Enterprise Software Executive

Enterprise Social Networking - A Great Place to Start

Recently, there has been a lot of press covering the Enterprise Social Networking industry.  I have my own definition, but I have included the Wikipedia definition below:

Enterprise social software, also known as Enterprise 2.0, is a term describing social software used in "enterprise" (business) contexts. It includes social and networked modifications to company intranets and other classic software platforms used by large companies to organize their communication. In contrast to traditional enterprise software, which imposes structure prior to use, enterprise social software tends to encourage use prior to providing structure.

The Association for Information and Image Management(AIIM) defines Enterprise 2.0 as "a system of web-based technologies that provide rapid and agile collaboration, information sharing, emergence and integration capabilities in the extended enterprise".

Regardless of your specific definition, it is clear that today's companies need a clear and targeted Enterprise Social Networking strategy.  For some companies, it is part of their DNA and has never been formerly defined.  For example, I work for an open source provider of CRM software that quickly grew from an idea in 2004 to one of the most successful startups in this decade.  EnterpriseSocial Networking was never a formal strategy for the company, but it was critical to the growth and success.  The company started with three dedicated and focused founders who began creating and developing their vision for next generation CRM software that leveraged thoughts and ideas from around the world.  To harvest these thoughts, ideas, and contributions, they build a "community" to help them share in their goal and achieve their objective.  The community was leveraged for product ideas/features, product roadmap feedback (ranking ideas/voting), submitting ideas/code/extensions, and quality assurance testing of the product during development.  In many cases, the community became so dedicated to their mission that they even helped debug and fix areas of the product for the founders.  The community forum quickly grew from a source of information and sharing between the founders and developers into a larger community that supported a variety of purposes ranging from consultants for hire/career/jobs to client - to - client discussions sharing the best practices for implementation and customization of the software.  Over time, the community became equally important to software company and resulted in the founders becoming another peer in the community rather than driving the community.  Each release was driven by the product ideas, product feedback, and assistance from the overall community.  However, there is no stated Enterprise Social Networking strategy at the company, rather it is a critical part of the company culture.  It is hard to quantify the value of the community because without the community, there really is no company.  The community today has over 100,000 members with over 12,000 specifically focused to developing and assisting with technical details.  Through the community, there have been over 5 million downloads of the software which has helped to drive more than 5,000 commercial clients using the commercial/fee based edition.  Those numbers are proof that there is a huge ROI behind Enterprise Social Networking.  However, the common question I receive from client is really simple.  "How do I start?"

Step 1: Define your target audience.  Does you company want to improve client interactions or harvest employee knowledge, or both?  Research topics on the "voice of the customer" to make sure that you are "listening" to all the relevant clients, community members, partners, and stakeholders in your business.

Step 2: Review currently deployed tools and review your strategy with a holistic approach that incorporates existing communication channels such as your corporate website, demand generation programs, affiliate marketing, support portals, intranets, email campaigns, and forums.  Very few companies are starting from a complete "green field" scenario, so it is important to incorporate and refine existing interaction channels.

Step 3: Deploy, test, and refine.  Start with a phased approach, but move quickly enough to make an impact on your business.  Start small, but grow quickly.

Step 4: Encourage your employees to adopt "social networking" tools such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter to get them thinking along the lines of new Web 2.0 communication tools.  While I noted a great example for how my company leveraged the community and forums for growth, I have a similar example where marketing failed to leverage Web 2.0 tools.  At a recent user conference, the company announced a Twitter feed for news related to the user conference.  The company posted only one single tweet, and that was on the topic of announcing the new Twitter feed.  The lesson for all is to make sure your employees embrace, understand, and become comfortable with using these new Social Networking tools before they take them into the "Enterprise" where your company often doesn't get a second chance if they fail with communication. 

In summary, many of the same concepts which drive intelligent use and adoption of social networking tools can be applied to Enterprise Social Networking.  Encourage your company to begin reviewing their strategy and interacting with clients, partners, and employees using these revolutionary new tools and strategies to improve your business.

Twitter for Business, really?

  There has been a lot written about the use of Twitter for business and marketing in the enterprise recently, and I think most of the blogs / articles highlight key concepts and ideas.  However, sometimes companies need to look outside their industry to really learn best practices.  When enterprises today are looking for new and interesting ways to interact with their clients, look no further than the cycling community and Lance Armstrong and friends.  So far, Lance Armstrong known as @lancearmstrong has almost one hundred thousand "followers".   For fans of Lance Armstrong's products (i.e. Trek Bicycles, Lance Armstrong Foundation, Team Astana, etc...) there are thousands of devoted followers who follow everything from product release info to product previews to cross promotional offers/news.  There is no reason why every company shouldn't take a page out of Mr. Armstrong's Twitter strategy to provide exciting and relevant "sneak preview" news and updates prior to them hitting the "newswire".  I would suggest that the VP Strategy, CTO, or CEO is the perfect person to begin Tweeting to all those customers who really do care about your products and love your company.

On Demand - Analytics Too?

After a few months off from the blog, I have New Year's goal to post at least once a week so please keep checking back in for new posts and feel free to submit topics.  I have the pleasure and good fortune to be a board member for the Technology Association of Georgia.  Last week, we had an excellent panel of speakers which I'll recap in my next post.  After the event, I met Amit Kesarwani of Decipher Tech (www.deciphertech.com).  Amit described his new start-up and their ability to integrate into Salesforce.com, Microsoft CRM, and several other large players in the industry.   More importantly, Amit described his company as a SaaS analytics company.  I have heard of most of the players in the market such as LucidEra and other similar companies, but I didn't know that Atlanta had its very own on-demand analytics vendor. 

So, how does Decipher Tech stack up against the other players in the industry.  Stay tuned, and I'll have a review of them all next week! 

CRM + Social Media Tools - July 11th - 7:30am - La Madeleine - Atlanta Perimeter

Everyone is looking forward to reuniting on July 11th at 7:30am for the Atlanta SugarCRM Meetup at La Madeleine - Perimeter. A recent addition to the SugarCRM team and a well known member of the Atlanta software community is Josh Sweeney. Josh will present on two hot topics which seem to be on everyone's mind today.

Meeting Topic:

#1: CRM for Social Media - Josh will explore the ability to leverage new social media tools like Twitter for customer service and support usage while demonstrating his demo integration of SugarCRM and Twitter.

#2: Building New CRM Modules without Code - Josh will demonstrate how business users can easily use SugarCRM's Module Builder feature to build custom modules such as HR, Inventory, Time/Attendance, or any other type of custom module desired in SugarCRM.

The meeting will start promptly at 7:30am at La Madeleine located at:
1165 Perimeter Center West, Suite 330, Atlanta 30346
La Madeleine Perimeter Location

Please come join us for complimentary coffee, pastries, and thought provoking discussions and presentations at the Atlanta SugarCRM Meetup.

Lead Generation - It's Science, Not Art

Anyone leading a sales team these days needs to be part sales management and part marketing guru.  It isn't enough for a sales VP to understand the basics of pipeline management, opportunity management, and the most popular sales methodology of moment.  Everyone knows that a strong sales funnel is a direct result of an optimized marketing lead generation program.  It is fine to allow marketing to own the lead generation piece of the puzzle, but it is critical that sales takes an active role in the building and management of that program.  Why?  Mainly, it is due to the fact that sales is the customer facing part of the organization.  As a result, Sales will typically receive direct feedback from clients and prospects with regard to what type of questions and solutions are important to them.  By harvesting this insight and building marketing lead generation programs around the prospect/client interests, it is possible to more efficiently deliver this information to prospects.  More importantly, marketing can begin the "dialog" prior to the start of the sales process which ultimately increases the success of the sales team when they finally engage in a buying process or sales cycle.  This is commonly known as "lead nurturing" and Jon Miller's company, Marketo, has developed software to management of this process between sales and marketing.  I would suggest reviewing Marketo's blog on lead nurturing along with linked info on Brian Carroll's thoughts on lead nurturing to quickly enhance your lead generation efforts.

SugarCRM Presents at Atlanta PHP User Group

On November 1st, Steve Kasinetz - WW Director of Sales Engineering and David Gearhart - RVP Southeast & Latin America for SugarCRM presented to the Atlanta PHP User Group.  The Atlanta PHP group connects and unites PHP users across the Southeast, provides world-class support and resources to the community, and advocates the adoption of PHP to local, national, and international businesses.  Steve Kasinetz presented the new SugarCRM 5.0 release and answered questions from the audience for 90 minutes.   Ben Ramsey is the experienced PHP developer who founded and leads the PHP User Group's monthly meetings at the Canadian Consulate in mid-town Atlanta.  If interested, please consider attending the next PHP meeting on December 6th at 7pm which will cover a presentation on Zend Framework 101 featuring speaker Cal Evans, Editor of Zend Developer Zone.  Cal will present a beginner's introduction to the Zend Framework.

Sales Training - Not Just Dinners and Drinks Anymore

Sales training has been one of the most dreaded annual events for every software sales and marketing exec for the past thirty years.  However, sales training can be productive if approached from the right perspective.  There is not denying that some companies are pulling revenue producing people from the field to do what sometimes amounts to nothing more than a large pub crawl.  Last week, I participated in a sales training that actually included sales info and sales training.  It is a novel idea that most companies fail to understand.  The event was a two day sales training that required all sales and marketing employees to come prepared to learn.  The training was a success mainly due to the expectation setting that occurred the prior week when the agenda was sent out with a prerequisite test.  By requiring everyone to study and test, it got us into the right frame of mind for the training.  For the first time, I arrived at a sales training with my head in learning mode instead of selling mode.  Did some prospecting suffer during the day leading to the event, yes, but I would suggest that the training was effective as a result of the prerequisite activities.  So, lesson learned, make sure that you assign some type of prerequisite learning with a test prior to your next sales training to get everyone's head in the game for the upcoming event. 

The iPhone for the Sofware Executive?

Matt Hendrickson discusses the iPhone vs. the Blackberry in a recent TechCrunch post that compelled me to comment on the topic for those who are travel sales executives trying to figure this whole iPhone mania out... http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/07/25/iphone-v-blackberry-side-by-side-two-week-comparison/

First of all, the iPhone is cool looking.  Fine.  However, if you are a heavy traveler who needs email access, please realize that this phone does not have push email.  That means that you will need to perform a manual sync or schedule a sync.  Having worked with phones like this in the past, it is a battery killer!  Secondly, the phone runs on the older version of the Cingular data network called Edge.  To put it in data terms, we are talking about speeds of 70 - 100kpbs compared to typical modern data networks at 400 - 700 kbps second.  When you are trying to send business attachments or via a spreadsheet with phone numbers or status updates, it will not be possible with those speeds.  Forget the fun tools, they will not be fun at those speeds either.

So, hands down, I would suggest ANY phone Blackberry, Treo 750, etc...as long as it runs on a modern 3G network.

David Gearhart Analyzes Marketo's Thoughts on Lead Nurturing

I am a huge fan of Marketo's products and services, and I get even more excited about the blog posts.  This post by Marketo is worth posting again to get more people to read their wisdom.....

Your demand generation programs are running, bringing lead information into your SFA system or other database. What do you do next? Send the raw leads directly to your sales team to qualify?

Isn't this like throwing out the baby with the bath water?
Instead of immediately handing leads to sales, marketing should make it a practice to nurture the leads, setting up a program of activities that provide information on topics of interest to your target and that focus on the value of your solution. Sending and tracking the response of successive lead nurturing activities also lets the lead self-qualify. You can assume that the more information requested, the stronger the lead.

Entire Post from Jon Miller's Marketo Blog: http://blog.marketo.com/blog/lead_nurturing/index.html

The post continues to outline the different types of nurturing programs.  At SugarCRM, we use several types of nurturing programs, and we have an excellent VP Marketing, Tara Spalding, who really works hard to pull people through the sales cycle via nurturing.  I will run through Marketo's nurturing examples and quickly highlight the value of each nurturing example.

Emails – Email campaigns are an excellent way to nurture your buyers.  Jon Miller once did a speech back at Epiphany where he discussed how absurd it would be to call up a group of women and tell them that they were analyzed based on their propensity to marry and then propose to each woman.  Crazy!  Of course, we all take for granted the concept of dating and relationship building in the human world, so the concept of building a relationship via marketing communication and email in this example is no different.  After receiving several different emails with each one building on the prior email, buyers feel that they have developed a relationship with the vendor.  At this point, the buyers are not ready to "buy", but they do feel that they have entered into a relationship and will be open to listening to further nurturing highlighted below.   

Newsletters & Blogs – Marketo highlights newsletters and blogs.  I think blogs are helpful for SEO, but I am not sure how much nurturing they provide to the vendor lead process.  However, I think that newsletters are very valuable.  Software vendors can continue to nurture via email and direct mail newsletters than contain links to online demos, webinars, and trial downloads.  Newsletters are like a monthly table of contents or site map for nurturing. 

Webinars – I think Webinars are very helpful for selling products and services that are generally understood by the buying community.  However, when Jon Miller and I worked at Epiphany, we tried to educate the market on a product called the Interaction Adviser.  It was a product that utilized real-time decision via Bayesian classification to determine the most appropriate offer.  Most people were familiar with real-time offers based on using Amazon, but they didn't truly understand how the collaborative filtering used by Amazon was basic product pairing compared to true real-time self learning engines.  In any event, the webinars were not very effective in educating the market as the buyers didn't understand enough to register for them in the first place.  Conversely, with products like SFA and Call Centers, the buying community is very aware of the general concepts and capabilities and really wants to understand the unique differentiators of "your" solution.  When selling more commoditized products, webinars are a critical piece to the lead nurturing puzzle.  In fact, at high volume SFA vendors like Salesforce.com and SugarCRM, it is safe to say that a substantial amount of the overall sales demo's are delivered via online demos and webinars without the involvement of an actual sales rep or sales engineer.  Now, that is lead nurturing at its best.

Calls – The Marketo list includes calls which is something near and dear to my heart this week as I am performing follow-up calls on leads received.  The most effective lead follow-up will always be a follow-up call, but as email becomes more accepted, I am seeing higher response rates with email on a daily basis.  However, I find the most effective call program to involve a phone call (inevitably a voice mail message) accompanied by a follow-up email.  I always send a short follow-up email summarizing my voice mail as many people don't take down phone numbers and names when they listen and delete voice mail messages.  If I had to guess, I would say that phone/voice mail + email follow-up yields a 50% increase in response rates.  Now, this increase response rate often equates to someone returning your call or email with a "not interested" message.  However, anyone doing prospecting and lead generation will tell you that any response is positive and appreciated.

Custom Landing Pages – I don't have anything to add to the custom landing page overview, so please refer to Marketo's answer.

In summary, the post by Marketo lists all the key areas of lead nurturing.  There are a also few other programs such as white papers and analyst reports which can further nurture the buyers.  All in all, I agree with the post and can speak from experience that lead nurturing is the key to effectively moving buyers through the sales process and engaging sales teams when the buyers are ready to purchase.   

Isn't this like throwing out the baby with the bath water?
Instead of immediately handing leads to sales, marketing should make it a practice to nurture the leads, setting up a program of activities that provide information on topics of interest to your target and that focus on the value of your solution. Sending and tracking the response of successive lead nurturing activities also lets the lead self-qualify. You can assume that the more information requested, the stronger the lead.

Entire Post from Jon Miller's Marketo Blog: http://blog.marketo.com/blog/lead_nurturing/index.html

The post continues to outline the different types of nurturing programs.  At SugarCRM, we use several types of nurturing programs, and we have an excellent VP Marketing, Tara Spalding, who really works hard to pull people through the sales cycle via nurturing.  I will run through Marketo's nurturing examples and quickly highlight the value of each nurturing example.

Emails – Email campaigns are an excellent way to nurture your buyers.  Jon Miller once did a speech back at Epiphany where he discussed how absurd it would be to call up a group of women and tell them that they were analyzed based on their propensity to marry and then propose to each woman.  Crazy!  Of course, we all take for granted the concept of dating and relationship building in the human world, so the concept of building a relationship via marketing communication and email in this example is no different.  After receiving several different emails with each one building on the prior email, buyers feel that they have developed a relationship with the vendor.  At this point, the buyers are not ready to "buy", but they do feel that they have entered into a relationship and will be open to listening to further nurturing highlighted below.   

Newsletters & Blogs – Marketo highlights newsletters and blogs.  I think blogs are helpful for SEO, but I am not sure how much nurturing they provide to the vendor lead process.  However, I think that newsletters are very valuable.  Software vendors can continue to nurture via email and direct mail newsletters than contain links to online demos, webinars, and trial downloads.  Newsletters are like a monthly table of contents or site map for nurturing. 

Webinars – I think Webinars are very helpful for selling products and services that are generally understood by the buying community.  However, when Jon Miller and I worked at Epiphany, we tried to educate the market on a product called the Interaction Adviser.  It was a product that utilized real-time decision via Bayesian classification to determine the most appropriate offer.  Most people were familiar with real-time offers based on using Amazon, but they didn't truly understand how the collaborative filtering used by Amazon was basic product pairing compared to true real-time self learning engines.  In any event, the webinars were not very effective in educating the market as the buyers didn't understand enough to register for them in the first place.  Conversely, with products like SFA and Call Centers, the buying community is very aware of the general concepts and capabilities and really wants to understand the unique differentiators of "your" solution.  When selling more commoditized products, webinars are a critical piece to the lead nurturing puzzle.  In fact, at high volume SFA vendors like Salesforce.com and SugarCRM, it is safe to say that a substantial amount of the overall sales demo's are delivered via online demos and webinars without the involvement of an actual sales rep or sales engineer.  Now, that is lead nurturing at its best.

Calls – The Marketo list includes calls which is something near and dear to my heart this week as I am performing follow-up calls on leads received.  The most effective lead follow-up will always be a follow-up call, but as email becomes more accepted, I am seeing higher response rates with email on a daily basis.  However, I find the most effective call program to involve a phone call (inevitably a voice mail message) accompanied by a follow-up email.  I always send a short follow-up email summarizing my voice mail as many people don't take down phone numbers and names when they listen and delete voice mail messages.  If I had to guess, I would say that phone/voice mail + email follow-up yields a 50% increase in response rates.  Now, this increase response rate often equates to someone returning your call or email with a "not interested" message.  However, anyone doing prospecting and lead generation will tell you that any response is positive and appreciated.

Custom Landing Pages – I don't have anything to add to the custom landing page overview, so please refer to Marketo's answer.

In summary, the post by Marketo lists all the key areas of lead nurturing.  There are a also few other programs such as white papers and analyst reports which can further nurture the buyers.  All in all, I agree with the post and can speak from experience that lead nurturing is the key to effectively moving buyers through the sales process and engaging sales teams when the buyers are ready to purchase.   

Atlanta SugarCRM Meet-up Group Is Off to a Sweet Start

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Atlanta SugarCRM Meet-up Group Is Off to a Sweet Start

Atlanta based SugarCRM Enthusiasts Meet Monthly to Share Lessons Learned, Discuss Project, and Eat Appetizers.

Atlanta, GA (PRWEB) July 2, 2007.  SugarCRM Inc. announces the Atlanta Meet-up group focused on Sugar best practices. The second Wednesday of every month is "Sugar Wednesday," the day that SugarCRM users and enthusiasts from the Atlanta metropolitan area gather and teach each other new SugarCRM capabilities and techniques, swap tips and tricks, and answer SugarCRM related questions at the Atlanta SugarCRM Meet-up group.

Open to the public and is free to join, the Atlanta SugarCRM Meet-up group convenes monthly on the second Wednesday of each month at 6:30pm at Jocks & Jills Galleria.  More information about the Atlanta SugarCRM Meet-up group can be found at http://opensource.meetup.com/72/. 

"SugarCRM has passionate users who look forward to Sugar Wednesdays," Says David Gearhart, Regional VP of Sales for SugarCRM.  “We swap SugarCRM lessons learned and have select speakers provide hands-on instruction.  More importantly, we get a chance to hear how others are using SugarCRM for their business. All skill levels are welcome.”

About SugarCRM
SugarCRM is the world’s leading provider of commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) software for companies of all sizes. SugarCRM easily adapts to any business environment by offering a more flexible, cost-effective alternative than proprietary applications. SugarCRM’s open source architecture allows companies to more easily customize and integrate customer-facing business processes in order to build and maintain more profitable relationships. SugarCRM offers several deployment options, including on-demand, on-premise and appliance-based solutions to suit customers’ security, integration and configuration needs. 
For more information, call (408) 454-6900 or 1 877 SUGARCRM tollfree in the US, email contact@sugarcrm.com or visit http://www.sugarcrm.com.