Audaxium Blog

Today I went for a excellent run.  And during that run I had one of those moments where you achieve perfect clarity, vision, and visualise an entire blog post in an instant.

This is not that post, because, of course, the next thought through my head was “That’s obvious, now keep up the pace.”

This post formed from the kernel I remember from that thought.

The Question

Essentially what ran through my mind was the following.  Does your company aim to be a high touch, customer responsive, and customer aware organization?  Or, and it’s not better or worse, is your company well positioned to be a low cost provider?

For small and medium businesses it is very easy to get caught in the middle.  Heck, I’ve had years of experience getting smashed by a boulder and some other really hard thing.  All to often there is a desire to over service customers, or, lose business based on dated views on pricing, either discount too much, or not enough.

Now, as times are tough.  Figuring out your strategy becomes increasingly important. Both in the short term, and long term.  There are probably several exceptions out there, where companies can be successful doing both.  But I’d venture to say it’s rare.   And, of course, I neglect all those companies who really compete with their product functionality and placement in the market.

One System

So what you ask?  Well, my endorphin induced thought was that Netsuite, being the awesome system that it is, can really be used by companies employing either strategy, but will implement each slightly differently.

NetSuite of course, can both help get a much better picture of customer habits, information, and profile while at the same time giving tremendous visibility into the profitability of the business, each transaction, and each customer.  What you chose to focus on will drive how you approach your implementation.

If you’re a high touch, customer centric organization you’ll focus much more on a few different areas.  You’ll start with marketing and the customer record.  You’ll track more custom information and have more reports written to drive the behaviours of your sales team. You’ll have a more detailed review of the sales force automation tools.  There will be more focus on the commission tools.  And, of course, you’ll want to nail the customer support end of NetSuite and give your customers the attention they deserve.

If you’re a cost and volume focused company you may in fact implement the above areas of NetSuite but they may be less critical.  Or you’ll give them a pass altogether.  NetSuite will provide you with detailed financial reporting and real time updates of the trends.  You’ll focus more on inventory management, perhaps time and expense billing, or maybe even project management if you’re a services team. Your dashboards will be chalk full of custom key performance indicators driven by the numbers.

Homework

So if you’re about to implement NetSuite here’s some homework.  You might want to do this with a whiteboard.  And, if you’re really inspired give me a call and I’ll stand beside that whiteboard and wave my arms and talk a lot, stoking the fires.

What, today, really causes people to argue in management meetings?  Usually in those debates 1 or 2 areas of information are at the root.  What are they and where would that information come from in NetSuite?

In the cost/customer matrix where do you sit as compared to your competitors?  Where do you want to go? Do you have the information to manage that shift day to day?

Write your vision at the bottom of the board.  Write some behaviours you need your team to exhibit at the top.  Leave lots of room.  Now fill in the following from the bottom up to connect the two.  Strategies, Processes, KPI/Metrics.  

Do you have the system to get you there?  What is the area you need to improve the most?

Figure that out and you’ll be well on your way to getting out of the mushy middle and implementing a system that keeps you laser focused on your goals.