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Posts tagged ‘ita’

Dec 6

The Social Business Imperative (ITA Fall Collaborative Session)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/naturesdawn/5122518384/sizes/z/in/photostream/Mark Yohai from Avectra led the discussion by starting off with the premise that the first social network was a chamber of commerce created in 1768. It’s the social collaboration that is important – not necessarily the specific tools.

Things to cover in session:

  • What is social business and why customers need it?
  • What are key requirements for social business software?
  • Vertical opportunities: associations and non-profits

Mark shared a quote from Gartner Group:

“There is one absolute about social CRM: it will be mandatory – not optional – for the majority of organizations”

He underlined this point with a slide showing the projected growth of Social for the next few years. As you might imagine, it was a set of bars growing from small to very large with a swooping arrow above the bars showing crazy fast growth.

The key to social business: people are talking. Are you listening? Engaging? Acting on these discussions?

McKinsey research has shown companies using social business solutions gain greater market share and higher margins. I believe the article in question can be found here if you are so inclined.

Mark shared some specific examples of adoption. The businesses that he spoke about were so large that, to me, they didn’t really apply to my customer base or my situation. I’m sure the IBM’s of the world are effectively doing these things but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it is going to be great for me or my clients.

In the audience, Kevin Cumley from Forepoint spoke up and made this point and tried to get clarification on how it applied to the typical firm in the room. Answered: clarification will come later.

Mark discussed common complaint: my prospects don’t use social networks. He countered this with a slide that discussed how strong and prevalent social networking is. I’m not sure that addressed the point but it’s a given that social networks are growing.

He continued on discussing public vs private networks. For public networks, he made the case:

  • Purpose – they make money
  • Branding – their brand
  • Content – they own
  • Network – they own data
  • User Experience – they control

And for private networks, you own and control all of the above.

So – do you go with only the private network? He stressed that you use both to ensure maximum value for customers and your organization.

Moving the conversation along, he asked what do we do with this social data? He discussed monitoring, tracking and even grading the particular customer or individual’s interactions with your organization. When the activity falls below a certain threshold, give them a call. When the activity is above a certain level – showing that they are extremely engaged, give them acknowledgement (a plaque, thanks, a gift card, whatever).

At this point, I’m pretty much checking out of this conversation. Mark did a great job presenting the information so it’s no fault of his. He seems to really know his stuff and makes a convincing argument for it.

For me, it just seems so far away from the practical needs of my company and my customers and I can’t see how to apply it.

I agree that this is important stuff for the near-term future and even right now for a small constituency. Your mileage may vary.

(BTW – I think I’m checking out at the right time as he is starting to go into particulars that apply closely to Avectra and their target industries.)

Dec 6

Using Social Media to Generate Revenue (ITA Fall Collaborative 2011 Session)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/birgerking/4731898939/sizes/z/in/photostream/From the session description:

Learn from a small, diversified, group of some of the industry’s most creative minds who have teamed together to create an innovative approach to generating leads and customers through Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitter.

This session was a panel of Apryl Hanson (BlytheCo) and Wayne Schulz (Schulz Consulting) led by B.J. O’Reilly (ISM). I’m not 100% certain how the description fits the panel but I know Wayne knows more about social media than most others in the channel and, because of BlytheCo’s sheer size if no other reason, Apryl certainly will have a good amount of experiences to share.

We started as Apryl talked about BlytheCo’s different social media products, their magainze and blog. Their second largest search term is their name (interesting – the Blytheco brand must be significant).

Their lead volume is about 5% of all traffic with monthly volume ranging from 20,000 to 60,000 visitors per month depending on the month (I would imagine year end gets heavier traffic). It wasn’t specified if this was uniques, pagecounts, total or exactly what it was.

She stated that lead quality is about 50% which means 1 out of 2 leads go from raw to qualified. This seems to be 50% of the 5% – not 50% of the total visitor count.

Wayne went on to discuss the importance of trying to determine *who* is making the inquiries because there is a big difference between someone just looking for a quick answer vs someone looking for long-term help. Further clarifying this point, Wayne underlined the importance of quickly and effectively filtering these folks to determine who will be serious customers that fit his particular model and ideal customer.

He also discussed the importance of getting people to sign up for newsletters as these people are usually quicker to make a decision and become a customer as opposed to the general, one-time inquiry which oftentimes is a price shopper that is already in discussion with other resellers.

As part of the filtering and qualification process, Wayne is a firm believer in providing starts as pricing to help people self-qualify and determine if they are a good fit from a financial perspective for Schulz Consulting. Wayne has created a fairly high volume of leads and has decidedly kept his firm smaller so it makes sense that he has established a solid methodology to move people along or out.

Wayne commented further about the importance of driving people to sign up for newsletters as this creates a stronger relationship with a higher value over time. Again, he stresses the importance of establishing this connection simply by using inexpensive, easy to use tools such as MailChimp.

He commented about being personal and connecting with people through images and stories. Apryl shared that one of their best hit posts was the one where she discussed shoes and conferences. To me, that makes sense since it’s a human thing – we can all relate so it creates a real connection with most of us.

There was consensus among the panel (and heads were nodding in the room) that the content that you put out there should be valuable, useful and informative. People will only stomach so many articles about how great your company is.

And if you do write those pieces, try your best to make it about your customers and their needs. (Here’s my attempt – it’s a work in process, let me know what you think.)

Wayne recommends borrowing ideas liberally from other industries because most businesses (he stated “resellers” but every industry develops tunnel vision) are comfortable repeating marketing tactics that worked in the 1980′s.

Apryl shared a slide of where BlytheCo’s volume comes from:

  • Organic Search 58%
  • Referrals 5%
  • Paid Search 8%
  • Direct Traffic 25%
  • E-mail Marketing 1%
  • Social Media 1%

What do these numbers tell us? Well … it’s great real-world confirmation that content is king since organic search is primarily driven by content, key words, information that you put out there.

Apryl discussed the importance of creating and tracking landing pages to determine what’s working and what’s not. From my perspective, this is so far beyond where I currently am that it’s hard to imagine this level of sophistication but it’s something that all the larger businesses seem to believe in strongly.

Again, landing pages should be defined around what customers are searching for as opposed to product features. Ex. How do I close my GL would be a common search term.

The discussion shifted to the concept that ideas make the social media team and it’s important to educate your team, your clients and even your prospect on connecting with you on the different social networks. This is easier said than done.

I’m not sure about you but most of my clients don’t see the value of social networking yet. Search engines … yes. Facebook … maybe. LinkedIn … somewhat. Twitter … not at all really.

I’m sure adoption will grow over time at an increasing rate. For now, it’s a tough sell.

The panel discussed using the right tools – such as Hubspot, SalesFusion, HootSuite, TweetDeck, Google Reader, Google Alerts and others. The tools make it easier to create, manage and track your social media efforts.

Watching my word count, I see that I’m around 850 and I’m always conscious of over-staying my welcome. Hopefully the information above will prove to be useful in your marketing efforts.

For me, the session was another valuable presentation here at the ITA. Special thanks to Apryl Hanson and Wayne Schulz for so freely sharing information. For any resellers, I strongly recommend that you subscribe to Wayne’s blog at www.erplife.com where he shares this type of information routinely.

Thanks also to B.J. O’Reilly for keeping the panel moving so well. Out of the various panel sessions I’ve attended over the last few days, he’s done the best job at balancing the conversation and including the audience.

Overall – this was a great, informative session.

Dec 5

New business models for success (ITA Fall Collaborative session)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/johngreyturner/2331623338/sizes/z/in/photostream/From the session description:

What are you doing to change your business to adapt and thrive? Do you see opportunity in this new climate of change and uncertainty? Is there one answer or multiple? Join your peers in a panel discussion as they share their thoughts and approach on evolving their business to “survive” or “capitalize”?

As stated in the above description, this session was conducted as a panel consisting of Bryan Wilton (InterDyn), Kevin Cumley (Forepoint) and Doug Deane (DSD Business Systems).

We started with a question about why and what? Why did the panelists choose their path?

Doug started off talking about the indicators starting four years ago that pointed towards small and medium-sized VARs facing pressures to survive and thrive. His route was to create a national presence that maintained nimbleness and strong local autonomy but also deliver a strong core brand. It’s been a challenging road that is proving successful.

Bryan responded with a quote “Safe is death”. He has this quote pop up regularly on his calendar to remind him that change is important. The consulting business is completely different today than it was five years ago, even two years and it appears to be more of the same for the future. We can’t keep doing the same if we want to survive.

Kevin started with the quote (seen here a few times) “If you don’t like change, you will like irrelevance even less” (General Eric Shinseki). Kevin went on to discuss how back in 2006 – 2007, his firm was having challenges with selling their go-to-market product, Sage Accpac. Sales were down, harder to find new markets. Their route was diversification to other products.

The panelists were asked how they came up with a plan and what if any research was conducted?

Doug spoke about reviewing current successes and failures and taking away important lessons to formulate a sound strategy that minimized risk of failure and maximize chance of success. DSD was in a unique position to recruit partners to join the family because they are a widely respected development partner making add-ons for Sage MAS. This allowed them to identify partners that would be a great cultural and ethical fit for the DSD family.

Bad cultural fits are leading problem with mergers and acquisitions. Good pre-nuptial agreements are important for all parties.

Kevin discussed the necessity thrusted upon him to try and sometimes stumble before executing.

Bryan talked about sitting in an airport five years ago and looking forward to how they would achieve their goals for the next ten – twenty years. He planned out how to get from the high teens to the hundred + employee count. Reviewing his business, he determined that he wouldn’t be able to find the people necessary to service the client base that would feed that size of organization. So he came to the conclusion that for his group to be successful, he would have to team up.

This meant through a merger / acquisition or through teaming up with trusted partners to reach their goals. Like Doug, he discussed the  importance of cultural fits and trust. It seems that DSD and InterDyn have similar models – rolling up of numbers, loose affiliations, strong central brand. Bryan’s group eventually merged with another InterDyn partner to form a larger group.

Culture! Culture! Culture! – Bryan Wilton

Moving on to How and Who? How and where did the panelists start and why?

Kevin talked about starting this transformation during a slower period in which he had excellent, highly skilled people who were available and interested in picking up new products. His group had opportunities from day one – one in particular that was a large blue bird – that helped force the forward momentum for the team. To meet those goals, they used collaboration to help succeed, increase knowledge transfer and spread risk.

Bryan’s group wanted to make sure their change did not disrupt employees, customers, sales, etc. They wanted to make sure the process was transparent to everyone. Everything they did came back to those two principles. The care given to this has made their transformation take a bit longer than it might have otherwise but Bryan feels that it helped (continues to help) ensure their success.

Bryan went on to talk about their software publisher, Microsoft, wanting to be involved, being inquisitive of their changes and finding the balancing act between collaborating with them and telling them “it’s none of your business”. (I think this is not a phenomenon restricted to Microsoft by the way.)

Doug continued this thought and talked about ensuring his actions and steps were done in concert with Sage.  Doug mentioned he is a systems guy and wishes he was more of a people guy. He mentioned that he always has a great time when his wife drags him out to parties but it’s not his thing to do normally. As a systems guy, he has created documents and forms and policies to help define the relationships and ensure the eventual success of the collaboration. He built these out before embarking on his growth plans.

Doug mentioned that his due diligence and company valuation documents are two great resources that partners could benefit from reviewing if they are interested in going down this road. The documents mentioned are available from Doug for everyone to benefit from on the ITA website. [As soon as I get a link, I will update the article.] The valuation document in particular is a great way for the professional service firms to determine where they really stand.

Doug mentioned that it’s easy to demonstrate the benefits of a larger organization to customers in a letter or a phone call. Personally, I’m not a fan of bigger is better and I’m not sure I agree with this blanket statement. DSD is extremely successful and growth has been a successful strategy for them but I believe that as long as you provide consistent, clear value for your customer, you don’t need a 100 person (or even a 20 person) team.

The session goes on from here but at 1100 plus words, I’m figuring that I’m losing people’s attention.

Suffice it to say that the session was interesting. I would have liked to hear more of a theme appear for each of the panelists before launching into the questions. It seems that Bryan and Doug are following a similar path of M&A and affiliation whereas Kevin pursued a path of diversification and verticalization.

I would love to see a repeat of this session in the future with maybe three completely different paths (maybe throw organic growth in there?) and a clearer written description (printed would probably be best) of the different paths, how they are doing, how far along they are, what are the challenges, etc. to supplement the panel discussion.

Overall – a worthwhile session to attend. Huge thanks to all the participants for sharing their stories.

Dec 5

1 Comment

Get out of IT while you can (ITA Fall Collaborative Mon morning keynote)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/markhillary/2212546989/sizes/z/in/photostream/What a change a day makes. The “Shift Age” keynote from last night left me a bit cold but this morning’s presentation by Craig Schiefelbein on “Get Out of IT While You Can” was interesting and a worthwhile investment of time.

Most of the points covered during the keynote can be found at a high-level here.

There’s a common expresssion that goes “you’re preaching to the choir”. Well – sometimes the choir needs preaching to and, oftentimes, the choir is the most receptive to the message.

We might have that case here with Mr. Schiefelbein’s presentation. His entire message resonated with me – he’s preaching to the choir. Here’s some nuggets:

  • You don’t need to invent to innovate.  People that read my posts regularly know that Peter Drucker has a go to quote for me that spells out businesses have two purposes: innovation and marketing. Craig’s point is on the money – you don’t need to invent the next iPad to innovate with existing products and services to create value.
  • Play to win vs. play not to lose.  When you play not to lose, you are looking at cost containment, efficiency, risk mitigation, etc. This leads to pursuing the holy grail of efficiency which leads to fragility and extreme leanness. This makes it difficult to innovate and that’s a business killer in today’s climate.
  • IT cannot be successful as a cost center.  This draws somewhat from the Tom Peters school of thought and underscores Craig’s entire presentation. Stop considering yourself as the IT guys – figure out how to drive value, innovate, wow your company’s customers. That’s what it takes to succeed in today’s rapidly moving world.

All in all, this was a great presentation and drove home some very important points for anyone with an IT department or providing IT services.

Don’t take my word for it. Grab a copy of the book and draw your own conclusions.

Dec 5

3 Comments

Is the “Shift Age” upon us? (ITA Fall Collaborative 2011 Keynote)

Shhhh! The futurist is at work

To kick-off the ITA Fall Collaborative, author and self-appointed “futurist”, David Houle, gave a presentation detailing his thoughts on where we are as a society, how we got here and where we need to go in the future.

I will say up-front that the talk left me a bit cold.

I can’t put my finger on why exactly but it could have been the delivery, the difficult to read powerpoints, the time of day (it was a long day) but I think the bottom line was the message.

I just didn’t buy into a lot of the information being presented. Some of this is my personal biases and skepticism towards imposed patterns.

Now, don’t get me wrong, there were some nuggets of truth sprinkled in there but a lot of it seemed like Monday morning quarterbacking – where Mr. Houle imposed patterns on history to draw conclusions and organize thoughts to make predictions.

Ok … so maybe that’s what a “futurist” does.

Personally I am the type of guy who needs more concrete facts and evidence instead of a couple of powerpoint slides. In all fairness, he might have access to this information and it is simply impossible to present it all in a one hour long presentation.

Even if we go along with this thought and make allowances for the difficulty that all “futurists” have in coallescing their thoughts into a concise and convincing presentation, the patterns that he overlaid on historical events and the conclusions that he draws don’t jibe with me on several levels.

His main thrust is that we have entered into a new age – which he has coined as the “Shift Age”. During this Age, we will experience many needs to survive as a business. (He outlines them in his book.)

Well … personally I don’t believe.

I think we are still in the Information Age (which he contends started in the 1970s and ended a few years back to usher in the Shift Age) and the reason for the current upheaval is not because we have entered a new Age but rather the disruption presented by the Internet.

To me, it seems that the Internet is a tool that is accelerating the Information Age – much like advances during the Industrial Age accelerated those periods (think the steam engine, the assembly line, etc.).

There were other points and conclusions that he has drawn that I disagree with but when you disagree with the core argument – the very existence of the proposed Shift Age – there is no need to break down the conclusions derived from the theory.

It’s like arguing how fast the sun moves around the Earth. It just doesn’t work that way.

This is just my opinion. Mr. Houle has obviously been very successful as a “futurist”, selling his theory and management speaking engagements, so what do I know? I can see how it appeals to some to have patterns on things and give a decisive direction for the future.

Who doesn’t want that? I encourage everyone to read his book yourself and draw your own conclusions. Report back here.

(Yes – some might say that “futurist” doesn’t need quotes around it just like “psychic advisor” doesn’t need quotes around it.)

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