Driving in Brazil is a bit different than driving in America. It is perhaps hard to understand these differences until you have experienced them but I will try to convey a few of the differences and then make some unique comparison with how it is similar to Joomla, Drupal or Wordpress portal development project.
While they have many of the same laws for driving, in Brazil, they are not as strictwith enforcing these laws so driving is a bit like the wild wild west. Every one seems to be beyond impatient and they are pushing to pass everyone and often "get nowhere fast vs. someplace slowly". There is an unofficial imaginary lane for passing where you are just expected to get out of the way if a car is passing and coming at you head on (Big Trucks included and there are many). Not a place where you can win "The game of Chicken". The biggest violators are motorcycles since they seem to dominate this 3rd lane even on the curviest roads with the busies traffic and inhibited sight lines for oncoming traffic. Driving a motorcycle though can get you to your destination often in a fraction of the time than with other vehicles. Though there are many accidents most folks drive bumper to bumper and fearless to the consequences. The first time I road as a passenger in Brazil I never let go of the upper right handle and I felt incline to say a sincere prayer prior to getting in to any vehicle. My 7 year old son has two words for driving in Brazil; "impatient and maniacs".
In the world of web development I see several similar contrasting approaches to developing a web site and the same "maniac and impatience" type of behavior. Most folks are in far to much of a hurry and they too drive their projects fearless to the consequences. I often see folks burn up a lot of time and money going too fast with little thought of the impact or steps involved to make the best decisions. I know everyone else is in just as big of a hurry but making a fatal mistake will leave you frustrated on the roadside as others pass you by. Technology and globalization are moving forward in near chaos as folks are trying to latch on to where they want to be in the world of the web, what lane to travel on and which vehicle to drive.
One of the things I like about the not so recent trend to use content management systems such as Joomla CMS, Drupal or Wordpress is that these sites are dynamic and allow you to respond quickly in real time. Joomla! CMS in particular is very flexible and offers over 6500 extensions. While this is a great opportunity, if you run off like a maniac installing every cool widget and extension you can find this can create a big mess and leave you on the sidelines starting over or cleaning up a lot of garbage. Our Joomla CMS team has many of times been tasked with transforming Frankenstein into sleeping beauty and it is not often an easy or an inexpensive feat once the monster has been created and presented to the public. On the contrary, since this is Open Source code and a global community of developers have contributed so much already, you can build just about anything imaginable with less cost and in shorter development cycles. Make sure though you think through the features that are most important and research the components you are using for compatibility and usability.
One thing that Joomla CMS and other Content Management Systems do is they allow you to progress like the unofficial 3rd lane in Brazilian traffic to charge in front of your competitors by getting information presented quickly and dynamically. However, you have to be careful as you scoot through the windy roads and limited visibility so that you do not lose sight of making sure your portal is secure with proper upgrades and support. In other words "wear a helmet and be careful when you try to pass". One fatal mistake is to think you can just "turn on your car and drive without caution." Folks with the most successful Joomla Drupal or Wordpress portals realize that ongoing maintenance is part of the cost of doing business online and they budget monthly for technical or development support and proactive security maintenance.
Building your Content Management System and presenting your content is also still a bit like the wild wild west since doing business online is now global in nature and while the technology allows us to connect and interact with each other the laws and governance are still being sorted out. There are a lot of maniacs called "hackers" that are trying to "Game the system" and disrupt your initiatives. This past year alone hacker activity is reported to have increased over 600%. There are though a growing set of web standards to prevent this and to allow developers to respond to vulnerabilities quicker. One of the most encouraging aspects of working with Content Management Systems in general and particularly in the Open source community is an incredible sense of collaboration and cooperation.
In conclusion, there are a lot of approaches to driving down the road of success and getting the right balance of speed to market with the thoughtfulness of ongoing security and maintenance. If you combined this with careful planning it will get you further down the road with less cost and risk. You need to be aware as standards and technologies evolve so you can protect your online investment and continue moving forward at a reasonable pace and in the right direction. Do not let impatience or some other maniac on this ever changing road of technical chaos dictate how you should respond to the marketplace or present your content. Best in my book to remain calm, aware, responsive, thoughtful and move with cautious aggressiveness.
Every couple years our family ventures back to my wife Sony's native country of Brazil. When we do this it always offers an outside looking in perspective on what we are doing at CNP and gives me a chance to reflect on the things we should be focusing on to ad value to our customers. I am often making comparisons between the many cultural differences and observations about the many similarities . My analogy is that it is the same ice cream with slightly different flavors. Our second home in Navegantes SC is a community exploding with tourism and the people come from all parts of Brazil to vacation there. In some ways it is a step back in time since there are a lot of local folks that have not caught up with use new technologies since this grew out of a fishing village. Many of the visitors are well in pace with the trends of globalization so this makes for an interesting perspective on how technology is getting integrated in to the commerce and culture here. It makes me remember the importance of human relationships and something we should never lose in our engagements with customers or friends and family.
One interesting example of this community is when I wanted to purchase a used bicycle and was asking a group of older local gentlemen for directions to a place that would sell me a good used bike, since a gringo on a new bike stands out and I just want to blend in and relax a bit when I am here.
The response was... "go up the road to Edwardo's place and ask anybody" since everybody knew the guy that sold used bikes. Well I think you can get the idea here that these directions implied first the value of reputation since Edwardo's place was just an ordinary house of someone respected in the community. It emphasizes the importance of gaining the trust and awareness of real people in your community since it is often how others will navigate to your business. In a virtual web world this is kind of like saying "go to Google and type in "XYZ" then read the comments of others for direction".
I will be the first to admit that I am a bit of a geek and I like my techno toys/software and all of the magic they can do but one of the lessons I take from this is how important it is to not get distracted by all of the "cool" technologies we have and lose sight of developing real relationships in the right circle and community of your piers.
The priority should always be the relationship and the technology should never get in the way or distract from nurturing quality relationships.
Social Media and Social Technologies have many new building blocks and take time to impliment
Keep an eye on these folks to learn the current trends in Social Web Technologies
The social wave just keeps getting bigger every time I look. Today I was building out my profile on Plaxo and found this great Web TV Show http://thesocialweb.tv/ If you are planning to work with a social community for your business then there are 39 and counting episodes that review a lot of the current trends and technologies in social media. These guys are sharp and have a lot of interesting guests and comments in their conversational format.
Couple thoughts on how I have positioned our use of social media.
My Social Framework
In addition to managing our 6 corporate portals and contributing to my blog, I currently manage several social network profiles; Facebook for connecting with family and friends, MySpace for my music profile, Plaxo and Linked In for business and professional networking. Then Twitter to communicate with industry pros and a community that connects with my Blog at www.cnpintegrations.com/myblog/ (so far around 20,000 followers). On top of that since we are using Social Media for part of our SEO strategy. We have accounts on Flicker, Digg, Stumbled Upon, Picasa, Delicious and many many others... to connect our messages and inter-link with each other. There are more that I will get involved with over time but this is plenty to keep me/us busy along with getting any real work done or saving time to spend with my family.
Careful with how you spend your time
This is such a time commitment and I see so many folks involved with even more than we are... I do wonder when they sleep. The trick is before you just start signing up that you think out a strategy of how you plan to use these tools to best serve your purpose and that will consider what will your best use of time. I had been advising folks to get active with a blog for years before I actually started posting regular on mine just because I did not have the time to commit to it. I knew the affect it could have on our site traffic but unless you are ready to be consistent then it could waist time since it has to grow over time and you need to continue to contribute content or you lose your readers and when you start up again you have to build a new audience from scratch. Make sure you establish your priorities and stay focused so you can get the best return on your time and talent investment. Each implementation is as unique as the individuals involved in making them happen. There are unique considerations for all of the social technologies that require thought and a keen eye on current trends if you want to implement them successfully or now waste a bunch of time. Remember all we have in this world is our time and once it is spent we cannot get it back.
I wrote a piece a while back about Customer Conversation Management or "CCM" which is really the essence of the new CRM 2.0 and now getting the label Social CRM. Regardless of the term you prefer to use to describe it the reality is that the customer is in charge of the engagement these days since they now have so many choices and your competition is global. I have plenty of blog articles here that further explore this concept but when I found this video, I had to put it up since it hits the core of the problem many companies have today with their customer engagements.
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.
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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Driving in Brazil is a bit different than driving in America. It is perhaps hard to understand these differences until you have experienced them but I will try to convey a few of the differences and then make some unique comparison with how it is similar to Joomla, Drupal or Wordpress portal development project. 
