Better known for its on premise desktop CRM software, Commence Corporation has been providing contact management, sales force automation and marketing campaign management solutions to small and mid-size companies for more than two decades.  The company introduced a web-based hosted version of their popular CRM software and is gaining notoriety.   With an outstanding track record for performance, reliability and world-class customer service Commence is a strong competitor and becoming a favorite among smaller businesses looking for a flexible hosted CRM solution with productivity tools that are easy to use.

“Commence web CRM has an impressive and unique user interface that makes the product very easy to use and navigate” says Gary Sanders of OK! Magazine.  “The product’s Home Page or Dashboard is completely customizable by individual or job function.  This allows each user to create a dashboard to the way they work.  The value here is that you can place the functions you use most right on the home page, such as today’s calendar and activities, e-mail, sales opportunities, leads, reminders and even an interactive sales funnel.  We hadn’t seen this in any other CRM solution.  This flexibility enables people to conduct 90% of their daily activities without ever leaving the Home Page and has really improved productivity.” 

Commence Home Page

Karen Deneau, Director of Marketing with Center for Film Studies, needed CRM software that her staff would feel comfortable with.   “When selecting a CRM solution, you worry about utilization, but we were confident that our staff would adapt well to Commence CRM and they have.   We also liked that Commence is modular in design, which allowed us to select only the functionality we required. We weren’t forced to purchase a package with a dozen features we would never use.  Commence’s strength clearly lies in its ease of use.  Within two weeks we had marketing campaigns out the door and leads captured from our web site were integrated directly into the Commence CRM system.  The staff at Commence was also extremely helpful in ensuring that we quickly realized value from their solution.”

Key Differentiators

Commence’s modular design provides the flexibility to start with basic CRM functionality such as Account and Contact Management, E-Mail integration and Sales Pipeline Management, then add additional features such as Quoting, Marketing Campaign Management and Project Management when you’re ready.  Integration to disparate systems can be achieved via an Application Programming Interface or API, and Commence CRM supports the majority of popular Mobile devices.

Another key differentiator of Commence CRM is the product’s lead qualification and sales reporting capability. The leads module includes an automated business process that scores leads based on pre-defined criteria, then color codes them based on how well defined they are.  This capability is unique to Commence CRM, and ensures that your sales team is working on the most qualified opportunities and not chasing tire kickers. 

Lead Scoring Screen

Reporting

The reporting engine offers three levels of data analysis.  A set of pre-defined reports for sales management, marketing and customer support can be viewed with a single click and modified just as easily.  A built in report writer allows you to create customer reports against any field in the database, including custom fields.  Lastly, Commence CRM includes a pre-built set of graphical and analytical reports for all sales activity, marketing, lead generation and customer support.

Reports

Commence offers the freedom of choice to deploy CRM software on premise or as a hosted web based solution and offers a level of functionality traditionally only provided by enterprise level solutions. Commence products are distributed around the world in more than 22 countries and 35 different industries.  The company’s track record for providing high quality reliable products and outstanding customer service make it a solid choice for growing businesses.

About the Author:  Jim Smith is the founder and managing partner of YCHANGE INTERNATIONAL,  a management consultancy specializing in helping small to mid-size businesses expand or execute a turnaround strategy.  Jim is a commissioner for the Housing Authority of Portland, Oregon and serves as a member of the newly formed economic cabinet of Portland. Jim is a motivational speaker and trainer and lectures on Customer Relationship Management in the areas of sales, marketing, business and leadership.  He is an avid blogger on www.ychange.com/ychangeblog.

Product Centric Strategy

To pursue a strategy of product leadership or product centricity involves delivering customer value through leading edge products and services.  This entails a continuous stream of new products and services, and creatively adapting to new and changing market conditions while constantly pursuing new solutions on behalf of clients and customers.

To do this effectively, the business needs to be very research and development centered and extremely knowledgeable about the products and services currently being developed and considered in the market place. Sales & Marketing needs to be closely tied to customers in order to teach them new approaches and solutions to their problems. This also requires the ability to direct customers into avenues they hadn’t entertained on their own about the use of new products and services.

Larger companies can execute this strategy more effectively than SMBs, because they have the resources to devote to research and development and also have larger sales, marketing and support organizations that are able to stay in touch with their customers.  The company’s personnel often act as advisors and consultants to their customers assuming the role of fitting their product to the customer’s needs.

Customer Centric Strategy

Customer intimacy or customer centricity entails precisely segmenting and targeting markets, acquiring detailed customer knowledge, developing an operational flexibility that allows for immediate response to customer needs, and securing customer loyalty. The value added component of this strategy is to attain intimate knowledge of the customer’s requirements or pain points and outlining a specific solution to address those requirements.

This strategy demands a very active marketing, sales and customer service department geared to relationship selling.  In fact, these departments drive the SMB’s business and are the company’s primary interface to prospects and the customer base.  As such, they need to continually solicit customer information, sort it, analyze it, and use to define a consistent message for all who interact with the customer.

One of the ways to capture, manage and share this vital customer information is through the use of Customer Relationship Management software (CRM).  Large organizations have been using CRM solutions for some time to automate and streamline the interaction between the company and the customer. The utilization however is mostly to gather contact management information about the customer and to use that information to drive and fine-tune the sales cycle.  The objective is to find creative ways to sell additional products and services to the customer by convincing the customer that there is a fit between their requirements and the products or service the sales representatives is selling.

While this is fine, in order to execute a customer centric strategy you need a CRM solution that is designed for customer collaboration. The CRM software must solicit not only geographic customer data, but also demographic data to help build a detailed picture of the “favorite” customer makeup.  In addition, the sales, customer service and any other personnel with customer contact need to be trained to solicit and collect psychographic and behavioral data that help define how and why the customer buys.

Social Networking

The rapid expansion and utilization of social networking can provide essential customer centric information for sales and marketing organizations.  Sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are being used by today’s businesses to communicate and interact with similar organizations. These conversations provide valuable insight into customer buying patterns, likes and dislikes and behavioral data. Best of all, you don’t have to be an enterprise company to access social media sites, capture and analyze information and produce a marketing message that fits the customer’s pain points and buying habits. What is important is that the SMB selects the right CRM platform which will enable them to directly link to these sites, capture the information and utilize it to gain a competitive edge.

Commence Corporation, a leading provider of cloud computing based CRM software, is taking a leadership position in this area and understands that the future of customer relationship management will be driven based on the collaboration and partnership with customers.  Commence is busy restructuring the data points that their system collects to include the needed demographic and psychographics data that CRM systems do not capture today.  Commence is also working to seamlessly interface the product with social media applications so that it can collect and analyze all of the different streams of customer conversations that are currently on the web, then use this information for targeting effective marketing campaigns.

Having the right business strategy in today’s challenging economy is critical for success.  A sound customer centric strategy gives you the ability to craft a company wide marketing message that is used by all to communicate your value not only to your current customer base, but also to those prospects that your sales team can readily qualify and close. To do this effectively, you need to select a CRM software provider that offers a platform that can support the customer collaboration that will need into take place in the future.

About the author: Larry Caretsky is the president of Commence Corporation, a leading provider of CRM software which can be deployed in a web-based, cloud-computing environment or on premise. Caretsky is considered an expert in Customer Relationship Management and has written numerous white papers on the subject, which may be accessed via the company’s web site at www.commence.com.

The Role of Technology

The last several years have brought a radical change in the relationship between the customer and business as a whole.  More and more customers are collaborating with businesses and technology is playing a key role in this new collaboration. An increasing percentage of interaction with customers is coming by way of social networks and online communities.  These interactions include suggestions for product improvement, requests for help, information requests and even customers assisting their counterparts directly.  These customer conversations are driving the need for the business to respond in a timely fashion and to also convince potential customers of their ability to adequately address their needs.

This is driving executives to focus more attention on discovering the “favorite” customer or target market and crafting a marketing message that resonates with that target market.  To do this effectively, the business needs to gather and analyze all of the relevant customer data points,  In addition to demographic and geographic data, the business needs to understand why customers are buying their products or services and more importantly, what specific language the “favorite” customer is using to describe the buying experience.

The Changing Customer Role

This calls for the establishment of a close collaborative effort between the business and the customer base.  Sales and any other part of the organization that is in direct contact with the customer needs to listen closely to the conversation in order to hear what the customer is saying.  The data gathered needs to be analyzed so that not only does the business then understand which customers comprise the target market, but also how those customers think and how they communicate.

This effectively achieves two goals.  First, it allows the sales force to be immensely more productive by getting them to concentrate on that part of the general marketplace that has these pre-qualified prospects that have the same profile as the “favorite” customer. Secondly, it gives the marketing side of the business the ability to script a marketing message that resonates with the customer since it uses the information gleaned from the customer and can be written in a language that the customer understands.

Even more importantly, with more customers using online communities and social networks, it is essential that the key phrases that the business uses are the same as the key phrases that the customer uses in their posts on Facebook and LinkedIn or in their tweets on Twitter.  It also allows the business to search engine optimize its web site because the language and the keywords used are the ones the favorite customers are accustomed to.

So now, the business has a marketing message that resonates with the customer.  The sales force has a sales pitch that is geared towards solving the customer pain and is in a language the customer understands.  The customer feels that the business is listening and hearing them and prospects not only find the business, but when engaged by the sales force are easier to bring to a close.

Can current CRM systems play in this arena?

Most current CRM systems are very effective at helping the sales force automate the sales process and manage the sales cycle.  The way they do this is by collecting customer and prospect data that the sales force uses to manage sales campaigns, schedule sales calls and keep the sales cycle moving along.  To meet the new paradigm of target marketing that requires collaboration with our customers, these CRM systems need new functionality.

Commence Corporation is taking a leadership position in this area and understands that the future of customer relationship management will be centered on the collaboration and partnership with customers.  Commence is busy restructuring the data points that their system collects to include the needed demographic and psychographics data that CRM system do not capture today.  Commence is also looking closely at interfacing the product with social media applications so that it can collect and analyze all of the different streams of customer conversations that are currently on the web, then use this information to targeting effective marketing campaigns.

As a result of the economic downturn, many SMBs are struggling to justify the capital outlay to upgrade or implement a new CRM system because of cost and business uncertainty.  To survive in today’s economy, you need to implement a CRM software solution, but you need to do it for the right reasons.  Don’t implement a CRM solution to simply automate the sales process.  Growing your business will require the ability to capture, manage and share vital customer information from several data sources and then use the information to gain a competitive edge.  Select a CRM software provider that offers a platform that can support the customer collaboration that will need to take place in the future.

About the author: Larry Caretsky is the president of Commence Corporation, a leading provider of CRM software, which can be deployed in a web-based, cloud-computing environment or on premise. Caretsky is considered an expert in Customer Relationship Management and has written numerous white papers on the subject, which may be accessed via the company’s web site at www.commence.com.

I am delighted to invite you to follow Commence Corporation on Twitter and on our new Commence Blog. More and more businesses and individuals are relying on social networking to convey and receive information quickly and simply. Commence’s new social networking presence via blog postings and “tweets” will enable us to enhance our communication and build closer relationships with customers. Whether it’s the latest news on our flexible suite of award-winning CRM products or news in the sales and customer service industries, Commence looks to educate and inform our customers.

Commence’s Twitter followers were the first to know about our new drip marketing functionality. The newest version of Commence OnDemand, a flexible, Web-based hosted CRM solution, now enables marketing teams to automate, and schedule the delivery of text-based or HTML-based e-mail marketing campaigns. Commence understands that companies are being challenged to do more with less. Commence OnDemand’s breadth of functionality – such as our new drip marketing capabilities – makes it the ideal solution for small to medium-sized businesses that want to have one system that manages CRM, sales and marketing. By following us on Twitter or at our blog, you’ll be among the first to learn about product enhancements and industry news.

Larry Caretsky, Chief Executive Officer