MARKETING MANAGEMENT

Effective Affiliate Program Management Requires Attention to Detail

2011-02-18T03:14:00.000-08:00

Affiliate program management is essential to maximizing marketing resources and developing a successful campaign. And yet, many marketers have no idea how to develop an effective affiliate program management system. Overseeing a number of affiliates, tracking the sales they generate and paying their commissions requires a solid attention to detail in order to be effective.

Bringing in the Professionals
For many Internet marketers, there's a bit of a learning curve. Some have never before owned their own business and others are unfamiliar with the technology and various Web-based tools available to them. The successful marketers aren't afraid of failure and learn from their mistakes. One thing many learn rather quickly is that in some cases, it's best to bring in the professionals. Managing affiliates is one such case.

For some marketers this may simply mean purchasing a software program designed by professionals for use by Internet marketers looking to accurately track the many transactions of their various affiliates. For others, this may literally mean hiring a firm specializing in tracking such transactions. Either way, accurate record keeping is essential.

Why Record Keeping Matters
Accurate record keeping matters because it provides you with essential information. It lets you know where your efforts are most effective, which methods increase your traffic and generate sales. This kind of information enables you to make changes as necessary and allows you to focus your energies on those areas that are yielding the biggest ROI.

Accurate record keeping is also important in terms of commissions paid to your affiliates. Having a record of a payment made, will help reduce frustration and, should there be a dispute, help expedite resolution between you and the affiliate. Even more important, clear and accurate commission records make tax time much easier and help you to avoid unnecessary fines and penalties.

Keeping Uncle Sam Happy
As you develop an affiliate marketing network, you will have several affiliates promoting your products and services. Each affiliate will bring a certain amount of traffic to your site and a percentage of that traffic will convert to actual sales.

Okay, so it quickly becomes apparent that high quality, reliable affiliate program management is vitally important to the success of your business. Not only do these programs help you track the numerous transactions happening - many occurring simultaneously, but they also help you to generate clear, accurate and detailed records of all of these transactions.

Online Hospitality Management Career Education Options

2011-02-18T03:13:00.000-08:00

Gaining an education in hospitality management is available to those who are looking to pursue an exciting career in this field. Degrees are obtainable by enrolling in a variety of accredited online schools and colleges. With numerous training levels and areas to choose from students can gain the skills and knowledge they need to pursue a successful career. Pursuing the necessary education for a hospitality management or hotel and motel management career will give students the training they desire while preparing them for the career of their dreams. Students can start by choosing the specific level of study that interests them most, and learning more about gaining an education in this field.

Associate's Degrees
Gaining an accredited online associate level degree in this exciting field will prepare students for a number of careers. Training can last around two years and will require the completion of various coursework. Subjects will be based on the career desired and the educational program. Students may study subjects like food safety and sanitation, restaurant management, hospitality accounting, hotel purchasing, hotel and restaurant marketing, and many other related courses. By gaining an education at the associate degree level students can pursue careers as guest services managers, dining room supervisors, management trainees, banquet sales coordinators, and more. Those who wish to further education can do so by obtaining a bachelor degree.

Bachelor's Degrees
Those who wish to pursue a bachelor level degree can do so with an accredited online educational training program. Students can earn their degree by completing four years of training. The desired career path will help decide what coursework will need to be completed. Studied will vary but may include accounting, food production management, leadership in hospitality, marketing, human resource management, and much more. Students who choose to gain a bachelors degree in hospitality management can pursue various careers such as hotel manager, event planner, resort manager, director of marketing, and other professions. By gaining an accredited online education at this level students will be ready to enter the workforce and seek employment or pursue a master degree.

Master's Degrees
Studying for an accredited online education in hospitality management can be done through various schools and colleges from the comfort of home. Students can obtain their desired career training with an additional two years of study once a bachelor degree is earned. Specific areas of study will be based on each student's desired career. Possible coursework can include financial analysis, marketing management, restaurant development, hospitality accounting, strategic management, and more. By gaining an online master's degree in this field students will be able to find employment as hospitality managers, finance directors, franchisees, management consultants, and more. By gaining a degree students can be on the way to the career they desire.

5 YouTube Time Management Tips

2011-02-18T03:09:00.002-08:00

Video marketing through YouTube can be an incredibly powerful way to attract new business and customers for the small business owner operating on a shoestring marketing budget. One of the reasons that video marketing is so effective is that prospective customers can actually "see you" which immediately helps establish a sense of trust for the consumer.

However, many business owners find YouTube to be too time-consuming and overwhelming. To keep your marketing time to a minimum, here are five tips that will streamline the time that you spend marketing on YouTube.

1) Shoot Five Videos in One Sitting

One of the most time-consuming parts of video marketing is setting up your camera, the lighting and other essentials. Instead of shooting five videos on five separate occasions, shoot five videos all at the same time. Each video only needs to be between 3 and 5 minutes.

Overall, if you spend 15- 25 in one sitting, you will save loads of set-up and take-down time.

2) Use An Outline

Never sit down and start talking. You need to have some sort of a plan before you begin shooting your video. Although you definitely don't need a full-script, you do want to have a basic outline to follow. This will save you time, energy and plenty of frustration in the end.

You can type up a few bullet points and hang it from your video camera. This allows you to follow a general outline and sound more professional.

3) Upload Five Videos At Once

Instead of uploading a video on Monday and another on Wednesday, make it a point to load five videos in one sitting. The process of loading videos all at one time will save you roughly thirty minutes every week.

4) Do Not Be a Perfectionist

One of the top mistakes in video marketing is that individuals become overly perfectionistic when it comes to their videos. Then of course, they start over - again and again. I once had a client who shot 150 takes before he was happy with the results. Obviously, shooting videos over and over again will destroy your time-management efforts. Remember that your goal is not to shoot professional quality videos. Your goal is to relay important and relevant information to your audience.

In fact, many people appreciate the small quirks and imperfections that accompany video marketing. So, if you say a few "ummms" while you're shooting your video, don't despair. Your video will still perform just fine.

5) Don't Get Lost in the YouTube "Black Hole"

When you log into your YouTube account, remember that you are there as a small business owner. You don't want to fall into the trap of getting sidetracked with that cute little dog video or the latest Brittany Spears debacle. You should log into YouTube with a sense of purpose.

In conclusion, don't allow the YouTube marketing process to consume hours upon hours of your valuable time and energy. Because, if managed effectively, YouTube is a goldmine for marketing your business and can literally bring hundreds of free visitors to your website every single month.

Online Aviation Management Degree

2011-02-18T03:09:00.001-08:00

What does an Online Aviation Management Degree has to Offer?

Air travel is at the moment, the fastest and the most reliable means of travel. Day by day there are new technologies and techniques are added to the aviation field in both technical and managerial sides to ensure the public and employee safety, efficient crew, fast flights and so on. The need for air travel is something which is just growing and growing time to time. As the businesses are going global, businessmen tend to fly back and forth in a matter of days and sometimes just hours and air travels saves them their precious time. For an airways organization to be a successful organization it does not require good planes, (well not just only good planes). With good planes and technology, they also need a good managerial side to ensure that everything is in a good shape, manage the flights, the crew, the flight timings, technical matters, public administration etc. Undoubtedly, without a good managerial side, an aviation company cannot go further. Aviation industry is of course a rapidly growing global industry catering to millions of people each year and the competition in the field is going tougher and tougher as the new technologies and techniques are hopping into the industry. Organizations want their employees to be highly skilled and to handle different things at a same time and holing well under pressure. If you think you have the traits to be a successful airliner (on ground or on board) then here's your chance to excel your career in the aviation industry and get a job that you have always dreamt of. Online Aviation Management Degree of top accredited online universities or top accredited online colleges offers formal training to get into this field and perform on-duty tasks efficiently. Different top accredited online universities and top accredited online colleges offering Online Aviation Management Degree program have a definite percentage of job guarantee too, provided that if the school you are joining is one of the top accredited online universities or top accredited online colleges.

You can start off by getting Bachelors in Aviation Management Degree Online program and make your way further. The prerequisite for the Online Aviation Management Degree Online program is to first complete 60 credit hours of an associate level degree. There is also an option to add an additional 60 credit hours to designated 120 credit hours in the Bachelors of Aviation Management Degree Online program from any of the top accredited online universities or top accredited online colleges.

Coursework

Some of the courses offered by top accredited online universities and top accredited online colleges in an Aviation Management Degree Online program are:

· Airline Management

· Airline/Airport Marketing

· Airport Administration and Finance

· Airport Management

· Airport Planning and Design Standards

· Aviation Insurance

· Aviation Labor Relations

· Aviation Maintenance Management

· Economics of Air Transportation

· General Aviation Marketing

· International Aviation Management

· International Trade and Regulations

· Management of Air Cargo

· Management of the Multi-Cultural Work Force

· Marketing Management

· Project Management in Aviation Operations

· Public Administration

· Small Business Management

· Transportation Principles

Employment Stance and Pay Scale

Aviation industry is a fast growing industry and is one of the requirements by the masses. The increasing fuel prices have of course affected the aviation industry as well but since there is no other alternative so airways is the last resort. After successfully completing Online Aviation Management Degree program from one of the top accredited online universities or top accredited online colleges, you would be able to secure job positions like, crew manager, on-flight manager, station manager etc and secure salaries from 50K - 70K a year.

Database Marketing Concept

2011-02-18T03:08:00.000-08:00

Database Marketing is a powerful and competitive weapon - especially on the Internet. The growth of database marketing is rooted in the small business philosophy of staying close to the customers, under-standing and meeting their needs and treating them well after the sale.

Corporate marketing is tied to BIG, general marketing or advertising campaigns with a single untargeted message. This message may be based on the companies Unique Selling Proposition (USP). However, customers have different needs and a single USP spelt out to the whole market is no longer enough.

Messages must be tailored to specific segments of the market and ultimately to the market segment of one, the individual customer. Computerizing the customer database makes it possible to address messages more specifically and market additional products to each customer.

Database Marketing

DBM is an interactive approach to marketing communication, which uses addressable communications media (mail, email, telephone, fax, etc.) to reach your target audience, stimulate demand, staying close by recording and keeping an electronic database memory of customer, prospect and all communication and commercial contacts, to help improve all future contacts.

The characteristics of fully fledged database marketing are ....

1. Each customer and prospect is identified as a record on the marketing database; markets and market segments are groups of individual customers.

2. Each customer and prospect record contains not only identification and access information but also a range of marketing information. It also includes information about past transactions and about campaign communications.

3. This information is accessible before, during and after the process of each interaction with the customer/prospect, to enable "you" to decide how to respond to the customer/prospect's needs.

4. The database is used to record customer/prospects responses to campaigns.

5. The information is available to marketing policy makers to enable them to decide such things as which target markets/segments are appropriate for each product/service etc.

6. Selling many products to each customer, the database is used to ensure that the approach to the customer is co-ordinated; and a consistent approach developed.

7. The database eventually replaces market research. Marketing campaigns are devised such that the response of customers to the campaign provides information, which the company is looking for.

8. Marketing Management automation is developed to handle the vast amount of information generated by DBM. This identifies opportunities and threats more or less automatically! This is fully fledged marketing automation. Very few companies have succeeded in doing this; but many have it as their goal.

DBM presents many challenges to management. It requires careful maintenance of great volumes of detailed customer data. Accessing the data, interpreting it, and using it to drive or support the marketing function requires a long-term marketing systems development policy.

It also requires computing and marketing people to work together, often educating each other. And, it may well require most people in the company to forget their traditional way of doing business.

DBM is used to move customers up the ladder.

The essence of database marketing is communicating directly with the customers and asking them to respond in a tangible way. It provides the means for the customer or prospect to respond and is set up to measure and fulfill the response.

It sets up or reinforces a relationship with the customer, which is "fulfilled" when we follow up a customer's response to our communication. Fulfillment may be in many ways; a personalized email, a telephone conversation, sending literature (pdf), a sales visit, attendance at a web seminar, exhibition or store, or sending products to the customer.

So DBM is a broad discipline, not a separate marketing communications medium, but a way of using any medium to elicit the desired response.

The Phases of Development of Database Marketing

Phase 1. Mystery Lists.

In this phase, marketing databases are basic sales databases. They are often organized by product; a customer may appear many different times under different product categories. It may be hard to identify that it is the same customer. These databases tend to grow from accounts systems and they are hard to analyses for marketing purposes. There is usually conflict with other functions ... they see no reason for changing database structure to meet marketing needs! Lists of potential customers are brought in and not integrated with the sales database/s. They may be used once, to identify potential customers for a particular product, and then discarded. Whether a campaign is successful or not does not affect the rest of marketing.

Phase 2. Buyer Databases.

In this phase, sales and marketing databases are well organized, but there may be many databases. If a company uses several channels of distribution, there may be a database for each channel. Customer focus is possible; we can identify the nature of our relationship with a particular customer across different products. Databases can be analyzed to develop strategy. Each database campaign is well planned and executed in itself, but may overlap, or even conflict, with other campaigns. Increased effectiveness without overall co-ordination leads to more conflict. The conflict may be within the marketing function; or with sales or inventory management. From Phase 2, we learn which data are important, which kinds of data we need to use together, which conflicts and stresses we must resolve and how to use DBM professionally.

Phase 3. Co-ordinated Customer Communication.

In this phase, one database drives all customer communication and management. Computer systems are used to co-ordinate and drive campaigns. The emphasis is not on the database, though this is the powerful tool that makes it all possible. The emphasis is on customers. Our first questions are: who are our customers, what are their needs, and how shall we plan and co-ordinate all our communications efforts to meet them? In phase 3, we plan campaigns using the database. A campaign management system ensures that all involved in a campaign know the schedule. We review past performance, we test, we inform other functions of our proposed activity, we use automation to evaluate the campaign; all campaign information automatically enriches the database.

Phase 4. Integrated Marketing.

Many functions automate within closed loops but need information from other areas. It may never be possible to link every function automatically, but each functional subsystem automatically gets the information it needs from every other subsystem. But we can go a long way to ensuring that the critical links are made at key stages. It is not possible to maintain a good database without a call center. Calling and talking to your customers and prospects is the only way to keep the information relevant and timely

Search Engine Marketing: How To Use The Upsell In Your Product Creation

2011-02-18T03:05:00.000-08:00

"Would you like fries with that... We also offer that in super-sized"

Your product backend is a way to provide HUGE amounts of value to your student/prospects when you are using search engine marketing management. A Backend is a certain way to inject unlimited amounts of cash in your business. Backend sales will increase your value of each customer you get in untold amounts. One way businesses are learning more about online marketing is through social media marketing training.

The Investment Holds Them Accountable

Time with the Coach: They get access to the person and their experience in an in person day of value experience, with something coming out of it. If you gave it to them for free, they would not take action. The more they invest the better bigger the results you deliver

Building an Implementation Program

"The more intimate the implementation the more you're in charge"

Regurgitate and Repurpose Content

You should set up your product sales funnel with upsells such as:

ebook - $10
ebook and audio - $20
ebook, audio, manual - $40
ebook, audio, manual w/video $50
w/ work shop $350
w/group coaching - $2,000
w/ 1 on 1 coaching- $10K
time with the guru - Priceless!

Designing your backend "Time for some thought"

1. How would your customer's best benefit from your expertise?

2. How could you deliver the best value to your students?

3. What could you do to insure their success in your program?

The best advice is to let your students tell you the answers to these questions

So, 2 questions to ask yourself:

What Products should You Create?
What should Your Pipeline Do? (Feed your backend)

LEADS -How Should You Qualify Your Leads?

Let them bump
Let them age
Let them apply

That which is Measured Improves

How to hold them accountable?
Measure and report
Make them compete against one another
Push them further every time

Application Only Opportunity

Allows them to qualify themselves
Everybody wants to be "sold" but nobody likes to be "had"
Ask them why they should be considered for the program
Let them know why you do not take everyone (Set the rules)

If you are out to generate an increased number of leads and develop an increased online presence and exposure, you owe it to yourself and the financial future of your business to learn everything you can about integrating social network marketing strategies.

Reputation Management Versus the Tools of Propaganda

2011-02-18T03:04:00.000-08:00

Propaganda, as defined by Garth S. Jowett and Victoria O'Donnell in their book "Propaganda and Persuasion" is "...the deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behavior to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist." When a company is targeted by a negative content campaign the guiding principles of the attack are very much the same as those of any propaganda campaign. To effectively counter one of these attacks it is essential to understand what those principles are and how they work together. Here are a few of the guiding principles of both propaganda and negative content campaigns:

Assertion - Assertion is commonly used in advertising, modern propaganda, and negative content campaigns. Assertion is a statement presented as fact which requires no explanation or factual basis. Statements like "ABC Company provides the worst customer service ever!", are meant to be believed without any further questions. Often lacking any kind of editorial sophistication, assertions can still incur damage during a campaign.

The Bandwagon - Identified as one of the seven main propaganda techniques by the Institute for Propaganda Search Engine Marketing Analysis in 1938, "Bandwagoning" is used to build the perception that there are masses of likeminded people behind the campaign. Complaints and experiences may be similar to give the impression that the targeted company's problems are widespread.

Selective Omission - This is information presented that may contain a certain degree of truth with the omission of important facts that run counter to the agenda behind the story. "ABC Company never refunded my money" has a quite a different connotation than "ABC Company never refunded my money because I never asked for a refund."

Plain Folks - The plain folk's principle is used to give the impression that the company under attack is somehow mistreating the downtrodden people of the world. "They took the last money we had." would be an example of the plain folks principle at work. These are often totally fabricated during a negative content campaign, but if there is there is truth behind the story this principle can be combined with "selection omission" to achieve its goals.

Pinpointing - Often combined with "selective omission", pinpointing is used to simplify a complex issue by taking a narrow view, focusing the negative aspects of a situation while excluding the bulk of the information surrounding the story. By focusing on one or two aspects of a situation the sponsor attempts to define a black and white judgment against the targeted company.

Transfer - Transfer, as used in a negative content campaign, is the attempt to link the targeted SEO company to a different tainted company that may or may not have an association with it. "These guys are just like Enron." would be an example of the transfer principle in action.

5 Simple Affiliate Marketing Management Tips

2011-02-18T03:03:00.000-08:00

Affiliate marketing is a form of Internet marketing. An affiliate marketer is an independent contractor that has joined a company's affiliate program in order to promote and sell this company's products or services for a set commission.

There are hundreds of thousands of affiliate marketers, maybe even more than a million of them doing business on the Internet. Affiliate marketing is a very competitive but highly lucrative business to be in, provided you can be successful with the affiliate marketing game.

Provided below are five affiliate marketing management tips that will help you to be successful at your business.

1. Always chose good products to promote over the company.

Do not chose to promote products for a company because a good friend recommended this company to you. There are many excellent companies you can affiliate with. It's the product that matters the most. Too often, affiliate marketers will chose a company because of the commission and compensation plan. They don't care about the product line. This is a big mistake that will eventually not work out.

Chose products to market that you can feel motivated about. Chose products to sell that are geared for niche market appeal. Today, the competition in the markets are very broad. It's best to be selling products that have smaller niche market appeal.

2. Stick with it.

Many affiliate marketers will give up after only two or three months. They don't see an immediate return for the time they put in, so they give up.

Let's face it, you may be working independently now, but the hours of working over the computer can be very long hours, especially in the beginning when you are also learning how to do everything. You have to commit to doing this for the long haul or it will be wasted time for you.

Believe it or not, if you stick with it and do everything you should be doing, you will start making some serious money in this business of affiliate Marketing. At first, the traffic just trickles in slowly, then it begins picking up more and more. I have seen this happen time and time again.

3. Outsourcing

There are many areas of affiliate marketing that you may never be an expert at doing. No one can be an expert at everything. As an example, many affiliate marketers will outsource their article marketing to an online agency to do for them. Some people can write more naturally and easier than others. Many affiliate marketers will outsource their lead generation to a PPC, Pay-per-click program that a company promotes.

Outsourcing can save you a lot of time and stress. There is a lot of work to do with affiliate marketing. Concentrate on what you do best.

4. Time management

Managing your time effectively is to create a routine that you can fall into. To some extent, you will need to manage your time at different projects and campaigns. If you don't create a schedule for yourself, you will probably not give yourself any time off for your family or social life. Everyone needs down time.

5. Networking

Making friends with other affiliate marketers will help you keep your sanity and also create more opportunities for your affiliate marketing business. There are many affiliate marketing forums on the Internet where you can join and make some great contacts and friends. Set aside some time everyday towards this end.

These are just a few tips concerning affiliate marketing management. It's always about staying on plan, managing your time effectively and not becoming a slave to your computer. You can easily work more than 50 hours a week at affiliate marketing. If you stick to plan and stay with it, you can't help but be successful

Affiliate Marketing Management In 7 Steps

2011-02-18T03:01:00.000-08:00

Many website owners have no structure or model to follow when managing their affiliate marketing programs. In this article, you will be provided with seven basic pointers on how to setup a productive affiliate marketing management system. Having a proper understanding of affiliate marketing management can greatly enhance not only business productivity but also profitability.

Step One: In order to create an effective affiliate marketing management program, you have to develop a comprehensive marketing plan. All of your marketing efforts have to be properly coordinated and strategically planned out in order to effectively manage your affiliates and guarantee strong marketing.

Step Two: The most important factor to remember about your affiliate marketing management is the need to constantly recruit and maintain quality affiliates. Most marketers focus on gaining thousands of affiliates without trying to gain superb and qualified affiliates. While the number of affiliates are important, you must remember that as an affiliate manager, gaining qualified super affiliates far outweigh the need for quantity of affiliates.

Step Three: Along similar lines, you want to setup something in your affiliate marketing management program, that will guarantee your newly recruited affiliates an incentive for joining and doing good marketing. Rewarding participation is always a good motivator for affiliates in any successful affiliate marketing management service.

Step Four: In your affiliate marketing management it is imperative that you create or setup a system in which you can monitor your affiliate actions. This kind of system is useful in managing your affiliates, especially when wanting to reward their effort.

Step Five: In addition to step four, you also want to setup an automated system that can remove non-functioning affiliates from your affiliate management program.

Step Six: Affiliate marketing management will also require you to constantly communicate with your affiliates via email. It is important that your affiliates feel like they are a major contributor to your marketing efforts and this can be done by sending them weekly tips and other free resources. This can help your affiliates take ownership of your overall marketing efforts. Communication is also a powerful motivator in affiliate marketing management.

Step Seven: It is also not a bad idea to talk with other successful affiliate managers about how they structure their affiliate marketing management program. You can also consider setting up a partnership with professional internet marketer that can assist you in developing and managing a profitable affiliate marketing management program.

Affiliate Marketing Management Taxes - FAQ

2011-02-06T21:20:00.001-08:00

Affiliate marketing management requires attention to detail, the ability to multi-task and the ability to plan long term. One of the more important aspects of the job involves taxes. The affiliate marketing management team must successfully, accurately, and consistently tracks affiliate tax information over the course of the year. Miss one person and it could cost the company millions.

Here we will answer the most frequently asked questions regarding taxes.

Do I need to send a 1099 to everyone?
While state laws may vary, federal law requires you to send a 1099 to any United States citizen whom you paid more than $600. It is up to you if you wish to send a 1099 to anyone that you paid less than $600.

What about foreign citizens or companies?
The forms are different for foreign citizens and companies, but the $600 limit is the same. You will be required to send a 1042 to all non-U.S. citizens whom you paid over $600.

When do I need to collect a W9?
There is no required time to collect a W9. However, it is highly recommended to get a W9 before you ever pay anyone. If the person or company never receives pay in excess of $600, it does not hurt anything. However, if you pay a person over $600 and you do not have it, then you will be responsible for taxes on that money.

Do I need to do the same for foreign citizens and companies?
The same does apply to foreign citizens. The difference lies in the paperwork. Instead of a W9, the affiliate will need to fill out and sign a W8.

Does the affiliate have to mail the W9/W8 in? or will a fax work?
While you can have the affiliate mail or fax the document, the federal government now allows for digital signatures. Therefore, you can send the paperwork via e-mail and the person can digitally sign the document.

A digital signature is just as legal as a written signature but it is easier to keep track of a digital file than a physical file. Therefore, we recommend the use of a digital signature.

Doesn't my affiliate program track that information?
Sometimes the affiliate network does track this information. Sometimes they do require a W9/W8 filled out before allowing people to join. However, many also allow the affiliate to change the information at will and it may not be signed.

Additionally, many programs that require the information do not verify the information is correct. Therefore, you can be stuck with an affiliate who put all ones in for their social security number.

It is highly recommended you track all the information yourself or with software.

How does the software help?
Software acts as a safeguard to the system. Before you pay your affiliates, you run the mass pay file through the software program. It verifies all the information and sends you an approved affiliate list. You take the list and import it to your mass pay system.

The Effects of Technology on Marketing Management and Products and Prices

2011-02-06T21:19:00.004-08:00

Many marketing managers are already aware of the four Ps and how pleasing customers has become a major priority in marketing today. With increases in technology, however, customer approval is more important than ever before, and all aspects of business are rapidly advancing to conform to expectations of today's varied consumers. The internet has offered consumers the ability to not only rate a large number of products, but also easily provide their own reviews, opinions, and input into the most popular products.

The effect of this on production is that today's products are tested and engineered to be of the highest quality and also accommodate many customer needs. In terms of marketing management, it means being able to listen to the customers and not only what they like and dislike but what their needs are and how they can be met. One great example of how businesses have adapted to customers can be seen in the auto industry. Today's vehicles come standard with such things as mp3 players, navigational systems, Bluetooth capability, and even added cup holders and grocery bag hooks. Also, cars are now equipped with more added safety features than ever before.

With the increased availability of information on a variety of different products, today's consumers are more educated than ever before, demanding products that are made from the safest materials and production methods that are safer for the environment. Increased consumer demands for hybrid vehicles and cleaner fuel alternatives have also prompted further government regulations, incentives for vehicles that benefit the environment, and also increased government funding for research into other forms of fuel.

Fuel and the price of gas in today's economy is also another aspect that has greatly influenced the auto industry, and a number of other industries as well. While sales of larger SUVs and trucks are declining, more people are interested in smaller, compact cars that offer better fuel economy. Another advantage that technology has offered auto dealers and consumers alike is price comparison shopping and referrals. Now, when a customer is looking for a new vehicle, they can go online, research certain models, compare prices, and easily get a referral to a local dealership that offers the best price. For the dealers, this has lead to increased competitiveness and greater cost cutting, as well as no haggle pricing on the part of some companies.

With more and more people turning to the internet not only to shop, but also to do product research prior to buying, price comparison is becoming increasingly important. In fact, in a recent survey, it was determined that 58 percent of online shoppers felt that all ecommerce sites should offer a price comparison service that enabled them to make the best choices on the spot. Marketing management is shifting faster than ever before, and customer input and approval is valued much more today than ever before.

Marketing Management Software

2011-02-06T21:19:00.003-08:00

We make lots of money thanks to the advantages of technology, and we invest less time and effort in our activities. Marketing strategies have always been behind the complex promotion of products and services, and not necessarily on the electronic market. Nevertheless, with the growing influence of the Internet, there are hardly any companies that do not advertise online. And given the large number of business tasks required, only the use of a marketing management software insures business efficiency. An automatic program thus has the advantage of operating with a large amount of information at the same, conducting tasks in parallel.

Business know-how comes in time, which is why lots of companies turn to marketing experts for help, because thanks to their professional orientation, they have experience in using marketing management software for the development of various companies. The basics of any strategy will definitely start with the plan and the insight of the activity, but planning is the first step towards search engine optimization, competition analysis, web design, improvement of traffic ranking and the increase of the return on investment.

A good marketing management software could enable the user to understand an individual business offer as compared to that of the competition. There is a lot more relevancy in such parallels for everything that has to do with price and distribution features, service or product position on the market and even customer feedback. Once information is processed by the marketing program, the solutions provided by the marketing management software are tailored to the current business needs first and foremost. Such tools also provide all sorts of statistical documents from reports to charts, for a well determined period of time or in relation to a number of factors.

A form of practical marketing management software is necessary for any business concerned with strategic planning. Such a course of action normally leads to business improvement, superior quality standards and higher customer support possibilities. Step-by-step software guidance, therefore improves advertising campaigns and business visibility on the market.

Core Small Business Skills - Sales and Marketing Management

2011-02-06T21:19:00.001-08:00

As a business owner and entrepreneur it is important to develop a set of key management skills upon which you can build your business. Even more so when you consider research into Australian small business failures, has identified that in 90% of cases, a lack of management skills has been a key reason for small business failure. Being able to effectively market and sell your products is one of the core skills required to operate your business effectively. We will take a look at the specific sales and marketing skills you need to master for profitable success.

Market Research

Strong sales and marketing skills are vital in the promotion of your small business and its products and services. You need to be able to undertake market research which will help you to identify where your markets are, the total market size and the size of each of its key segments. You should also be able to profile your customers, identify their needs, wants, behaviours and ambitions and parlay the information into powerful and effective marketing campaigns and sales techniques which will help to drive sales revenue.

You also need to develop the skills required to undertake primary research. Primary research is research that you undertake yourself. i.e. feedback, surveys, questionnaires, etc. You need to be able to keep your finger on the pulse of your customers ever-changing demands and the business environment in which you operate and to identify the threats and opportunities that may impact on your small business. Inability to adjust to changes in the market place was identified by market research as one of the key skills lacking in small business operators.

Customer Segmentation

Customer segmentation is the practice of analysing your customers in your customer database and grouping them according to their gender, age, education, geography, income, life stage, behaviours and aspirations. Developing your customer segmentation analytical skills provides the foundation for better understanding your customers so that you can target each segment with specific campaigns designed specifically to speak to them, thereby increasing the response rate of your marketing campaigns. It can also help you identify where potential customers with similar profiles might be found.

Marketing Planning

Successful entrepreneurs and small business owners need strong marketing planning skills. You need to be able to take your marketing strategy and communicate it to all relevant stakeholders. Usually the vehicle that is used to formally communicate your marketing strategy is your marketing plan.

Marketing planning skills will help you create a clear, concise document which defines your strategic business intent and the marketing approach you have chosen as the most effective method of achieving your overall business goals.

Creating Value Propositions

Customers buy when the perceived value is greater than the price. Marketing involves the development and creation of innovative value propositions that puts your product or service offering ahead of those of your competitors. You need to learn to harness the primary research from your customers, competitors customers and potential customers to continually strive to improve your offering.

Effective Campaign Development

Developing effective marketing campaigns relies on having completed the market research, the customer profiling and segmentation, developing a marketing plan that aligns to the organisations' strategic intent and developing innovative value propositions. Campaign development takes all that information and designs appropriate messages and determines communication delivery channels in order to directly appeal to your target segment.

Sales Techniques & Processes

It definitely pays to develop effective sales processes, including the preparation and planning of your sales approach. You need to master your sales pitch, learn how to handle objections and refine your closing techniques. As the small business owner you also need to be able to teach each of your employees how to sell effectively.

Customer Fulfilment

Delivering to your customer should be a well planned, well prepared and well executed process. After all, you are aiming to deliver the ultimate customer experience. Having the ability to define the process, so that it can be repeated time after time, with each and every customer, takes skill. Exceptional execution or customer execution. Exceptional execution will earn you happy customers. Happy customers tell their family and friends and also remain loyal. Customer execution results in no repeat sales and no referrals.

Developing sales and marketing management skills will help you achieve sales and marketing success and help you to drive increasing sales revenues in your small business. Keeping abreast of changes in the marketplace and in consumer demands and having the ability to respond to those changes will ensure your business grows, thrives and survives.

Karen L. Paiyo is an Australian Small Business Counsellor, supporting and nurturing the spirit of entrepreneurship in the Asia Pacific Region. Karen empowers small business owners by transferring to them the skills and expertise needed to help them take their business ideas from creative concept to profitable reality, faster and with less risk.

Marketing Management Systems - Basic Resource Allocation Strategies

2011-02-06T21:18:00.000-08:00

You have to organize and carry out all the operations of your company with the highest efficiency possible. This is applicable to the production and to the sales, but it is equally true for the marketing. You cannot get the most productive and cost efficient results unless you have good management. It is best not to rely on chance. Using marketing management systems is essential.

You have to provide for the three phases of the system accordingly. The planning and budgeting is the first stage that you have to focus on. It is essential to develop this part of the marketing process to a great extent. In this way you can use ready patterns for quite some time which is efficient. This is the point of the allocation of different resources to each project. It is important for you to devise effective strategies for this segment of the marketing management systems you will be using.

As a start you should be able to plan how long the preliminary stage will take you. The next factor that you have to focus on is the preliminary market analysis. This will allow you to determine your target marketing groups as well as to estimate the demand for your product. It is best to allocate a sufficient part of the budget to research and analysis so that you can be certain you have a stable platform for the development of the campaign.

You have to make sure that the methods and techniques you use will use for the campaign are cost efficient. The correct allocation of labor and capital resources to these is crucial for the success of the project. It is a good idea for you to invest in methods that have been proven to work. But you should not be afraid to employ innovative approaches. The really effective marketing management systems allow for more flexibility and a slightly higher risk.

Tips on Email Marketing Management

2011-02-06T21:17:00.002-08:00

List building is one of the most profitable online ventures that you can ever get into. And if you are already making good money through your website, adding list building and an email marketing management solution into your arsenal might give a good boost to your income earning potential.

Part of this is because a list is a very personal and direct way of communicating with your customers. You are conversing with people straight through their email inbox. For a short period of time, you likely have their undivided attention as they are reading whatever it is you have to say or offer them. With a good email marketing management software program, you can introduce each email with the name of the recipient. This personal level of communication is not possible with your more 'traditional' forms of advertising.

Remember that email marketing is all about relationships and not merely blasting your list with advertisements. Think about it...if every time a friend called you he was trying to get you to buy something, you'd eventually stop answering the phone when he called. This is the same mentality you should have when using email marketing. The overall goal is to slowly brand yourself as an expert in your field and build a two-way relationship with each of your subscribers in order to convert them into loyal customers.

A good business marketing strategy, especially for an email management program, would likely include the following:

1. Be as personal as possible, without overdoing it.

As mentioned earlier, most email marketing management programs will give you the ability to automatically put the names of your readers on each email. All you have to do is to write the message and the program will personalize it for you. Statistics say that people will read the whole email if they see their names in the body of the message. Just be carefully not to overdo it. Just adding the {first.name} tag at the introduction of each email should be more than enough. There is no need to keep adding their name in multiple places throughout the message.

2. Write as if you are talking to a friend.

People often feel much more comfortable when they are being talked to on a very personal level. If you walked into a store and were greeting in a professional, yet friendly, manner, you'd likely feel pretty good about the place. The tone of your emails should be the same - professional, friendly, and more informative than pushy. This will likely cause people to eventually get excited about your message.

3. Do not bombard your list with emails.

This is an important business marketing strategy that is often ignored. Many online marketers send daily emails to their list, all under the guise of trying to gain brand recognition. If you built your list with a single or double opt-in requirement (and you did, right?), you are not doing anything wrong legally. But the term 'spammer' is thrown around quite loosely these days. Even if you are not spamming anyone, once you get that label it's hard to overcome. Much like in real life, a bad reputation can be a big obstacle to your overall goals. As long as you keep #1 and #2 in mind, a weekly email should be more than enough.

The goal of an email marketing campaign is forging a lasting and very personal relationship with the people on your list. Contrary to what many marketers believe, the goal should NOT be to get people to immediately buy what you're selling. Keeping your emails informative in nature and truly adding value to each one will eventually brand you as an expert in your industry. Once you get that label, your subscribers will not only be more receptive to your products or services, but they may even reach out to when they need something.

And, after all, isn't this why you started your business in the first place? To fill a need? Email marketing is just a simpler and more personal way of doing so, with a much larger reach and on a more personal level.

Tips For Effective Affiliate Marketing Management

2011-02-06T21:17:00.001-08:00

As the US affiliate marketing industry is expected to grow to $4 billion by 2014 (as per Forrester estimates), affiliate marketing will become a major marketing tool for most US companies. However, this rise will also necessitate better affiliate marketing management strategies so that the program delivers good results.

Affiliate Marketing Management: Useful Tips

Here are some useful tips that companies can use for effective affiliate marketing management:

1. Keep informed: Inform your associates about your company's latest developments, be it through newsletters or forums.

2. Training: Provide training, content, discounts and promotional items to help drive sales. Providing content ensures control on information dispersal and their accuracy. Lack of support only results in decreased effectiveness in affecting sales. Besides, supporting your associates also attracts better quality affiliates for your business.

3. Honesty: Promise only what you can deliver. Although your associates may have their own questions and demands, always offer honest answers; be honest with promotions as well.

4. Respond promptly: Answer their questions promptly, preferably within 24 hours. This can be done by creating a forum, where older associates can interact with and answer newer associates' questions.

5. Consistency: Be consistent in your actions. For instance, when you update your associates with regular newsletters, be consistent with its frequency. You can start with a monthly newsletter and graduate to weekly ones.

6. Track tax records: Keep track of your affiliate's tax records so that an IRS audit does not result in fines and penalties for you. You can all tax-related information in the W9. It is best not to rely solely on your associate for this information, as any inaccuracy will be your sole responsibility. You can use specialized software to track this information.

7. Track sales: You can track your affiliates' sales records (with a simple software) to identify the top performers. This will enable you to reward top performers as well as get insights into factors that convert visitors into buyers. You can also offer small tokens of appreciation or incentives, while they gain the distinction of being top rated.

Besides, you must never assume anything. Talk to your associate to gauge his understanding of the program; and provide guidance, if required.

Marketing Management Secrets

2011-02-06T21:16:00.002-08:00

The key to success in any venture is information; and marketing management is no exception. The phrase refers to the art of exercising effective authority over the resources and activities involved in improving the success of a product or service.

The role of information is actually more significant in this field than in may others. It is said that information is power. Power is the one thing an enterprise needs in order to have a reasonable influence on the target clients. That is the only way such a client will pick your product and leave several others on a supermarket counter. The same factor comes into play when the customer enlists your services and not those of any other provider.

A key way to get the wealth of information needed for marketing success is by reading MBA articles. The term generally refers to all types of articles that provide guidance on marketing strategies available to entrepreneurs.

Such articles are meant to help give you an edge over your competitors and a hold on your consumers. They also help you to make adjustments if ever you find yourself losing that grip.

Another important source of information is from branding articles. These researched pieces offer information on how best to present your product or service to the public. Branding involves everything from naming the product, to packaging it, developing a slogan for it etc. It gives the product a unique identity and it is aimed at making prospects feel like that is the only product they can use. Achieving that effect is by no means easy because even competitors are working towards the same target. That is not to say it is impossible.

Branding and MBA articles are designed to help in this regard, providing suitable solutions to different types of product or service providers.

Utilizing these information resources brings numerous benefits to their users:

1: When new marketing management ideas are introduced into the market, you will have instant access to them. This puts you a few steps ahead of competitors since you will learn something that they do not know.

2: With this information at your disposal, you may implement changes in you marketing and branding that will give you that all-important edge over competing firms.

3: This certainly translates into increased profit margins - the prime goal of any business enterprise.

4: With a consistent source of MBA and branding articles, you can be sure to maintain the state of excellence. The problem of being a one-hit-wonder in the business domain is therefore averted.

5: From a position of advantage over competitors, you can always make use of certain benefits that will not be available to them. For instance, as your outfit expands, economies of scale will lower production or service provision expenses. This means you can lower your price rates to a level that they cannot match and thus keeps the success cycle in motion!

These articles are usually available online so you can enjoy access to them anytime, anywhere. Having a dependable source of this information will give you unending power over rivals and on customers thus resulting in effective marketing management.

Marketing Management

2011-02-06T21:16:00.001-08:00

When promotional techniques are applied in a manner that is practical, the business discipline is referred to as marketing management. The activities and resources of a company associated with promotions are a major focus in this discipline. The responsible party in charge of customer demand, timing, and the influence of the level is a manager. This individual does not have a set role as the size of a company, the context of the industry and the corporate culture can change the duties included in that role. One of those roles can be as a general manager of the product assigned to him or her.

Marketing management encompasses a wide range of things based upon the size of the company. The basis of the idea of this kind of promotion control are resources and activities that build relationships with customers who are drawn to the company. As a reference, Keller and Kotler have a definition that encapsulates the delivery of services and products to customers. This is what makes this kind of marketing unique because the promotions require every aspect of a company to be involved in bringing customers in. Everything about a company influences customers to take part in the purchase of that company´s services and products.

The production of customers and seeking new and creative ways to bring in customers are the primary function of such management, and these two functions must be done exceptionally well to ensure that a company´s growth continues. In order to continue to grow with successful promotions, expenses have to be considered outside of those primary functions to save money while effectively using resources in order to expand a company´s profitability. The portion of a business that always maintains its creativity and uniqueness is the marketing management of that organization. It keeps the business fresh and alive.

It is important to be aware of the general perception of what marketing is for businesses outside of your business. Although we have discussed the creativity of marketing management, its broad scope and focus on the production and innovation of customers, there is a much more rigid perspective to what marketing management is, and this topic has become quite controversial to executives. Many promotional activities only include the formation of fliers and brochures, so to give a department that much more control would rock the boat. Meshing both the old ideas and new ideas of promotions will create a much broader use of these strategies while holding on to the traditional touch that is so often absent from campaigns.

Internet Marketing Management - Tips For Choosing Your "Just Right" Email Marketing Platform

2011-02-06T21:14:00.000-08:00

You'll often hear in Internet Marketing circles that, "The money is in the list." For that reason, building up a list of email subscribers forms a part of most online businesses' Internet Marketing management strategy.

Having worked with several email marketing platforms over the years, I thought I'd share my thoughts on various criteria for making a smart choice for a service provider.

Deliverability

First of all, know that ISPs (Internet Service Providers) have the interests of their customers in mind. To them, spam is anything the subscriber doesn't want in his or her inbox.

Therefore, deliverability of your emails will partly be based on your own reputation, as the ISPs perceive it. Do you build a relationship with your subscribers, creating expectations and meeting them with relevant, value-added content?

However, it's also based on the reputation of your email marketing service provider. Do they take an active role in meeting CAN-SPAM guidelines and building win-win relationships with ISPs?

It's worth finding this out, because all the great content in the world has limited value if much of it goes undelivered.

In my experience, AWeber remains a leader in this regard.

Capability and Flexibility

The various email marketing platforms all have their own strengths and limitations.

Do you have a single email list, and want to create a short (five messages or less) autoresponder series for new subscribers? A service such as Constant Contact may work well for you.

Do you want the ability to create multiple, unique lists within a single account? Is it important to you to be able to segment these lists, so that you can adjust your marketing messages to subscribers' behavior? Do you want a platform that can integrate with other service providers, such as 1shoppingcart.com? AWeber may be the best service provider for you.

Do you sell multiple products and want a particularly robust system that ties together a shopping cart, email marketing platform, POP email accounts, calendar, task management, and more, in a single, cloud-based solution? InfusionSoft may be the answer for you.

Naturally, the best solution is going to depend on your individual needs. The important thing is to think through what your needs are...and what you anticipate them to be in a couple of years. Because it's a fairly major undertaking to migrate your subscriber list from one service provider to another, you want to find a solution that's sufficiently robust, without swinging too far in the opposite direction and overbuying.

Ease of Use and Quality of Training

This is highly subjective, of course, but here are a couple of things to consider when you're choosing the service provider for the email marketing branch of your Internet Marketing management plan.

How do you learn best? For example, do you like to learn by reading instructions or by watching videos?
If you prefer live training (for instance, by webinar), is this offered?
What support does the provider offer to help you hit the ground running with their service? Is this included in the monthly subscription fee, or does training incur an additional fee?

Another place to look is on the service provider's blog, if they have one. The quality of the content there can give you hints about what you can expect later.

Quality of Technical Support

Finally, you want to be assured that when you're stuck, effective help is available.

A great way to check on what other people are saying about a service provider is to do a keyword search in one of the major social media channels. It isn't necessarily a red flag if a problem is noted. In fact, it's particularly enlightening to see how the provider handles it when a problem does arise.

Other things to think about may include whether technical support is included in your subscription fee, what the support hours are, and where the support is based.

For instance, if you're on Pacific Time and your email marketing platform's live technical support is available 9am to 5pm Eastern Time, that's something you want to be aware of. It's not necessarily a deal-breaker, but it's good to know ahead of time. As another example, if you're going to incur an additional cost for live technical support, does it involve a separate monthly fee, or can you pay by the incident?

Making the Choice

If your Internet Marketing management strategy includes email marketing, you want the solution that provides the best combination of features, ease-of-use, cost, and support. With some good planning and research, you can uncover the best solution for your unique needs.

Hotel Marketing Ideas Demand Calendar - Hotel Revenue Management Tool

2011-01-19T02:06:00.001-08:00

So how can we make informed decisions about our pricing strategies? I mean decisions founded on solid data and statistics. A demand calendar is the answer for your revenue management operations.

A hotel needs an extensive revenue management demand calendar show multiple demand indicators to appropriately analyze market situations. Sounds nice no? But what are we talking about....

The most basic version of a demand calendar you contain the following information;

RevPAR last year
Groups or events last year
Demand level indicator last year (High, Medium, Low, Distressed)
Demand level indicator this year
Bank holidays
School holidays
Exceptional demand indicators
Hotel marketing plans

So a lot of the information is easy to get. RevPAR last year, groups or events in the hotel etc, can be retrieved from internal PMS data. Te determine if school holidays or bank holidays affect you you should run arrival statistics of last years holidays per feader market (country) against their holidays. This way you can see if any particular school or holiday from a particular country affects your hotel. It will allow you to target it intelligently with special offers and packages this year.

We have done some leg work for you and put together an international holiday calendar for half of Europe. It includes holidays and national festive days in the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Spain (and provincial celebrations like in Catalonia), Portugal, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland.

We use this calendar for the hotels we manage to determine if any country specific holidays affect our demand, in a negative or positive way. It also allows us to create promotions targeting specific vacations or celebrations. The document is based on Google Docs, shared with all our clients to expand and add countries and holidays etx... We are working together to make become stronger...

The data and information from the demand calendar can now be integrated into your OTB (on the books) and pick-up summaries. It will give you a much broader view of where your hotel is trending.

In the end informed decisions are better decisions, leading to better results!

Affiliate Marketing Management Taxes - FAQ

2011-01-19T02:05:00.004-08:00

Here we will answer the most frequently asked questions regarding taxes.

A digital signature is just as legal as a written signature but it is easier to keep track of a digital file than a physical file. Therefore, we recommend the use of a digital signature.

Additionally, many programs that require the information do not verify the information is correct. Therefore, you can be stuck with an affiliate who put all ones in for their social security number.

It is highly recommended you track all the information yourself or with software.

The Effects of Technology on Marketing Management and Products and Prices

2011-01-19T02:05:00.003-08:00

Search Engine Marketing: How to Succeed With Your Online Marketing Campaign Management

2011-01-19T02:05:00.001-08:00

You can fine tune search engine marketing campaign advertising performance by basing keyword bids on merchandising product data such as profit margin, cost of goods sold, inventory levels, and so forth. That data can provide additional and valuable dimensions beyond the simple sales volumes that often justify a keyword bid. One way businesses are learning more about online marketing is through social media marketing training.

For instance, by importing profit margin data, you would be able to make a data-based decision to bid higher on the keyword "Persian rug" because that product line offers higher margins. You might stop bidding on "doormat" for lack of product inventory. Tracking and adapting keyword bidding to inventory levels helps ensure you're able to fulfill orders, reduce web site abandonment, and maintain a high level of customer satisfaction.

As a search advertising practitioner, you should reach out to your merchandising team to procure this data and funnel it into your PPC management solution. As noted earlier, collaboration is a hallmark of successful online marketing, and you may want to talk to other marketing groups about landing pages, too, as we'll see below.

Ensure Continuity Throughout the Conversion Cycle

Inconsistent messaging across the conversion cycle can cause a customer to abandon your website and convert somewhere else. Search queries, ads and landing pages must match in terms of content and offer. Extraneous or discrepant information on a landing page or unappealing creative can derail the conversion. Search advertisers, however, don't always own the landing pages. Those pages may have been developed by the merchandising or some another group.

Search advertising practitioners can benefit by reaching out to web page owners and working collaboratively to ensure the pages are optimized for search advertising campaigns. The same exercise can be applied to transaction pages-such as shopping carts-as well. Landing page optimization is likely to enhance your search engine quality score, which helps reduce CPC rates to maintain the same ad position.

Think Outside of the Keyword Box

Basic keyword recommendations come in two flavors- terms popular on search engines, and terms that your competitors bid on. While recommended keywords cannot be ignored, savvy marketers augment them with natural, onsite, and original search queries.

Are you in search of new methods of attracting more leads to your website? Do you want to learn more social media marketing strategies on how to increase your business's online visibility and sales?

Core Small Business Skills - Sales and Marketing Management

2011-01-19T02:04:00.001-08:00

Market Research

Customer Segmentation

Marketing Planning

Creating Value Propositions

Effective Campaign Development

Sales Techniques & Processes

Customer Fulfilment

Marketing Management Systems - Basic Resource Allocation Strategies

2011-01-19T02:03:00.002-08:00

Multi Level Marketing Management Programs - Important Things to Know

2011-01-19T02:03:00.001-08:00

If you want to start making some money at multi level marketing, it makes sense to look into one of the multi level marketing management programs available. This is because no matter what you do for a living, management in that job or field is going to command a higher salary than the worker bee level. Multi level marketing is no exception to this rule. The sooner you transform yourself into "management material" the sooner you will be making the big bucks. The programs and software available in this area will also help you to get a handle on the workflow and progress of your sales.

Since you are curious about a management program geared toward the idea of direct referral selling, or network marketing, you probably are aware of how multi level marketing (MLM) works. It is basically offering products or services under the direction of a larger company through word of mouth. It has the potential to bring in more and more money by means of the seller receiving a certain percentage of each downward level of sales traceable to him/her. It is perfectly legitimate and is not to be confused with a pyramid scheme, which offers no true tangible goods or services of any value. Many reputable companies use multi level marketing techniques as part of their overall marketing plan. Companies like Mary Kay, Avon, Discovery Toys, and Herbalife, are all examples of such companies. They do very well and you can bet that the management team at these places is extremely dialed in. What can you do to learn more about MLM management programs?

There are software programs for the management of MLM, to help you execute your plan and generate more business. Some are free and some are quite costly. Start with the free ones you can download. Try them out and see how they work for you. If they do not meet your needs you may need to purchase a more sophisticated program. Keeping track of multi level marketing data can be chaotic and time consuming. Ensure your success by reviewing specific software programs. Among a few of the popular programs are: iMatrix Software (customers include New Vision, Tupperware, and First Fitness), DH Software with DH-MLM programs, and VAR/MLM Management System. iMatrix Software lays claim to being one of the first (if not the very first) multi level marketing software programs available. They were launched in the late 1990's. There are a lot of programs out there, so do your research! You can find out more about available software that will meet your needs depending on how much time you want to invest in promoting multi level marketing.

In relation to software there is the real and necessary aspect of gaining some general management experience as it pertains to the subject of multi level marketing. This can be gained through basic management courses that are applied directly to steps involved in MLM. The Internet is a great resource for both of these purposes, use it to your advantage

Tips For Effective Affiliate Marketing Management

2011-01-19T02:02:00.001-08:00

Affiliate Marketing Management: Useful Tips

Here are some useful tips that companies can use for effective affiliate marketing management:

1. Keep informed: Inform your associates about your company's latest developments, be it through newsletters or forums.

3. Honesty: Promise only what you can deliver. Although your associates may have their own questions and demands, always offer honest answers; be honest with promotions as well.

Besides, you must never assume anything. Talk to your associate to gauge his understanding of the program; and provide guidance, if required.

Marketing Companies Can Help You With Your Online Reputation Management

2011-01-19T02:01:00.000-08:00

How's your company's online reputation? Do you even know? The results of a quick search could be startling for you. Marketing companies could specialise in this area, helping you manage and accelerate a positive online reputation.

Why is online reputation management important?

More people than ever look to the web to help them make decisions about everything from minor purchases to big ticket items. The internet provides consumers with a plethora of information to help them make decisions, such as: product specifications, user reviews, and information about where to get what they want. If your reputation isn't nurtured, one of two things will happen:

Nothing?

If you have zero reputation, people won't find you. Lack of a poor reputation is a good thing but in many cases, if they know about you and find nothing positive or negative, they'll keep looking. Many people want validation for their choice through reviews, testimonials, and an online presence that puts them at ease.

Of course no reputation is better than a poor reputation but if you're even moderately successful offline, you'll want to share that positive reputation online so that you can take advantage of it.

Lost Sales - $$$

If you're not paying attention to your reputation and something negative is said about you, this could be even more damaging than something positive being said. Bad press can rise like wildfire in the search engine results for your name or your niche. You can't necessarily control the bad press but marketing companies could help you boost the good press so that it outweighs the bad press.

How Online Marketing Companies Help:

Online marketing companies can track what's being said, can optimise the good press, and help you encourage feedback from your clients. Feedback utilised online in the right way will help you show new prospects that existing and past customers are satisfied.

If something negative is said, your marketing consultancy firm could track it down quickly and do damage control, either by alerting you so that you can act on it or by optimizing proven reputation management tools so that the bad press doesn't necessarily stick out like a sore thumb.

Most companies experience at least a bit of bad press at some time or another. Smart companies learn from this and use it to help them improve weak points in their infrastructure. Marketing companies can help you gather intelligence, boost positive results, solicit testimonials, and spread good news virally so that those considering your products or services will see that you're an organisation worth doing business with.

Freeware Vendor's Web Tracking Draws Curses

2011-01-09T21:45:00.001-08:00

Comet Systems Inc., a privately held company that gives away software that can convert your cursor into an animated shape of your choosing when you surf the Web, has been collecting information about where the estimated six to fourteen million users of the Comet Cursor point their browsers. The discovery was made by a private security consultant, Richard Smith, a founder of Phar Lap Software, who was also responsible for revealing security problems in Windows and for independently tracking down the Melissa virus.

Comet uses a unique serial number for each user to that they can accurately report to their websites the number of cursor-using visitors. Comet is paid for bringing users to some of these sites, and it must be able to recognize that a single user is viewing more than one page on the site. This is quite similar to the kind of data collected by websites and advertising software. (See TEC Technology Research Note: "Counting Website Traffic - The Skinny On Hits, Impressions, Visitors and Clickthroughs" December 1st, 1999). Smith discovered that the serial numbers were created with a Microsoft Windows random number generator that sometimes uses information that identifies the individual machine. Comet spokesperson Ben Austin stated that Comet immediately began implementing a different way of creating serial numbers as soon as Mr. Smith notified it of the problem.

Comet Systems has arrangements with more than 60,000 websites, each of which can serve Comet's cursors to their visitors. While many of these are personal sites, Comet has been making deals with such sites as StarTrek.com, Paramount's official Star Trek web site, multimedia specialist RealNetworks, ISP MindSpring, and spaceKids.com, the kids' section of space.com, a space exploration site whose President is astronaut Dr. Sally Ride. Comet recently announced a partnership with advertising network 24/7 Media. Users of Comet's plug-in software who pass their cursor will see their cursors change to an icon related to the product being advertised. Preliminary results indicated that Comet's technology increases clickthroughs from 50 to 300 percent.

Changing the method of calculating the serial number removes any way of tying the data collected by Comet to an individual's machine. However, privacy advocates have expressed concern about keeping these data for three additional reasons. First, that there was no notification to Comet users that these data would be collected; second, that many of the websites that support the Comet cursor are targeted to children; and third, that the data could potentially be tied with data that identifies individuals, such as on the "My" pages offered by most portals.

Comet Systems has responded that because they did not use the data for any purpose other than counting website visits, they did not see that there was a privacy issue. They have now posted a privacy statement on their website. This statement says, in part,

Any information you provide to Comet Systems when registering for CometZone is maintained and is accessible only by Comet Systems and a few of Comet Systems's content sponsors. We use the information collected during registration to better understand your interests, and to provide you with the best products and services on the web.

We analyze Activity Logs in the hope of presenting our Cometeers with the most relevant and valuable content and advertising. We develop summary -- not individual -- reports for our sponsors. The sponsors who make it possible for you to use CometZone for free need information to determine the effectiveness of their advertising investments. We never tell our sponsors who it was that saw or clicked on their advertisements unless you have specifically told us this is acceptable.

Mr. Austin also stated that the data collected about surfing behavior is only kept long enough to generate a report - about 30 days - and is then deleted. He reiterated that no use is made of the data other than for the purpose of counting the number of "cometeers" visiting the client sites.

User Recommendations

The issue for the average company is the privacy of the data collected on web surfers in the normal course of business. It is difficult to blame Comet for using faulty software not part of the operating system, but once the issue became newsworthy, Comet became vulnerable to criticism about the lack of a privacy policy and to questions about why the data were being collected. Comet has probably lost users because of this, because people seem to be especially sensitive about data being collected or used surreptitiously. While few users would have read Comet's privacy policy prior to this incident, an earlier posting of it would have blunted much of the criticism. Posting a privacy policy, and adhering to it, is a good business practice - and a good way to keep out of trouble.

Five Ways to Positively Impact Customer Retention and Business Operations

2011-01-09T21:44:00.000-08:00

Table of contents

Executive summary
Continuous measurement and improvement
Product innovation and quality
Delivery performance and speed
Lean and "green"
Proactive alert and exception management
Summary
About Infor

Executive summary

Like most businesses today, manufacturers face a variety of factors that can impact the performance of their companies. Many of these business variables are beyond an organization's control, such as the rising cost of energy and materials, global competition, and the introduction of new regulatory mandates. But they all directly impact the cost of goods sold, influence the final price, and continually put financial performance in jeopardy. How a company responds to these factors can also impact long-term customer satisfaction and retention.

There is no question that the escalating cost of fuel and energy, as an example, will continue to drive up costs at every level of the supply chain. Global competition will also continue to force manufacturers to keep their prices low, tightening their profit margins as a result. Organizations that have proactively outsourced labor-intensive production to lower cost regions of the world may be able to apply even greater pricing pressures on the rest, leaving smaller and less agile producers with further reduced profit margins and the risk of losing long-time customers. In fact, according to a study by Industry Week and the Manufacturing Performance Institute, as shown in Figure 1, of the 914 manufacturers surveyed in the study, 74% see foreign competition as a threat.

As companies struggle to adapt to these financial challenges, they can quickly lose sight of their mission and value proposition while focusing on internal cost management issues. Although cost management is critical, it is not the sole element of a winning strategy for long-term business performance. Customer service, product quality, and delivery performance typically are impacted during the process of reducing costs, and if not managed properly, can lead to customer dissatisfaction, and in some cases customer erosion. However, organizations can leverage these elements as positive differentiators and make them strengths for improving customer retention.
All Plants U.S. Canada
Number of Plants 915 782 133
Significant Threat 14.5% 13.4% 21.1%
Moderate Threat 24.5% 24.3% 25.6%
Slight Threat 35.1% 36.1% 29.3%
No Threat 25.9% 26.2% 24.1%

In the meantime, these and many other factors have enabled unlikely competitors to threaten businesses that have long held a secure position in their markets. Manufacturers begin to ask themselves questions such as: Why do seemingly dedicated, long-time customers suddenly move to a different supplier? Do manufacturers really understand what drives their customers' purchasing and supplier selection decisions today?

What can manufacturers do to defend and secure their long-term viability as a supplier in the face of rising costs and declining prices? How can value-added services and customer support structures be preserved when profit margins are getting squeezed? And what steps can be taken to grow and retain a loyal customer base?

Price pressure is often blamed as the reason for the loss of a customer. But is price the only reason? As markets consolidate, larger suppliers emerge that are able to lower their pricing through economies of scale and lower cost production. This often leads to some shifting of brand loyalty, but is not necessarily enough to sustain long-term success. Therefore, how can small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) position themselves to succeed? Lowering costs is an important aspect, but simply cutting costs is not enough, and often leads to the wrong costs getting cut.

Rather than trying to compete strictly by reducing costs, manufacturers must stay close to their customers, understanding and exploiting the unique value they offer in their marketplace. As SMB manufacturers get more sophisticated and fight back, they can take charge of their market by considering the following five ways to positively impact customer retention and business operations:

Continuous measurement and improvement
Product innovation and quality
Delivery speed and agility
Lean and "green"
Proactive alert and exception management

Each of these steps represents specific areas that can either improve your business performance directly though improved efficiency, or can set you apart from your competitors and help you to differentiate through product quality and innovation, delivery excellence, corporate citizenship, and company values. The common belief is that people buy from other people whom they trust and can depend on, and that the products they buy are not detrimental to the environment. In many cases, customers will pay slightly more for better quality, more dependable service, and the right technology and innovation that will help them to improve their own costs and efficiencies.
Continuous measurement and improvement

For many companies, measuring their business performance is the last step they take when launching a new business improvement initiative. Unfortunately, not reassessing the business metrics can be just as debilitating as not reassessing the business processes and procedures first. Knowing what you are looking to achieve is critical, as well as knowing at what point you will be successful, before setting out to make changes. Companies must look within and honestly determine:

Where is my business today?
Where would I like it to be in the future?
What is the plan to get there?
How will I know when I am done?

The key is to determine the right metrics that will help you to continually improve:

Product quality
Product innovation
Product delivery
Product profitability
Time to market
Market share
Corporate citizenship
Customer satisfaction and loyalty

Understanding why products are selling, where they are selling, who is selling them (if you distribute through a channel or through representatives), and who is buying them can help you to adjust your business plan and production plan.

A good first step, and one that should be repeated on a regular basis, is to conduct a customer survey to find out why your customers buy from you, what they like about working with your company, and what they feel is not working or could be improved. Explore the qualities of your business with them, and why they chose you over another company. Taking a regular temperature reading through a neutral resource will help you understand your true value in the market and to your customers.

Another good practice is to survey customers who decided not to buy from you, or who used to buy from you and have switched to another supplier. Was price, delivery lead times, delivery accuracy, or product quality the reason for the switch or decision not to buy? And if those objections were to be removed, would they do business with you then?

This new information will provide some initial insight into areas that are directly contributing, either negatively or positively, to your performance. By categorizing the feedback into product, sales, services, and operations, you will be able to focus on developing department-level metrics such as:

Product – engineering and design, production, and quality
Sales – sales and marketing, inventory availability, and shipping
Services – customer service and support, warranty and repair, and field service
Operations – accounting, purchasing, supplier management, legal, corporate citizenship, and resource management

Each departmental set of metrics should maintain the theme of centering on customer-specific metrics.

At the core of establishing best practices is making a switch from traditional accounting to throughput accounting. Traditional accounting metrics unfortunately obscure our view of those measures that can actually contribute to improved business performance. In the past, measures such as product cost, labor cost, general overhead, burden, and finished goods inventory cost were evaluated and measured. These costs cannot be leveraged to improve your performance. Conversely, customer- centric metrics look at the value-added elements such as on-time delivery, lead time reduction, throughput, and profitability.

Examples of key performance indicators (KPIs) to consider in each departmental area include:
PRODUCT

Product lead-time in (hours/days/weeks)
On-time delivery percentage
Design to delivery time
Conformance to specification percentage
Market-share ranking and percentage on an annual basis

SALES

Customer retention year over year
Maintenance plan renewals (if applicable)
New customer adds by month/year, and by region and channel
Sales volume by:
Month
Region
Rep./Channel
Promotion

PRODUCT

Throughput value
Throughput increase by month and by year
Supplier on-time delivery
Supplier return percentage

SERVICE

Support call time to first response
First-call resolution percentage
Customer satisfaction ratings/percentages by month
Warranty and repair tickets as a percent of customer base

Once the metrics have been established by department, each functional area should use a Business Intelligence dashboard or reporting mechanism to track specific KPI improvements, and make changes where necessary.

Colonial Mills, Inc. (CMI) is a leading manufacturer of braided-texture rugs and accessories in the United States. Based in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, it was facing more foreign competition and increasing pressure to lower prices. The company realized that it needed to upgrade its ERP system to maintain its market position as industry leader in on-time shipment and low turnaround time on orders to shipment.

When CMI began evaluating its enterprise resource planning (ERP) system with the operational goal of improving on-time shipment rates and reducing the number of days from order to shipment, it realized the current system, including the latest upgrades, was far from adequate. Bill Turgeon, CIO at CMI, explains, "We had no visibility into gross profits and costs, with 150,000 items that needed billing but were not in the system." The technology goal at CMI was to install an ERP system that would enable entry, tracking, and shipment of a product within a five-day timeframe, and would provide quick visibility for identifying a product that appeared to exceed the five-day standard.

Notes Turgeon, "The two most important measurements determining the health of our business are the on-time delivery percentage, and the number of days from the time an order comes in until the time it ships out the door. Before implementing InforTM ERP SyteLine, life was a nightmare. The bill of materials that needed to be in the system to provide visibility required too much time to enter, and that process was error-prone. Our numbers showed 81% on-time delivery, and 7.5 days to shipment."

After implementing Infor ERP SyteLine, Turgeon asserts that the process became smooth and efficient. "Now we can view all details within the manufacturing process—the gross profit per customer and gross profit per item. We can also run the financial reports at any point during the month to check our status against budgets, alerting us to potential problems so we can react in time. The company quickly achieved 92% on-time delivery and only 3.75 days to shipment—a dramatic improvement. Most of our competition quotes delivery of 20 days or longer."

With the introduction of new tools to measure performance, companies can leverage technology to proactively manage exceptions and gain insight into key metrics and business trends. Most organizations have also found that exposing these key performance measures and scorecards to all employees, such as posting monthly trend results on a bulletin board, greatly assists in gaining company-wide support for improvement efforts. People like to aim for goals, and making goals visible and tangible can help you to motivate your workforce. Establishing a reward system to promote achievement and to solicit ideas for improvement also helps to sustain your business improvement initiative.
Product innovation and quality

Although most manufacturers may have established themselves in their respective markets as the leaders through some unique innovation or service, markets continually evolve and change— sometimes with little warning, and go unnoticed until a customer calls to say they are taking their business elsewhere. As markets change and larger global competitors emerge, it is easy for manufacturers to lose sight of their core competencies and the qualities that have made them unique.

For many companies, a focus on near-term sales and responding to the needs of one or two larger customers can easily result in a short-term gain, but could also allow a competitor to swoop in and introduce improved products that have new features and broader appeal. Regularly checking the pulse of all customers and the market is more critical than ever, including research beyond their current likes and dislikes.

Companies also need to evaluate any new and emerging challenges that exist for their customers by conducting executive-level roundtables. What keeps them up at night? And what are the challenges threatening their businesses? What products and services do they see a need for in the future? Is their business growing, declining, or leveling off?

Understanding where their markets are going and what is driving their customers' business will enable manufacturers to continually innovate and improve their products. In other words, what is most important to their customers?

In reviewing the market, companies also need to look at how fast competitors are coming out with new products. And as new standards and regulations emerge, how quickly are companies responding versus the competition?

Using the performance measure of time to market, a company can gauge how long it takes to bring its product to market from concept to first shipment. How does this compare in the industry? Most likely, industry data is available providing the typical new product introduction, and tools exist to measure and manage this process. Market windows are continuing to shorten, and taking too long to bring product to market can significantly impact your market share and revenue growth. In addition, customers will gain a sense of which suppliers seem to be able to introduce new innovative products quicker and more frequently. Involving the customer base in the design and product launch process can establish a level of expectation and anticipation for new product launches, and establish your organization as the leading innovator in your market.

The video game console market is a prime example of innovation, time to market, and product quality being critical success factors. The competition between Sony, Microsoft®, and Nintendo® has been fierce for years and has seen many changes in the leadership position due to these factors. Although originally the market leader in the 1990s, Nintendo found itself unseated by rival Sony, and eventually by Microsoft, which was new to the video game industry. Sony captured the top spot from Nintendo first by leveraging improved display graphic resolution and providing a better overall user experience. When the market evolved again and display technology jumped to high definition (HD) resolutions, the leader was able to leverage both time to market and innovation to capture the lead. Microsoft and Sony both had HD versions of their products in development, but Microsoft was able to deliver first, making it the market leader almost overnight. Both of these changes in market leadership evolved largely as a result of both suppliers leveraging innovation through common technology advances accessible to all suppliers. However, Microsoft was able to dominate through its ability to shorten time to market.

Microsoft's dominance could have been even greater had it not encountered product quality issues soon after units began to ship. These quality issues, coupled with sometimes scarce inventory, allowed Sony to maintain some of its brand loyalty.

The market then saw another change when Nintendo, almost forgotten in the industry, developed its own innovation rather than wait for hardware suppliers to pave the way. In launching the WiiTM console, Nintendo provided the added differentiation and innovation of a motion-sensitive remote control wand, allowing for a revolutionary, interactive video-game experience. Through this innovation, Nintendo has regained the leadership spot and broadened its market to a whole new target audience of buyers from all age groups and demographics. Through its ability to introduce its own innovation, Nintendo now outsells the Sony and Microsoft products combined. And in spite of Nintendo's extended absence from the competition, it was rewarded for its ability to eventually provide critical new innovation. Microsoft, although plagued by some early quality issues, was able to capitalize on time to market. Therefore, innovation and time to market became the most significant critical success factors in this market.

The lesson learned from these manufacturers is that even with stiff competition and a loss of market share, these obstacles can be overcome. Providing innovative new products or adding more value to an existing product that exceeds the needs and requirements of the target market can make a difference. Although recovery from quality issues is possible, minimizing them is critical to taking advantage of a strategic market window of opportunity. Consider capabilities that can help to bring new innovations to market faster and mitigate quality issues in the process, including:

Centralized document and project management to ensure that all relevant and up-to-date product planning and lifecycle documents can be accessed by team members
Company-wide task management and collaboration tools to manage product launch activities, access employee work overload conditions, reset priorities, and manage human resource assignments
Workflow technology to push information proactively through the organization so that the project stays on track
Non-Conformance Management (NCM) to detect, assign, track, and address exceptions immediately for reduced scrap and rework at the shop-floor level

Delivery performance and speed

As product lifecycles and new product introduction timelines shorten, customers respond positively toward supplier performance and responsiveness. They also have a lower tolerance for missed due dates and a supplier's inability to respond quickly to changing needs and priorities. Therefore, manufacturers must employ strategies to improve delivery performance and shorten order-to-delivery cycle times as well as be able to respond flexibly and rapidly to short-term demand requirements. Doing so can be a strategic advantage and can foster long-term customer retention. But it must be done consistently. Employing a lean methodology is one of the best ways to ensure faster delivery, significantly reduce production costs, and improve profitability.

Traditionally, manufacturers have adopted push-based production methodologies such as those promoted by the use of Material Requirements Planning (MRP) systems. Even today, many contemporary ERP systems continue to use this methodology that promotes standard lead times and infinite production capacity. These planning constraints actually came into existence as a result of make-to-stock-oriented production models and computing power limitations in the 1960s and '70s. Companies have also traditionally adopted cost accounting methods that focus on individual unit cost reductions and grouping large runs of the same product together to economize on production set-ups. The net effect is increased work in process, increased inventory, and accompanying increased costs and lower profitability.

Lean manufacturing, on the other hand, employs a pull-based or demand-driven methodology that is predicated on only producing product directly as the result of a customer order. The notion of traditional cost accounting is replaced with a concept of throughput accounting, which looks at overall cost reduction. Throughput accounting focuses only on the variable costs, such as materials and outside services. The company focus becomes one of selling more products and manufacturing only to customer-specific orders. As a practice, lean manufacturing can help the organization free up additional capacity to work on customer-driven orders once the company is no longer simply building to forecasted demand.

As an example, Kaydon Corporation, a US-based designer and manufacturer of proprietary, custom- engineered products such as filters, bearings, rings, and seals, was looking to grow its business and strengthen its operational excellence by focusing on strategic initiatives in manufacturing efficiencies and process improvement. Both lean manufacturing and Six Sigma principles had been adopted throughout the company. Lean "thinking" and Six Sigma, according to Kaydon, includes operational efforts to eliminate redundant costs and nonvalue-added activities, an implementation of a proven set of tools and processes aimed at reducing variability, and developing products and services to serve customer needs.

By leveraging Infor ERP SyteLine as its technology infrastructure, Kaydon was able to embrace these philosophies and show positive financial results. "The Infor solution goes hand in hand with our lean manufacturing efforts, which is a key and vital part of delivering a world-class product and world-class value to our customer," adds Al Hubbard, Kaydon plant manager. "At Kaydon we pride ourselves in making customized products for our customers, and Infor has truly helped us achieve that," concludes Chris Hermann, Kaydon production control manager. Before using Infor applications, Kaydon's lead times increased and customers felt the impact. The company needed to find a way to reduce lead times by aligning its systems from the beginning to the end of the manufacturing process.

With the implementation of Infor ERP SyteLine, information flows through the factory more efficiently, and has yielded results including:

Improved lead times—from 12-14 weeks to 3-5 days
Increased delivery performance—by 20%
Improved inventory levels—70% maintained
Reduction in administrative and clerical work
Redeployment of employees for more strategic and tactical planning
Elimination of waste and downtime from manufacturing processes
More accurate information for the shop floor
Reduction in expedited shipment rates by eliminating the need to rush every order
Minimized customization times with better information the first time

Adopting a lean manufacturing philosophy does require a new way of thinking because it requires business process change and cooperation from all supporting organizations. Critical to the successful transition to lean is company-wide buy-in—that is, endorsement and active participation by the CEO. Lean manufacturing can also have many other positive effects, including elimination of product defects, reduced procurement transactional costs, reduced lead times that support demand-driven and pull-based strategies, and on-time delivery accuracy to ensure there is not a negative impact on the demand side of delivery performance. This more agile and response- driven philosophy improves on-time delivery, helps the bottom line, and helps to secure customer loyalty.

To be truly lean and agile, however, manufacturers must also have lean, flexible, and agile extended supply-chain partners.
Lean and "green"

While product innovation, time to market, and quality improvement have long been a visible concern of manufacturers, managing equipment assets has not typically been at the forefront of the manufacturing agenda. However, with the rising costs of fuel and energy, asset management should be the next step in addressing business performance and customer retention.

Manufacturers have always had an eye on the usage of equipment and facilities since proper asset management can help to sustain the life of the asset, as well as reduce maintenance and repair costs. However, many progressive companies are realizing that these traditional approaches to enterprise asset management are no longer enough. Increasingly, manufacturing leaders realize that they also must proactively manage the combined challenges of rising energy costs and increasing public and government focus on environmental concerns, such as emissions of CO2 and other pollutants. Minimizing energy consumption to contain costs, combined with raising the stakes as a "green" or environmentally friendly organization, can set the manufacturer apart from its competitors.

To be considered a progressive company today, a manufacturer must surpass government and compliance mandates, and demonstrate true corporate citizenship that extends beyond the minimum requirements. Called "social responsibility," "environmental sustainability," or "environment commitment," the leading Fortune 500 organizations have embraced this notion of corporate citizenship. In fact, 18 of the top 20 Fortune 500, which include representation from energy, retail, manufacturing, banking, insurance, and healthcare industries, have dedicated content related to their corporate citizenship policies on their website.

A good place to start with a corporate citizenship initiative is to build enterprise-wide awareness of company policies on a safe and healthy work environment, including any efforts to minimize energy consumption and reduce hazardous materials and pollutants in the workplace and into the environment. Next, add asset performance to your key performance measures, including energy consumption. By integrating energy with other asset performance parameters, you will have a more complete picture of how each asset is performing and the impact on your business. In the process, be sure to:

Consider tracking energy consumption for individual asset.
Monitor assets for compliance with existing and impending regulation.
Incorporate asset sustainability alert management capabilities to monitor how equipment is functioning against established KPIs with notification of issues to prevent equipment failure.
Include preventative maintenance and action management capabilities to determine the appropriate action needed to address an identified anomaly or event.
Use asset sustainability planning tools to facilitate design changes in asset infrastructure to reduce energy consumption, lower emissions, and save money. (Using the GAS index on sustainability, integrate energy metrics with other asset performance data to determine whether a piece of equipment should be repaired or replaced.)
Include energy and other environmental factors into the asset maintenance decision process.

By better understanding the energy performance of each asset, you can drive out inefficiency and cost from your operations. You can also begin to integrate energy metrics with other asset performance data to determine whether a piece of equipment should be repaired or replaced, or identify the most energy-efficient supplier technology that is compatible with your asset infrastructure. It will also enable you to begin to compare alternative energy scenarios. Alternative energy can not only allow you to practice good environmental stewardship, but can also provide additional cost savings. Most states now provide energy efficiency tax credits and renewable energy rebates to companies that meet their environmental program criteria.

As larger companies take the lead in establishing "green" initiatives, SMBs will need to follow suit to compete. Despite the effort involved, the benefits of doing so are significant. Traditional asset management practices enable you to gain insight into only about 35% of your asset expenses. And although that has typically enabled organizations to make tangible improvements in the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of their asset infrastructure, it hasn't addressed energy consumption, which is by far the largest expense in most operations and maintenance budgets.

Taking asset management to the next level will enable proactive management of rising energy costs, minimize the emission of CO2 and other pollutants, and demonstrate an ecologically responsible posture in the market. In addition to the cost savings, it can be a compelling differentiator and marketing message to like-minded organizations that are looking to partner with eco-responsible suppliers. Now you can go green and have a positive business case at the same time.

Because Mohawk Fine Papers, a producer of premium writing and printing papers, has many large, high-profile customers, social responsibility has been a growing concern. And with growing awareness of climate change, many of these companies are seeking to reduce not only their own environmental footprints, but also those of their suppliers. "Large companies continue to need paper in order to communicate. But the medium needs to match the message," says Joe O'Connor, senior vice president of sales at Mohawk. "If you're going to produce a piece that discusses your company's environmental initiative, it had better be on a product that helps you speak that message."

To meet such client needs, Mohawk now designs and markets environmentally friendly papers. Mohawk has a historic commitment to stewardship of natural resources. It adopted an environmental management program more than 30 years ago, and in 1992 voluntarily capped emissions on its New York operations. It has also been involved in leadership programs with the US Environmental Protection Agency, including the Green Power Partnership and the Climate Leaders Program. But in response to the new demands from customers, the company redoubled its efforts.

Most recently, Mohawk has developed papers that have a high percentage of recycled content, which require less energy to make. It has worked with the nonprofit Forest Stewardship Council to ensure that the virgin fiber it does purchase is harvested in a sustainable manner. It has invested in renewable energy, particularly in the form of wind-generated electricity. And it has purchased carbon offsets for the nonrenewable energy that it does use.

Despite recent improvements in sourcing renewable energy, an even more sustainable approach would be to require less energy in the first place to drive down internal energy consumption. "The company has set a priority on energy management in part," O'Connor adds, "because it makes financial sense. To us, the true definition of sustainability today is where environmental performance equals financial performance." Given the rising prices of energy, reducing consumption can lower costs and thus increase profits even as it reduces carbon dioxide emissions.

But to gain more control over energy consumption, Mohawk needed more information. In particular, it wanted increased insight into what was happening on the factory floor. Infor's Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) solution will provide Mohawk with comprehensive information about the company's assets, which will lead to better decision making. "I think the most important thing we'll gain is visibility into the entire lifecycle of our equipment," according to Paul Stamas, vice president of IT at Mohawk. "We're casting a wider net on the parameters and inputs and outputs that we can affect. We'll further our efforts to move from a reactive mode of doing maintenance to a proactive mode of doing preventive and predictive maintenance. Such information will also standardize the way assets are treated across the company. Everyone will be performing maintenance on the equipment the same way," says Stamas. "And, with Infor EAM, our executives will have visibility into which equipment is consuming the most energy at any particular time."

Mohawk purchases 100 million kilowatt hours of energy per year from its green sources. If it achieves a 10% reduction, and prices remain at the current 8 to 10 cents per kilowatt hour, Mohawk will save hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. These cost reductions go directly to the company's bottom line. Another factor, not always measured in financial reports but perhaps equally important to society as a whole, is CO2 emissions. Future regulatory schemes, such as carbon cap or cap-and-trade programs, may make it possible for Mohawk to monetize these savings eventually. But even today, such impressive environmental initiatives improve the company's brand outside the traditional selling channels. "Essentially, we didn't used to have a brand," says O'Connor. "We have no retail distribution; our paper isn't sold at Staples or Office Depot. But with our corporate customers, we've been able to build a brand around environmental management." In other words, environmental stewardship has led to not only lower costs, but higher sales. "At the end of the day, we are looking to sell a product," says O'Connor. "We manufacture a product and we want it to be sold. But we've found that the sales process is also about aligning values, what we do as a company and what each of our customers does as a company. And compared with our competitors, we are continually investing more time and effort and capital into our environmental philosophy. The EAM solution is just one example of a set of values that has really resonated with our customers."
Proactive alert and exception management

The final step to improving customer retention and business performance is to leverage technology that can help to assist in proactively responding quickly to critical supply chain activities, exceptions, or events. Supply chain complexity has increased significantly due to suppliers and materials being sourced on a global basis, and customers are demanding faster turnaround times and responsiveness on their orders. Given these dynamics, manufacturers need to be more adaptive than ever before. When they encounter exceptions, such as last-minute changes to orders, manufacturers need to be able to sense, respond, and act appropriately to ensure their customers get the products they want in the right quantity, and at the right time, place, and price. They also need to be able to have upstream and downstream visibility of their sourcing, production, and order fulfillment transactions so that corrections can be made swiftly, and not impact the quality, timeliness, or profitability of their customer orders.

Employing technology that can trigger proactive alerts when exceptions occur becomes critical to heading off potential delays or added cost burdens. Having the ability to respond to changing customer demand in a positive and controlled fashion can be an advantage. Customers respond to adaptive suppliers, and entrust more business to them in the future. However, as a manufacturer sets the expectation that it can respond and support change, this expectation can increase the risk of exceptions at a number of points along the supply chain. Having technology that can proactively notify the appropriate individual or groups of individuals of changes through email and other forms of communication is crucial.

Del Monte Foods, one of the country's largest and most well-known producers of premium quality food and pet products for the US retail market, wanted to improve its efficiency in managing exceptions, even though it had well-established processes for alerting employees to existing or potential order fulfillment problems. "We had people manhandling the information in our existing ERP system, trying to find if there were problems in their areas of responsibility," according to Andy Wojewodka, director of business systems and decision support, Del Monte Foods. "Once they uncovered a problem, they had to go to other screens to find out what action they should take." To eliminate this inefficiency, Del Monte Foods deployed an event management solution from Infor.

"The solution was not only helping our users find a needle in the haystack, but also giving them the right information they needed to respond to issues as they surfaced," he says. "As a real- life example, Infor Event Management has the capability to help us evaluate the order pull for specific products, on a specific day, determine which distribution center should be responsible for fulfilling the order, and whether there is sufficient inventory. For situations where there is a shortage of the right product, the solution provides users with information about incoming re- supply and, if that is going to be inadequate, the steps they should take. I can see business activity monitoring being of value to many other areas of our operations," Wojewodka says. "It's as basic as informing someone of an event that would have a negative impact on a given process, and then supplying the information in a meaningful form so they can take preventative action."

In addition to dealing with real-time exceptions, event management technology can also be leveraged to expose trends—when and where changes and exceptions are occurring so that some amount of anticipated change can be planned for, with procedures established to improve responsiveness. For example, change events may be heightened and added staff needed during specific seasons or campaigns. Organizations can plan for these events and increase staffing levels in advance to ensure the transaction volumes can be handled appropriately.

A common mistake an SMB manufacturer makes is to focus only on the internal operations of its plant. By encompassing the entire supply chain, including both the supply and demand side, in its thinking, it can significantly improve the speed and effectiveness of new product development, procurement, and order fulfillment. The SMB can also optimize its supply chain interactions at every link in the supply chain through technology supports that trigger proactive event management activities. Event management technology can be instrumental in helping companies to achieve:

Quicker routing of order status information to customers and supply chain partners
Improved on-time delivery performance
Faster resolution of supply chain problems
Fewer last-minute "fire drills" caused by a faulty alert system
Improved ability to detect the root causes of problems
Lower purchase prices, fewer expense overruns, and improved cash flow
Reduction and elimination of excess inventory and stock-outs
Improved teamwork, collaboration, and employee effectiveness
Improved supply chain efficiency and effectiveness

Summary

Maintaining strong business performance and retaining a loyal customer base requires continual vigilance and assessment. Establishing key metrics that focus on value-added and customer- centric performance allows manufacturers to operate as an agile enterprise and stay close to the pulse of market changes and dynamics. Performance tools such as dashboards and reporting can help to monitor performance and enable better and faster decision making. More importantly, manufacturers need to focus on innovation, quality, time to market, and event responsiveness as critical success factors when it comes to sustaining strong business performance and customer retention. Each has the potential to increase revenue and reduce operational costs for improved profitability, and can strengthen customer relationships.

Keeping close to your customers is one of the best ways to see where the market is heading and enable you to address customer service issues and market changes before they impact your business. Even if you think customer satisfaction levels are high, it is important to keep in touch with where customers are going, what their expectations are, how their business is changing, and how they can be better served. Businesses need to continually assess the current state of the market they are in, analyzing who they are competing with, and who they could be competing with in the future. Our global economy continues to sprout new competitors and challenges, but working proactively to adopt and rethink your key business metrics, focus on continual innovation, quality improvement, delivery performance, and customer responsiveness can help you to improve business performance and sustain ongoing customer loyalty.

Why Are CRM and Analytics Intrinsically Connected?

2010-09-15T23:13:00.003-07:00

As its name suggests, customer relationship management (CRM) focuses on building enterprise profitability through the service and management of customer behavior and processes. It centers on the collection and analyses of customer-derived information to exploit this knowledge to better meet customer needs and business objectives. The APICS Dictionary describes CRM as a marketing philosophy where information is analyzed to provide marketing and sales with the necessary information to service customers' existing and potential needs. Thus, along with account management, catalog, and order entry, major commercial CRM software application areas include customer service and support (CSS), call centers, sales force automation (SFA), and marketing automation (MA). Of these, that latter two areas, SFA and MA best illustrate the interconnection between CRM and analytics.

With each new advance in technology, especially the proliferation of self-service channels like the Internet and wireless application protocol (WAP) phones, more elements of the customer service relationship is being managed electronically. Organizations are therefore looking for ways to personalize on-line experiences through tools such as help desk software, e-mail organizers, and Web development applications. For more information on other aspects of CRM, see CRM is Busting Out of Its Britches: Operational, Analytical, and Collaborative CRM Is Born.

Many CRM software vendors focused their first marketing modules to generate and convey leads to the sales force. SFA thus refers to the application of technology that enables selling through all channels, including field sales, telesales, selling partners, Web selling, and retail. The goal is to integrate technology with optimal processes providing continuous improvement in sales effectiveness, as well as providing balance and optimization to each enterprise sales channel.

But, while SFA was designed to equip a sales force to close deals, it typically does not influence customer adoption, which is the tenet at the heart of CRM. SFA is about acquiring new customers, but the CRM is also concerned with identifying, servicing, retaining, and increasing profitable customer relationships. The technologies that CRM harnesses should enable greater customer insight, increase customer access, create more effective interactions with customers and trading partners, and be integrated throughout customer channels and back-office enterprise functions

Thus to enable an organization to become more customer-centric, marketing departments must lead by example and improve the management of their operations, including better allocation of marketing resources with the highest value opportunities. This feat is only possible through the improved orchestration of the marketing function—marketing automation (MA). MA eventually leads to customer relationship optimization by applying customer insight and intelligence to plan the execution of customer interactions.

Building a better understanding of customer preferences to better serve their needs and increase their loyalty is certainly the motto for the new generation of MA systems. MA involves analyzing and automating the marketing process through information technology (IT) tools to allocate marketing resources to activities, channels, and media that will best meet customer needs while delivering profitability to the company. Its functional components include customer data cleansing, analysis tools, and campaign management systems. MA also enables new metrics, such as customer profitability, lifetime value, and wallet share to supplement the traditional metrics of market share and penetration.

All of these tools focus on determining what an enterprise's strategy should be during each customer interaction and these interactions fall within the following three categories: outbound campaigns, event-triggered interactions, and inbound interactions. For example, target marketing focuses marketing activities specifically on those people who are most likely to buy a company's products and services. Data gathered on people who use the Internet enables companies to identify and focus on more likely candidates. Retention efficiency is a measurement of how well a company creates repeat customers. Marketing cost analysis is the study and evaluation of the relative profitability or costs of different marketing operations in terms of customers, marketing units, commodities, territories, or marketing activities. Cost accounting is also typically used.

These tools are used to replace or enhance human intelligence by scanning through massive storehouses of data to discover meaningful new correlations, patterns and trends by using pattern recognition technologies and statistics. Likewise, predictive analytics drills even deeper. It is a statistical method that includes all analytics to predict the probable future outcome of an event and falls under data mining, a class of database applications that look for hidden patterns and support decision-making by forecasting the outcomes of different scenarios.

Ultimately, given the depth of information MA processes can pull out, MA is an integral part of a sound CRM strategy that can help drive organizational alignment through its analysis of markets, customers, and segments. For example, it can help guide marketing campaigns and identify segments of the customer base that is likely to cancel their subscription. For more info, see Marketing Automation: Coming of Age Slowly.

Campaign Management

Once patterns and trends are discerned, the next step is to apply what has been learned. Overall, basic campaign management provides capabilities such as planning campaigns targeted at segmented audiences; keeping a history of all the campaigns that have been run; tracking and analyzing the response to various products and target segments; and executing and tracking responses, which help in generating leads for sales.

Campaign management and e-mail marketing functions were among the first modules for CRM vendors to include in their product offerings. Siebel Systems, E.piphany, Pivotal (now part of chinadotcom/CDC), DoubleClick, and Aprimo are some of the providers of such functionality. By using a campaign management tool, marketers can design multilayered marketing campaigns filtered by customer segments, and use the contact center capability to reach their target through multiple channels such as phone, portals, e-mail, direct mail, and personal digital assistant (PDA). Another functional category that falls within this realm and is also widely provided for is electronic marketing, which offers a web-accessible, enterprise resource that manages and delivers essential information to marketing's customers, both internal (sales, customer support, etc.) and external (prospects, media, partners, etc.). Integrated content management and customization have added value to the basic features of e-mail marketing by avoiding the pitfalls of traditional mass marketing.

Marketing analytics adds a new dimension to basic campaign management. With marketing analytics, marketers can conduct customer behavioral analysis and understand key issues such as propensity to buy. Traditional CRM vendors such as Pivotal, PeopleSoft (now part of Oracle), and Siebel have been offering marketing analytics mostly through former acquisitions. Marketing analytics is also offered by other pure MA players such as Chordiant, E.piphany, SAS Institute, and Unica.

SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/why-are-crm-and-analytics-intrinsically-connected-18114/

Marketing Automation: Coming of Age Slowly

2010-09-15T23:13:00.001-07:00

The debate about the future of the marketing automation and management market, as a stand-alone sub segment of the entire customer relationship management (CRM) market, continues, partly owing to mixed signals coming from relevant point solutions providers. On one hand, recent demise, and buyout of Xchange by Amdocs (see Xchange Adds To The List Of CRM Point Solutions' Casualties) was the last in the array of less-fortunate point players. At the time prior to Xchange's assets auction, allegedly over twenty companies expressed interest in buying Xchange's assets, and in maintaining its products and supporting its customers, including much better-performing direct competitors Chordiant Software, DoubleClick, SAS, and especially Unica Corporation. While the upbeat marketing management software vendor Unica (www.unicacorp.com) was initially marked as a very likely buyer of Xchange, the vendor, however, slightly surprisingly elected not to make a bid for the Xchange's assets. Rather, Unica has since announced a migration plan from Xchange's solutions to its Affinium platform, given it has already migrated approximately 15 percent of Xchange's customer base to Affinium, and the vendor touts that regardless of which company has taken ultimate ownership of Xchange's remaining assets, converting to Affinium will be the most attractive solution for Xchange customers.

The CRM market as well as its marketing automation sub-segment remains both the land of opportunity albeit with many sinister patches of quicksand traps for those with small footprint breadth in the field. While the biggest or the richest packaged suite CRM or enterprise resource planning (ERP) providers have been able to hang onto flat new sales, possibly modest declines, or in more rare cases possibly modest growth, only a lucky and more probably the most apt few with a true differentiation in a selected number of markets have even bucked the trend and have shown some enviable growth.

Every business cycle begins with the attraction of the customer through sales and marketing. This hopefully results in an order management and fulfillment process and ends with a customer service, which can involve anything from field installations through to enquiry and complaint management. All of these steps have to be executed well without exception, since otherwise, the customer will end up on a competitor's list of customers. The "64,000-dollar" question is how all business processes work together. In the electronic world, the degree of flexibility and efficiency of collaborative processes relating to the customer life cycle, product life cycle, and service life cycle, to name but a few, will be a big determinant of losers and winners. To that end, there seems to be a dichotomy between the marketing automation promise of benefits enterprise-wide and the way it has often been misused.

Appeal of Marketing Automation

The importance of finding and keeping customers has only increased lately amid diminishing new sales opportunities. The appeal of marketing automation has come from its ability to tailor marketing campaigns and to track their effectiveness and control marketing costs and to perform better-targeted, finer-grained, multi-stage and multi-channel campaigns. These applications thus aim at helping organizations segment their customer bases, identify specific customer needs that are not that obvious to a naked eye, and build promotions and personalized campaigns designed to meet those needs and thereby create additional revenue.

This is all done by analyzing large volumes of scattered data, and then by identifying patterns or trends that would not otherwise be apparent (particularly if one is to notice an opportunity from a non-event, such as a customer has not used the ATM in the last month). With this information in hand, enterprises can create custom campaigns and track their effectiveness, and they can also leverage it to drive other processes, such as real time, customer service interactions or cross-sell opportunities (for example, customer service agents recommend products ad hoc upon customer needs over the phone, or real time offers and promotions personalized to customers navigating a web site).

In a nutshell, marketing automation software should be able to capture, blend, mine, and analyze large amounts of customer data from multiple sources, including online registries or directories, customer databases, flat files, billing systems, and external customer lists. That data is then used to target a consistent message across multiple channels to specific segmented (profiled) customer sets. Theoretically, these applications may justify the ROI rationale through

* A more effective customer acquisition, owing to extremely focused campaigns that are personalized and tailored to specific customer segments

* Increased customer retention, owing to improved value for existing customers by continually presenting personalized product and service marketing messages to more profitable customers, and through effective cross-selling opportunities that leverages purchasing histories and increases the likelihood of repeat business

* Improved marketing strategies in almost real time, via the ability to examine many indicators such as customer response rates, conversion rates, web site metrics, abandon rates and general demographic data to continually fine-tune customer segments and profiles, and discontinue marketing approaches that are futile if not even counterproductive

* Cost reduction, via the ability to evaluate the effectiveness of campaigns and to identify successful strategies, to readdress ineffective campaigns and to manage the costs of all campaigns within the organization

Analysis of the Marketing Automation Market

The marketing automation market has been fragmented since its advent, and one could discern three major sub-categories of solutions:

1) marketing operations,

2) marketing analytics, and

3) campaign management solutions. Marketing operations software aims at managing and tracking the costs, resources and goals of multiple marketing programs, and campaigns across multiple lines of business (LOBs). Marketing analytics solutions, as the name suggests, were designed to capture customer data from various channels and data sources, and to analyze (i.e., "slice and dice") that data in different angles for customer segmentation, profiling and personalization purposes. Finally, campaign management software attempts to design, schedule, execute,and measure the effectiveness of multichannel (including direct mail, telemarketing, customer service centers, computer-telephony-interaction (CTI), the web pages, e-mail, etc.) marketing campaigns that leverage the input from marketing analytics.

The other way to segment these applications would be to discern whether they are designed to primarily improve the use of marketing resources or to improve the value proposition to customers, or both. The focus of the first is on designing and creating a marketing strategy, determining the best allocation of marketing budgets, managing marketing staff skills, and effectively tracking and supporting marketing processes. On the other hand, the latter applications define and communicate the value proposition of the organization to the customer, ensuring the profitable creation, development and maintenance of the customer relationship. All three previously identified categories of applications would contribute to both purposes, particularly marketing analytics, although marketing operations will seemingly be more associated with the use of marketing resources, and campaign management would conversely be aligned with customer relationship optimization.

However, despite cited benefits of the applications, many marketing automation specialists have, for various reasons, been a far cry from success or, at least, not had an easy time. Most of pure-play providers have been either acquired or gone bust during the past few years including Xchange, Prime Response, BroadBase, Protagona, and MarketFirst, and those that remain independent (such as Aprimo, SAS, NCR Teradata, Blue Martini Software, DoubleClick, and Unica) are apparently creating broader marketing suites to cover all the above-mentioned bases.

One reason for this is the ability of large packaged ERP or CRM suite providers to slow or even stall enterprise applications buying decisions even well before their serious market entry. As a result, the niche vendors have to battle to maintain their market dominance despite strong solutions. Meanwhile the large vendors are still developing astute solutions and market credibility, and attempting to sell these based primarily on the integration of their limited functionality with the rest of their suites and a promise of deeper and complete functionality some time in the future. This category would include the likes Siebel Systems, Chordiant Software, Pivotal, E.piphany, Kana, Onyx, Amdocs, PeopleSoft, SAP, and Oracle.

Incidentally, Applix, with its recent exit from the CRM market (see Will A Big Fish's Splash Cause Minnows' Flush Out Of The CRM Pond?), may exemplify the dark side of the CRM medal nowadays, as droves of smaller pure-play CRM vendors have been hard pressed to survive owing to the combined effect of CRM users' disenchantment with the products' hardly ever materialized benefits, compounded with the tight IT budgets due to the delay of the worldwide economic recovery and with Microsoft's entry into already crowded place. Although many mid-market pure-CRM solutions have been maturing and improving, they must continue to facilitate integration with back-end systems, given the increasing awareness of this need for full-fledged benefits of CRM. Further, they must also provide the differentiation through verifiable ROI metrics, and indispensable features and functions germane to selected industry verticals.

Larger CRM vendors have, on their side, been weathering the storm by relying on cross-selling broader CRM application suites to their existing and potential customers, involving also components such as sales force automation (SFA), employee relationship management (ERM) or call centers. Marketing automation point solution providers have also fallen prey to pessimistic investors and diminishing global corporations' appetites for technology. They have taken the impact of the slowdown because of a more budding market yet to create the market awareness of its true value proposition, and because of the slower adoption of information technology (IT) in marketing departments (such as a cultural resistance to software automation, which is perceived as restrictive to the art of marketing, with an oversight that automation might actually eliminate the low-value activity to release more time for true creative work).

The fact is that most CRM deployments so far have focused on operational aspects like automating tasks in processing interactions with customers, whether that is registering a complaint in call center, closing a sale, or responding to a customer or prospect's query. The irony is that these transactions are often left to languish in multiple database islands dispersed around the organization, and not used to refine marketing campaigns or to improve customer service. Marketing is possibly the only remaining major business function yet to revise its core processes so it can take advantage of IT that can cut time, costs, and improve the quality of its operations.

Moreover, unlike SFA or customer service, marketing has an effect on customers throughout the entire relationship tenure, since, for example focus groups, marketing campaigns, sales collaterals, and even aftermarket activities (such as warranty registration and service calls) present opportunities for companies to ascertain and control how their products are perceived in the market. With information being disseminated and gathered from many diverse sources, a unified marketing platform could be an instrumental to improve enterprises' demand and revenue management strategies.

SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/marketing-automation-coming-of-age-slowly-17282/

When Customer Relationships Meets Business Intelligence Marketing Analysis

2010-09-15T23:11:00.000-07:00

Strategic moves by SAS Institute (see Part Two of this note) are a response to the requirement that modern business intelligence (BI) suites be able to access and present key business measures for sales, customer service, the supply chain, financials, purchasing, inventory, and many other areas. In addition to these functions, BI suites must also provide the ability to use information building blocks as the basis for comparisons, calculations, ratios, and metrics. Users should be able to dynamically combine business measures to derive key performance indicators (KPI), such as product profitability, margin analysis, book-to-bill ratios, return on investment (ROI), and other vital metrics. Typical data that manufacturing enterprises should know about, on a daily basis, include inventory situation, rejected items, throughput, booked sales, order status, on-time shipments, and warranty levels. In each of these categories, users may want to get behind the numbers and trends to discern the root causes or find out what items, regions, channel partners, or customers are involved.

Part Three of the SAS: Striving to Sustain Leadership series.

For many reasons, SAS's alliance with Amdocs (NASDAQ: DOX) and partnership with Aprimo might be one of the few vendor partnerships where both customers and vendors benefit. By including customer, supplier, and information technology-related (IT) intelligence, SAS has a product functional scope that moves well beyond financial BI solutions to espouse a holistic corporate performance management (CPM) vision. However, the company will still face strong competition in many vertical markets from other leading BI vendors, such as Cognos and Business Objects. We believe SAS could further strengthen its position and enter more vertical markets by espousing a stronger original equipment manufacturer (OEM) or independent software vendor (ISV) partner strategy, which enables third parties to add their vertical, industry-specific experience, and accompanying front-ends and tools to SAS' analytical engine. The resulting packages could be resold into large and mid-market companies in those verticals.

In addition to the ongoing competition from a plethora of traditional BI players, or from statistical package market players, such as Insightful's S-Plus and SPSS, SAS is also facing a new nemesis in Siebel. Siebel designed Siebel Enterprise Analytics from the scratch and with data integration in mind. In two years, this product has grown from a few early adopters to become one of the vendor's fastest-growing, and possibly the largest product lines in 2004.

Needless to say, Siebel has long been a customer relationship management (CRM) archrival to Aprimo in the realm of enterprise marketing management (EMM), but it has also posed challenges to Amdocs in the call center and customer service space within the telecommunication sector. Both Siebel and Amdocs the largest two remaining pure-play CRM vendors and the competition with Amdocs has only intensified after Siebel acquired the billing and customer self-service provider eDocs, in late 2004. Given Siebel's recent intrusion into the BI market, we might even stand to be corrected by calling it a "semi-pure" customer relationship management (CRM) player. In any case, discussion indicates an intrinsic link between CRM and BI, which is possibly best illustrated within the market automation (MA) and customer service and call center markets (see Marketing and Intelligence, Together at Last and Analyze This).

Despite the challenge posed by Siebel and other rivals, SAS' move to build partnerships, especially with Amdocs should meet the growing need of communications service providers (CSP) seeking to build more profitable customer relationships. Until recently, crucial information was locked in Amdocs' disparate systems, such as billing, CRM, orders management, mediation, etc. and given this, CSPs were questioning such systems value. Through the collaboration between Amdocs and SAS, CSPs should now be able to collect this information and derive useful analyses to gauge the climate of the market and the temperament of their clients, and adjust and build services accordingly. Likewise, if successful, the vendors will also find profitability. SAS will be able to strengthen its position in the telecommunications market and extend its functional CRM footprint and Amdocs will be able to drive its MA strategy forward, and justify its new direction to its current customers. For more information see Amdocs Overhauls Its Marketing series, Part Three.

This is Part Three of a three-part note.

Part One profiled SAS.

Part Two discussed alliances, partnerships, and acquisitions.

Challenges

To compete with leading BI and data warehouse companies and enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendors that are moving into these markets, SAS needs to further open its products to make it easier to employ third-party tools. Also, like Cognos, Hyperion, and Business Objects, SAS should also exploit the current, weaker BI technology position of many ERP vendors to foster relationships with them, rather than viewing them as the adversaries.

SAS may also have to further adjust its business model. Currently, it still primarily provides its software on an outdated mainframe licensing model, deriving over half of its revenues from annual license fees that amount to about one-third of the initial licensing cost of its products. This provides SAS with a steady income, but may not be an attractive option for many prospective customers. SAS should consider moving to a more common enterprise software licensing model with annual support costs in the range of 15 percent of license costs. With its new product, SAS 9, SAS may be showing signs of recognizing that the old model of selling a complex tool kit, and then training its customers' internal staff on the tools, needs to be extended to many levels within the user enterprise. Strong vertical tailoring, more consultancy, and more out-of-the-box functionality to all areas in a business process are other positive signs that should be further exploited by SAS.

SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/when-customer-relationships-meets-business-intelligence-marketing-analysis-and-user-recommendations-18109/

Marquee Vendors Partner for Deepening Inherent CRM and BI Links

2010-09-15T23:10:00.004-07:00

The strong connection between business intelligence (BI) and customer relationship management (CRM) is being recognized by companies and vendors alike. In order to extend the customer life cycle and meet customer needs, enterprises are looking beyond mere call lists and focus group information. They are seeking to exploit the vast amounts of information they already have on their customers, in order to build more effective marketing strategies, retain profitable customers, and let go of customer liabilities. Leveraging predictive analysis and other analytics, will enable enterprises to drill deeply into customer and market segmentation and improve product lifecycle management (PLM) to possibly reduce operating costs, enhance customer loyalty and lifetime value, and increase profitability.

Perhaps the tightest connection between CRM and BI can be seen in marketing automation (MA). MA involves analyzing and automating the marketing process to better allocate resources into various activities, channels, and media to build and enhance profitable customer relationships. This moves beyond traditional metrics to incorporate data cleansing, analysis tools, and campaign management systems (see the article Why Are CRM and Analytics Intrinsically Connected?)

Despite the complementary nature of CRM and BI, the implementation of MA has been stunted by slow markets and pessimistic investors. MA point solutions are often seen as luxuries when compared to broader CRM or enterprise resource management (ERP) solutions. Thus, vendors in CRM and BI, respectively, are building alliances in order to gain market share and illustrate the value of MA.

For example, SAS Institute, the world's leader in BI, in particular has been busy forging partnerships. It announced a global strategic alliance with Amdocs, a global telecommunications leader, to help communications service providers (CSP) unlock valuable intelligence from underlying operational systems. The alliance promises to leverage Amdocs' telecommunications industry expertise and established operational applications and SAS' predictive analytics and profitability software to give CSPs a combination of strong analytical software, business consulting, and implementation services. Together, Amdocs and SAS have created a Customer Profitability and Segmentation solution, and Amdocs will encourage its campaign management customers to migrate to SAS' Marketing Automation 4 offering. Customers will also be offered the SAS Telecommunications Intelligence Solutions.

For a detailed discussion of Amdocs see Amdocs Overhauls Its Marketing. For a detailed discussion of SAS see SAS: Striving To Sustain Leadership.

In addition to its strategic alliance with Amdocs, SAS has also announced that it will incorporate Aprimo Marketing Suite into SAS Marketing Automation. Aprimo pioneered the concept of marketing resource management (MRM), which centers on tracking marketing resources, including budgets and marketing skills to generate effective marketing strategies—a crucial activity given an age of shrinking budgets in marketing departments. It combines workflow capabilities for assigning tasks and triggering alerts and knowledge management (KM) to comply with marketing best practices.

The "name game" is also coming into play as vendors try and differentiate themselves from the competition to show the depth and coverage of their point solutions. For example, Aprimo and Unica refer to their products as enterprise marketing management (EMM) solutions to illustrate that their solutions surpass the limits of MA to offer tighter control over projected budgets, planning, and execution. Aprimo, in particular has created a Web-based software product that is designed to interface with and enhance ERP and CRM systems. To date, the company seems to be successful, as it boasts the Bank of America, Alticor, and Ernst & Young as among its clients. Unica also claims an impressive list. Its clients include AmBank, Halifax Bank of Scotland, and Best Buy. For more information on Aprimo and Unica, see Can the Market Sustain a Stand-Alone EMM? and Should Uniqueness Vouch for Marketing Automation Niche Players?

Marketing Automation Consolidation

Given the difficult market climate, only a few MA providers remain. Unica, Aprimo, MarketSwitch, and MarketSoft, have footholds in the market, but its questionable how steady their footing is. Acquisitions are abound as the strongest solution providers look to broaden and enhance their current offerings. The acquisition of Annuncio by PeopleSoft (which itself was acquired by Oracle, proving that anything is fair game in the IT sector) (see PeopleSoft Annuncio-es Continuation Of Its Shopping Spree); MarketFirst by Pivotal; Protagona by DoubleClick; Point Information Systems by S1 Corporation; DataSage by Vignette Corporation; Prime Response by Chordiant, and the merger of Kana and Broadbase (see The Mid-Market Is Consolidating, Lo and Behold), indicates the diminished life expectancy of independent CRM point solutions providers.

Blue Martini Software has also fallen into consolidation. Blue Martini is a provider of sales optimization systems, and has recently boosted its analytical capabilities and bringing its new functionality to the forefront of its latest product suite. In May, 2005, Blue Martini announced that it will be acquired by Multi-Channel Holdings, which is a privately-held Golden Gate Capital portfolio company and the parent entity of multi-channel retail software vendor Ecometry, which is a predominantly retail-mail-order-oriented company. Multi-Channel Holdings was likely attracted to Blue Martini by the opportunity to round out its retail portfolio with a B2C e-commerce solution.

Blue Martini's strategy has changed many times. The company began as an e-commerce application vendor for business-to-business (B2B) and business to consumer (B2C) businesses with an on-line presence. However, it started to develop products as a multichannel CRM suite vendor, intruding even into the dubious partner relationship management (PRM) realm (see What Does the Future Hold for PRM?). In 2002, with the purchase of Cybrant, Blue Martini entered B2B, on the sell-side of e-commerce, because Cybrant provided the configuration for guided-selling functionality. From there, Blue Martini then narrowed its focus to only two industries—retail and manufacturing. In 2004, the company backpedaled its positioning as a CRM suite provider to focus on interactive selling optimization, mainly due to declining business in e-commerce and CRM markets. Before being acquired, the vendor shifted focus away from its traditional B2C e-commerce positioning into more generic support for all selling channels, such as mobile sales, and will now likely focus only on retail.

Other Prospective Industries for Alliance

MA solution providers are searching for different markets to peddle their wares. Financial services is a promising target as their need for strong customer service capabilities is clear. They have millions of customers generating significant transaction volume each month, and consequently, focuses even greater resources on customer support than the telecommunications industry. Testing this market opportunity is Amdocs. Amdocs' offers an integrated customer management strategy that should be well-suited for this industry. ABN AMRO, a Dutch bank, recently selected Amdocs to join its efforts to modernize and consolidate its transactional systems for its business and consumer retail banking customers in the Netherlands. The Amdocs solution will integrate information from disparate systems onto a single, unified platform, allowing the bank to launch new bundled services and cross-product price plans and discounts, reduce operating costs and time to market for new services, and increase efficiency, all while improving the overall customer experience.

Deregulated gas and electricity (and even waterworks to some degree) energy and utility companies, may also be a viable market for MA providers. Utilities companies are now operating in a competitive, dynamic environment that is quite different from what it faced previously as a near-monopoly. In particular, the introduction of a dynamic trading market for energy has meant price fluctuations that puts a strain on the internal resources of energy companies.

SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/marquee-vendors-partner-for-deepening-inherent-crm-and-bi-links-18117/

A Customer Relationship Management Solution Aims To Cover all the Bases

2010-09-15T23:10:00.003-07:00

Surado Solutions Inc., founded in 1995, is a privately held company based in Riverside, California (US), and offers a suite of customer relationship management (CRM) solutions.

Surado aims to provide a complete CRM suite, rather than a modularized solution targeted towards departmental delivery. Its goal is to build full-featured, integrated, and multifaceted systems, as well as out-of-the-box solutions. The vendor is a Microsoft Certified Partner and Microsoft Business Solutions Certified Gold Partner, and uses the Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) as the foundation for its product development. It also touts the merits of the Six Sigma methodology and Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) as quality improvement philosophies.

Surado targets the small and medium business (SMB) market, namely organizations with annual revenues of $1 million (USD) to $1 billion (USD), and approximately 88 percent of its clients fall into this category. To reinforce its position in this market segment, Surado offers Surado Small Business CRM 5.0, designed for ten users or less. Surado Small Business combines the core Surado CRM suite (Contact & Account Management, Sales Automation, Marketing Automation, and Customer Service/Help Desk) with Integration for Exchange (for e-mail, contacts, and tasks), the Surado Integration Module (for connecting to third party databases or creating custom tables and screens), and Surado CRM Web (a web interface for remote user access to basic functionality.

Although Surado CRM is not vertical-centric, it enjoys a wide installed base in traditionally "vertical CRM"-dominated industries, such as technology, health care, education, banking and finance, and government. The vendor has customers in all fifty US states and in over sixty-four countries worldwide. A sampling of its top clients from those vertical industries includes Blackbox, County Regional Medical Center, California State University, Georgia Student Finance, and the City of Riverside Economic Development Agency.

We'll analyze Surado CRM 5.0 from the perspectives of core CRM functionality, look at some of its distinguishing factors, and discuss some of the challenges users may face when considering Surado CRM for small to midsized businesses.

Core Functionality of Surado CRM 5.0

Core CRM functionality covers five aspects:

* contact and account management
* sales management
* marketing management
* customer service and support
* integration

The figure below is a TEC-created table comparing Surado against other vendors and their offerings. Surado performs above other vendors in the areas of marketing automation, sales force automation, customer service and support, and partner management. In the areas of contract management and creation, and project management, Surado's performance is above average, but below the highest-rated competitor.

B2B (Business-to-Business) CRM Module Ratings

Source: http://www.vendor-showcase.com/software/281-16091-idealprofile/Customer-Relationship-Management-CRM/Surado-CRM-by-Surado-Solutions/ideal_customer.html

Contact and Account Management
This area of CRM typically displays and manages detailed account information, such as information related to the company, contacts within the company review of past activities and history, scheduling, and task management.

This module offers a unified interface for account and contact management functionality, where users can review past communications, upcoming activities, sales opportunities, quotes and purchases, support issues, links to relevant documents, and information from back-end systems. In addition, Surado CRM also captures all customer communications, whether through phone, e-mail, fax, the Internet, or personal contacts. A fully integrated workgroup scheduling and task management features the ability to track activities, participants, and resources, including pop-up reminders. A relationships tab also allows users to track the important relationships that may exist between two or more contacts in the system that otherwise might otherwise be overlooked or poorly managed.

Sales Management
This area of a CRM solution focuses on managing sales opportunities and processes. It provides the features and functionality to define, implement, manage, and execute one or more sales cycles, based on individual opportunity types. This allows users of Surado CRM to configure the system to better fit their unique needs rather than having to conform to a generic sales cycle supplied by the system.

The module includes the basics: contact information, correspondence, opportunity and forecasting data, literature and presentations, quotes, orders, and post-sale service history.

Surado CRM 5.0 allows for multi-source data import from lists, or captured leads from a web site through its eLeads module. It also allows inquiry tracking and intelligent leads routing. Automated process can be initiated to distribute literature, schedule follow-up activities, and set conditions to advance opportunities. Managers can use Surado CRM to monitor team activities across customized sales stages across multiple product pipelines. Sales positioning features and functionalities are also available through competitive intelligence analysis and customer analytics, to identify habits, trends, and potential.

Marketing Management
In this area of CRM, the key components to attracting and retaining a customer base are evaluation, design, implementation, and execution of marketing initiatives.

The application can track the results of advertisements, direct mail, and telemarketing, and help design, execute, and manage personalized, permission-based campaigns. Surado CRM 5.0 also allows for the planning, design, execution, and management of multichannel permission-based marketing campaigns. Users can assign tasks and responsibilities according to revenue projections, campaign periods, targeted audiences, and channels. Potential deployment issues can be identified, and resources re-allocated. E-mail and fax campaigns can be set up for automated execution and follow-up.

Surado CRM provides for campaign return on investment (ROI) analysis as a means to track the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, by comparing potential and actual responses and sales.

Customer Service and Support
This area of a CRM solution is where customer service inquiries and support issues are entered, tracked, and in specific cases, escalated to resolution.

Surado CRM 5.0 features a customer service, help desk, and support knowledge base, with keyword searches. It also provides an integrated system that coordinates and tracks customer interactions across multiple contact points to address customer inquires.

Surado CRM automates support and help procedures, by automatically converting incoming e-mail messages into support tickets (including attachments), responding to support tickets, and notifying customers of soon-to-expire service-level agreements (SLAs). It also handles routing, load balancing, escalation based on multiple criteria, automated response, and ticket updates and deletions.

In addition, Surado's Web Self-Service module provides a channel for clients to access an Internet knowledge base search as well as conduct self-service ticket submission and review.

Key metrics are displayed in graphical form, and can provide managers with the information necessary to make rapid decisions regarding re-deployment of resources to the most urgent support areas. Performance gauges (such as support metrics by urgency, touch point, area, type, and support groups) provide managers with the opportunity to act quickly to prevent potential bottlenecks in providing support. Finally, color-coded alerts for events that fall outside defined parameters provide managers the ability to take a proactive approach, preventing escalation of support issues.

SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/a-customer-relationship-management-solution-aims-to-cover-all-the-bases-18676/

Should Uniqueness Vouch For Marketing Automation Niche Players?

2010-09-15T23:10:00.001-07:00

The debate about the future of the marketing automation and management market, as a stand-alone sub segment of the entire customer relationship management (CRM) market, continues, partly owing to mixed signals coming from relevant point solutions providers. On one hand, recent demise and buyout of Xchange by Amdocs (see Xchange Adds To The List Of CRM Point Solutions' Casualties) was the last in the array of less-fortunate point players. At the time prior to Xchange's assets auction, allegedly over 20 companies expressed interest in buying Xchange's assets, and in maintaining its products and supporting its customers, including much better-performing direct competitors Chordiant Software, DoubleClick, SAS and especially Unica Corporation. While the upbeat marketing management software vendor Unica (www.unicacorp.com) was initially marked as a very likely buyer of Xchange, the vendor however slightly surprisingly elected not to make a bid for the Xchange's assets. Rather, Unica has since announced a migration plan from Xchange's solutions to its Affinium platform, given it has already migrated approximately 15% of Xchange's customer base to Affinium, and the vendor touts that regardless of which company has taken ultimate ownership of Xchange's remaining assets, converting to Affinium will be the most attractive solution for Xchange customers.

Incidentally, on May 16, Unica, now a globally-present provider of solutions it refers to as Enterprise Marketing Management (EMM), announced it instead acquired Marketic, one of leading providers of campaign management software in Europe and a subsidiary of Groupe DDB in France, the second largest global communications group. As a result of the acquisition, Unica believes it has secured the leadership position in the French and Southern European markets as well as in some new industries like automotive. In addition, the deal should expand Unica's worldwide customer base to over 300, making it possibly the largest provider of marketing software globally.

Through the acquisition of Marketic, Unica also expects to bolster its strong position in sectors such as financial services, retail and telecommunications, since Marketic's customers include Disneyland Paris, Orange, Crdit Lyonnais, Groupe Cofinoga and Peugeot. In turn, Unica's respected customers include Lands' End, Medco Health Solutions, Bank of Montreal, Nordstrom, ABN AMRO, Cintas, Club Med, SNCF, EDF, Scotiabank, Choice Hotels International and AIG. Further, combined with its strong base of existing customers such as Marks & Spencer Financial Services, ARG Equation, Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS) and Vodafone, Unica now claims an installed customer base in 10 European countries. Building on its two-year presence in the UK and now in France, Unica also expects to benefit from Marketic's strong presence in the Benelux countries (i.e., Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg) and Spain. From this strong base, Unica plans to further expand across Europe.

Unica pledges to continue to sell Marketic solutions, which include software for campaign management and loyalty marketing. In addition, Marketic's customers should benefit from the added capabilities available in Unica's Affinium Suite, such as predictive analysis, data mining, multi-channel campaign optimization, real-time event triggers and marketing content management. Based on an open, scalable architecture, Unica's Affinium Suite aims at enabling marketers to gather and analyze knowledge from multiple data sources; identify customer wants and needs; plan, execute and manage tailored programs for interactions through multiple touch points; and measure and optimize marketing effectiveness. The Affinium Suite is also fully internationalized with Unicode support and will reportedly be available in a localized version for the French market starting in June 2003.

A few days later, on May 19, Unica announced the addition of two new consulting services -- Affinium Operational Services (AOS) and Affinium Innovation Services (AIS) -- to its Unica Consulting Services portfolio. Introduced at Unica's Global Customer Conference 2003, these two new programs aim at enabling customers to maximize their Affinium investment through innovative strategies, techniques and recommendations, since they will be delivered by experienced and skilled Unica consultants and partners with deep product knowledge and extensive cross-industry marketing experience. For customers currently using Affinium, AOS offers both the services and resources to expand their use of Affinium within their organization. To that end, AOS programs include:

* Advanced Techniques Workshop to offer expertise, tips and techniques on how to use the advanced customer-focused strategies and features of Affinium for specific business environments and to increase user productivity and marketing return on investment (ROI);
* Performance Optimization to pinpoint opportunities to enhance performance and scalability to optimize and streamline campaigns;
* Post-Production Support to provide staffing support, ranging from a few weeks to several months, to cover staffing or skill gaps and ensure the timely and successful completion of key projects.

With AIS, Affinium customers will be supported through each stage of the marketing life cycle. The four key programs include:

1. Enterprise Marketing Assessment to identify where marketing processes can be optimized for greater efficiency and to help develop specific strategies to meet marketing objectives;
2. Incorporating Predictive Modeling to use companies' current data to show how to create models, interpret the results, and then act on the information yielding positive, profitable and differentiated outcomes;
3. Enterprise Marketing Planning to establish an optimal marketing planning process that provides real insight into the business and enhances decision-making; and
4. E-Marketing Review to provide recommendations and a route map to assist companies in successfully addressing the issues surrounding online and real-time marketing.

In addition to providing the above services directly to customers, the AOS and AIS programs complement Unica's alliance partner program, given the vendor can deliver AOS and AIS to customers in cooperation with alliance partner teams and offers training to alliance partners on delivering these services.

Affinium 5

The above moves follow on recent major product releases' delivery and impressive annual financial results. At the end of 2002, Unica announced the general availability of Affinium 5, only a half year after the release of Affinium 4 , which somewhat resembles the time apart between the recent Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions movie trilogy parts' releases. The Affinium 5 release aimed at delivering a marketing solution that provides one of the richest and most intuitive functionalities for managing and deriving increased value from the entire marketing process -- from strategic planning and budgeting to predictive analysis and cross-channel relationship optimization to campaign execution, resource management and closed-loop analytic reporting.

Featuring significant enhancements to its campaign management, e-marketing, resource management and optimization capabilities, Affinium aims at facilitating efficient cross-organization collaboration, workflow and the accessibility of marketing technology, while increasing organizational agility and customer-focused marketing aptitude. Additionally, Affinium is modular, so organizations can choose the functionality they need now and add capabilities over time. New functionality includes sophisticated relationship optimization; marketing content management; advanced real-time e-mail marketing capabilities; and new rapid start templates for planning and managing marketing initiatives such as marketing events and cross-channel acquisition campaigns.

With the shipment of Affinium 5 at the start of its new fiscal year, Unica believes to be well positioned to build on the strong momentum it has sustained over the past five years. In 2002, Unica reportedly grew by 27% and achieved record revenue, profitability and cash flow from operations. Unica closed the year with more than 250 customers in the financial services, retail, hospitality, health care, pharmaceutical, insurance, telecommunications, publishing and business-to-business services industries, many of which are Fortune 100 companies. Unica also continued its international expansion into Europe, Middle East, Africa (EMEA) and Asia-Pacific markets and entered into agreements with a number of technology and professional services partners worldwide including Epsilon, Harte-Hanks, Headstrong Japan, IBM Global Services, Premier Technologies and Sophron Partners.

Market Impact

Hats off to Unica for being a shining example of a successful privately-held niche vendor, in spite of difficult economic environment and despite belonging to arguably prosperous market segment. The CRM market as well as its marketing automation sub-segment remains both the land of opportunity albeit with many sinister patches of quicksand traps for those with small footprint breadth in the field. While the biggest and/or the richest packaged suite CRM/ERP providers have been able to hang onto flat new sales, possibly modest declines, or in more rare cases possibly modest growth, only a lucky and/or more probably the most apt few with a true differentiation in a selected number of markets have even bucked the trend and have shown some enviable growth. Unica seems to be defending the pride of the bittersweet marketing automation segment with its protractedly good performance against the odds.

Every business cycle begins with the attraction of the customer through sales and marketing. This hopefully results in an order management and fulfillment process and ends with a customer service, which can involve anything from field installations through to enquiry and complaint management. All of these steps have to be executed well without exception, since otherwise, the customer will end up on a competitor's list of customers. The 64,000-dollar question is how all business processes work together. In the electronic world, the degree of flexibility and efficiency of collaborative processes relating to the customer lifecycle, product lifecycle, and service lifecycle, to name but a few, will be a big determinant of losers and winners. To that end, there seems to be a dichotomy between the marketing automation promise of benefits enterprise-wide and the way it has often been misused. For a discussion of marketing automation, see "Marketing Automation: Coming of Age Slowly".

However, despite cited benefits of the applications, many marketing automation specialists have, for many reasons, been a cry far from a success or, at least, not had an easy time. Most of pure-play providers have been either acquired or bust during the past few years including Xchange, Prime Response, BroadBase, Protagona and MarketFirst, and those that remain independent (such as Aprimo, SAS, NCR Teradata, Blue Martini Software, DoubleClick, and Unica) are apparently creating broader marketing suites to cover all the above-mentioned bases.

One reason thereof is the phenomenon of large packaged ERP and/or CRM suite providers to slow or even stall enterprise applications buying decisions even well before their serious market entry. As a result, the niche vendors have to battle to maintain their market dominance despite strong solutions, while the large vendors are still developing astute solutions and market credibility, and attempting to sell these based primarily on the integration of their limited functionality with the rest of their suites and a promise of deeper and complete functionality some time in the future. This category would include the likes Siebel Systems, Chordiant Software, Pivotal, E.piphany, Kana, Onyx, Amdocs, PeopleSoft, SAP and Oracle.

Incidentally, Applix, with its recent exit from the CRM market (see Will A Big Fish's Splash Cause Minnows' Flush Out Of The CRM Pond?), may exemplify the dark side of the CRM medal nowadays, as droves of smaller pure-play CRM vendors have been hard pressed to survive owing to the combined effect of CRM users' disenchantment with the products' hardly ever materialized benefits, compounded with the tight IT budgets due to the worldwide economic recovery delay and with Microsoft's entry into already crowded place. Although many mid-market pure-CRM solutions have been maturing and improving, they must continue to facilitate integration with back-end systems, given the increasing awareness of this need for full-fledged benefits of CRM. Further, they must also provide the differentiation through verifiable ROI metrics, and indispensable features and functions germane to selected industry verticals.

Larger CRM vendors have, on their hand, been weathering the storm by relying on cross-selling broader CRM application suites to their existing and potential customers, involving also components such as Sales Force Automation (SFA), employee relationship management (ERM) or call centers. Marketing automation point solution providers have also fallen prey to pessimistic investors and diminishing global corporations' appetites for technology. They have taken the impact of the slowdown because of a more budding market yet to create the market awareness of its true value proposition, and because of the slower adoption of information technology (IT) in marketing departments (i.e., there is still cultural resistance to software automation, which is perceived as restrictive to the art of marketing, with an oversight that automation might actually eliminate the low-value activity to relax more time for true creative work.

Yet, these applications will have also often been perceived either as luxury (a nice to have' but not show-stopping) applications in these days of anyone hardly having any customers at all, or, in cases of customers valuing the proposition, they might be much more inclined to obtain it only as a part of a broader CRM suite (if not even from an ERP provider) rather than as a point solution. Thus, the need for providing a full, comprehensive CRM suite rather than an individual solution or a bundle of point solutions for each distinct CRM area remains firm, and will urge further CRM (and overall enterprise applications for that matter) market consolidation.

The gravity of these narrow product footprint vendors' predicament might be well illustrated by the Applix' exit, given the vendor had a solid CRM product breadth and technology foundation, a good implementation track record with nearly 1,000 satisfied customers, and some notable endorsements from ERP vendors that have been remiss in delivering their own CRM (i.e., SSA GT and Geac Computers Corporation). Many pure-play CRM players that cannot even come close to the above traits should do their own math and analyze the justification of their independent existence within the CRM battleground. Not surprisingly, marketing automation-only providers have long been falling away to the extent of only a few possibly also endangered remaining providers like Unica, Aprimo, MarketSwitch, and MarketSoft. PeopleSoft's acquisition of Annuncio (see PeopleSoft Annuncio-es Continuation Of Its Shopping Spree), Kana and Broadbase merger (see The Mid-Market Is Consolidating, Lo And Behold), Pivotal's recent acquisition of MarketFirst, DoubleClick's acquisition of Protagona, S1 Corporation's acquisition of Point Information Systems, Vignette Corporation's acquisition of DataSage, SAS' acquisition of Intrinsic and Verbind, and Chordiant's acquisition of Prime Response all should indicate diminishing life expectancy of independent CRM point solutions providers.

The good news nevertheless is that there are huge untapped opportunities for business improvement, given marketing has a unique vantage point in any enterprise to understand the customer needs, buying behavior, and value perception. Increasingly, marketing automation solutions are being adopted by large enterprises with multilevel, multi-LOB marketing departments. Those organizations need to coordinate their marketing programs and campaigns and are creating increased demand for holistic marketing-automation suites that include marketing operations, analytics and management functionality. Thus, we expect to see more marketing-automation suites that offer marketing analytics and campaign management in a single product offering. However, the large packaged enterprise suite vendors still have it as a mere afterthought to the product blueprint rather than a strategic enhancement to their product offering.

SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/should-uniqueness-vouch-for-marketing-automation-niche-players-16995/

Can the Market Sustain a Stand-Alone EMM?

2010-09-15T23:07:00.000-07:00

The new millennium has completely redrawn the IT industry map especially in the enterprise marketing management (EMM) sector. Since year 2000, the number of independent marketing automation vendors has significantly shrunk due to frequent acquisitions and takeovers. Names such as Xchange, MarketFirst, Annuncio, and Prime Response no longer exist. Larger application providers like Amdocs, PeopleSoft, and Chordiant have assimilated all. Amongst the few still operating is Aprimo. Their strategy primarily targets large customers from the financial services, technology, media and entertainment, pharmaceuticals and manufacturing industries, and it pays. Aprimo just released its version 6.0 posed to help the vendor sustain the ongoing IT turmoil.

Building a better understanding of customer preferences to better serve their needs and increase their loyalty is certainly the motto for the new generation of marketing automation systems. Many customer relationship management (CRM) software vendors focused their first marketing modules in generating and conveying leads to the sales force.

Campaign management and e-mail marketing functions were amongst the first modules for CRM vendors to include in their product offerings. Siebel, E.piphany, Pivotal, DoubleClick, and Aprimo are some of the providers of such functionality. Marketers can design multilayered marketing campaigns filtering by customer segments and using the contact center capability to reach their target through multiple channels such as phone, portals, email, direct mail, and PDA.

The second functional category widely provided is electronic marketing. Such a solution offers a web-accessible, enterprise resource that manages and delivers essential information to marketing's customers, both internal (sales, customer support, etc.) and external (prospects, media, partners, etc.). Integrated content management and customization have added value to the basic features of e-mail marketing by avoiding the pitfalls of mass marketing.

Overall, basic campaign management modules provide the following capabilities:

* Planning campaigns targeted at segmented audiences

* Keeping a history of all the campaigns that have been run

* Tracking and analyzing the response to various products and target segments

* Executing and tracking responses, which help in generating leads for sales

Marketing analytics is the third component adding a new dimension to the basic campaign management modules. The analytics functionality enables marketers to conduct customer behavioral analysis and understand key issues such as propensity to buy. CRM vendors such as Pivotal, PeopleSoft, and Siebel are now offering marketing analytics through acquisitions beside other pure marketing players such as Chordiant, E.piphany, SAS, and Unica.

The most recent tool in the world of marketing automation is the emergence of the marketing resource management (MRM) pioneered by Aprimo. Facing shrinking budgets, marketing departments are more and more accountable for the cost of their activities. MRM helps marketing professionals to plan ahead for the following:

* Time for human resources

* Time for financial resources

* Responsibilities for different team members at different steps

MRM combines workflow capabilities for assigning tasks and triggering alerts and knowledge management to accede into marketing best practices. A tighter control over the projected budget, the planning, and the execution combined with a myriad of functions from campaign and lead management modules have pushed the limits of marketing automation and that is the reason vendors such as Aprimo and Unica are now referring to their products as enterprise marketing management (EMM) solutions.

Product Definition and Market Impact

Despite competition from both major CRM/ERP (enterprise resource planning) vendors and marketing analytics providers, pure-player marketing solutions like Aprimo, and Unica continue to serve the enterprise market place with new and updated EMM offerings. Recently Aprimo announced its new release Aprimo Marketing 6.0. The Indianapolis based firm, caters to big accounts like Merrill Lynch, America Online, Pfizer, and Autodesk. Its fully web-based solution encompasses functional areas such as marketing planning, financial management, production management, customer dialogue, and lead management applications. According to Mike MacNulty, a product marketing manager at Aprimo, "the product emphasize on application modularity contributes to deployment flexibility over time and quicker time-to-value". Production Management and Planning and Financial Management are two functional components geared towards the marketing resource management (MRM). The more traditional features such as campaign and lead manager are covered by the Demand Creation suite.

The Production Management modules deliver the necessary features to initiate and design through a scripted web template a marketing project from scratch. Features include internal or external resource assignments and management of cost by means of real time cost tracking. The pre-defined templates help marketers to follow the steps specified by best practices. The teamwork is fully auditable through online approvals for deliverables and creative. A rule based workflow manager, enables users to control quality standards like Six Sigma or financial regulatory rules like Sarbanes-Oxley.

The Planning and Financial Management modules confer to marketers financial visibility into their planned, committed and actual investments and provides the solution its expected MRM qualification. Using the budgeting and forecasting tool, defined users can be granted access to budget assignment, allocation, and transfer of funds. Links to a number of back-office applications, such as PO and AP systems, facilitate the exchange of financial data. Automated notifications for over- or under-plan conditions can be used by managers to control their marketing activities financials at different stages.

Customer Dialogue Management and Lead Management are the two major components of the Demand Creation suite. Users can leverage various demand creation modules to divide their customer list by segment and start targeting them using a multistep and multichannel marketing campaign. As a result they can automatically assign generated leads to specific sales groups or persons to conclude the sale.

Aprimo Marketing 6.0 .NET architecture takes full advantage of web services facilitating the interoperability of the application in a disparate system environment.

SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/can-the-market-sustain-a-stand-alone-emm-17268/

Customer Relationship Management Strategies Part Four: Strategies and Case Study

2010-08-24T04:17:00.002-07:00

Keeping in mind the three main components of CRM, the customer, the relationship, and management, we will expand on specific customer relationship management (CRM) system strategies that will help you realize your investment.

Some crucial strategies you must adopt are

* Develop specific, measurable goals
* Establish ROI strategy to achieve your goals
* Build the technical framework
* Identify explicit sales and marketing strategies
* Outline Internet strategies
* Develop and maintain customer satisfaction metrics

Develop specific, measurable goals

Vague, abstract mission statements were pervasive in the business culture of the 1980s. Companies sought to motivate their employees by posting "catchy" slogans and ambiguous corporate agendas all over their office spaces. Statements like "to provide the best quality" or "to provide quality customer service" are all positive goals that employees want to strive for. However, these mission statements are hard to live up to if there is not a substantial measure of standard to compare to. "Quality" and "Best" are all unquantifiable.

Create your catchy mission statements but find ways to quantify the results. Set specific and measurable goals. For example, increase your revenue by x percent, decrease product exchanges by y amount, increase profit margin by x dollars, decrease attrition by y percent. If you want to increase the quality of your product, consider what happens when your products are less than 100 percent quality. Do you spend more money replacing the product? More dollars are spent servicing products still under warranty. Does your call center experience more calls? Is there high wastage? Do you set out to decrease money spent on replacement products or parts by $100,000, or decrease call volume by 40 percent, or decrease wastage by half? These are goals your employees can understand and strive for.

This is Part Four of a four-part note.

Part One discussed new approaches to CRM implementation,

Part Two discussed implementation strategies, and Part Three described achieving and maintaining the competitive edge.

Establish ROI strategy to achieve your goals

It is no accident that CRM performance accounts for a large part of a companies profitability or lack there of. Once you've identified your goals, compare those numbers to the investment you've made in your CRM system. Create a return on investment (ROI) strategy that delivers the best return on your investment, and will provide more dividends in the future. Utilizing the analytical tools that your CRM applications provide is the key to understanding and defining a company CRM ROI. CRM analytics help companies to recognize consumer behavioral patterns and identify new opportunities in the marketplace. Mine your data to learn about customer's buying habits, their marketing profile, consumer risk thresholds, and segmentation.

The main objective here is to ascertain if your investment was worthwhile. Did it reach optimal return? If not, how much did it reach by? Can you make up for it in economy in size?

To calculate your ROI, estimate your per-customer cost of implementation. Add to it the cost of maintenance, including head count and overhead (of the employees you've added to support the system), hardware, storage, user education, and upgrades. Multiply this by the number of customers you have. This is the cost of your CRM initiative. Next take your number of customers multiply it by your gross profit, multiply that yet again by your success rate. Take the product and subtract from it the total cost of your CRM initiative. The result is your return on investment.

Calculating ROI involves numerous factors and the analytical tool in your CRM application will help you with the complex equation. However, you need to determine what elements need to be measured and how to measure them. Key elements include per customer cost for the implementation, maintenance (including any employees hired to maintain the system), user training, upgrades, and general overhead. Also include the gross profit and the success rate, which is normally expressed as a percentage. It is here were establishing metrics is crucial. You need to determine what factors will be included in the success rate, such as office efficiencies, sales growth, customer growth etc. and you need to establish how they will be weighed. Depending on your industry and your company's goal, the presence and weight of these factors vary. Remember, you need to establish that your CRM investment will not only pay back in time, it will actually make or save you money. Knowing where your company currently sits and where the CRM system will take it, will make the case for a CRM system.

Build the technical framework

CRM strategies are turned into action items by implementing innovative software and powerful databases. Your sales and marketing strategies have worked for you in the past—there is a reason why your company is a mid-market organization and not a small business. To continue on the path of growth, your organization needs to relate your sales and marketing actions to the technology at hand. The technology is there, take advantage of it. Why invest in the system and not exploit it to make your job and your employees' jobs easier?

Your CRM system can automate processes and provide data analytics. Before CRM, your marketing manager would storyboard a marketing campaign, hold meetings to discuss the idea, put together a spreadsheet of prospective customers, make multiple copies of the list, hand them out to each sales representatives, walk back to his office, and wait for his sales people to make the phone calls, and write up the order.

However, your CRM system can drastically reduce those manual steps. Collaborative tools are available to users for discussing ideas, getting budget authorization, obtaining concept approval, setting up meetings, and exchanging e-mails. Marketing tools can help you import lists, assign leads, qualify leads, generate quotes, and create sales orders.

Sales analytics can help you recognize patterns and track buying habits. Knowing how to use these individual tools is not enough. A successful CRM strategy encompasses the entire CRMBC. Integrate your sales and marketing functions with your customer service efforts, and circle around to your customer satisfaction evaluation. The CRMBC is a continuous feedback loop that integrates the application with organizational strategies to facilitate, gather, and process customer behavioral patterns in terms of discreet units of data.

Identify explicit sales and marketing strategy

How will you achieve your company's goals? What key sales and marketing strategies do you need to get your organization from point A to point B, from 10 percent profit margin to 30 percent profit margin, from 50 percent attrition rate to 25 percent, from 800 service calls a day to 500? Your plan must be specific and detailed. It should consider your customer's needs and how you react to those needs.

Sales and marketing strategies can utilize CRM to provide contact points with the customer to present product offerings. It is this interaction that your marketing plan must take advantage of. A sales person that makes an outbound call is an event that can trigger a step in your marketing strategy. When a customer calls into your service center, that is a contact point. How can your marketing department capitalize on this event?

Wrap your sales and marketing plans around these points of contact for opportunities to execute.

Outline Internet strategies

The World Wide Web has decreased the cost of doing business by enabling economy of scale. Nowhere else can you potentially reach billions of people, make millions of contact points, and create a fortune in opportunities, all with the luxury of mass communication, dynamic content, and instant recall. You can invest very little in Internet technology and receive a high return.

Mid-market companies seldom capitalize on this relatively inexpensive tool. Consider a mass mailing of 100,000 households. The list would cost you a few hundred if not thousand of dollars. The print and paper would cost you more, and postage, if mailing in the US, would set you back about $17,000 (USD). If you're lucky, you will get a 10 percent response rate. Most people will throw your mailer away. If it crosses their mind later, they won't remember what was on it and they certainly wouldn't have memorized your phone number.

Successful Internet strategies must have three characteristics:

* Facilitate user interaction
* Provide a benefit to the customer
* Add to value to your system

First, users will not stay long on your site if they cannot interact, whether they are reading valuable information they cannot easily get elsewhere, or they are engaging in an on-line game, or the visual aspects of your site fascinate them. Engage your audience.

Second, you must provide an advantage over traditional sales channels. An Internet strategy must meet a need your customer has but in a way that is timelier, more convenient, more accessible, or more economical. If your customer logs a request for service via the Internet, will it be completed more quickly? Can your customer register his product on the Internet easier than mailing in a postcard? If your customer purchased a product on your web site, can they get it for less than on the shelf? For example, Barnes and Noble sometimes offers their books for less on their web site than at their stores.

Third, take advantage of this channel to add value to your CRM system. Have your customers verify their address when they re-order a product. Ask your customers to take a survey. Capture your customer's interest by tracking their traffic through your site. Did they spend more time in the electronics section than in the book section? Track your customer's buying habits. Do your customers wait for a sale to purchase a product? How many items do they order at one session?

SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/customer-relationship-management-strategies-part-four-strategies-and-case-study-17787/

A New Customer Relationship Management Framework

2010-08-24T04:17:00.001-07:00

Simply put, the business ecosystem changed dramatically and for good about three years ago (five minutes in fashionista time). It shifted focus from corporate to customer, and the location of value changed with it. Where value had historically been located in the products and services produced by companies, it is now located in the value produced by the customer. The driver's seat is now occupied by that customer, whether the service is business-to-business or business-to-consumer or government-to-citizen. Ultimately, value now lies in the hands of the individual customer, and it is up to the company to both come to terms with that as the way the economy now runs, and to find ways of receiving that value from the customers through the provision of value to the customer.

Think I'm wrong? Look around you at what's successful these days. You hear tell of The Long Tail—niche markets that are successful over time by capturing the volume of individual responses through the creation of a highly specific market built around a personal desire of one sort or another. It's why you see a proliferation of successful mini-Starbucksian types of businesses. Some of the more colorful examples:

1. There are dessert-only restaurants in New York (US) and Barcelona (Spain), among other places, that have high-end desserts only on the menus.
2. There is a concept of fractional super car ownership that allows you, for some yearly sum at different levels, to use Porsches, or Bentleys, or Ferraris for weeks at a time, depending on what level you purchase for the year. It's the ultimate chichi car ownership model.
3. According to the author of The Long Tail, Wired's Chris Anderson, 25 percent of purchases at Amazon are from non-traditional booksellers who would otherwise have no chance of selling their books.

We can go on, but this is merely one representation of the transformation of the desires of the customer.

Peppers & Rogers have a different take on customer value. They call it "return on customer," which they see as a metric and set of performance indicators that are a true measure of a successful business. Their recent hit book Return on Customer makes it quite clear that whether or not you agree with their specific metrics, we now live in an age where the customer, not the company, determines the value.

What Is that Value?

The irony is that in the "old days" of CRM, you'd think that the value was determined purely financially. Bottom- and top-line stuff. Revenue, sales volume increases, margin and profit increases, number of products from your company owned by the customer, and so on. This is not the case in the age of the new customer. The customer's idea of what is valuable and the company's may be quite different.

What customers are looking for is "meaningful value." In other words, something that they think is worth it. Worth what? Something for which it's worth being advocates for your company. But we'll get into that in a short while. Customers are looking for a great experience with your company—an experience that is owned by them. They are looking to your company, not just as a manufacturer of products and services, but as an aggregator of experiences that they both drive themselves and co-own with you. This means they expect a certain level of transparency—also known as honesty—from you.

Don't underestimate this, because your underestimation of "truth, but not advertising" can be the deal-breaker that drives your customer from you. It is the reason that three years ago, no discernable percentage of companies were running business blogs, and that now 8 percent are, with 55 percent intending to, according to multiple studies recently released. Because honesty no longer lies (double entendre there) with the marketing department. Honesty is a corporate effort at conversation with a customer from all employees. Marketing in the way that we knew it is not as useful as it once was, which means that traditional CRM ways of looking at marketing (campaign management and the like) need some rethinking around the use of the new means of communication that customers are demanding, and around the new approaches to marketing taken by some of the big players like Procter and Gamble (P&G).

What do they do? They understand the value of intimacy with the customer—truth, and then some. For example, P&G has a network of 600,000 members they call Vocalpoint. Know what it consists of? Mothers. Yes, mamas, but with a unique twist. Each of the mommies has a social network of at least twenty-five other moms. Multiply that, readers, and what do you get? A minimum of fifteen million reachable targets that are living within trusted networks. So if Prime Momma in Network #33 says to Mommy #52 that they should take a look at this P&G product sample which Prime Momma thinks is really cool, Mommy #52 does and tells #53 about it too. Why shouldn't she? Prime Momma is a trusted friend.

This all works because P&G gets what the new customer demands and what this customer and potential advocate sees as value. Thus, they understand what the new CRM is. Read these quotes from P&G chief executive officer (CEO) A.G. Lafley real close, because they are an exact representation as to why we need a new framework for CRM going forward:

"We have to create a great experience every time you touch the brand, and the design is a really big part of creating the experience and the emotion. We try to make a customer's experience better, but better in her terms."

"I think it's value that rules the world. There's an awful lot of evidence across an awful lot of categories that consumers will pay more for better design, better performance, better quality, better value, and better experiences."

This latter comment was a direct counter to Wal-Mart's philosophy that "price rules the world."

Ultimately, what I'm saying here is that there is a new breed of customers in town who are both undeniable in their formidable presence, and who have demands that are non-negotiable. They are social customers who are as likely to trash your company as to be advocates for you. They are customers who are part of what Springwise likes to call "generation C"—creative, connected, and content-driven—regardless of which actual generation they belong to. It is the Blackberry users who use the device for personal stuff too and take it home at night. It is the kids who text message their buds, instant message (IM) them, or even call them. It is the people who look at what you do and think cool. But it is also the people who use the Internet to get the word out about what bad service a company provides. They get that "diss" to absolute strangers who automatically trust the bad comments and spread it to others—even though the only thing that you know about the person sending is that their e-mail handle is rabidbatman@robinzonked.com. To both counter the latter, and encourage the "cool" response and create an advocate, what you have to provide as a business is an experience with you, your products, and your services that distinguishes you from your competitors who can provide similar products and services as cheaply and as easily as you—something that your customer is fully aware of, by the way. Think about it. You're a customer too. Don't you know that? Don't you think—I loved that hotel? or I hated that hotel?—and that can color your perception of an entire vacation. Imagine that thinking going on about all products, services, and companies these days.

That means that you have to differentiate yourself by providing customers with a personalized experience that they can find some meaningful value in. And that meaningful value could just be the satisfaction of outright "coolness."

Think that's an overstatement? After all, it's not easily metrically determinable. Well, think of this. A study that was commissioned in a joint effort by Intel and Toray Ultrasuede found that 76 percent of the survey respondents not only looked at someone's technology, but at the style of it—and that style was a critical factor in technology choice. Now, while this study indicates something about the new customer, Intel and Toray Ultrasuede's answer to the results indicates something about uncreative thinking—an ultrasuede-covered laptop. Sigh and Ugh.

But the underlying research is both sound and important. What is meaningful value to a customer can be emotional. What these customers want are the tools to fashion and sculpt their own experiences with you.

Disney Destinations Marketing, the vacation arm of Disney, made what they call a small change in their CRM acronym a few months ago. They started calling it CMR—"customer-managed relationships." They made what that meant clear when their spokesperson said, "CMR is our version of CRM—just a slight nuance regarding our philosophy that our guests invite us into their lives and ultimately manage our presence/relationship with them." While I think that's a lot more than a slight nuance, it indicates that there are a number of companies that know the new business models and especially the customer strategies, and thus, the processes that are determinate in the execution of those strategies now have to be built around features and functions that have some engaged customer value embedded—whether the feature or function is internal or external.

So a new framework for CRM has to be built. One that says, "we recognize that customer demands are different than they were; that customers want to be more engaged in the creation of personalized experiences with the companies they choose to collaborate with." In order for the company to get value from the customer, they need to both create an advocate and not create a verbal terrorist. The company has to be both a manufacturer of goods and services, and an aggregator of experiences that provides the tools and environment for the customer they need to make those experiences excellent and "cool." That means that blogs and social networks and user communities and cell phones and mobile device platforms and podcasts and you-name-it are all part of the customer strategy that wins during this part of the twenty-first century. The new framework for this now needs to be created. If it's not time, it's too late.

SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/a-new-customer-relationship-management-framework-twenty-first-century-necessity-or-blowin-in-the-wind-18726/

Amdocs Overhauls Its Marketing

2010-08-24T04:16:00.002-07:00

Amdocs (NASDAQ: DOX), is a leading provider of billing systems, customer care, and support for the communications industry in North America, Europe, and the rest of the world. A global company with revenue of about $1.8 billion (USD) in fiscal 2004, Amdocs employs over 9,500 IT professionals and serves customers in more than 40 countries around the world.

Headquartered in Ra'anana, Israel, Amdocs has long been the leader in the world of telecommunications billing, by long supplying operations support software (OSS) used by telecommunications service providers to deliver voice, data, and wireless services to their customers. OSS is a generic term for a suite of software programs that enable an enterprise to monitor, analyze, and manage a network system. The term was originally applied to communications service providers (CSP), referring to a management system that controlled telephone and computer networks. However, the term has since been applied to the business world in general to mean a system that supports an organization's network operations. To that end, Amdocs' software includes modules for customer service, billing, sales, and audits, while it also offers sales and publishing software for developing print and on-line directories. It is a technology company that engages in the provision of product-driven information system solutions to major telecommunications companies.

The company's product offerings now include a library of OSS, whose core elements include customer resource management (CRM), order management, call rating, invoice calculation, bill formatting, collections, fraud management and directory publishing services, while its managed services include information technology (IT) outsourcing, application outsourcing, and business process outsourcing (BPO), particularly for customer service and data center operations. In fact, a large proportion of Amdocs' 2004 revenue came from managed services, where the company saw continued strength in its directory services business and enhanced relationships with important existing customers. For instance, following the completed acquisition of Certen from Bell Canada in mid-2003, Amdocs took over the managed services responsibilities for Bell, Existing managed services agreement with Bell extends through December 2010. Amdocs has also continued to develop an integrated billing platform to replace legacy systems built on a product-by-product basis. Thus it has further contributing to Bell's productivity improvement goals and enabling Bell to deliver on its one integrated bill commitment to its customers.

This is Part One of a three-part note.

Part Two will discuss market strategy.

Part Three will cover alliances, challenges and make user recommendations.

Amdocs Products

Amdocs Ensemble suite of products encompasses several key customer care, billing and order management systems (CC&B systems) application areas, such as customer care; order management; event processing; invoicing; and fraud management. Moreover, through the acquisition of a former CRM leader Clarify in 2001 (see Clarity of Vision: Clarify Sold to Amdocs by Nortel), Amdocs also became a noteworthy player in the CRM and call center areas, so that, in terms of the OSS side of a communication customer or a CSP, most data of any effect is captured and managed by an Amdocs solution. To that end, Amdocs ClarifyCRM product offers solutions that help companies better perform and manage selling processes across multiple sales channels. The major suite, Amdocs ClarifyCRM Service and Support, offers solutions spanning support centers, contact centers, and self-service solutions, although the product offers certain marketing and analytics capabilities too.

Another related product, Amdocs Enabler, provides flexible, real time rating and billing for all voice, data, content, and commerce services, by offering integrated on-line and off-line charging. It also provides a single product to support both prepaid-postpaid convergence and wire-line and wireless convergence. Enabler is pre-integrated with Amdocs ClarifyCRM, which will coordinate the integration of future product upgrades, since Enabler's functionality can be extended through pre-integration with value-added Amdocs products.

In 2003, Amdocs launched major releases of its flagship products. These releases introduced out-of-the-box, productized billing and CRM integration, enabling easier implementation of the products as well as with third-party and legacy applications. This functionality has provided customers with the potential to achieve integrated customer management regardless of their current operating environment, and these releases also provided additional functionality that allows Amdocs' customers to drive profitability within their businesses. For example, Enabler 5 supports new revenue streams and business models with advanced on-line charging capabilities and it supports multi-market and multi-national operations, all on a single platform. On the other hand, ClarifyCRM 12 introduced advanced user interface (UI) technology that delivers more real time, relevant, and actionable customer information to the service agent's desktop, thereby transforming a high-volume call center into a more efficient and effective multi-channel customer contact center.

Amdocs further evolved its CRM offering in 2003 with the acquisition of the technology assets the bankrupt Exchange Applications Inc. (Xchange, see Xchange Adds to the List of CRM Point Solutions' Casualties). Now re-branded as part of the Amdocs ClarifyCRM suite of applications, the campaign management and real time decision-making capabilities obtained through this acquisition complemented Amdocs' traditional strengths in operational CRM, thereby delivering a more complete, closed-loop customer management.

Even during 2002, while battling to secure new finances, Xchange surprisingly managed to build a real time engine to deliver targeted promotions-based capability to detect important customer events and behaviors from transactional data throughout multiple marketing channels within an enterprise. In early 2003 the company announced the release of its former Xchange 9 browser-based suite that enables marketers to automatically trigger an appropriate communication to the customer immediately after they exhibit a behavior representing a cross-sell, up-sell, or retention opportunity, thus answering the question "when" to initiate a marketing interaction.

Further, the Xchange 9 EDM (Event Driven Marketing) Option allowed users to observe data from multiple sources within the enterprise, look for changes to the "state" of the customer, and change direct marketing via the Xchange 9 platform. This development is in sharp contrast to using traditional data mining tools or writing complex structured query language -based (SQL) queries to leverage historical information and to produce predictive models long after the marketing opportunity has past. Nevertheless, the former Xchange applications have since hardly promoted Amdocs as an integrated OSS for CSPs. The reason being that within the marketing automation (MA) market, Amdoc's capabilities have, at best been, described as only "adequate", not "exciting" or "leading".

Amdocs Product Group

Principal among Amdocs' product highlights in 2004 was the formation of the Amdocs Products Group. This is a new department that should bring a more cohesive approach to developing and managing Amdoc's product portfolio and build greater integration into the software. Efforts planned for fiscal 2005 in product development and management will be another major step in enhancing the company's ability to help its customers implement their own integrated customer management strategy.

It appears that the Amdocs' acquisitions have been paying dividends as the company now intends to go to market with a more holistic message dubbed Integrated Customer Management (ICM). What appears to be a new corporate personality actually represents a fundamental shift in the Amdocs strategy. It is moving away from positioning itself as a vendor providing best-in-class CSP billing systems with a CRM suite on the side. Now the company offers an integrated business processes with the customer as the focal point.

Its portfolio now offers an appealing proposition with the built-in ability to help service providers move toward the ICM vision—one product at a time or all at once. With the acquisition of XACCT Technologies in 2004, Amdocs was able to add network data management capabilities to its product offering. By adding XACCT mediation system to pre-integrated components such as self-service, billing, CRM, order management, and partner relationship management (PRM), Amdocs owns possibly the most comprehensive portfolio currently available to telecommunications companies.

With increased investment in research and development (R&D) to $126.4 million (USD) in 2004 versus $119.3 million (USD) spent in 2003, 2004 product launches included new versions of

* Amdocs ClarifyCRM, which offers improved performance, scalability and availability, as demonstrated through recent benchmark tests using the HP-UNIX and BEA WebLogic platforms.

* Amdocs PRM, which enables CSPs to (relatively) cost-effectively deliver a selection of new products and services and to reduce the cost of managing multiple content and commerce partners in order to differentiate themselves in the marketplace and to promote new revenue streams.

* Amdocs Commerce Payments, which now has more advanced features to allow providers to monetize third-party content and commerce services and increase end user satisfaction and loyalty.

SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/amdocs-overhauls-its-marketing-18092/

Customer Relationship Management: Evolution, Not Revolution

2010-08-24T04:16:00.001-07:00

Choosing a new customer relationship management (CRM) solution can be onerous for anyone saddled with this task. But the process of choosing a solution doesn't have to be time-consuming and tedious. Nor should it cause major upheaval in an enterprise's operations, creating significant inconvenience for users. The last thing any manager wants is apathy—or even mutiny—from disgruntled employees “forced” to use an application that doesn't suit their needs or that is too complex to be adopted quickly.

Instead, a CRM solution should be implemented so that users are fully supported and feel that the tools at hand are helping them to get the job done, not adding an extra element of responsibility to their workdays. What you don't want is hand-to-hand combat when trying to encourage employees to use new applications, as lack of user buy-in is one of the most common reasons for CRM project failure.

The application you choose should, in fact, increase efficiency. And hand in hand with efficiency, you expect either a reduction in costs, or an increase in profit. Ideally, you'll get a quantifiable return on what can be a significant investment.

But First, What Is CRM?

CRM is a process of improving a business's relationships with its customers, using software applications that target the requirements of the business's processes. CRM can strengthen these relationships in a number of ways. Typically, CRM applications fulfill one of three key functionalities related to managing customer information: marketing, sales, or service. Software modules are generally broken down into four functional areas: sales automation, marketing automation, customer service and support, and a reporting and analysis tool. Some CRM packages are comprehensive, meaning that they incorporate aspects of all four functions.

So how do you know if you need a comprehensive package?

This partly depends on whether your enterprise is small-to-medium, or whether it is a huge national industry or multinational corporation. It also depends on how many aspects of your customer relationships you think could do with a little revolutionizing—or “evolutionizing.” And finally, it depends on your company's budget.

What Are the Features of CRM?

In order for CRM to effect positive change in your company, its features should speak to all activities involving customer interactions. But don't stop at thinking this means only face-to-face interactions. CRM should include features that take into account all ways the customer comes in contact with the company—before, during, and after a sale. Therefore, advertising campaigns and customer complaints are just as important as that friendly smile offered to customers when they take their purchases and walk out of the store. All activities should emphasize to customers how much the company values them—and, for a more personalized experience, how well the company knows them. So that when you thank customers and invite them to “come again,” there's a much better chance that they will.

CRM can include any of the following features:

* call management
* customer management
* service issues management
* knowledge exchange management
* sales force activities
* marketing campaign management
* sale lead tracking
* marketing analysis and forecasting
* database storage

Packages that are tailored separately for the sales, marketing, or service aspects of CRM have additional features. Customer service and support automation, for example, may have such features as call routing, contact center sales support, and tools for measuring customer satisfaction. Marketing features might detail sales activities and time management, and allow for analyzing and reporting on sales opportunities.

But How Are These Features Going to Benefit My Business?

One simple way to sum up the benefits of CRM is this: better relationships with your customers. But, this is likely self-evident from the very name of the software—though of course “manage” is not necessarily synonymous with “improve.” What you really need to know is how exactly the many features of CRM can restructure and improve your relationships with clients.

Here are some key benefits:

* Data management and analysis tools help you to track customer preferences and to anticipate needs based on individual purchase histories, over time and according to changes in the marketplace.

* Marketing automation helps you create targeted campaigns based on those anticipated needs.

* Costs are reduced as a result of more efficient post-purchase support and service.

* As a stable base of satisfied repeat customers is created, more time can be spent on expanding the client base.

* Profitability and revenue can increase as a result of improved relationships with clients both old and new.

* New software can be merged with a business's existing platform or with other previously installed software applications, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), sales force automation (SFA), and e-mail programs.

* Operations can be streamlined to increase competitive advantage and to cut costs.

* Customer loyalty is boosted by making the enterprise customer-centric instead of product-centric.

* Customers are able to report on how they experience the enterprise.

And the Number One Benefit of Implementing a CRM Solution Is …

Quantifying all the benefits is the easy part, but the number one benefit is really up to you to determine. What exactly do you want a CRM package to do for your business? It is essential to perform a thorough comparative analysis to find the solution that provides the benefit that best meets your needs.

What Industries Can Use CRM, and What Are the Advantages?

CRM can be used by a broad spectrum of industries and enterprises. Applications have been designed for specific domains, including aerospace, automotive, call centers, real estate, telecommunications, financial and banking, energy, government, legal services, manufacturing, health care and pharmaceutical, retail, transportation, and travel.

* Financial and insurance markets
This solution includes features of comprehensive CRM packages, but is designed to help financial and insurance markets with their specific client bases. Among its features and functions are policy tracking and investment tracking in order to enhance client databases. Software from some vendors might allow customer data to be consolidated, permit better communication between branches, and reduce staff training costs.

* Real estate
CRM for this sector helps vendors to improve customer relationships by capturing online leads, increasing the volume of higher-quality leads, performing personalized electronic marketing campaigns, and automating various administrative processes such as prospecting, quoting, and financing.

* Telecommunications
Solutions specifically designed for this industry can help reduce churn rates, generate new sales opportunities, and increase customer retention. In an era when the number of competitors seems to keep pace with the number of services provided, CRM can allow companies to bundle their services, thereby reducing cost as well as preserving an evermore fickle client base.

* Travel and transportation
Among the many industry-specific functions of this CRM solution, automated campaign management and SFA can help businesses consolidate client data and improve passenger experiences. As a result, increased productivity, higher traffic volumes, and reduced costs become the benefits for this sector.

* Health care and pharmaceutical
For the pharmaceutical industry, a CRM application can facilitate improved sales presentations, better promotion of product information, and better collaboration with physicians regarding product market demographics.

* Government
Yes, even in a domain that is not profit-motivated and that prefers the word “citizens” over “customers,” CRM applications can provide benefits. Across the board, government departments are constantly striving to improve “customer service” and overall user satisfaction, and can do so with a CRM application that merges services and permits quicker response.

SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/customer-relationship-management-evolution-not-revolution-19108/

Boosting the Bottom Line with Master Data Management

2010-08-24T04:15:00.002-07:00

If you haven't heard of master data management (MDM) yet, you will. If you didn't realize that you use master data every day, you do. If you didn't know that MDM can help boost your company's bottom line, it can.

MDM is the process that organizes, unifies, and eliminates duplication of customer, product, and logistical records, as well as other key pieces of information that businesses have to track every day. And it does this across different departments, platforms, and systems. Simply put, master data is the core customer and operational data that gets used in virtually every significant process and transaction that a business conducts.

So what does this mean for an organization in practical terms? MDM enables companies to boost their bottom line by

* reducing the cost of mailings, marketing campaigns, and lead acquisitions
* allowing for faster sales lead processing
* improving the quality of service in customer service departments and call centers
* strengthening sales and marketing functions

Download this informative podcast featuring Lyndsay Wise, senior analyst at Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC), and Anurag Wadehra, vice president of marketing and product management at Siperian, a leading MDM and customer integration solution provider, today. You'll find out more about MDM, including how to get started, what strategies to bring to the table, and all the benefits you can expect.

Click here to download Boosting the Bottom Line with Master Data Management now!

This podcast examines the following questions:

* What is the importance of master data management (MDM) to your organization?
* How can you cut costs through the use of MDM?
* How can MDM help you improve your company's sales and marketing efforts?
* What should you be aware of from a technical point of view before implementing an MDM solution?

Podcast Transcript

Hi, and welcome to TEC Radio. My name is Lyndsay Wise, and I am the senior research analyst for business intelligence [BI] and performance management here at Technology Evaluation Centers. Today I have [with me] Anurag Wadehra, the vice president of marketing and product management at Siperian. Siperian is a leading master data management [MDM] and customer integration solution provider. I will be discussing with Anurag what the importance of master data management is, and how organizations can use MDM solutions to improve their sales and marketing efforts, and how MDM can affect the bottom line and increase profitability within an organization.

Lyndsay Wise: Anurag, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today.

Anurag Wadehra: You're welcome.

LW: What is MDM?

AW: That's a very interesting question, Lyndsay. Today, there's a lot of coverage of master data management, and essentially what it is, is a management of a certain kind of data. It is a data that defines the core business descriptions of customers, products, locations, and other key entities that [businesses] have to track. That's a very simple way of saying that master data management is managing your key business entities.

LW: How do organizations use master data? Can you give us an example?

AW: What's interesting about master data and the management of it, and the use of it in companies is that nobody uses it exclusively. Nobody wakes up and says, "I'm going to use master data today." It gets consumed in every business process and every business transaction. Let me give you an example. If you go to the bank and withdraw 10 dollars from an [automatic teller machine] ATM, in that transaction is implied who you are: what's your name,... your account number,... your address,... your location. Those aspects of the transaction are attributes of master data, and they get used, derived, or accessed during that transaction. And that's true for other business processes that involve customers, products, the relationship among customers and products, or other classes of what is called master data. So, in a nutshell, master data gets used in virtually every significant business process and transaction.

LW: How can MDM actually help a company improve its sales and marketing efforts?

AW: That's a very tricky question because companies have been trying to improve their business performance, including their sales and marketing processes, for a very long time. And for sales and marketing, companies have been trying to reduce the cost of mailings, cost of marketing, to different segments of their customers.

In sales, the cost of acquiring the leads and processing the leads … is an area of focus for many companies to improve their effectiveness. Master data is critical because very often the reason why costs are very high is because companies do not have good control over their master data. And therefore by controlling the quality and reliability, and very often, very simply, the definition of master data around customer product accounts, companies can significantly improve the business performance and business processes associated around this data.

Perhaps an example will help. If you consider a mailing that is sent to 10 million customers by a large bank announcing either a credit card offer or some other product offer, a significant amount of money can be spent on incorrect addresses, incorrect duplicate names, similar names, multiple mailings sent to the same household, very often not recognizing that spouses might actually belong to the same institutions as customers.

All of these issues result directly in higher cost and lower profitability. The root cause of many of the problems I've just described was poor quality of master data, lack of understanding of the relationships among master data.... By improving the quality and control of master data, you can improve directly the bottom line of your sales and marketing processes by reducing the cost of mailings, by improving the quality of services at call centers, and by improving the time it takes to process leads for sales.

LW: What kind of strategies should organizations use to help them implement MDM?

AW: So, what we've discovered is that a lot of companies understand the importance of high quality master data and the management of it, yet struggle with getting started because master data is so pervasive and is part of every major transaction and business process. Therefore, our recommendation has been that you start by looking at one specific business problem, such as cost of marketing, or high cost of sales, or improving customer service levels, and then drill down within that problem to the root cause of high costs, and very often those are driven by poor quality of master data.

By limiting the business problem, you are trying to attack and [narrow] in on the master data issues in that area. You can actually implement a solution rather quickly, very often within 60 days or less. And therefore you can start getting the benefit of having fixed the master data issue in one particular business area, such as marketing or sales, very quickly.

That's what we advocate. Don't try to boil the ocean. Don't try to attack master data across the entire enterprise in a single project. Identify a business problem that is very contained, and solve the problem by implementing a solution for master data. The dark side of that approach is that if you solve the problem and then go on to address a different problem—let's say, with product data—and now you implement a completely different solution for that, how do you make sure that all these solutions are actually, in fact, connected, because your common definition of a customer for marketing needs to be the same common definition of customer for, let's say, tracking products that are being shipped to the customer.

Connecting the master data solutions and making sure that all the master data solutions in the company are based on a common set of definitions is a very important consideration as you attack master data problems.

LW: In your previous question beforehand about sales and marketing, you actually did mention some of the challenges that customers face when they are trying to implement or use master data management solutions for their sales and marketing efforts. But can you also describe some of the challenges that customers face who don't use MDM, either additionally within sales and marketing or other areas of the organization?

AW: I think what has happened is that people who don't think that master data management is a new problem that needs to be addressed in a new way, usually end up having to address the problem in the old way.

Let me give you an example of that. A lot of companies might say, “I have a CRM system,” whatever the back office application they have purchased for managing sales leads, or “I have a call center application,” whatever system they might use to train their customer service reps to take the calls and support them. They might believe that those systems are adequate for providing a coherent view of the customers—their addresses, their locations—and that might be true for just that narrow process. However, business processes and customer processes span across sales and marketing and support. So, it's very important that the customer service rep knows that a sales call has been made to this customer the day before, or what state of marketing offer might have been sent out two days before.

Business processes that span sales and marketing and customer service should acquire a common, standardized definition—a common, standardized view of your customer's core profile information, be it their address, their location, their preferences for e-mail, their privacy preferences, etc. And if companies do not have master data management or do not believe they need master data management, they end up spending a lot of time handling data inconsistencies, data quality issues. Ultimately, these are customer retention, customer loyalty issues because customers get frustrated; they say, “You, the company, do not understand me,... that I have already given you my new mailing address six times, and yet you keep sending me stuff to the old address,... that I've told you not to e-mail me at this particular e-mail address, and yet you keep e-mailing me back at this particular e-mail address”—these kinds of customer loyalty, customer experience issues stem from not addressing master data.

SOURCE:
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/boosting-the-bottom-line-with-master-data-management-19117/

When Customer Relationships Meets Business Intelligence Marketing

2010-08-24T04:15:00.001-07:00

Strategic moves by SAS Institute (see Part Two of this note) are a response to the requirement that modern business intelligence (BI) suites be able to access and present key business measures for sales, customer service, the supply chain, financials, purchasing, inventory, and many other areas. In addition to these functions, BI suites must also provide the ability to use information building blocks as the basis for comparisons, calculations, ratios, and metrics. Users should be able to dynamically combine business measures to derive key performance indicators (KPI), such as product profitability, margin analysis, book-to-bill ratios, return on investment (ROI), and other vital metrics. Typical data that manufacturing enterprises should know about, on a daily basis, include inventory situation, rejected items, throughput, booked sales, order status, on-time shipments, and warranty levels. In each of these categories, users may want to get behind the numbers and trends to discern the root causes or find out what items, regions, channel partners, or customers are involved.

Part Three of the SAS: Striving to Sustain Leadership series.

For many reasons, SAS's alliance with Amdocs (NASDAQ: DOX) and partnership with Aprimo might be one of the few vendor partnerships where both customers and vendors benefit. By including customer, supplier, and information technology-related (IT) intelligence, SAS has a product functional scope that moves well beyond financial BI solutions to espouse a holistic corporate performance management (CPM) vision. However, the company will still face strong competition in many vertical markets from other leading BI vendors, such as Cognos and Business Objects. We believe SAS could further strengthen its position and enter more vertical markets by espousing a stronger original equipment manufacturer (OEM) or independent software vendor (ISV) partner strategy, which enables third parties to add their vertical, industry-specific experience, and accompanying front-ends and tools to SAS' analytical engine. The resulting packages could be resold into large and mid-market companies in those verticals.

In addition to the ongoing competition from a plethora of traditional BI players, or from statistical package market players, such as Insightful's S-Plus and SPSS, SAS is also facing a new nemesis in Siebel. Siebel designed Siebel Enterprise Analytics from the scratch and with data integration in mind. In two years, this product has grown from a few early adopters to become one of the vendor's fastest-growing, and possibly the largest product lines in 2004.

Needless to say, Siebel has long been a customer relationship management (CRM) archrival to Aprimo in the realm of enterprise marketing management (EMM), but it has also posed challenges to Amdocs in the call center and customer service space within the telecommunication sector. Both Siebel and Amdocs the largest two remaining pure-play CRM vendors and the competition with Amdocs has only intensified after Siebel acquired the billing and customer self-service provider eDocs, in late 2004. Given Siebel's recent intrusion into the BI market, we might even stand to be corrected by calling it a "semi-pure" customer relationship management (CRM) player. In any case, discussion indicates an intrinsic link between CRM and BI, which is possibly best illustrated within the market automation (MA) and customer service and call center markets (see Marketing and Intelligence, Together at Last and Analyze This).

Despite the challenge posed by Siebel and other rivals, SAS' move to build partnerships, especially with Amdocs should meet the growing need of communications service providers (CSP) seeking to build more profitable customer relationships. Until recently, crucial information was locked in Amdocs' disparate systems, such as billing, CRM, orders management, mediation, etc. and given this, CSPs were questioning such systems value. Through the collaboration between Amdocs and SAS, CSPs should now be able to collect this information and derive useful analyses to gauge the climate of the market and the temperament of their clients, and adjust and build services accordingly. Likewise, if successful, the vendors will also find profitability. SAS will be able to strengthen its position in the telecommunications market and extend its functional CRM footprint and Amdocs will be able to drive its MA strategy forward, and justify its new direction to its current customers. For more information see Amdocs Overhauls Its Marketing series, Part Three.

This is Part Three of a three-part note.

Part One profiled SAS.

Part Two discussed alliances, partnerships, and acquisitions.

Challenges

To compete with leading BI and data warehouse companies and enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendors that are moving into these markets, SAS needs to further open its products to make it easier to employ third-party tools. Also, like Cognos, Hyperion, and Business Objects, SAS should also exploit the current, weaker BI technology position of many ERP vendors to foster relationships with them, rather than viewing them as the adversaries.

SAS may also have to further adjust its business model. Currently, it still primarily provides its software on an outdated mainframe licensing model, deriving over half of its revenues from annual license fees that amount to about one-third of the initial licensing cost of its products. This provides SAS with a steady income, but may not be an attractive option for many prospective customers. SAS should consider moving to a more common enterprise software licensing model with annual support costs in the range of 15 percent of license costs. With its new product, SAS 9, SAS may be showing signs of recognizing that the old model of selling a complex tool kit, and then training its customers' internal staff on the tools, needs to be extended to many levels within the user enterprise. Strong vertical tailoring, more consultancy, and more out-of-the-box functionality to all areas in a business process are other positive signs that should be further exploited by SAS.

SOURCE:

http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/when-customer-relationships-meets-business-intelligence-marketing-analysis-and-user-recommendations-18109/

Marketing Automation: Coming of Age Slowly

2010-08-24T04:09:00.000-07:00

Amdocs Overhauls Its Marketing

2010-06-01T00:33:00.001-07:00

SAP Finds CRM Partner for Marketing Tools

2010-06-01T00:32:00.001-07:00

On December 6, SAP revealed it had entered into a partnership with Recognition Systems Group of the United Kingdom to add marketing planning and campaign-management features to its customer-relationship management suite.

SAP and Recognition Systems have agreed to jointly develop integration between SAP's enterprise resource planning and data warehouse packages and Recognition's Protagon suite, which offers customer-segmentation tools to help marketing professionals plan and analyze marketing campaigns. The integrated offering will be available in the second quarter of next year. Analysts say the partnership will help SAP get to market on time in the CRM arena.

Market Impact

As we already indicated on a number of occasions, SAP has long been remiss in addressing and delivering its CRM product line, and has faced a difficult internal dilemma: whether to fully integrate its internally developed CRM modules with its R/3 ERP system and risk the possibility of losing customers to quicker-to-market ERP competitors or CRM niche players, or to jump on the bandwagon and hastily deliver sub-optimal CRM functionality. It chose a third option of partnering. We believe that SAP has caved under the pressure from the marketplace not only to deploy a solution but to also articulate its product development strategy. If SAP had blindly followed its tradition and built marketing software from scratch, as it is doing for the sales and customer support components of its CRM suite, it would have taken at least another 12-18 months to deliver. We believe that this partnership will partially fill some gaps within SAP's CRM product strategy, although no one can discount the painstaking effort in delivering a fully functional product.

A Customer Relationship Management Solution Aims To Cover all the Bases

2010-06-01T00:30:00.000-07:00

Surado aims to provide a complete CRM suite, rather than a modularized solution targeted towards departmental delivery. Its goal is to build full-featured, integrated, and multifaceted systems, as well as out-of-the-box solutions. The vendor is a Microsoft Certified Partner and Microsoft Business Solutions Certified Gold Partner, and uses the Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) as the foundation for its product development. It also touts the merits of the Six Sigma methodology and Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) as quality improvement philosophies.

Surado targets the small and medium business (SMB) market, namely organizations with annual revenues of $1 million (USD) to $1 billion (USD), and approximately 88 percent of its clients fall into this category. To reinforce its position in this market segment, Surado offers Surado Small Business CRM 5.0, designed for ten users or less. Surado Small Business combines the core Surado CRM suite (Contact & Account Management, Sales Automation, Marketing Automation, and Customer Service/Help Desk) with Integration for Exchange (for e-mail, contacts, and tasks), the Surado Integration Module (for connecting to third party databases or creating custom tables and screens), and Surado CRM Web (a web interface for remote user access to basic functionality.

Although Surado CRM is not vertical-centric, it enjoys a wide installed base in traditionally "vertical CRM"-dominated industries, such as technology, health care, education, banking and finance, and government. The vendor has customers in all fifty US states and in over sixty-four countries worldwide. A sampling of its top clients from those vertical industries includes Blackbox, County Regional Medical Center, California State University, Georgia Student Finance, and the City of Riverside Economic Development Agency.

We'll analyze Surado CRM 5.0 from the perspectives of core CRM functionality, look at some of its distinguishing factors, and discuss some of the challenges users may face when considering Surado CRM for small to midsized businesses.

Core Functionality of Surado CRM 5.0

Core CRM functionality covers five aspects:

* contact and account management
* sales management
* marketing management
* customer service and support
* integration

The figure below is a TEC-created table comparing Surado against other vendors and their offerings. Surado performs above other vendors in the areas of marketing automation, sales force automation, customer service and support, and partner management. In the areas of contract management and creation, and project management, Surado's performance is above average, but below the highest-rated competitor.

"Star Search"—Talent Management Made Simple

2010-03-27T05:46:00.000-07:00

So, what is talent management, anyway?

When I think of talent, I think of musical and artistic talent: stage performers, actors, and singers. I think of Star Search, Canadian Idol, and America’s Got Talent.

When I think of talent management, I think of talent agencies and talent scouts. But talent management reaches far beyond Hollywood’s casting couch and the doors of Motown’s recording studios.

Talent management is the process of developing and retaining current employees, and of recruiting and attracting highly skilled workers for your business.

Talent management may also be referred to as human capital management (HCM), human resources information systems (HRIS), or human resources management systems (HRMS)—and it’s something that every growing business should know about.

While talent management emerged in the 1990s, the term was originally coined by McKinsey & Company in 1997. Since then, it has been adopted by scores of businesses looking to improve the processes of tracking and managing their employee talent.

Why Is Talent Management So Important?

One of the biggest challenges businesses face today in the area of human resources (HR) is the recruitment and retention of skilled talent. According to 2007 HR Trends Report: People to Profitability—answered by more than 500 executives of small and medium sized companies—talent management is the greatest business concern after revenue.

People are the most important resource in today’s global economy. And whether companies are willing to admit it, at the end of the day, it’s their people that are going to make the difference to their bottom line. To remain competitive in today's job market, employers need to know about their employees—what they're doing, what their skills are, how they're progressing, and where they fit in the business’s future. As such, companies need to integrate talent management into their wider business strategy.

When it comes to managing talent, HR and talent managers definitely have their work cut out for them. In order to deliver results that will positively influence their organization, these managers must develop and implement an integrated talent management strategy or plan.

A successful talent management plan must flow seamlessly from strategy to practice, putting effective techniques into efficient practice.

What Are the Two Key Challenges?

1. Employee Recruitment and Retention

Recruiting and retaining the “best and brightest” requires more than just offering fringe benefits and signing bonuses. Managers must be ready and willing to help their current employees develop the skills that will prepare them for higher-level roles. The search for the best and the brightest can be a constant and costly battle, so companies need to find more imaginative ways to keep their best people.

Don’t lose the skilled talent your organization needs to your competition. Understanding which employees have the greatest value in particular business areas will enable you to create an effective workforce plan. Having a workforce plan will help determine whether you have the right type and number of employees with the right skills to meet the demands of your business.

2. The Global Workforce

Globalization has changed the face of business. While most organizations have adapted their operations to this new reality, too many are falling behind in developing HR strategies, policies, structures, and services that support their global operations. To create a truly global workforce, companies—especially organizations that operate on an international level—must incorporate a talent management strategy throughout their global environment.

In order to stay competitive and maintain an effective and stable workforce, organizations have to change their hiring, retention, and workforce management strategies throughout the global enterprise. This will help them to keep their candidate pipeline full for future growth.

To this end, a talent management strategy can be invaluable in developing a unified corporate philosophy for attracting and retaining much-needed talent across the globe.

What Systems Are Available to Help Manage Talent?

By now you have a better understanding of the importance of talent management. But even the best talent management strategy can’t stand alone; it requires the help of a system that can automate core HR functionalities while making crucial employee data easily accessible to the users who need it. In order to control costs and gain the most from the organization’s resources, the system must be able to bring key talent management and such HCM processes as performance management, workforce planning, skills management, succession planning, recruiting, and resource scheduling together into one unified solution.

Enter integrated talent management (ITM).

An ITM solution is comprised of several applications designed to help organizations improve their recruiting and hiring processes. These processes include performance management, succession planning, and workforce planning, and may include several other modules, depending on the solution. ITM can often be adapted to meet industry-specific challenges, such as those in the health care, education, or financial services fields.

ITM solutions are primarily delivered as hosted software—i.e, software-as-a-service (SaaS)—but they are also available as on-premise software.

Some of the benefits of ITM include the following:

*

provides managers the tools they need to accomplish their recruitment and retention goals
*

handles large-scale hiring and terminations
*

integrates comprehensive employee data into one unified system
*

identifies which employees qualify as successors for key positions
*

enables the creation and management of a talent pool that is based on performance appraisals and career goals

Squeeze Play in the Supply Chain Management Market

2010-03-27T05:43:00.002-07:00

To increase market share, vendors are expanding and offering more services to customers. On one hand, enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendors are adding such functionality as warehouse management systems (WMS) and transportation management systems (TMS) into their suites; on the other hand, supply chain management (SCM) vendors are including business intelligence (BI) or supplier relationship management (SRM) functionalities in their applications. Consequently, the IT market is seeing a convergence of functionality for ERP and SCM systems.

In pushing downward into the supply chain space, ERP vendors are incorporating such additional functionality as product lifecycle management (PLM), SRM, advanced planning, WMS, TMS, event and performance management, labor, slotting, yard management, and radio frequency identification (RFID) to their ERP product suites. This business model of ERP vendors pushing downward has expanded, and it is consuming valuable supply chain execution (SCE) market share. This is in accordance with market demand, as organizations are now expected to have one system to address all needs collaboratively.

This article examines the upward push of supply chain vendors into the ERP space and the downward penetration of ERP into the supply chain market, as well as the overall impact on the market.

The Downward Push of ERP Vendors

ERP vendors are expanding their market share at the expense of SCM vendors. ERP solutions encompass a wide range of functionality that includes most of the business processes of an organization. Traditional modules like accounting, BI, customer relationship management (CRM), advanced planning and scheduling, manufacturing, warehousing, and shipping are all standard ERP offerings today.

Most ERP functionality is usually stronger within a particular function of the enterprise (such as financials), while accommodating the other functions within its infrastructure. Other business functions within the ERP infrastructure are incorporated within the same platform, and there is no need for additional interfacing between each operation. Although ERP software covers many modules, its functionality within a module may vary widely, and may not incorporate an adequate level of detail for a particular function like an engineered-to-order product.

Many organizations have elected to implement best-of-breed SCE software on top of their current ERP system to address the shortcomings of functionality within the supply chain. An example where additional functionality was needed in the warehouse is Indigo Books & Music. Indigo implemented SAP corporate-wide, and then had to install an additional WMS (HighJump) to cater to its warehousing requirements. This is common for other companies, such as Nike, Daydots, and 99 Cents Only Stores, where ERP systems have been installed along with WMS solutions to manage the warehouse.

Companies like Catalyst, HighJump, Manhattan Associates, and RedPrairie have all interfaced to SAP successfully, and Catalyst is even approved by SAP for its interface between the WMS and the ERP. Generally speaking, new SCM functionality now incorporated into the ERP products is more detailed and stable from a platform and functionality aspect.

This new level of functionality incorporated within ERP may be the element that is currently missing to handle today’s increasing need for real-time information and accuracy. Tier one vendors, aware that their solutions were lacking in detailed supply chain functionality, have spent extensive research and development resources to improve these shortcomings. SAP, for instance, has dramatically increased functionality within its WMS offering.

Figure 1 outlines most of the traditional functionality included with most ERP and SCM systems software.

How the Mining Industry Benefits from ERP Systems

2010-03-27T05:43:00.001-07:00

Mining is a multifaceted business, one that in many ways parallels a repetitive manufacturing business. The analogy is that exploration and marketing for a mining company, for example, is similar to the marketing research performed by a manufacturer, although a noted difference between the two is that most mines are of sizes to support decades of operation, whereas a manufacturerâ€™s production runs last for much shorter durations.

Here in this article, a loose comparison is drawn between the mining industry and the manufacturing industry, and suggested is a method to follow in order to integrate financial reporting so that auditors can verify results. It concludes with concepts that are required to manage the entire organization.

In a mining company, each department has its own way of measuring outputs, which often is incompatible with legal or shareholder requirements. An enterprise resource planning (ERP) system allows each department to use its own reporting measures. The ERP software transforms data bidirectionally to the standard (legal) business reporting. However, it is this use of disparate methods by departments that causes confusion within the mining company.

The manufacturing industry has learned that integrated scheduling, materials management, production manufacturing, and distribution are the keys to profitability. Yet in a mining company, what is understood in one business department, if managed by non-ERP software such as spreadsheets and tailored stand-alone software, is that financial integration is time-consuming and fraught with errors, and it does not allow a coherent view of the companyâ€™s operations or a true measure of annual profit.

Table 1 depicts similarities between the basic departmental structure of a mining company and a manufacturer, but this article focuses specifically on one overview of the departmental structure of mineral mining.
1. Exploration
Geologists are the mining companyâ€™s major explorers. Often the geologistâ€™s work is to follow the ore vein at an existing mine, other times it is fieldwork. The geologist collaborates with the mining engineer in exploration and in extending operations at an existing site.

In the past, the land to be surveyed was walked; samples taken were labeled and put into knapsacks for later analysis. Newer methods now use aircraft with instrumentation to look at anomalies to the earthâ€™s magnetic field as well as at soil colorations and vegetation as indications of vast ore bodies lying beneath the earthâ€™s surface. This primary information is used to limit where the geologists begin the on-foot exploration and the extent of their survey. Once a potential ore-bearing area is targeted, the geologist arrives to take samples.

After a potential ore body is discovered, a secondary, in-depth analysis is performed to determine the economics of building a mine. Other (chemical) research determines the amount of the oresâ€™ accompanying minerals, such as sulfur, gold, uranium, and others. Exploration costs include salaries, camps, insurances, aircraft and electromagnetic equipment, and other machinery and materials needed to estimate the ore body size.

Financial considerations that come after an adequate â€œore body sizeâ€ has been confirmed include a lifetime estimate of the mine (based on a prescribed rate of depletion), labor, installation and amortization of fixed assets; cost of converting currency and royalties; and taxes. All things being favorable, the infrastructure planning for roadways, railways, and so forth is done in conjunction with the ore extraction department.

Exploration costs are based on overheads and on time and materials. Typically, this cost is converted to a per diem charge (dollars per day, amortized over a year).

2. Ore Extraction and Excavation
In a typical manufacturing company, a production order is issued to respond to a sales order, sales contract, or a marketing request to make goods to forecasted sales. The mining industry operates in a similar way. The mining sales contract is more often a multiyear (10 years or more) deal. This deal marks the beginning of the refining or smelting process. Multiple sales contracts combined initiate the mining of the ore. Extraction and transportation of the ore is subject to sales and to seasonal requirements, and these operations are managed by the geologist and the engineering groups. In the extraction environment, analysis is performed to determine decline (the angle of a tunnel or the angle of the walls) at an open pit. This ongoing work allows for maximizing safety while ensuring the lowest cost of excavation possible as the dig expands. Too sharp an angle increases risk of collapse, whereas too shallow an angle cuts into the available area for excavation.

At a working mine, consumables and spare machinery parts are inventoried. Geologists now active in the quality control (QC) role measure the quality of the excavated material and its accompanying minerals. Extraction may be performed by many means, including strip, pit, or in-situ mining (the latter of which uses solutions to dissolve desired metals). As much as possible, the ore is separated from the soil and other accompanying material.

New environmental laws require mining companies to minimize the pollution they might create, with overburden being a prime example. Overburden is the unwanted material that is excavated along with the ore. After separation from the ore, overburden is spread over the exhausted area and covered with topsoil. Other pollutants are recyclable, permitting reuse with a minimal increase in excavation costs. Typically, the financial exercise at the mine is to derive a standard cost per metric ton of metal and to establish a standard quantity of ore that can be extracted to produce a metric ton of metal.

Consumables (e.g., diamond drill bits, dynamite, chemicals, fuel, food, etc.) and fixed assets (e.g., buildings, heavy haul equipment, generators for electricity, air conditioning, etc.) are factored into the cost equation.

Amortizations, depreciation, and the like feed into a set of financial ledgers, weighting factors, and a few transformation rules assigned to each variable, when manipulated, and a cost per metric ton of the ore is derived.

3. Transportation
In the transportation department of large manufacturing organizations, management (logistics) plays a major role in minimizing costs and optimizing delivery routes. But companies in the mining industry have a larger requirement. These companies often need to build their own routes as well as purchase all their rolling stock, since mines are usually located some distance from the smelter or the stockpile area. This stockpile area could be at a wharf, at a smelter, or can even be the ore in transit. (In transit, ore and refined metal are parts of the inventory, and they are added to the measured inventory).

Specific to the mine operation are capital investments for roads, railways, and wharfs and barges needed to haul the ore to the smelter or the delivery of work-in-process metal or finished goods. Actual transportation of product requires another method of costing, based on weight and distance. Truck, rail, and boat each have their weight-distance rates. Costs for fixed assets (overhead cranes or vehicles required for ore transfer from one form of transport mode to another, based on destination) are apportioned out. The operational costs are generally converted and blended to provide an amount per tonâ€“kilometer.

4. Smelting
In a manufacturing factory, inventoried material is scheduled, and the work in process passes multiple workstations, where at every station value is added. A mine operation is somewhat similar. Smelting or refining is the process of converting ore to metal. This is a continuous operation, with ore introduced at the end of the furnace where heating begins. As different metals have different melting points, the ore, which contains these metals, will have each metal siphoned away once its melting point is reached. Value is added as precious metals are extracted from the ore.

Sulfur, an element that accompanies almost every ore, is part of the â€œraw ore material,â€ which is consumed in the furnace as part of the mineral extraction process. Sulfur can be the fuel responsible for more then half the heat required to create molten metal. The molten metal is transferred to secondary mixing furnaces. QC activities for blending alloying ingredients, ensuring the purity of the product, and other processing then takes place.

Some internal or external customer contracts demand that the molten metal be poured into molds and then forged to a rough finished product. Other customers take ingot bars for further cold processing. Costs consist of the base smelting, the mixing, the purifying, and transportation. The transportation cost (ton-kilometer rates) is elevated, as the goods shipped require improved handling. The addition of alloys to make a special form of metal increases the finishing or work-in-process costs.

The Seven Deadly Sins of Software Marketing

2010-03-27T05:39:00.000-07:00

Marketing collateral does not come cheap. Costs associated with textual content, graphic design, and production quickly add up. Obviously, you want to get an appropriate return on your investment. This article looks at seven common mistakes, or "sins," made when developing marketing collateral for the software industry. The sins discussed consider such concepts as targeting your market, lowering costs, and making it convenient for your potential customers to use your marketing collateral. Also considered are the various forms of marketing, such as hard copy, electronic, and e-mail. Finally, we consider the cost of changing marketing collateral and its reproduction.

However, before we start confessing our sins, we need to state the obvious. Marketing collateral must be tailored to your marketplace and products. To sell a car, you probably would emphasize miles per gallon, passenger accommodation, and maintenance costs. Applying these same metrics to software may not make a lot of sense or demonstrate the strengths of your software products. While it may go without saying, never lose sight of the obvious—know your marketplace. This simple statement is not considered one of the deadly sins because if you are committing this grievous offense, you need to go back to the basics and seriously rethink your marketing plan.

The good news is that committing one sin may not condemn you to marketing hell, but committing enough of them surely will. So, grab your holy water, prayer beads, or whatever your religion provides for protection, and let's proceed.

Sin #1. Hiding Your Message

Have you ever gone to a web site that is plastered with customer testimonials, but with either no indication of what it is selling or, at best, with its products or services written in small print? It's like lighting a candle and covering it with a basket. You need to tell your audience what you are selling, what services you offer, and what support you provide. Tell them up front that "We offer software designed for the process manufacturing industry," "We cater to the food and beverage industry," or "Our software was developed to support the field services industry."

To avoid the "hard sell" approach, it may be helpful to ease into the description of what you have to offer. Consider the example below for the food industry.

They say that "it's the ingredients that make food taste good." However, in a rapidly changing marketplace, it takes a lot more than ingredients to compete effectively and efficiently in the food industry. Our software is designed to take care of the production and operational issues of the food industry so you can focus on the freshness of the ingredients.

Don't assume that your audience already knows what you do. If they did, they probably would not need a marketing brochure in the first place. In creating marketing collateral, assume that the reader is seeing your company and its products for the first time. Stating the obvious is not a bad thing. With marketing collateral—hard copy or electronic—readers already familiar with a particular content can simply read on or scroll down.

In the case of the cluttered web site, consider your own buying practices. If you were buying a car, would you start by finding out what current customers say, or by finding the car that meets your needs? Your next-door neighbor may be enthusiastic about his truck, but you're hauling kids, not lumber. Marketing collateral, which includes the web site, must clearly state what you are about and leave no room for doubt. When developing a piece of marketing material, remember that this is probably a prospect's first introduction to your company and its products and services.

When driving down a highway late at night on a business trip, looking for a place to stop, does the bright neon sign say in big letters "Free HBO" and in small letters "Motel"? Of course not. Likewise, if your marketing material emphasizes effective formula management before you mention that you cater to the chemical industry, you may want to reverse the order.

Sin #2. Swerving off Course

Too often we give up before the finish line is in sight. We become impatient if the results of a marketing campaign are not immediate. Here are some simple facts. Getting more than a 1 percent hit ratio for a marketing campaign is considered a success. So, if you send out a mailer with a response card to 100 prospects and 1 responds, don't give up. It usually takes between eight and ten contacts before you can expect to get your foot into your prospect's door. Accordingly, when planning a monthly e-mailer campaign, make sure you have enough material for at least eight months, hopefully avoiding repetition. Think about your reading habits. If you are extremely busy, you probably push unsolicited mail into your wastebasket and e-mail into your "deleted items" folder. On those rare occasions when you have time, you may actually peruse the mail, if only briefly. This is why success takes so long. The mail habits of your prospects are not much different from yours. However, if you incorporate consistent, eye-catching graphics, the chances are better that visual recognition will kick in a little sooner than normal.

Constantly changing directions confuses your prospects. Let's say your most recent sell was to a computer manufacturer. Now you want to switch to the discrete manufacturing space, when all along you have been proclaiming software development for process. Sure, make the sale, but don't let it change your focus—at least not after the first sale. Constantly changing your marketing plan destroys your credibility. Trying to be all things to all prospects is a bad business plan—and a worse marketing strategy.

There was a local dentist whose slogan was "We cater to cowards." On every piece of literature he sent out, the slogan was prominently displayed. Now, he did not have the advertising budget that most companies have, but after three years, whenever someone mentioned his name, the response was "Oh, the dentist who caters to cowards." Staying the course does pay off.

Sin #3. Failure to Create Reusable Material

Being able to use a piece of marketing collateral for multiple purposes can significantly reduce your overall marketing costs and time to deployment. If considered from the onset, this is not a difficult objective to achieve. If not, there could be a lot of redundant effort.

Let's look at a simple example to illustrate this point. Typically, marketing collateral is available in hard copy for one-on-one meetings, and electronically for ease of transmission. A nice, professional-looking, hard-copy format is an 11 x 17 inch paper folded in half, giving four 8.5 x 11 inch sides to the brochure. While you could easily convert this to a PDF format for electronic transmission, anyone who has tried to read such a document online knows it is like paying Pac-Man with your scroll bar. Left, right, up, and down just to center the content on your screen, making it difficult for the reader to maintain a steady train of thought. However, the advantage of the 11 x 17 inch format is that it can be easily converted into four 8.5 x 11 inch pages. When this document is converted to a PDF, you just read straight down as you would a normal paper document. When advance consideration is given to the various ways of using a piece of marketing material, your overall costs can be reduced.

Agreeing on a standard format and content can eliminate the typical floundering phase that goes into any creative process. Don't be afraid to reuse textual content. An example will illustrate this idea. In process manufacturing, you are always talking about formulas, pack recipes, ingredients, and scalability. If one of the sections of the marketing piece talks about software functions and features, it is all right to repeat these common aspects in a brochure for the food and beverage industry as well as for the chemical industry. Some might say that you are being redundant. Of course you are. The industries are both process-manufacturing-oriented. Furthermore, you are not going to send the same prospect both the food and beverage and the chemical brochures. With this approach, you need only pepper the functions and features with the uniqueness of each industry—say, catch weight for food and beverage, and carcinogenic reporting for chemicals.

You also want to give some thought to the preferred method of delivery for marketing information to prospects. An electronic transmission with an attachment or an e-mail campaign is the least intrusive and least costly. The problem is getting the e-mail addresses. Unless you have made a concerted effort to obtain addresses over a sustained period of time, the campaign may not have much impact. While you can buy lists, you do not get the list. The owner of the list e-mails your message. Consequently, you must rebuy the list each time. E-books—brochures that you read online as if you were turning the pages of a book—present the most professional-looking, electronic delivery mechanism. Unfortunately, they are typically executable files, which many corporate servers reject as potential virus-spreading attachments.

Another technique is useful for trade shows, where you can expect to meet a cross section of prospects. For them, burn all of your marketing collateral onto a CD, indexed by industry and topic. Essentially, you are creating a highly adaptable CD-based marketing (CBM) environment. If you have ever been to a trade show, you know that repacking for the trip home can be a humbling and difficult experience. Let's face it: you have to leave room for the stress balls, tote bags, and, if there is still room, vendor brochures. CDs take up little room. Since marketing material rarely consumes all of the space on a CD, you can re-burn it with updated information. The major cost components—the physical CD, label, and case—are reusable.

Tamkeen hosts comprehensive workshop for partners

2010-03-20T05:32:00.001-07:00

Tamkeen hosted one of the most comprehensive workshops for its training and consultancy partners, spelling out Tamkeen's priorities and way forward, the role of Tamkeen in empowering Bahrainis to become stakeholders in the leadership's Vision 2030 development matrix and its priorities in the months ahead.
Over 200 Tamkeen partners who handle training programmes, ranging from hospitality programmes to human resources and from accountancy programmes to occupational health and safety, in addition to private sector support programmes partners also attended the event.

Tamkeen's Chief Executive Mr. Abdulellah Al-Qassimi delivered an overview on 'Vision 2030 - The way forward' which detailed Tamkeen's role in realizing the leadership's goals and responding to the aspirations and needs of Bahrainis.

This theme was then taken forward by Dr. Nasser Al-Qaedi, Senior Manager in Tamkeen's Planning & Development department, whose topic 'Tamkeen's 2010 - 2014 strategy' touched upon Tamkeen's plans and how to put them into action.

Furthermore, Dr. Ahmed Al Shaikh, Vice President - Enterprise and Human Capital Development, gave a presentation on Tamkeen's achievements and the way forward, highlighting more than 50 programmes by Tamkeen for human capital development and private sector support with an investment of over BD100m.

Partners were given a detailed tour of Tamkeen's operations by Mrs. Suha Karzoun, Vice President of Finance and Support - with a detailed presentation on how projects are conceived, planned and tendered, what Tamkeen expects of its partners, how Tamkeen carries the message of change management and development and its resources to stakeholders.

As for Tamkeen's Communication strategy, Mrs. Hala Sulaiman - Marketing Communication Manager, focused on the importance of communicating Tamkeen's messages of change management and positive work attitudes to all stakeholders in the community.

commented Tamkeen's Marketing Communications Manager, Hala Suleiman.

"As an agency that is responsive to market needs and flexible to market changes, we believe that all our partners have to be on the same page if we are to succeed and this workshop is a channel of communication that we follow for maximum effect," she added.

Dell launches new system management features and new Dell PowerEdge servers

2010-03-20T05:31:00.002-07:00

Today Dell introduced new system management features as well as new Dell PowerEdge servers to address the evolving technology demands of large enterprises, small-to-medium-sized businesses and public organisations, providing them flexible and reliable solutions to help them grow and thrive.

Dell is introducing nine PowerEdge blade, rack-mount and tower servers and three Dell Precision tower workstations updated with the new Intel Xeon 5600 "Westmere-EP" series of processors, as well as new enhancements to Dell Lifecycle Controller and Dell Management Console (DMC). These hardware and software solutions offer customers outstanding management capabilities while providing a robust IT platform for virtualisation, server consolidation, mission critical business and database applications.

Dell has designed and built its 11th generation of PowerEdge servers to be more responsive and "intelligent" with the inclusion of the industry's only embedded system management, Lifecycle Controller. The new Lifecycle Controller 1.3, an embedded technology on the Dell server motherboard can help simplify and speed the most time-consuming IT tasks such as system deployment, system updates, workload migration hardware configuration and diagnostics from the desktop to the data centre. Independent tests show that with Dell embedded management that the Dell PowerEdge R710 delivered 58 percent faster pre-OS deployment than the HP ProLiant DL380 G6.

Plus, every Dell PowerEdge server comes with the latest version of Dell Management Console (DMC), which provides IT administrators a unified view of their IT infrastructure. The latest release includes a new power monitoring feature that provides greater awareness of server power consumption, allowing more informed decisions which can lead to lower energy use and cost savings. It also provides "Out of Band" server BIOS and firmware updating that reduces administration time and improves flexibility. The net result is these enhanced systems management capabilities can reduce or eliminate manual processes allowing customers to spend more time on strategic projects.

Something for Everyone—Nine Dell PowerEdge Servers Featuring Intel Xeon 5600 Processors
Dell is offering the new Intel Xeon 5600 series processors across its entire line of two-socket PowerEdge servers, including two blade servers (M710, M610), four rack servers (R710, R610, R510, R410) and three tower servers (T710, T610, T410). With Intel Xeon 5600-based PowerEdge servers, customers can realise better overall system performance increases of up to 69% and energy efficiency improvements of up to 47% compared to Dell PowerEdge servers with Xeon 5500 processor technology.

In addition, customers can:

- Get more computing done with embedded virtualisation hypervisors, generous memory footprints and I/O capabilities on Dell PowerEdge 11th generation servers to consolidate the application workloads of several servers onto one.

- Help improve energy efficiency through Dell Energy Smart Design enhancements including power supply units right-sized for system requirements, enhanced system-level design efficiency, policy-driven power and thermal management and highly efficient, standards-based Energy Smart components. Energy Smart design focuses on maximising useful work performed per-watt consumed.

- Bolster system and data security with Intel Advanced Encryption Standard New Instructions (AES-NI) and Trusted Execution Technology (TXT) to help protect against emerging software attacks. AES-NI enables broader use of encryption throughout the data centre and can make the encryption and decryption process efficient for customers.

Dell's line of PowerEdge servers offers large enterprises, public organisations and small-to-medium sized businesses reliable, high-value IT solutions that help them grow and thrive. Dell PowerEdge servers powered by Intel Xeon 5600 processing technology are globally available through Dell and its PartnerDirect channel partners from 23rd March 2010.

New Rack Server for Small to Midsize Customers
Dell is also introducing the PowerEdge R310 in early April, a new high-performance, 1-socket 1U rack server with the right combination of scalable computing power, value and enterprise-class features to meet the diverse needs of small businesses and larger enterprises alike. The compact, energy efficient PowerEdge R310 with the Intel Xeon 3400 series processors is ideal for applications such as Microsoft Windows Small Business Server, Business Center Essentials, SQL Workgroup/Standard, Oracle 11g Standard, VMware, Active Directory and SharePoint. Like all 11th generation PowerEdge servers, the R310 takes advantage of simplified systems management via Dell's embedded Lifecycle Controller along with state-of-the-art serviceability and diagnostics with optional interactive LCD. Other features include:

- RAID configurations to help increase data reliability and/or increase I/O;
- Flexible choices in operating systems for flexibility for diverse computing workloads. Choose from Microsoft Windows, Red Hat, Novell SUSE, VMware XenServer and Solaris; and,
- Energy-optimised technologies, including lower wattage power supplies.

Dell Precision Tower Workstations featuring the Intel Xeon 5600 Processors
In addition to introducing nine new Dell PowerEdge servers based on Intel Xeon 5600 series processors, the company is making available three new workstations in the coming weeks—the Dell Precision T7500, T5500 and T3500 models. Tailored and optimised for 3D design and animation, engineering, oil and gas exploration, scientific visualisation and defense professionals who are seeking standards-based solutions that enable greater flexibility, improved performance and the ability to help their business thrive.

"Intel has focused on three key areas when developing our latest Xeon 5600 series processors—security, virtualisation and energy efficient performance," said Kirk Skaugen, vice president and general manager of Intel's Data Centre Group. "Dell has chosen to use the Xeon 5600 across its entire 2-socket portfolio, using unique-to-Intel features such more cores and cache, and new security features, making these servers an ideal cornerstone for any enterprise, capable of meeting the computing demands of businesses of all sizes."

"IT organisations are under increasing pressure to improve business productivity while prioritising technology spend within decreasing budgets. Dell's 11th generation Dell PowerEdge servers help customers spend more time on creating business value and less on planning, deploying and maintaining IT with customer inspired design and advanced systems management," said Mohamed Halawa, Dell's Enterprise marketing manager. "With massive performance gains from greater memory and processing power in our updated servers and built in reliability to minimise single points of failure, Dell is helping companies achieve better business results."

DTCM Showcases dynamic Dubai to the world at ITB

2010-03-20T05:31:00.001-07:00

For the 21st consecutive year, the Dubai Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DTCM) participated in the International Tourism Exchange (ITB), showcasing Dubai's tourism product offerings at the world's biggest tourism fair in Berlin.
Joining DTCM as co-participants at the five-day fair from March 10 to 14 were the emirate's tourism industry stakeholders, including hotels, tour operators, airlines, and destination management companies (DMCs).

The B2B platform for travel trade visitors, the ITB took place at hall numbers 1 to 26 of the Berlin Exhibition Grounds (ICC Berlin). The importance that this fair enjoys is reflected in the exhibitors' sales of about five billion Euros and an exhibitors' satisfaction rate of 92 per cent. This year's edition had an overall exhibition space of 160,000 square metres.

Approximately 11,000 exhibitors from more than 180 countries presented the latest travel trends and tourism products at the 44th edition of ITB. The world's leading travel trade show expected around 100,000 trade visitors and 70,000 members of the general public to attend.

Mr. Saleh Mohammed Al Geziry, DTCM Director of Overseas Promotions and Inward Missions, who headed the Dubai team, said: "The ITB remains an ideal event for us to aggressively promote and market Dubai in overseas markets. It again provided us the opportunity to showcase the best of Dubai to a global audience. We are confident that our co-partners will benefit immensely from the ITB."

He said the participation in ITB will also help Dubai tourism industry players to reach out to Germans who have been showing unfaltering interest in Dubai as a year-round business and leisure destination.

The DTCM delegation also included Mr. Abdullah bin Suwaidan, DTCM Deputy Director of Overseas Promotions, and Mr. Ali Abdul Wahab, Head of East and West Europe at DTCM Overseas Promotions.

Among the VIPs who visited the stand included Mr. Mohammed Khamis bin Hareb, Director General of UAE's National Council for Tourism and Antiquities, UAE ambassador to Germany, H.E Mohammed Ahmad Al Mahmoud, and Mr. Fadi Abboud, Lebanese Minister of Tourism.

Measuring 528 square metres, the double-decker Dubai Stand had 58 booths and 111 co-participants. There were 52 booths and 96 co-participants at the Dubai stand last year's edition.

Germany has remained a key source market for Dubai's vibrant tourism industry with a three per cent growth last year in the number of German hotel guests which stood at 283,319. The number of tour operators promoting Dubai in Germany went up by seven per cent to reach 296. The number of Germany nationals utilizing the Dubai airport in the year 2008 was 1,391,892, an increase of four per cent

Oman Air appoints Maitha Al Mahrouqi as Country Manager Oman

2010-03-20T05:30:00.000-07:00

Oman Air announced the appointment of Maitha Al Mahrouqi as country manager for Oman. Born, brought up and partly educated in Oman, Maitha brings with her a wealth of experience and knowledge that she acquired within a span of a decade.

She also carries with her the tag of perhaps being the first female cartographer from the region, and the first Omani cartographer as well.

Maitha started her airlines stint with Emirates where she began her career as reservation and ticketing, sales and holidays officer and moved over to Gulf Air as the airline's Business Development Manager. She was subsequently promoted as the General Manager of Gulf Air for Oman, where she was in charge of the entire sales teams, their target and the projected growth.
As Country Manager for Oman Air, Maitha will be responsible for the target of key hub station - Oman, optimising the sales revenue and seeking ways and means of promoting Oman Air through various sales channels.

Abdulrazaq Alraisi, General Manager Worldwide Sales, Oman Air says: "Oman Air is very happy with the appointment of Maitha, as she brings with her exceptional qualities and qualifications required for this post. We are sure that Oman Air will greatly benefit from her expertise and experience and the persistent hard work that sets Maitha apart from others. We wish her all the best in her new role, which we are sure she would execute with elan and efficiency."

With her exposure of working with the major airlines of the region, Maitha has the knowledge and competence in leading sales operations, reservation, ticketing, holidays-packaging, revenue-optimisations techniques and the related support services.

Consistency Gives Your Positioning Time to Work

2010-01-25T06:54:00.002-08:00

Change is not your "friend" when it comes to positioning. Your friend is consistent delivery and repetition. No matter how clever an idea, phrase, or tagline, if you fail to deliver a consistent message over a long period of time, it will fail to reap the benefits of product positioning.

As I said before, the goal of positioning is to help the target market associate a benefit with your product or company. With some effort, time, and money, you can claim a position by consistently communicating an idea that has meaning (this is key) to the target audience, and then repeating it, and repeating it, and repeating it.

Even a weak positioning strategy, consistently executed over a period of at least 18 months, is far more effective than a strong position that is inconsistently executed and that changes once a year.

What Does Being "Consistent" Really Mean?

Being consistent means using the same carefully crafted message strategy in all of your marketing communication. You say you don't have a message strategy? Then you need one. By creating a message strategy, it's easier for you to stay consistent (or "on-message") across all marketing activities, including advertising, web sites, brochures, public relations, and presentations to prospects, customers, industry analysts, investors and, of course, key influencers.

And while you're doing that, keep an eye on your competitors. Those with a consistent message are likely to be toughest ones. Remember, when you evaluate for consistency, first check print advertisements, then direct mail or e-mail campaigns, then your web site, then press releases.

Perception Maps Let You See "Where They Ain't"

2010-01-25T06:54:00.001-08:00

OK. You've analyzed your competitors and created an informative table. Now, how do you decide if there is an unclaimed gap you can claim for your own? Follow the baseball adage, and "hit 'em where they ain't." (In baseball, this expression refers to the batter hitting the ball where the other team's fielders are not standing). A table won't show where to hit it, but a map will—a perceptual map of the competitive landscape, that is. Figure 2 maps the positioning landscape for the software companies listed in Figure 1.

By creating a perceptual map, you can easily determine whether your proposed product positioning is unique, and avoid creating "me-too" marketing materials that copy your competitors' and fail to set you apart from the competition. Testing your positioning statement for uniqueness is a critical step in the positioning process, but one that many business-to-business (B2B) software marketers overlook. Don't let this happen to you.

Give the Prospect a Break—Differentiate

2010-01-25T06:53:00.000-08:00

In their 1993 marketing classic, Positioning. The Battle for Your Mind, Al Reis and Jack Trout wrote, "too many companies embark on marketing and advertising as if the competitor's position did not exist. They advertise their products in a vacuum and are disappointed when their messages fail to get through."

The goal of positioning is to help the target market associate a significant benefit with your product or company. Failure to differentiate creates market confusion, and this inevitably leads to longer sales cycles. Yet few companies successfully differentiate, generally because they either don't know how to evaluate and determine competitors' product positioning, or they simply don't think it's important.
It's pretty easy to learn how competitors are positioning themselves, because they do it in public. So start reading and analyzing your competitors' print advertisements, marketing collateral, and web sites, with an eye to deducing the positioning behind their messages. You'll probably find that a lot of the marketing communications put out by your competitors aren't backed by a real position. Often, these messages are just a "brain dump" (a lot of factual information) of product features. They lack the heart and soul of good positioning—a meaningful benefit statement, a reason the audience should care about their product.

A positioning statement frequently appears in the first or last paragraph (or both) of an advertisement, or in a prominent place on the home page of the web site. A good positioning statement should be a focused benefit idea or concept underpinning the executional theme of the advertisement, home page, brochure, etc. For each competitor, analyze as much of the marketing material as possible, including direct mail and e-mail marketing pieces, brochures, and press announcements.

Once you have determined the competitors' positioning, organize the ideas or themes in a table according to the conveyed benefit statement. Some competitors are likely to have similar or identical positioning statements. Other competitors may publish many claims, making it harder to determine how they are positioned, if at all. It is common—and a mistake—for companies to make two or more benefit claims of equal importance. Check those too. Figure 1 shows a real-world example of how the following mid-market enterprise accounting and enterprise resource planning (ERP) software companies were positioned in late 2005.

The Quick Answers to the Questions

2010-01-25T06:48:00.000-08:00

Surado CRM interactive workflows include a graphical user interface (GUI) designer that lets managers design various business processes graphically, to help guide representatives through processes such as handling customer inquiries or complex internal procedures. Many vendors define process automation as workflow. However, Surado CRM interactive workflows are not simply process automation represented through GUIs. Users can drag and drop objects, create links between multiple objects, and then actually use objects to open internal windows, launch external applications, execute automated triggers, and launch other workflows.

An Innovation: Organograms
Surado users can create or view unlimited organizational charts (the Surado Organogram). With this feature, users can see the traditional hierarchy view of the parent company, accounts, departments, and contacts, in addition to the organizational charts belonging to their customers.

The Organogram provides the ability to display contacts within the organization, as well as other relationships, including partners, suppliers, alliances, contractors, and any other customized relationship. The functionality includes color-coded differences between contacts within the organization, relationships, and the ability to launch any contact or relationship with a click, directly from the organizational chart.

Mobile CRM
This aspect of CRM addresses the need for remote and mobile users to access accurate, timely, and up-to-date information. Surado CRM allows mobile users to access customer information through a separate disconnected laptop solution. The solution can also synchronize contact and schedule data with Palm and Pocket PC devices, including personal digital assistants (PDAs) and mobile telephones; salespeople can also access information with any Internet connection, through web-enabled modules.

Challenges
When conducting an enterprise evaluation selection, it is important to thoroughly assess the organization's needs, and create a shortlist of vendors that can best meet them. Based on the features described in this report, Surado appears to cover all of its bases, by offering a complete on-site CRM suite, which is easy to use, highly customizable, quick to implement, and affordable. Innovations like Dynamic Workflow and Organograms have allowed Surado to be a leader in the CRM market.
Answer the first question by developing a list of key customer problems, ranking them one through five. Then determine if your positioning statement addresses one of the top problems from a benefits angle. If it does, you are making a claim that is important to your target market. If it doesn't address one of the top problems, you need to change your positioning statement.

A unique claim means that you are the only one making it. Test for uniqueness by analyzing competitors' advertisements and web sites to determine how they are positioned. Then create a perceptual map that will show you whether your claim is unique or not. If you are making an important claim, but one that's not unique, you may want to consider changing your message strategy.

The key to successful positioning is to consistently execute your message strategy in all your marketing communications, and then repeat it, over and over. Check for consistency by first evaluating advertisements, then your web site, and finally, press releases. The primary benefit should stand out in each medium. There are many reasons for inconsistent message strategy delivery. The audit identifies the causes and recommends ways to deliver your message more consistently.

One outcome of the audit is that you are able to decide if there's a need to implement a standard process for positioning. Some of the steps in the process become obvious when you audit your message strategy. Let's take a closer look at how to do the audit.

Your Product Is Only as Important as the Problem It Solves

Your prospects are overwhelmed by communication in today's fast-paced, high-tech world. They get so many marketing messages—somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 per day—that they have become experts at filtering these messages out. You need to become an expert at cutting through the filter with a message that is relevant, important, and unmistakably yours.

A list of product features just won't "cut it" (be effective). Your passport through the filter is a benefit statement that addresses the primary concern that keeps your prospect awake at 2 A.M. Your target audience will listen when you demonstrate that you understand their problem and clearly communicate the benefit your product offers to solve it. Give your target audience a break and show that you really understand what's keeping them awake at night. Your single-mindedness will be rewarded.

Once you've developed a list of key problems, you need to rank them. If you ask customers to rank these problems when you survey them, they can do so pretty quickly, but be alert for repetition (the same problem described in different words) and broad generalizations. The act of ranking the list of customers' problems gives you a gauge to measure your positioning statement. The test is simple: does the statement address the target audience's most pressing problem? If it doesn't, you may need to go back to the drawing board.

Audit Your Message Strategy by Answering Three Questions

2009-12-05T01:49:00.001-08:00

The launch of TEC’s blog has somewhat coincided with my visit to Belgrade, Serbia (what used to be Yugoslavia and then Serbia & Montenegro) for personal reasons. Those several days spent in my homeland in late October/early November (whereby I missed my beloved Boston Red Sox’ winning the MLB World Series ’07 Championship, darn it!) I at least used this time to also learn about the enterprise applications market in that region, and maybe even in the entire Balkan region. I have never seen any such market report from any other analyst house about this (possibly obscure) region, and I thought this topic might be of interest to our (curious) readers as well as to me. To be fair, I’ve seen other similar trip reports, such as this recent one about the Australian enterprise applications market.

Well, it appears that in Serbia (and in all other countries from the former Yugoslavia), there is today still not a mature enterprise applications market per se, as opposed to in the developed Western world. On one hand, the variety of offerings is far from being sufficient, while on the other hand, the prospective buyers’ awareness and education about what and why they really need is not developed either. Consequently, most purchased and deployed enterprise resource planning (ERP)/accounting systems are those products that have somehow already become a brand name in the market (the so-called Coca-Cola phenomenon). Alternatively, prospective user firms simply buy the cheapest option, regardless of the (mis)fit and possible ramifications. Such a situation seems to be in all spheres of information technology (IT) – hardware, software, telecommunications, etc. (if not even in virtually all spheres of business and life). But I digress…

One should, however, note that the former Yugoslavian market, never having been behind the Iron Curtain, had an enviable tradition of both local entrepreneurs and state-owned enterprises developing their own software applications from scratch, even at a time when the term ERP had not even been coined yet. Thus in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the market was dominated by the software products of many domestic companies, such as former (now defunct) SDC-CIP’s Mozaikus (a.k.a. Comand 2000) product, former Digit’s Hefis product, meanwhile renamed into FIS (Financial & Industrial Systems) and arguably SAGA’s Avizo product. These firms and their respective products held at the time about 80 percent of the market, while many new companies emerged later like M&I Systems , Breza Software Engineering , Spinaker, ABsoft, Mihajlovic Soft , etc.

Some of these companies are apparently no longer in business, while the others have meanwhile diversified their offerings to become reseller partners for Microsoft, Fujitsu, Oracle and so on. One ERP product that deserves due mention here is Apollo, not only for weathering all the storms of the 1990s to survive today, but also for keeping abreast of modern developments. Namely, its fourth generation product, dubbed ApolloG4, boasts a multi-tenant software as a service (SaaS) architecture for on-demand deployments, in addition to solid multi-national capabilities. But I digress again, and Apollo will get an in-depth coverage in a separate blog post or in a research article on our web site/newsletter…

Going back to the era of late 80’s & early 90’s, Oracle was the main provider of underlying relational database management systems (RDBMS) and development tools, whereas IBM DB2 also played a part (albeit to a much lesser degree). Much later, software developers started using Microsoft SQL Server and related cheaper integrated development environment (IDE) tools (or, until recently, one could use even “alternative channels of supply”, i.e., piracy). The protracted crises (the regional wars and the United Nations [UN]’s sanctions throughout most of the 1990s) have tremendously weakened (if not even put out of business) many domestic ERP vendors.

Given that at the time one could count on the fingers of one hand the number of successful manufacturing companies, demand for business software was extremely thin, so that only some privileged enterprises (under the patronage of the government, so called „government budget enterprises“) would purchase an ERP solution. These were Naftna Industrija Srbije (NIS) or the Serbian Oil Corporation, Elektroprivreda Srbije (EPS) or the Serbian Electrical Utilities, the Serbian Government and its umpteen ministries , as well as some government agencies and institutions. Certainly as a separate lucrative segment, there were banks and insurance firms, which, beside telecommunications, such as government-owned Telekom Serbia and former Mobtel (now Telenor), were the only enterprises able to afford the modern IT systems and services.

A particular blow for many avant-garde domestic ERP providers in the 1990s was the closing of Oracle’s office in Belgrade. Amid UN sanctions and NATO bombing, some resilient ERP entrepreneurs were left to their own scarce means to continue developing and supporting their applications. However, the positive political and economic changes that took place after October 5, 2000 (when the Serbian velvet revolution took place) have resulted in the emergence and penetration of foreign packaged software systems into the Serbian market.

Interestingly enough, before Oracle returned Microsoft was one of the first to arrive (in great part due to a deal with the new Serbian Government to provide the standard IT infrastructure solution for all government agencies). But, beside its common infrastructure and desktop products, Microsoft then brought something new – the Microsoft Dynamics NAV ERP product (at the time known as Navision). Soon after, the Serbian market witnessed Baan (then part of Invensys, today known as Infor ERP LN) via its value added reseller (VAR), followed by Oracle, who initially only offered its infrastructure and middleware, but not necessarily Oracle e-Business Suite (EBS). Former PeopleSoft/JD Edwards (well before being acquired by Oracle) and, of course, SAP also followed suit.

Certainly, there were still a number of lower-end accounting products that had meanwhile been developed in Serbia even if under adverse conditions. These products came out of the needs of smaller enterprises, which were not ready to pay more than a few hundred German Marks (later Euros) per month (the price entailing both the software license fees and implementation costs) for their accounting needs (i.e., regulatory compliance imposed by the state).

In any case, in 2001 and later the Serbian ERP market became a hodgepodge of available products, to a such degree that at some tenders (selections) one could witness up to 30 contesting vendors offering their products in the range of contract prices from Euro 150 to Euro 2 million (?!). One could then imagine the ludicrous task of a selection committee to select the best solution if the main selection criterion was the price. For that reason some tenders would be repeated several times in order to set criteria that would eliminate unsuitable solutions to enter the contest. That was also the time when certain consulting houses entered the picture. For the price of an arm and a leg, they offered their selection services, which would include some criteria and contract terms that could easily render some vendors as favorites.

During last seven years or so, the situation has become much clearer, and the market has been stratified into the following three segments/tiers:

1. The buyers of the most expensive, top-of-the-range Tier 1 ERP solutions,
2. The buyers of moderately expensive, middle-of-the-range Tier 2 ERP solutions, and
3. The buyers of the least expensive, Tier 3 ERP solutions.

When one attempts to segment the enterprises in Serbia, it is most natural to divide them into the large, mid-size and small ones, as well into privately or state-owned, and also by the industry vertical. Certainly, from the buyers’ angle and their possible needs, one could think of other segmentations, but the above tiering of Serbian ERP market should be sufficient here. Given that every market consists of demand and supply, let me try to describe each segment/tier in terms of buyers and vendors.

Tier 1 – the potential buyers here are the abovementioned public and government-owned enterprises: the Serbian Government and its institutions, and large manufacturing, retail and export/import trading enterprises that have meanwhile become privatized (as it is so popular and politically correct to say in Serbia these days “they have completed the transition”). As we will shortly see, most of such privatized companies have been sold to multinational companies who then often brought in their own already implemented enterprise solutions. The estimated number of such enterprises, and thus potential users of Tier 1 ERP systems would be between 100 and 150, but it is not unrealistic to expect as many more in a couple years or so.

This market segment already seems to be largely captured by SAP. According to data from SAP West Balkans , which covers Serbia and a few other countries from former Yugoslavia, SAP ERP has nearly 50 corporate customers in the region. For many privatized enterprises, given that the parent company in Europe has SAP as a corporate-wide ERP standard, recently acquired plants or divisions in Serbia were given the mandate from the HQ office to roll-out SAP. Enterprises like ZDRAVLJE “Actavis” Company (a drug manufacturer in Leskovac), Tetra Pak Balkans, or Duvanska Industrija Nis (DIN), a cigarettes manufacturer and part of Philip Morris International, would represent well SAP’s client roster. Certainly, SAP’s brand recognition and leadership position worldwide have played a part in the decision-making of other customers, which are not necessarily owned by a SAP-using foreign entity.

Inevitably, the fiercest competitor to SAP Business Suite is Oracle EBS, albeit with only a handful of installations in Serbia, mainly owing to its apathetic regional marketing effort for its ERP solutions. The most notable Oracle EBS users are Narodna Banka Srbije (NBS) or the National bank of Serbia, “Vojvodjanske Toplane” Novi Sad (a public heating utility in the city of Novi Sad) and Aerodrom Nikola Tesla u Beogradu or the Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport. Oracle has some additional presence, because one investment fund (Salford) has bought a majority of dairies and some food and mineral water plants in Serbia (thereby establishing the Danube Food Group in Serbia). The corporation has been trying for years to implement JD Edwards (first acquired by PeopleSoft, and now part of Oracle) as its ERP standard. There are also a few notable companies with instances of Baan due to its distributor’s timely entrance in the market in the early 2000s.

But, in a nutshell, SAP currently has a very little competition in this market segment due to Oracle’s tepid marketing approach and because the former Baan distributor company, ITS Intertrade Sistemi was acquired in 2004 by the SAP reseller, Austria-based S&T Group. There are simply no other viable upper-market and/or specialized solutions in the market, such as Lawson M3, Infor (a plethora of possible offerings), Epicor iScala, QAD Enterprise Applications or IFS Applications. The reasons for the lack of competition might be multiple – from these ERP vendors’ estimates that the Serbian market is too small and not worth the investment, to the possible political instability and the fate of ongoing reforms in the region, and so on – but the Tier 1 ERP supply situation is so.

Audit Your Message Strategy by Answering Three Questions

2009-12-05T01:48:00.000-08:00

The goal of positioning is to help the target market associate a significant benefit with your product or company. Failure to differentiate creates market confusion, and this inevitably leads to longer sales cycles. Yet few companies successfully differentiate, generally because they either don't know how to evaluate and determine competitors' product positioning, or they simply don't think it's important.

Are You Making a Unique Claim?

It's pretty easy to learn how competitors are positioning themselves, because they do it in public. So start reading and analyzing your competitors' print advertisements, marketing collateral, and web sites, with an eye to deducing the positioning behind their messages. You'll probably find that a lot of the marketing communications put out by your competitors aren't backed by a real position. Often, these messages are just a “brain dump” (a lot of factual information) of product features. They lack the heart and soul of good positioning—a meaningful benefit statement, a reason the audience should care about their product.

A positioning statement frequently appears in the first or last paragraph (or both) of an advertisement, or in a prominent place on the home page of the web site. A good positioning statement should be a focused benefit idea or concept underpinning the executional theme of the advertisement, home page, brochure, etc. For each competitor, analyze as much of the marketing material as possible, including direct mail and e-mail marketing pieces, brochures, and press announcements.

Once you have determined the competitors' positioning, organize the ideas or themes in a table according to the conveyed benefit statement. Some competitors are likely to have similar or identical positioning statements. Other competitors may publish many claims, making it harder to determine how they are positioned, if at all. It is common—and a mistake—for companies to make two or more benefit claims of equal importance. Check those too. Figure 1 shows a real-world example of how the following mid-market enterprise accounting and enterprise resource planning (ERP) software companies were positioned in late 2005.

Benefit	Lawson	MBS	Best	SAP	Oracle	SSA
Understands the needs of small and medium businesses.			X
Understands business fundamentals.				X
Is flexible and adaptable.		X	X	X
Is affordable.		X			X
Delivers value to the customer.	X				X
Supports rapid implementation and return on investment (ROI).						X

Figure 1. Positioning of mid-market enterprise accounting and ERP software companies in 2005.

Bolstering the Call Center with Service Resolution Management Processes

2009-12-05T01:47:00.002-08:00

To accommodate increasing customer demand for company and product information and for quick issue resolution, companies are now considering the benefits of online self-service systems. Knowledge management (KM) software is the key to such systems, as well as to integrating customer relationship management (CRM) and service resolution management (SRM).

For more background, please see Integrating Customer Relationship Management and Service Resolution Management and Knowledge Management: The Core of Service Resolution Management.

Bolstering Call Center (and Other CRM) Processes

The trend of customer service enablement and the nurturing of customer relationships (which have traditionally been the forgotten stepchildren of CRM) may be overtaking customer acquisition as a main driver of recent CRM deployments. Customer service has historically been provided primarily in person or over the telephone, with limited reference materials available for the customer service representative (CSR). This emerging business model assumes that companies that provide customer service over the telephone will find value in aggregating company knowledge by using the appropriate software, and will be willing to access the content over other channels, especially the Internet. The business model also assumes that companies will find value in providing some of their customer service over the Internet instead of by telephone.

In the past, customers would show a preference for a certain channel of communication with a company, but this is no longer the case. Customers now use several different channels available to ask for support and service and about upgrade issues, or to inquire about or request new products and services. And they expect to receive accurate, consistent information, regardless of the channel they are using. Service that does not meet these expectations is considered a waste of time, and a reason for the customer to seek out competitive offerings elsewhere.

The use of multiple channels for customer service and support, as well as the importance of consistent, accurate, and swift answers, is expected to only increase in the future. Companies are thus realizing that what their customers are seeking is knowledge (which is likely stored somewhere in the company, but more likely, scattered all over the company), and that these customers want it regardless of the channel they choose, be it telephone, Web self-service, e-mail, retail kiosk, or chat.

The logical question a company should ask itself is how it can provide customers with direct access to the knowledge they are looking for when that data may be residing in a variety of places. For example, product specifications, technical support, billing questions, and pricing and policy information can all be found in any number of places, such as CRM databases; legacy KM systems; frequently asked questions (FAQ) lists; intranets; content management systems; billing systems; or an automated response system. The goal here is to analyze the customer's problem, retrieve the information needed to solve that problem, and to do so in whichever contact channel the customer chooses. This process should not only minimize customer frustration and lower the cost of the support transaction, but it should also leave the customer delighted.

Although computer-telephony integration (CTI) systems do a great job at automating call routing and case management, web sites have become ever glossier and animated, and CRM systems do a decent job of handling customer contacts (and possibly preferences) and product information, something is still missing to enable cohesive customer service. The plethora of new self-service technologies, such as natural language search engines, knowledge bases, guided navigation, user forums, collaboration, personalization, multichannel (e-mail, instant messenger [IM], integrated voice response [IVR], call centers), and so on, lead us to the emerging part of CRM software applications, specifically applications that enable customer service organizations to more effectively resolve service requests and answer questions.
What Service Resolution Management Offers

Built on KM and search technologies, SRM (not to be confused with supplier relationship management) applications optimize the resolution process across multiple service channels, including contact centers, self-service web sites, help desks, e-mail, and chat.

An SRM system creates a knowledge backbone for the seller company by creating a single interface that pulls vital information and knowledge from wherever it is stored, whether it is in the CRM system, legacy support systems, search engine, web site, document libraries, etc. It allows the company, as a business leader, to evaluate what processes are taking place in its support environment and to then determine how it would like those processes to be handled. With this, the company can guide users step by step through the process of answering their questions, applying the right process to each inquiry to drive the outcome it wants.

Service resolution systems enable the company to harness all the tools and knowledge it has already acquired to solve customers' issues, regardless of what channel they use to tell the seller company about their issue. These SRM applications have to complement, integrate with, and enhance traditional CRM areas like sales force automation (SFA), marketing automation, contact center, and help desk applications by providing knowledge-based solutions that improve service delivery. Although still an emerging software category, existing SRM customers include some of the largest companies in the world, and SRM products have reportedly enabled these companies to reduce operating and service delivery costs, improve customer satisfaction, and increase revenues.

Here is an illustration: A service call (customer inquiry, complaint, etc.) comes in, and the agent fields it by performing a search. A technical bulletin, written by a product manager and stored on a network drive, comes up in the query results because the knowledge base searches both structured and unstructured knowledge. This very issue has been documented, and a resolution has been built to ensure that an answer can be provided. A wizard pops up and prompts the technical support agent to walk the customer through a setup process. The new product can then be used successfully, resulting in a happy customer.

This is the type of service the customer wants and what support systems are really trying to provide—seamless service resolution, which can only be provided by effectively using and managing corporate knowledge (i.e., the knowledge of products and services; diagnostic troubleshooting; information stored in all documents on the network drives, intranets, and e-mail systems; and, most important, the knowledge of the customers and support agents).

Trend Analysis

The markets for KM and SRM solutions are still emerging, and it is difficult to predict how large or how quickly they will grow, if at all. Some companies have found that the productivity of customer service personnel initially drops while CSRs are becoming accustomed to using the software.

Self-service can cause conflicts, since it contributes to a general shift of control and resources away from the call center. Also, exposing some information can be risky. For example, logging complaints into the system and then displaying them on the customer portal can cause some users to regard giving out sensitive information as “hanging themselves." Resistance to the software by customer service personnel and inadequate development and maintenance of the system's knowledge resources, business rules, and other configurations have in some cases made it even more difficult to attract new customers and retain old ones.

Competition in the fragmented SRM marketplace is rapidly evolving and intense, and one should expect competition to further intensify in the future as current competitors expand their product offerings and as new competitors enter the market. One should also expect that competition will increase as a result of industry consolidation, which comes from the need for newer models of customer service, in which a single vendor provides solutions for both internal and external service, technical support, and search.

Knowledge Management: The Core of Service Resolution Management

2009-12-05T01:47:00.001-08:00

Today's businesses are faced with the reality of customers expecting and demanding more multichannel information and better service from call centers than ever before. Integrating call center service resolution management (SRM) into customer relationship management (CRM) can help companies retain both their call center agents and their customers.

For more background, please see Integrating Customer Relationship Management and Service Resolution Management.

Knowledge management (KM) is at the core of integrating CRM and SRM. KM software aims at helping to unlock the power of a company's knowledge to improve efficiency, competency, and profitability. It does so by providing an environment in which companies can, more quickly and cost-effectively, create a company-wide knowledge base to store and index documents and to more accurately search for the answers to user questions.

Currently, the key trends in KM tools enable companies to perform the following: 1) target their online information to reflect what is most likely to interest customers, and 2) maintain online forums where customers can share amongst themselves what they know about the company's products.

Hence, KM products typically fulfill two functions. KM accommodates self-service, meaning a customer can access a pool of public information that a company accumulates about itself, without the need for live assistance, to have his or her questions answered. Second, KM software helps call center agents to retrieve information from a repository that is often, obviously, larger than what is available to the public (since the aim of live assistance is the same as self-service—to answer customers' inquiries quickly and accurately, but with the preferred human touch).

The above considerations have marked a fundamental shift away from the time when any company could claim to perform a valuable service to customers simply by displaying information on its web site, without having to take into account who the customers were. Today however, virtually all companies must demonstrate their value to customers by segmenting information that is directly relevant to them.

Customer segmentation is not a new idea, since segmentation was supposed to be the way that—with the help of CRM tools—companies would offer the best possible service to their best customers. The problem with applying overt segmentation to customer service was that it then revealed a hierarchy that placed most customers at the bottom. This was so because, by definition, elite customers represent a small minority (the proverbial Pareto's 80/20 Rule). The premise of segmenting customers reinforced the idea that customers existed to create value for companies, rather than the other way around. Using this logic, most (up to 80 percent) customers were of little value to the companies that they bought products and services from.

By contrast, the practice of KM helps companies establish a bidirectional relationship with customers that rewards them for sharing knowledge (their product and service use experience), and not only for spending money. The latest generation of KM software makes this possible by enabling the company to combine what it knows about customers and what customers know about the company, and to offer this information as part of the resources available on its web site.

As discussed in Making the First Call Count by Greg McFarlane, an astute KM software has to make it easier for agents to author new knowledge when new services, products, or upgrades are in place. This reduces the need for agents (especially novice agents) to escalate calls to the upper service tier. This decreases the costs and the lengths of calls, but more importantly, it gets calls answered more quickly. In addition, the diagnostic search functionality helps resolve customers' issues quickly and accurately with its ability to pull answers from any data source an agent can connect it to, thereby giving agents the right information at the right time. Lastly, the automation of key resolution processes enables new agents to get up to speed more quickly. By pre-populating case notes and pre-establishing workflows and other techniques, the companies can create an environment that allows agents to operate as effectively as possible, regardless of their experience.
With the addition of multiple channels and new technologies to support them, call center agents' job descriptions should become more interesting and diverse. When this occurs, several of the major barriers to call center agent job satisfaction, such as stress, repetition, and dullness, can be eliminated, thus resulting in greater retention. The customer service representative (CSR) might start to feel like a problem-solver rather than a mere document reader.

Agents might also feel more accountable for problem resolution, as they begin to follow problems from start to finish. For instance, a CSR can access and present solutions to problems from a knowledge base; create a service ticket; request repair services; note a complaint; process returned materials; issue a rebate, coupon, or refund; and escalate issues to other responsible parties, such as tier (level) two support, development, quality assurance (QA), or even third parties.

Customer satisfaction should, in turn, increase, as the number of disconnected handoffs between agents, customers, and channels are reduced. On the other hand, increased agent retention should improve the organization's domain knowledge, and as a result, the number of first-call closures should rise.

The Impact of Online Customer Service

Online customers are becoming increasingly demanding, since they want answers to queries quicker than ever before, and they want to be able to access services when it suits them—around the clock. No customer wants to be put (seemingly endlessly) on hold or escalated, or to attempt several different solutions over the next hour, only to be called back the next day. He or she wants the issue resolved as quickly as possible, either through self-service or by a knowledgeable agent at the other end of the telephone.

At the same time, web site design is maturing, and the average customer is becoming more computer literate, which means that customers are ready to be introduced to online self-service solutions. Many customers indeed want to be able to solve their own problems through self-support on the Web, since we are all “too darn busy, and who has time for lengthy phone calls.” Companies, too, are ready to embrace the benefits of self-help solutions, which offer the dual advantage of cutting the cost of support while improving the quality of the service delivered to users.

In the early 2000s, Forrester Research reported that it costs, in US dollars, about $33.00 to handle a customer inquiry by telephone, $10.00 to handle it by e-mail, and about $1.00 to deal with the question through an online self-service system. Furthermore, by 2010, Gartner projects that self-service interactions will account for 58 percent of all service interactions, up from 35 percent in 2005. Thus, the goal of self-service has been to drive as many inquiries as possible away from the telephone to the Web, which is less difficult than it might seem, because organizations usually find that about 12 questions will account for half the calls made.

An effective self-help system should allow users or customers to resolve most common queries on their own, but it should also make it easy to escalate inquiries to an operator through telephone, Web chat, or e-mail if users get stuck or their questions are more complex. Also, call center representatives can sometimes handle problems more productively over live chat than on the phone, since an agent can deal with only one customer at a time over the phone, but it is quite possible to simultaneously juggle a few live chat sessions with customers.

One should note, however, that different users have different levels of tolerance for the length of time they are willing to commit to self-service, which means the availability of live support is still a necessary option companies must offer. On the other hand, in a corporate setting, the company may want to discourage highly paid staff from using self-help for more than a few minutes, because it does not want these employees to be unproductive.

In summary, enterprises can provide customer self-service that reduces service costs, improves customer satisfaction, and facilitates the sales and marketing of products and services. Moreover, IT organizations can increase the effectiveness of employee help desk operations while decreasing internal technical support costs.