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It’s the Quiet Ones You Should Be Like in Meetings

December 23, 2020 Microsoft Dynamics CRM

You’d be surprised at how much more you can accomplish when you’re not talking.

We’ve all attended meetings–it’s a necessary part of the job. Yet, have you ever been in a meeting discussing your CRM system, and no one can stop talking? Someone wants to discuss how to improve data tracking, while someone else wants to focus on contact management. Team leaders or managers might try to steer the conversation back on track, but everyone keeps talking.

I’ve been in a number of meetings where this exact scenario played out. Heck, I’ve even been the one that’s been talking too much. After leaving a meeting like this, I’ve gone back to my desk, frustrated and a little annoyed that nothing got done. All we did was talk–and talk and talk and talk. Maybe we were all trying to show that we deserved our job title or wanted to make sure we were on the list for a big promotion. Whatever the reason, we were all too busy talking to accomplish anything.

“However,

after spending years in the professional world,

I’ve realized these meetings aren’t a complete waste of time.

And that’s thanks to the quiet ones.”

And no, I’m not referring to the weird character in a scary movie who reveals himself as the killer. Rather, these are the people who go unnoticed during meetings. They sit quietly in meetings, watching the room fill with noise and observe. They may even be known as ‘the quiet guy’ around the office–the one notorious for never talking during a meeting.

While you may think that these individuals don’t speak because they don’t have anything to contribute or are too intimidated to speak up, this couldn’t be further from the truth. They’re thinking. They’re taking in information from the room, coming up with action items, and learning. These incredible quiet creatures do all this without uttering a word.

I’ve always been curious about these individuals, eager to know what their take is on whatever we’re talking about. But these quiet people don’t waste their words–they save them for a fortunate few.

As I’ve worked more closely with these individuals, I’ve changed how I react in meetings. Instead of jumping in and contributing to the throng of voices, I keep quiet and listen. I’m a long way from perfecting this skill, but already I’ve seen great results.

Silence is Actually a Sign of Intelligence

How many times have you sat in a meeting to discuss problems within a team or process pain points and felt ignored? Many problems in a professional setting come from a lack of listening. Managers are overly eager to come up with a solution that they layout in a too-long PowerPoint or team members spend too long discussing their problems that they don’t give anyone a chance to present a solution.

The endless talking happens for a number of reasons: managers eager to show they’re worthy of their job title or showcase their leadership skills, employees anxious to show off their communication skills to bump themselves upon the promotion list, over-inflated egos, and more. But perhaps the biggest reason is to look smart. Where the idea that the smartest person in the room is the one that talks the most came from, I don’t know.

I’ve found that the opposite is true. The people who sit quietly and take in all the chatter are incredibly smart. Think about how much these people learned or the action items they created while we were all too busy talking.

Even after the meeting ends and many of us linger, anxious to talk more, the quiet ones head back to their desk, ready to get started on their next action item or to further process all the information that was just presented.

“That’s one of the characteristics of quiet people:

they act instead of talk.”

Seeing the results that these silent creatures produce has changed my opinion. I’ve realized that the person who spent the entire meeting talking doesn’t know as much as they think they do. They put on a good show, sure. But the person who never said a word actually knows so much more than the rest of us.

Staying Quiet is Actually a Good Thing

When the time comes that these quiet creatures do have to speak up, it’s an incredible sight. Rather than reference a very detailed spreadsheet, repeat a lengthy conversation with a customer or an email chain between a customer and themselves, they say what they need to say, then shut up.

That’s the mindset I’m working towards but I am a long way from perfect: make your point in as little words as possible, then listen.

Already, I’ve found that I’ve learned more by listening and observing. Additionally, I’ve picked up on what people aren’t saying, which is equally as important.

Intelligent People are Focused on Listening

Focusing on listening instead of talking has, for me, been a game-changer. Primarily because I’ve been able to learn so much more about our customers, processes, and the market by listening to what others have to say rather than showing off my own knowledge.

I’ve had some practice with this throughout the years, beginning with my first job after graduating college. I accepted a job as a content writer with a large software company days after graduating. However, I was concerned about my lack of technological knowledge and was concerned about how well I could do this job. Not one to shy away from a challenge (or the salary for that matter), I accepted.

However, I quickly became known as being “the quiet one” on the team because I rarely, if ever, spoke during team or company meetings. At first, this was because I was afraid of coming off as stupid because I didn’t know much about the technology. Over time, I was able to learn more about our company’s software stack, how our business operated, and what our customers were interested in–all because I focused on listening.

Listen Meeting 1 625x418.jpeg.pagespeed.ce.GoXGmJ6ueC It’s the Quiet Ones You Should Be Like in Meetings

Enough of tooting my own horn though. I also heard an example of someone who used the art of listening to accelerate his career path and attend a meeting with the founders of Google.

Simply by offering to take notes, he gained a wealth of knowledge that allowed him to stay ahead of his competition and accelerated his career. That skill was what earned him a seat in a meeting with the two men who created Google.

I can only imagine what this man learned from these two professionals and how valuable that information is to him now. And how did he do it? He listened.

Welcome Silence

Now when I walk into a meeting, I’m focused on observing rather than adding my voice to an already noisy room. This small change has accelerated my own learning dramatically.

While this change is small, it takes time to master–I’m a long way from it like I’ve said. However, it’s not impossible to do. Rather than allowing your pride, ego, or job title take over in meetings, reign it in. Swallow your words and listen. Not only will your knowledge increase, but so will your productivity. You’ll have a list of things that need to be done rather than having to call yet another meeting to discuss action items.

A final warning I’ll leave you with: have the self-discipline to know when to talk and when to listen. Don’t become known as the guy who can’t stop talking (both in and out of meetings) because you’re actually hurting your career.

Look for the quiet ones around your office. Watch how they work. Pay attention to when they do speak up and follow their example. Again, you’d be surprised at how much more you can accomplish simply by staying quiet.

For more articles on effective meetings, check out these:

How to Work from Home and Stay Productive

Microsoft Remote Work Tech Update: Azure, Teams, 365 Groups

…

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It’s the Quiet Ones You Should Be Like in Meetings Article by: Dave Bollard – Head of Marketing | 801-436-6636

JourneyTEAM is an award-winning consulting firm with proven technology and measurable results. They take Microsoft products; Dynamics 365, SharePoint intranet, Office 365, Azure, CRM, GP, NAV, SL, AX, and modify them to work for you. The team has expert level, Microsoft Gold certified consultants that dive deep into the dynamics of your organization and solve complex issues. They have solutions for sales, marketing, productivity, collaboration, analytics, accounting, security and more. www.journeyteam.com

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CRM Software Blog | Dynamics 365

3 major signs that indicate it’s time to Automate your Recurring Invoices within Dynamics 365 CRM/Power Apps!

December 19, 2020 CRM News and Info

What’s the one factor common to all businesses and holds the most value? Yes. Money. Majority of businesses are focused on sales and revolve around using their Dynamics 365 CRM to bank in more sales. They want to use it to its full utility to capture their leads, convert them, and continue to service them. However, the same numbers are not reflected when it comes to taking action for optimizing the process of carrying out the sales for their customers. This changes when a simple-to-use and efficient solution like Recurring Billing Manager is introduced.

Recurring Billing Manager, now available on Microsoft AppSource, is an app that makes billing a piece of cake. It is a mix of automated intelligence, bulls-eye accuracy, as well as time and effort saving convenience. How do you know if you really need a solution like this? We’ve identified the top signs that indicate a reason for concern and a demand for change. Have you noticed the below signs?

Sign #1: Multiple Billing Schedules prove to be a burden

The biggest question with multiple clients in your billing pipeline is figuring out and organizing when each of the clients has to pay and exactly when the bill should be scheduled. This can prove to become a management nightmare if payments start to slip. But this is old worries with Recurring Billing Manager. Recurring Billing Manager provides Flexible Billing Schedules that change the way you deal with bills.

Recurring Billing Manager gives you the control of billing schedules: set which invoices should be generated, when they should be generated, how frequently they should be generated and what line of items should be a part of the new Invoice.

That’s not all; you can create multiple Billing Schedules and customize them. You can use the common billing attributes such as billing length, frequency, reminders, delayed charges, and even include multiple products as per your requirement. Using this feature of Recurring Billing Manager, seeing multiple bills will only make you happy.

Sign #2: Payments are delayed

A growing company always has limited attention time. When the workload gets heavy or the company has a major upcoming project that needs more eyes, it’s common to have operations like billing that does not stop work fall behind. With Recurring Billing Manager, Reminder Schedules takes care of this for you by sending payment reminders to your clients. You can set up a schedule for reminders with respect to invoices that are past due or for upcoming renewals. What’s more is that every Reminder Schedule will have Reminder Rule(s). These rules outline when the reminders should be sent, the email templates to be used, to whom it should be sent, etc.

So, you can now channel your focus to more pressing tasks while Recurring Billing Manager automates your reminders for you.

Sign #3: Inaccurate/Zero Compensation for Delayed Payments

Let’s be practical. Receiving a cleared invoice right on time through all clients is seldom the case for many businesses. Along with this being an inconvenient situation, it also adds a time and effort consuming overhead to the team for calculating the penalty charges.

With Recurring Billing Manager’s Delayed Charge Schedule, the penalties are calculated automatically for you. You can create a schedule for the delayed charges that the customers must pay for their overdue invoices. The UI is made simple to use so you can simply choose parameters like the percentage of penalty, its frequency and from when it should be charged, and you will be given the calculated penalty.

This helps you to be accurate in your calculations every time and ensures that the additional time doesn’t go to waste. This also eliminates any room for bargaining from clients to wiggle out of paying calculated overdue as sales people have a claim that the systematic and automated generation of penalty is out of their control. Compared to manual control, this allows representatives to deal with difficult situations by simply relying on the automated process of penalty generation.

Did you notice any of these signs in your business? If yes, then don’t wait anymore! End the year with a resolution to make your processes more optimized and your time better utilized. Here’s even a free 15 days trial for you on our website or Microsoft AppSource to try it before you buy it. If you would have us assist you in any way, you don’t have to think twice before contacting us at crm@inogic.com.

So, until the next time – try Recurring Billing Manager and make it the last bill you generate manually!

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CRM Software Blog | Dynamics 365

It’s That Simple

November 26, 2020 Humor

You gotta love the Scottish National Health Service.

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Political Irony

IT’S GOTTA BE GREAT TO BE JAY LENO

November 17, 2020 Humor

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ANTZ-IN-PANTZ ……

IT’S GOTTA BE GREAT TO BE JAY LENO

November 14, 2020 Humor

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ANTZ-IN-PANTZ ……

Google details how it’s using AI and machine learning to improve search

October 16, 2020 Big Data

During a livestreamed event this afternoon, Google detailed the ways it’s applying AI and machine learning to improve the Google Search experience.

Soon, Google says users will be able to see how busy places are in Google Maps without having to search for specific beaches, parks, grocery stores, gas stations, laundromats, pharmacies, or other business, an expansion of Google’s existing busyness metrics. The company also says it’s adding COVID-19 safety information to business profiles across Search and Maps, revealing whether they’re using safety precautions like temperature checks, plexiglass, and more.

An algorithmic improvement to “Did you mean,” Google’s spell-checking feature for Search, will enable more accurate and precise spelling suggestions. Google says the new underlying language model contains 680 million parameters — the variables that determine each prediction — and runs in less than three milliseconds. “This single change makes a greater improvement to spelling than all of our improvements over the last five years,” Prabhakar Raghavan, head of Search at Google, said in a blog post.

Beyond this, Google says it can now index individual passages from webpages as opposed to whole pages. When this rolls out fully, it will improve roughly 7% of search queries across all languages, the company claims. A complementary AI component will help Search capture the nuances of what webpages are about, ostensibly leading to a wider range of results for search queries.

“We’ve applied neural nets to understand subtopics around an interest, which helps deliver a greater diversity of content when you search for something broad,” Raghavan continued. “As an example, if you search for ‘home exercise equipment,’ we can now understand relevant subtopics, such as budget equipment, premium picks, or small space ideas, and show a wider range of content for you on the search results page.”

Google is also bringing Data Commons, its open knowledge repository that combines data from public datasets (e.g., COVID-19 stats from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) using mapped common entities, to search results on the web and mobile. In the near future, users will be able to search for topics like “employment in Chicago” on Search to see information in context.

On the ecommerce and shopping front, Google says it has built cloud streaming technology that enables users to see products in augmented reality (AR). With cars from Volvo, Porsche, and other “top” auto brands, for example, they can zoom in to view the steering wheel and other details in a driveway, to scale, on their smartphones. Separately, Google Lens on the Google app or Chrome on Android (and soon iOS) will let shoppers discover similar products by tapping on elements like vintage denim, ruffle sleeves, and more.

Google details how it’s using AI and machine learning to improve search

Above: Augmented reality previews in Google Search.

Image Credit: Google

In another addition to Search, Google says it will deploy a feature that highlights notable points in videos — for example, a screenshot comparing different products or a key step in a recipe. (Google expects 10% of searches will use this technology by the end of 2020.) And Live View in Maps, a tool that taps AR to provide turn-by-turn walking directions, will enable users to quickly see information about restaurants including how busy they tend to get and their star ratings.

Lastly, Google says it will let users search for songs by simply humming or whistling melodies, initially in English on iOS and in more than 20 languages on Android. You will able to launch the feature by opening the latest version of the Google app or Search widget, tapping the mic icon, and saying “What’s this song?” or selecting the “Search a song” button, followed by at least 10 to 15 seconds of humming or whistling.

“After you’re finished humming, our machine learning algorithm helps identify potential song matches,” Google wrote in a blog post. “We’ll show you the most likely options based on the tune. Then you can select the best match and explore information on the song and artist, view any accompanying music videos or listen to the song on your favorite music app, find the lyrics, read analysis and even check out other recordings of the song when available.”

Google says that melodies hummed into Search are transformed by machine learning algorithms into a number-based sequence representing the song’s melody. The models are trained to identify songs based on a variety of sources, including humans singing, whistling, or humming, as well as studio recordings. They also take away all the other details, like accompanying instruments and the voice’s timbre and tone. This leaves a fingerprint that Google compares with thousands of songs from around the world and identify potential matches in real time, much like the Pixel’s Now Playing feature.

“From new technologies to new opportunities, I’m really excited about the future of search and all of the ways that it can help us make sense of the world,” Raghavan said.

Last month, Google announced it will begin showing quick facts related to photos in Google Images, enabled by AI. Starting in the U.S. in English, users who search for images on mobile might see information from Google’s Knowledge Graph — Google’s database of billions of facts — including people, places, or things germane to specific pictures.

Google also recently revealed it’s using AI and machine learning techniques to more quickly detect breaking news around crises like natural disasters. In a related development, Google said it launched an update using language models to improve the matching between news stories and available fact checks.

In 2019, Google peeled back the curtains on its efforts to solve query ambiguities with a technique called Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers, or BERT for short. BERT, which emerged from the tech giant’s research on Transformers, forces models to consider the context of a word by looking at the words that come before and after it. According to Google, BERT helped Google Search better understand 10% of queries in the U.S. in English — particularly longer, more conversational searches where prepositions like “for” and “to” matter a lot to the meaning.

BERT is now used in every English search, Google says, and it’s deployed across languages including Spanish, Portuguese, Hindi, Arabic, and German.

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Big Data – VentureBeat

It’s the Perfect Time to Reimagine Your Business Productivity

October 4, 2020 Microsoft Dynamics CRM

If you’re doing the very best you can to keep your business thriving during a tumultuous 2020, some of this might sound familiar… You’re doing all you can to manage your organization. You have one team member managing the day-to-day financials while working from home full-time. You have another calling on sales contacts while venturing into the office from time to time.

Source

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PowerObjects- Bringing Focus to Dynamics CRM

AI Weekly: Amazon went wide with Alexa; now it’s going deep

September 26, 2020 Big Data

Amazon’s naked ambition to become part of everyone’s daily lives was on full display this week at its annual hardware event. It announced a slew of new Alexa-powered devices, including a home surveillance drone, a suite of Ring-branded car alarm systems, and miscellany like an adorable little kids’ Echo device. But it’s clear Amazon’s strategy has shifted, even if only for a product cycle, from going wide to going deep.

Last year, Amazon baked its virtual assistant into any household device that could accommodate a chip. Its list of new widgets with Alexa seemed a mile long and included a menagerie of home goods, like lamps and microwaves. The company also announced device partnerships that ensure Alexa would live on some devices alongside other virtual assistants, tools to make it easier for developers to create Alexa skills, networking devices and capabilities, and wearables. It was a volume play and an aggressive bid to build out its ecosystem in even more markets.

This year, Amazon had fewer devices to announce, but it played up ways it has made Alexa itself better than ever. That’s the second prong of the strategy here: Get Alexa everywhere, then improve the marquee features such that the experience for users eclipses anything the competition offers.

As is always the case at these sorts of events, Amazon talked big and dreamy about all the new Alexa features. Users will find out for themselves whether this is the real deal or just hype when Amazon rolls out updates over the course of the next year (they’re landing on smart home devices first). But on paper and in the staged demos, Alexa’s new capabilities certainly seem to bring it a step closer to the holy grail of speaking to a virtual assistant just like talking to a person.

That’s the crux of what Amazon says it has done to improve Alexa, imbuing it with AI to make it more humanlike. This includes picking up nuances in speech and adjusting its own cadence, asking its human conversation partner for clarifications to fill in knowledge, and using feedback like “Alexa, that’s wrong” to learn and correct itself.

Amazon is particularly proud of the new natural turn-taking capabilities, which help Alexa understand the vagaries of human conversation. For example, in a staged demo two friends talked about ordering a pizza through an Alexa device. Like normal humans, they didn’t use each other’s names in the conversation, they paused to think, they changed their minds and adjusted the order, and so on. Alexa “knew” when to chime in, as well as when they were talking to each other and not to the Alexa device.

At the event, Alexa VP and head scientist Rohit Prasad said this required “real invention” and that the team went beyond just natural language processing (NLP) to embrace multisensory AI — acoustic, linguistic, and visual cues. And he said those all happen locally, on the device itself.

This is thanks to Amazon’s new AZ1 Neural Edge processor, which is designed to accelerate machine learning applications on-device instead of in the cloud. In the event liveblog, Amazon said: “With AZ1, powerful inference engines can run quickly on the edge — starting with an all-neural speech recognition model that will process speech faster, making Alexa even more responsive.” There are scant details available about the chip, but it likely portends a near future when Alexa devices are able to do more meaningful virtual assisting without an internet connection.

Given the utter lack of information about the AZ1, it’s impossible to say what it can or can’t do. But it would a potential game changer if it was able to handle all of Alexa’s new tricks on devices as simple as an Echo smart speaker. There could be positive privacy implications, too, if users were able to enjoy a newly powerful Alexa on-device, keeping their voice recordings from Amazon’s cloud.

But for Amazon, going deep isn’t just about a more humanlike Alexa; it involves pulling people further into its ecosystem, which Amazon hopes is the sum of adding device and service ubiquity to more engaging user experiences.

Part of that effort centers on Ring devices, which now include not just front-door home security products but also car security products and a small autonomous drone for the inside of your home. They’re essentially surveillance devices — and taken together, they form an ecosystem of surveillance devices and services that Amazon owns, and that connects to law enforcement. You can buy into it as deeply as you want, creating a surveillance bubble inside your home, around your home, and on board your vehicles, regardless of where you’ve parked them. The tension over Ring devices — what and who they record, where those recordings go, and who uses them for what purpose — will only be amplified by this in-home drone and the car alarm and camera.

Whether Amazon goes deep or wide, what hasn’t changed is that it wants to be omnipresent in our lives. And with every event’s worth of new devices and capabilities, the company takes another step closer to that goal.

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Big Data – VentureBeat

CRM is Failing: It’s Time to Transition to CXM

September 1, 2020 CRM News and Info

By Jack M. Germain

Sep 1, 2020 4:30 AM PT

CRM and CEM/CXM are essential tools for maintaining business flow with customers. Although similar, they have distinct differences. To choose the right one, organizations need to go beyond the alphabet soup of these hi-tech business applications.

Customer relationship management (CRM) software tracks interactions with sales prospects and customers. CRM systems can provide many benefits, but not every business needs one.

Customer experience management (CEM or CXM) is a more extensive information collection process to track, oversee and organize every interaction between a customer and the organization throughout the customer lifecycle. It goes deeper into the customer experience and focuses on insight from their unique perspective by listening to customers, analyzing their feedback, and understanding their viewpoint to optimize the customer experience.

In short, both tools optimize customer relationships. How they do this makes all the difference. CRM facilitates relationship building for the organization. CXM focuses on monitoring and improving the experience for the customer.

A Different View

Centralizing all tools and customer-impacting services into one system delivers great efficiencies for the business. However, enabling your customers to have the same experience with you in real time is the difference between a CRM and CXM, according to Ryan Cantor, vice president of product and marketing at Thryv.

The CRM market is growing every day with new entrants. Centralizing hordes of data for all the employees of the business to view in real time is not a new concept. But few enable the end customer to partake directly in this journey, he noted.

Siebel Systems first pioneered CRM software in 1997. The goal was to create a single, centralized location for all customer information. This would enable employees to access the CRM and become more productive, efficient, and able to answer questions more accurately, based on real-time information.

In many companies that opted for quick adoption, the software created little more than a glorified centralized spreadsheet. Its original premise went beyond employee efficiency. It was supposed to automate marketing efforts and sales functions to improve the customer’s experience.

Cantor believes CRM for many companies perpetuates a missed opportunity to grow the customer experience. To fix that, he believes it’s time for companies to transition to CXM software. One option is his company’s CXM platform.

CRM Buyer pursued the potential transition process — and the impact of both CRM and CXM products — in a conversation with Cantor.

CRM Buyer: Why is CRM a failure for users?

Ryan Cantor: Being able to login, update their information, communicate with the business, schedule, pay, share. Often this is a complex integration or custom web development work needed that is outside the capabilities of most small businesses.

Centralizing the data speaks to efficiencies you can get as a business. It’s valuable, and it has the “potential” to improve the customer’s experience. This can be demonstrated when a customer calls two different employees, and each employee is operating with the same real-time set of facts.

However, in most businesses this potential is never truly realized, because it is limited to these personal interactions and not extended to the electronic or technology-enabled experience the customer gets. The companies who have done this part well include Amazon, Dominos and Apple. They have done this with millions upon millions of development, code, and integrations to deliver what ultimately appears as a seamless customer experience online.

CRM Buyer: How do you do this with CXM?

Cantor: When customers have the ability to book appointments on your website, login to reschedule, ask questions, make payments, download historical receipts, read and share documents and more, only then have you moved toward actually improving your customer’s experience.

86825 ryan cantor CRM is Failing: Its Time to Transition to CXM

Thryv VP Ryan Cantor

Every aspect of Thryv has two views. The business view and the customer view. We constantly ask ourselves, “how does the customer engage with the business?” Let’s say a new piece of functionality is added, such as our “packages,” for example. (Packages allow Thryv customers to sell services in multi-packs — like yoga classes.)

Yes, it is important for the business to track package assignment, package usage, etc. But it is also important that a consumer can buy a package, track their usage, know when their package expires, and visually see every time they book a service online, that their package was used as payment and what their balance is.

It takes a discipline to do this, and some would argue it requires twice as much work. Technology not just built for one audience (the business owners), but for two, (the company and its customers).

The experiences aren’t the same. They don’t have the same permissions or capabilities, and often you need to simplify and get to the root of the use cases and desires of both groups to determine how to design the system and what to prioritize.

CRM Buyer: How is automated customer experience different from CXM, which I’m guessing is a hybrid of CRM and ACX?

Cantor: Marketing automation is a form of automating the client experience. To further exemplify the difference, it is really about whether you want a one-way dialog pushing customers through a path, or whether this experience was designed to be fully interactive — beyond whether someone opened an email or clicked to a website.

CXM really speaks to all of the bespoke and fully connected touchpoints in a customer’s experience. A trigger-based workflow to nurture, follow-up, or invite back is nothing new.

CXM speaks more to being easy to do business with at all times. It ensures that your customers can easily download their payment receipts around tax time next year without jumping through hoops. It means that when you ask for HOA approvals for a construction process, you have made it easy for the consumer to upload them to you, and that they are organized properly on the back-end to prevent asking for them again, or misplacing them.

CRM Buyer: How can companies transition to CXM?

Cantor: The first step is an audit to acknowledge the gaps in your current platform, or lack thereof. Have a close friend secretly shop your business, go to your website, browse, schedule and submit a form. Track follow-up time. Track the buying experience. Is there friction? How long until you get your estimate? How easy to schedule? How was the follow-up? Professional? Did the emails go to spam?

Until people recognize and appreciate there is a problem, it’s hard to fix it.

The second is evaluation of tools and systems in the marketplace. Doing the first step will make a small business owner more informed during the demo and the testing phase. If you know the gaps and the problems, you know what to look out for and what to test in any new solution.

Lastly is the switch. Is it a flash cut on a future date? Do you migrate data? Do you live in two systems for the next 30 days while your old jobs finish up? This one is personal preference We’ve seen it go both ways.

CRM Buyer: Is the move to CXM an all-or-nothing strategy, or can companies adopt some parts and ignore others?

Cantor: Going from zero to 100 is probably too much for any small business owner or their teams to digest. The important part is to start someplace and pick a platform with future planning in mind. You don’t want to pick a platform only to find out it won’t do automated review generation. You may not be ready yet to jump to that, but you should have a vision of where you want to be three, six, nine, 12 months from now. The platform shouldn’t be the barrier to get there.

We’ve seen some success with integrating a bunch of platforms together, but ultimately what we’ve found is every email looks different, comes from a different sender, and ultimately creates a disjointed experience for end consumers.

An invoice from one platform, payment receipt from another, and a booking confirmation from a third. This gets out of control pretty quickly, and we’ve found it also tends to be more expensive.

So start with the end in mind, then eat the elephant one bite at a time, incrementally improving the customer’s experience, expanding usage of the platform until you’re covered end-to-end. Then start over with testing improvements, changes, and tweaks.

Lastly, all good software should keep getting better. So just when you think you’re done, there should be something new to learn, adopt, and start using to help your customers even more.

CRM Buyer: How budget-friendly is the transition process?

Cantor: It shouldn’t break the bank at the small business level. Be wary of providers who charge you hundreds of dollars for the software and then thousands of dollars on training or professional services to get started.

This is a true partnership, and a partnership means mutual support and assistance. For a true end-to-end platform, depending on the size of your business and logins needed, it should be all-in, less than US$ 1,000 a month.

CRM Buyer: Is the CXM strategy a complete rip and replace process, or can both models co-exist to suit various departmental needs?

Cantor: I think you’ll find the implementation can happen over time, but in the end, customer-facing functions adopt the CXM platform, and other departments that aren’t customer facing can continue to use platforms that integrate with it.

For example, the accounting team will need to use accounting software. It’s not important for the customers to have access directly to the accounting software (probably better if they don’t). But it is important that the customer-facing actions like an invoice, estimate, payment, installment plan, or subscription all synchronize with the accounting software automatically.

CRM Buyer: Is CRM bound to fail for all companies? What are the warning signs that it is time for a transition?

Cantor: I think for the most part, yes. The warning signs can be found in two simple words: So what?

We track this piece of information about our customers in this drop down menu…So what?

We know precisely when a customer opens one of our emails and clicks on it…So what?

What happens next? What is the business actually doing with this information? Not what they could do, or want to do, or even plan to do. What is the business actually doing with it?

CRM Buyer: Any closing thoughts on your view of the lack of CRM’s sustainability?

Cantor: You’ve seen a push in the last 12 to 18 months to bolster the database-in-the-sky problem with artificial intelligence. Since the employees aren’t using the CRM to affect change, drive efficiencies or increase revenue, that CRM companies are starting to integrate and build elaborate AI components to drive the recommended outcomes and automation needed to extract value.

That’s a step in the right direction for some businesses, but most AI requires significant data to be effective, so at a small business level, they are either combining data across multiple businesses to get a large enough sample, or simply serving up highly obvious outcomes/recommendations. The part that generally is still lost is the end customer involvement in the process.

One of the key differentiators for small businesses is maintaining a local personal touch and experience. Adopting technology to improve efficiencies and support growth shouldn’t force them to give up those competitive advantages.

Jack%20M.%20Germain CRM is Failing: Its Time to Transition to CXM
Jack M. Germain has been an ECT News Network reporter since 2003. His main areas of focus are enterprise IT, Linux and open-source technologies. He is an esteemed reviewer of Linux distros and other open-source software. In addition, Jack extensively covers business technology and privacy issues, as well as developments in e-commerce and consumer electronics. Email Jack.

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It’s Still a Young CRM Market

August 21, 2020 CRM News and Info

The IDC CRM market share numbers are in for 2019 and for the seventh consecutive year Salesforce leads the pack, this time with 18.4 percent of the market. Other big vendors trailing the leader include, SAP 5.3 percent, Oracle 5.2 percent, Microsoft 3.7 percent, and Adobe 3.6 percent.

The list is impressive, but the numbers are absolutely binky after 25 years of competition. The runners-up have a combined share of 17.8 percent, still less than that of Salesforce.

Most interesting is that the top five vendors, including Salesforce, add up to an unimpressive 36.2 percent. That means the majority of the market is made up of CRM vendors that we may know well, but that don’t hit the radar.

Others in the Field

I’m thinking about companies like Zoho, a global provider of front and back office technology that’s quirky enough to evade most definitions of CRM or ERP, yet provides just-right solutions to small and medium companies at price points that the majors avoid.

I’m also thinking about Siebel which, despite the fact that it was absorbed by Oracle a long time ago, still has a big installed base — and Oracle recently announced that support for the product has been extended to 2030.

Finally, just to mention a third, there’s Creatio (formerly bpm’online), a company that focuses on the processes of CRM and not just the data.

But 36.2 percent is hardly the stuff that makes an oligarchy, or a simple monopoly, and it offers all of us hope. Regardless of what you think of the majors, and full disclosure, they’ve all paid me at some point to provide research and analysis, they aren’t dominant, and the other vendors are still adding considerable value.

Quick segue, it’s entirely possible that IDC’s definition of what makes a CRM company is overly broad and it’s also possible that many large companies built their own CRM or greatly customized a version of Siebel or some other product they bought a long time ago. It’s also possible I’m immune to COVID and just not aware of it. But none of those is probable.

The one insight from this research that I find really interesting is just how diffuse the market is. There are still plenty of niches where other vendors can set up shop and do pretty well. But I also wonder how long this can go on.

Salesforce’s Grand Design

The top five vendors all have buckets of cash, in part because they have portfolio businesses that cater to a variety of other markets like databases, operating systems, and ERP. So they aren’t as dependent on the CRM market as Salesforce. Also, the addition of analytics to the CRM record keeping systems embraced by the majors sets a high bar for the rest, most of whom are clearing it.

If you’re wondering about market consolidation and the emergence of a dominant supplier, then the smart money would obviously be on Salesforce, but the smart money was once on Siebel too. I think Salesforce is going in a different direction. It is axiomatic that Salesforce is the CRM leader and is likely to remain so. However, if they get to dominance, as in market share at or above 50 percent, it will be inconsequential for them.

The company’s strategy for quite some time has been to invent new products that will be attractive to its installed base so that it can re-sell to its friends. The strategy has resulted in many new products and additions to the core CRM; like social media, process support, CPQ, BI, analytics and its development platform. Each new addition gives Salesforce more potential a little further from its core CRM business, however the company has always been strategic in its thinking to ensure full compatibility with its core.

Salesforce is in the process of becoming the Swiss Army Knife of software development. Its platform is at home developing systems of intelligence for all sorts of businesses, from finance to healthcare, and that’s a major reason that I’ve begun talking about the CRMification of society. The systems that we rely on to run our lives all seem to have a CRM root. Increasingly they are database apps surrounded by intelligence, making recommendations and anticipating our next moves.

My Two Bits

So believe it or not, I am impressed and somewhat relieved at IDC’s newest numbers. They show a market still in its early days and still growing with multiple, well-funded competitors, and consumers that are still skeptical enough to keep a large group of credible companies in pursuit.

At some point we might have to grapple with the idea that mom and pop businesses aren’t likely to adopt CRM, or at least the CRM now available. But that’s for some point in the future. For now, there’s still a lot of low hanging fruit.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ECT News Network.

Denis%20Pombriant Its Still a Young CRM Market
Denis Pombriant is a well-known CRM industry analyst, strategist, writer and speaker. His new book, You Can’t Buy Customer Loyalty, But You Can Earn It, is now available on Amazon. His 2015 book, Solve for the Customer, is also available there.
Email Denis.

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