Cloud computing is becoming more and more popular in enterprise software. As a result, more buyers are comparing Cloud-based systems against traditional on-premise ones. One of the most important factors to consider when deciding on a deployment model, among many others, is cost. However, on-premise vs. software as a service (SaaS) comparisons can be a difficult a time-consuming task.

Many buyers already know the major difference between the licenses: on-premise licenses are purchased with a large, upfront investment; Cloud-based systems are licensed for a relatively lower subscription price. But often, buyers do not consider other key factors beyond licensing, and thus do not have full understanding of what their total cost of ownership (TCO) will be for a software investment. For instance, the need to customize your software and integrate it with existing applications can have a significant impact on the total cost of your software.

When broken down even further, we can see that comparing costs of on-premise and Cloud software is a complex process that must consider a multitude of elements.

Derek Singleton of Software Advice recently worked on finding a way to help buyers calculate their TCO of their software investment–and to take a little bit of the hassle and confusion out of it. So, he put together an interactive TCO calculator for software buyers to use as a tool to compare SaaS and on-premise costs for a 10-year ownership period.

The calculator is pre-populated with the data for an example situation, but users’ inputs will override those values and show how each change alters the outcome of the total cost, and a graph at the top of the page updates to reflect that. With this tool, users can insert the cost data provided by software vendors and find out where the TCO of a Cloud-based system will that of an on-premise system, which is modeled on a yearly and cummulative basis.

While there are many individualized, specific possible factors that the calculator does not account for (e.g. the cost of employing an internal IT team), the “Other” category allows users to calculate any additional considerations they may have. Of course, the calculator cannot produce an exact figure for any particular business, but it helps give users a ballpark estimate of what their costs would be. Check it out here: http://www.softwareadvice.com/tco/.

Just read an article by Jim Dickie, a partner at CIO Insights. Jim discussed the connection of technology to lead generation, nurturing and sales.

The article indicated that email marketing is still the largest lead generation tactic being used industry wide. Sure, we as consumers may blast away emails at a pace we’d swat mosquitoes in the everglades on a warm day, but we still act on emails. We frequently end up purchasing something due to an email we happened to “see” and blast in one stroke. This article made me think of a recent personal example.

I recall seeing an email regarding training library access. Those kind where you can learn a new programming language in 24 hours: yeah, sure you can! Anyway, I was asked by a family member what I would like for Christmas. Being the type that has everything I really need and I have little wants, that is one of the most difficult questions to have to answer. I thought of the emails and the libraries. I did have a curiosity and would enjoy access to the video learning tools for a year. But, I had blasted that email and likely the couple that followed it. I searched for it in my CRM history (although it really shouldn’t have been there anyway). I searched in my Google Mail. I continued searching to no avail. So, as you can see, those emails worked. They raised my awareness, they likely made me “want” to have the product.

So as businesses trying to reach prospects and customers, how do we ensure that people that promptly deleted our emails can still get to us when they realize, as I did, that the blaster finger was faster than the brain synapses? The likely answer is to ensure that we include recognizable items or words for the human eye and brain, those that might make our businesses unique. Then ensure that our web search terms will allow people to find that same email content somewhere when searching as I did.

In my case, I think I found the site but when I finally got there I was frustrated and the moment had passed. No sale was made as I did not share the link after all of that.

So, was I really a prospect?

Using cloud-based software in your business is a benefit to most and a cost saving to even more.  Using cloud-based software means not installing software on your servers or your workstation or your laptop.

It gives you access to your information from pretty much anywhere in the world, of course, you must have an internet connection.

The benefit of using cloud-based software is having that access at anytime, from anywhere, for any reason.  No more waiting for a connection to a server to occur, loading up VPNs, remote desktops, remote access software.  Your information will be available to you at the click of a mouse or the stroke of a pad.

Using cloud-based software from your laptop at home, or your desktop at home, or somewhere else out on the road, is very handy as it allows access to the same information from all points and it saves time and money.  Gets jobs done with efficiency.

An additional benefit is the ability to pop open your iPad and access your product without even waiting for that 60-120 seconds waiting for your desktop or laptop every time you want do something.  It’s there; immediate on; immediate productivity!

Can you guess how much time you will gain for yourself by utilizing these small chunks of time?  Did you know that according to Google Answers:

According to efficiency experts, the average computer user spends 9
minutes every day waiting for files and web screens to download.

That’s everyday!  That’s 1.25 hours per week!  You can crank out a couple of emails in that amount of time, or work on a project outline.  Want to feel how much time that is?  Just set an alarm for 9 minutes from now on your smartphone, then sit back upright, get comfortable, now close your eyes and see if you can keep them closed for 9 minutes.  When, and if, you complete the exercise, you will have a different appreciation of 9 minutes.

Imagine having the ability to find phone numbers, write e-mails, listen to voice-mails, read documents and follow-up on important activities while waiting for a train, plane or taxi.

Will your business being improved?  You bet!

By being able to respond immediately with full information and keep your team and others involved, you’ll have sleeker operations and faster deal time from introduction to completion of your deals, the time frame can be shrunken from days to sometimes minutes.

Will your business be improved?  You bet!

Imagine the cost savings of not buying $5,000-$10,000 servers; not buying high-end machines to crank through software that’s installed on the workstation itself.

Your team will be quick, fast and one of hidden benefits is by having by access anywhere, everywhere, always,  your team will essentially work for free, they’ll do it without being asked to.  They’ll enjoy the tools you have provided with the convenience to get their job done without the “work” part.

So, in the cloud, or on your software or on your service?  Choice is yours.

Some people are worried about security and data access, where the information is stored and so on.  In yesteryear that was a concern.  In this year, now, almost everything we do is impacted by the cloud.

You watch television at night ?  You’re coming out of the cloud with that, and I’m not talking over the air, I’m talking cable.

Listening to this or reading this post?  You’re coming through the cloud as well.  Our blogs are in the cloud.

When’s the last time you shopped online?  Bought online?

Even if you are one of those concerned about data in the cloud, I suspect its been less than 24 hours since you did online banking or purchased something with a credit card at a department or grocery store.  I also suspect you understand that all those financial transactions are transmitted over a cloud connection!  So really, is cloud not an everyday event that you’re already participating in?

Considering a system change?  Considering cloud-based services?  Let us know what we can do to assist.

Recently we’ve moved our sales and services group to the cloud.  In fact a few clouds!  Yes, we’ve got a complete souffle of clouds.  As our clients know, we’re a solution provider.  Being a true solution provider means you need to understand a wide array of products and techniques. Really, a solution provider needs to know first hand how it feels to make that transition.  Software is available in many types and can be molded if necessary but the services must be right on the spot.     So, we felt that it was necessary, to experience it from many angles and to be in at least a few of our cloud based offerings, not just one as we had done in the past.

But, what an undertaking that is.  We’ve determined that our long term production system will be SugarCRM backing that up with a Zoho CRM instance and finally, for Social CRM (sCRM) our founder will utilize Nimble. These systems will be integrated at our point of reference.  Be advised though, we would not recommend so many at once for any organization.

So some might ask, WHY?  Why are you doing what sounds so silly then?

Let me clarify.  It’s to your benefit that we would do this silly project.  We felt that our recommendations needed to be the ultimate in flexibility and configurability to meet your demands.  So, we knew that we would need only the highest quality products to work with and recommend.  Our journey continued and we had many considerations to evaluate.  Given that our clients might need to be able to keep their data internal on in-house servers for compliance requirements, we felt we should experience  a cloud to on-premise project.  We chose SugarCRM as our obvious choice. We ran SugarCRM on-demand (meaning cloud), we then moved it to our local servers and ran for a while.  Then we chose to put it back to the cloud for our business.  We’ve done many on-premise to cloud conversions but going in reverse can certainly be a challenge.  SugarCRM is one of the few CRM products available on the market that allows this flexibility.  If you are looking to have an in-house CRM system on your own servers, for your comfort or compliance needs, SugarCRM is an excellent choice.  With SugarCRM there are no additional product costs to bringing the software to your server.

Next we felt that a number of clients may just want an “out of the box” cloud based system.  One that has some customizing flexibility but doesn’t require it.  Visual appeal can play heavily with some clients moving from the older CRM systems to cloud based systems.  To meet the flexibility, user friendliness and visual appeal, we chose Zoho CRM.  Zoho provides a complete suite of products from CRM to remote support and bookkeeping modules.  Our services focus on the CRM as you might imagine (we’ve been CRM for 23 years).

Finally but certainly not least, our most successful clients will require, in fact, demand strong real-time social media tools and abilities.  If your business development person is spending more than 30-60 minutes a day monitoring and participating in the social conversations, you’ll really appreciate the Nimble product.  Many of our customers used older CRM systems that we also utilized for many years; back in the mining days (ha) and before riding the range, you get the product name right?  The founder of Nimble sCRM is Jon Ferarra, the founder of GoldMine Software Inc – a market leader in CRM 10 years ago.  Jon’s team at Nimble has done a great job of integrating social with CRM.  As was mentioned earlier, our founder spends most of his day in Nimble, the social media customer relationship manager tool for the new business developer.

Many prospects and clients ask, “Is my data safe in the cloud?  I don’t want my data in the cloud, there’s all the security contacts….”  Our answer to that is, “you do banking online right?” , “you purchase goods over the wire, right?”  Well if you are willing to make deposits and transfers of your life funds, then why would you not feel comfortable allowing your contacts and business associates to access data in the cloud?

As you can see, there are reasons for each tool in business.  We are here to assist should you need guidance with your journey to the cloud based business system.

Let us know how we might help.

 

 

Social CRM -  Gartner defines social CRM as a business strategy that mutually benefits cloud-based communities and businesses by fostering engagements, while generating opportunities for sales, marketing and customer service. Social CRM applications are used by sales, marketing and customer service organizations to engage customers or prospects along any CRM process. They may engage customers to co-develop new products or services, generate brand awareness, aid information gathering and evaluation decisions, offer price comparisons, assist in the selling process, enable peer-to-peer customer support or in marketing support for post-purchase dissonance. Social CRM applications have internal- and external-company users, and they can be public or private, outsourced or hosted, and can make connections to independent communities and social networks, such as patient groups or Facebook.

Social systems - describe the context for the way everyone works. Social systems emerge from the people, processes, tools, organizations, relationships, skills and information associated with a group of individuals.

Social computing - describes an approach to IT whereby individuals tailor information-based collaborative technologies to support the way they work.

Social networking – describes the use of online services, such as Facebook, for participants to share information and interact with others. It is a subset of social computing.

Business Analysis, Planning for Growth, Achieving the Goal

 Ten Key Points to Consider when Planning for your Success

• Invite prospects, vendors and customers to your web site daily.  EVERY staff member should be doing this daily.
  In Telephone conversations
  In Email communications
  In Mail  and Voice Mail Scripts

• Determine who your “customers” really are.
  Attributes ( 80 / 20 analysis ) – perform the analysis on your accounts

 

• Find your targets (based on 80/20) and promote your brand and value proposition zealously at all times.
  By using Websites, Blogs, and Social Media (SM) channels
  – Ensure that your Social Media strategy is formalized and communicated with all members of the team.
  —–Do you and they understand the methodology of using Social Media in your Business?
  —–Make sure you use Social Media to drive traffic/prospects to your website. ( See TeamAutomation Blogs)
  ——–Write Blogs on a strict schedule.
  ——–Interact with other blogs adn bloggers in your industry – contribute!

 

• Drive marketing, sales and customer service effectiveness by developing a plan and monitor regularly.
  –Annual, Quarterly, Monthly and Weekly plans advised; in that order.
  –Plans should address product sales, gross revenue, resources, and activity expectations.

 

• Develop, implement and manage processes across ALL teams – not just in the marketing/sales teams.

 

 

• Define data/system interaction logging for different levels of usage for different users; train the team thoroughly in the processes throughout the company; empower team members.

 

 

• Capture ALL interactions with clients through all client communication methods.
  –Telephone activity logging, general notes, Email, direct mail, IM, website and social media

 

 

• Ensure that you have the ability and resources to provide absolutely great follow up to customer inquiries, support issues and social stream comments.
  –Respond promptly! (unless you are angered, then respond in 24hrs)

 

 

• Consolidate all customer sales, marketing and customer service transactions into 1 central depository for analysis – preferably your CRM system.
  –Measure, Analyze, Adjust
  –Measure and REPEAT on a scheduled basis

 

 

• Your information systems must support multi-channel communications, preferably in one system.

 

 

Oh ya, and a bonus point!!!

• Always build the business case for new software/equipment purchases – Return on Investment (ROI) in TIME
  –How long will it take to recover the expense, consider the team costs of non-responsiveness or non-productivity?

 Now, Repeat Until you are Tired of Realizing the Wonders of Depositing!

Want to increase your marketing results?  Contact us for a FREE 30 minute consultation.