Customer Service Tip #1 – Providing a Comfortable Knowingness

October 18, 2011 in Customer Service | Leave a comment

In dealing with an offshore development company with difficult timezone differences (a whopping 12.5 hours), it became crystal clear there are two vital customer service tips:

  1. Always respond to a customer’s email within 24 hours: there is nothing worse than having your emails ignored by a service provider. Did they get the email? Was it “not important”? Should I resend it? Therefore, it is VITAL to always acknowledge a client’s emails within 24 hours.
  2. Always give the customer good prediction: doing this on projects and tasks gives the customer a secure feeling about the future because there is agreement that so-and-so will be done by a certain date or that work will be accomplished this week or next, etc.  Without providing any prediction leaves the customer in doubt about the future, wondering if the service provider really cares and so on.  Sometimes a service provider just doesn’t have any prediction because of conflicting projects and requests; but, you still have to give SOME prediction.
Following these two tips will go a long ways to keeping your clients informed with a comfortable knowingness about their future with you.

Salesforce.com Value Proposition

May 12, 2011 in IT Management, Technology, Tools | 4 comments

Introducing new technology within any organization faces adoption challenges from the user community for a variety of reasons but a major barrier can be just the learning process of how to use the new technology without disrupting or destroying existing work flows.

Prior to 1868 there was no usable typewriter in existence and thus communication was hand written or using a printing press. In 1853, the record handwriting speed was 30 words per minute. Then the first practical typewriter was invented by Christopher Latham Sholes in 1868 which easily doubled the possible number of words per minute.  Speeds of over 150 words per minute were possible.  Wow, a 5x speed improvement!

Imagine standing there in 1868 with fountain pen in hand and your boss gesticulating about this fantastic new device called a “typewriter” that you now had to learn immediately and that written communication was now frowned upon! This was the new revolution in business communications. Your first thought was probably, “how in the world do you use this thing?” and the second thought was, “I will be spending all of my time learning this darn thing and not getting my work done!”

Similar challenges face any organization wishing to adopt a system like Salesforce.com to revolutionize their business and sales activities.  Sales staff envision all the time they will need to spend learning the new system and thus view it skeptically.  Sales management see the potential but are not altogether enthusiastic as their short-term sales quotas may be impacted.

In today’s world, no one would ever think of not using a typewriter for business communications and the same is becoming true of systems like Salesforce.

To help smooth the waters, here are the value propositions for adopting Salesforce within your organization that I have found pertinent:

Company Assets

The company’s sales contact information is an invaluable asset and thus it must be protected by housing it within an enterprise system that all sales, marketing and executive staff can access easily and swiftly to accomplish their work. Allowing sales staff to have their own sales database on their laptop is a sure way to lose that information completely when they leave the company.

Activity Tracking

Having sales staff input their opportunity and activity information provides transparency into what are my sales staff actually doing? Sales management need information on what is happening in order to be effective at helping to close deals and mentor their staff.

A central system like Salesforce delivers this transparency in all possible ways: opportunity activity, call logs, notes, email threads, account activity, payment history, invoices, documents, etc. Without such a system, management and sales staff are much less efficient as they are now required to call or email or talk in person to get updated and vital information.

In fact, relying on inefficient team updating methods is a sure way to keep your sales teams small and resist growth.

Knowledge Sharing

Knowledge sharing amongst sales staff and teams is a vital activity and the Salesforce Chatter collaboration tool allows for fast and direct knowledge sharing. The power of Chatter is that it can replace traditional email for sharing and collaborating in a much more efficient manner.  Examples:

  • Create a Chatter group around a particular project in order to share ideas and post status updates.  This way everyone on the team is instantly kept informed without individual email threads being lost or not being CCed to important people.
  • Create a private Chatter group for sensitive team or management information.
  • Stop forwarding all those emails to “keep others informed” and use Chatter.
  • Leverage Chatter to get your question answered quickly by someone in your team without getting duplicate answers (since everyone can see the reply to the question as soon as it is posted).
  • Chatter is very easy to use with mobile and desktop applications available for download.
ANY CHARACTER HERE

Meeting Scheduling

Salesforce provides a Request A Meeting feature which is fantastic at coordinating meetings with multiple people without the hassle of the endless emails back and forth to schedule everyone: video overview.

Inside vs Outside Sales

Inside sales staff typically have to catch all the sales balls the outside sales staff are throwing their way – quote requests, contracts, chasing up customers, etc., etc. If the outside sales staff are keeping their Salesforce accounts, contacts and opportunity information current with all activity noted then the inside staff will be 200% more effective. Gone will be the innumerable clarifications and additional communication in order to process requests.

Quote Workflows

Leverage Salesforce quotes and workflows such that outside sales staff submit new quotes which are automatically routed to inside sales staff via workflow rules where the quote is fully prepared and then routed back to the outside staff for review before sending off to the customer.

ANY CHARACTER HERE

Document Repository

Every sales group has various documents they use on a regular basis – marketing material, quote forms, company bio, slide decks, etc.  Salesforce has a very good Content Library for managing, sharing, discovering and tracking all of these in a single place.

The Deliver Content feature is particularly useful for sending a PDF or PowerPoint to a customer without the bulky attachment but a simple URL that the customer can click on and view the document right in their browser. This avoids those troublesome firewalls and the recurring “never received your proposal” emails. The system even emails you when the content is viewed by your customer.

ANY CHARACTER HERE

Marketing Automation

Having all of your company’s contacts and leads in Salesforce opens the door to integrated email campaigns leveraging demographics and other data points for focused campaigns. Salesforce integrates with all of the major email marketing and automation companies.

Enterprise Systems Integration

Salesforce can be seamlessly connected to your company’s ERP, finance or other enterprise systems in order to expose all vital information in a single place. A good example would be customer invoices visible right in the account record without ever having to login to the finance system or pry the information out of Accounting.

Endless Possibilities

Salesforce is a true cloud computing platform that allows for any custom application to be built. Entire ERP, finance and other complicated systems have been built on the platform.

Summary

Let’s go back to that moment of staring down at that 1868 typewriter and struggling whether to either strangle your boss or embrace a new method of working. The first step is just recognizing the long-term benefits of the new technology. Then getting over any irritation at having to learn something new. Followed by rolling up your sleeves and grasping the new technology and running with it.

That would be for an individual. For a company, the success of introducing new technology utterly depends on upper and middle management completely behind the initiative and mustering their juniors to learn and use the new systems.

Salesforce is an enterprise solution and thus its full benefit is not truly realized until the entire enterprise is on board and utilizing it in a creative fashion for their business.

Domain vs Page Backlinks

March 30, 2011 in Internet Marketing, Technology | 1 comment

A domain backlink links to your site’s domain (e.g. www.acme.com) and a page backlink links directly to a specific page within the domain, like a product or article page.  Martin Spiek Chief Search Officer of DEP Labs gives a great answer to “What is the value of domain vs page backlinks?”:

  1. It really depends on the keywords or key phrases that are used by the consumers in their searches for products or services.  If the consumer searches are more detailed, specific and individually product relevant, then a single product or group of products can rank higher.
  2. The higher ranking of specific products over “broad” subject matter also depends on the origin of the backlinks.  Does the origin web page of the backlinks consist of a “broad” or “narrow” subject matter and use similar keywords or key phrases in the origin page(s) as in the destination link / web pages?
  3. The greater the continuity of keywords and key phrases (broad or narrow) of both the origin web page(s) and destination web page(s) will have the greatest linking benefit to the both the one way link association and most certainly in any reciprocal / traded link associations.
  4. Consumer traffic, daily, weekly, monthly to the origin of the backlink is also critical in the quality of the link.  If the origin site has high consumer traffic on a regular basis this is a critical factor in the Quality Score of the backlink.  If the origin of the backlink has little or no regular consumer traffic then the back link is really of little or no value – no matter how good the subject relevancy or continuity from origin to destination is.
  5. Does the origin site currently rank on Page 1 of Google, Yahoo or Bing for the keywords being used?  If the site is not in the top 3-5 pages of these popular search engines on the target keywords & key phrases then again the Quality of the link requires much greater review before creating the link association.
  6. Popularity and subject continuity are very important components to relevancy as well as linking structures both internally and external inbound links.

Martin’s answer helps to clarify that not all backlinks are created equal and the typical SEO approach of getting lots and lots of backlinks to your site will not necessarily improve organic search traffic at all. Google and the other popular search engines are all about ensuring search results are relevant and this applies to backlinks as well.  Therefore, a well thought out backlink building campaign that targets sites of high quality will have a much higher impact on search ranking than getting thousands of poor quality backlinks.

IT Dept Triumphs

January 5, 2011 in IT Management | Leave a comment

At the beginning of every new year I review the past year’s triumphs and hurdles to not only correctly acknowledge what was accomplished but to layout the IT strategic plan for the new year.

One of the key reasons IT is so mis-understood or not recognized by upper management is that no one really knows what happens in IT and the efforts required to pull off various projects.  It’s rather like simply taking for granted that the lights continue to shine or the power to the building is always there. You don’t really notice until they stop working and then all hell breaks loose.

In our modern world the non-IT person completely under estimates the effort needed to implement IT solutions.  They have the concept of so-and-so and thus it should just happen, right? This is where expert communication is needed to fully enlighten and keep informed the stake holders and users for any IT project.

Unfortunately many IT executives communicate poorly to upper management and to the user base, if at all.  This keeps the IT dept in a sort of “mystery” and generally under appreciated.  So, my motto is keep interested parties informed on what is going on.  Very simple but very powerful.

So, what was accomplished by my IT Dept in 2010?

  • Rebuilt the IT Dept through personnel changes, clear job descriptions, regular weekly meetings, setting of strategic plans, establishing steering committees and generally putting in effective management.
  • Created an effective IT Help Desk by hiring two staff, rolling out the first ever ticketing system at the company and grooving in the team to service the 180+ end-users.  The result has been over 1,100 resolved tickets and a positive shift to satisfied customers.
  • Resurrected the dead corp intranet on a new platform (Mindtouch Enterprise Wiki) with all new content.  The result has been the re-establishment of vital shared information in the company and the first ever comprehensive knowledge base for the IT Dept.
  • Rolled out the first enterprise anti-virus solution (using Symantec Endpoint Protection) to provide improved security and safety for individual PCs, laptops and servers.
  • Rolled out an ERP integrated warehouse shipping solution (Logicor Globalship) that improved warehouse shipment efficiency by 1,000%.
  • Rolled out an ERP integrated sales tax solution (ADP Taxware) that streamlined sales tax calculations on all orders and obviated the need to have sales tax returns prepared and filed in 100s of jurisdictions.
  • Placed all Xerox copiers under a fleet contract and saved the company $788/month.
  • Rolled out the first Microsoft Active Directory network at the company to 65% of the users across 4 offices with 3 offices left to go.
  • Successful desktop/laptop upgrades for 65% of the users resulting in faster more reliable systems.
  • WAN/LAN upgrades that have increased Internet access performance by 700%.
  • Successful upgrades to the ERP system including 4x memory, latest ERP version, new 64-bit Linux base OS and various custom modifications.
  • Successful launch of the first ever e-commerce website for the company – Tools4Heroes.com (see my poston the launch).  Project triumphs:
    • Debugged and established the ERP API integration with the website for product synchronization and web sales order insertions.
    • Prepared a 2,000+ product database including images, descriptions, weights and pricing.
    • Integrated the website with the new Logicor Globalship shipping system for real-time shipping cost estimates.
    • Integrated the website with the new ADP Taxware system for correct sales tax calculations on all orders.
    • Complete shopping cart setup including an Internet merchant bank account, payment gateway and working with Accounting to ensure all monies flowing properly.
    • Established the internal order fulfillment processes and procedures to provide excellent customer service.
  • Successful emergency move of the Firebooks.com website to another ISP when the old one went out of business unexpectedly.
  • Over 2,300 custom ERP reports delivered to end-users.
  • Successful roll-out of the first ever email marketing system for Marketing using Vertical Response.
  • Successful implementation of a new ERP product pricing process which cut update time by 50-70%

Whew!  It was a busy year and most of the above was done after I joined in March or in the last 9 months of the year.  This was all done with a relatively small group of staff – 2 Help Desk, 1-2 System Admins, 4.5 Product DB staff, .75 ERP Reports staff and 2 out-sourced web developers.

It was a very good year!

New Ecommerce Site Integrated with Infor ERP

January 2, 2011 in Announcements, Technology | 1 comment

Tools 4 Heroes Homepage

Tools4Heroes.com Homepage

Upon taking up my new post as Director of Technology with L.N. Curtis & sons in March of 2010, one of my mandates was to debug a 2.5 year e-commerce project that had stalled.  This was a vital project as the company did not yet have an e-commerce site and was therefore missing out on a significant revenue stream.

The new site development had been outsourced to a custom .NET development shop in San Jose but only the site design and basic back-end for managing products had been implemented.

The remaining challenges were many and varied:

  1. Product synchronization with the Infor SX Enterprise ERP system had yet to be developed and gotten working.
  2. Product pricing for web sales had yet to be finalized along with specialized ERP pricing records.
  3. Sales order insertion into the ERP for order fulfillment had yet to be developed.
  4. Missing Internet merchant bank account.
  5. Missing Internet payment gateway.
  6. Shopping cart had yet to be implemented.
  7. Most static content on the site was missing or not final (e.g. Privacy Policy).
  8. No method for determining correct Sales Tax.
  9. No method for determining correct shipping costs.
  10. No method for automatic email confirmations on ordering and shipping.

As you can see there were many key site elements which were missing and had to be dealt with quickly; and these were handled with the site going live in 8 months just before Thanksgiving 2010.

In the following sections I detail the hurdles to get the site built and launched:

Infor SX Enterprise ERP Integration

Firstly the Infor SX Enterprise API is not web service based and requires one to load either a .NET or Java API on your web server which you then call.  Couple this with no documentation and expensive Infor professional services, I now had a recipe for frustration.  Given problems with the .NET API it was dropped in favor of the Java version which required a re-write of the interface code.  Later, the interface had to be written into a web service form itself in order to handle unusually long socket open times of the underlying Java API – an astonishing 4-5 seconds.

The web server had been located in a 3rd party data center whereas the ERP server was in-house and this required a hardware dedicated VPN tunnel to provide a secure channel.

Product Synchronization

The ERP system maintains all web product pricing and availability information which needed to be synced with the website DB.  The antiquated Infor API does not provide a simple query mechanism to simply get all web coded products.  Instead we were forced to get every product (over 50,000) and then narrow down the result set to the 2,000 web products and then query again to actually get pricing and other details.  The process takes many hours and is done overnight.  This is certainly not an elegant solution but it works until Infor can provide a more interactive and/or robust API.

All 2,000 products had to be configured in the ERP system with the correct web product code, pricing and weight.  Interestingly, many of the products had no weights and thus there were many trips to the warehouse to check actual weights!

Shipping Charge Calculation

The ERP system did not have the ability to determine estimated shipping costs and these would be needed in the shopping cart.  Given that our items ranged from very light items (like batteries) to very heavy items (50 lb containers), free shipping was not an option, especially since we would be shipping anywhere in the United States.

A shipping system module for the ERP system was located, evaluated and brought online: Logicor GlobalShip.  This system has a seamless interface with the ERP and is accessed by the website via an API for determining shipping rates based on destination zip code, weight of item(s) and class of service.

The GlobalShip product was also rolled out in one warehouse to replace the existing UPS Worldship PC.  This new system provides:

  • Warehouse shipping station: PC with GlobalShip software, scale, shipping label printer and bar code scanner.
  • Bar scanning of warehouse pick tickets to bring up item for shipment directly from the ERP.
  • Weighing package on scale and adjusting shipment details.
  • Printing shipment label and updating ERP system with shipment information, including tracking code.

Sales Tax Calculation

The company has a complex sales tax situation in that it has 11 different tax nexus points in the western United States.  This includes Washington and Colorado which have destination sales tax laws (every zip code and even partial zip codes have their own sales tax rate).  Thus a simple tax calculation was out of the question.

The ERP system was being updated manually to provide the correct sales tax rates for regular orders but the API would have needed custom modifications to calculate the right sales tax.

Therefore, the decision was made to adopt the ADP Taxware product which worked seamlessly with the Infor ERP in order to provide sales tax rates based on the destination zip code.  This was a major project to evaluate, install and turn-up.  This product was a great enhancement as it removed the necessity for manual updating of our ERP sales tax tables plus ADP even prepares the sales tax returns and will file on your behalf.  Great product.

Sales Order Insertion

When a user is ready to check-out, a Sales Quote request is sent to the ERP in order to get the correct sales tax and estimated shipping.  Then after the user’s credit card is charged, an actual Sales Order is sent to the ERP and this kicks off the internal order fulfillment process.

Interestingly, a sales quote cannot be converted to a sales order via the API and thus we had to create a job to delete old sales quotes.

Shopping Cart

The first order of business was to get an Internet merchant bank account which is normally a routine process but not if the company is considering changing banks.  This added a delay of some months and then the bank had quite a lengthy approval process – they wanted to see an actual working shopping cart with a secure cert (quite unusual since a secure cert is only needed on a live site) before giving us an account.  Anyway, we finally got an account!

Signing up with Authorize.net as our payment gateway was a snap and was easily integrated with the website.

Internal Order Fulfillment

The company had never had an e-commerce operation and thus I established the order fulfillment and customer service processes in the company which included:

  • Setting up a new toll-free number.
  • Training the warehouse staff on how to use the new GlobalShip shipping system for shipping web orders.
  • Training the inside sales staff on the website and how to provide customer service.
  • Setting up the ERP system for alerting the right management on new orders.

Post Launch Report

The site launched with no significant issues and started taking online orders almost immediately.  Internal order fulfillment was also smooth.  Metrics since going live:

  • 9,575 visits
  • 92,000 page views
  • 9.65 pages/visit

Overall, a technically beautiful launch.

Next Steps

The emphasis is now on marketing the site heavily and we have selected DEP Labs as our Internet marketing partner.  We have also adopted Salesforce.com as our new sales and marketing platform and will be used initially for email marketing campaigns.

Post Mortem

Now that the dust has settled, how would I have done this project differently?  I would have taken a closer look at the ERP API sooner in order to determine if it would really fit the bill or not.  Given the difficulties we had with the Infor API, I would have preferred making the website more intelligent about product information and only use the ERP for availability information.

I am a big fan of SaaS and would also have prefered to have built the site on a SaaS e-commerce platform and thus leveraged all that the e-commerce platform could provide (e.g. user contributed content, reviews, accounts, etc.).

If I could have swapped out the ERP system altogether then that would have made my day but even Hercules has his limits.

Harnessing User Requests With The Best Online Ticketing System – Zendesk

November 20, 2010 in Technology, Tools | Leave a comment

In taking up the reins of my new technology directorship at L.N. Curtis & sons, I was confronted with the fact that the IT Dept had absolutely no ticketing system for over 160 users spread across 10 offices.  Requests came in by email which went to all IT staff and by direct phone calls to individual staffers.  User satisfaction was low and IT staff overwhelmed.

Consider standing beneath a rather large waterfall and batting away at the water, becoming more and more upset that the water doesn’t just stop!  Handling user requests can be similar if you have no way of channeling the requests – you eventually drown!

Therefore the necessity of having a good ticketing system that the users will actually use coupled with ways of channeling requests into the IT Dept is vital unless, of course, you like drowning!

In evaluating various online ticketing systems, Zendesk was selected for the following reasons:

  • Low cost of entry being a SaaS solution;
  • The UI is extremely easy to use and the end-users picked it up without a hitch;
  • Customizable fields allowing for different departments and groups to easily channel requests to the right person or section;
  • Ability to create a knowledge base of articles and how-to guides for the end-users;
  • Decent reporting;
  • Excellent integration with external systems like Campfire, Twitter, Jira, Yammer, Basecamp and others;
  • Microsoft AD integration.

Zendesk has worked flawlessly for my dept since it was rolled out back in May and I highly recommend it.  Your users will love it and your staff will find it very easy to work with.

My only caveat is that if you are used to using a very complicated system, like Remedy, then you will be disappointed with the lack of configuration, reporting, etc.  The strength of Zendesk, in my opinion, is the fantastic web UI, the SaaS model to keep TCO down and the ease of use for your end-users.

New Governing Website Goes Live

May 20, 2010 in Announcements | Leave a comment

The newly designed and updated Governing website was launched recently by the eRepublic technology team  – www.governing.com:

Governing Home Page

Governing Home Page

Governing.com connects America’s leaders by providing intelligence and analysis on management, policy and politics to help guide and inspire innovative leaders across state and local government.

This was the fifth site to launch on the new web content management (WCM) platform the company adopted in 2009 – Clickability.com – and was completely re-designed and re-built from the ground up in 2010 using in-house staff in just 5 months:

  • Full front-end redesign;
  • Full presentation layer and template coding;
  • Full data migration from a Drupal based system to the Clickability.com platform;
  • Migration of external blogs onto the platform including one robust micro-site;
  • Web ad management system using DART;
  • Lead capture is managed by a seamless integration with Eloqua and SalesForce.

Website Highlights

Blogs

The site launched with no less than six blogs all being powered by the Clickability platform.  The Better, Faster, Cheaper blog had been a stand-alone micro-site which was fully incorporated into the platform.

Governing Blogs

Governing Blogs

Events & Webinars

The site seamlessly manages many events and webinars:

Governing Events

Governing Events

Web 2.0 Media Pages

Governing Column

Governing Column

Governing Article

Governing Article

E-commerce Bookstore:

Governing Book

Governing Book

Technology Visions for Knowledge Based Sites

January 21, 2010 in Technology | 4 comments

A knowledge based site would be any site that provided knowledge rather than primarily selling products or providing entertainment.  This is a wide classification and encompasses media, content, reference, research or any site that communicates knowledge on specific subjects or topics.

The Internet has become the great knowledge provider given the plethora of sites providing any type of knowledge imaginable from baking cakes to building space craft.  Sophisticated search and indexing engines expose that knowledge and the game has become how to craft sites to be found and used by the largest audience possible.

Out of the virtual sea of possible knowledge sources, the more relevant, useful and valuable that knowledge is perceived to be, will determine a site’s success.  Sites which do not provide relevant, useful and valuable knowledge are never very successful.

Once a site has conquered the design, usability and SEO challenges, the next mountain to climb will be how to make it an invaluable resource for the widest possible user base.

Here are some technology visions for increasing the usage, relevancy, usability and value of any knowledge based site:

Tailored Visitor Content

The Holy Grail for any online marketer would be to push tailored content to each visitor based on their online digital profile.  Now, such a profile would be built up over time as the user interacted with your web properties and email marketing campaigns.   Thus we are talking about dynamic digital profiles.  Such visitor profiles would enable marketers and sales teams to dramatically increase visitor interaction, participation and, ultimately, the sales close percentage.  These profiles could also be shared with partners to provide qualified leads and generate a significant source of revenue.

Minority Report

Minority Report - Holographic Ad

Sounds very grand and brings to mind the techno thriller film Minority Report with Tom Cruise, where consumers are presented with holographic ads based on their past spending habits.

Generating online digital profiles of your public is quite possible using Eloqua – a marketing automation and lead generation service.  Eloqua has developed the technology for creating Digital Body Language profiles for powering tailored marketing campaigns, empowering sales teams and providing tailored content.  See Eloqua CTO Steve Woods post What Exactly IS Digital Body Language? for more info.

At eRepublic, we now have a synergistic and powerful combination of using Eloqua, SalesForce, Clickability and our own proprietary object relational database, The Node Mesh, for powering our marketing, sales, content and knowledge delivery programs and systems:

eRepublic Matrix

Eloqua

Powers all of our email marketing campaigns and online forms with full synchronization with lead, contact and custom objects within SalesForce.

SalesForce

Is utilized in four core business areas:

  • Straight CRM for all sales teams.
  • Magazine circulation custom application for managing the subscribers of all company magazines.
  • Event custom application for managing the 70+ events the company puts on each year.
  • Account, user and case management for the two Navigator SaaS products.

Clickability

Is our new Web Content Publishing system and currently powers the following:

  • Convergemag.com
  • Emergencymgmt.com
  • Centerdigitaled.com
  • Erepublic.com
  • News, blogs and CIO Interviews content that is presented within the Navigators.

The Node Mesh

Provides a very flexible database and web services platform for connecting cloud based services.  Examples of how it is currently used:

  • CMS and delivery platform for:
    • Govtech.com
    • Centerdigitalgov.com
    • Navigator SaaS portals
  • Consumes Clickability content for publishing to the Navigators.
  • eCommerce forms with data pushed to Eloqua.
  • SalesForce API interface for managing the Navigator products.
Plum Benefits

Plum Benefits Presentation at EE09

The next technology advance will be to use these systems to present tailored visitor content on our web properties.

At the Eloqua Experience 09 conference there was a great presentation on how this was achieved for Plum Benefits using Eloqua and SalesForce (click image on right to download).

The synergistic aspects of these cloud based services are enhanced dramatically by using a directly controlled platform, like the Node Mesh, for providing data translation and integration services.

Content Syndication

Going beyond providing RSS feeds and utilizing Feedburner, content widgets with various themes and controls could be provided for embedding on other sites.  A good example are the new Facebook Widgets.

Not only would these drive more traffic to your site(s), they would provide more back links and raise your overall page ranking.  If you have a significant user community then simple marketing campaigns could easily start a viral adoption of them.

Content Affiliate Programs

Looking beyond straight content syndication, if your content is relevant enough then creating affiliate programs much like Google’s Adsense, would drive even more traffic to your site as well as provide a financial incentive for other web publishers to sign-up.  Here is a post that gives a comprehensive list of Adsense alternatives for providing a well-spring of ideas: Good List of Adsense Alternatives.

An example for a reference site could be an answers type widget that examines the page title, H1 tags and other elements looking for keywords that could be phrased as questions and linked to reference articles.  For example, given an affiliate article entitled The Future of Internet Technology in Britain, the answers widget could generate the following questions:

  • When was the Internet created?
  • What is the Internet?
  • Who is the current Prime Minister in Britain?
  • Etc.

Content APIs

There may be a business case in providing content APIs for third party applications and platforms that wish to leverage the knowledge within your systems.

We are currently flushing out a content API for our Navigator products to seamlessly publish content to a client’s SalesForce organization or other CRM systems.

Smart Phone & Handheld Apps

The bank, Credit Suisse, projects global smartphone sales in calendar 2009 at 176 million units and 223 million in 2010.  Thus the technology gold rush of third party created applications for smart phones and handhelds is in full swing and this ensures a deep and positive market for your applications on the leading platforms.

 

If your knowledge content has a wide enough audience then exposing and presenting your content on these mobile platforms is a  fantastic way to dramatically extend the reach of your sites.

Here are the application stores for the top smart phones:

Summary

A knowledge delivery platform will be as successful as it is relevant, useful and valuable to its users.  Adopting Eloqua or a similar technology will increase the relevancy and value of the knowledge provided because it will be tailored to the user.  Extending the platform to as many communication channels and third party platforms as possible has become a very successful model for dramatically increasing usefulness, value and the user base.

Bookmark Technology Visions for Knowledge Based Sites

The Right Stuff – Why Some IT Teams Succeed?

December 31, 2009 in IT Management | Leave a comment

 

The last day of the year has dawned and I was struck by a fundamental question as an IT executive: “What makes some IT teams really excel and succeed where others fail?”

This thought came to me as I reflected on the huge successes this year with my own team of 12 staff -

  • Convergemag.com – site  completely redesigned from the ground up and launched on the Clickability.com platform.  The new site was recognized as one of the top 10 great media sites in 2009 by BtoB Media Business.
  • Emergencymgmt.com – a new site split out from Govtech.com and launched as a standalone website on the Clickability.com platform.  The site was awarded a Bronze Digital Azbee Award for Best New Website in 2009!
  • Centerdigitaled.com – the site was completely redesigned from the ground up and launched on the Clickability.com platform.
  • Erepublic.com – the site was updated with a fresh look and launched on the Clickability.com platform.
  • Navigatorgov.com – SaaS product completely re-designed and re-built from the ground up on the in-house developed proprietary CMS and API (the Node Mesh).  See Navigator Product Launch post for more details.
  • Navigatored.com – SaaS product completely re-designed and re-built from the ground up on the in-house developed proprietary CMS and API (the Node Mesh).  See Navigator Product Launch post for more details.

Yes, it was a banner year for the IT department!  But, back to my original question, why this success?  Was it because I am a great executive?  No.  Was it because of strategic and tactical planning?  No, not really.  Was I blessed with perfect project management?  Again, no.

There is a very fundamental reason why some teams succeed and others fail.  Yes, there are many, many factors which make an IT project successful but if this one factor is missing then everything will be for naught.  The reason can be summed up in a single concept:

TEAMS SUCCEED WHERE THERE IS EXCELLENT TEAMWORK

This may seem too obvious and of course one needs teamwork in a team.  But, let’s take a closer look.  Every successful organization or team you have ever witnessed has had fantastic organization and teamwork.  Have you ever seen a football team win the Super Bowl and not be just an amazingly coordinated team?  That teamwork did not just spring from the ground and appear – it was created by each of the team members working in coordination with one another.

Teams are not just a group of people – they are individuals working together to achieve a common purpose.

Thus, as an executive or manager, one must work with and grant beingness to individuals vs the whole group as just one big mass, and ensure that everyone on the team has the same purpose.  If this is not done then there are a lot of wasted actions, staff feeling left out or not noticed, staff having their own agendas, work being re-done, etc., etc.

Since teams are built from individuals, you must ensure that you have GREAT staff on your team.  Do not compromise when looking for new talent and just accept whatever the market has to offer!  Keep looking and find those really great staff and hire them.  Building your team with excellent staff is half the battle.

If you have staff which are a liability to the team then that is a real problem and you should work with HR on how to handle it, fast!

Given a team with great staff then you need to really drive home a common purpose for the group.  This is done in various ways but it will always consist of clear communication on the goals and purposes for the group and reinforced regularly.  Here are some ideas on this:

  • Strategic plans adopted by management and communicated to all members on the team (see my post Building Bridges with IT Governance).
  • Tactical plans hashed out on how and when the items in the strategic plan(s) will be carried out.
  • Regular team and project meetings to review the plans.
  • Excellent processes in place to ensure a smooth working environment for the team (see my post How to Make an IT Department Efficient).

In summary, if one really treats a group as individuals with a common purpose and just reinforces this over and over with good organization then you will have a top-flight team that really has the Right Stuff!

Navigator Alchemy

December 28, 2009 in Technology | Leave a comment

 

In my previous post, Navigator Product Launch, I detailed the project scope and features of the new Navigators from a high level.  This post will detail the technical alchemy used to pull the whole system together.

The new Navigators were completely re-designed and re-built from the ground up on the in-house developed proprietary CMS and API – the Node Mesh – which is an object relational database running on MS SQL Server.  The middle-wear was written in PHP5 to take advantage of the Node Mesh and our deep repository of PHP5 objects.  The presentation layer and CMS were both built from scratch using advanced CSS, Ajax, Ext JS library, JSON, Flash and XML.

Node Mesh Implementation

The Node Mesh provides a very flexible database structure which can be accessed using lazy reads from PHP5 without writing a single line of SQL code.

Given the overall complexity of the database schema for the Navigator project, having the Node Mesh greatly assisted moving the project along as the schema expanded and became more complex.  Here is a diagram of the Node Mesh in use for the Navigators:

Navigator Node Mesh

Navigator Node Mesh - Click for Larger Image

The mesh structure of the database provides an extremely flexible system without the necessity of re-writing large areas of the code base to accommodate new changes in the future.

System Overview

The Navigator system is actually comprised of a number of different components:

Navigator System

Navigator System - Click for Larger Image

Clickability is the company’s Web Content Management (WCM) platform which was adopted earlier this year to power all of the company’s websites except the Navigators.  The Marketing and IT teams have successfully rolled out four websites on Clickability this year (see image above).  Clickability is used as the content platform for News, Blogs and CIO Interviews which are consumed by the Navigator system using the Clickablity API.  This allows those content items to be shared with any other web property powered by Clickability.

Web Services is used to connect to a 3rd party Grants database for exposing grant information within the Navigators.  Simple HTML fetches are used to consume 100s of eRate bids daily (a type of education id) and display them as well.

SalesForce was rolled out as the company’s CRM standard this year across all sales units and is used in the Navigator system as follows:

  • Account Management – all Navigator accounts are just SalesForce Accounts with custom fields for contract information.  Custom workflows were created to move Navigator Accounts into “renewal” and “expired” phases and to alert the appropriate sales staff.
  • User Management – all Navigator users are simply SalesForce Users with custom fields for Navigator user information.  New user emails can be generated and sent, as well as the management of trial users with automatic workflows.
  • Support Cases – when Navigator users submit support requests they are pushed up to SalesForce and automatic cases are created and then dealt with by the Member Services team.  Automatic emails are generated and sent to the end-user and support staff.
  • Custom Research Cases – when Navigator users submit custom research requests they are pushed up to SalesForce and automatic cases are created and then dealt with by the Research team.  Automatic emails are generated and sent to the end-user and support staff.

The communication with SalesForce utilizes triggers within SalesForce to initiate requests within the Navigators which in turn use the SalesForce API for effecting changes within SalesForce.

The Navigators use a custom C# application running in-house to manage the hourly, daily or weekly e-mail pushes to Navigator users who wish to receive news, blogs and bid information, based on their exact preferences, by email.  The email gateway used is the PowerMTA system from Port25.

A custom Cron synchronizing system was built using PHP5 to manage the syncing of data between the Navigators and Grants, eRates and Clickability.

Summary

The Navigators are very sophisticated, data centric web applications which provide a vital service to the clients of the Center for Digital Government and Education.  I am very excited about the new platforms as they were designed to allow the rapid extension of new features without the headache of “complexity creep”.

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