Audaxium Blog

We live in an age of self help.  Anyone with a brain is supposed to be able to sit down, and with a good enough help file be able to turn on just about any technology going.

This has lead a few folks I know to implement NetSuite without much help at all.  It’s not that it’s impossible, or even terribly difficult, but it’s harder the first time you do it.  This got me thinking and this quick list came to life.

It’s a bit Scary

When you implement NetSuite, you’re putting in an application that has the potential to affect almost every part of your business.  You don’t want to mess it up and fly into the ground.  Or, perhaps worse, you don’t want to wreck anything or anyone while trying to get off the ground.

Solution?  Talk with people who’ve implemented it before!  You don’t learn to fly from the guy in the showroom who sells you the airplane. (If you can afford an airplane in a showroom) Talk to people who run the system day to day, and to people who’ve seen mistakes made.  That would be me by the way!

It’s Easier with a Copilot

With NetSuite you can get people to help you implement it remotely.  They’re really smart.  And having someone talk you through it over the web just might work in many cases.  But there is also something to be said by having someone by your side, giving you the best practices and the finer points that will take you from good to great.

Consider what the benefits are of getting someone into your boardroom to help you out.  Even if it’s just for a second opinion or for best practices and change management.

Airplanes have Standard Dashboards

NetSuite has a lot of power in it’s Dashboards.  It’ll consume a lot of time if you simply try to muddle through and figure out the best way to work.  Talk to those who use Dashboards every day, what works, what doesn’t.

There’s a lot that belongs on dashboards but there’s a lot that doesn’t.  Get stuff up there that really lets you manage the operations of your business.  This isn’t Salesforce.com here.

Heads Up Flying

It’s critical when flying to fly the plane and look up, and not keep your head stuck in the instrument panel.  The same is true for a NetSuite implementation.  You’ve got to manage the people involved, you’ve got to constantly be examining your situation and your business surroundings.

When implementing NetSuite it’s about getting your business to the next level.  Keep the end goal in mind and you’ll have a safe arrival.

Implementation Implementation, Lessons Learned

Everyone has experienced it.  You have a wonderful experience with an account manager while you’re investigating a solution.  And then, magically, once your purchase order hits their email inbox… silence.  It’s deafening.

It seems to me that many companies look at their sales team, and at the systems they provide that team, in isolation of what is best for the customer.  And this results in the grand old strategy of “islands of automation”, and a big disconnect between sales and the rest of the company, and a big disconnect between sales and the customer.

Many CRM Vendors seem to build their systems like this as well.  Just look at the standard steps in the “sales process.”  Most have something like this:

• Lead – Unqualified
• Lead – Qualified
• Prospect – Investigating
• Prospect – Needs Discovered
• Prospect – Demo
• Prospect – Closing
• Customer – Won

Now I don’t have any real difficulty with these stages of bringing a company into your customer list, but, it doesn’t reflect the fact that the work doesn’t stop when the customer makes their first purchase.

This won’t come as a surprise but the C in CRM stands for customer, and when you implement CRM you really should think about how you manage your customer base first, and then think about how you turn a company who could buy from you (Lead) into a company who has bought from you. (Customer)

So here’s some ways to ensure that doesn’t happen.

First. Make sure everyone in your company has access to all customer related information. There shouldn’t be a case where someone says “I don’t have that information here, that’s another department.”  At least for the vast majority of information.  There will always be secure or sensitive information that only certain people can see.  But don’t force your employees to waste a lot of time walking issues around your office.

Second. Make sure that your company tracks opportunities and not just Lead/Prospect/Customer statuses.  Alternatively you could track quote or estimate statuses instead of opportunities but the effect is the same.  If you’re a services firm you could track jobs or projects as separate from the customer.

Third. Don’t rely on systems integration to connect different parts of your business.  It’s a constant battle to keep that stuff buckled together.

Many vendors will talk about the fact that they are open, and can hook to other systems, or they have a million partners you can pick from.  Sometimes it works. In the last 4 days I’ve talked with 4 people who looked at a one particular CRM system and said something like “I’ve looked at that system but the integrations between the third party apps and it don’t seem very solid.” Again, I’m sure that there are many good integrated apps with that CRM tool but it will require patience to keep everything connected.

The conclusion of all this is that a CRM system must, naturally, be a system that integrates many parts of your business, from Sales, to Marketing, to Finance to Tech Support.  Large companies have had this available to them for year, at a high price.  But now almost every company can afford it.

General CRM, Lessons Learned

I’ll be making a bit of a series out of this I think.  Rather than post walls of text I think I’ll post some smaller, bit sized pieces of information.

I have been managing a NetSuite implementation for 2 years and have helped out a few people with their implementations and in doing so I’ve learned a few things about what made us successful.

One thing I learned is that it is easy to get very distracted by the ROI and high level strategic rationale behind implementing CRM/ERP during the rollout.   Pretty simply, your employees really don’t care a whole lot about that.  Their question?  “What’s in it for me!”

When deploying NetSuite it’s important to get feedback from the diverse group of people that will be using it.  After all, it covers a lot of ground as an integrated system.  Find out what people care about, what’s getting in the way, and how they visualise improvement.

Once you round up that data, and of course, by continuing to talk to people throughout the deployment, you’ll stay on target with what really matters.

Then you’ll be ready to sell the change.  It’s critically important that you can articulate, to each user, just how their life will get better after NetSuite.

Here’s some real, actual examples.

Inside Sales – With NetSuite you’ll be able to hand off opportunities to the sales team without having to craft and send individual emails each time you run across an interested prospect.

Marketing – You’ll be able to run more targeting email campaigns. (Should you choose to do so!) You’ll be able to track in real time the responses to your emails.

Sales Reps – You’ll be able to access the system from anywhere. You’ll be able to track commissions realtime.  You’ll see new leads and opportunities fast.  You’ll be able to spend less time managing spreadsheets and more time in front of customers. You’ll be able to quickly log your calls to keep yourself on track with the sales process.

Sales Management – You’ll be able to track activities by Rep. You’ll be able to see outstanding quotes and opportunities. Forecast review meetings will be able to be focused on the important deals, not just what the rep brings in his latest spreadsheet.

Admin – You’ll be able to process orders much more quickly.  Orders will be cleaner with less fire fighting to do.  Tracking orders, shipments, payments will all be done in one spot with no cutting and pasting.  

Tech Support – You’ll be able to pick up, respond to and close cases faster with NetSuite.  You’ll be able to see case history for a whole company, not just by email address.  You’ll be able to create opportunities for the sales team without switching applications. You’ll be able to see and manage onsite visits and projects in the same spot with NetSuite.

IT – You’ll be able to stop worrying about keep the system up, backed up, and updated and can instead focus on interesting value add projects to configure it and make it work better.

Those are just a few examples.  I think I’ll have to run a poll of some folks and get some other responses of users and managers who have been around NetSuite for a while.

Homework

Before you go and select a new CRM, ERP or Support application, create a survey for your team and ask them what’s standing in their way, and what they want to see in the tools they use each day.  Then think very hard about what’s in it for them before you commit to an implementation.

Tips and Tricks Lessons Learned