SmartCloud - Blog

What the WannaCry Ransomeware attack means for cloud accounts

Mon, 15 May 2017 12:47:01 GMT

Computers across the globe were targeted by the WannaCry ransomware attack that occurred late last week. The virus quickly spread to infect over 230,000 computers in more than 150 countries around the world.

It is easy for users of cloud accounts such as G Suite (previously Google Apps), Office365, Dropbox or any of the myriad of other cloud vendors to assume that, because their data is backed up in the cloud, they are safe from a ransomware attack - but that is not the case.

To find out how to protect your organisation, see below.

The WannaCry virus exploited vulnerabilities in the Windows XP operating system and compromised those PCs which;

Had not installed the latest security patches from Microsoft
Did not have up-to-date anti-virus software installed

The virus exploits a security loophole in Windows that allows malicious code to spread through structures set up to share files — such as dropboxes and shared drives for documents or databases — without permission from users. “The widespread use of filesharing between organisations is to some extent a dream come true for a cyber criminal,” says Darren Thomson, chief technology officer of Symantec, the anti-virus and web security company. “If you can exploit a filesharing vulnerability, then you can get to tens or even hundreds of thousands of users.”

If your computer is infected, all of the files on the machine are locked and your access to your data is prevented until you either restore from the latest back up or pay the ransom.

Collaboration platform vendors like Microsoft and Google provide strong capabilities to help protect their customers’ data, but customers must also protect themselves.

SaaS providers focus on preventing cybersecurity attacks, with data security scanning, malware detection and prevention, but these controls cannot fully prevent cybersecurity attacks that lead to data loss. Microsoft and Google will also protect your data against hardware or software failure, natural disasters, or power outages, but SaaS applications can’t fully protect customers from data loss caused by Ransomware, sync errors from integrations, or human error.

Why not? Well, to the SaaS provider, when data gets encrypted, changed or deleted by Ransomware, sync errors, or other destructive activity, it looks just like data that was changed or deleted by you, the customer, for legitimate reasons. There is no way for the SaaS provider to know that something untoward has happened. This is why you must protect yourself against the data disasters that continue to occur every day.

The alarming growth in ransomware poses a particular threat for those organisations using SaaS collaboration platforms like G Suite and Office 365.

Because the responsibility for data protection falls to the customer, and because these platforms speed collaboration by making files and folders easy to share, automatically syncing changes – a ransomware attack can lock shared files at compute speed. One Spanning Backup customer reported that a ransomware attack locked nearly 950 files in a few minutes.

“At about 7:50 AM, one of our users saw a message open on their screen, saying their files had been encrypted and locked, and they needed to pay ransom to access their files. By 8:00 AM – ten minutes later! – a number of other users called our IT support desk saying file names had been changed.

“The malware went through complete hard drives in seconds and encrypted EVERYTHING. And as shared documents in synced folders became encrypted, other docs in those folders were encrypted. In just a few minutes, the ransomware attack on one synced folder alone encrypted almost 950 files!”

How can you protect your organisation?

For on-prem applications, IT routinely performs backups in order to meet compliance / business continuity requirements for the fast restoration of data. As we’ve seen, SaaS applications like G Suite or Office 365 still need protection, and part of that protection is once again IT’s responsibility.

Some best practices include:

Pre-attack

Train end users to be more phishing-resistant and hack-savvy
Identify high-value spear-phishing targets, and review / restrict their folder and file sync to limit the impact if ransomware infects your organization
Evaluate and acquire an enterprise grade cloud-to-cloud automated backup solution with robust restore capabilities; monitor backup status
Periodically test the restore process to ensure restored files from backups are usable

Post-attack

Isolate the infected assets quickly – if needed, unplug physical PCs, turn off all syncing for SaaS applications, and shut down network access
Determine whether the infection is “scareware,” or a low-level hack causing a browser screen “law enforcement warning” without true file encryption – if so, use Windows Task Manager to close the browser, or force quit on Macs
If not scareware, research whether there is a known decryptor app – however, it may not be possible to recover your files if the ransomware has robust encryption
Run an antivirus program on the infected devices to remove the malware

If you HAVE prepared (by subscribing to an automated, point-in-time cloud-to-cloud backup solution like Spanning), your first steps post-ransomware will be isolation and malware assessment / removal. But recovery is now possible, even for ransomware with robust encryption.

The customer story noted above has a happier ending than most ransomware stories.

“Fortunately, we had Spanning deployed. The infection wasn’t robust – but it did make a mess that I estimate it would have taken the IT team a full two days to recover from. With Spanning, the time it took to recover was about 3 hours – about 100% faster than we could do without Spanning. We are very glad we had Spanning backing us up prior to this attack!”

If you’re not using Spanning Backup to protect your G Suite or Office 365 data, you should evaluate whether it would improve your RTO before ransomware infects your organisation.

SmartCloud is an authorised Spanning Backup Reseller. To get Spanning set up on your G Suite or Office365 domain, contact us.

What's in your email survival kit?

Fri, 11 Sep 2015 14:58:11 GMT

The volume of emails we send and receive is unsustainable for business.The average knowledge worker today gets 133 emails a day and 77 instant messages, she spends half her working day on email, constantly tethered to her smartphone, responding to short bursts of communication and creating email overload. It is estimated that managers spend between 5 and 20 hours a week just reading and writing emails. Furthermore, we are all using social media networking more and spending around 25 per cent of our time searching for information.

By the end of 2015, more than half of all new digital content will be the result of updates to, and the editing of, existing information
Online social networking is now more popular than email and search
Middle managers spend more than 25% of their time searching for information
As long ago as 2010 Corporate users received some 200 mails per day, 18% of which were spam, and the numbers have risen dramatically since then.
Initial feedback on the adoption of social collaboration platforms to share and keep track of ideas on subjects from innovation and Lean Management through to sales and support indicates that the use of these types of tools can reduce email by between 10 and 20% immediately.

In this article Principal Consultant Michael McKenna outlines strategies and tactics that can be employed at both the corporate and personal level to reduce email overload.

Company Tactics

1. Stop Using Email

For a lot of internal communication with co-workers email is just not the right communications option. Often it is better just to pick up the phone or walk over to their desk and speak in person. But where written communication is needed, or for geographically distributed teams, consider using a social collaboration platform such as MangoApps, Podio or Bitrix as your primary method of communication within the organisation and cut out email altogether.

These social intranets are quicker, more collaborative and simply a better way of working as a team - and the knowledge in your organisation is enhanced, as is aggregated in one central location where it can be searched by everyone, rather than dissipated in many personal inboxes, where it can't.

2. Use a Helpdesk

If your support team are suffering from inbox overload, if they are still using Gmail or Outlook for support emails and losing track of customers, then you need to deploy a Helpdesk solution, such as Freshdesk. Rather than trying to jury rig an email tool to provide support, just connect the Helpdesk to a central support inbox, such as support@yourcompany.com and bring order to your email support.

Using a social intranet and a Helpdesk application will mean a change in the way you work, but it should result in an immediate reduction in email within your organisation of about 20%. It will also dramatically improve the quality of the interactions between co-workers and customers. Integrate the social intranet application and the Helpdesk for even tighter co-operation between different teams.

3. Use Google Apps

If you haven't already, take a look at Google Apps for Work and consider using Gmail for your business email. You can keep your existing email address and business domain (yourname@yourcompany.com), but there are three more good reasons to do so.

Firstly, it is a cheaper option to hosting your own MS Exchange server. Secondly, you can access your email from anywhere and on any device and finally, there are a number of applications that integrate tightly with Gmail and can help you improve personal email management.

We switched to Gmail when we established SmartCloud back in 2010. I have to admit that it took me a while to adjust to the Gmail interface compared to Outlook, but now I wouldn't switch back. For the diehards you can make Gmail look more like Outlook or you can configure Outlook to work with Google Apps, but many of the services listed below work with native Gmail and may not work with Outlook.

Personal Email Tactics

As an individual knowledge worker you are probably not in a position to influence what applications are used within your company, but there are still tactics that you can use to reduce your individual email load.

It is a challenge, but I like to keep my Inbox as tidy as I can. However, keeping the clutter to a minimum is difficult. I was getting over 100 emails a day, including dozens of updates from LinkedIn Groups, newsletters and messages from the various sites I had signed up to when testing their business applications. It was becoming harder and harder to separate the wheat from the chaff and I was struggling with the volume of emails - most of which were, if not spam, just not particularly important.

As a result I was spending at least an hour a day reading, deleting and archiving mails that I probably did not need to read at all. So I set out to find a better way to manage and tame my inbox.

I now use all of the following tools and my email load has reduced from over a hundred items a day to a couple of dozen. I may not feel quite as important as I once did, but that is a small price to pay for a tidy inbox!

1. Inbox by Gmail

Inbox by Gmail is an email app by Google for Android, iOS, as well as the browsers Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. The app is focused on improving email productivity and organization by allowing the user to snooze messages for a later time, bundle similar emails together, and receive Google Now-style cards for things such as flight times. While Inbox is available on the web, you'll need to activate Inbox on your mobile device first.

2. Sanebox

SaneBox is now an essential part of my email life. SaneBox intelligently filters and organises emails based on their importance, before they reach your inbox. By removing unimportant emails from your inbox you can concentrate on only what is urgent. You receive a daily summary of the diverted messages and can train Sanebox, so its performance is always improving.

3. Mailstrom

Mailstrom is the perfect tool for email triage, power through thousands of messages in just a few clicks. Quickly delete bulk emails and reduce your inbox to just those emails you want to keep. Inbox zero is now within reach!

4. Unroll.me

Unroll.me enables you to unsubscribe from the emails you no longer want to receive with one click. After you sign up, see a list of all your subscription emails. Unsubscribe instantly from whatever you don’t want. And that's it.

5. rapportive

Imagine relationship management built into your email inbox. Rapportive is FREE and shows everything about your contacts right inside your inbox. You can immediately see what people look like, where they're based and what they do. Grow your network by connecting on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and more. Record thoughts by leaving notes.

6. EverContact

EverContact is another indispensable tool which automagically updates your Gmail and Outlook contacts. Keep your address book up-to-date through the semantic analysis of email signatures. Then synchronise your address book with your CRM to ensure you always have the latest contact information for your customers and prospects.

7. MailTrack.io

MailTrack enables you to track email in real-time. See if, when, how often and where an email was opened, and the device or browser used. Get actionable insight to make better selling decisions. One green ✓ means the message was sent and a second ✓ confirms your recipient read it. Know who and when they opened your email! Free & Unlimited for Gmail Accounts.

8. Mailbox

Mailbox is a mobile app for iOS and Android which is well worth checking out if you use Gmail on your phone. Mailbox have redesigned the inbox to make email light, fast, and mobile-friendly. Quickly swipe messages to your archive or trash and scan entire conversations in a chat-like view. It's a whole new inbox.

If you are using Gmail, a little know and seldom used feature that you should enable is the 'Send+Archive' Button. Turned off by default, this add-on was tested in Google Labs and got the thumbs-up from users in 2012. But if you don’t know it exists, you can’t take advantage of its inbox-cleaning capability. Simply access the Settings page when you’re in Gmail and click the option that says "Show ‘Send & Archive’ in Reply." When you reply to an email, you’ll have the option to Send & Archive or simply Send, which keeps the original in your inbox.

Finally, make sure you have your email system integrated with a CRM, such as Nimble, Zoho, ProsperWorks or PipelineDeals so that you can track your interactions with your contacts simply by looking up their contact record in the CRM and finding all of the emails you have ever sent to or received from that person in the one spot - no more searching through your Inbox or folders to find missing mail.

Email is never going to disappear, but it can be reduced - dramatically. By implementing the solutions above at either the corporate or personal level (and preferably both), you will see your email volumes drop significantly, freeing up your time to be used more productively.

Michael McKenna
Principal Consultant
September 2015

I recommend reading Keith Rarick's brilliant Blog post on how to achieve 'Zero Inbox for Life'.

Google Inbox for Work is on its way

Thu, 12 Mar 2015 16:43:32 GMT

Google launched Inbox for Work in October of last year and have been gradually rolling it out to private Gmail accounts.

However, up until now it has not been available for Google Apps for Work accounts, but that should change over the coming months.

Update 17/03/2015 - Yay! We got a St. Patrick's Day present from Google today when our invite to Inbox for Work on our Google Apps landed in our inbox. We are looking forward to using Inbox for Work on a daily basis and reporting back to you on how we find it.

Alex Gawley, Director of Product Management, Gmail and Inbox by Gmail recently put out a call for Google Apps for Work users who would like to join the Inbox for Work early adopters programme. He is looking for organisations who are already using Google Apps for Work and who;

Want to use Inbox as your primary email at work
Have employees who are heavy mobile users
Most importantly, want to partner with Google on user studies to help build the new work Inbox

If that sounds like you, send an email to inboxforwork@google.com to request a place on the program.

Don't expect an immediate reply, as they will be enrolling companies over the next few months.

Note: The email must be sent by the Administrator of your Google Apps for Work domain and not just a regular user.

Social Media in the Irish Workplace

Wed, 25 Feb 2015 13:33:37 GMT

Interesting infographic from Anne O'Connell, Employment Law Partner at Dublin solicitors Sherwin O'Riordan.

Did you know for example that 60% of Irish companies have a formal social media policy in place? But almost 1 in 3 companies have had to take formal disciplinary action with an employee over their use of social media in the workplace. What is also interesting is that Ireland is the 3rd highest in the EU for using social media in the workplace (Malta is the highest).

This infographic also outlines 10 clear steps for putting a best practice social media policy in place - have you got your social media policy sorted out yet?

Click on the image to see it at full size.

What's new - Nimble Everywhere App for Google Chrome

Thu, 02 Oct 2014 15:18:57 GMT

Nimble, the Smart Social Relationship Manager, today announced the release of the latest version of the Nimble Everywhere App for Google Chrome.

Nimble combines your contacts from Google Contacts, Outlook and Apple Address Book. It then maps and discovers the most important contact information on the web (Twitter, AngelList, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, FourSquare, Instagram and more), connects your email, calendar and social interactions and then keeps it up to date and in sync on a daily basis.

Automatic Social Profile Matching: Nimble removes the detective work required to find contact details by auto-magically mapping your contacts social profiles and consolidating the key background information you need into a digital dossier, giving you all the relevant information you’ll need before reaching out.

Nimble is a pioneer in Social CRM and Social Selling for individuals and teams. Building upon its innovative ability to create and update social profiles dynamically, it now puts social overlay information into your inbox, mobile device, web browser, and line of business applications as a true enterprise customer enablement application.

Watch the overview video below and see a demo of the new Nimble Everywhere App for Google Chrome in action.

To install a copy of the new Nimble Everywhere App for Google Chrome, click here.

Key Features of the new Chrome app include:

Intelligent Relationship Insights: Nimble searches the web and social networks to deliver insights to provide context about your contacts: mutual interests, shared passions, and important moments making it easier to be prepared for the people you’re meeting with.
Stay top of mind with Stay In Touch Reminders: Since Nimble automatically logs email conversations and social connections it’s easy to set a Stay In Touch cycle and let Nimble remind you to Stay In Touch.
Simply Organize with Tags, Tasks and Notes: Effortlessly organize contacts with tags, log details about the people you meet with notes and remember to follow-up with tasks.
Completely Redesigned User Experience: We took the design concepts we learned from building our mobile app and completely re-wrote our widget to be more intuitive, smarter, and faster.
Take Action Within the Nimble App: Send emails, Twitter DM’s and Facebook messages to key contacts from the app.

What's New in Google Apps - September 2014 Releases

Thu, 02 Oct 2014 14:45:07 GMT

September 2014 was a busy month for Google Apps for Business, not least because it was rebranded as Google Apps for Work signifying Google's commitment to providing a complete personal productivity suite for the workplace.

To get a complete overview of all the changes which were rolled out for Google Apps this month you can watch the following video or download the worksheet.

AARRR SaaS: Pirate Metrics Demistified

Sat, 07 Jun 2014 19:23:04 GMT

Pirate Metrics is a simple metrics and analytics foundation for startups devised by Dave McClure in 2007. The Metrics are based on the assumption that every startup needs to get customers through 5 key stages and Pirate Metrics helps you perform quantitative and comparative analysis of your business by tracking these key metrics:, Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral & Revenue. AARRR!

Acquisition
You acquire the user. For a SaaS product, this usually means a sign up.

Activation
The user uses your product, indicating a good first visit.

Retention
The user continues to use your product, indicating they like your product.

Referral
The user likes your product so much that he refers it to other new users.

Revenue
The user pays you. Yay!

The infographic below is a great breakdown of these metrics using the example of a project management SaaS app.

If you want to find out more about Pirate Metrics, check out the great Blog Post by Pierre Le Chelle

The Entire Internet - Live and in real time!

Wed, 28 May 2014 12:34:30 GMT

Click the image to open the interactive version (via Penny Stocks Lab).

It's a big, big place......click on the image to be taken to the original infographic and see the (huge) numbers change as you watch.

CRM Watchlist 2013 winners: Social is as social does the mainstream - Nimble review from ZDNet

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 11:10:42 GMT

The following is part of a review of 3 CRM applications - Get Satisfaction, Lithium and Nimble - written by Paul Greenberg as part of a series of articles critiquing the winners of CRM Watchlist 2013 which was published in ZDnet recently.

I think the review would have to be catagorised as 'tough, but fair'. It emphasises the immense potential that Nimble has, in the SME market in particular, and identifies the key challenges facing the company in the year ahead.

Keep one thing in the forefront as you read what are my fairly tough love reviews of my 2013 social platform winners. These are maturing companies, not mature for the most part. They are newer to the enterprise world than, say, Oracle, or even Salesforce.com, which is a relative newcomer. They have, for the most part, been successful in the enterprise, even as they need to scale up to sustain their success and expand their opportunities in that always competitive space. It's never a technology question — all of the ones that are focused on the enterprise can scale. When they aren't aimed at that market, like Nimble, it's still broadly about the same question — how sustainable they are in the markets that they target. The CRM Watchlist is an impact award that is based on their ability to sustain that impact over years, and that means to sustain the success of their company over years. Or, at least, my belief in their ability to that based on the evidence I have.

Since I said a lot of what I wanted about the social platforms last Thursday, I won't repeat it here; but there are a couple more things to chat about.

That's why I'm kind of tough on them. I think they are great companies, but they are teens about to graduate college or even in the case of the most mature of these six (I'm not telling you who that I think that is), they are newly graduated from college. This of course is relative to the industry giants — veteran companies with mature models that have their own issues, but sustainability isn't one of them.

So, forgive me in advance if I sound too tough. I bop because I love.

Nimble

A two-anecdote start to this one:

Jon Ferrara, the CEO and founder of Nimble, long-time CRM industry pioneer, took the stage at Social Business Atlanta in February 2013 and made an offer to the 250 attendees: "I'd like to offer you Nimble Premium free for one year." The audience went home happy.

This press release hit the wires on March 4, 2013: "Nimble offer[s] free year of social relationship software to over 50 leading startup accelerators." The story went on to say that Nimble was willing to provide a complimentary two-user premium version with 100GB of additional storage for a year to young startups — with an initial list of over 50 who had already said yes.

In a certain way, these two stories typify Nimble — both through its generous nature and industry involvement of its management, especially Jon Ferrara, and a strategy to build up the customer base with a bit of a dependence on conversions — which has its strengths and weaknesses.

To its credit, Nimble almost built a category — social contact management, which it calls social relationship management. It has become a seriously visible recognized presence in small business CRM. Note that I didn't say social CRM, even though it is all about "social". I didn't say it because social CRM is CRM now, and there is no longer a distinction. Social infrastructure, components, and features are built into all CRM systems either from scratch, with retro wiring of the applications or through integrations. It is de rigueur, and SCRM is just plain CRM from now on.

Make no mistake about it: Nimble to a certain extent is still a product in development — a work in progress — as all good products are. But in the last two years, it has added significant functionality — with a strong nod to contemporary business reality — a lot of business information resides on social networks, and small businesses need to be able to surface that information and use it in their daily business lives to think better, sell better, market better, and serve better. To that end, Nimble provides a solid useful product for the small business market in particular — one that is fairly priced at $15 per user per month.

I could go into the features, but what makes Nimble a Watchlist winner in 2013 is its well-executed strategy — one that has been in place for several years. It is a strategy that extends from the partner/channel program to the involvement in social and traditional networks, events, and activities to the analyst relations to the strategy to a well-crafted agenda to building out the customer data it needs to both seed its monetization and to gather intelligence for product development. Let's briefly look at each piece. And I do mean briefly.

Partner strategy: This is a combination of resellers (VARs) and integration partners. Jon, modeling the VAR channel after his success with a similar strategy for Goldmine, which he sold for zillions of dollars years ago, has about 250 VARs that resell Nimble, half of which are outside the US. They focus on the 10-25 user markets. His technology partners are all precisely aimed at providing functionality for that same 10-25 user market, with significant scalability possible if Nimble chooses to do so. So he's integrated with HootSuite, FreshDesk, MailChimp, HubSpot, and several others of the "two words run together" type. What makes this fascinating is that its contact API provides significant extensibility and widens the possibility for a much larger number of technology partners.
Social and traditional outreach: Between Jon Ferrara's constant involvement on social channels, personal one-to-one meetings, on the phone, in the press, at events on the web, and live and anywhere else that Nimble can be evangelized, and PR maven Brenda Christensen's alternative involvement in the same channels, it has done a pretty superb job of insinuating Nimble into the pores of discussion in the industry. It has many relationships at the personal and business levels, with dozens of influencers that have on the balance been beneficial in getting the Nimble message out and respect for what it's trying to do. All in all, the constancy of the campaign, the usually well-crafted messages, the usually non-abrasive cadence, and the level of discussion has worked to give it some genuinely impressive top of mind when it comes to the SMB world technology companies being discussed. The number of write-ups about Nimble in both the traditional and digital press is mind blowing.
Freemium model for leads and data: Nimble has 45,000 registered users and a growing four-figure paid customer base. It has been building the free subscriber model up for a long time, and has used it to generate a good but non-disclosed conversion rate, and has been able to use the data that it has from the free users to improve the product.

All in all, its tightly designed and well-executed strategy is what gets it the impact it has. But it is also at a crossroads in 2013. This is the make-it-or-break-it year, as far as I see it. It has a shot at being wildly successful, but it has one of the tougher roads to travel to be that.

What it needs to do

Revenue, revenue, and, oh yeah, revenue: There is nothing more important in 2013 than revenue for it. It has to date done OK, but it has to step it up by multiples to both give itself the opportunity to exponentially grow and to continue the momentum it has built over the past few years. It has a pretty strong reliance on the conversions, which are great, but I think that there are a number of things to do that will get it to the revenue level that it has to achieve — aside from the conversions. First, its VARS need to step it up. As far as I can tell, and this is just supposition, but I think a reasonable one, its 250 VAR channel isn't pulling its weight, and that means some pressure and reassessment if need be. Revenue is the key. I'll say it 100 times. In my head. 2013 is the year for revenue growth big time for Nimble.
More thought leadership assets: Oddly, given the brilliance of the outreach, Nimble hasn't done much in the way of producing original assets either from internal sources or external subject matter experts. I suspect this is due to not much of a budget for it. Time to bite a little bullet and invest a bit in building up the thought leadership assets — webinars, videos, whitepapers, web apps, and podcasts that define the market it wants to lead. It doesn't have to be a huge investment, but it's a prudent one in 2013 for it.
More integrations, please: This goes hand in hand with the revenue plea. Integrations like HubSpot are perfect because they are integrating with mature companies in a complimentary way that expand its footprint in areas that both flesh out its offering to a more complete CRM offering and at the same time open up Nimble to whole other markets that it otherwise wouldn't be involved with. For example, it makes sense to consider a possible alliance and integration with Infusionsoft. That integration would be with a company that focuses on the same market size roughly, has a huge channel of its own, has complementary functionality (though some overlaps), and has a revenue stream in the tens of millions. It has advocates all over the place. Just see my review here. This opens up opportunity. There are others. It also needs to grow its Apps Marketplace. It has integrations there with NetSuite and others, but one or two partners are building them. More developers on the marketplace should be a priority, though I'd personally try to focus more on added functionality and less on integrations that might be strategic (like the NetSuite one).

Back when I first had it on the Watchlist (2011) it was a matter of faith, and I said that. It's no longer that. It got here because of performance. Its strategy to have an impact has been successful so far. It has reached a crossroads in 2013. If it crosses that road, not only will it continue to impact the market, it can possibly also be known as the market maker, in the same way Radian6 did it several years ago. We'll have to see, but I hope that I can see it with even my 20/20 eyes (without glasses on). That's the potential it has.

The full article can be read here.

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Unbelievably Comprehensive List of Start Up Resources

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 17:49:01 GMT

The guys at VCcafe.com have put together an unbelievably comprehensive list of Business Tools for start ups, many of which are featured in our App Directory, but they have just updated this with a great list of Start Up Intelligence Tools.

So not only can you find out about everything from hosting your code in hackathons to open source legal docs, now you can discover everything you needed to know about the startups themselves. From premium paid subscription databases to free tools showcasing new startups and startup maps, The Ultimate Startup Intelligence Tools List is guaranteed to help you get your research done.

It is a great resource, but if you need help making sense of it, click here to schedule a call with one of our team.

Nimble & HootSuite Close the Loop on Social Selling

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 08:26:00 GMT

Nimble, the pioneer of social relationship management now integrates with HootSuite, makers of the market-leading social media management system. Now users can connect social media best practices to Social CRM capabilities, such as identifying, connecting and nurturing prospects to really engage with their customers.

Nimble is the first CRM in the HootSuite App Directory and the integration is available free to all Nimble and HootSuite users.

This is a significant step by Nimble towards their goal of becoming the primary source of consolidated contact insights and the most effective tool to engage and nurture business relationships. The Nimble app for HootSuite makes it easier for you to grow your business network, track social conversations, realize measurable value from your social media investments and finally "close the loop" on social selling.

What is HootSuite?

HootSuite is a social media management system for businesses and organizations to collaborate across multiple social networks from one secure, web-based dashboard.

What is Closed Loop Social Selling?

Traditionally, departments within companies had clear roles and objectives. Marketing generated new leads, sales converted leads into paying customers, and customer service did their best to retain customers. Often these departments acted independently and in silos, using different systems for customer engagement and communication, which made it difficult to determine a customer’s status in the sales cycle. Unfortunately today, many departments are still not effectively documenting their engagement activities and communications with prospects and customers in the sales life cycle.

This is where closed loop social selling can help.

Modern social businesses know that the key to sustained success is to include all departments and all employees in the customer engagement process. Closed loop social selling enables your company to track your prospects all the way through the customer lifecycle – from “hello” to “welcome aboard” to “how can we help you?” When all departments actively track someone from prospect to customer, the entire organization can stay on the same page with their critical contacts and conversations, and measure the resulting ROI.

“Social media is moving beyond the early adoption by marketing and community managers to the rest of a company’s customer facing business professionals. Sales, Service and Support teams will benefit greatly by utilizing social media to enable customer engagement and social selling,” says Ryan Holmes, CEO of HootSuite. “Through the Nimble app, business teams can now follow up with social media leads, nurture relationships in real time, and close deals easier than ever before.”

Nimble App for HootSuite Overview

The Nimble app for HootSuite allows users to view contact information, such as additional social profiles, phone number, email, bio, location and date of last contact in the HootSuite dashboard. With a simple mouse click, users can jump directly from HootSuite to the Nimble contact record and manage deeper contact details. For example, a user can view a complete conversation history, schedule follow up tasks and events, log notes, and forecast sales.

5 Ways the Nimble App Will Boost Your Social Selling Effectiveness

The most beneficial feature of the Nimble app for HootSuite is that it provides essential context to your business contacts. Following are five ways the Nimble app will allow you to easily create valuable and repeatable social selling opportunities.

1. Closed Loop Social Selling:

Closed loop social selling is empowering an entire business team to stay on one page with their critical social contacts. This process involves tracking the contact from prospect to customer and the resulting ROI. Combining HootSuite’s extensive social monitoring and publishing capabilities and Nimble’s customer engagement and social selling tools will enable business teams to pinpoint and connect with key prospects and existing customers with increased relevance.

2. View Nimble Contacts in HootSuite:

The Nimble integration adds context to your contacts by clearly displaying useful Nimble contact information, such as additional social profiles, background info, location, phone number, email, and most importantly, date of last contact. This information is pulled directly from Nimble’s contact record and conveniently displayed in your HootSuite dashboard.

3. Create Contacts in Nimble From HootSuite Streams:

If the contacts you’re engaging with in HootSuite do not already exist as Nimble records, they can be easily imported.

Once a contact is added to Nimble, you and your team will be able to match additional social networks, view related connections, and log conversations and other important sales data in Nimble.

4. View Contacts in Nimble:

Nimble automatically combines all your business contacts, emails, social communications, and calendar activities into one unified social contact manager.

Now you can jump directly from the HootSuite dashboard to the Nimble contact record to manage deeper contact details, such as seeing a complete conversation history, scheduling follow up to-do’s, logging notes and forecasting sales.

5. Nimble Automatically Maps Additional Social Profiles to a Contact:

After you have imported a contact, Nimble will match additional social profiles and create a multi-dimensional contact record accessible for engagement by you and your team.

As you can see there’s a lot to be excited about with our new Nimble CRM integration with HootSuite. Improve your teams social selling capabilities by starting your free trial of Nimble today! Don’t forget to add in our Nimble App from the HootSuite App Directory to get complete Closed Loop Social Selling.

One Year Status Update on Nimble

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 12:15:42 GMT

Great review of Nimble's first year at the DEMO Conference from CEO Jon Ferrara.

To find out more about Nimble CRM and how you can make it work in your organisation - click here

Prezi - No More Death by PowerPoint

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 21:29:26 GMT

Death By Powerpoint? Traditional slide presentations can be utterly boring and encourage linear thinking. To liberate your ideas, try Prezi and see how it facilitates new ways of considering things.

Prezi is a web based tool that lets you map out a presentation, including text, graphics and embedded PDF files and videos in one large layout. Instead of clicking through one slide after another during a presentation in a linear format, you zoom in on relevant information and then zoom out for a big picture view.

Prezi is partucularly useful during Q&A sessions, as you can quickly zero in on relevant data rather than plodding through 20 slides. Prezies are created and stored online, so you can share them with clients by sending a link via email - or you can hold real time presentations with clients online. Prezis can be downloaded to your desktop as well, so that you always have them to hand.

Prezi has a free version, which requires you to make your presentation public on Prezi's site, or Premium versions which let you create unlimited presentations and store up to 2,000MB of data online.

Prezi has an excellent website with some great examples of Prezis that other people have created, so you get an immediate source of inspiration. They also have (naturally enough) a number of Prezi instruction presentations to get you started;

Basic:
Follow these guidelines, and you'll be set to amaze.
LESSON 1: Step-by-Step Tutorial on Prezi Basics
LESSON 2: Why the Best Prezis use Grouping & Layering
LESSON 3: Quick Tips on Presenting & Publishing

Advanced:
Don't just make a prezi - make the best of the best.
LESSON 1: Prezi in 15 minutes
LESSON 2: 10 ways to say it with Prezi

Expert:
The vocabulary for expressing yourself in Prezi
LESSON 1: Looping and zooming

Try Prezi yourself and see what a difference it can make to how you deliver your ideas.

Is Social Media a Fad?

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 18:48:40 GMT

Erik Qualman is the author of Socialnomics: How social media transforms the way we live and do business. These videos form the world's most watched Social Media video series; "Social Media Revolution".

What is interesting to see is the change and growth in the social media statistics from year to year. Is it a fad? Watch the videos and judge for yourself...

2012-13

2011

2009

The Social Helpdesk Revolution

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 19:02:17 GMT

Social networks continue to grow at an alarming rate. While Twitter is averaging 250 million tweets per day, Facebook has grown to over 900 million active users. This means that now for every five minutes spent online, one of those minutes is spent solely on social media sites.

Every week over one million people view customer service related tweets, with 80 percent of them being negative. Understanding and responding to the needs of your customers is crucial, because 59 percent of consumers will switch brands for better service.

The social help desk may turn out to be a game-changer in the ongoing relationship between businesses and their customers. As customers increasingly turn to social media sites for customer service, the social help desk lets you respond in real-time to meet the evolving customer definition of "now."

See below for a great infographic from Desk.com showing how the Social Helpdesk is changing the game.

Click to Enlarge Image

The Social Help Desk Revolution — Brought To You By Desk.com

How to be a CRM Power User

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 20:31:14 GMT

How can I be a CRM Power User? This is a common question that I am regularly asked, the short answer is there is no "magic button" - but there are a lot of habits and activities that you can employ with your CRM that will dramatically improve your productivity.

The first thing you need to do is to establish exactly what it is you want to achieve and then devise a plan to that will enable you to reach that goal. Without a plan you are wandering in the dark. When you are working on the plan you need to think strategically about your business and your role in it and decide on the elements that will bring YOU more success. Then use your CRM as your vehicle to achieve those objectives.

Having established your strategic goal, there are a number of ways that you can use your CRM tactically to achieve it;

Share your CRM with your entire team/company so that everyone has access to a common set of information
Build your database - Need more contacts? Find out how to search the web and import data
Set company/team standards for data entry and make sure that all data is entered Correctly, Consistently and Completely - otherwise it is GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out)
Integrate your CRM with your email system so that all sent and received emails are logged into the database and can be easily found.
Increase your reach by running regular email campaigns using MailChimp, Constant Contact or other email marketing software. Track your opens, clicks etc.
Set up email and letter templates to automate your common responses
Create Activities in your CRM directly from emails, allowing you to put all of the details of the email into the activity item
Reschedule Activities in your Diary that have not been completed
Monitor progress and customise your dashboards to display current status vs. objective results.
Measure activity against a goal: #Calls, #Appointments made, #Emails, #Initial Sales, #Closed Activities, #New Contacts entered, #Opportunities Created, etc.
Have sophisticated Groups that break down prospects and customers into categories that directly relate to marketing ex. prospects that never bought, customers within a product line that don't use another product that you sell etc.
Have a defined communication plan for customers
Take live calls using the software - do not write down notes and key them in later (you might consider getting a phone headset to leave both hands free to type)
Run your day from the Task List in your CRM, so that you are working from a list and checking off Activities as you complete them.

You are probably doing a lot of these tasks already, use your CRM as the means to bring them all together and manage them through it. You will find that you actually get things done!

Advanced Search in Gmail

Thu, 13 Dec 2012 20:44:32 GMT

One of the main reason why most of us love Gmail is because of its generous offering in terms of storage space. With more than 7Gb (and counting) free mail storage space, there’s really no need to delete your old emails.

However, not deleting email leads to the next potential problem – a messy and unsorted inbox. The good news is that by using Labels and Filters you can organize, sort and retrieve your emails easily.

In addition to this Gmail offers suprisingly powerful methods for searching and retrieving mail. The simple "Search Mail" function right beside Gmail logo actually does more than we imagined. In this post, we'll introduce you the useful Gmail search operators as well as examples on how you can search for almost any type of mail easily via the search text field.

See below for a range of Gmail Operators which you can use to improve your search...

Operators

Here’s a list of Gmail operators you can take advantage of when you search via the search box in your Gmail. Examples of usage is also provided.

"" (quotes):
Format: "keyword"
Example: "meeting agenda"
(Return only emails with the exact quoted keyword(s).)

subject:
Format: subject:keyword
Example: subject:Google Alert
(Return emails with keyword(s) in titles.)

from:
Format: from:
Example: from:mike
(Return emails received from a specific user, but not the email address.)

Format: from:
Example: from:mike@email.com
(Return emails received from a specific email address.)

to:
Format: to:
Example: to:mike
(Return emails sent to a specific user, but not the email address.)

Format: to:
Example: to:mike@email.com
(Return emails sent to a specific email address.)

in:
Format: in:
Example: in:trash
(Return emails stored in a specific location. If you are looking for emails that you have no clue where it is, use in:anywhere.)

is:
Format: is:
Example: is:unread
(Return emails with a specific status. E.g, Starred, unread, read emails or even Gtalk chat logs.)

cc: & bcc:
Format: cc: or cc:
Example: cc:mike or cc:mike@email.com
(Return emails carbon copied to a user or specific email address.)

Format: bcc: or cc:
Example: bcc:mike or cc:mike@email.com
(Return emails blind carbon copied to a user or specific email address.)

before: & after:
Format: before:
Example: before:2010/07/01
(Return emails before a specific date)

Format: after: before:
Example: after:2010/06/01 before:2010/07/01
(Return emails after in range of or after specific date)

label:
Format: label:
Example: label:Comments
(Return emails with a specific label)

filename:
Format: filename:
Example: filename:presentation.pdf
(Return emails with the exact filename attached)

Format: filename:
Example: filename:pdf
(Return emails that have the same file type attached)

has:attachment
Format: has:attachment
Example: from:mike has:attachment
(A more general search for emails with attachments. Return emails with attachments, regardless of file type and format.)

Combining Operators

Here are some operators that allows you to yield more specific and accurate results.

"-" (minus)
Format: operator:value -operator:value
Example: has:attachment -filename:zip
(Return emails with attachements, filtering away those with .zip attachments)

"OR"
Format: operator:value OR operator:value
Example: from:a@email.com OR from:b@email.com
(Return emails received from either user(s))

"AND"
Format: operator:value AND operator:value
Example: from:mike@email.com AND has:attachment
(Return only emails received from a specific email that has an attachment)

10 Advanced Search Examples:

The possibility of manipulating these operators are quite limitless. Here are some of the combination of search queries use frequently or find useful.

Example 1: in:inbox label:facebook is:unread
(Search for all unread emails labeled facebook inside inbox)

Example 2: in:anywhere from:peter
(Search for all emails regardless where it’s stored (spam, inbox, trash) received from anyone with the name Peter)

Example 3: is:unread after:2010/06/01 before:2010/07/01
(Search for all unread mails for the month of June)

Example 4: from: peter@emailadress.com has:attachment
(Return all emails with attachments sent by peter@emailadress.com)

Example 5: in:inbox "meeting"
(Search inbox for any emails with the keyword "meeting" in it.)

Example 6: from:peter@emailaddress.com has:attachment filename:zip
(Return only emails received from peter@emailaddress.com with .zip attachments)

Example 7: "facebook" -from:@FACEBOOKMAIL.com
(Return all emails with the keyword "facebook", excluding those sent by facebook.com)

Example 8: to:peter OR cc:peter
(Return all emails sent to or carbon copied Peter)

Example 9: label:google OR from:@GOOGLE.com
(Return all emails received from google.com or labeled "google")

Example 10: "meeting" is:chat
(Return all chat log files with keyword "meeting" in it)

The Most Popular Small Business Apps

Wed, 15 Aug 2012 15:35:24 GMT

The use of cloud based applications by small businesses has mushroomed over the past couple of years. This Infographic from Mavenlink gives a very good overview of the current state of play in the market.

If you are wondering how you can implement Cloud computing in your own business but are a bit bewildered by the options out there, give SmartCloud a call. We can steer you through the clouds to the bright blue sky!

There are some great small business apps that were voted most popular:

Office Email: Google Apps
Customer Relationship Management: Salesforce
Data Storage: Backblaze
Payment Processing: PayPal
Storage/Backup/Virtualization: Dropbox
Social Media Management: Facebook & HootSuite
Accounting: QuickBooks
Billing: QuickBooks

Thanks to cloud technology, mobile business applications are booming in the business landscape, and small businesses are the most enthusiastic adopters.

"There's a sea change going on in the marketplace...The number of cloud applications SMBs have adopted has doubled in the last two years." - Bill Odell, Senior Director of Marketing with Dell Cloud Business Applications

IDC estimates that the cloud marketing, including products and services, will expand from $16 billion in 2010 to $56 billion in 2014.

According to an AT&T Survey on The Huffington Post, 30% of small businesses use mobile apps for their business. An additional 50% say they can't survive without mobile apps. This is up 31% since last year.

Making the Switch to GoogleApps:

Because it offers a suite of free or inexpensive user-friendly online applications, more and more enterprises cite Google Apps as the go-to solution for their business needs.

There are more than 4 million organizations running Google Apps for Business with more than 40 million users. Every 14 seconds, a business signs up for its web-based tools. And the platform has a 90% renewal rate.

White Stratus analyzed adoption rates of Google Apps in the US business market and found that one out of five organizations have deployed Google Apps. Out of the companies that have deployed it, more than 80% are either piloting or actively using the apps.

How to get more Likes, Comments and Shares on Facebook

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 14:00:37 GMT

In preparation for his attempt to break last year’s Guinness World record for largest webinar ever– SCIENCE OF INBOUND MARKETING –Dan Zarella of HubSpot been collecting piles and piles of new marketing data.

One area he focused on recently was Facebook. He collected data on more than 1.3 million posts published on the top 10,000 pages to put together this infographic to help you get more likes, comments and shares on your Facebook posts.

Click on the Infographic below to see the full size version

The State of the GoogleApps Ecosystem

Tue, 26 Jun 2012 14:25:07 GMT

Special report by the Cloud Alliance for Google Apps on how enterprises large and small are embracing Google Apps. You can download the full 17 page report here.

Click on the Infographic image below to see a full size version.

Press Release: SmartCloud Announces Solution Partnership with Nimble CRM

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 16:47:28 GMT

NEW SOCIAL BUSINESS PLATFORMS, NIMBLE, TRANSFORMS THE WAY PEOPLE MANAGE RELATIONSHIPS
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: PRLOG (PRESS RELEASE) - Dec 01, 2011

Dublin, Ireland – SmartCloud has announced their solution partnership with Nimble. Nimble is a Social Business Platform that combines customer relationship management and social engagement into an affordable web-based solution.

Nimble integrates LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google, email contacts and conversations into one seamless, intuitive environment, empowering small businesses in today’s socially connected world to attract and retain the right customers.

Created by Jon Ferrara, the founder of GoldMine, a pioneering SFA/CRM product, Nimble is the only solution on the market that integrates the "4 Cs" -- contacts, calendar, communications and collaboration -- to enable professionals to effectively manage the way they see, hear and connect with their company's most important asset: their business contacts.

"The problem today is our contacts and our communications are in too many places," said Jon Ferrara, CEO of Nimble. "Between IM, text messaging, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Skype and email, we can't keep track of it all. Trying to manage all of this in eight different tabs on your browser isn't the solution. We created Nimble to solve our own needs and we’re bringing it to the world to help small businesses solve theirs."

Michael McKenna, Principle Consultant of SmartCloud states, "We are excited to announce this new solution partnership with Nimble. We are pleased to offer our customers Nimble which unifies email, calendar and social channels in one application. This will allow our customers to easily see all of the communications made with their contacts no matter where the conversations took place."

Nimble is the next evolution in relationship management – a social relationship manager that makes it fun and easy to nurture personal and business relationships.

About SmartCloud: At SmartCloud, our goal is to build systems for your organization that will analyze your customers and opportunities, and help your company be more efficient by examining your current business, sales, marketing, and customer service processes. For more information, please visit our website at http://www.smartcloud.ie or call us at +353 1 506 0760. You can also join us socially on Twitter @mckennamike.

About Nimble: Nimble was founded in 2009 to help small businesses transform their communities into business opportunities. Nimble opens a whole new channel for businesses to engage customers in two-way dialogue, leveraging the power of traditional CRM and social media with its web-based social business platform. Located in Santa Monica, Nimble is in the heart of the Southern California tech community. Please join the conversation on Nimble’s Facebook page, LinkedIn and on Twitter @Nimble.

--- end ---

Press Release - Award-Winning Social Business Platform Nimble Launches in Europe

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 16:56:44 GMT

NIMBLE RESPONDS TO OVERWHELMING MARKET DEMAND FOR SOCIAL CRM SOLUTION WORLDWIDE.

Santa Monica, CA - Nov. 8, 2011 - Nimble announced today that its award-winning Social Business platform for small businesses has now officially launched into the European market with the partnering of key channel organizations to meet overwhelming demand. Nimble is the first SaaS platform designed to help small companies turn business connections and social communities into customers for life.

"More than half of our customers are overseas, and European partners have recognized the power of applying social to their business processes and are looking for a solution today," said Jon Ferrara, CEO, Nimble.

"Companies are trying to fix their social business dilemma with legacy CRM systems. That’s because most business people live in Outlook, Address Book or Google and they only go into the CRM systems to manage leads to update lead status and forecasts. Having to copy emails and activities into your CRM system does not work. An effective relationship platform needs to capture your social contacts and communications and activities for you and your team."

With its unique combination of relationship management, social networking, and sales and marketing tools, Nimble helps businesses capture leads with its website lead capture forms, organize them with its advanced contact manager, and engage them with automated drip marketing campaigns. To further help build relationships with those leads, Nimble enables businesses to run marketing campaigns and engage in social conversations via LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. As conversations and campaigns turn to business opportunities, Nimble manages the sales pipeline by tracking the deal amounts, probabilities, and conversations that translate to business success.

Said Michael McKenna, Principal Consultant, SmartCloud: "We became a Nimble Partner because we could see there is a fundamental shift in the way that companies and customers interact. Companies are looking at other ways to engage with the users of their products and services via the medium of 'social media' and the power of this media is plain to see to anyone witnessing global events this year. Nimble has looked at traditional business and at social media and created a tool that allows 'social business' for the next generation of business owners and employees. Nimble has changed the game. This is going to be the natural way to do business and we are really excited to be part of the change."

A recent report from comScore measured social networking visitation and engagement around the world, by region. Europe saw the highest engagement of worldwide visitors to social networking sites.

Nimble’s groundbreaking standalone and team solutions have driven unprecedented early success: since its launch earlier this year, the company gained over 20,000 registered users and is one of the fastest growing CRM platforms today. Nimble has signed up over 300 partners worldwide with our European market as our fastest growing market who see the vast potential in the social business marketplace.

According to Gartner, the global social CRM market is forecast to achieve USD $1 billion in revenues by the end of 2012, up from approximately USD $625 million in 2010. The same report shows that spending by buyers on social software for marketing, customer service and sales increased by 40% in 2010, but that social CRM received less than 5% of revenues from the total CRM app market. This indicates that there is now a clear path for a market leader to emerge in this billion-dollar market.

About Nimble: Since its initial launch, Nimble has quickly established itself among publications and customers alike as a leading Social Business platform. The platform was awarded PC Magazine "Editors Choice" as well as the coveted "DEMO God" award from a field of hundreds of start-up contenders. It has also been recognized by leading analyst firm, Gartner, as a “Cool Vendor” for Social Software and Collaboration and placed on "The CRM Watchlist 2011” by Social CRM expert and best-selling author, Paul Greenberg.

Founded in 2009, Nimble leverages the power of traditional CRM, Sales Automation and social media to create a complete, web-based Social Business platform capable of helping small businesses transform their social communities into business opportunities. Located in Santa Monica, Nimble is in the heart of the Southern California tech community. Please join the conversation on Nimble’s Facebook page, LinkedIn and on Twitter @NIMBLE.

February 04th, 2013

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 20:13:35 GMT

The following is a research note written by Jim Davies, Research Director with Gartner. In it Davies draws an analogy between the behaviour and attitudes of organisations today towards Social Media and similar attitudes a decade ago towards CRM.

At that time Gartner developed its eight building blocks of CRM which consisted of steps such as vision from the board, implementation of strategy and changes to organisational structures, processes and culture. In this article Davies subscribes to the same approach to ensure that investment in social CRM isn’t wasteful.

"I really got the sense that a lot of companies that are doing social CRM have actually forgotten about the building blocks. They may have had a CRM strategy and metrics and done all that in the past, but now with social they have forgotten about it and instead it’s all about playing with social monitoring platforms."

"There was a real sense that there wasn’t a social strategy in place that could then help steer them in terms of what technologies they need, what metrics they should be tracking, what data they need to collect, and what analytical tools they need to buy. All of that hadn’t been thought through. It was more of a 'kids in a sweet shop’ approach. On the back of that I published a research note which was basically eight building blocks again, but applying it to social media, because I think it is such an important finding that people have forgotten about it and they are not approaching this the way that they would approach CRM – but they absolutely should be."

Applying the Eight Building Blocks of CRM to Social Media

Jim Davies, GARTNER

The increase in adoption of social media across media, high-tech, consumer goods and retail sectors has been prolific during the past few years, and is set to expand into other industries during the next three years. Organisations need to embrace this phenomenon as an integral part of their customer relationship management (CRM) strategy.

Our research points to improvements in customer and market responsiveness, product development, sales effectiveness and operational efficiency as key drivers. Success, however, requires the same due diligence in traditional CRM that Gartner has reinforced for the past decade.

CRM is difficult to get right and Gartner estimates that fewer than 10 per cent of organisations have optimised the management of their customer relationships. A decade ago, Gartner created a framework called "The Eight Building Blocks of CRM" to help organisations be more successful. This framework has stood the test of time and is still highly regarded worldwide. Updated versions of the original research have been released over the years to reflect market shifts, but no fundamental changes have been made to the core framework.

The Eight Building Blocks of CRM

Our very latest research emphasizes the additional considerations that organisations now need to factor in across each building block from a social CRM perspective. Many of the social CRM projects Gartner has studied over the past three years have been in the "pioneer" phase, where individuals experiment and break new ground, but don't measure benefits. We are now seeing a desire to move to the "settler" phase, where a more structured approach is needed to get business results. Of course, to achieve this settler status, commitment to all eight of the building blocks will be required.

Gartner defines social CRM as a business strategy that mutually benefits cloud-based communities and the business by fostering engagement while generating opportunities for sales, marketing and customer service. The key considerations within this definition that organisations need to take heed of are:
Social CRM is a sustainable strategy, not a single project, such as setting up a Facebook page or mining social media.

Social CRM requires an increased level of openness and a willingness to engage more with customers.
Social CRM relationships need to be mutually beneficial for them to work.
Social CRM has to have a positive financial impact on the organisation through the associated impact on sales, marketing and service.

Given these considerations, each of the eight building blocks needs to be refined accordingly.

1. Social CRM Vision

A CRM vision encapsulates the very essence of a company's reason for existence, highlighting the differentiated attraction for its customers. A social CRM vision should take this customer value proposition further by embracing the shift of power associated with social CRM to one that is much more balanced.

2. Social CRM Strategy

The CRM strategy is a blueprint for how to create and maintain a customer base that is an asset to the company. It needs to integrate with the overarching corporate strategy, and requires the segmentation of customers by attributes such as value, loyalty and satisfaction. Adding a social dimension to a CRM strategy does not technically change anything, it just expands the options available for each segment and each phase of the customer life cycle.

3. Social Valued Customer Experience

A successful customer experience management initiative ensures that feedback is continually used to help design and refine the customer experience. When adding a social dimension, organisations need to consider how social media can be used to better set/reset expectations with customers, to positively influence the customer experience directly and to collect feedback on the customer experience and then act on it in an appropriate and timely manner.

4. Social Organisational Collaboration

Once an organisation begins to embrace external social media, new guidelines and policies for employee participation need to be created, and associated aspects (such as its governance and enforcement) embraced. With social CRM and the emphasis on having a true relationship with customers, in which they contribute through activities such as co-creation, support, lead generation and campaign feedback, these "customers" have a far more influential role to play within each department.

5. Social CRM Processes

Customer process re-engineering to ensure each process flows down a logical path from the customer's perspective is a common investment area and a key influencer of the customer experience. When executing against a social CRM strategy, specific processes spanning sales, marketing and customer service will potentially be impacted. The key is to determine what processes are most appropriate to be driven socially, and where mass collaboration adds value, ensuring that there is an upside to the customer, as well as the business.

6. Social CRM Information

In addition to the sheer volume of social data that can be collected from customers and prospects from social environments, the subsequent challenges associated with determining its meaning and importance are the major hurdle to tying that data to individual customers within the existing customer database. The ability to capture the comments made by an anonymous customer called "Jimbo" and then to retrospectively assign them to "Mr Jim Davies" once a linkage can be determined is a key development area. However, there are lighter-weight approaches that can provide some degree of value and should be explored; for example, looking at participants' follower numbers on Twitter to determine the importance/impact of their comments.

7. Social CRM Technology

Most, but not all, CRM initiatives require some form of technology to enable the CRM strategy. Within the social CRM area, the marketplace is extremely fragmented, with over 100 vendors, each providing a specific functional capability. Most have annual revenue of less than $1 million and are not profitable. No one vendor can yet provide a holistic social CRM suite that can facilitate execution of socially driven sales, marketing and customer service processes. However, over the next two years we expect significant market consolidation and much tighter integration between social processes and traditional processes across sales, marketing and customer service.

8. Social CRM Metrics

The health of any CRM strategy can only be assessed through the provision of appropriate metrics. Once social CRM is embraced, new metrics need to be applied, which are often much harder to measure. Very few organisations have measured the return on investment of their social CRM activities, but this will begin to change in 2011 in line with growing maturity.

In another article Davies identifies the fact that the social media technology landscape is very fragmented, "populated by the likes of community builders and social media monitoring firms", with no one vendor having a full suite of tools. He states that "next year the true social CRM suites will start to emerge as acquisitions happen [and the market consolidates] and as R&D happens then [vendors] will start to get broader in their capabilities." He finishes this article by saying;

"In the meantime, [companies] absolutely should not wait. Because there is going to be value to be had by buying SaaS-based, pay-as-you-go service for a tool that may be acquired in a year’s time or they may not want to use in year or two’s time. So they need to think about it strategically and long-term, but don’t delay investment in the software because they are incumbent and can’t do it yet.

"It is a learning curve. If they are running vendor X for their core CRM platform and are going to wait until 2015 for that vendor to come to market with that offering then there are three years of learning that they are not going to have benefitted from. They are going to start to lose out from a competitive point of view because if all their competitors are having social activity, talking to customers socially, using it as a lead generation or marketing tool, then they are going to start slipping behind. So there is a risk of choosing a vendor now that isn’t going to be around in two years time but I think the benefits outweigh those risks."

So the message is, define clear Social Media strategies and goals and get moving quickly. Experiment and learn because, if you don't, your competitors will.

What's New With ACT! 2011

Fri, 26 Nov 2010 04:01:16 GMT

ACT! 2011 has been on sale in the USA since mid-summer and was recently released here in Ireland. Sage have listened to the requests that users have been making and have implemented a number of significant improvements in the product, particularly around the area of Sales and Marketing and system administration.

Sales and Marketing professionals are able to get up to speed faster with helpful information about a prospect and their industry with the Hoover's data integration. The ability to import lists of target market companies and contacts will kick start lead generation. Smart tasks allow you to automatically stay connected to your contacts and be 'top of mind'.

Administrators will appreciate a streamline startup process, additional data security, improved screen layouts and ability to quickly create new fields in the database. Depending on your organization's level of integration with Outlook, the enhanced configuration options may also be useful.

Sage have also improved the general usability of ACT! with improved default layouts and navigation, further refining the improvements that were introduced with ACT! 2010.

New Sales & Marketing Features

1. Smart Tasks - Automated Workflow:
This is one of the compelling reasons to upgrade to Sage ACT! 2011 and has the most options for enhancing productivity. Once you have your business processes defined, which in itself is a big competitive advantage, you can take it to the next level by automating the process with Smart Tasks - useful actions for your Keep in Touch strategy. It is like having a virtual assistant helping you schedule activities and staying at the top of the mind of prospects and customers.

What are Smart Tasks?
Smart Tasks are a series of common and connected steps, performed inside of Sage ACT!. Smart Tasks will set in motion the most basic or advanced processes to take care of things like reaching out to customer that you haven't heard from in a while or notifying you of stalled sales opportunities.

By putting together small steps, Sage ACT! can automatically perform many of your routine sales, marketing, and customer service tasks. This helps everyone in your organization to work more productively so you can contact more prospective customers, sell more products or services and support more existing customers - all without needing to hire new employees or acquire resources!

Here is an overview:
Smart Task Templates:

Useful out-of-the-box or edit to personalize
Suitable for general productivity or sales
10 Pre-configured templates for common tasks, such as:
Contacts with no recent activity
New Contact Welcome
High value opportunity alert
Close opportunity follow up
Birthday reminder
Contacts with incomplete information
Easy Customization:
Easiest visual designer for creating and modifying Smart Tasks
Drag/drop capabilities for Smart Task steps

Smart Task Operation Visibility:

Pause or Activate Smart Tasks
View pending Smart Tasks
Fully Extensible Engine:
Windows Workflow Foundation
Out-of-the-Box integration with ACT! E-marketing

2. Sage Business Information Services:
Sage has partnered with Hoover's to provide access to Hoover's data within Sage ACT! 2011. Hoovers provides lead lists and business insights about companies around the world. This information saves a lot of research time for any business or sales organization. Extend your depth of knowledge into an industry using First Research's trends, major players, and key challenges. Here is the business information the ACT customer gets with the subscription service:

Contact and company profile.
Company Financials, Contacts (org chart information) and Notes
Industry Information - useful for gaining an quick understanding of the prospect's industry and getting that conservation started. Quickly know the key trending that is occurring.
Search for new companies and Import New Leads (which is a big time saver) Its like finding more companies similar to your existing customers
Email alerts of changes in the account

3. Import directly from Excel
This will especially help when working with commercially supplied lists of prospects as these are usually provided in Excel or CSV format and this new functionality should just make the process of working with them a little easier.

New Administration Features

4. Improved Outlook Integration and Synchronization
In businesses with heavy use of Outlook the sync functionality may be the most important part. With several configuration options it will be much easier for users to move data from Outlook to ACT!

Create new Outlook contacts from Sage ACT! and new Sage ACT! contacts from Outlook. Everything will be kept updated in both places. Don't worry about duplicates.

Keep your busy schedule updated in both Outlook and Sage ACT! no matter where you add or modify activities and meetings.
Choose which contacts and activity types in Sage ACT! synch back to Outlook

5. There is support for Office 2010
For those early Microsoft Office 2010 adopters, you can now use this productivity tool set with Sage ACT! 2011.

6. New Database Security Preferences
Security is a particular concern for many businesses, particularly those in the professional and financial services area, and in larger corporate environments that deploy Sage ACT!. One aspect of that concern has to do with file attachments in the database. The following capabilities are now new database preferences:

Restrict emails from being attached to user records - addresses issue of one ACT! user reading another ACT! users (the boss, or colleague) correspondences via their user record.
Restrict email attachements in the database
Restrict file attachment in the database such as IE, Word, Notes, Histories, Activities, Mail Merge, ACT! Email.

7. Improved Startup Wizard
Some of these features long time customers have been asking for and Sage has delivered:

Express Importing - which allows users to get contacts into their ACT! database faster with a redesigned import functionality.
Import directly from Excel - this will especially help when many lists are used as when a commerical supplier of lead lists provides them in Excel or CSV format. Often we have clients that want ability to get a new lead list imported- this should help the process.
Improved Default Layouts for improved navigation - ACT! 2010 had user interface enhancements, and Sage has continued to improve navigation.
Redesigned Welcome Page- somewhat easier and more intutitive navigation. There seems to be less clutter and somewhat more useful getting started topics

ACT! Social Networking & LinkedIn

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 03:39:48 GMT

If you have ACT! 2010 or Sage ACT! 2011 and you’re not using the Web Info tab you are missing the boat. And, if you haven’t figured out how to use the Web Info tab in conjunction with your favorite social networking sites, then you’re in for a treat.

You’ll find the Web Info tab in both the Contact and Company Detail views. The Web Info tab is actually a browser that displays information based on data in various fields on a contact or company record. Sage ACT! comes with a number of links to sites including Google Search, Google Maps and Weather.com so you can instantly scour the Net for more information or just see what the weather is like in your contact’s location. You can also easily add new sites; for example, many of my clients like to create a link between their contacts and Twitter.

By far my favorite web link is the one to LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site mainly used for professional networking; as of the latest count LinkedIn had more than 80 million registered users. The beauty of sites like LinkedIn is that they offer you another way to stay in front of your contacts; any posts you make on your LinkedIn site are visible to all of your LinkedIn contacts. And, in the event that a contact leaves his place of employment and changes his e-mail address, you’ll still be able to connect with him.

Here’s how you can start building your own LinkedIn network in 5 easy steps:

Start by logging in to your LinkedIn account.

Create a Lookup of the Sage ACT! Contacts that you’d like to add to LinkedIn.
Click the Web Info tab on the Contacts Detail View and select the LinkedIn link that runs along the left-hand side of the Web Info tab.
LinkedIn will search its database for matches to the current contact record. Click the Add to Network hyperlink on the Web Info tab to send a LinkedIn invitation to the current contact.
Advance to the next Contact record and repeat the process.
Many Sage ACT! users start out by creating a Lookup of all their customers and connecting to them. If you’ve recently joined a networking group or attended a trade show you might want to “link up” with those contacts. Eventually you might get into the habit of checking the status of any contact you’re currently working with.

Social networking is becoming an essential method of communication. If you’re a Sage ACT! user you can stay in touch with your important contacts at the touch of a button.