KEEP IT SIMPLE
Biggest Barriers to Business Intelligence Success: Complexity and Cost
Doug Henschen has written an overview of the BI market in Intelligent Enterprise called: Business Intelligence Gets Smart that has this to say about “smart” or “analytic” business applications:
“One appeal of these smarter applications is that they cut the information management and data warehousing burden, so look for these options to multiply. “
The article includes the rankings of the biggest impediments to business intelligence success according to a recent InformationWeek Research Survey:
You can read the full article here.
posted by Darren Cunningham at 5:38 pm
Ken Rudin to Discuss Business Intelligence Market Shift to SaaS
Ken Rudin will join other leading industry professionals to present on the topic of the business intelligence market shift to software as a service (SaaS) solutions as a panelist at the Office 2.0 Conference today.
The panel is at 1:30 p.m at the St. Regis Hotel in San Francisco and will focus on “Office 2.0 Intelligence.” As more and more data is moving online, the panel will focus on the new web-based tools and applications organizations are using to support business decisions.
Ken will also be a panelist at the SIIA On-Demand Summit 2008. The topic is, “How Do SaaS Players Work Together” and it will focus on the emerging issues and best practices for managing integration, customer management, financial compensation and collaborative marketing within SaaS ecosystems. The session will be held on Wednesday, November 19 at 2:45 p.m. at the Marriott in San Jose.
Next week he’ll also be presenting on a Selling Power webinar which will introduce an 8-step funnel management process designed to maximize sales success and outline some of the critical metrics you need to put in place to achieve dramatic sales improvements.
He’s a busy guy!
posted by Darren Cunningham at 8:38 am
AppExchange Analytics Update
LucidEra was featured in a Force.com AppExchange newsletter today that promoted 4 Analytics Apps in 10 Minutes.
“Listen to this 10-minute presentation to learn about 4 analytics applications from the AppExchange that can help you better measure success across sales, marketing, and
service & support.”
You can view the podcast presentation here. It’s great to see Salesforce.com promoting their top partners and I’d like to thank the AppExchange for their on-going support.
posted by Darren Cunningham at 11:13 pm
Webinar: Funnel Management in a Sales 2.0 World
Join us next week for a lively discussion with Gerhard Gschwandtner from Selling Power, Mark Sellers from Breakthrough Sales Performance, and Ken Rudin from LucidEra that will focus on:
- An 8-Step Funnel Management Process designed to maximize sales success
- An approach to managing opportunities focused on sales results, not just sales rep activities
- The critical metrics you need to put in place to achieve dramatic sales improvements
You may have heard of Sales 2.0, but how does this new reality actually translate to increased revenues? The webinar will focus on specific tactics and techniques to help Salesforce.com customers rethink the traditional sales funnel and put in place the performance metrics needed to predictably grow the business while avoiding unwanted pipeline surprises.
posted by Darren Cunningham at 8:53 pm
What if Everyone Followed Best Practices?
Today Dilbert takes a shot at so-called “best practices” that I thought was worth sharing.
While I do agree that it’s an overused term, we’ve seen an incredible desire from sales organizations of all sizes for the types of metrics that will help them accelerate revenue growth. As Gerhard Gschwandtner commented here:
“[sales managers] desperately want to understand how to squeeze productivity out of their sales force. They want to know how to hire the A players, how to compensate them, how to incentivize them, how to get them to adopt a better sales process, how to train them, how to measure their results, how to get them to forecast more accurately, and how to get them to adopt CRM technology.”
A few months ago I wrote a post on some of the best practices of sales analytics. It highlighted some of the metrics and reports that we showcase in our Analytics Gallery for Salesforce.com customers such as:
- Top 25 late stage opportunities for the quarter by rep and win rate
- Top 50 customers by total bookings and open pipeline
- Quarterly win rate by industry and region
- Product sales by lowest-performing sales reps
- Bookings by product, discount % by product, open pipeline by product
- Average Days to Close (win/loss), Average Deal Size
- % of the current period pipeline moved out to future periods
- % distribution for early stage versus late stage opportunities by region and by sales rep
- Deal size, discount, and quota attainment for seasoned versus new sales reps
- Avgerage Age of Open Opportunities
- Average Days to Close
- Avg. Deal Size (won/lost)
- Closed Revenue as % of Quota
- Opportunity Discount %
If you’re on the hunt for new and interesting key performance indicators (KPIs) that will help you identify opportunities and threats in your sales pipeline, be sure to check out our Sales Analytics Gallery as well as consider subscribing to the KPI Libary blog. I’m confident that the result of implementing actionable metrics and KPIs won’t lead to sales mediocrity - regardless of what Dilbert has to say about “best practices.”
posted by Darren Cunningham at 7:02 am
Why Don’t Salespeople Read?
Last week I exchanged emails with Garth Moulton over at Jigsaw about the kind of publications salespeople read. He ended up writing a funny (as always) post which concluded that they don’t read much of anything because some of the best reps are either illiterate or else they’re too busy, “sitting by the fax machine waiting for orders.”
Gerhard Gschwandtner then chimed in with an interesting overview of Selling Power and his experiences running this publication over the years. He makes the following points in his comments to the post:
- “Today less than 5% of our circulation goes to salespeople
- Sales managers read Selling Power, because they desperately want to understand how to squeeze productivity out of their sales force.
- 80% of all sales organizations are hopelessly mismanaged because 80% of all sales managers have been star salespeople before someone promoted them into management.
- There are 19 million salespeople in this country, but less than 1% read anything more intellectually challenging than the Wall Street Journal.”
You can read the complete post from Garth with Gerhard’s comments here. And for the small percentage of salespeople who do read, here are some of the more interesting blogs that you might want to check out:
Thanks for starting the conversation Garth. Too bad so few people are going to read about it…
posted by Darren Cunningham at 3:13 pm
CSO Quotes About the Importance of Sales Analytics
Every time I speak with Barry Trailer over at CSO Insights, I end up with a few great quotes about sales performance management and the importance of sales analytics to bottom line results.
Here are a few of my favorites from a conversation we had today:
- “Don’t expect what you don’t inspect.”
- “We’re selling fish not wine – a lead doesn’t get better with age!”
- “We don’t know if it’s better to have bad breath of no breath in a territory!”
- “When it comes to our forecast, we have beer goggles and we need a microscope!”
- “I’m pretty sure we’re going to get better than average results…once we figure out what average is!”
- “We don’t have time to sharpen the saw because we’re too busy cutting wood!”
- ” Comparison is the basis of all unhappiness!”
Can you relate to any of these? Got some more gems worth sharing?
posted by Darren Cunningham at 2:27 pm
Howard Dresner on SaaS Business Intelligence
“SaaS competes with the dominant enterprise software model (e.g., higher margins). So, for a time, it’ll be like the “wild, wild west” with a myriad of offerings from many smaller suppliers. This is a good thing. There will be amazing innovation until consolidation begins.”
He also notes that there is a “huge interest and openness to SaaS solutions across the board: small and large organizations, IT Departments and business users” and that the large enterprise software vendors will only offer “half-hearted” SaaS solutions.
You can read the entire post here or listen to his DM Radio podcast called, Business Intelligence Trends: Everything is a Service.
posted by Darren Cunningham at 5:52 pm
Excitement for Denver Salesforce.com User Group
It looks like Denver is getting ready for next week’s Salesforce.com user group meeting, which will be sponsored by LucidEra. It will be the first morning meeting for the group and it will be held at the Denver Athletic Club. Here’s the agenda:
- 7:45 – Networking, Introductions & Announcements
- 8:15 – Salesforce Summer ’08 Highlights
- 8:45 – Driving revenue growth and forecast predictability with LucidEra Pipeline Insight
- 9:15 – Flood Lights: User Community Issues and Solutions
More details on the meeting are available here. I’m hoping that these guys won’t be needed after this week’s protests at the Democratic National Convention…
posted by Darren Cunningham at 12:12 pm
LucidInsights for August
As the summer comes to a close, here are some of the articles showcased in this month’s LucidInsights Newsletter to help you get ready for a busy September:
- Why You Should Re-Think the Sales Funnel (Note: we’ll be delivering a webinar with the author in September.)
- Why Build a Qualified Sales Pipeline (Archery and Sales…)
- Using a SaaS Model to Deploy Analytics (LucidEra case study)
- Qualifying Your Sales Process (”Hope is not a credible strategy.”)
- 3 Steps to Improve Sales Effectiveness (Detail, flexibility, measurement)
Click here to sign up for the monthly sales-focused newsletter.
posted by Darren Cunningham at 10:27 am
Ken Rudin is the VP of Market Development at LucidEra. He co-founded the on-demand business intelligence company in 2005. Ken is a veteran of the rapidly growing software as a service industry with over 7 years of experience as an executive with leading on-demand software vendors. These include roles at Salesforce.com, at Netsuite (as an advisor), and at Siebel's on-demand division.
Darren Cunningham is the Director of Product Marketing at LucidEra. Prior to joining LucidEra he was the Category Director for salesforce.com AppExchange Analytics and Data Management. Before joining the on-demand world, he spent over 7 years at Business Objects.