Audaxium Blog

With the recent (re) launch of SAP’s Business ByDesign in direct competition with NetSuite, I thought that it would be useful to present some pertinent questions that should be asked if you’re investigating a new CRM/ERP application, hosted or not.

In recent years, applications have come a long way but it’s not fair to assume that some of the big names, like SAP, always have the perfect solution for your business.  And by solution I mean both the application, and the ecosystem that surrounds the app.

So lets get to some of the questions I feel are important.

What’s been the track record over the past 5 years?

Software, and especially software as a service has developed tremendously over the past few years and it’s important to understand the trajectory of the company and the application.  A series of false starts is sure to be a warning sign.  Progress need not be tremendously rapid, but always forward, and always with the needs of customers at heart.

Perhaps things were a little rough?  What steps have been taken to improve things for the now many customers the vendor has up and running.

What does an implementation look like?  How flexible is it?

Every company is different and yet, the same in many respects.   Do you have choice in how to deploy the system and who is involved in the implementation?  Can the implementation be modified to fit your needs, timing, and budget?  Are there resources readily available who can make sophisticated changes during the initial implementation, while at the same time ensuring that your company is self sufficient at running the app?

How deep is the functionality?

It’s easy these days to develop software that fulfills the check boxes required by the marketing team.  The trouble with any application is the level of sophistication the functional areas have, and how easy it is to actually use them day to day.  Perhaps the system can send email, but can it do so automatically and intelligently?  Perhaps it can track opportunities, but can it track projects, quotes, sales and tasks related to those opportunities?

If the answer to “What’s next on the product road map” contains many very simple requirements, perhaps it’s time to be cautious.

How Scalable is it?

As a customer, getting caught in a bait and switch has got to be one of the worst experiences.  It pays to avoid starting out with apps that are designed to upgrade you, at significant cost soon after you sign up.

Sometimes limits on the use or scalability of an application make sense.  If your company has 10 employees, a cap of 1000 would seem reasonable.  But a cap of 10 or 20 likely indicates that it’s an arbitrary number, defined in the marketing department and not actually a software limitation. And if the new app you’ll need to move to requires a new implementation?  You know you’re in for it.

What is the Vendor’s commitment to Accessibility?

Any SaaS vendor worth their salt can give you reasonably detailed uptime metrics on their systems.  Compare these to your own uptime metrics that, hopefully, you’re keeping in your own IT departments.  While all systems go down from time to time, including big name apps like Gmail and WordPress, having a track record, and a stated commitment to protecting your data is important.

In Closing

Hopefully these questions give you a start on asking some very reasonable questions of a potential vendor.  They’re not questions with a pre-defined acceptable answer, such as, Are you a public company? or with no good answer at all, such as What if you go out of business?

With luck these questions will get you into a dialog with your potential vendor and you can both work together to determine if their application meets your needs.

If you’d like to have that conversation with us, particularly as it pertains to NetSuite, please contact us.

Here’s a funny video from NetSuite spoofing the Apple vs Mac ads, except this time it’s SAP vs NetSuite.

There are a couple other amusing videos on the NetSuite Youtube channel.

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.

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.

Software as a service, or SaaS is a well known animal to most of us.  But, in talking with some prospects today, I realize that the average business owner doesn’t have the time, or possibly the inclination to really dig in to the benefits.

The other day I happened upon a great blog post over at the BuildingSaaS blog that summed up the primary reasons for why hosted systems benefit the customer. 

John Martin’s post is very comprehensive and he goes into some depth on each point below.  I highly encourage you to check it out.

• Upgrading the software and technology stack
• Becoming orphaned on an old software version
• Solving infrastructure software incompatibilities
• Operating the infrastructure and software
• Maintaining multiple non-production environments
• Diagnosing technical issues
• Building technical expertise for the software
• Enduring cost surprises
• Shelfware, with Maintenance Fees for Unused Software
• Platform Changes When Upgrading
• Aging Software
• Licensing Shenanigans
• Multiple Instances and Versions
• Internal Support Staff Costs
• Performance Tuning
• Waiting for Quality

Keep in mind that these benefits are all from the technology perspective and generally relate to the long term costs of maintaining your IT infrastructure.  They don’t include other benefits of hosted, multi-tenant applications that certainly apply to something like NetSuite, such as:

• Access from anywhere
• Easier system configuration
• Enterprise Level Security
• Best in Class Backup
• Highly Scalable
• etc.

The best line from his post is:

The common factor is that a SaaS vendor’s motivations are much better aligned with the customer, since the SaaS vendor’s revenue is tied to the customer’s satisfaction, retention, and software usage.

I really believe in this.  Even though it might not seem like it, if you are paying as you go for your software you can be darned sure that your software provider cares that you keep using it, much more than if you got delivered a box of software. 

It may take some time for all of us to start assigning dollars to each of these benefits to truly determine the ROI of moving to the hosted model but it’s happening, especially as those version upgrades from traditional software vendors continue to disappoint.

Over the past 2 years using and managing a NetSuite implementation I’ve seen it help reduce the impact of crazy events in a number of ways.   Certainly these are true of most “Software as a Service” applications but NetSuite stands out because of it’s ability to handle the vast majority of your critical business functions.

In my previous job, as Director of Operations at a NetSuite customer, one of my worries was what happens if some kind of big event occurs.  Even though I was fairly confident that we’d do ok with each of them I often thought through scenarios and tried to figure out the impact on the business.  

Here are some examples where I think having a SaaS system like NetSuite can really help.

Weather

If you live anywhere where you get a lot of snow on occasion you’ll have experienced the conundrum; “I’ve got a lot to do, should I risk the long drive into the office or just stay home.”  What happens when the weather is particularly bad and most people can’t make it in?  Does your office come to a grinding halt?

With NetSuite in place the standing rule can be, stay at home, work from there.  You don’t put employees at risk on the roads, and, customers and prospects can still get the service they expect.

How often do big weather systems shut down your office and strand employees at home?

Widespread Illness

Now of course everyone should stay home when they’re sick.  And you should rest.  This is normal and every office can handle a few people out.  But what happens when there is a widespread flu outbreak?  

Every business should plan for the situation where leaving the home, and coming to the office is not advisable because there is a more widespread flu outbreak or other such illness that scientists warn us about.  Could your company still operate if everyone has to stay at home?

System Failure

Most midsized and small businesses I know simply don’t have the ability to get decent redundancy in their systems.  

One customer I knew had a storage failure one day. They lost 7 years worth of company data and files.  When they went to restore using backups they found that they were corrupt and couldn’t be loaded.  They went out of business.

Fires happen. Power in your building fails.  Servers fail.  Drive Arrays Fail.  While the probability may be low just what would you do if it did occur?  Could you keep operating, either from a different location or on different hardware?

Recently a marketing team was preparing to do a promotion that needed to go out that day.  Then the power went out in the local area.  Did they get the promo out?  Of course.  Zip home, hop online and hit the “execute campaign” button.

Laptop/Desktop Failure or Change

Have you ever lost a laptop, or had a desktop fail?  Just what is on those systems?  Do sales reps keep customer data in excel files?  Is the Quickbooks database on there?  Do you have customer sensitive data on individual workstations?

Being able to simple switch machines and lose very little is a wonderful experience for both the user and the IT guy.  There’s a lot less yelling while the data is recovered.  Or a lot less crying if the machine has been lost.

Virus

I like this particular category as a separate one.  There’s a different set of probabilities involved.  How often to individual users or your server get brought to their knees by viruses?  

In my experience it happens.  Perhaps one out of ten users for a day a year.  Again, it’s very nice to be able to move a user to a different machine while removing the virus, and not have your company data at risk from them.

Almost every company has an anti-virus solution in place.  But what happens when they do hit?

Remote Access

Maintaining connection to remote offices, in a secure fashion, can often be a pain.  By having all the information hosted, in one place, there’s less to worry about and the remote office is just as productive as your own.  It’s also much easier to get a remote location up and running as you expand.

Conclusion

All these situations come down to the same thing.  Stuff Happens.  Your data can be safe and you can get access to it from anywhere.  Seems simple.

So what are you doing to make sure that this is the case for your company?  Consider: Sales, Marketing, Accounting, Customer Support, your WebStore.

But Wait!

What about my Internet Connection?  What if I lose my Internet?

This is a fairly common question.  One that I have multiple answers for.

First, it’s normally your connection, and it’s relatively painless to put in a redundant connection in the office. It’s way cheaper than redundant servers and disk arrays.

Second, internet outages tend to last for minutes, not hours.  In these cases it’s like electricity.  You can send people home and they still can work.

Third.  For remote, or on the road folks, like sales reps, it’s now fairly affordable to get them cellular wireless cards for their laptops.  Depending on where you live.  Heck, in emergencies you can access Netsuite on your iPhone or similar device.

My wife, recently, was kind enough to get me a subscription to my favorite magazine, The Economist.  In my opinion it’s got some of the best analysis of world issues, including technology, of any magazine or paper.

Last week I came across an article that mentioned NetSuite.  Check it out here.  The article discusses how, because of Moore’s Law, more and more computing power is available, but, during the recession, companies are going to instead switch to lower cost solutions that offer the same features as existing ones.

Here I think the Economist has it partially right.  There will be some companies that trade down technologies to cut costs.  But, using NetSuite as an example of a tool that does the same for less money is missing the boat.  NetSuite, and other applications like it, can enable a vast number of businesses to do far more for less money.

For the vast numbers of us employed in small businesses, we know that there is still lots of room for improvement in the tools we use today.  Putting in place NetSuite can really be a giant step forward to all those companies out there who are outgrowing Quickbooks or Sage BusinessVision.

This article was prompted by this post by Michael Fauscette, an analyst at IDC who’s blog I read.  Frankly, his post has been bothering me all day.

NetSuite Cases

Michael comments about how Salesforce.com has announced that customers can sign up for a service that will tie in a customer support application to facebook, google, etc.  He seems to validate that “Salesforce.com claims that over 2/3′s of all customer service conversations will take place in the cloud” and then describes how the application works.

Michael begins his article by saying that he hates calling IVR or voice recognition systems and this is what drives him to social networks for support.

To me it seems like the problem that needs to be solved is not, “How do I give support to customers on Facebook” but how do I build a great support system for my customers.  And it is this topic I’d like to address, along with my thinking on why this announcement by Salesforce will mean little to the vast majority of small and medium sized businesses.

What to do

Don’t use voice recognition exclusively - Lets give us all, including Mr Fauscette, a break.  Those systems don’t work well enough yet.  Always give your caller an out to get to a live person in one key press.

Have multiple support points of entry – Different customers want different methods of contacting you.  These will obviously include phone, and email but should also include a web form, perhaps live chat, and social media pages and contact points.

Have enough Resources – It may not be easy to provide the people you need to answer questions in tough times but just remember its about expectation management.  If you make it appear like you can get a person in 5 minutes, and it takes 60, people will be angry.  If they know it will take 4 hours for a call back, at least they’ll know.

Consider managing your inbound support calls in a way that spreads the demand out over time and makes better use of your support teams time.  Collecting cases via email and calling customers back actually can help manage this quite effectively. 

Track all issues – This might sound obvious but many smaller companies don’t have a system like NetSuite or one of it’s competitors to capture all the emails, phone calls, and web form submissions.  If customers know their issue is being tracked then they’ll feel better that someone has got the ball.

Build a Knowledge Base – Don’t waste your teams work by not capturing what they learn.  As time goes by, and the knowledge base grows, your team should be able to respond faster and faster to issues.  This takes some time to manage, keep clean and up to date, and polished, but the ROI is significant.

Measure the full Experience - Many companies measure how long a case takes to close, or the time of the call.  Make sure that you have a way of measuring how long it takes a customer to find you, get through your menus and get to a live person, or to the answer they need.   Monitor this often!

Provide Visibility – When building a support team you have 3 groups who need visibility on cases and their status.  Your own team should be able to see the big picture of open and inbound cases. Your companies management team should be able to see, in real time, what’s happening in support land.  And your customer should be able to see case statuses online, update them, close and reopen them.

How? - There are a lot of systems that can help you do this.  Obviously NetSuite has been able to do these things for quite some time.  

What not to do

Turn off a point of contact – A number of companies, for some reason, end up turning off one point of contact or another.  Sometimes it’s email, sometimes it’s phone.  Doing this is very rarely a solution.  If your system can handle the multiple inbounds, change the system. Don’t railroad customers. It sucks

Dead End a Path – My pet peeve is when I go down a path to get help and it stops. Nothing says “go away” to a client than having your phone system say “Goodbye” or “this email inbox, support@company.com is no longer monitored”.  The other day I called a company and the message came on, “Our call times are longer than normal, please call back again later.  *click”  At least let me leave a message.

Ignore the Web – It is true that your customers are talking about you.  Online.  But if you’re reading a blog you get that.  Monitor the places your customers are talking and get engaged.  I recently got help from a rep of Polar, the heart rate monitor makers, online via twitter, and it made me a superfan instantly.

Getting online and joining or building communities is where we are headed, and where many customers now expect you to be.  Get there.

Why Automating Social Media Support may not work

It’s too broad for effective capture - Support works best when customers have confidence that where they are leaving a question is going to get an authoritative reply. Perhaps if this is on your company facebook page, this might work.  

Noise to Signal Ratio - Customers talk about a lot of things.  If you monitor twitter for NetSuite, you’ll get lots of random comments, or even “netsuite help”.  It’s better to direct customers to a support mechanism that works via these tools then try and filter out the random comments from the customers that need assistance.

Entitlement - As much as we all want support to be “free” it rarely is.  A good support system will ensure that the customer getting help is identified and is entitled to help, or, is encouraged to do what is necessary to get official help.  It’ll be difficult to do this on the cloud.

Size Matters - Obviously if you’re a SME your customer base is similarly sized.  This is true for the vast majority of companies.  Picking them out of the crowd online in an automated way will be difficult.  Build a good system, and they will come, mainly.  This announced integration will only be truly valuable for a few large companies who want to offload a vast number of customers onto the web to chat amongst themselves and help each other.  Not a bad thing, but not for everyone.

Conclusion

In this day and age there’s no excuse for bad customer support.  It’s a choice as to how good your company is at it.  Don’t make people like Mr Fauscette swear at a phone system that’s not recording their voice.

How can you tell that people need information 24 hours a day?  By seeing when they log in to their most important work application.  

And just in case you’re stuck in the last decade, that’s not their email.

This is a graph that shows the number of logins of a company that uses NetSuite.  My first NetSuite implementation.

It clearly shows that while there’s a lot of logins in the morning, there are quite a few in the early hours in the morning.  

Even when many users are deskbound, they will log in at all hours to clean up issues, check their calendar, and check on things.

If you have a system that limits users, and their connectivity to the system based on either time or location, then you’ll simply miss out on giving your employees information when they want to consume it.

Yes, they do have a few night owls… Strange but true.

The Holidays are winding down, and while I am stuck in the middle of nowhere I have managed to gain reliable access to the web.  

I’ve been wanting to re-write this post for some time.  There’s a lot of reasons to take a look at NetSuite.  As a customer of 2 years, looking back, these don’t all match with why we picked NetSuite, but they are the ones that stuck.

This list is meant to give some food for thought.  Different companies are going to have different viewpoints based on their needs and processes.

10 – Role Based

One of the things nice things about NetSuite is the fine detail you have when you design different roles for users within your organization.  Of course, this means that it’s important to understand what all of the hundreds of permissions do.  But that just takes time or a little help.

NetSuite, by default, has the permissions of the default roles very close to what you’ll need people to be able, and not able, to do, and they have the commands laid out in a fairly nice manner relative to where you’d expect them to be.  This allows you to get started with NetSuite a fair bit quicker then you would be able to to if you had to build the layouts by role from scratch.  Most of the roles we used were pretty standard but we did copy the default roles and then tweaked them over time.