Practical example of SOA

There is much talks about SOA - Service Oriented Architecture. Companies define it differently, but in essence you may say it is a way of connecting components together and making use of informastion from other sources that your own primary one, like the ERP solution in your business.

Last week I went to a presentation for Salesforce.com, the on demand crm-solution. I will write about this in another article, but in their presentation, Enecto from Sweden presented their own solution ProspectFinder.

The short version is that most companies do not know who visits their own website. Perhaps if you have an easy Contact Me page and want an integrated erp and crm-solution you will get an answer. But most prospects search and browse on many sites before they find what they are looking for. So in best case you loose out 80% oaf all potential business. Taking into account how expensive it is to do "cold canvass", improving your communication with searchers might be what can improve your easy sales.

The swedes have some happy customers as well and this is in short how I understand the concept.

When a customer browses your web page, the IP number of his or her machine is stored with ProspectFinder. Over the years they have collected massive amounts of IP adresses, and cooperate with each countries IP-board to collect names of owners of these IP-adresses.

This info and the companies unique ID is then sent over to D&B and information like credit history, rating, number of employees, turnover etc. are connected to the right company.

next step is to send this information based on certain rules, to the sales reps in your company for immediate action. You can set up per region or other criteria to match your sales organisation in the best way for you. Some of this is done wia SOA technology. And when the information is sent to your ERP or CRM solution it is shown on the relevant customer or contact card. You can just go for the sales pitch, and you know someone at the customers is interested.

The downside you need to think about is that you get information about the company. Now if thats HydroStatoil, you need more info from other sources. Perhaps you can chack your network with Linkedin.....

For small companies with less than 10 machines, you also might have a slight problem. If you need more inforation, I am shure Bjørn Sperling can help you.

From my former company, HansaWorld, there are several examples on SOA.
You can from the contact card, send an SMS by clicking on a button. You write the message and when you send it, the system connects to a world wide SMS provider, ViaNett, and sends it. ViaNett also sends back a receipt with SOA commands to the system.

Winning Sales Organisations - WSOs

I want to share something with you. I just came home from a short seminar with Robert B. Miller, one of the founders of Miller Heiman, the Sales Performance Company. I got an invitation from my business contact, Vidar Top, and decided to give it a shot. It was about success in Solution sales, rather that product sales. You decide if it was worth it.

Bob talked about B2B sales. And complex sales. How you as a sales person should understand how your key accounts or new business ackuisitions buy from you. How it involves different layers in the organisations and how each layer involves more people. Most of them can say no to you, but recent years the power of saying yes has rised to the top in organisations. Do you know who that is in your hot prospects or even key accounts? Bob´s company also performs a study to understand what the high performers do better. In the industry, in the region or even your company, you have high performers or Top Guns. Bob wonders why do not all companies resarch and implement these best practises into their own organisation. Some companies do, and very ofte the best companies out there are best because thay always search for ways of improvement. It is all about improving sales quality.

Winning Sales Organisations - WSOs
The survey according to Bob defines the winners as thos companies who have:
20% growth revenue
20% growth in average account billing
20% growth in new account ackuisition
Only 7% of the 6000+ companies go into this category (so there is room for improvements)


Areas where these companies stand out I would summarise in the following:

1. Customer focus - Do we know what the customer thinks of our solution? Long term customer relationship is the most important thing. Keep your Key Accounts. Understand their business better than themselves.
2. Opportunity creation - Why are we different? Why do we win? Why do customers buy from us? Most industries are suffering (vendor point of view) from commoditisation - they all look alike. You need to think outside the box, what can I bring to the table, and do the customer see this as being benefitial to him. Think in terms of individualisation rather "one size fits all". Know your Value Proposition. It used to be: Product - Feature - Benefit. Now it is more like: Benefit ONLY if it solves a specific problem in the eyes of the customer. You need to understand what the customer is trying to fix, accomplish or avoid to be successful in selling. And most importantly you need to standardise a way of qualifying your leads. The cost of selling is so high so you need to win fast or loose fast. You need to know when to stop investing in large deals. You have Good sales, Better sales and Best sales: Only a proper template for for where we do our best sales and what is common for our best large accounts. Find your companys Sweet spot, so to say.
3. Opportunity management - Be with your key accounts. Get the pulse of their business. Even though you don´t get business right now, it might be 6 months down the line.
4. Relationship management - Lear to listen. Wiat for the right moment for your own message.
5. Sales management - Managing people change over time. What was good when your were your might not apply today. Do not cap bonuses, do not force too much policies, and understand why your best performers succeed. There is no such thing as discounts....
6. People - Leverage talent. Let your your salesstaff shadow the more experianced. It takes some gut to leard selling to executives.
7. Reinforcement and support -
8. Management executives - Understand when during the year executives make desicions. When is the right stragetgi time. Get in that timeslot before it all gets known publicly. In stead of waiting for their RFT (tender document), help them write the need analysis. Remember that high cost solutions are decided upon by top ranked executives. Make shure your executives are involved in the case at the right time with their own level. Just get your best or right resource for that. Top executives today need to spend between 20% and 50% in face to face contact with their key accounts.

A small hint for all of you at the very end. Having a short executive meeting. Ask what you want more from your sales people, and what you want less of. The shut up for 20 minutes. Your client starts talking, and the answer you make at the end, might well give you a handshake at that moment, not even telling how your are going to fix their problem.

And here is a free tip on improving your sales.

Good luck, and thanks Bob.

Heaven and hell

Let me put it right. There is nothing religious about this title in this article.

After my trip to Duabi, I needed to sum up a few thoughts and share them with you.

Many years ago, I touched down in Abu Dhabi, on my way to Bangkok. The only thing I remember from the airport was gold jewellery and the image of great shops. This was almost 15 years ago. Their oil fortune needed to be spent wise.

So I was exited when I was offered to go to Dubai for HansaWorld. More than a few days work and a few days pleasure.

The heat is on

In many ways. The plainride was "cold" (and KLM could really do with some help raising service level, food quality, seat comfort and generosity) so the "heat" was almost knocking me to the ground as I left the aircraft. I was told to bring cash to pay for visa, entering the United Arab Emirates, or UAE. I had US Dollars and Euros. Beeing norwegian for for free. I lined up for passport control and it took a while. But what struck me was the large number of men in thoub, ogal and shumagg and women in hijab or burqa. Women in burqa, always together with their man. I still wonder how they identify themselves under their burqa.

Traffic

Saturday evening is no different from other times, when it comes to traffic. More than 1.4 million people live in Dubai. 75% are expats (foreigners working in Dubai). They all drive a car it seems. The city growth is rapid, and it seems like the infrastructure does not keep up with the rest of the building going on. Although there is a new metrosystem under construction. Beeing finished in 2009, most people tend to think this will not help enough, du to rapid expansion plan of the city. Some say it will continue until it reaches 15 million people.

Construction - glory and slavery

The Dubai skyline is changing all the time. Some told me that 20% of the worlds capacity for cranes are tied up in Dubai. Streets and intersections are changed daily, challenging taxi drivers for the shortest routes. Highrise, glam and glossy seem to be the mantra for architects. The famous Burj-al-arab hotel is fabolous from a distance. But if you try to enter it, you are denied unless you live or work there. The hotel was printed on number plates for cars in 2001, but a conspiracy theory told that it resebled a christian cross facing Mekka so it was banned.

The worlds largest building is now reaching the top. Nobody wants to say officially how tall it is going to be, - Burj Dubai. Armani will design his own hotel here. Up to 5 hotels will reside in the building. I am shure it will be spectacular (if you like that style...). But when you know poor indian workers with no rights at all work there for 100 EUR per month, are bussed after their shift to their camp in the dessert, it all gets a bit sad. On example I heard, was that the official temperatur never exeeds 50 degress in Dubai. Even thoug it does, it would mean that workers would have to stop working in that heat.

Shopping and skiing

Glam and motors

The hub

HansaWorld at Gitex 2007 in Dubai

I just came home from Dubai.

I spent a week there for Gitex. The biggest expo of gadgets, parts, services, computers, televisions, phones, computer-programs and more. Seem to be a long time since we thought such expo times were over in my part of the world..... Gitex 07 was not as big as the year before, so perhaps things are changing in the ME as well? At least they did not claim it was bigger, and we all know what that means.

Where was Nokia? Where was Microsoft? Where was Apple? Well apple does not have a strong prescence in the region, but have their own IMC ME (Independent Marketing Company) who was there.

HansaWorld is going global. That is part of why I went to Dubai. To help our local office situated for the time beeing in Internet City, One of many FreeZones to encourage international business in Dubai, one of the seven emirates in the United Arab Emiarates or U. A. E.

Last year we were invited to Nokias stand at Gitex. This time we managed to be able to present our Mac-versions on the stand of IMC ME. It was like a nice hidden surprise. But it was a nice experience, meeting nice and friendly employees from IMC ME and quite a few both interested partners and customers from the whole arabic speaking region. Our best marketing drive was the one thing or gadget that was NOT present, - Apples iPhone. A lot of people came to our stand to ask to see it. I saw two, - both of them inofficial cracked versions to run on the local operator.

I have a story to tell you, one about a company who came back a few times to reveiw our solution. I myself do not speak arabic, but when you demonstrate a fully functioning erp-solution that does it is fun. Our multilanguage versions allow us to change language interface with a key stroke. Most people are impressed when they see the english version turn into their local language. This nice lady was quite impressed, but I could see the small grin on her face when she told me with some sort of polite arrogance: "but arabic is from right to l.....?" Her face broke into a smile when I with another keytroke turned the picture from right to left.

Well, now the hard work starts. Trying to close the deals and get some more new customers in the region and to sign on board new interesting HansaWorld partners for us in the Middle East including opportunities from countries like Saudi-Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, Jordan, U.A.E, Qatar, Quwait, Lebanon and Yemen.

Saved by GoogleMap on my mobile

I just came home from vacation in Lisbon in Portugal with my wife and two kids. We rented a car at the airport, and I was prepared for the shortest route to our company appartment in Carcavellos. On paper, printed from Google Maps, and I had also motivated my wife to understand the directions. Beeing used to GPS in my car back home, have made me lazy when figuring out what way to go and what turn to make when. Just in case, I also downloaded GoogleMaps on my Nokia E61 mobile phone the night before we left.

It all went well the first 4 points following the instructions on paper in the dark with no natural way of knowing north from south with the help from the sun and my watch.

Beeing too dependent on paper notes, reduced the gut feeling and normal sense of direction, and all of a sudden we slipped off into the wrong direction, - towards Sintra.

After a while we headed back into the Benfica area, stopped at the first sight of a clear street name crossing another street with a clear street name.

I popped up my E61, started GoogleMaps and entered the names, and in a few seconds it found the right street (first in Brazil....), then in Lisbon. Next step was to enter our final destination for the night, and then click on the route description menu.

From then on, we reached our appartment and could start our holiday, which was great.

HansaWorld SmartApps, Skype Extras and FaceBook Applications

To a large extent, providers seem to provide value ads to their own apps. I have used Skype for a long time both internally in HansaWorld, toward some of our partners and customers. We lauched HansaWorld BusinessPhone some time ago as a Skype Extra, directed towards new non-HansaWorld users. FaceBook also ads value for their users, with their Applicatons. I just tried out the Bookshelf app and the Winelist app for the fun of it. And our own HansaWorld SmartApps for business users of many kinds.

This looks like a way to attract more users, users with specific needs not supported by the main developer. It also attracts third party developers with special skills and interests.

Can SmartApps do for HansaWorld what iPod did for Apple?

iPhone and Apple
I cannot se why not. I just read an intersting article about Apple outgrowing Microsoft by Robin Bloor. Apple has a great growth in the US. And currently a lot more than Microsoft. By launching the iPod, Apple TV and now the iPhone a lot of new sales are made. I challenge Steve Jobs to do more in the business area, if he really want to outgrow Microsoft.

SmartApps and HansaWorld
Well, the sky is the limit. We just introduced our SmartApps in Budapest. A sneak preview. This suite of mobile apps are directed towards all the companies out there who does not have HansaWorld ERP solutions. Time will show if we get the same effect as Mr. Jobs got.