Category: business process improvement

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4 Rules of Thumb for Business Success

4-rules-of-thumbThe business environment is becoming increasingly competitive, with global opinions influencing customers of even the smallest local businesses.  The best method of competing in a world where customer perception is reality – at least when it comes to the impact of social and other media – is to create a company that people simply want to do business with.

Here are a few things which every business can do in order to create the best possible environment for engaging new customers and providing quality service. Regardless of industry or business orientation, these 4 simple considerations will go a long way towards creating a sustainable, high quality operation which recognizes the value of a customer relationship – whether it’s an internal or external customer.

Teach everyone in the company that they’re part of sales and customer service.

Each and every member of the organization should be in a position to help customers get what they need, and to help guide the customer towards the various products, services or solutions the company offers.  This means that internal training is essential, and all employees should be fully informed in the offerings of the company.  Business owners will find that one of the best ways to reach and retain the best workers is to provide ongoing skills development and training programs.  The result is a more confident and productive workforce and workers who feel more satisfied with their jobs.  It’s also important to recognize that employees are another form of ‘customer’ of the company, and surveying them to understand how satisfied they are with the work is a really good idea.  When employees lack satisfaction in their jobs or with the company they work for, it will be revealed in their interactions with customers and other workers, which is not good for business.

Remember that first impressions count – a lot.

You only have one chance at the first impression, and it takes a lot more work to overcome a bad impression than it does to leave a good one in the first place.  This means that the company should promote a quality, clean and professional image.  When speaking to customers on the phone, speak clearly, professionally and politely.  Make sure that all workers arrive at their jobs in clean uniforms and in clean, branded trucks.  Customers should not only know who’s parked outside, but a good-looking branded vehicle is a mobile advertisement for the company and can deliver a lot of good impressions.  On the other hand, not maintaining or caring properly for vehicles and equipment can deliver the opposite type of impression you want to leave.

Do company business with the company voice.

Communication is essential in building a successful business, and it is important that the messages be what the company wants the customers and market to hear.  When communicating on company business, always use the company email address and contact information rather than personal email addresses or generic domains.  Just like with uniforms and trucks, communications from the company should be branded and professional so that the right type of impression is created.  The business website (which should support mobile devices!) is available to help communicate your values, brand and services, and should serve to present your business as someone a customer would want to do business with.  Posting case studies and testimonials can be very useful in this regard as they help to build credibility in your company and convey the trust others have in your services.  Apply social media and listing services, too, so that customers and prospects can find information on your company and read good things others have said.  It’s important, however, to remember that social media can go both ways.  While being a great way to reach new customers as well as reminding current customers of the other products and services you offer, it could also turn negative.  If there is negative feedback, be honest and reasonable, but address it quickly.

Work beyond corporate walls.

The business exists in a community, and workers in the company live in neighborhoods and have lives beyond the business they work for.  Community service is a way to develop a more cohesive and productive team while developing closer community relations and enhancing the image of the company and ownership. Volunteering and creating an environment where service to others is promoted helps build a team atmosphere in the company, and expresses the understanding that businesses will thrive when the communities around them thrive.  

Joanie Mann Bunny FeetMake Sense?

J

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Accounting Professional Value is Insight and Advice, Not Just a Hosted Server

Accounting Professional Value is Insight and Advice, Not Just a Hosted Server

Back in the late 90’s, when the application service provider model was first established, a number of providers recognized how beneficial it would be for public accountants to use hosted applications to work more closely with their accounting and bookkeeping clients.  Seeking markets which would rapidly adopt a hosted application model, these providers focused on hosting small business accounting solutions such as Intuit QuickBooks desktop products, and then sought participation by the largest addressable communities of users working with those products – QuickBooks ProAdvisors, bookkeepers and accountants.  The idea was that the community of QuickBooks professionals would benefit by bringing their clients onto the hosting platform, and service providers could sell to one professional and gain a bunch of small business users.  It made sense, too, as it allowed the professional to have a single service and login that allowed them to access all their client QuickBooks company files.  The client could log in to the system, too, delivering remote access and managed service benefits to the client, as well.  But there was a catch, and it didn’t fully reveal itself until recently as cloud-based applications and true SaaS applications began to gain market adoption.

The problem actually started to reveal itself as more businesses elected to adopt hosting services.  There’s a saying amongst the QuickBooks hosting providers that “nobody uses just QuickBooks”.  Saying “nobody” uses just QuickBooks is a bit of a stretch, but the reality is that numerous businesses use other applications and software solutions in addition to their QuickBooks product.  Sometimes these products integrate with QuickBooks and sometimes they don’t, but it is not often that a business utilizes just the one software solution.  At minimum, there are likely email or productivity tools in use, too.  The point is that the QuickBooks hosting providers – those hosts focusing on providing service to QuickBooks accountants and small business clients – realized that the number and variety of applications desired by their customers would grow very quickly, as would the variety of needed implementation models.  The unfortunate solution of the time was to just put it all on the same environment.

The original selling message to the QuickBooks consultant and accountant markets was that they should get all their clients on to the hosting service, and then the accountant could benefit from an “economy of scale”, making the cost of the overall delivery lower.  Further, by grouping the firm and the clients into a single hosting environment, it would make application and data sharing easier.  Both of these messages are true, but putting the firm and its clients into a single environment – with the firm as the “sponsor” and front line promoter of the service – began to have impacts which were not clearly foreseen.

  1. Accounting professionals and consultants changed the nature of their relationship with the client, going from trusted advisors to technology and solution vendors.
  2. Client business technology needs were placed as secondary to “enabling” the working relationship between the accountant and the small business client.
  3. Attempts to fully satisfy client technology requirements overburdened and impacted the environment, reducing overall service quality and satisfaction and diminishing the value of the scale economy (as well as the clients’ perception of their accounting professional).
  4. Firms structured their processes to support a single technology and operating model, and found difficulties in adopting new strategies or solutions.

In concept, having accounting professionals and their clients all working seamlessly together in the same systems sounds great.  For some firms, a cloud server packed with all the firm and client applications and data enables an entirely new business and service model, which is very cool and it actually works (for some firms and their clients).  But the problem – a problem which may not be fully revealed in the short term – is that the various businesses involved, from the accounting practice to each and every client, has different business needs and operates as a unique organization.  While there may be fundamental similarities, “the devil is in the details” as they say, and a single platform or hosting solution is unlikely to really work well for all.  Even more potentially damaging, the perception of the trusted advisor who is now viewed as a vendor of IT services or software erodes the value of the client engagement and the potential for the firm to deliver greater benefit through their core offerings.  A business owner is more likely to change vendors of IT service than they are their trusted accounting or finance professional.   And they’re also more likely to change IT service providers if the provider cannot deliver exactly the application or service desired.  When the accounting professional is perceived to be the IT service provider, the lines are blurred and the client ends up attaching their loyalty to a software product or business solution instead of the accountant advisor OR the IT provider.

With SaaS and native web-based applications being broadly adopted by small businesses, the opportunity for firms to engage with clients in different ways and with different solutions started to break the one-size-fits-all hosting approach.  Professionals found that empowering their clients by supporting properly fitted solutions which work for the client business delivered the opportunity to become more operationally and strategically involved with the client business.  Deeper operational and strategic involvement with the client became the means to drive increased value in the engagement and services offered and delivered.  The client business was able to benefit from the involvement of their trusted advisor, regardless of what platforms or systems might be in place.

Accountants and bookkeepers are recognizing that the previous model of aligning the practice with a particular software product or delivery system may not be the best approach to building and retaining the customer base.  With new business accounting and bookkeeping solutions emerging regularly – and gaining broad market adoption – and as more and more varied cloud based services and solutions are applied to various business problems – professionals will further recognize that their value is not tied to a cloud server, a single small business accounting solution, or to any particular technology.  The value of the accounting professional is not in the software they support or the server it runs on.  The value of the accounting professional is in the insight gathered and advice provided – services offered which help support better business management, growth and profitability.

Make Sense?

J

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Marketing and Sales Needs System and Process Automation

Marketing and Sales Needs System and Process Automation

Running a business means finding and keeping customers who will buy from you.  This isn’t necessarily easy, particularly with the number and variety of “impressions” people get throughout their day.  It used to be that simply locating a business in the right place would generate drive-by traffic, with location being the key to generating impressions and causing people to actually stop and shop.  Impressions – yes, those brief instances where your brand or service is viewed – count.

The entire lifecycle of the customer relationship starts with the first impression, so it needs to be a good one.   Marketing impressions expose your business and products to prospective customers, with efforts oriented towards the generation of sales leads.  A lead is a business or individual that may ultimately develop into a sales or business opportunity.  Rather than attempting to engage with businesses or individuals one at a time, businesses use marketing to target large groups in hopes of earning the permission to engage group members in more focused or individualized sales activities. When the business earns the ability to communicate directly with a prospective buyer, a sales lead is generated, and the business now has a prospective customer and the potential to make a sale.

Sales leads don’t stop becoming leads just because they purchase from you.  Every customer remains an ongoing opportunity to generate new business directly or indirectly via referrals or recommendations.  The best case scenario for your business is when you know when and why your customer buys from you, when the customer wants more, and that they will refer their friends or business associates to you.

Part of the problem with marketing and sales is that there are often too few people and/or resources to apply to the task.  Most businesses aren’t in the position of simply throwing money at a problem (which rarely actually solves the problem), so it becomes essential that you find a way to get the job done with the same or fewer people and resources.  The keys to solving this problem are systems and processes (automation).  Automation doesn’t always mean that there is an “automatic system” somewhere which performs all of the tasks for you.  In most cases, it simply means that the process is structured, efficient, and is able to be effectively repeated without significant deviation or loss.  Structured systems and processes, along with a strong commitment to capturing activity data and measuring results, is the foundation which will support growth.

Marketing Automation Explained (Infographic) | The automation of business function is set to be the new trend in 2014. There are already dozens of sales, marketing and finance automation options, and for good reason: The quantifiable returns they provide are undeniable. Here is a look at marketing automation and how it works. 

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/227923#ixzz2ghHq9Qpn

From the very first impression through the conclusion of the sale and ongoing, it is essential to capture the data which describes the activities and events around doing business with your customers.  It is important to track unsuccessful efforts as well as those which are successful.  By understanding what does not work, you develop valuable insight which helps refine the process and the approach, resulting in fewer wasted efforts. The accumulated data tells the story of how you earn new business and how you create a customer relationship, which helps you understand how and where you are successful in earning new business and why you are able to retain loyal customers.

Joanie Mann Bunny FeetMake Sense?

J

Read more about Enterprise Functionality for Small Business | Relating to Customer Data

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Banks and Small Business: Finding the “Just Right” Fit Isn’t Easy

Banks and Small Business: Finding the “Just Right” Fit Isn’t Easy

Banks need business customers because business accounts provide more profitability than consumer accounts.  By volume, there are more small businesses in the US than mid-size or enterprise businesses, which you would think would be a good thing for the banks – more business customers, right?  It seems not so much.

For many banks, the problem is that they don’t appear to really know how to service – or even identify – these small business customers.  The majority of small businesses in the US don’t have employees, so direct deposit and payroll solutions aren’t something they are looking for.  Many of these small businesses operate from the business owner’s home rather than an office, and don’t generate the revenues (=deposits) that bigger businesses do.

To a bank, most small businesses look like consumers.  These small businesses are treated like consumers – are offered consumer-level services and are not educated on what business banking services might be able to do for them.  In reality, the banks really don’t have much to say to these small business owners, because the services offered by the banks are simply not a great fit.  There are studies which suggest that the small business market is fairly evenly divided, with approximately 50% using consumer banking services rather than those designed for business use.  Given the inability of the banks to even identify those consumer banking customers who are actually small businesses, I would suggest that the percentage is even higher.

There are three primary elements tied to banking which should be better-positioned to assist small business owners in leveraging their banking relationships to the benefit of the business and not just the bank.   If the financial institutions can find a way to meet these three essential needs for smaller businesses, they would likely find that more small businesses would embrace business banking services, resulting in greater profitability for the bank.

e-Payments

Use of electronic payments services represents a growing trend in small businesses and needs to be better-addressed by the financial institutions rather than purely retail providers.  Small businesses are increasingly using the Internet and online technologies to service their various business needs, and payments processing is among the top sellers.  Providing SOLO/SOHO and other small businesses with the ability to process payments at any time and from anywhere has become a big driver for this type of solution.  The popularity of Pay Pal, Intuit GoPayment and Square payment solutions is a testament to the need for such services in the small business market, yet the broadest use continues to be within retail providers rather than directly via the financial institutions.

Entitlements

Security and access controls to account and transaction information (frequently referred to as “entitlements” attached to business accounts) are hugely valuable for small businesses.  Most small business owners engage bookkeeping or accounting professionals at some point, and the process of accounting for the business activities is improved dramatically when those professionals are able to access the information directly from the financial institution.  Unfortunately, it is only with the more expensive business class accounts that most banks provide the means for account holders to grant access to account and/or transaction information for accountants and bookkeepers, financial advisors, etc.  Allowing small businesses to benefit from this type of security and control of their accounts is tremendous, yet the overall costs of the associated business banking solutions are often simply too great for the small business to bear.  The result is either a lack of privacy, security and control, where the business owner must grant unfettered access to account information to a 3rd party bookkeeper or accountant, or the business owner simply continues to pay for manual bookkeeping transaction entry.

Cash Management

Most small businesses operate on cash, and expense and cash management is essential to maintaining operations.  Consumer banking solutions may offer limited capabilities for expense and cash reporting, but the services offered through many business banking portals would be far more beneficial for the business, reflecting trends and providing more insight relating to business financial activities and business behavior.  Unfortunately, many of these services designed for business customers are oriented towards the larger organization, and are far too complicated or expensive to provide real value to the owner of a small business.

Small businesses fuel the economy, yet remain a largely untapped market in terms of business banking and other services.  Small businesses run “under the radar” of many service providers because they have not reached the point where the obviously available business services (e.g, the more profitable banking solutions) seem attractive to them.  Banks need to recognize that serving the small business customer well – providing the services which help small businesses grow into bigger businesses – is ultimately the key to acquiring new customers for whom the big banking solutions fit.

jmbunnyfeetMake Sense?

J

Read more about small business banking and credit

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Enterprise Functionality for Small Business | Relating to Customer Data

Enterprise Functionality for Small Business | Relating to Customer Data

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Many small business owners are under the impression that most powerful business process management solutions are just for big businesses. A common misconception, for example, is that robust CRM products with turn-key functionality are too complicated and expensive.  This misconception leaves most small business owners to frequently turn to inexpensive online solutions or to their favorite email client in order to store and manage customer information. In today’s competitive business environment, the intelligent and innovative use of technology and business information is often the determining factor between success and failure. Now more than ever, small businesses must leverage tools with the same capabilities as their enterprise counterparts in order to help the business perform at levels necessary to drive growth and maintain profitability.

The data developed within the solutions supporting various business processes is the key which unlocks business intelligence. This data may only be captured and used if the systems and tools in place allow for it. With far too many small business CRM solutions, the assumption is that simplicity of use is the equivalent of less functionality. Approaching the problem from the standpoint of what most small business owners KNOW they need to know, developers have sometimes failed in delivering the capability (and resultant data) small business owners didn’t know they needed or would benefit from. What business owners need to know about is the customer.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions help businesses identify, acquire and retain customers. Almost any business relationship or interaction represents a customer opportunity. Present customers are customers now, past customers are not just past customers but prospects and everyone else is a prospective future customer. Consider that vendors or resellers are different types of customers, too.  Even employees and coworkers can be seen as “internal” customers. Keeping useful and relevant information about these various “customers” and documenting how the business interacts with them is essential to understanding the entire relationship lifecycle, which is a step towards understanding the business better.

When a small business elects to use a software solution to handle the various interactions with customers, it is often approach in pieces rather than in a comprehensive manner.   Traditionally, Contact Management solutions are applied to sales efforts, providing tools for communicating with leads and prospects as well as current customers. However, related information is also often stored in accounting systems, which handle billing and payment processes involving customers (clients, suppliers, employees, etc.). Some businesses also may use other systems for time management, service or work order management, project management and to archive related documents and emails at various levels of the relationship, where customer information is used and data is created.  With segmented pieces of information in numerous databases, it is hard to achieve true Business Intelligence and a comprehensive view of the entire operation.  Smaller companies can easily miss out on the benefits that their enterprise counterparts possess.

It’s not really unusual for businesses to store some of the same information in several systems, generally in order to support specific job functions for workers in those areas, and delivering data on the equivalent of a “need to know” basis.  For most small businesses, though, an integrated Business Management system that provides CRM as a component of its overall offering could be the answer to providing a single comprehensive solution for all departments.  An integrated solution of this sort would seamlessly integrate with the accounting, email, and document management products Small Businesses use every day.  Examples of such solutions include, but are not limited to, Results CRM, Method CRM and LeGrand CRM.

Beware, however, that not all integrated CRM solutions are created equally. If your organization delivers billable services, make sure that the integrated CRM system that you select can take a billable appointment that was scheduled in the CRM system and automatically place that on an invoice for you – without duplicate data entry and manual tracking of timesheets – so you’re not leaving money on the table. If you manage projects, make sure that the CRM system has the cohesiveness to include project and resource management functionality so that the full business relationship – from sales to the delivery of services to billing – can be managed and tracked in one system without duplicated data entry.

When systems are not tightly and intelligently integrated, sharing data between them becomes very problematic.  Without the ability to check for duplicate records or properly map data points and related fields between systems, there is a great potential for errors in or duplication of data. The result could be a large amount of unrelated and unusable information, which is often what happens when list or transaction data is simply copied between applications without the necessary logic to understand changes in various records, record types, or record states.

There’s a reason why “legacy” integrated software solutions made sense for businesses, and why many enterprises continue to hold on to their solutions – they include the wide variety of tightly integrated functionality and logical data sharing that has been a benefit to the business for years. As organizations seek to start up or reassess their software and systems, they would be wise to keep in mind that generating “big” data with a bunch of loosely connected applications isn’t enough. The data must be intelligently related – just like the business and the customer. 

A tightly integrated and well-managed CRM and Business Management solution, whether in-the-cloud or on premises, is not out of financial reach for small business.  While a solution of this type is not free, the reasonable investment in a quality solution will provide the Business Intelligence necessary to build and maintain a competitive advantage.

Joanie Mann Bunny FeetMake Sense?

J

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CIO, CFO, IT and Procuring the Cloud | buildingUp.biz

CIO, CFO, IT and Procuring the Cloud

For as long as there has been high technology use in business, there has been a struggle between the enterprise CFO and CIO for the power to make IT purchase decisions.   It isn’t rocket science… the reasons for the challenge are fairly straightforward.  The CFO wants to know what the expected return on the investment will be.  The CIO, on the other hand, recognizes that there is rarely a straight line to be drawn between IT expenditures and near-term positive business outcomes.  Sometimes it takes a while to fully realize the benefits of an IT project… and sometimes it’s necessary to spend the money just to maintain status quo.

While there may be indicators that the CFO’s influence in the enterprise is extending into areas where the CIO traditionally ruled (due – at least in part – to SaaS and the Cloud) there are also indicators that the role of the CIO is evolving rather than losing relevance.

A survey performed in 2011 by Gartner and Financial Executives International revealed a number of interesting results which indicated that the balance of IT procurement power was shifting within the enterprise.  344 senior financial executives were surveyed, and they revealed that:

  • in 45% of organizations, the CFO makes or leads IT investment strategy
  • about 75% of surveyed CFOs said they have little confidence in their own IT departments

A CFO.com article on the subject also mentioned a KPMG study from April 2011, in which it was reported that “73% of CFOs identified IT as the greatest risk to finance meeting its objectives”.

With the emergence of “cloud” computing solutions and the plethora of application and service options now available to businesses, some businesses have concluded that “the CFO is better equipped for the cloud world”.  The belief is that the CFO is more attuned to the processes of vendor management and contract term and condition negotiations, which are primary areas of focus when looking to obtain outsourced IT and application services.  The process of comparing pricing and service level agreements is more of a business process than a technology process, placing it squarely in the realm of the CFO.

The real issue here isn’t a struggle for power and influence; it’s a change in business priorities fueled by changes in technology and service models.  IT and the role of the CIO must focus on innovation and improvement of processes and profitability through efficiencies gained with technology, not on defragging hard drives and running software updates.  Brocade.com discusses this evolution of roles and focus with enterprise CIOs and CFOs in the release entitled The CIO Is Dead. Long Live the CIO. The Cloud Redefines the Role of the CIO

“ … the CIO role will evolve and policy enforcement, technology evangelism and mediation between business units and their services providers will become the key responsibilities for the CIO by 2020…. And rather than being replaced by the CFO in this shift in IT provisioning, two-thirds of respondents predicted that the roles of COO and CIO will merge as technology continues to become more operationally vital. http://newsroom.brocade.com/press-releases/the-cio-is-dead-long-live-the-cio-the-cloud-rede-nasdaq-brcd-977455

Who understands better than the internal IT department the time-consuming and frustrating nature of maintaining user environments and applications?  Who in the organization has the technical understanding, coupled with a direct business understanding, sufficient to explore new ways of approaching various process or workflow problems? I think most business IT managers would agree that addressing issues that have a potential to radically improve the way a business operates is much more challenging and interesting than selecting the right make and model of server.

via CIO, CFO, IT and Procuring the Cloud | buildingUp.biz.