April Foolish - Web Upgrades

We've decided to go extra foolish and perform some necessary web upgrades and ratchet up security measures; if you come upon us this week and we are down, it isn't just a silly April Fool's Day joke! In short order, we will have our upgrades executed and tested and be back online for your continued enjoyment of our domains and subdomains.

Otherwise, Happy April Fools Day!

Putting Your Eggs In One Basket

For most business scenarios, putting all of your eggs in one basket is typically a "no-brainer, no-no". But, are there facets of business where making everything dependent upon only one thing a good approach? We submit that there is: while we can't plan for perfection,

Within an ability to seamlessly integrate certain Cloud applications, we can achieve Accuracy, Efficiency and Extensibility by getting some of our most critical business data into one basket, an ecosystem of applications leveraged globally by our business with dramatic impact on our bottom line.

Sales-to-Accounting Cycle: An Ecosystem of Leveraged Data

One of the easiest paths to a leveraged ecosystem is that of the Sales to Financials cycle:

SOCIAL SALES & MARKETING

Make this egg your leading point of entry for your data; Sales leads and target Marketing information here should be leveraged repeatedly within your ecosystem from this single, and first, point of entry for critical business data.  For those unconvinced (and resultantly being left behind and losing time and money), we will leave it to other ConsultED articles to espouse the necessities for, and realities of, social selling and engagement of your customers.  Ensure that data into your CRM here is entered correctly and validated, as it will be recycled continually by your other business systems.  Simply put, if you are not embracing and egaging your customers socially, you are dis-servicing your current clients and losing out on potential ones.

Leading By Example: RADIAN6 SOCIAL MARKETING CLOUD

CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT (CRM)

Good businesses realize that when they lose a customer due to inefficiency or delays, they will lose existing and potential revenue when that upset customer tells ten or more associates of his or her negative experience. Manage and massage your marketing efforts and sales leads with a well-chosen CRM application.  Your customers are your most important eggs, so your CRM tool must be one that is scalable to handle growth from your Sales & Marketing efforts as well as being adaptable in engaging and collaborating internally with your own knowledge workers and externally with your actual customers, suppliers and partners (inclusive of a mobile workforce strategy).

Your CRM application must fit within the company's objectives and used by a competent, trained staff with the company's goals in mind to promote shorter sales cycles, reduce administrative costs, require less time to track down information, improve reporting and give quicker issue turnaround time, increase sales closing rates, and improve customer retention. When CRM is effective, it improves internal processes within the business and personalizes the organization's external relationships; this extends the company's value across the firm through data integration, increasing customer retention and loyalty, and responding effectively to competition in the marketplace.  As a result, CRM software solutions allow companies to escape revenue plateaus by capturing new customers, retaining existing ones, and by better managing their business.  At this stage, you continue to Embrace & Engage!

Leading By Example: SALESFORCE

ESTIMATES & PROPOSALS

Manifest your Sales, Marketing and Customer Relationship efforts into estimates and proposals for contractual work; these eggs are born to hatch! An application fully integrated with your CRM and Accounting applications will help automate client Estimates and Proposals in real-time: don't lose time, and lose out on potential, laboring unnecessarily over estimate and proposal writing - these should be primarily auto-generated from data already known with the ecosystem, chiefly from your integrated CRM and Accounting applications.

Leading By Example: QUOTEROLLER

DIGITAL SIGNATURES

An electronic signature application is one of the most fundamental, yet often over-looked eggs we find missing from most business baskets.  The advent of a digital signature mechanism is a highly beneficial time-saver in closing those all important deals!  Many processes require formal authorizations or approvals. Often times, the number of signature-dependent processes within an organization or department is much higher than many realize. By implementing digital signatures, organizations are able to significantly shorten process times while cutting costs and improving collaboration and efficiency.

Leading By Example: RIGHTSIGNATURE

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Keeping a business of any size afloat in today's tenuous economy requires a high degree of organization and planning.  Business success is a hybrid of two primary ingredients: doing what you do well and, in turn, convincing prospective clients of that competence so new work flows in on a consistent basis. Your business simply doesn't function if you aren't managing projects efficiently and effectively!  Project Management in our opinion is the single most important function in any business; operating poorly within this responsibility begets problems in all other business actions.  Collaboration, Delegation, Budgeting, Tracking, Reporting and Communication ALL are engined and managed within Project Management.  

A haphazard technology choice here, or worse - poor performance in applying it, and your organization will have issues affecting all other core business functions.  If you are not on time with your client projects, then you are not on time with your invoicing; if you are not current with your invoicing, your business is without revenue that is rightfully owned. That's your business's money laying on the table, unclaimed due to defective and ineffective management.  Here, Project Management software can prove of invaluable help with its capacity for detailed planning and project tracking - it helps you show exactly what you're going to do and how you're going to do it. Further, this provides highly beneficial information that can be compiled and used to illustrate precisely how you will handle any new job.  Where you may get away for a short time with other business functions failing, no business can afford poor project management. Don't let this be a bad egg for your business! 

Leading By Example: BASECAMP

HELP DESK & SUPPORT

In today’s highly competitive business environment, companies must strive to deliver world-class support in order to maximize client loyalty, retain market share, and ensure ongoing profitability. Help desk software can provide businesses with the tools needed to deliver the kind of superior and convenient service that evolving, modern customers require.  Any Help & Support function should not be disruptive to your primary business operations, but rather seamless as part of your overall Project Management.  A well-chosen, and effectively used help desk application means your business can build stronger, longer lasting relationships and gain a solid competitive edge by providing faster, more convenient and more fluid service. Increase productivity, Improve information flow and reduce overall costs of supporting your main egg: your customers!

Leading By Example: ZENDESK

TIME TRACKING

In our experience, if there is one rotten egg consistently found in most business cycles it is this one: inefficiencies and inaccuracies within time tracking.  Obviously, problems here dramatically impact your ability to properly, and timely, bill your customers. But that's not all: we view time-tracking as absolute extension of the all-importance of Project Management, and time management applications can further enable your organization to think differently about your business, and individuals in becoming better knowledge workers. 

For the Organization/Company

Company-wide time management software allows employees to keep track of their timesheets in real time. For businesses with productivity issues, time management software can promote more accountability in your organization. With time tracking software, employees receive data describing how they spent their time, allowing them to improve their performances. Even more important in our estimation, this provides a framework for billing clients and monitoring company productivity.  A business that knows, and understands, how time is being spent (either beneficially or inefficiently) can both address issues to improve performance and profit and to enhance and promote those areas known to go well.

For the Individual/Knowledge Worker

If you are a task-oriented person who gets bogged down in the details of projects, certain features of time management software can help you keep the end goal in mind as you work. If you are a "big picture" type of person who easily loses track of details, or someone who begins projects with gusto but can't seem to finish them, time management software can keep you on track with timely reminders and task lists.

A cloud-based time tracking application (replete with mobile device access) improves the organization's productivity by giving regular project information, spent hours, billable hours or for non-billable hours. It helps you to create your project plans, run reports and manage time sheets, as well as telling you how much of your project has been completed on time and how much is yet to be done. It gives you an accurate status of each project task, against your planned target list and the total time and money spent to date. With this egg of information, you not only can keep an eye on the status of your project at any time, but of your business overall. 

Leading By Example: HARVEST

BILLING & INVOICING

As we've discussed, keeping a business of any size afloat in today's tenuous economy requires a high degree of organization and planning. A successful, profitable business uses the best tools and applications available to keep its finances in order.  By implementing cloud-based invoicing software for your business you will see reduced costs and increased cash flows by sending large batches of invoices and statements electronically. You will also increase accuracy and customer satisfaction by allowing your customers to pay you online, easily and securely. Invoicing software benefits and features don’t end there though; additional features that will have a definite positive effect on your business are: Manage Customer Data; Manage and Send Electronic Invoices; Receive Electronic Payments; Provide Customer Self-Service; Promote and Advertise Your Products and Services.

In our opinion, Billing/Invoicing and Accounting functions of any business should be the most seamless, and automated; no business should be unduly burdened with month-end billing and subsequent client and executive management reporting.  With today's cloud technologies, this scenario of inefficiency is absolutely uncalled for; the data required for these functions already exists in your other business applications, and can therefore be leveraged accurately and immediately in real-time.

For a clear picture, reference this quality info-graphic as provided by WinWeb.com:  Cloud Invoicing & Billing Software Benefits

Leading By Example: HARVEST

ACCOUNTING & FINANCIALS

Old School accounting is, well... Old School! Say goodbye to bloated, inefficient accounting software and embrace the currency of now with cloud accounting applications! Solo-practitioners to small business to major organizations and government agencies around the world are already leveraging the cloud to manage their financial data. These businesses fully appreciate the benefits that come with the ability to access their data in real-time, via a browser from anywhere in the world.

Benefits of Cloud Accounting

Reduced cost – cloud accounting is a very cost effective solution for all enterprises regardless of their size. It eliminates the need to purchase hardware or accounting software. And unlike conventional accounting software, it requires absolutely no updates. Overhead costs, version upgrades, maintenance, system administration costs and server failures are now no longer issues – all those things are managed by a cloud accounting service provider.
Ease of access – cloud accounting applications enable users worldwide to access their company financial data from anywhere, at any time without having to download and install anything on their desktop. All you need is an Internet connection!
Low TCO - cloud accounting applications tend to be subscription based and can scale according to your company’s needs. Usually there is no major up-front investment in hardware and software. Companies using cloud accounting technology benefit from better cash flow and are able to allocate their IT staff to more strategic projects. Upgrades are also managed seamlessly allowing users to enjoy the new features that come along. What’s better – all this is at absolutely no cost!
Improves Business Performance – cloud accounting gives an organization the scope to respond to changing business conditions and helps a finance team to generate real-time financial reports and dashboards while allowing a shift of focus to more strategic initiatives.

Leading By Example: FINANCIALFORCE

ANALYTICS & REPORTING

Without detracting from our emphasis on the importance of any of our business eggs above, analytics and reporting on your global business functions is valuated as a "mission-critical" business function in our organization.  As experienced as we are with the above applications, we need to understand where we are doing well just as importantly as learning areas where we can improve.  We want to know our business and how it functions intimately with use of a cloud-based business intelligence application, affording us centralized, improved access with a better understanding of key business metrics such as sales and to predict future performance. 

Business intelligence (BI) has become a must-have technology for C-level executives, IT professionals and individual employees across different departments (recent Gartner studies have found business analytics to be the top-ranked priority for executives).  At ConsultED, we aim to eliminate guesswork: far too often, executives and individual decision-makers must rely on 'best guess' and 'gut feel' decisions as they attempt to steer their business into the future. They do this because their business data lacks any structure to allow them to make truly informed choices. A well-chosen and competently utilized business intelligence application can provide more accurate historical data, real-time updates, synthesis between departmental data stores, forecasting and trending, and even predictive 'what if?' analysis, eliminating the need to guesstimate. 

Benefits of Cloud BI

Return-On-Investment: BI analytics are extremely useful with regard to decision-making processes, from identifying which marketing strategies are effective to predicting whether a new product line will be successful. As a result, the technology can help achieve a faster return on investment.

Get faster answers to your business questions: BI users can quickly get answers to business questions, rather than the traditional approach of spending hours reading through volumes of printed reports, generated by many manhours from antiquated spreadsheets and datawarehouses.

Get key business metrics reports when and where you need them: today, cloud-based business intelligence makes it possible for users to access key business metrics, reports and dashboards on mobiles devices (e.g., Tablets, Smartphones) giving everyone from sales and marketing people to project managers to executive management access to critical business information on the fly.

Get insight into customer behavior: one of the great benefits of business intelligence applications is that it allows companies to gain visibility into what customers are buying (or not), giving them the ability to turn this knowledge into additional profit and retain valuable customers. With an ability to identify cross-selling and up-selling opportunities, business intelligence software allows business to leverage customer data to build, refine and modify predictive models that help to up-sell and cross-sell products at appropriate customer touch points.

Real-time Visibility: With its ability to produce ad hoc reports on call, business intelligence provides both useful and uniform information throughout the workplace.

Leading By Example: GOODDATA

Gathering good eggs into an ecosystem of seamlessly integrated and automated basket of cloud solutions is the best investment your organization makes (2nd only to intellectual capital, your knowledge workers themselves), but your business's executives must wholeheartedly support and promote these technologies.  No technology implementation should be seen as a "magic bullet"; your ultimate success comes from a concentrated, organizational buy-in and commitment to BUILDING BETTER BUSINESS. By separating good eggs from bad ones, and getting them all in one place, your knowledge workers and your business are in "egg-cellent" shape towards higher productivity, retention and profit.

Putting all your eggs in one basket doesn't mean breaking them all if you drop it.  Instead, this is one idiom that works towards a real business advantage, enough to put a bounce in any bunny's basket!

This information is not an advertisement on ConsultED's part but merely alerts our Members to a potentially useful company, website, application or idea.

Four-leaf Clovers for Staying in the Green

Happy St. Patrick's Day - We hope that you enjoyed yours! To follow is ConsultED's own four-leaf clover of cloud applications for keeping your business in the green!

FOUR-LEAF CLOVERS TO STAY IN THE GREEN

RACKSPACE - the open cloud company, Rackspace is a global web host known for their high end managed hosting and dedicated services. The company delivers enterprise-level managed services to businesses of all sizes and kinds around the world.  You get cloud, managed and hybrid hosting all backed by Fanatical Support, the industries platinum standard for help services.

(Infrastructure-as-a-Service)

HEROKU - the first and leading open language cloud application platform and supports Ruby, Java, Python, Clojure, Scala, Node.js. and custom language buildpacks.  Heroku allows developers to deploy, scale, and manage their apps without needing to think about servers or systems administration.

(Platform-as-a-Service)

XEROUND - a ridiculously simple, seriously powerful, elastic and always-on Cloud database for your MySQL applications.

(Database-as-a-Service)

CENZIC - provides solutions for Cloud, Web and Mobile applications security testing for enterprise software to Software as a Service, going beyond signature-based tools to automatically find application vulnerabilities.  Prevent hacker attacks, reduce the risk of data fraud and theft, and ensure security compliance with Cenzic's comprehensive web application security solutions.

(Security-as-a-Service)

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An International Women's Day Hooray!

Today is International Women's Day! Now celebrated for over 100 Years, International Women's Day commemorates advancements made in human rights and furthers the discussion of the challenges women continue to face in politics, education, business, employment,

This year's 2013 United Nation's Theme for the Day is "A Promise is a Promise: Time for Action to End Violence Against Women" - seeking to strengthen the international community’s commitment to put an end to violence against women. As part of the U.N. effort to fight violence against women, Secretary-Generals Ban Ki-moon's UNiTE campaign calls on all governments, civil society, women’s organizations, men, young people, the private sector, the media and the entire UN system to join forces in addressing this global pandemic.

RECOMMENDED: Take a look at how International Women's Day is celebrated across the World (courtesy of CSM), and stay tuned for ConsultED's upcoming article series focusing on the Empowerment of Women in Business!