Audaxium Blog

What’s not to love about automation?  Having things done for you is always better than doing them yourself.

Pardot’s email marketing automation solution is a tremendous application for anyone who wants to do a better job sending emails and generating leads. With rules based email, intelligent lead scoring, and integration with NetSuite, Salesforce and SugarCRM it’s sure to improve almost any marketing department that sells B2B.

The first thing to know is that Prospect Insight, Pardot’s application, works just great as a stand alone application.  When you are using it in combination with a CRM tool it’s designed to operate “in front” of your CRM, feeding it with leads when it’s appropriate to contact them.

The image to the right really sums it up.  Pardot will capture web visitors information and activities, score the lead, automate email followups, and then, when you deem it useful, assign the lead to a sales rep.

Do you have problems with large quantities of “junk” leads?

Do you wish you could sort leads by how interested they are in your website?

Do you wish you could nurture cold leads with a call to action that makes sense for that individual contact?

I could ask a hundred more questions.  But if you say yes, then read no more and contact us to see a demo.

Read more if you must…

Read more…

General, Marketing, Tips and Tricks Campaign, Email

Every year, probably since the dawn of time, people have been using the relatively arbitrary start date of a new year to think about the future.

Now I don’t typically make resolutions, as I think the’re best done through out the year, but now’s as good a time as any to think about things. Here are some questions that I think you should ask yourself, and the answers just might cause you to take action and contact us.

How much do you spend on employee productivity?

This question is a bit tricky, but a white board, or a paper and pen, along with 10 minutes of your valuable time should give you a ballpark.  You might know exactly how much you spend on marketing, or even exactly how much you spent on employee training, but how much did you spend on all productivity related items. This includes IT related purchases that are supposed to make people better at their jobs.  Now, how much of that was on the periphery? How much was spent on the tools they use most often?  I won’t beat you over the head with the logical conclusion.

How predictable is your business?

Can you know in advance if you are going to hit your targets?  What data points can you use for planning?  Do you have an accurate forecast from your reps?  Do you have a system in place to track that data and make it not a complete PITA for those that work for you?

Do you have unused power at your fingertips?

During the past year I’ve heard “We’re not using the system to it’s fullest.  We just don’t have time to improve.”  C’mon.  2010 is the year to make the list of things that you know you should be doing and tick them off the list.  Need help?  Ask.

How clean is your database?

Do you have someone who is officially, not “should be”, in charge of how clean your customer data is? When was the last time you looked at data that calculates how clean?  When are you going to implement a clean up/refresh plan?  Pro Tip – If you can get your customers to clean it up for you it’s a lot easier.  This is very easy to do in NetSuite… Ask me how.

How intelligent is your marketing?

Do you use rules to segment your leads?  What about customers?  Do you employ drip marketing to nurture contacts and valued clients.  Do you add value to your recipients lives while blasting them with email?  We can fix that…

So… with 2010 upon us, lets do all those things we thought we’d been doing in this space age year.

General

Garbage in, Garbage out!  I hear this comment almost every other day.  And it’s not me saying it, it’s the customer.

Then why oh why are most companies in such a state of disrepair when it comes to their customer information?

How can we fix this up when we implement NetSuite?

How can we make sure that it doesn’t happen again?  Or at least not to the same degree.

But first let’s get to the top 3 reasons why this happens. Read more…

General, Implementation

Just what is the best browser for use in NetSuite?

The other day a customer asked me this question and I gave my usual response based on the feeling I get while using various NetSuite instances.  Normally I feel Chrome is fastest, and Internet Explorer slowest with others falling in between.  Firefox is my usual choice as Chrome has some known issues (we won’t call them bugs) with NetSuite.  Safari also seems to hold up well in the speed department as a few NetSuite users I follow on twitter keep raving about it and I found it fairly snappy as well.

Just for kicks I decided to do a rather unscientific test of 4 different browsers and use the built in NetSuite performance reporting to figure out which were fastest and which were slowest.  The results were surprising.  In fact, I re-ran my scenario multiple times to see if there had been some mistake.

The Scenario

My test was very simple, mainly because I don’t know how to automate the testing and get page load times for multiple browsers using some kind of super plugin.  I ran the test 3 or 4 times and used the times I got most frequently, as opposed to averaging.  This to ensure that my connection wasn’t the issue.  In all cases I got 3 results that were very close for each page.  All tests were done on my Windows XP SP3 Desktop.

I admit that this is rather unscientific and I haven’t removed certain variables and I encourage others to try the same thing and report on the results here.

Read more…

General, Tips and Tricks Browser, Speed, UI

Right now the News is filled with bad press about the economy. Last weeks Economist painted a particularly gloomy picture.

It’s all well and good to simply unsubscribe from the news feeds but that won’t make you successful in the long run, just maybe less stressed.

Right now a lot of businesses are waiting cautiously, not spending money, but waiting for signs of a turnaround.  Cruising along. Perhaps your business is one of them.

So how will you know when a turn around is beginning for your business?  Your business is unique, it won’t simply happen for everyone at once.  For some it’s already starting, for others, they may have to reinvent themselves to simply stay afloat.

Will you wait until you’ve had two good sales quarters in a row?  How long does it take to roll up a quarter?  1 Month?  That might just be looking 7 months into the rear view mirror.

Will you wait until you’ve had 2 good months over targets?  Can you be sure that it’s not a lucky blip?

Will you watch the forecast, and when it starts to grow, start investing in your business?  How reliable is your forecast?  What’s driving the uptick?

Will you look at inbound leads? When they start increasing, turn up the heat on the reps.  How will you know where the leads are coming from and what their intent is?

Unfortunately there’s no one answer but I can say one thing for certain.  Those companies that only look far in the past for recovery will do less well than a firm with a balanced view of it’s KPI’s

The questions to ask yourself are:

• “Do I have the systems in place to get me the numbers I need, and trust, fast enough to react in a timely fashion?”
• “What are the 3 pieces of data I need to predict the direction my business is headed?”

If you’ve got the systems, great.  If not, give me a call.  Now’s the time to invest to ensure that your business can really be excellent once everything is moving again.  Don’t wait until you’re too busy to become more productive.

Here are some example Key Performance Indicators that NetSuite Provides out of the box. Perhaps some of these could help if you had them on your dashboard every day. Keep in mind that you can create your own KPI’s as well!

• Authorized Commission
• Authorized Partner Commission
• Bank Balance
• Cases Escalated
• Cases Closed
• Cart Abandonment
• Closed Issues
• COGS
• Credit Card Balance
• Equity
• Estimated Commission
• Estimated Partner Commission
• Fixed Assets
• Forecast Override
• Gross New Leads
• Hosted Page Hits
• Inventory
• Long Term Liabilities
• Net Cash Flow
• New Business (Sales Orders)
• New Customers
• New Customers (Sales Orders)
• New Issues
• New Opportunities
• New Visitors
• Open Issues
• Open Opportunities
• Open Prospects
• Open Quotes
• Operating Cash Flow
• Operating Expenses
• Opportunities Lost
• Orders
• Other Assets
• Other Current Assets
• Other Current Liabilities
• Paid Commission
• Paid Partner Commission
• Payables
• Pipeline (Projected)
• Pipeline (Weighted)
• Pipeline Deals
• Profit
• Quota Reps
• Receivables
• Revenue
• Sales (Cash Basis)
• Sales (Orders)
• Total Open Opportunities
• Total Open Quotes
• Total Orders (Count)
• Total Pipeline (Projected)
• Total Pipeline (Weighted)
• Total Pipeline Deals
• Total Sales (Orders)
• Unique Visitors
• Web Orders
• Web Revenue
• Web Site Hits

General Data, Reporting

Zach Nelson, CEO of NetSuite has gotten some of his thoughts posted over at the venerable Financial Times.

You’ll find his thoughts on Business Intelligence From the Cloud there.

Essentially the article is a nice summary of why one should consider NetSuite.  These benefits are simple, yet can have very positive impact on many organizations.

• Better information at your fingertips and therefore faster and hopefully better decisions
• Less time and money spent messing around with integration
• Faster implementation times

So there you have it! If you’re getting educated about the benefits of software as a service, articles like the one above will provide you a good starting point in developing your elevator pitch to your boss.

General, NetSuite News SaaS

A new year is upon us and with it we eagerly await the rollout of the next version of NetSuite, always mindful that we’ll need to get everyone trained up on any new functionality.

With this in mind NetSuite allows customers previews of the new functionality at beta.netsuite.com.  When you log in there you’ll see the “sneak peek” and the release notes for the new version.

If you’re a customer just log into beta.netsuite.com once your beta account has been provisioned and you’ll be able to try out the new functionality in your own account without messing with your live account. There you’ll see the release notes. Give them a good read and prepare a plan to test, and rollout, the new features. In particular, test your scripts.

You’ll also want to do a some training for some of your users on the new functionality and how you want them to use it.

Here’s a few things that caught my eye along with my comments.

Bugs

This isn’t a feature but the word on the street is that the quality of this release is very good.  If you can check out the posts on the usergroup forums on this.  Of course there are always issues but those people who have done extensive testing of 2009 in their own instances have mainly good things to say.  Your mileage may vary.

Price Lists

Nice! You could always make a price list of sorts, a custom estimate, but now you can create standard price lists for emailing to customers. You can even create an individual price list for a specific customer with their own pricing. Two thumbs up!

Spend some time figuring out exactly how this functionality works and how to use it as it’s not incredibly intuitive. It’s especially nice if you have different price levels for different types of customers and just quoting them isn’t really appropriate.

Multiple Units of Measure with Serial and Lot Items

Now you’ll be able to include batch/lot numbers along with items that need multiple units of measure. Chemicals by the gallon, pint and quart? With batch number attached. This will be perfect for a potential customer I was just talking to!

Direct List Editing on Transactions

If you love direct list editing, like I do, this will be nice. Now you won’t have to open and edit that estimate just to change expiry date or include it in your forecast when you’re viewing it in a list.  This will be great for sales reps everywhere.

Subsidiary Budgeting in OneWorld

NetSuite has a very good budgeting tool. I like it at least. Very good for keeping things on track. Assuming you can get your team to agree on the numbers! Now OneWorld users in subsidiaries will be able to budget in their local currency and not in the currency of their parent company.

Project Tasks Portlet

Project Tasks are different than regular tasks in NetSuite. Now you can more easily keep track of your project tasks in their own portlet on your dashboard. Cool. This will be very helpful for services groups using NetSuite.

Sales Campaigns

I’m never turning this on! Who wants the sales team to send out their own mass emails to their customers! Spam City! Seriously though. You can restrict access so that reps can only send to their own customers. Especially nice if you require prospects to opt in to emails before receiving them. Now reps can stop bugging marketing to do it!

Seamless Integration with Microsoft Outlook and BlackBerry

This feature, the latest sync client for Outlook and BlackBerry is only being rolled out in a limited “Beta” fashion. But it’s still cool. You can schedule syncs which you couldn’t before. And, wait for it… You can sync with Microsoft Exchange Server. I know someone who is going to jump for joy reading this! This has been a long time coming and apparently works fairly well.  I still have yet to test this out in an Exchange Server environment.

Multiple Dependent Dropdowns

How I have longed for this feature. This is fantastic. Now, you can filter the choices in a dropdown field based on the selections in one or more other fields. In the past you had to deal with some pretty long lists where most of the data wasn’t relevant based on other information on the form. It opens up lots of customization options.

Customizable Results for Global Search

Here’s a feature I didn’t know I missed. Now you can customize what fields are shown when you do a global search. Very Nice, and easy to configure as well it looks like.

Direct List Editing of Global Search Results

User-Defined Reminders

Another very nice enhancement. It’s easy to set up custom searches and portlets in NetSuite. But now you can set up a custom search and have it appear in your reminders portlet. Your list of everything that needs doing. I know users who basically only use the reminders portlet to show them what needs to be done. Now anything can show up there.

Showing Totals in Search Results

Google Checkout Integration

“With Google Checkout integration, you can offer Google Checkout to your Web store customers as an option for checkout, along with NetSuite checkout and PayPal Express checkout.” This is not rolling to all customers. Like the Outlook/Blackberry sync it will be limited to a few customers for a while and then released to everyone.

Conclusion

At around 64 Pages Long there’s a lot in the 2009.1 release notes. And keep in mind that there will likely be a 2009.2 release. I know that 2008.2 was one that had a lot of nice things I liked.

There’s a lot in there. Be sure to dive in and give it a solid read. Be sure to have your note book at your side while reading. If you’re a NetSuite admin there will be a few things you’ll want to add to your task list as you browse.

NetSuite 2009.1 will be rolling out from February through till April.

General, NetSuite News 2009.1, What's New

Today I’d like to introduce Kasey Bayne of Javelin Technologies. She is the Marketing Manager at Javelin and is a very enthusiastic NetSuite user. She’s at the controls day to day, rolling up reports and planning campaigns. She’s also helped other NetSuite customers with tips and advice on how to get things done in NetSuite.

—–

Kasey, before we talk about NetSuite, could you describe how the marketing team did their work before NetSuite? What systems did you use and how did everything come together?

Hi Rob, and thanks for meeting with me today.

Before NetSuite, it seems now like we were living in the dark ages! We ran our marketing team on a number of systems – one for sending out campaign emails, one for creating emails, one for our customer database, and one more for managing our budget.

We used GoldMine, Mach5, some accounting software I don’t even know the name of, and more Excel spreadsheets then I could count (or would ever want to). None of the systems talked to one another. This made it difficult to track results of our campaigns, in terms of campaign performance and tie them to the sales cycle. It also made visibility across departments very difficult. We were constantly emailing documents around.

In one word – it was a mess.

—–

When you were first introduced to NetSuite what was the thing that changed the most for the Javelin Marketing team?

The greatest (and most beneficial) change to the Javelin Marketing team once we started using NetSuite was the metrics. Marketing success can be tough to measure, and Netsuite has given us the tools we need to track the data to make good decisions. Things like click-through rates, ROI, close rates, and even down to what happened with each individual lead we dig up are easy to find and help us make better, more strategic, decisions.

Previously we only had vague ideas of what was working and what was a waste of time.

—–

Change doesn’t happen overnight. How long did it take to get using all the functionality and reporting in NetSuite? What phases did you go though while learning NetSuite?

It didn’t happen overnight, but nothing worth it happens that quickly. We had a great NetSuite consultant (that would be you!) who helped us get set-up. I was nervous at first, especially about the email campaign portion. You don’t want to mess up when you’re sending out 20 000 emails! But you helped us get set-up quickly, do some testing, and that made me 100% confident in how NetSuite could work for us. I’d say we started using it on day 1, and it was about 4 weeks to having everything up and running (we kept adding new features as we discovered them!).

There were a few phases in our NetSuite implementation – we first took some time to map out our current processes, from lead generation to close. It was important to see what happened to a lead, from the time it was created to the time it closed. We were able to see where we wanted to make changes, and mapped those out BEFORE we started implementing the system. Taking this time out before hand was a huge benefit to setting up our system to work the way we wanted our business to run.

We had a good week of training, and then worked with our NetSuite Consultant to set-up and customize things as we got the system into place. We did some more advanced things with our Consultant once we had the basics down and were ready to take full advantage of some of the more advanced features. Now, things are working great across the board, and we are able to make better decisions because of it.

—–

What’s your favorite NetSuite feature?

There are so many, its hard to pick one! My absolute favourite has got to be the Campaign ROI Report, and really the reporting features in general.

Why did I pick the Campaign ROI report? In the past, to get these numbers was a HUGE ordeal. I’d lock myself in my office for a week straight, with a pile of spreadsheet printouts, and a pencil and ruler for cross-referencing by hand. Since it was such an undertaking to pull this all together, we’d only do it once a year, to wrap up the year’s events.

Being able to see this information at the push of a button is amazing! I can see the data often, and make quicker decisions to better run our marketing team. The change from one week to immediate is unbelievable, both in terms of time saved and in increasing my ability to make timelier, more strategic decisions. I can’t imagine running a successful department without it, its become that valuable to how I run my department.

—–

You’ve helped a few other NetSuite customers. What are some typical questions you get?

The main questions I get were in regards to setting up campaigns. That is one of the fundamental parts of any marketing program, and it is important to have it set up from the start. Its the most common area of questions, because it can be difficult for a non-marketing person to understand how campaigns work, so its important to have someone who understands the process there to help you get set-up right.

—–

Looking back, are there any recommendations you would make to other marketing managers out there who are just starting up?

The best recommendation I have is to take the time to get set up RIGHT at the start. Make sure you fully understand your own processes. There’s nothing more frustrating then having to go back and re-do something because it wasn’t set-up for the way things actually work in your organization. Take the time you need, and get some help! There are SO many functions in Netsuite, to help not only marketing, but every department, so get someone to help you out and take the time to really dig into things and take advantage of all the system has to offer. Trust me – it’ll help your business.
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Thanks very much for your time Kasey.  It seems like you really are a fan of NetSuite Campaigns!  I appreciate you taking a moment out to chat about NetSuite.  Have a good 2009 and keep us posted on how you change the way you market over the year. I’m sure we’ll have a lot to talk about.

You can find Kasey on twitter as @JavelinTech

General Interview, Marketing

The other day I was having a nice discussion with a new NetSuite customer about best practices when implementing NetSuite.  We covered a wide range of topics but the one that I’ll cover today is training.  I’ve got a few simple words of advice on how to ensure that your NetSuite experience is a great one.

Training for NetSuite is available from a number of sources.  Each one has it’s place and should be used appropriately.  I would encourage you to work with your NetSuite implementation partner to ensure that you have all the bases covered.  Cutting costs by cutting training will surely cost you more in the long run.

Online Training

NetSuite has some decent online training available via the customer support center, formerly known as NetSuite University, now called Suite Training. There are 17 online videos some of which are almost 30 minutes in length.  In total there’s about 4 hours of video.  

Most of the content there is good and well produced.  It’s also very general in nature.  Normally, when introducing new users to the system, I will direct them to 3 or 4 video that pertain to their role in order to get them familiarized with the system.

Because the content is fairly broad it’s important not to use those videos as the only training resource for either yourself or new NetSuite users.

Also available via NetSuite Central are some documents on particular topic. They are also worth a read if you are new to being a NetSuite Admin.  They are:

• KPI Scorecards for Business Intelligence
• Customer Returns Management
• Getting and Giving Credit With Gift Certificates
• Keyword Marketing Campaigns
• Forecasting for Success

Give those a read if you are just setting out.

Customer WebCasts

Also available via NetSuite Central are some previously recorded webcasts done by the NetSuite Training Department.  The content varies widely and you’ll find some useful ideas and tips inside.  These presentations are longer than the basic videos above and you’ll find yourself hovering over the fast forward button, but they are very useful.  You’ll find such topics as:

• Commission Management 
• Forecasting – Predicting Your Sales Future 
• Data Mining: Mastering Reporting and Saved Searches in NetSuite 
• NetSuite Productivity Tips 
• Productivity Tools for Sales Reps – Make Selling Easier 
• Involve Your Customers: Using Self-Service to Optimize Customer Relationships 
• The Ultimate Marketing Tool: Closed Loop Marketing Campaigns 
• Webstore Customization: Using Site Templates to Enhance your Website

As a NetSuite admin make sure to check these out, grab a beer and sit down and watch them.  You’ll also want to direct specific users, such as sales and marketing to go watch some of them as well.

Scheduled Online Courses

Now that you’ve gone over the basics you may want to attend some of the Administration courses that NetSuite puts on on a regular basis.  You can learn more about some of these NetSuite training options here.

These courses are longer and can last the entire day.  They also have a price but can be useful in rounding out your training plan and can give you an opportunity to ask questions.  There are not a ton of different courses, as you’ll see but they are the commonly requested ones.

So what’s left?

The training above will probably serve you well as a NetSuite system administrator.  By the time you get done the above training and you have been given a chance to mess with your demo or sandbox account you’ll be using the help file or the NetSuite user group to get most of your questions answered.  

However, both you and your users have missed out in two key areas.  First, I have found, the end users will benefit from customized training done in the context of your specific NetSuite instance, and their jobs.  Secondly, the admin has missed out on someone providing advice on why to do certain things in NetSuite as opposed to how to do things.

Custom Training

Once everyone is up to speed with the basics I suggest that you, the NetSuite Admin, or someone like us in partnership with you, sit down and plan out training for your end users that shows them specifically how and why to do certain tasks in NetSuite to get their jobs done.

You can deliver this training on-site or over the web, my suggestion is to do it face to face, in order to look over peoples shoulders and help them through.

This training should target a specific group of users at your company and be focused on their tasks, and, it should also provide an overview of how their work impacts the work of those in other departments.  With an integrated system like NetSuite this is particularly important.

When it comes to your own knowledge ensure that you have a resource who will be able to explain what the ramifications are of configuration decisions within your own instance.  You don’t want to learn the hard way, just do it right the first time. Often times a partner, like Audaxium, can help with this custom training.  You can also get help from NetSuite Professional Services for a fee.

If you’re interested in learning more about this please let me know!

What’s New?

Lastly, I encourage everyone to check out the what’s new training, again via the customer portal, on an ongoing basis.  It’s important to keep up with the new functions being launched. There are a lot of them and you want to take advantage of them just as soon as possible.

Planning

The final word on this topic is PLAN!  Ensure that, as you are launching NetSuite, that you have a training plan for yourself and different user groups.  Make sure that you make full use of the resources out there to maximize your NetSuite productivity.

Keep your plan task focused.  By showing users how to get their tasks done in NetSuite you’ll have much better results than by demonstrating features and buttons.  Pay particular attention to how to view information related to their tasks in NetSuite, searching and reporting is just as important as the work itself.

General, Implementation Implementation, Training

Paul Greenberg wrote a nice article at ZDNet about CRM for the Mac. Give it a read.  It nicely sums up the CRM options for Mac Fans. And it gives a solid shout out to NetSuite as being a particularly strong choice.

There are many people who are far more qualified than I to talk about why Apple hasn’t really penetrated the business market but I was talking to a Mac user today and this article struck me as timely.

NetSuite has supported the Mac for some time and officially supports Safari, Netscape and Mozilla on the Mac OS.

Historically I’ve always been a Windows user because of compatibility issues with business applications, but now, with NetSuite, I really have a full choice over what I use.  In fact, now, I don’t care what co-workers or customers use because it really doesn’t matter. Use a Netbook, a Macbook, or Ubuntu.  NetSuite, being hosted, will be accessible for you.

Heck, NetSuite will go one step farther for you as it supports the iphone.  I’ve tried it out, on a loaned iphone.  It’s ok if you have a wifi connection or a solid 3G connection, but if you are on a flakey data connection you might want to steer clear or maybe just use it to look up a phone number.

All in all, NetSuite is a good fit for those of use who would rather have choice in the OS and/or browser that we use.  Freedom is a wonderful thing.

General Apple, iphone, Mac, SaaS