I am working remote this month from our office in Brazil. One of the things I am growing accustom to here is siesta, which is a 2 hr break in the middle of the day from noon to 2pm. As an American, when I first experienced this I thought it was rather inconvenient since I was used to working through the lunch hour and it always seemed to be when I was able to get the most done.
Well it has taken several trips here now for me to get used to it and rethink my planning of a regular work day. However, what I have found is that it can actually help me be more productive with less stress and better insight since the "down time" time allows me to recharge a bit and enables me to be able to jump back to my work with new perspective and fresh ideas.
When I think about this concept I can not help but notice how the same mindset or process can be effective with Project Management. The tendency with most projects is to charge forward and get everything done in as short of a life cycle as possible and then transition into maintenance mode. While there are many advantages for this methodology there is also value in shorter spurts of forward progress with brief cooling off or reflection periods to help you gain perspective and evaluate where you are and where you are going. This can reduce the potential for mistakes and add more insight and creativity to your outcomes.
Of course every project is unique and there is not a cookie cutter solution for every project. There is value though in taking time in your process to reflect in a way that is not under intense pressure for a deliverable.
There is a old saying about "not seeing the forest through the trees" and it is my opinion that a little "Siesta" at appropriate times in your project life cycle is a good idea for seeing both with clarity.
Education for corporate training and elsewhere is a big topic these days. Funding cuts in our schools and the high turnover in the workplace combined with the need to tighten our belts and refine business processes are all waking folks up to the value or improved and quality training resources. It is proven that education in the workplace will improve efficiency and productivity and help your company or remain competitive in a global economy. These key factors are all opening the door for the Joomla Content Management System with Learning Management capabilities.
There are a lot of options for Learning Management but two top contenders in the open source world are Moodle and Joomla with the various 3rd party Learning Management System (LMS) extensions. There is even a "bridge" between the two systems that allows you to use both Moodle and Joomla for the same user base. CNP Integrations is one of the early adopters for this bridge on our http://www.givetoed.org project where we integrated a host of tools for K-12 educators, parents and community leaders to collaborate and engage in conversations about the future of education and related topics.
There are a lot of tried and true systems used for traditional learning institutions and larger organizations but these are often very expensive solutions to implement. Until recently this has made them far out of reach for the small and mid size business or non-profit organization. What we have found is that by leveraging Joomla CMS (http://www.joomla.org) with LMS capabilities or Moodle (http://www.moodle.org) or combinations of both we can help deliver a reasonable scale of features and student tracking capability that puts the power of Learning Management Systems at the fingertips of small and mid-size businesses and non-profit organizations. Not only is this technology platform much more cost effective but all of the curriculum and training resources that we develop can be designed to be SCORM compliant and thus can be integrated with virtually any other SCORM compliant Learning Management System should your needs ever outgrow the platform. However, since the technologies continue to improve and scale with new features you may never need to look elsewhere.
If you are a small business training can help you deliver your products more consistently and position your company to be able to scale up or down to meet the needs in the marketplace and protect you from risk in employee turnover. If you are a School or educational institution it is important to segment your user types and track student progress. If you are launching complex business tools on the web you need to empower your users to get the most out of your technology investments. What this means is that utilizing the capabilities of Learning Management can offer benefits to businesses and organizations of many types and range in size. It also means that this may be a wise investment that can have short term and long term payoffs.
Since most of our team has backgrounds in education and training there is a lot of passion in our company for incorporating professional development and training as part of the value in our service offerings. We will be dedicating the Month of September as "Training Month" at CNP and moving forward you will see a lot more from us in training and curriculum development for educational products and services. We hope the articles and information that we present will generate conversation and help us find creative ways to help you engage your customers and better train your workforce using many of the cost effective solutions that we support.
If you would like to have a demonstration or more information of any of the Joomla based learning management solutions or training we can offer, feel free to contact us so we can help you assess if what we offer will fit your needs.
Build Value by following a success program and planning carefuly
I have been following the ITtoolbox.com discussions lately and ran across these comments below. It reinforces much of what we have learned and why we have designed a consulting practice around our Value Building Methodology. Notice the date of these articles. In other words this is not new information but folks are still making the same mistakes nearly 4 years later.With the new Social CRM and social technologies that we have to now integrate into these systems it is only going to get more challenging.
Invest in good training, support and consulting to align your initiatives
To implement CRM effectively it often takes an outside consulting team to help plan, execute, train and align an organization's people and processes with the technology. Thinking you can just buy some software that an ambitious CEO or IT manager likes and that you can implement it without a full support package from a qualified consulting firm is a path for disaster. It tends to be a rather expensive proposition on so many levels when you do not invest in the right balance of consulting with your technologypurchase. It is a myth that one you purchase the software and turn it on that your investment is over. This will become a paridigm shift in most cases for the way you do business and will continue to evolve over an extended period of time.
Open Source solutions positions you for future needs
This is one of the reasons we like solutions built off of an open source code base. The cost of entry on the software is much lower so you can get more implementation resources and training for the same investment while not being held over the barrel on the software should you want to modify the system to meet unique requirements down the road. Many of these requirements you may not even know you need yet.
Full Article:
Disclaimer: Contents are not reviewed for correctness and are not endorsed or recommended by ITtoolbox or any vendor. Popular Q&A contents include summarized information from CRM-Select discussion unless otherwise noted.
1. Medium-size company wanting to facilitate revenue growth purchased SFA software without any sales strategy. They expected that the software would make their life easier. As most SFA software, it came with its own pre-packaged best practices, which did not fit the company's processes. The implementation dragged out as the company realized that they had to re-examine their processes.
2. A large company purchased call center software to address the growing backlog of thousands of unanswered customer emails. After the software was implemented, training followed. During training, the users scream: we can't use this system, we won't use this system. Two reasons: first, same as #1, little effort was made to align process to packaged functionality, and second, no effort was made to engage the users and build champions among them.
3. A fast-growing company with a solid CRM strategy purchased and implemented SFA, Call center, and Marketing automation software. They did not, however, consider the importance of data quality in the beginning. The Result: reports could not be trusted, pipeline and trending was worthless, and the project went through a major crisis until these issues started getting addressed.
After a number of years, the company in #1 has abandoned the original SFA software and opted for a more simplistic and less costly solution from an SaaS vendor. The company in #2 has taken a step back, re-examined their CRM strategy, re-mapped its processes, and rebuilt most CRM components. The company in #3 has continued building upon the described solution, overcomming the initial data quality issues.
Outside the scope of pure CRM systems, but within the scope of business-critical systems, plenty:
All boil down to: 1) Rubbish needs analysis 2) Rubbish solution analysis and selection on top of poor needs analysis 3) Poor end-to-end implementation, with little outcome-based assessment of the implementation team (with a serious stress here on training and external change mgt) 4) Zero, or poor metrics in place to measure success, not only before, but during, at time of go-live, and for 12 months minimum after.
The key points are 80% point one, and 20% point two. The third and fourth are merely confusing factors, that while important, could not *really* (other than in a completely dysfunctional org) exist without the first two.
CRM implementations fail for three reasons, and it all boils down to Human Nature! If a business owner can overcome these three things, CRM will pay for itself rather than be a huge expense.
1) CRM implementations live and die by its EMPLOYEES acceptance... PERIOD!! If the user refuses to use it, IT BECOMES AN EXPENSE!!!
2) Not only is there no BENEFIT for a user to learn and use a CRM application, it's actually a DETRIMENT for an end user to learn and use a CRM application!!!
3) If you encounter a businessman who is looking to purchase a CRM solution, regardless of price or company, they should be able to answer, INTELLIGENTLY and TRUTHFULLY, this one simple questions... "How will your EMPLOYEES benefit from learning and using a CRM application?" If they cannot, they will LOSE MONEY ON THE PURCHASE. Let's see if they can actually ENFORCE the use of a CRM if their sales department is under the impression that it will help line the pockets of the CEO/OWNER even further while THEY have to work harder with no compensation to learn and use it for that purpose.
The following is a press release that goes out today and tomorrow. We are excited about this program since it helps us give our new CRM customers (Small Businesses) an easy low risk point of entry. It will also help us demonstrate our value, expertise and better understand where we can help our customers the most. The Launch pad program will provide in-depth information for a small upfront investment that can save customers a significant amount of money. The program begins with evaluation and works through to a rapid deployment process based on CNP's needs alignment process and value building methodology. Customers can either avoid purchasing the wrong technologies or failures from deploying infrastructures and new processes without clear focus on value to the organization.
We are looking forward to your questions and discussion as we continue to build success stories for growing small businesses.
CNP Integrations announced today the introduction of its new Small Business CRBM Launch Pad Program. Thisservice and consulting support bundle is built off of CNP's proven success model; The Value Builder Program (VBP), a strategic, tailored planning methodology for businesses integrating virtual technology, designed with proven practices for success. "Setting your priorities and focus up front will help you better manage the results and expectations of your technology implementations" says Chris Nielsen CEO/General Manager for CNP Integrations. The CRBM Launch Pad program is based on the concept that significant cost savings and increased sales, along with improved customer and market relations, equate to greater profits and business value. Defined as the SMB CRBM Launch Pad Program, CNP is offering blended learning/consulting/technical support programs that include consulting, software solutions and training. These programs are designed to offer small businesses a cost effective way to deploy CRBM Technologies. By evaluating and mapping business processes with organizational needs and technology features to create an optimized deployment strategy provides an opportunity for guaranteed success.
The program comes in three distinct flavors;
1. The CRBM Kick Start System,
2. The CRBM Jump Start System
3. The CRBM Rapid Deployment System.
Each of the three targeted technology alignment tracks is a tiered point of entry tailored to the needs of businesses eager to see rapid results with deploying Customer Relationship and Business Management solutions. This program pairs the human dynamics of your small business with the priority requirements to get your set up, configured and aligned with a proven success program. These programs can be delivered succinctly in a phased approach or as a standalone deployment launch program. It all depends on the size and expertise within your company. "We have found that CRM systems in general are often complicated in nature and companies often try to take on to much all at once when they deploy CRM. Essentially we have taken these lessons learned and turned them in to affordable solutions for business owners. We offer what SMB's need to launch a turnkey program that aligns the people with the technology successfully at a price point that maximizes their investment."
The Launch Pad Program is three unique deployment packages built around CNP's unique Value Builder Methodology. The VBM is a series discovery steps delivered in one-on-one workshops where clients and subject matter experts translate a proven methodology into a plan specific for the client's needs. The main goal is to build value and improve the return on investment for the targeted technologies. The strategic planning process will address an integrated approach including management consulting, IT solutions, product training and support services. Value Builder Program is a structured approach that will take your team through an in-depth evaluation and strategic planning process to define a solid roadmap. This is a hands on consulting experience tailored to a business's specific needs and goals which provides a working integrations plan. Based on this roadmap CNP configures a custom support contract based on your CRBM platform design, and offers this on a low cost monthly retainer fee vs. large upfront costs.
Over the past few months I have been giving a lot of thought about who our customers are and will be in the future. What is it they want and need most? Kind of ironic sine the past three years we have been doing this and thought we finally had it nailed. Well the biggest lesson I have learned is that providing what a customer wants is a bit of a science and can often be predictable but delivering what they need is a moving target and not so predictable.
Since we work in the customer relationship and engagement space we have to not only set an example for customer experience but we have to help guide folks on ways they can use our CRBM Platform to harness theirs. I have been reluctant in the past to build "service packages" since we are a service provider and do not for the most part sell products. However, what I have found is that the number one thing our customers need is value. The question has been how can we deliver value in a way that those new to these technologies can understand while delivering it in a model that is easy to embrace.Thus we launched a series of Kick start progeams and value building initiatives. This is what our customers were asking for.
Welcome to the Value Builder Methodology:
“If you don't know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.” - Yogi Berra
We have seen the buzz in the CRM world to be all around building value for the customer so here are some key steps we take in our new Value Builder programs.
The first questions we have to ask are what are your biggest pains and what are the biggest hurdles for increasing your sales potential.
Then we have to clearly identify your priorities and map them to the required technologies that can increase efficiency and achive business goals.
Then we have to identify and configure what technology can meet the desired results.
Then we have to integrate the people and processes with the new technology.
Then we have to follow-up with alignment and support solutions designed to help you navigate through the bumps in the road.
There are often additional steps in the process but part of the planning with this kind of Value Building Methodology is the fact we customize a specific plan for each customer.
Smaller business units will drive efficiency and change the landscape forever:
Some projects involving many stake holders require much more in-depth documentation and a more traditional approach. This slows down the process and makes the implementation much more challenging. Breaking down a horse pill into smaller bite sizes makes anything much easier to digest. One big advantage with smaller businesses or business units is their ability to respond in a collaborative real time process. This can not only significantly increase the efficiency in execution and improve the return on your investment but it can allow you to better target an action plan that meets the dynamics for your work group and untimely better service to your customers. I think as enterprises realize this and have to respond to the downturn in the economy and combined with the trends of social media dictating customer expectations you will find redefined business models that will have smaller divisions acting as smaller companies within a larger company umbrella.
The changing tide will wash surprises up on the beach.
Since well before the big melt down and shift in US politics we have been seeing some dramatic changes in the way customers are choosing vendors.
It is harder to win loyalty
There is a longer venting process
Customer are in control of engagement
They are eager to embrace next generation tools
Building Value is key to successful relationship
Consolidation and efficiency is in big demand
Customers are cautions due to uncertain future in the marketplace
Greater opportunity will be there for those prepared when spending loosens and the economy gains momentum in an upturn. If you can make a solid case for delivering value and quality to your customer while providing a complete and emotional experience with your customers you will be prepared for the relationship. If you embrace and develop business processes and efficient business units that can leverage a Customer Relationship Business Management system or CRBM Platform of technologies you will be prepared to successfully respond and manage your new and existing relationships. Simply put having an aligned business strategy combined with the tools to effectively execute the strategy will be the formula for success with the customers of tomorrow in an ever changing economy.
Let’s start a conversation
The new customer relationship management wave is Socail CRM and what I like to call "Customer Conversation Management" or CCM. If used right these tools can be a roadmap to meet your next generation of customers. What we have found to be a great resource for gathering customer information and insight was to use social media tools blended with a CRM strategy and other web technologies to engage in ongoing two way conversations. While we all want to hear from our customers it is also important to have this conversation with your peers. The other thing to think about is the depth of these conversations since no one wants to listen to someone full of themselves or with nothing interesting to bring to the conversation.
Business is getting presonal again with the wave of web 2.0 social technologies digging their heels in. Relationships in the new social space will follow the same principles of any good relationship. Just like in a personal dating engagement no one likes a bragger and you need to start off as friends if you want the romance to live long. In a business relationship you need to make sure that you connect personally since you are doing business with people. A machine can be configured but humans need to be nurtured and responded to.
I am interested in your comments and insight on these topics and encourage your conversation.
Our core team of service and support technicians,
configuration specialists, project managers, Sr. CRM Consultants, creative content designers and subject
matter experts all share a common thread with our "Value Builder Methodology".
We make sure the chosen web solutions align with your top
priority business goals.
Our proven integration process assures expectations are realistic and clearly defined.
We are committed to deliver Superior Value and Return on Investment
People, process and technology
all have to live in harmony.Whether you are implementing a
complex business management platform, a simple web site or e-commerce portal they
all must target your intended business goals.
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Each associate displayed a high degree of integrity, responsibility, competence and ambition. Their good judgment and
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which resulted in the completion of our project ahead of schedule –
exceeding our expectations.
The services which CNP
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Ahh it is siesta again... 
