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November 2019
Best in Class
CRM
Solution Providers in 2019
Expert's Outlook Open Source Trends to Watch for 2019
Women Power Dynamics of Women Participation in the Everchanging Modern Workforce
Industry Insights Innovation Management -An Integral Part of the Business
Indy Sarker Co-founder & CEO
Helping Broker-Dealers and Banks drive high value engagement with their customers
EDITOR’S NOTE It is thus, Needed!
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elationships' are the most crucial factor in human lives, aren't they? Whether oriented to personal or professional lives, maintaining a healthy relationship only brings out fruitful benefits to one. Even in the top-notch businesses, maintaining diplomatic as well as friendly relationship with customers and clients, is more of a need than a want. Thus, the requisite of a reliable Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has increased. Though the markets are filled with many CRM solutions providers, the number of them being promising enough is quite less. Any organization should understand the depth Why there is a need of implicating such aspect in their businesses and What problems they are facing of its absence. With an all-encompassing CRM solution, organizations might have a chance to proceed on various others business-related work rather rather leveraging more time and resources on one. In this special edition 'Best in Class CRM Solution Providers in 2019', CIO Look emphasizes on some of the trustworthy and leading CRM solution providers who have immensely contributed in this ever-evolving industry.
Best in Class
CRM
Solution Providers in 2019
Here is the cover featuring ANALEC—a leading financial technology company offering platforms and solutions in the investment research and related client servicing space, working with a range of broker dealers and investment banks globally. The investment research and related client servicing business model is under structural pressure. Technology innovation and service level differentiation are integral to the success of Broker-Dealers and Investment Banks. With an intent to make them more competitive and productive and above all help them engage their clients in ways that lead to a longer lasting and profitable relationship, ANALEC was established. The company combines deep domain knowledge of its client's business and its ability to leverage the most appropriate technologies to design workflow and process automation and client servicing solutions, helping them to build more profitable and sustainable customer engagement while boosting their competitive position in the marketplace. Let's unveil such alike, inspiring interviews and stories of many such significant organizations in this special edition and spread a word about their contribution in making this world a better place. Also, flip through the CXO standpoints presented by some of the leading industry experts to taste the glimpse of industrial revolutions. Enjoy the read.....
Bhushan Ghate
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C ON T E N T S
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COVER STORY
ANALEC Helping Broker-Dealers and Banks drive high value engagement with their customers
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Datix: Enhancing Businesses with Integrated Software Solutions
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Women Power:Dynamics of Women Participation in the Ever-changing Modern Workforce
Expert’s Outlook: Open Source Trends to Watch for 2019
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eWay System s.r.o.: Delivering E ective CRM Solutions Globally
Focus: Building Success into Sales Organization
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Leader’s Take: The Key to Secure Digital Transformation
vtenext: The CRM with a BPM Heart!
Industry Insights:Innovation Management An Integral Part of the Business
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K. Roy Editor-in-Chief
CONTENT
Senior Editor Alan Swann Managing Editor Bhushan Ghate Executive Editors Sourabh More
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November, 2019
Indy Sarker, Co-founder & CEO
Cover Story
Helping Broker-Dealers and Banks drive high value engagement with their customers
ur deep domain knowledge of global Capital Markets puts us in a unique position to meet the business challenges and ambitions of our customers.
The investment research and related client servicing business model is under structural pressure. Technology innovation and service level differentiation are integral to the success of Broker-Dealers and Investment Banks. With an intent to make them more competitive and productive and above all help them engage their clients in ways that lead to a longer lasting and profitable relationship, ANALEC was established. ANALEC is a leading financial technology company offering platforms and solutions in the investment research and related client servicing space, working with a range of brokerdealers and investment banks globally. The company combines deep domain knowledge of its client's business and its ability to leverage the most appropriate technologies to design workflow and process automation and client servicing solutions, helping them to build more profitable and sustainable customer engagement while boosting their competitive position in the marketplace. The inspiration behind ANALEC came from the core team's own experience working in large investment banks and broker-dealers where process automation and intelligent workflow solutions were at best clunky and cost the banks millions of dollars to create and maintain. The company wished to address specific efficiency challenges in the areas of content authoring and publication, workflow compliance and content delivery in the investment research space and boosting customer service engagement levels via its cutting-edge CRM platform for capital markets. All of the above while ensuring a compelling total-cost-of-ownership argument on the technology spend. ANALEC since its inception has built long lasting client relationships. Many of its customers have renewed their subscription contracts on the company's platforms year after year, in some cases relationships spanning over 13 years. One of the ingenious minds behind the inception of the company is Indy Sarker. As the Co-founder and CEO, Indy has been integrally involved from the very onset of the company. Indy spent over 12 years in capital markets (prior to ANALEC) and was an Institutional Investor (II) ranked analyst. Indy along with his colleague Colin Stone brought the fundamental building blocks of the business with Indy bringing the business domain knowledge of capital markets and Colin bringing the technical expertise to create world class software. ANALEC chose to build a technology center in India and over the years has built a global delivery model out of India office with Consultants and domain specialists based in the United States to cater to the US marketplace.
ANALEC’s proposition has been to build world class software platforms that addresses acute workflow and client servicing challenges at its customer organizations, while ensuring the data collected into the client servicing process drive insightful analytics to aid business decision-making around service levels and resource allocation. Indy is supported closely by Colin Stone – CTO and Chief Product Architect - and Lalit Raj – Director of Client Engagement. Colin brings a deep understanding of the capital markets place. As a technology leader, Colin works closely with the customer base to ensure the company has a “solution” for most of their needs, pertaining to its area of involvement with its customer. In addition, Colin supports the internal product development and innovation roadmap at ANALEC, with the view to keep ANALEC’s capabilities cutting edge and contemporary always in the marketplace. Lalit Raj has over 12 years at the firm and has built world class customer engagement capabilities across the ANALEC organization, as well as worked closely with the team on various client implementation mandates both in Asia Pacific as well as the United States. Lalit remains closely connected with each customer of ANALEC on an on-going basis, in order to ensure that the company has the best solution and engagement model in place for each client organization. Three of them have set a work culture that is of a complete meritocracy with enormous opportunities to individuals and groups to seek greater responsibility and ownership in their career growth aspirations. The company works in a collegiate environment with each team member assessed on teamwork and participation, while ensuring a keen focus on its customer needs and aspirations. ANALEC’s platforms cater to specific business challenges being faced by the broker-dealer and investment banking firms servicing their institutional investor client base. Firms providing investment research led financial insights and recommendations to institutional money managers are facing significant structural challenges in their business models, such as range of compliance controls, reporting, and the commercial model supporting their business models in the marketplace. ANALEC’s CRM helps research analysts, salespeople and the trading professionals to ensure their levels of service remain the most relevant to their customer base and supports a (service level) prioritization that reflects
ColinStone CTO
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ur technology stack and cloud deployment allows us the ability to swiftly respond to our customer needs at all times.�
Lalit Raj Director – Client Engagement
e put our customers at the center of our thought process and work tirelessly to meet their aspirations.”
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In summary, its CRM for capital markets – ANALEC ClientManager - ensures more transparency across the service value-chain, while driving intelligent and insightful decision-making to support the profitability of the business. ANALEC's commercial model focusses on total-cost-of-ownership of the technology on its platforms by its customer organization, with an acute focus on delivering a strong ROI rationale for the business. The company’s product suite – ANALEC ResearchWise offering on the research authoring, workflow & compliance and content distribution front, once again delivers enormous workflow automation and productivity benefits and delivers innovative client engagement solutions around the research product (at the broker-dealers and banks) when it comes to servicing their institutional client base. The challenges in the marketplace as a result of regulatory change in Europe under the MiFID II regime as well as US investors adopting certain provisions of the MiFID II regime as best practices in a "commission unbundled", poses business model challenges to brokerdealers in the US. ANALEC's technology solutioning has consistently focused on raising the commercial viability of its customers while addressing their challenges from technology perspective, both on the workflow as well as decision-making analytics to support the business. “Doing more with less” has been the mantra for ANALEC when it comes to empowering its customers on its platforms and helping them achieve their commercial goals. According to ANALEC, there are many roadblocks that an organization can face over a length of time. The first challenge is to execute successfully to build the capability necessary to deliver a proposition to the customer base. The second hurdle is to win over customers to their proposition and finally to ensure they build long-lasting customer relationships.
Indy Sarker, CEO states “The success of ANALEC rests disproportionately on the quality of human capital and resources that come together on this common pursuit. ANALEC has been very fortunate to have a solid team of high energy professionals that always have gone beyond their call of duty to make ANALEC a success in the marketplace.” ANALEC over the years has never shied away from making the investments necessary to continuously innovate and keep its product suites cutting edge and contemporary in the marketplace. Customer feedback and engagement drives many of the items in any future roadmap at ANALEC, while at the same time ANALEC showcase new technology solutions proactively to its prospects and client base. When it comes to impacting change with compassion in society, ANALEC has been a strong believer in “giving back” right from the onset, having initiated a social contribution to well deserving causes over the years. Presently, ANALEC is closely involved with the Miracle Foundation to help orphanages and orphans in India. ANALEC aspires to be the solution provider of choice to Broker-Dealers and Investment Banks. Additionally, its long-term aspiration is to expand its customer reach to a wider audience to help them better manage their data and content across the organization while fulfilling internal reporting and compliance objectives and ensuring intelligent content distribution.
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Testimonials “The ANALEC team was very dedicated to the task of implementation. They also demonstrated a high degree of flexibility in working with us.” - Managing Director and Head of Research, at a leading investment bank “ANALEC’s deep knowledge of the investment research and sales & trading space makes them stand out as a service provider in the marketplace. They are extremely receptive and swift in meeting our requirements.” - Managing Director, Head of Equities, at a Pan Asian financial institution
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the current as well as future importance of a client institution to the business. Increasingly, services consumed by the client base drives both transparency requirements (under the "unbundled commission" regime being adopted by most institutional money managers) as well as better client profitability targeting by the service providers (i.e., broker-dealers and investment banks). The company provides not only the technology capability to track services delivered and consumed by the client (of the bank or broker-dealer), but also drive insightful analytics that aids proactive decision-making.
“ANALEC’s onsite team’s technical expertise, business acumen and passion for their work, combined with the quality of their product suite are top-tier.” - Director, Global Research, at a US based investment bank
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Matt Schuval CEO
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Datix
Enhancing Businesses with Integrated Software Solutions
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ith over 20 years of experience, Datix, a leading enterprise software consulting firm based in St. Louis, is transforming businesses through its quality solutions and services. The company is providing a wide range of solutions to multiple manufacturing and distribution industries. These solutions include ERP, CRM, eCommerce, BI and Disaster Recovery. Considering the seamless services and integrated solutions, CIO Look recognizes Datix as one of the best in class CRM solution providers in 2019.
By serving as a onestop shop for premier solutions and services, Datix empowers clients to transform their businesses through software.
Below are highlights from the interview conducted between Datix and CIO Look: What led to the inception of the company? Datix was founded with the vision to provide premier software solutions and services under one roof. Though St. Louis has long been home to thriving manufacturers and distributors, our city hasn't always had local enterprise technology firms to support these organizations. We strived to fill this gap by partnering with diverse software vendors and employing dedicated consultants and developers to help businesses optimize performance from the top floor to the shop floor. Since we opened our doors, we’ve grown to become one of the country’s leading software consulting firms. How do you diversify the organization’s offerings to appeal to the target audience? Our mission is to serve as a one-stop shop for midmarket discrete manufacturers and value-added distributors. To do that, we listen closely to our clients to understand their pain points, work with premier vendors and constantly add new solutions and services. We’ve long
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been the only certified partner of Epicor, Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM and Salesforce, making us a leader in both ERP and CRM implementations, integrations and consulting. Earlier this year, we started offering Microsoft Azure cloud hosting, Jet Analytics and EverSafe! Backup and Disaster Recovery to further serve our clients. By constantly capitalizing on exciting opportunities, we continuously grow to help clients transform their businesses from start to finish.
What marketing activities do you implement to reach out to your potential customers? Datix is the most recent recipient of Epicor's coveted Marketing Excellence Award. We earned this award by providing comprehensive content that pertains to the most pressing needs of midmarket manufacturers and distributors. We extensively research trends and strategies in multiple industries and share our knowledge about CRM best practices and other software solutions. We share these insights in our blog, downloadable content, video demos site and social media platforms. Our resources are designed to provide relevant tips at every stage of our audience's software journey.
Describe your CRM offerings. Manufacturers and distributors don't always have their sales processes and front-office technology at the top of their minds, but a CRM solution is essential to develop customer-centric operations and gain a competitive advantage. Datix is a certified partner of two of the leading CRM vendors: Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM and Salesforce. For over 20 years, we’ve been a CRM-agnostic firm committed to helping clients select the right solution and align it with their specific processes. With our Unity integration solution, our consultants can rapidly connect CRM with Epicor ERP to create a single source of truth. With implementations, integrations, upgrades, customizations and more under one roof, Datix has everything a business needs to maximize the value of their CRM investment.
How does the company cope with the volatile technological trends to boost its growth? At Datix, we don't look at technological trends as volatile; we look at them as opportunities. Our consultants and developers never back down from a challenge and are always exploring innovations that can optimize our solutions. But ultimately, our focus is on the needs of our clients. Unity, for example, is an integration solution created after we found that businesses were struggling to connect their software systems. It is the only pre-built integration solution that is fully managed by certified experts and rapidly installed to seamlessly connect Epicor with CRM, Marketing Automation or eCommerce software. Unity is a prime example of how we stay ahead of digital trends without losing sight of the client.
Give a detailed description of the featured person’s influence over the company and the industry. As President of the Epicor Partner Council, Matt Schuval is a thought leader in the Epicor community. He also has proven expertise in Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM and Salesforce. He leverages his extensive experience in accounting and executive roles to deliver practical solutions to manufacturers and distributors. His vision and leadership skills have transformed Datix into one of the top enterprise software consulting firms in the U.S. Never satisfied, Matt is always exploring new ways to elevate our practices and meet the needs of each client.
Describe in detail the work culture and the values that drive your company. At Datix, we adhere to four core values: having each other’s back, pursuing growth and learning, solving real issues and doing what it takes. Strong teamwork drives us to go the extra mile to develop new solutions, complete certifications and support our clients. Whether it’s driving all night because there was a flight cancellation or spending the weekend to make sure a go live is a nonevent on Monday, we work hard to help each other and make every project a success. These efforts never go unnoticed; we take the time to acknowledge the accomplishments and dedication of individual team members.
As per your opinion, what roadblocks or challenges are faced by organizations in a corporate business? And what is your organization’s advice to overcome them? Most of our clients have found great success operating the same technology and following the same methodology for decades, but at some point, they find themselves at a crossroads. Globalization, customer demands and the fast pace of digital innovation push them to the breaking point, but they still have a hard time accepting change. Our advice is to embrace change. New technology and strategies are essential to survive well into the future. But don’t take on these changes alone. Businesses are susceptible to great risk if they try to put together a solid IT roadmap and change management plan without expert consultants guiding them through the process.
What are Datix’s future aspirations? What strategies are you undertaking to achieve those goals? Our goal is to continue providing more resources across multiple regions and expand our solutions and services. Our firm is adding on new certified professionals with extensive experience in a diverse range of manufacturing and distribution environments. We plan to keep up this momentum and offer reliable support to our clients for many more years to come.
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Dynamics of
Participation in the Ever-changing Modern Workforce
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Women Power
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Collaboration, and not the cutthroat competition, is the modern era’s principle virtue to achieve success. Many endeavours which seem to be beyond the bounds of possibility can be attained by combining efforts from different resources, channels and departments. Further, collaborating products with consumer experience are enormously important. It leads to crafting the best solutions for customer’s pain points and compelling value propositions that reflect their overall business objectives.
one are the days when women were stereotyped to a certain set of skills and professions, restricting them from exploring the world of endless opportunities. Today, women have announced their arrival in many fields of the business world. Therefore, it seems more important than ever before to recognize female contributions in every profession. Fighting through biased work culture in favour of male dominance, women have conquered the unconquered on the account of their distinct calibre and predilections. In the times when the world female participation rate is to the dispiriting levels of around 67% and pay-off rate of about 63%, achievements by women go-getters are praiseworthy.
Multiple studies have found that women prefer to work in teams, while men prefer to work alone. An unfaltering affinity towards collaboration primes women to garner success in different fields of business which gives them an edge over others. Increased profitability can be a motivating factor for many firms to hire more pool of female talents as many studies support the fact. Statistical research shows that Fortune 500 companies with the highest representation of women on boards financially outperform companies with the lowest representation of women on boards. Moreover, gender-diverse teams have higher sales and profits compared to male-dominated teams, and a recent Gallup study found that gender-diverse business units have higher average revenue than less diverse business units.
Listening capabilities is one of the distinguishing aspects of feminine species as compared to their male counterparts. Instilling and pursuing ones thoughts is undoubtedly important for effective working. But being a better listener is something that can make a difference as studies show that the customer values and trusts the firms if they perceive that they are being listened to by the firms. With inherent caring and affectionate traits, women outclass men when it comes to understanding critical demands of the customers. Emotional Intelligence (EI) - the ability to identify and manage one’s own emotions as well as the emotions of others - is an essential skill when it comes to dealing with a diverse class of consumers. Women are naturally gifted with higher EI making them better suited for pressure situations and avoiding counter-productive decisions while keeping emotions in check.
Trust over female leaders is an attribute which needs to be reciprocated while making the choice. More American workers perceive female executives as honest and ethical than male executives. Pew’s “Women and Leadership” surveyed Americans in 2015 and found that 34% say women are better at this, while only 3% say men are better at it (64% say there’s no difference).
Emotional Intelligence encompasses two major dimensions – awareness of one’s self and awareness of others. Both the attributes are very much significant for the survival and success of any organisation. Selfawareness involves being familiar with trigger points and behavioural traits when put to the test. This, in turn, helps to modulate impulses avoiding conclusions which are harmful for the welfare of business. In addition to selfawareness, an awareness of others is equally critical in business. Analysing and decoding non-verbal communication – that amounts to 93% of the message – eventually benefits in convincing and converting a lead into a client.
While it’s unclear whether this means women are actually more honest, it’s a subtle reminder of how tangled some business decisions can be. Leaders are often tasked with choosing between options that aren’t black and white, ethically speaking, and the capacity to lead honestly is important to the entire company’s success and job satisfaction. Not to mention, increased job satisfaction and organizational dedication to cite positive and meaningful business culture are the added advantages feminine employees carry to the organisation. However, the journey is not all merry go round every time.
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Hindrances – seen, unseen – are there to check the unrelenting zeal of women aspirants to thrive in the industry. These obstructions need to be pointed out and rectified to create an environment that fuels women empowerment.
Women are generally uneasy about asking for what they want. They must stop thinking about what they need as a self-serving request. They must develop the courage and fortitude to stand up and ask for what they want. While proving value, women tend to overcompensate in order to demonstrate that they are adding value. Instead of doing it all alone, change the paradigm and track to encourage others to take on more responsibility, thus enabling them to scale and multiply their own impact.
Lack of confidence, according to many experts, is one prime reason women tend to question themselves and doubt their worthiness. In order to advance, they must coach their inner critics. Out-speak and define what women want professionally if they want to get succeeded. Too often they don’t know or rely upon others to define it for them.
Not to forget, biased work culture and regional barriers are the crucial obstacles in the road of women work participation. But, today women are breaking these shackles and coming out boldly to be a part of economic processes shouldering their male counterparts. There has been obvious progress in achieving gender equality around the world over the past two decades: more girls are attending school, more women are working and are being elected to public offices, more women hold management positions, and the situation involving women’s legal as well as social rights have also improved.
“Building relationships with those in positions of leadership is critical,” Susan Brady, executive vice president of Linkage Inc. says. “Put down the to-do list long enough to connect with decision makers across the organization, and help them understand who you are and what you bring to the table.”
However, a great deal still remains to be done to achieve equal outcomes for women and men. Recognizing women’s abilities, the values they bring to the organisation, the transformation they achieve as far as work environment is concerned, and considering monetary benefits associated with the female work participation, corporate sector need to welcome their emergence with open arms. No future is far where maledominated workplaces will be a tale of extinct, we believe.
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Expert’s Outlook
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ollowing several mergers and acquisition this year, 2019 will see open source investments starting to pay even more dividends. Given how it has become the driving force behind much of the world’s cloud-based systems, companies need to keep a close eye on the open source trends that could impact their strategies for the months to come.
Providing even more impetus for this is the recent launch of what many consider to be South Africa’s first truly digital bank. Focusing on ‘behavioral’ banking, all its systems are cloud-based highlighting the security, availability, and redundancy of going this route. Moreover, it is built on open standards all but giving the death knell to those who think proprietary is still the preferred method of doing business.
With deals such as Microsoft and Github as well IBM and Red Hat, this open source-driven environment will see organizations in a position to take the best aspects of these businesses and come up with something truly great. Thanks to the growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the resultant explosion in data points, companies understand that they need the resources of cloud-based systems to extract the most relevant insights.
Next year will be an intriguing one to see where the cloud and the open standards approach will be heading. Strap in and enjoy the ride.
About Obsidian Systems Obsidian Systems is an established supplier of Open Source software solutions. The company was started in 1995 as a services provider targeting businesses and organizations looking to integrate and leverage off Linux infrastructure. Obsidian Systems has expanded its knowledge base in partnership with subsidiaries Cape Town based Autumn Leaf and GuruHut.
The days of relying exclusively on proprietary solutions to do this are long gone. Open standards have become part of the approach many organizations take towards implementing technology innovation. And those that have not done so yet, will soon follow as they seek to find relevance in an increasingly digital (and connected) world. This will also likely impact the cost of solutions. Using open standards is resulting in products being developed faster as data is analyzed in virtually real-time. Understand what customers want and providing the customization to do so, have become integral to the operating environment today. And the secret to this must be the open source foundation on which this is built.
The expansion of skills is now a formidable team with Java™ expertise aligning our Enterprise Open Source solution for retail, supporting technology and consulting services across enterpriseready open source infrastructure, big data, collaboration and agile IT strategies for your business. Obsidian Systems and its subsidiaries strive to bring three legs to the South African market: the first being vendor-certified products, the second bein g local skills providing consulting, development and support and the third being vendor-certified training and certification. With these three elements, any organization can trust the enterprise open source solution provided.
Local changes The imminent arrival of several international data centers in South Africa (two from Microsoft and one from Amazon Web Services) will have a significant positive impact on the local market. This not only shows those skeptical of the cloud that investments are being made, but, more importantly, South Africa is viewed as a platform for growth into the rest of the continent when it comes to the cloud (and open source). The evolving landscape is seeing business requirements also shifting. Next year will see a veritable land rush for position in the cloud environment. More C-suite decision-makers are open to going, well, open, and vendors and service providers are clamoring for market position.
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eWay Systems s.r.o. Delivering Effective CRM Solutions Globally
ustomer Relationship Management tops the food chain aspect in almost every industry. Being the most efficient approach in maintaining and creating relationships with customers, it has ensured itself a significant stature in business. Meet eWay Systems s.r.o. — a CRM solutions provider which offers professional CRM software for MS Outlook that helps its clients to grow and focus on essential concerns of the organizations.
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no cost. Hundreds of people use this software because they want something easy to start with, or because they are determined and highly organized freelancers who are good with a single license. Whereas, eWay-CRM Premium is designed for teams that need to share data across the organization, to work with user permissions and to use advanced features. The company states that many users of eWay-CRM Free eventually switch to Premium.
CIO LOOK admire such organizations and appreciate their contribution in evolution of business management sector.
eWay-CRM Premium can be bought as a lifetime license or as a monthly subscription. The company understands the requirements vary for every company, thus they offer both lifetime and monthly subscription. The company can deliver eWay-CRM as an on-premise solution, or as hosted on its cloud. Most of eWay competitors provide cloud-based tools, however the company still gets a lot of inquiries for the “old fashion server-side installations”. There are still a lot of companies who do not trust clouds and want to keep data under their control.
Below is eWay’s story: The idea of eWay System s.r.o. was first emerged, around 11 years ago, under the parent banner of MEMOS Software. They created a custom-made software with a main purpose to help international law firms to track matters or data and related communication. Since the product looked very promising, it was soon transformed into a CRM / Project Management tool called eWay-CRM. They put together a team of enthusiastic professionals and began to function as a brand new company.
The company strongly believes in content marketing. While creating content, it focuses more on STDC strategy, that means ‘See, Think, Do and Care’. In the ‘See’ stage, the person only sees a piece of information which he or she has no idea about and eWay helps them understand what CRM means. ‘Think’ is when its potential client starts thinking about actually purchasing a CRM software and have to provide them
The company provides two editions of its product – eWay-CRM Free and eWay-CRM Premium. eWay-CRM Free is a single user version available for individuals at
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eWay Systems s.r.o.
Best in Class CRM Solution Providers in 2019
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Listen, learn and work hard. Success never comes easy.
Jan Lalinsky CEO & Co-founder
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Jan Lalinsky & Roman Stefko co-founders of eWay-CRM
with arguments. The third stage, ‘Do’, is the most important for the company as it needs to persuade the client to choose its solution. However, it also invests lots of the company’s energy into the ’Care’ stage, which is mainly represented by short articles with tips. Later, good content needs to reach the target audience thus the company is available on all popular social media like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube. At eWay, the teams keep trying new formats, such as the recently presented eWay-Podcasts.
when and where they work. Thus, eWay-CRM is integrated with Microsoft Outlook allowing it to provide an offline CRM so that people do not need to rely on a fast and stable internet connection. The company has an iOS and Android app that can be used on the go, that helps to keep company data in everybody’s pocket. It is working on an online web interface so that its customers can use whatever device they prefer to. Opinion of an Impeccable Leader “My main goal when starting the new project was to create a globally successful product, something familiar and popular with people from all around the world. I believed such a company could be founded even without grants, investors, and loans,” says Jan Lalinsky.
eWay-CRM states that it is happy to welcome any team member who is dedicated to work. All teams work hard to achieve their goals and love to celebrate new milestones together. “Every person counts!,” exemplifies the company’s motto. Based on customer feedback, it knows that the company already has a great product and needs to tell the world it can deliver a tool that will help them grow. Its Unique Selling Proposition of eWay is a CRM in Outlook thus, its customer does not need to spend ages learning how to use a new software. They simply use Outlook, but they achieve more with it!
The CEO and Co-founder of eWay also adds,“thought became even clearer as I watched the ongoing trends. Startups in particular often try to get the attention of investors. I understand that a financial injection is able to give the business a drive, however, I would be concerned about losing the freedom in my business. You start being pushed away from your philosophy toward the views of your investor or you are forced to make enough money to pay installments to the bank. Therefore, you sometimes make decisions you should not make if it was just up to you. A strong investor can significantly change the image and structure of a company. That is something I have personally never wanted to get too far from our original plans and thoughts we wish to fulfill.”
The company has never tried to attract the early adopters who are looking for the newest gadgets. Its software is designed for those who want a reliable solution proven by many companies beforehand. At the same time, eWay does understand that modern people want to be remote, mobile, in-charge of deciding
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FOCUS
Buildin
g Succe
ss
into Sal es Orga
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nization
Focus is your ongoing partner for outsourced sales and CRM management. Whether you need help with Sales Strategies, Sales Coaching, CRM implementation, CRM Support or CRM User Training, Focus can bundle it all as an ongoing Partner with your organization! —Steven Wright President & CEO
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Solutions to Rely On
ustomer Relationship Management (CRM) is one of the key aspects in business. Although, many organizations are leveraging such a tool, many are still striving to attain a dependable CRM system that truly provides an ROI. Meet Focus, an outsourced sales and CRM management provider whose unique offerings and ideologies have helped many businesses achieve their milestones and overcome the various obstacles that stand in their pathway when setting up a sales organization and/or a CRM. Specifically related to CRM, Focus concentrates on supporting and guiding companies to get the most value out of their investment.
With roots in sales optimization, Focus makes sure that people not only understand how to use their CRM tool, but more importantly, they ensure people understand the "why" they’re using it. Specifically, what value they are to generate through their usage for themselves, their colleagues and organization. Because this always requires a behavioural change at various levels of an organization, Focus leads a client through three core areas: Ÿ Process Design Ÿ Customization & Administration Ÿ User Adoption
Although Focus was established in 2003 with an original purpose to set up and run lead generation departments, the last five years have seen Focus transform its attention to disrupt the customary CRM implementation market. Steven Wright, joined the company in 2006 as a Business Development Manager, and over the years has grown through the organization playing various roles and responsibilities. Today he is the President and CEO of Focus.
Process Design: "Believe it or not, most organizations lack a defined process for how a lead is generated and it’s journey through the buying cycle to cash", says Steven. As a result, Focus, with its two decades in Sales Process Design, works with its clients to properly determine sales structure, process and strategy before any CRM is turned on.
"From implementing and managing lead generation resources and processes, we transformed to taking more ownership of the sales organization as a whole. In general, we became our client’s Outsourced Sales Manager. In that process, CRM is always a part of that discussion," mentions Steven. Most companies need some level of a CRM to help centralize, manage and organize their sales efforts. The most basic reasons for having a CRM are usually for pipeline visibility, forecasting, tracking activities, and gaining a 360 degree view of their customer from lead to cash.
CRM Customization & Administration: Once the underlying structure, processes and strategy have been defined, a roadmap of how the CRM should be customized is now clear. This includes determining what areas to activate, what fields to create, who should have access to what and what automations should be built. Ultimately, what is being built now has a clear connection to the value previously identified and agreed upon. User Adoption:
Today, many CRM providers rely on 3rd party implementation vendors to set up their CRM and what has been very troubling to Focus is how these vendors go upon their implementation. None focus on understanding the underlying processes a CRM will facilitate, especially how a lead is generated and how it will make its way to a sale. In addition, none provide the energy and resources to transform user behaviour and change habits through ongoing personal training. For now, the implementation vendor’s job is to simply digitize any uncovered processes into CRM without challenging its legitimacy and therefore, CRM is always being set up to fail. To respond to this, Focus’ business started to pay more attention on supporting and implementing Salesforce.com, the world’s largest CRM company, with a substantial effort put on customizing the tool based on properly defined sales structure, process and strategy and then deploying it through a heavy emphasis on user training to increase adoption.
Launching CRM with one or two group sessions and expecting users to get it, is where most implementation companies fail. Although the defined processes and customizations have been made, there is always going to be tweaks to the CRM as real usage takes hold. Moreover, and “most importantly, usage is a behavioural challenge. If users are left to their own self-discipline, experience has shown that people will return to their old habits; get complacent and ultimately avoid using a CRM tool” understands Steven. As a result, “like a personal trainer at a gym, most humans need someone to support, motivate and guide then to build a lasting habit”. Into the Shoes of Leaders Steven graduated with a Bachelor in Administrative Studies, with Honours in Marketing and a burning desire to become a marketer. Like most entering the
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marketing realm however, he ended up in a business development role. Working in the promotional products industry, he was responsible for introducing new clients to a software designed and geared to simplify the imagination and ordering of customized products. Realizing his desire to support people, he decided to explore a sports marketing role within the memorabilia market. He was responsible for setting up, training and on-boarding, sales agents throughout the US and Canada. While this provided him with some great exposure into the world of sports marketing and setting up an organizations sales resources, he knew he needed more. And so began his career with Focus. In his early days he would hire and onboard business development reps, set up Salesforce.com or other CRM’s and work with clients as their outsourced sales manager. Glimpse of Focus’s Future “If you usually think about software and technology, and how it is assessed and deployed, most believe you turn it on, you do a couple of customizations, and you just expect it to work,” claims Steven.
that no one is using it. As a result, no data is managed correctly disallowing for effective analytics and information to be attained from the system. “Companies often share their conclusions of the EPIC failure that CRM Implementation has been for their business,” says Steven. “We are here to change that”, says the CEO. Therefore, “the first and most important first step is to ensure that an organization views their technology purchase as an investment as if it was like an employee. This investments requires a proper ’job description’ and any tool selected must be onboarded, coached, supported and evaluated often”, believes Steven. As Focus continues forward, it’s goal is to continue to position itself as a Sales expert who enables it’s clients to get the desired return from an investment in CRM. “In summary, people are spending money on CRM and most people are, unfortunately, a year, maybe two years following, are regretting that decision. And so we want to be a resource to these clients to help them avoid that,” says Steven. If struggling to achieve the value from your CRM is a reality or wanting to ensure success from the beginning, Focus would love to chat. Send them questions to questions@focus-crm.com
Many organizations purchase CRM tools, locking themselves into a long-term investment only to realize
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The Key to Secure Digital Transformation
Marc Vanmaele CEO TrustBuilder
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Leader’s Take
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fail to complete tasks as required, bringing operations and productivity to a halt. They may be unable to deliver the right levels of service to their customers, which once again impact your revenue and reputation. Furthermore, dealing with problems of user experience, whether inside or outside your organisation can take up a great deal of your IT department’s time and attention.
arc Vanmaele, CEO of TrustBuilder explains how organizations can beat balance the needs of security and user experience
What do Users Want? Your users demand simplicity. Whatever sectors you operate in, whatever the scale or scope of your offering, if your customers find it too difficult to access and use your service, they will go elsewhere.
Digital Transformation: The Road to Simplicity Little wonder, then, that businesses in all industries have been encouraged to modernise, improving their services with innovative new features, foregrounding user experience and customer journeys, and developing the most frictionless experiences possible.
The same rules apply within your organization. If your staff find it too difficult to access and use the applications and systems they need to do their jobs, they will go elsewhere too. This rarely means that they will leave their jobs altogether – rather, it means that they will seek workarounds and shortcuts, unauthorised tools and unsanctioned processes.
This is one of the core goals of many digital transformation projects. Previously manual processes are replaced with automation, leading to a smoother user journey and a strong platform for additional innovation and creativity. Organizations such as Google and Apple, with their unrelenting focus on clarity and simplicity for the end user, have led customers and staff in other sectors to expect the same.
Both situations can be a big problem. Losing customers very directly affects your business bottom line – and, depending on how vocal they are about moving on, your reputation in the marketplace too. Employees who seek workarounds may compromise security, opening up vulnerabilities or weak points in your infrastructure, or
About the Author arc Vanmaele, CEO at TrustBuilder. He initially started his career as Technical Support Manager in (Philips Data System) and later on became business partners with SoftSwitch. He also served as the Director at Management Software Benelux. Besides, Marc contributed his best at every organization and mentored them in the path of success. Currently, he is a part of SecurIT which was later renamed as TrustBuilder in 2017. 35
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Such solution incorporates the next evolution of multifactor authentication (MFA) systems, which demand additional layers of verification before or after the user enters their login details. At present, this extra step will typically be some token or one time password provided by the user’s mobile device. Ultimately, the best way forward is for multi-factor authentication to be truly – well – multiple in its approach. That is, it should make use of more than one additional factor, so that even in the case of a code being intercepted or a device falling into the wrong hands, access to the system in question isn’t compromised. The trick, of course, is to do this without presenting unnecessary friction to users, which may cause them to switch to another service. The most effective IAM solutions take a more intelligent – and a more user-focused approach, thereby helping organizations to tread that fine balancing line. Along with enabling the latest secure MFA methods like those requiring a hardware or mobile token; they consider a range of different factors when verifying each user request, such as where the user is located, the time of the request, and whether the device itself is recognized. They also provide a bridge between different environments, allowing seamless access while keeping intruders out.
What are the Challenges Faced by the Organization? But ‘frictionless’ can come with caveats. Such processes are frequently less secure than their more cumbersome, multi-stage relatives – precisely because they entail fewer layers of user identification and verification. Organizations, then, have to make a choice – add extra security steps, such as a second password or PIN code, and hope that this increased complexity doesn’t lose them users – or keep the process simpler, and hope that they don’t succumb to a malicious cyberattack or accidental infection.
In turn, this allows organizations to offer a genuinely intelligent and ever-improving security service to their end users, demonstrating how seriously they take data protection, whilst automating that security behind the scenes and therefore smoothing the customer journey as far as possible.
Meanwhile, organizations are managing increasingly complicated IT infrastructures. Their services are made up of multiple different applications, many of which are hosted in the cloud with data shared between the organization and its vendors. This makes providing a smooth user experience challenging – and making it secure, even more so.
It is essential to choose an IAM solution that is highly flexible, able to keep up with the pace of change and evolve along with the organization in question. However, in doing so, organizations can take a genuine step towards balancing user experience with watertight security – and embracing digital transformation, securely.
The Role of Next Generation IAM This is why next-generation Identity and Access Management (IAM) services have such a crucial role to play. They help organizations to not only strike the right balance between user experience and security, but also, critically, to maintain that balance as the organization’s services and systems continue to evolve.
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vtenext The CRM with a BPM Heart!
Davide Giarolo CEO 38
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vtenext
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n an interview with CIO LOOK, vtenext emphasizes on its contribution, made as company, in the evolution of tech sector. Under the guidance of Davide Bonamini & Davide Giarolo, the company has achieved many milestones en route to success. Being Chief Executive Officers of the company, their aim was to create an Enterprise Open Source CRM solutions based in Europe and soon attained the desired goals.
needs. We support the customer on managing the application and also the virtual machine. Ÿ
CIO LOOK admire and appreciates such oraganizations commitment towards their goals and takes pride in featuring vtenext in its special edition, "Best in Class CRM Solution Providers in 2019."
vtenext cloud services: this is the quickest solution to start up the project, the customer can choose to change the number of users every time. We manage all the application and the related services. For the cloud we have also the HR (high reliability) version. This permits to reduce the SLA Time guaranteed of the cloud services less of 99%.
On what principles your organization is based on? Our structure is very streamlined, with few hierarchical levels and the development of decision-making autonomy. We try to create a creative environment where the goals are at the center. In the same way we try to offer the customer products-services with the best value for money. The technology must be easily accessible. Customers must already make the effort to change their organizational culture. We facilitate them with solutions that are easy to implement and test. Without bleeding and with the possibility of being scaled over time.
Below are the highlights of the interview: What led to the inception of the company? The project is based on our CRM open source solution vtecrm. This was used in Rexroth Bosch Group to manage their CRM opportunities. As, this company also was implementing the process management philosophy, the Rexroth CEO decided to support us to introduce into vtecrm the BPM (business process management) engine.
Give a detailed description on how the current CEO influenced the company to grow promptly. We believe that CRM as a thinking strategy has highlighted the organizational shortcomings of companies. On the one hand, because very often the processes are not studied putting the customer at the center, on the other because the customer is increasingly demanding. To grow quickly, keeping up with customer demands, we need to adopt processbased customer management logics. Vtenext believes in this model and has embarked on a push towards the adoption of CRM processes also internally. In this way the whole organization moves in a coordinated way towards customer satisfaction, is monitored and corrected. All this creates a virtuous circuit that can also be proposed as a model for our vtenext customers.
In this way, all the CRM processes are able to be managed easily, giving to the users the possibility driven by tasks and, at the same time, to use the data collected into the CRM to manage their tasks. By the fusion of CRM and BPM logics in our open source technology we created vtenext. The first Open Source Process Driven CRM available into the market. How do you diversify the organization’s offerings to appeal the target audience? Our offerings start from the vtenext community edition (CE). Everyone can download the application from the community project page and start to manage their CRM processes. For the company, that wants to receive business services such as—technical support, automatic bugs fixing, consultant support, extra features, we provide many kind of solutions:
As per your opinion, what roadblocks or challenges are faced by organizations in a corporate business? And what is your organization’s advice to overcome them?
vtenext on premise solution, based on range of users: For this solution we have also the unlimited version for big companies that don’t want to have limit on creating new users. The license fee is fixed. Ÿ vtenext private cloud: this is a solution that mix cloud services and on premise benefits. The customer buys the on premise solution and hosts the application on our data centers. Our virtual machine are tailored based on the customer requests and Ÿ
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As Gartner says, the majority of the organizations are splitted into different silos. The CRM projects are on consequence implemented into these silos (for example marketing, sales, customer service departments) and it’s normal to find companies with many CRM installed that are not integrated between them. The real problem is the customer processes are cross department. The customer don’t care if we are arranged by silos, they wants to satisfy their needs, as soon as possible. So vtenext give to the companies to work on a new logic, the customer processes. We don’t care if the customer has already a CRM solution installed, we integrate that solution (for example Salesforce is already integrated) and spread the customer process logic to all the organization. Using calendar tasks, pop-ups, vtenext interfaces. If a person has to manage a task of the process, this person has the right to access to the CRM.
How does the company cope with the volatile technological trends to boost its growth? We think that the only way is to work on processes. When we start seeing the customer processes we started to move our focus on the customers, if and only if we are able to implement. What are Vtenext’s future goals? And what measures are you undertaking to achieve those goals? On the subject of processes, we are launching a vtenext upgrade on the market that will allow customers to selfanalyze processes. In this way the process of implementing the processes becomes much simpler. The most delicate phase for a customer is always the analysis of its processes. Only an effective mapping becomes the fulcrum for the development of a CRM process driven logic. We will then be able to offer the customer precise digital processes and then make them operational. We count that in this way, with the use of machine learning and process mining technology, we can halve the implementation time. The interesting thing is that the self-analysis system allows to operate also with other CRM platforms. We have no problem working on pre-existing CRMs. We simply improve them.
What marketing activities do you implement to reach out to your potential customers? Our main sponsor is the open source community. We has been nominated as "project of the month" for September, 2019 by the community of Sourceforge. Also we arrange a lot of physical and online seminar just to spread the customer processes mentality into the organizations. Our slogan is "kill the silos mentality".
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vtenext, we shot the departmental silos to implement a real CRM process driven logic.
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Davide Bonamini CEO 41
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Innovation Management An Integral Part of the Business
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nnovation Management plays a crucial role in businesses, as it assist an organization to strengthen its roots and, flourish promptly in the markets. It mainly involves managing processes regarding an organization’s innovation procedures, from initial ideation to execution. It’s a cyclic loop structure starting with ideation followed by the auditing, prototype testing and full implementation. Either it may be decision making or a drafting innovation strategy, this type of system manages all.
into the repository, which increases the participation of employees in the innovation campaigns. Moreover, theses database-driven tools assist in analyzing the effect of an implemented idea for the benefit of an organization. In an attempt to admire employee contribution, a company can also present rewards to the winning ideas. Idea Management systems a.k.a. Innovation Management systems basically help companies to share best practices further capitalizing them efficiently. It narrows down the bridges between the different locations of shared ideas and brings them together under the best practices. Known for the quick processing analogies, innovation management systems delivers cost-effective practices that multiply the bottom-line benefits of the company.
It bestows some fruitful benefits to organization and allows its employees to bring forward their ideologies, which can be filtered depending on the errors while execution. This significantly increases the quantity and quality of input ideas empowering specific organization’s objectives and goals. Moreover, many innovation management tools enable employees to initiate a germ of an idea, and share it for gaining varied perceptions from every aspect of the enterprise. Through such systems, accumulating ideas from each and every unit of the organization becomes quite easier. And the source of idea collection is not just left inhibited with R&D and marketing but to every sector. These ideas could be stored in a shared repository, allowing respective employees to gain more transparency within various business processes.
One of the best practices is to implement a cloudoriented idea management system, which will allow access to the database from any region breaking the geographical and organizational barriers. Even though the system is self-efficient, it does require some manual input to carry out repetitive changes in its complex programming. This carries out the identification and evaluation of potential ideas from the pile of innovative ideas. Outlook on Achieving Innovation Management
By maintaining transparency, a business person can look through the outcomes of all the ideas submitted
It is quite necessary for a company to install and support innovation culture so that, employees can
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Industry Insights
put forth their participation in generating quality ideas. Also, making employees feel valued boost up their enthusiasm and confidence in order to take part in the idea campaigns. Digitalization is the rolling stone in the market which is single-handedly creating a change in the traditional method of business practices. Integrating one such subcategory—social networking, with idea campaigns also helps in gaining customer-oriented perspective of the idea and product. This feedback through social media platforms, generate a steady stream of ideas within and outside the organization.
and implementing intelligence, creating and maintaining relationships, identifying and nurturing talent, and comprehending the demands of a disruption. The way of performing tasks varies from one manager to other. Every individual work on their own terms and managerial ethics, and thus reinvents the methodologies of organization. Processes such as capital auditing, hiring and promotion, project management, internal communications, strategic drafting and knowledge management are the foundation on which the management is taken into practice. Such managers mainly focus on implementing operational inventive ideas for the business processes such as logistics, consumer’s requirement, and procurement.
As described earlier, an organization must follow a cyclic approach for comprehending and processing innovation management systems. Ideation stands first in this cyclic structure, which encourages the generation of unique ideas. Followed to the ideation, comes the well-managed innovation process in order to identify and differentiate the viable and authentic ideas from others. In the end, it is essential to evaluate the results and come to a conclusion for its successful implementation.
Implicating innovation management for one’s business could be an issue at an early stage. But with a complete knowledge and an adequate guidance, one can easily overcome the issues and establish an efficient innovation management system. Either an organization could reach out and outsource their innovation management to a promising company or it could in-house the management on their own. Both ways facilitate with same reimbursements and determine a unique future approach for the company.
In addition, engaging with C-suite in discussion over innovation management will help an organization to ensure that the shortlisted ideas are as per the business goals and norms. Organizations must hire innovation managers with a keen knowledge and skills to drive innovation and monitor on over-all management process. Managerial work includes setting goals and deploying plans, motivating other staffs, collecting and allocating resources, acquiring
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