The Executive Edge Newsletter October 2007
Delivering Customer Value: Innovative Approaches to Customer Success
Customer Support Resources
Growth Outside the Core
SAP Business All-in-One News
Upcoming Events
Past Events
Delivering Customer Value: Innovative Approaches to Customer Success
Smaller companies generally have an easier time knowing their best customers and supporting their needs. As they grow, though, this level of personal engagement can become harder to maintain. As a result, there’s a risk that important customers can feel shortchanged.
The most successful companies work to ensure that this doesn’t happen, because they understand that maintaining a strong relationship with customers is important for continued growth. Beyond simply gaining additional business with that account, customers can provide essential feedback on new products and services. In addition, customers can serve – formally or informally – as reference accounts to strengthen marketing efforts.
Delivering customer satisfaction and value today involves much more than delivering the products and services customers want. It means enhancing the relationship, improving the quality of the engagement and providing access to timely information. These factors can be just as important in sustaining a strong relationship as the products and services delivered.
Effective access to information, which is an important part of customer intimacy, includes both external information access (for the customer) and internal access to information (for key sales and accounting staff). Externally, this access can be useful for self-managed resources, so customers can get details on their account status and order delivery whenever they want. Internally, staff can have access to similar customer information so they can have a greater understanding of the nature of customer profitability over time.
In this exclusive white paper, IDC analysts Raymond Boggs and Mary Wardley look at ways to deliver customer value. They explore the customer value experience from both the internal and external perspectives, and discuss how companies can ensure that their customers have access to the critical information that will make them successful and want to keep doing business, and how businesses can make sure their own people have access to the resources they need to sustain value from the customer’s perspective.
Customer Support Resources
Find out more about the latest practices in providing customer support from these sites:
CRM Today
www.crm2day.com
CRM Today is a leading online community for professionals involved in a variety of customer issues and functions. The site includes news articles and features related to customer support and service.
Patricia Seybold Group
This consulting firm offers resources, including some free downloads, to help companies increase customer loyalty and make it easier for customers to do business with them.
Association of Support Professionals
The Association of Support Professionals is an international membership organization for customer support managers and professionals. The ASP publishes research reports on a wide range of support topics.
CRM Magazine
CRM magazine provides a host of feature articles related to customer service and support issues. This page includes links to conferences and other resources on customer support.
CRM Buyer
Provides news and feature articles and advice on a variety of customer value issues. The site also has in-depth white papers on CRM technology.
CRM Advocate
CRM Advocate provides a variety of sources of information concerning technologies, strategies and trends for customer relationship management and contact centers. It offers industry news, webcasts, case studies, white papers, research and product information.
Growth Outside the Core
Growth in an adjacent market is harder than it looks: the effort fails three out of four times. But companies can change those odds dramatically. In this article from Harvard Business Review, authors Chris Zook and James Allen review a five-year Bain & Co. study. It shows how successful companies have outgrown their rivals by developing a formula for pushing out the boundaries of their core businesses.
SAP Business All-in-One News
Wellborn Cabinet Improves Processes, Boosts Online Orders
Wellborn Cabinet Inc., a manufacturer of semi-custom wooden cabinets and drawers for kitchens and bathrooms, implemented the SAP for Mill Products portfolio, including the SAP ERP application and the SAP Business Information Warehouse component (now the NetWeaver Business Intelligence component). The result: improved engineering processes, increased online orders, and enhanced tracking of project costs and budgets.Learn more
How CIOs Can Help Manage Change
Learn how your organization can improve the selection and deployment of its business applications and other systems by focusing on the change that will impact end users. View this webcast and find out how IT executives can improve change management and closely align technology projects with business objectives.
Learn more
Qualified SAP Business All-in-One Partner Solutions Guide
Find out more about the innovative industry-specific and horizontal business solutions developed by SAP Business All-in-One partners.
Learn more
Upcoming Events
IndustryWeek Webcast
The Shrinking World: How it Affects Small and Midsized Manufacturers
October 17, 2007
Click here to register
Discover True Business Focus with the
Power of SAP and IBM
October 25, 2007
Lisle, IL
itelligence and Logicalis invite you to learn why companies are investing in SAP software and support services to manage their businesses with new levels of confidence and performance, without compromising internal resources or time. Mid-market companies often hesitate when considering SAP, worried that implementation will monopolize IT staff and budget and jeopardize organizational focus. This event will highlight how an investment in the unsurpassed power of affordable SAP software helps businesses stay focused on their unique challenges and opportunities.
Click here to view invitation and register
Past Events
July
MBT Podcast
Midsize Company Differs from Competitors with Innovative Manufacturing Approaches
Featured Speaker: Don Brekke, Vice President Information Technology, Greenheck Fan
Click here to listen
August
MBT Podcast
The Role of Information Technology in Lean Production
Featured Speaker: Miles Burd, Sr. Business Analyst, Wilson Tool
Click here to listen
IndustryWeek Webcast
The Make-To-Order Journey: Understanding the Lean Foundation for Rapid Order-to-Cash Cycles
Featured Speaker: Tony Gorski, President, DemandPoint
Click here to view
September
IndustryWeek Webcast
Implementing Lean/Six Sigma in Complex Industries
Featured Speaker: Terry Burton, President, The Center for Excellence in Operations, Inc. (CEO)
Click here to view
MBT Podcast
The Globally Integrated Enterprise
Featured Speaker: Cindy Jutras, Vice President, Aberdeen
Click here to listen
Industrial Distribution Webcast
Turn a Profit, Not Just Your Inventory
Featured Speaker: Carl Johnson, CEO, Drywall Supply
Click here to view
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