KEEP IT SIMPLE
Lucid Analytics for a New Era?
Not surprisingly, I really enjoyed this article from MyCustomer.com called, Business intelligence on-demand: Lucid analytics for a new era?
These quotes from LucidEra confounder Ken Rudin shine some light on why we’re so bullish on the business intelligence market shift fo SaaS:
““A lot of the reason that many customers historically haven’t been able to fully harness the capabilities of their BI solution is because traditional BI solutions have been very complicated to deploy and maintain, and very difficult to use. BI stands for ‘bloated integration’.”
“You used to have to go and buy software from Business Objects or Cognos, now you can buy the same thing as a service. The focus for us is simplicity. We want to offer people analytics that are simple to set up and use.”
“To try to do on-premises and on-demand is very difficult. You end up with an internal battle because they are two very different business models.”
“If you do what SAS does on-premise, then you have built something as complicated as a nuclear reactor in your data centre. If you have enough money and enough skills then you can do it, if you can withstand the pain. But if you look at the mid-market, they can’t do that.”
“In the mid-market, no-one is taught how to analyse their own business or or how to analyse their sales pipeline. That’s where we come in with the whole concept of delivering this as a service.”
If you found the article interesting, be sure to Digg it here and/or share your feedback.
Have a fantastic 4th of July!
posted by Darren Cunningham at 10:38 am
What is Your Data Actually Telling You?
Last week I met with a sales operations manager who had some interesting data but didn’t know what to do with it. Here’s how it went:
Sales Ops manager wants to know if having interesting data actually makes a difference.- He asks, “What decisions can we make with better data?” and “What’s the so what angle I need for the VP or Sales, CFO and CEO?”
- He comments that, “we have a sense that this is useful, but we’re still struggling with how to sell it to ourselves and then drive decisions with it.”
Does this sound familiar to you? First things first though - do you have interesting data to begin with? How is your data quality? What metrics are you measuring? Do you know what your data’s actually telling you? Are you taking action?
In the meeting we talked about the importance of an analytic company culture and what David Wells calls, “The Human Side of Business Intelligence.” We also referred to Tom Davenport’s Competing on Analytics and a few other books on Howard Dresner’s reading list.
The conversation then returned to the question of, “Even if we have this information, how does it help us?” For example, if you see that certain sales reps are taking longer than others to close, what do you do with this information?
Does sales management really want to know about sales trends…especially the ones that might not make them look so great? (I wrote about the Truthiness of Number Spinning a few weeks ago.)
The conversation led to an interesting discussion about the need to have clear goals and the need for 2.0 sales managers to always know where you are and be working on ways to reach the next level (or avoid falling if the trend line is already moving in the right direction). We then discussed some of the actions we’ve seen Salesforce.com customers take thanks to on-demand sales analytics and LucidEra’s Pipeline Healthcheck. Some examples include:
- A manufacturing company modified discount policies and approval processes when the impact of large deal discounts was seen to be negatively affecting margins.
- A high-growth software company increased their inside sales team investment once the cost of each sales rep, their pipeline, average deal size, and quota attainment trend was visible year over year.
- Large public company improved the accuracy of commits and forecasts by tracking deal size, discount, and quota attainment trends for seasoned versus new sales reps.
- A data storage company identified areas where additional sales training and focus will drive bookings activity and move stuck opportunities more quickly through the pipeline.
By the end of the meeting this sales operations manager was already starting to think like a Sales Operations Hero and I was day-dreaming about the movie The Minority Report and whether this is the ultimate in data interpretation and actionable information. But I digress…
posted by Darren Cunningham at 11:02 am
A Business Intelligence Black Eye for Cognos
“So-called “business intelligence”" got a bit of a black eye today on the front page of the Boston Globe -$13m software deal is called unnecessary.
The article outlines many of the issues that plague both enterprise software and traditional on-premise approaches to business intelligence. It turns out that Cognos, an IBM company, won a huge government contract for 20,000 state users who apparently lacked the skills needed to use the complex software. Here are a few statements from the article that definitely pack a punch (not to mention the details of the deal itself):
“It is certainly not a tool for everyone in the organization. It requires a level of sophistication to use it and understand the results.”
- Theodore Grossman, professor of technology operations and information management at Babson College
“Specialists said such a plan [for 20K users] makes no sense for two big reasons: It unnecessarily inflates the price of the contract, since the cost is dependent on the number of people who are licensed to use it, and it is likely to lead to wasteful use of the software.”
SAS and Oracle actually come out smelling like roses - their bids were only $7M and $5M respectively.
Ouch!
posted by Darren Cunningham at 5:03 pm
Celebrating Canada Day
I always get blank stares at the office when I ask people how they plan to celebrate Canada Day. I think it’s actually worse than wishing my American friends “Happy Thanksgiving!” in October…
Because the majority of this blog’s audience is either staring at a fax machine right now or celebrating a fantastic Q2 (or better yet, enjoying a warm night on a Lake Ontario dock!), here are 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Canada:
- Approx. 89% of Canada is not habitable, because of extreme climate conditions.
- Newfoundland is the only province that does not have an Indian reserve.
- Yonge Street in Toronto is the longest street in the World.
- Canada has six time zones.
- With over 2 Million lakes, Canada has the largest amount of freshwater in the world
- The oldest program in Canadian broadcasting history is” Hockey Night In Canada”. At first it was on the radio in 1931, and in the Fall of 1952 the first TV ice hockey game was broadcast nationally on CBC. It is still being produced weekly in both English and French .
- The coldest temperature ever recorded was -63C (-81.4F) in Snag, Yukon on Feb 3, 1947.
- Basketball: now a favourite in the U.S. - was invented by Canadian James A. Naismith , who was born in Almonte, Ontario in November 1871. After studying at McGill University in Montreal,Quebec he became an instructor at the International YMCA Training School in Massachusetts, USA. where he came up with the idea for basketball. The first basketball game was played in 1891.
- Canada is the world’s second largest country , but houses only 27 million people - making it rank only 28th in population.
- Five pin bowling was invented in 1909 by Canadian T.E. Ryan.
Now for some some Rush and a Coffee Crisp. Have a good Canada Day, Eh!
posted by Darren Cunningham at 5:11 pm
Gates Goes, Fires Burn and The Weekly Review
Driving in to work this morning in the smoky haze of the San Francisco Bay Area I listened to an interesting story on NPR about the retirement of Bill Gates. You can check out the Geek to Gazillionaire to Do-Gooder link here or just watch the video below.
In the meantime, here’s the week that was on the Keep it Simple blog:
- Summary of some weekend reading and a fantastic PowerPoint presentation that every business should review in SaaS Clouds, Stupid People and Happy Customers.
- Overview of the LucidEra Lead Insight announcement and the LucidInsights newsletter.
- Notes from an SIIA panel on Marketing 2.0.
So long Bill. It’s been quite a ride…
posted by Darren Cunningham at 1:27 pm
Marketing Web 2.0
Yesterday I participated in a Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) marketing and communications roundtable discussion on the topic of Marketing 2.0. The discussion was moderated by Rob Carroll from Clickability (who I notice hasn’t been posting much lately on the his blog). Early in the discussion Rob distinguished between social media as a product (or service) and social media from a marketing perspective. The discussion focused on the latter.
Some interesting points from the panel:
- People agreed on the importance of building customer communities. Lots of good discussion about the importance of having clear objectives, finding ways to measure success, and what role marketing should play (facilitator only? actively involved? no role whatsoever?)
- Rob Lamb from Clickability (and formerly Salesforce.com) talked about the Yahoo community board being the first version of what’s become success.salesforce.com.
- Rob also stressed the importance of having a clear focus in your social media initiatives and always knowing what problem you’re trying to solve.
- Some panelists noted that some 1.0 marketing tools are still the most effective (direct mail anyone?) because of spam filters and email overload. Will we see a back-to-basics movement? Is this all just a bubble? (As the classic video below describes - sorry, I couldn’t resist.)
- A lot of time was spent talking about the growing importance of blogging, Twitter, Facebook, Digg, etc. and the demise of traditional marketing brochures, datasheets and the like.
- When it comes to Marketing 2.0, less is more. Frequency is critical.
- Some of social media books and websites recommended by David Thomas and others include: Here Comes Everybody, The Paradox of Choice, and Webmama.
- Who knew that WD40 had a fanclub and 2000+ uses? Other good community examples include TiVo and Salesforce Ideas.
- Susan Chenoweth from Jigsaw mentioned a webinar they did that had 5000+ attendees. Make the topic catchy, yet relevent. There’s was, “Turn Cold Calls into Gold Calls.” I let her know that I’m a fan of the Garth’s World blog.
- I like the term “crowdsourcing“.
The bottom line seemed to be that firms that aren’t waiting and jumping into social media initiatives are seeing success. The old command-and-control corporate structure simply won’t work so find ways to have a dialog with your customers and get them involved. The next panel will showcase social media success stories as it’s clear that this is a hot topic.
Somewhat gratuitous, but here’s the bubble video in case you missed it…
posted by Darren Cunningham at 4:56 pm
Lead Insight and LucidInsights
Today we announced LucidEra Lead Insight, an on-demand analytic application focused on directly aligning marketing programs with sales success. Here are a few articles that provide more details on this new SaaS application for Salesforce.com customers:
- LucidEra’s Lead Conversions are BI in the Sky
- LucidEra Aims to Link Marketing Analytics to Sales Pipeline
Later in the day LucidInsights subscribers received our monthly newsletter full of useful tips and tricks and best-practice sales success articles. Not surprisingly, most of this month’s content is focused on sales effectiveness. Here are the highlights:
- Lead Tracking - Keeping a Pulse on Your Sales Pipeline (Simplicity + Consistency = Results)
- Improving Sales Effectiveness (Teach reps “to do the right thing at the right time” and measure, measure, measure!)
- Pipeline Management - Your Path to Achieving the Sales Edge (Is your pipeline healthy? what are your conversion ratios?)
- Improving Sales Efficiency - The Question is Why (What + How + Why = Sales)
- How to Build a SaaS Business (Hint - “staying committed to the model is of paramount importance.”)
Speaking of high performance, check out this video of a baseball outfielder getting shown up by the ball girl. It is Fact, Fiction or Fantasy?? I suspect the latter, but still good for a quarter-end laugh.
posted by Darren Cunningham at 5:17 pm
Sales and Marketing 2.0
Late last year Denis Pombriant wrote an excellent article in CRM Buyer called Sales 2.0 and Marketing Too. He made the point that “Sales 2.0 is actually more about marketing than selling,” but “truth be told, many of the people who want closable leads, deals won and upward-trending graphs don’t want to be concerned with the details of attraction, nurturing and hand-off as a distinct process.”
Since then, the Sales 2.0 drumbeat has been fast and furious. Sales managers have also gotten into the act, realizing that metrics (not hunches) are the cornerstone of Sales Management 2.0. Maybe it’s the economy. It might have something to do with the market shift to cloud computing and SaaS. But most likely it’s simply the realization that competing without the right analytics is like bringing a knife to a gunfight.
One of the Sales Operations Heroes in last week’s on-demand webinar went so far as to say:
“Having access to the right metrics/answers makes you look really smart - and allows you to anticipate business changes before they get the best of you!”
So what does this mean for the marketing department? Haven’t marketers always had to justify their expensive programs with data? Haven’t they always had to focus on feeding the sales team with leads? Yes. Well, yes but….
How many times have you heard this from the marketing department:
- “Sales has no appreciation for what we do?”
- “We hit our goal of generating [insert massive # here] leads last month. I don’t know what those sales guys are doing!”
- “Sales just doesn’t know how to sell the value.”
- “We’re spending our markeing dollars on SEO and events this quarter because that’s where we get the most leads”
For many companies the front-end of the sales funnel is often more like a “sales sieve” as marketing dollars are wasted on lead generation activities that don’t have a direct correlation to closed business. In the past, companies had to implement complex on-premise business intelligence solutions to get the insight required to align sales and marketing managers.
- Do you know where the bottlenecks are in your lead-to-close cycle? Where are leads getting stuck?
- Which sales reps have the best performance against their leads by region, industry and title?
- How can you close more deals without increasing marketing spend?
LucidEra Lead Insight is designed to help you know where your marketing leads actually lead. We’re going to be talking a lot more about optimizing the lead-to-opportunity-to-close-to-order process in the coming weeks. In the meantime, you can find out more about today’s announcement here.
posted by Darren Cunningham at 5:18 am
SaaS Clouds, Stupid People and Happy Customers
After a scotching hot weekend in the Bay Area, here are three interesting perspectives on what’s hot (or should be hot) in business today:
- Solid SaaS coverage in Newsweek (”slightly cloudy forecast, with clear skies on ahead.”)
- Nick Carr makes the case that Google may be making us stupid (I actually tweeted it while reading yesterday - case in point I suppose…)
- According to this very creative presentation, “the happiness of your business relies on the happiness of your customers.” Thanks to Dave Kellogg’s blog for pointing me to the presentation. I’ve also posted it below:
Some good food for thought as we enter the dog days of summer…
posted by Darren Cunningham at 1:01 pm
Sales Ops Hero Goes Platinum
I received an email this week after our Sales Ops Heroes webinar from a former sales operations guru with perhaps a little too much time on his hands. But before I share the lyrics he sent with you, I must first apologize to the band Foreigner and do a quick recap of the week that was on Keep it Simple:
- Lead Insight gets some early attention from Smart (Enough) Systems
- Slides posted from the Sales Ops Heroes webinar
- LucidEra coverage on SmoothSpan
- Salesforce.com Silicon Valley User Group presentation (70% of attendees noted that they’re looking for better business visibility!)
Now for the song. I have to admit that some of it I don’t quite get, but I thought I’d post it as-is for your review:
Standing in the room, with her head hung low
Couldnt get a login, they were all out of dough
Heard the roar of the team, she could see their screens
Put her ear to the wall, then like a distant scream
She heard one “get smart ping”, just blew her away
She saw reps in her eyes, and the very next day
Bought a beat up group edition in a second hand store
Didnt know how to use it, but she knew for sure
That one application, felt good in her hands
Didn’t take long, to understand
Just one Appexchange, slung way down low
Was her one way ticket, only one way to go
So she started bloggin
Aint never gonna stop
Gotta keep on bloggin
Someday she gonna make it to The Force
And be a sales ops hero, got reps on her mind
Shes a juke box hero
She took one app, sales ops hero, reps on her mind
Sales Ops Hero, she’ll create reports through the grind
In a User Group without a name, in a heavy downpour
Thought she saw her own sandbox, by the old data center door
Like a trip through the past, to that day in the rain
And that one application made her whole life change
Now he needs to keep bloggin
She just can’t stop
Gotta keep on bloggin
That girl has got to stay logged on
And be a Sales Ops Hero, got stars in her eyes
She’s a Sales Ops Hero, got stars in her eyes
Yeah, Sales Ops Hero, got stars in her eyes
With that one application she’ll login tonight
Come alive tonight
Yeah, shes gotta keep bloggin
She just cant stop
Gotta keep on bloggin
That girl has got to stay logged on
And be a Sales Ops Hero, got reps on her mind
She’s a Sales Ops Hero, got stars in her eyes
Just one application, put reps in her eyes
Shes just a Sales Ops Hero, aah aah aah
Sales ops hero, Sales Ops Hero, she’ss got reps on her mind
Reps on her mind
Now here’s a pretty cool video of classic version of the song:
posted by Darren Cunningham at 7:50 am
Ken Rudin is the CEO of 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.
Nate Bride is a Senior Account Executive at LucidEra. Nate has over 14 years experience in building, training, and running sales teams. Most recently, Nate was the VP of Sales at Abso, a leading provider of talent management solutions. Prior to Abso, Nate ran Sales Effectiveness at Salesforce.com. Nate is married with two young daughters and lives one hour from Lake Tahoe.