One of the questions thrown up in open forum at the Sugar CRM event last week asked for recommendations on the best approach to training users. Since this didn’t garner a particularly illuminating or comprehensive response I thought I would set out a few thoughts on what I see as Continue Reading

While on the subject of television adverts and the Sugar event, I’ve always had great respect for the way that Unilever has marketed Pot Noodle. Pot Noodle emerged in the late 70’s as a convenient instant snack. By rights the healthy eating revolution of the new millennium should perhaps have Continue Reading

One of my favourite TV adverts is for British Telecom (BT) and features Gordon Ramsay using a carving knife to gain access to the innards of a PC, while in the background his kitchen is rapidly descending into chaos. The voice over is something along the lines of ‘Do what Continue Reading

While I was away on holiday earlier in the summer I read Richard Moore’s book ‘Heroes, Villains, & Velodromes’ which tells the story of Chris Hoy who went on to win three gold medals in Beijing. While Chris’s achievements are not surprisingly the focus of the book, there’s some intriguing Continue Reading

The reporting aspects of CRM technology produce two of the great fibs of the CRM industry: Fib number one – ‘The CRM system comes with 200 standard reports which will meet most of your needs’ (cue the salesperson to point to a long and seemingly exhaustive list of reports on Continue Reading

Sitting in on a series of CRM short-list presentations this week, I became acutely aware of just how much we seem to rely on acronyms and jargon. I had to stop a couple of sessions because it was obvious that the audience wasn’t following what was being said. Even when Continue Reading

I’ve been reading CRM RFP responses for much of the week and I’ve seen a number of references to ‘fully managed systems’. This caught my attention at first because it seemed to support the suggestion in my last post that outsourced of administration of CRM systems may prove a new Continue Reading

Ever since InsideCRM rightly observed that my blog postings were somewhat erratic, I’ve attempted to maintain a certain level of regularity, even if the posts are hardly prolific. However I’ve be on holiday in a rather remote part of France where internet access proved taxing to say the least, so Continue Reading

I may well have covered this topic before, but as someone asked me my thoughts on this topic this week, and as I’ve been both sides of the table more times that I’d care to think about, I thought I’d draft a ‘x ways to improve CRM software demonstrations’ post, Continue Reading

There was an interesting article on the BBC site – and elsewhere I’m sure – which highlighted a breakthrough in significantly reducing the amounts of deaths and complications resulting from surgery. The breakthrough was not as you might suppose a technology related one, but the simple introduction of a check-list. Continue Reading