5 secrets to smb profitability david coleman founder & managing director october 13, 2010 1

5 Secrets to SMB Profitability

David Coleman Founder & Managing Director

October 13, 2010

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David Coleman, Background

©2009 Collaborative Strategies 2

Founder and Managing Director of Collaborative Strategies

“The Collaboration Maven” “The soft stuff is the hard stuff!”

• 20+ years in “collaboration• Ran the first conference on collaboration 1991• Author of 4 books on collaboration• Developed EFFECTS methodology• Part of the HPSCM team

Why do I do this?


Shifting to better collaboration can change the world!

This is MY mission

My Message1. Don’t be satisfied with poor collaboration !

2. Poor collaboration leads to broken relationships, which cost you way more than you think!

3. Make a shift to holistic collaboration

4. Your profits are eroding, collaboration may be a way out!


Your Issues• Improve customer loyalty

• Increase product scope and breath

• Dealing with social networks

• Increasing profits

• Keeping track of people you meet

• Silos

• Attracting collaborators without giving away too much

• Adapting to change


The 5 Secrets…1. Focus on relationships, profits will follow

2. Collaboration is like a magnifying glass it can enhance business relationships (it can also hurt them)

3. Identify critical processes that have collaborative leverage – and fix them!

4. Good relationships make unshakeable client loyalty, go to your best client’s first!

5. Credibility is critical, have you done it before you ask a customer or prospect to?


Secret 1…

“Relationships require an ongoing interaction between two or more people”• Trust is not always necessary, but is helpful

• They hold your and every other organization together

• The only way you make $ is if someone gives it to you. More likely in the context of a relationship


The Collaborative Shift

©2010 Collaborative Strategies

Shift Happens!!

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Necessary for collaboration and relationship success!

Holistic Approach to Collaboration

9©2010 Collaborative Strategies

From Collaboration 2.0

9©2010 Collaborative Strategies

Focus on Customers/Clients

• Can you make your workflow with customers for effective?• Supply chain – LotusLive shipping example

• Sales & Marketing – LotusLive room for getting contracts signed

• CRM vs. Collaboration – PBworks

• IDEO case study


Secret 2…

• Collaboration is like a magnifying glass! It can make things worse or better• It will not make a bad process good

• Fosters transparency, no place to hide

• Social networks are not always collaborative, only when there are interactions, otherwise they are a focused publishing media (Twitter).


Collaboration solutions for SMBs

12©2010, All Rights Reserved

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Zude: SocialMix, Aggregating Social Networks

© Collaborative Strategies 2010,All Rights Reserved

Social Network - example

©2010, All Rights Reserved 14

IBM/Lotus The essential bundle for small and medium businesses

To meet the needs of small and mid-sized companies

● Web mail, store and share files, manage projects, instant messaging and social networking services priced for any business

● $7 per user/per month

● www.LotusLive.com/bundle


UPS Shipping with Lotuslive


Choose UPS shipping in LotusLive

Generate and print the shipping label from LotusLive

Get contracts signed in LotusLive (S&M)


Managing Client Relationships


Contact

Management

Forecasting

Ad hoc Reporting

CRM Document Sharing

Presales Coordination

Negotiation & Closing

Project Rollout

Support & Follow-up

The real customer relationship medium is still email & phone

CRM vs. Collaboration


Contact

Management

Forecasting

Ad hoc Reporting

CRM Document Sharing

Presales Coordination

Negotiation & Closing

Project Rollout

Support & Follow-up

The Full Customer Relationship

PBworks Customer Collaboration Edition (keeping track of people)PBworks Customer Relationship Edition

Communications, content & coordinationIntegrated IM/chat and teleconferencingWiki pages for collaborative engagementDocument sharingProject management

Engagement monitoring for assessing opportunities

Pricing & Availability$30/user/month (customer/prospect access is free)Available early Q3


Secret 3…

• Find critical processes with collaborative leverage and fix or enhance them

• Best place to start looking for problems

• Leverage means you get the best ROI

• Leverage can work both ways

• Example: the sad sales manager


1. Sales & marketing (proposal development)

2. Customer service/support (exception handling)

3. R&D (new product development)

4. Supply Chain

a) Order-to-Cash Process (Customer Collaboration)

b) Purchase-to-Pay Process (Supplier Collaboration)

c) Exception handling

5. Training (internal and external)

6. Decision support/crisis management

Critical Processes with Collaborative Leverage

22©2010 Collaborative Strategies. All rights reserved

Secret 4…

Good relationships make unshakeable client loyalty, go to your best client’s first!• Clients that have bought are best prospects

• How do you create an ongoing relationship and opportunities for new business?

• Transparency helps to build trust, but understanding “local context” is critical

• It is often not about price, but about trust


Example

Worked at NetApp 4 years ago – hourly pricing

The person I worked for moved to VMware a year ago

August, called me to do the same work at VMware ($75k project) value based pricing.


Secret 5…

Credibility is critical, have you done it before you ask a customer or prospect to?

How IDEO solved their own problem and created a new and growing business


IDEO Case Study:Using a “design” culture to create a social network


•Well known design company (designed the first mouse)•Based in Palo Alto with 8 office worldwide•Now have 600 people, 3-5 people•It was common for 3-5 people in different roles and in different geographical locations to be working on a project and each person worked on multiple projects.•Last 10 years growth; the challenge became how to collaborate and coordinate effectively over time and space.

IDEO case study

• Did an internal study – people want to work with each other.

• IDEO offices were found to be good at innovation but not so good at sharing

• Hierarchies tended to support this siloed organizational structure. But organizational structure was changing…

• Started the “Knowledge Sharing” Project


IDEO Case Study• IDEO uses “design thinking” for problem solving and creation

• Focuses on human-centered work.

• It looks at social, cultural, cognitive, and physical aspects of people working

• IDEO process is to understand, observe, synthesize (visualize, realize, evaluate, refine) and implement

• Implementation occurs through cycles of rapid prototyping (visualize, realize, evaluate, refine) which happens early and often in most projects.

• They were looking for an adaptive and innovative solution, rather than a more efficient/effective solution.


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IDEO Case Study

• Focused on the IDEO ecosystem rather than just on individuals.

• Realized there was no “silver bullet.”

• Their organization was changing: hierarchic structure to a flatter, networked structure

• The focus of the KS program was not only to connect offices across the world, but support collaboration across skills, passions and interests.


IDEO Case Study• Successful collaboration was less about the tools/technologies,

and more about the culture and content which were critical for adoption.

• Important to capture conversations and decisions without making the employees do a lot of extra work

• Built their own tools; looked at 40 different commercial collaboration tools they could not find one that supported all of the functions they needed. • The only tool they did buy was ThoughtFarmer, which is the fifth wiki

platform they had tried. The unique function of ThoughtFarmer is that it automatically creates the linking and navigation for you with many different kinds of content


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IDEO Case Study

• IDEO started tracking usage statistics in May, 2008 and within 6 months had a 97% adoption rate

• They evolved five principles to make collaboration successful at IDEO:

1-Build pointers to people and help them to connect (like Facebook)

2- Reward individual contribution - an intersection between “what motivates me” and what the organization needs.

3- Demand intuitive interfaces – diminish any impediments to adoption, even something as small as requiring an additional login between different tools.

They used Tandberg video conferencing devices to connect distributed groups, and allow others to hear the ambient conversation (if it was left on all the time).


IDEO Case Study

4- Go where the people already are - Rather than requiring people to change their behavior

They used large screen LCDs in the company café (at each location) and linked the screens by “wormholes” to help people interact with each other.

5- Build adaptive systems (prototype new features – Integrate into existing workflows) iterate until they work


IDEO case study


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How was IDEO Successful?

• How is IDEO so successful with their KS program? The answer is simple (but not easy), focus on the people. Trust people, value the contribution of every employee, and don’t just focus on the technology.


IDEO was so successful that their clients asked for the same system

All webinar attendees

Are invited to have a ½ hour strategy session with David

Just fill out the form on the CS web site at:

www.collaborate.com/strategysession


Contact Information and ResourcesDavid Coleman – The Collaboration Maven

[email protected]

Dcoleman100 on Twitter or G-Mail

650-342-9197

David Coleman on Facebook & LinkedIn

Lots of resources at www.collaborate.com

“Collaborative Thinking” column in eLearning! Magazine


5 secrets to smb profitability david coleman founder & managing director october 13, 2010 1

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