprawling networks where disruptions are common, along with waste, inventory build-ups and shortages. If you don’t know where critical sets of supplies are at any given point in the chain, it directly affects your ability to deliver products and serve customers.

It’s likely that most organizations already have some hardware or software in place to manage their supply chains, such as inventory management and barcoding systems. All are typically part of an overall enterprise resource planning (ERP) application suite. But why do so many of these IT solutions fall short of expectations?

The likely culprit is not the technology itself, but poor planning. When supply chain systems become too complex, it’s easy to lose focus. In an attempt to fix a problem or implement a new solution, organizations may implement too many point solutions and technologies without regard to how they fit together.

Integrating technologies

Any successful supply chain management solution today requires a holistic approach. It must be as simple as possible, taking into consideration all of the various systems that both you and your trading partners are using.

Look first at integrating your technologies. For a retail organization, that involves the order system, the warehouse management/inventory system, and the ERP system. Next comes the technology around scanning, such as barcodes and radio frequency identification device (RFID) chips.

RFID is an emerging technology that uses passive or active chips to tell you, at any given point in time, where pieces, parts, inventory components might be and how many you have. For a retail organization, it shows which items are moving the fastest and when you need to reorder or restock. A passive RFID chip is read by independent scanners and is often found in high-end retail items, computer components and drug supplies. This type of scanning is limited by distance, accessibility, and lighting.

An active chip, on the other hand, can send out radio signals which enable you to track items from a greater distance, even hundreds of feet away. This gives you good visibility into inventory without having close-up scanning capabilities. Consider the advantage from a warehouse perspective, particularly when these functions are automated and integrated. Someone unloading a truck can quickly find, offload, and ship a particular set of products. Improving efficiency this way reduces your inventory carrying charges, thereby driving up revenues.

RFID is a very strategic tool in terms of your ability to manage. Because of its relatively high cost, it is currently used on larger, higher value added items. But as the technology progresses, the cost per tag is coming down, which will soon make it a more universal technology.

When these systems all fit together, they help you develop a single book of truth which gives you insights into your inventory, cost structure, manufacturing and product availability. Many of today’s platforms promise a single solution for these functions, but they cannot deliver on that promise unless they are properly implemented and maintained. That includes the human element -- having the right people assigned to various projects and aspects of the supply chain to ensure success.

Collaborating with partners

An often overlooked aspect of a fully integrated supply chain management system is collaboration. Some organizations become so blinded by their own technology and so insular in their approaches that they neglect the critical aspect of sharing information and processes with supply chain partners.

Remember that partner suppliers may not own all of the supply chain, so some of their components may come from other sources. By working closely with supply chain partners you can access up-to-the-minute information such as when products, pieces, or components are shipping. You can also automate and accelerate invoicing and payments. Having access into your partners’ systems and allowing access to yours is a critical success factor for streamlining processes and minimizing risk and waste.

As you look to improve your supply chain management, remember that anything this complex and potentially rewarding is worth the investment in good planning, thinking and execution. As you review and select hardware and software, stay focused on the goal of improved visibility through integration and collaboration.

Mike Gorsage is a Partner and Leader of the Business Operations and Technology Practice for Tatum LLC. Tatum is the nation’s largest executive services firm, providing financial and technology leadership nationwide.

How to Live Stream a Meeting

Michelle V. Rafter — 2009-10-28T10:34:15-05:00

Scott Kurtz was looking for a way to promote his 10-year-old Web cartoon business when he decided to broadcast himself drawing the strip, an ode to video games and the geeks who love them called PvPOnline.com.

After some initial experimentation, the 38-year-old Dallas resident hit on a winning formula: he draws the strip directly onto a touch-sensitive computer screen and live streams the video and audio over a website called Ustream.tv so fans can watch him work.

At first Kurtz was self conscious about sharing his creative process with the world. But once dozens and then hundreds of fans started logging on at any given time -- and sticking around to chat with each other and buy the strip’s merchandise -- Kurtz got a lot more comfortable with the concept. “They really are getting to know me, they’re getting invested, and that’s the X factor between a causal viewer and someone who might want to buy something,” he says.

Like Kurtz, small business owners are starting to use live streaming in all aspects of their operations, including sales, marketing, and customer service.

Broadcasting in real time

Live streaming is like podcasting with a few major exceptions. Both consist of an audio or video segment broadcast over the Internet. But while a podcast is recorded for future download and playback, live streaming happens in the here and now. Unlike the solitary experience of listening to a podcast, broadcasters also link live streams to chat rooms and other social networking features so viewers can exchange comments with each other while they’re watching.

Live streaming is taking off in and out of business circles because the equipment that’s required has become plentiful and cheap. It’s also been helped by a proliferation of Internet-based broadcasters such as Ustream, Livestream.com, and Justin.tv that small business owners can use to stream their feeds for little or nothing.

In many parts of the country, companies that would rather not take on the logistics of live streaming a meeting themselves can now hire a live streaming producer or consultant to do the work for them for hundreds or thousands of dollars depending on the length and complexity what’s being produced.

For do-it-yourself types, a basic live stream set up doesn’t cost much. Must-haves include:

A reliable high-speed Internet connection and some kind of video input -- a high resolution or high-definition video camera is recommended but even a PC’s built-in webcam will do
Audio from a video camera or stand alone microphone
A computer with enough processing power and memory to handle upload speeds of 500 kilobytes per second for normal broadcasting or 1 megabytes per second for HD pictures

Kurtz, the Web cartoonist, uses a free software program called CamTwist to stream what appears on his Mac’s monitor to Ustream, and Audio Hijack Pro, another free program that lets him stream audio from his video camera, Skype, iTunes, or another audio source.

Though she can’t quantify exactly how many of Livestream.com’s 450,000 active channels are run by small businesses, the number is growing, says Deborah Kornfilt, the New York City company’s head of content and partnerships. Among them: Network Solutions, which streamed its recent GrowSmartBizConference on the network; Women’s Enterprise Network, an Ohio-based organization that runs a channel devoted to promoting women in business; and a retailer that streamed a fashion show to market its wedding dresses. “They had a contest to win a wedding gown and used live stream as an incentive to bring traffic to their site,” Kornfilt says.

Like several other live stream broadcasters, Livestream.com offers a free service that’s supported by advertising, as well as premium plans with lots of extra, including a white-label player companies can put on their own website. At Livestream.com, premium plans cost $350 and $1,250 a month for additional channels and storage as well as HD-quality video.

Hiring a live stream producer

Businesses that would rather not do their own live streaming can hire Internet broadcasters and live event producers to do the work for them. SLL Productions in Portland, Ore., handles everything related to designing, setting up, and broadcasting an event. The firm, run by husband and wife team Mike and Cami Gebhardt, also provide extras such as conducting interviews at a company’s event and broadcasting them along with the event’s main stream. “It provides a deeper online experience for people who can’t attend” in person, Mike Gebhardt says.

Joe Christiansen, owner of Blaze Streaming Media, also of Portland, thinks of himself as a virtual event coordinator, staging a client’s live stream, testing Internet access at a meeting space and capturing e-mail addresses from people who watch the live stream for the client to use for lead generation afterward. He also acts as the liaison between his client and the live stream broadcaster and provides extras that a Livestream.com or Ustream might not offer.

Such customization doesn’t come cheap. Christiansen’s fee for live streaming an event runs $1,000 to $10,000. His bill to live stream an Oregon soil company’s three-hour fall meeting, including running multiple cameras and live chat was $3,500. Christiansen’s fee also included statistics on exactly how many minutes each one of the company’s customers tuned in, information sales reps will use in follow-up calls. “Times are tough and their attendance was down” but the live stream gave the company a way to connect to customers anyway, he says.

Browser Wars: Does IE8 Change the Game?

Marc Saltzman — 2009-10-28T10:26:07-05:00

Built into Windows 7 or available as a free download for other operating systems, Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) offers a number of improvements and new features to go up against the likes of competing browsers such as Mozilla's Firefox, Google's Chrome, Apple's Safari, and Opera.

IE8 delivers Internet users stepped up security against cross-site scripting attacks, downloads of malicious code, phishing, and other security risks. At the same time, the new browsing platform provides businesses with tools to centrally manage and configure group policies for the office, streamlined browser management, built-in developer tools to help save your developers time, and backwards compatibility with the earlier browser version, IE7.

The question for businesses now is whether IE8 is a game-changer in the battle of the browsers and whether your organization should standardize on IE8 -- or any of its well-regarded rivals.

Browsing issues to consider

There are several ways small and mid-sized businesses use Web browsers. Employees often use browsers to look for information about customers, competitors, or products on the Internet. At the same time, a growing number of companies are using and/or developing Web applications that need to be compatible with Web browsers.

Deciding which browser is best for a small business "is like asking an Italian and a Frenchman which country has the best food," jokes Steve Hilton, vice president of small and mid-sized business research at the Boston-based Yankee Group.

The advice may depend on which computing platform your business uses, PC-based or Mac. "My advice for picking a browser is simple: Internet Explorer 8 is your default, but if you feel like experimenting consider Firefox or Chrome and you might find one particularly appealing from a user-interface point-of-view," says Hilton. This isn't the case for a Mac user, though, he adds. "Apple-heads should just stick with Safari."

So, does it really matter which browser you go with? Not really, say some experts. "For most companies it's the path of least resistance, so whatever is the default on the operating system -- Internet Explorer for Windows or Safari for the Mac OS -- is the first one to try," advises Michael Gartenberg, vice president at Interpret LLC, a market research firm based in New York and Los Angeles.

The launch of IE8 provides businesses with a safe bet for standardization -- sort of. "At the end of the day, you won't have an issue if you go with IE8 as it's secure and stable," Gartenberg says. "Microsoft has done an excellent job to move the product forward over the years, but honestly, any modern browser is going to work pretty well for you."

That said, Gartenberg says Microsoft's dominance of market share in the browser space means some applications might favor IE8 over others in the compatibility department.

A company involved in writing Web apps should also take a browser-agnostic approach, both Hilton and Gartenberg say. "Web builders need to optimize sites for all of these browsers, but at least make sure IE and Firefox work, and then pick-up the Apple-centric products," Hilton advises.

"If you're writing Web-compliant apps, you shouldn't play favorites," adds Gartenberg.

Windows 7's relevance

Gartenberg says IE8, which is bundled in every copy of Windows 7, gives Microsoft a "home court advantage" in the browser wars. But it's not without merit: "IE8 does work better in Windows 7, so the combo helps Microsoft -- and ultimately, its users, too."

But that doesn't mean there isn't room for competition. "While I have not tested all browser and operating system combinations, I can't imagine Microsoft would do anything intentional to impede the use of competing browsers in Window 7," says Hilton.

Referencing antitrust issues, Hilton adds "surely Microsoft, and their legal department, would follow that old adage, 'once bitten, twice shy,' when it comes to their operating system and browser issues."

Quick pros and cons

While some technology analysts take laissez faire approach to deciding which browser is best for your business, there are still some advantages and shortcomings to each of the big players. Here they are:

Internet Explorer 8

Pros: Most websites and plugs-ins work well with IE. Faster speeds and handy time-saving tools. Compatibility View helps see older websites easier. Available in multiple languages. Built into Windows.
Cons: Security holes still found. Market share leader means more susceptible to attacks. Some crashing.

Mozilla Firefox

Pros: Newest version is roughly three times faster than Firefox 3.0. Tabbed browsing works well. Convenient features, including location-aware browsing. Vibrant and passionate development community.
Cons: Some bugs and security issues that requires "patching."

Opera

Pros: Lean and fast. Secure. Mouse gestures and other extra features in Opera (including Opera Unite) are handy additions.
Cons: Doesn't fare as well on heavy multimedia sites. Not as much plug-in support than IE and Firefox.

Apple Safari

Pros: Good looking. Fast. Reliable. Minimalist design.
Cons: Close button on left side. Not much mouse functionality (e.g. middle button). No status bar. Not all plug-ins supported. Built into Macs.

Google Chrome

Pros: Clean and fast. Some nice features like shortcuts. Available in 50 languages.
Cons: Lack of add-ons; not all websites/plug-ins are supported. No support for Macs.

Track Comments about Your Business Online

Minda Zetlin — 2009-10-28T10:17:57-05:00

A few weeks ago, a Twitter user tweeted that she was planning to try Zitune, a restaurant in Los Altos, Calif. David Auerbach, the restaurant's co-owner got an e-mail alert from a Web-based service Trackle, calling his attention to the tweet. As he often does, he sent a response thanking her for visiting Zitune and asking how she'd liked it. Soon, they had a dialogue going. Then she asked if Zitune's chef (and Auerbach's brother-in-law) would like to be interviewed for her video blog.

"The restaurant business has been tough for the last year and a half," Auerbach says. "Having a blogger or video blogger write anything about us, any extra PR we can get is a huge plus. And Trackle found it."

Trackle is one of a new crop of online services that helps you "listen" for keyword mentions on social networks and around the Web, and will send an alert when someone mentions your business or product -- or your competitor. Services like Trackle go way beyond Google Alerts and other news alert services because they monitor microblogs such as Twitter, social networks such as Facebook, and the blogosphere, as well.

"Increasingly, it's consumers, not news outlets, that are putting out information other consumers use," says Blake Cahill, senior vice president of marketing at Visible Technologies, which both tracks keywords and interprets the resulting data. "Consumers have as much impact on your brand as you do." The majority of consumers check user reviews before making a major purchase, he notes.

But if knowing what customers and others are saying about you online is absolutely essential, it can also be very time-consuming. "You can spend a lot of time doing searches on Twitter and Facebook and Google and so on to find out who's talking about your restaurant," Auerbach says. "It's really helpful to get a daily update where everything is all in one place."

For Veronica Sopher, executive assistant at Ben Bridge Jeweler, looking after the company's social network presence is only one part of her job. She uses Social Mention among other services to follow Ben Bridge, but also flag mentions of "ring shopping," so as to find and start conversations with brides-to-be under her Twitter handle @BenBridgeGirl.

"I talk with them in a girly fashion and find out what wedding dress they're dreaming about or ask them to send me photos of the ring they're considering," she says. "My strategy is not to make sales with tweets, but to raise brand awareness and present a more personable side of what is often perceived as a cookie-cutter jewelry retailer." The advantage of a service like Social Mention, she adds, is that it also flags the company's name all over the Web, so if, for instance, a non-profit organization thanks Ben Bridge for a donation on its website, Sopher can follow up with a friendly e-mail.

Picking the right service

Most every small business can benefit from some online tracking of its name and product mentions around the Web and in social networks, but picking the right service can be tricky. Services range from completely free to a minimum charge of $500 a month -- and most seem to fall at one extreme or the other. The pay services will aggregate thousands of mentions according to metrics like "sentiment" (whether people are mentioning you in a negative or positive light).

Here are some popular choices:

Social Mention, a free service, allows you to search the Web, as well as Twitter and Facebook for keywords, and can list them in a once-a-day e-mail alert as well or get a "Realtime buzz" widget for your website.
Trackle tracks keywords across the Internet and social media, but also tracks many other items, such as weather in your location, local news, real estate values, and even crime in your neighborhood. You can get email alerts, or any of the company's "tracklets" can also be used as widgets.
Viralheat alerts you to mentions with some analytics and a new option to filter results by location. It's a rare moderately priced pay option, with plans starting at $9.99 a month a month to track up to 10 keywords or phrases.
Visible Technologies has plans starting at $500 per month for up to 20,000 results and offers analysis to help you get the sense of what people are saying. "Small businesses can do a lot of tracking with free tools," Cahill notes. "But as brands get popular and the volume gets big, it becomes difficult to follow all those mentions."

Whichever service you use, experts agree, it's important to not only listen to what people are saying, but respond promptly. "Social networks can help bring a problem to the surface faster than it would otherwise," Cahill says. By letting users know you're working to solve the problem you may find some of your critics turn into defenders, he says. But, he adds, "Once you start engaging in a dialogue with customers on a social network, you have to be genuine, you have to be transparent, and you have to keep at it."

"I try never to go 24 hours without checking what people are saying about us and posting," Sopher adds. "Once you have a presence in social media, it's like adopting a puppy. You can't ignore it."

Should You Create an iPhone App?

Kim Boatman — 2009-10-21T17:11:34-05:00

Tripware, an online travel management company, recently started the design phase for its new iPhone application. The company focuses on business travelers, and many business consumers rely on BlackBerry smartphones. But, says Dean Wright, vice president of marketing and brand, “All the buzz says iPhone.”

Debbie Robertson Bialick, founder of Sweet Dog Organics, an online organic dog treat store, thinks iPhone apps are “cool,” but she’s not investing in development. She doesn’t see an app driving business to her company.

A ubiquitous iPhone commercial rattles off a list of functions, repeatedly telling viewers, “There’s an app for that.’’ And indeed, there’s a tsunami of apps flooding the market, with the count in the Apple iPhone Apps store approaching the 100,000 mark. And just as small and mid-sized businesses have had to decide what their presence will look like in social networking media, many are evaluating the value of an iPhone app.

While it might infer a bit of status at the gym or among friends and family, an iPhone app needs to be about more than buzz or coolness to add value to your business. Developers, advertising experts and small business owners who’ve gone through the process advise running through a checklist before you begin the process.

Know your customer

Wright, the Tripware vice president, lobbied for his company to develop a Research In Motion app first since so many businesspeople rely on Blackberrys. “I think people in Marketing are too iPhone happy,’’ he says. Understanding your customer’s online behavior is essential, says Dan Neumann, emerging platforms strategist at interactive advertising firm Organic. “How does your target use digital? Do they have iPhones or Blackberrys or a combination of the two? Do they spend their time on Facebook or in e-mail?’’

Define your goal

The vast majority of apps developed by businesses today are about marketing rather than function. Large companies might be able to afford to develop an app that is little more than a gimmicky marketing tool, but that’s a luxury ill-afforded smaller businesses. Your business will be better served if you develop a useful app, says Mohamed Alkady, CEO and founder of after10studios, an interactive media firm. “Please give a value to your user,’’ he says. “You’ll never see us doing an app for the sake of doing an app. Ask yourself ‘Is this an extension of your business to make your customer’s life easier?’”

While being able to order a dog treat with an iPhone might make life a bit more convenient for her customers, Bialick figured it’s not the sort of task people necessarily have to do on the go. “Once the novelty of a new app wears off, successful iPhone apps seem to be used regularly for recurring tasks, tasks that need immediate attention, tasks that you can’t do using the mobile function of the phone, or tasks that cannot wait until you get home or to your office,’’ observes Bialick. “Ordering dog treats does not fall into any of these categories.”

However, apps for both the iPhone and the Blackberry are absolute necessities for JumpForward, a company that assists college coaches and the athletes they recruit in managing the often byzantine recruiting rules of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Mobility is a way of life for coaches, so JumpForward needs to push its information from the web site to mobile solutions, says co-founder Adam McCombs.

Develop a budget

Demand for iPhone developers has sent costs skyrocketing. Big brands are spending as much as $100,000 to develop an app, says Chris De Vore, co-founder of AppStoreHQ, an app search/discovery site that also hosts a developer directory and a developer matching service. A custom app is likely to cost your business $20,000 to $30,000.

For a small business, it might make sense to take advantage of the burgeoning market of app templates. Services such as Sweb Apps allow you to build a basic application, even creating a virtual storefront that will accept PayPal transactions, with no technical expertise. Using what amounts to a cookie cutter app won’t generate buzz or excitement, but, says Alkady, the developer, “It’s a good way for a very small shop to test the water.”

Using a toolkit, you can likely get to market within 30 days, says De Vore. Plan on a three- to six-month timeframe if you’re developing a custom app.

Separate yourself from the crowd

If you’re using the app to generate new business, you face a big hurdle. “The phenomenon is huge, but how do you get eyes on your application?” asks De Vore. “With the flood of information, it’s very hard to make your information stand out. The biggest problem with the iPhone is discovery.”

That’s one reason Wright, the Tripware executive, thinks a presence in the BlackBerry App World would make sense for his company. With far fewer apps with which to compete, Tripware would stand out, he reasons. So, Tripware will likely develop a BlackBerry app next. Meanwhile, Wright will promote the upcoming iPhone app through Twitter, the company’s website, its listings on business directory websites and e-mails to existing users with a promotional offer for downloads and referrals.

At after10studios, Alkady says he’s a bit choosy when it comes to accepting clients. He’s looking for customers who understand the need to come in with a well-developed concept that will have appeal for their customers. He’s looking to create buzz-worthy apps that attract attention, such as the after10studio-developed Viper SmartStart, which lets you open and start your car from your iPhone with the use of an in-car receiver. “Everybody jumps on the wagon because they think they’ve got to have it,’’ he says. “An app has to be an extension of your business value.”

Discovering Your Advantage with CRM

Mike Gorsage — 2009-10-21T17:00:10-05:00

You’ve heard the expression, “the customer is king.” In today’s economy, the customer is key to your future success. The right customer relationship management (CRM) strategies can give you insights that lead to increased revenue, improved earnings and solid competitive advantage.

Bill Gates once said, “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” Whether happy or unhappy, your customers are a vital, often underutilized source of business intelligence. Companies that take the time to understand their customers are better able to anticipate and respond to their needs. They also gain a distinct advantage over their competitors.

At this stage of the recession, many companies have lost sight of the competition, focusing instead on cutting costs and improving efficiencies. And they have succeeded; in fact, today’s companies are leaner and meaner than ever before. But now is the time to look outward – focusing on better CRM to grow top line revenues, improve earnings, and take market share away from the competition.

Know your customers and reap rewards

The key is capturing the right information about your customers. With effective CRM processes and technology, you can build a single “book of truth” about each customer. It’s a data warehouse that chronicles each customer’s history, including the products they typically buy, how often they buy, as well as their individual preferences and any problems they have had in the past. CRM delivers instant, company-wide access to valuable customer profiles and gives you the insight you need to turn this data into actionable information.

With a detailed customer history, you can easily segment customers, identifying which are your best customers and why. Is it their margins? Or is it their consistency of buying particular products and services? Linking your data warehouse or business intelligence system to your CRM process and technology can help you answer questions like these and gain an enriched insight that allows you to know how and when to focus on particular customers.

Profitable communication

Consider, for example, a customer who prefers doing business with your company over the Internet. If you don’t know that information, you may unnecessarily redouble your sales efforts by having a direct sales person call on that client. Had you known the customer’s preference, you could have eliminated the effort and cost of a direct sale and freed up your direct sales force to focus on generating new clients.

CRM is a great way to streamline and optimize your sales force. The information you gather in various systems can show you where to focus your efforts, directing your sales force to certain sets of clients. When implemented properly your CRM system will enable you to be more successful in attracting new customers, responding to new leads and closing deals more quickly. By improving your responsiveness to customers you also build loyalty and decrease customer "churn."

At the same time, you can identify the best ways to cross-sell and up sell to each customer, either through direct sales, telemarketing, Web marketing, or other sales or marketing activities. If your goal is to better enable your website for e-business activity, CRM is the ideal approach. It establishes a single point of contact with your company and enables you to capture vital customer information and put it into various applications. The result is a cost-effective and efficient way to communicate with and learn from your customers.

Creating your system

Practicing CRM does require discipline in the form of a more efficient and integrated internal business system. When it comes to developing a CRM system, it is important to remember that this is an “outside-in” approach that focuses on customer input. The most critical component is spending time with customers, learning what they find most valuable about doing business with you. By doing that, you are essentially identifying your main competitive advantages. From there you can design your processes and the supporting systems that will capitalize on that competitive advantage.

As with most IT initiatives, there is a wide variety of CRM hardware and software available from major vendors like SAP and Oracle. When choosing your CRM system, be sure to couple it with business intelligence capabilities that allow you to capture data in a variety of areas and organize it into a single book of truth about that customer. As you put that information into your CRM software in the right fields and capture all the types of transactions you do with clients, you now become very effective in the way to interact with them.

Keep in mind that CRM can only work to your advantage if you view as more than just a tool for getting more from your customers. It helps you do more for your customers. When you become more responsive to customers and understand the way they want to do business with you, you give your organization a head start over the competition and prepare for the impending recovery.

Tech Talk: Publisher Puts Kibosh on Spam

Elizabeth Wasserman — 2009-10-21T16:54:08-05:00

Hay House, a book publisher based in Carlsbad, Calif., was founded 24 years ago and has grown to become one of the largest self-help publishers in the world with 125 employees in the U.S. and locations in four different continents. The publishing house relies on e-mail for internal communication and for communicating with writers, often sending manuscripts back and forth. But employees were being deluged with spam – the company receives up to 10,000 spam messages per day – until information technology director Mike Fishell and his staff installed an e-mail security appliance.

Elizabeth Wasserman: What are the plusses and minuses of using e-mail in your business?

Mike Fishell: It's much faster for moving information around. Whether it's information for a book, fact-checking, public relations, or passing on quotes to be inserted into our books, we rely on our e-mail. We also have offices located in time zones that don't match up. We have offices in the U.K., Australia, South Africa, and India, in addition to the U.S. So if it's noon in London and someone e-mails us with something that has to be addressed that day, we can get back to them before they go home that night. We also may receive manuscripts via e-mail from our authors. Instead of sending a manuscript via FedEx, they can e-mail it to us directly.

Wasserman: What are the security risks to a business posed by relying on e-mail? Do you get a lot of spam?

Fishell: We get in the neighborhood of 10,000 spam messages a day.

Wasserman: What did you do about that?

Fishell: We were using software-based spam solutions in the past, but the spam problem was growing faster than our application could deal with it. I looked at appliances and Axway’s Mailgate was the first one I brought in-house for a trial. It worked so well that we couldn't even think of taking it out of production. The trial unit we were sent was kept in production for three years.

Wasserman: What does it do? How does it help you?

Fishell: It helps us with spam by using a context-based algorithm. Some of our books may deal with health and we may have the word Viagra show up in a book, maybe with someone giving medical advice related to it. It's not in the context of someone trying to sell it, because that wouldn't be delivered to the mailbox. Our users receive an e-mail every day at 5 p.m. showing everything that was quarantined by the filter. They have an option to release it to themselves or ignore it.

Wasserman: What have the results been?

Fishell: On the inbound side, the time savings is money savings. I do a report once a year for the directors explaining the cost savings associated with it. I have calculated out in the thousands and thousands of dollars in terms of man hours for our people not having to delete spam. The cost savings worked out to about $54,000 a year in terms of man-hours we would have spent deleting spam.

There are a lot of these e-mails being sent around maybe directing people to a website and it's not enough of an e-mail to be caught as spam or a virus. But it directs them to a website that may have malicious intentions. We're able to plug keywords into our filter and have it blocked in a matter of minutes instead of waiting for the virus companies to have something out there to block one. I don't have to worry about anyone clicking on the link.

It also allows me to set policies to prevent certain types of sensitive data from being e-mailed outside the office accidentally. Not only viruses, but personal information or confidential information, certain contracts we don't want leaving the building, or proprietary material we don't want leaving the building.

In terms of time management, it's nice having something in the business that doesn't require babysitting. I take a look at the reports once a day. If I skip looking at the reports once a day, I'm not worried. The box gets restarted once or twice a year. That and software updates a couple times a year and you can pretty much set it and forget it.

Tech Talk: Vehicle ID Firm Upgrades Internet

Elizabeth Wasserman — 2009-10-21T16:46:17-05:00

DLG Group, headquartered in Bedminster, N.J., started out in the 1960s inspecting vehicle and cargo at sea ports and handwriting reports for manufacturers and insurance companies. The Internet era allowed the company to issue those inspection reports on the same day from the field and use the data to help customers improve quality control. Upgrading to fiber-optic based Internet service today has let the business expand and offer online services for customers, CEO and President Andrew Vazquez Jr. tells IncTechnology.com.

Elizabeth Wasserman: What's your company's story?

Andrew Vazquez: The DLG Group started out as Automotive Visual Inspections (AVI) as a family business that began in the mid-1960s. My father started the business and I started working for it full time in 1980. It's an automotive inspection business that verifies vehicles for damage for insurance purposes for imported and exported vehicles shipped overseas.

Wasserman: How has your business evolved?

Vazquez: One of the shipping lines came to me in the early 1980s and wanted to automate statistical information on damage for claims settlement and to improve quality control. They came to me and asked if I would assist them in developing an electronic system to do that. They would give me the programmers and I would help them design a system. Later we needed our own electronic systems and started developing our own proprietary electronic system tracking inspections, warehouse management and vehicle tracking. Taking that technology around 2004 we branched out into the vehicle logistics side of the business and launched Vehicle Logistics Solutions, which is a logistics company that works with various vehicle manufacturers in the Midwest, starting in Michigan and Ohio. But we positioned ourselves to be flexible if a customer needed a facility for short-term or long-term use to keep vehicles until they were sold.

Wasserman: How did the Internet change your business?

Vazquez: We started inspecting in the 1960s and 70s with a typewriter and carbon paper. If our customers in Europe received a report to settle a marine claim two months later, they were happy. In the 1980s, we were one of the first companies to use hand-held computers in the field. It helped us basically save a lot of steps. It used to be our inspectors would go out in the field and record information on paper, transpose to type back in the office, and then the report would hit the mail. Now we are able to take that electronic data and upload it immediately to our databases and send our files electronically. It saved us a lot of time and gave our customers a lot of power. The customer did not just receive data to settle claims but could actually use data for quality control of service. The quicker they could act on either a problem on their hands or the factory where the vehicle was manufactured the better.

Wasserman: How did that impact your needs for Internet service?

Vazquez: Back then the files weren't as large and the bandwidth wasn't as big. Most of the handhelds we used were more like electronic notepads. Now that the bandwidth is here and the technology is state of the art and has much better coverage, we've upgraded our systems and now data with photos can be transmitted in real time. Our workers can upload data and photos out in the field which means they don't have to return to the office to file their report. Now our customers can have their report immediately. We can communicate with any employee by putting a cell phone in their hand computer equipped with a wireless card. You probably would have needed two or three times more people to do the same job we're doing today.

Right now, I have offices in seven different states and also do other projects that have to be in various states across the country. We've had projects in the past where we've had to be in 32 cities around the country each quarter. Having Verizon as our communications provider really helped. We've upgraded to Verizon FIOS Internet for Business, which enabled us to become an application service provider for our customers, as well. We started another business called Vehicle Inspection Network which allows our customers to use our electronic inspection and reporting systems. We give them a log on and password. We have a lot of traffic now in and out of our central office here so it's very important that we have very good, reliable service. You can't sell a service if your Internet is slow or weak.

Wasserman: What have the results been?

Vazquez: It gave me the confidence to launch the application service provider portion of the business. If I was having a problem with companies accessing our system, I wouldn't have been able to do it. We've also started another new company called Hybrid Intermodal Transportation. This business is a freight distribution company. What makes it unique is that we've developed these specialized containers that can be loaded with freight. Today, in the automotive industry, whether they are transported by truck, rail, or vessel, vehicles are being carried in one direction and being dropped off. Many vehicle carriers or assets go back empty. It's a waste of fuel. We've developed containers that we can load with freight onto these car carrier assets, creating the opportunity to fill the empty miles of the industry. We track these containers electronically with our systems.

The Real-Time Web and You

Vijay Chittoor — 2009-10-21T16:39:39-05:00

One of the biggest technology trends in 2009 has been the emergence of the "Real-Time Web." The real-time Web is a made up of technologies and practices that can inform users as soon as information is published, instead of requiring users to check for updates. The real-time Web discards the traditional notion of the more static “webpages,” and instead adopts the notion of dynamic “streams” of information. The real-time Web is also very conversational because it makes it possible to get instant responses across very large networks of people.

Action in the real-time Web started with companies like Twitter and Friendfeed, which built their own infrastructure for large scale delivery of real-time messages. By providing Web service application programming interfaces (APIs), these companies enabled many other developers to create applications based on the real-time Web. However, Anil Dash, a prominent blogger, points out that real time services need not be built on the back of Twitter and Facebook anymore. Due to emerging technologies, the pieces are falling together for creating a free, open and decentralized “pushbutton platform,” which makes it easy for websites to add real-time messaging services. With these developments, we can expect many more websites to jump onto the real-time bandwagon.

Growing importance to business

The real-time Web is becoming increasingly important to businesses in multiple ways. Firstly, as many webmasters and Web analytics companies have pointed out, the real-time Web is starting to rival search engines like Google as a source of website traffic. For example, Mark Cuban talked a few months ago about how his blog receives more visits from Twitter and Facebook than from Google. Secondly, the real-time Web opens up communication opportunities that the traditional Web could not have provided. For instance, if an airline wants to sell off its last minute tickets, the real-time Web provides a great outlet for advertising this very time-sensitive deal. Thirdly, by making information instantaneously accessible, the real-time Web can create, or erase, instances of information arbitrage. As an example, take a look at Skygrid, a service that provides high quality financial news in real time, giving its users an edge, but at the same time leveling the playing field between professional investors and amateurs in terms of the speed of access to reliable information. Finally, because the real-time Web is very conversational, it becomes a repository of people’s sentiment, and mining this sentiment can be very useful to marketers and others.

Taking advantage of real-time Web

Beyond creating an account on Twitter, how can you take advantage of the real-time Web? Here are some thoughts to get you started:

Engage with the real-time Web with tailored offers and content. Several companies are seeing success with time-sensitive programs that could not have been conceived without the real-time Web. Jet Blue’s “cheeps” and United Airlines’ twares are exclusive Twitter promotions for last minute fare deals. Another company that has encountered great success with offering exclusive deals on Twitter is Dell. A Dell blog post from June mentioned that Dell had surpassed $2 million in Twitter sales fro Dell Outlet, which sells refurbished items, scratch and dent items, and previously ordered new laptops. The real-time Web also acts as a place where people express their intent to shop (e.g. someone may tweet “thinking of buying an ipod touch.”) Selectively targeting such users, without spamming them, might also be a great way to help your customers make real time buying decisions. A service like Twitterhawk can be used to automate this kind of marketing.
Make use of real-time Web tools for business intelligence. The real-time Web is a great source of knowledge and sentiment about your customers, your competitors and your industry. You can use services like Firstrain to research the real Web for the news that matters to you. You could also use Twitter’s search functionality in simple ways to keep track of some of this information, or go to one of the many real time search engines. A recent article in mashable talks about the many tools that help analyze Twitter content.
Join in the conversation about your company. In one of my previous articles, I had talked about how companies like Comcast are using Twitter to understand their customers’ concerns and address them. The conversational nature of real time web can be very powerful in building relationships with your customers.
Create the infrastructure that allows your company to respond in real time. Real-time enterprise data integration has been around for a long time. However, with the emergence of the real-time Web and the opportunities it creates, it is becoming increasingly critical for companies to be able to access all their internal data in real time. In other words, “real-time data integration is no longer a luxury.”

Vijay Chittoor is the director of product management at Kosmix, an exploration engine that offers a 360 degree view of any topic on the Web. A former McKinsey consultant, Chittoor is a graduate of Harvard Business School and the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. He shares his thoughts on technology at his blog.