Author Archives: David Northmore

Hitting the limits with MYOB and you don’t want to change accounting software

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Hitting the limits with MYOB

If you’re hitting the limits with MYOB but you don’t want to change accounting systems or you’ve just realized that its not a substitute for a CRM.

For warehousing:

It’s common that people use lots of paper and excel spreadsheets because MYOB doesn’t really have a pick, pack, ship process. MYOB just does the accounts.

As a result there can be lots of paper based process, running around with dockets, re-keying data between courier systems, excel, MYOB.

For example quite often:

  • Sales order entered
  • Special prices or custom pricing manually handled.
  • Printed
  • Taken to warehouse
  • Picked, packed
  • Sales order comes back to admin with notes
  • Invoiced & Invoice printed
  • Data entered manually into Australia post for labels.

Tall emu extends MYOB to deliver some process in the warehouse.

  • Enter orders into CRM or download from Shopping cart
  • Special pricing automatically applied.
  • Auto print picking slip
    • When picked, tick and flick in CRM
    • Auto printing of delivery label.
    • Auto printing of invoices (if required)
  • Transfer consignments automatically into Australia Post, Star Trak, Fastway (can add your courier too).
  • Transfer invoices automatically into MYOB
  • Email to the customer automatically.

Not just that – but can get the core crm features too:

  • Outlook integration with our Inbox 360
  • Phone integration
  • Email marketing
  • CRM database
  • Rich info about products
  • Process Automation
  • Website and Shopping Cart integration

and on it goes. We are happy supporters of MYOB but we make it better and help your business work smarter. So as you are so smart he is our number call us 02 9299 9959

Top 20 CRM Process Automations

This entry was posted in CRM Intergations on by .

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Top 20 most common process automation we’ve done for customers of Tall Emu CRM

The potential for automation with Tall Emu CRM is massive and we don’t really make time to tell everyone what type of Automation’s we have done for clients. Here are the most common or recent process automatons, but there are hundreds more we do and can do.

Customer service

1.    Automatic logging of Phone calls inbound and outbound to the business
2.    Automatically pull in customer data (financials, opportunities and recent communications) into Outlook without having to look in CRM
3.    Automatically update opportunity status based on monitored events and activity.
4.    Pop screens of customer data (financials, etc.) when phone rings

Marketing

5.    Automatically add someone to a target list for marketing campaigns
6.    Automatically follow-up sales people to speak to Leads and opportunities
7.    Automatically drip feed communication to leads that are not active or thinking

Sales

8.    Dynamic Proposal / Brochure Creation
9.    Fast Quote calculation
10.  Auto quote follow up (either customer or salesman)
11.   Salesman’s Target reports auto sent

Accounts

12.    Automatically sending of invoices (especially recurring ones like membership or subscriptions)
13.    Automatic Follow-up rule based reminders on outstanding Invoices
14.    Automatic transfer of customer, sales and other data to accounting systems
15.    Send invoices via EDI (used for Mitre 10)

Operations

16.    Automatic update of Stock values and availability (between CRM and accounting system)
17.    Automatic estimation of stock level based prior sales history
18.    Automatic calculations of Landed costs (great for importers)

Management

19.    Automatically send Management Reports on Business Activity to Management
20.    Broadcast Sales performance on a big Screen on the sales floor

If there is something in your business that can be automated or if there is a job that is laborious and time consuming then feel free to ask us if we could engineer it out or automate a solution.

Invisible CRM for 2016

This entry was posted in CRM Intergations on by .

CRM needs to know its place

My first introduction to CRM was Sales Force and the idea for it was a sound one. I was leading a team of consultants that were all working with a portfolio of clients on a retainer basis. So it was important that we knew how many hours that we worked on their behalf so that we were not over or under servicing them.

You’ll never get the ROI out of your CRM investment, if you only ever see it as a central database for customer data.

We also needed to know what redundant time there was in the team for taking on more work and what sales opportunities there might be out there.

I hated CRM…with a passion!!

However, I hardly used Sale Force CRM as it just added to my work load. It was my job to enforce the use of the SF CRM on my team and I saw first hand how much of a pain this needless intervention was. It stopped us from doing our work which was consulting and selling our services.

So it’s a funny turn of events that all these years later, I now own a CRM of my own.

Does that mean the above inherent problem has been resolved?

At Tall Emu we are always looking ways of capturing the activity of a company’s staff without the need for them to do extra data entry.

The goal of Tall Emu is to develop a CRM / ERP that works for you and is an aide to the work you do and does not turn you into a slave for it.

Tall Emu CRM can collect data automatically from lots of different sources and data that tells us a story about what is going on in a business.

We also want the CRM to be illuminating, proactive and a worker in the business. It needs to keep people on its toes, like sending reminders to customers to pay, Sales people to call a lead and to automatically send marketing material to potential customers without being asked.

Need ideas – Top 20 Common Process Automation

Dream Big and be Smart

If you have CRM or thinking about getting one or just want to work smarter, then think about what would be helpful to each team, business unit or individual staff members in being better more productive in their work. If you just can’t think of what’s possible then that’s when you need to get a third party to look at how you currently work and create CRM strategies and an implementation plan.

Buying CRM just to be the central hub for data, is missing the point. You’ll never get the ROI out of your CRM investment, if you only ever see it as a central database for customer data.

Success in 2016 with CRM is understanding that the implementation of CRM is more important than the CRM you select and YOU need to ask yourself “how can we work SMARTER not harder”.

Do I still hate CRM?   Not anymore because my expectations for it are different from what I was told to expect from it. So I am excited about where CRM is going and if you’re not then you might be in need of a conversation with a CRM implementer that gets its.

Don’t like writing website content?

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Better at talking than writing? Don’t like writing content? This might help.

In my office I am known for always looking for the shortest way to get to a destination or finding a destination that’s the closest to the office.

It’s not that I am ‘lazy’ it’s more that I am ‘energy efficient’. Seriously though, it’s in my DNA to find shortcuts and its the same when it comes to work.

When I am confronted with a task that looks big and time consuming, then that’s when I start looking for options to reduce its size to be more manageable.

Writing content is one of those tasks that stumps myself and my clients. I am always recommending that they write content as “Google food” especially for the long tail terms and to demonstrate their knowledge as a subject matter expert.

You don’t always have the option of outsourcing content writing, especially when you are an expert in your field. So it’s back on you to write the content.

Recently, I had the idea of listening to the one of our more recent Reckon webinars and to take the best bits and reuse them for website content.  So I was planning on listening and transcribing it.

Getting it transcribed is good, as not everyone has the time to watch an hour long video.  Not only that, sometimes one can explain things verbally in a far better way, than anything we would write on our website.

So transcribing this webinar might get us some great content for our to describe our product offering.

 

Quick Google Food made easy

So, having got the idea, I was not keen on sitting there and writing it all up.  That’s when I did a quick search for a service that could do it for me…and I found one. Two days later I got 13 pages of Google food in a word doc and started to think of ways to use it.

We asked for the transcription to be time stamped, as we wanted to give the readers the ability to jump to the section of the transcription (or the video) that they were interested in.

So, because of my laziness energy saving ways we ended up with a lot of SEO rich content, two different ways of consuming that content being Audio or the written word and a neat usability trick of being able to skip to the parts that interest you.

Now we have found this method creating content at least in its raw form is quick. Obviously, it may need work to reuse elsewhere but then if you gave it to a copy writer they would have something to work with.

 

Need Help?

If you want to know the vendor we have used for the transcription or how we hyper linked into the video at a particular point then please email me directly.

In the meantime go here to see the transcription and video of the webinar.

http://www.tallemucrm.com/tall-emu-video-demos/reckon-webinar/

 

 

The Silent Death of a Customer

This entry was posted in CRM Concept, CRM Intergations on by .

The Silent Death of a Customer

Silent Death of a Customer

You may have heard the saying “death by a thousand cuts”. Well it’s a powerful and relatable concept and most people will know what it means.

If you apply this to your relationship with your customers, you can well imagine that their loyalty or patronage may be at risk by a similar dynamic.

This Blog deals with the notion that you can tell when a customer is starting to move away from you, BEFORE they do.

We will discuss how CRM integration, great reporting and Business Intelligence can help you not get blindsided.

Have you ever lost a customer?

Realistically there is not a business, no matter how good, that hasn’t lost a customer. This Blog is not focused on “why” they may have left but on how  you can detect early, which customers are on the way-out or are doing a lot less business with you.

When you have a small customer base this might be quite easy to discern, but as you grow, this becomes hard and you might not ever realise, let alone name the customers you are losing.

It’s not ME, its YOU.

Here at Tall Emu CRM we are working with some of our customers to spot the customers that are about to “exit left” but haven’t told you yet.

When you lose a customer it happen in one of four ways: It can be swift and public, swift and silent, slow and public or slow and silent.

We are only interested in the silent death of a customer.

Much like a romance that is on its last legs, there are tail-tail signs that together tell the real health of that relationship. Like real life, sometimes, you are too close to notice or are not able or willing to acknowledge it.

So how do you “Catch” the customers slipping away before they do?

Luckily, we can use technology to keep us abreast of how our customers might be feeling long before they’ve gone forever.

Here are two main areas that need to be monitored to get that insight:

  • Buying less

If your customers buy more than one product or they buy frequently, then there maybe a pattern to this buying worth monitoring. If it changes in a negative direction would you notice?

  • You just don’t call anymore

Another indicator that things aren’t all that rosy, is a drop in communication. This could be less or no emails (received by you or read by them), phone calls received or not returned. It could be by less visits to our premises or if you’re tracking their visits to your website then this too may indicate a mood change.

Even customers not opening your newsletters or worse still, unsubscribing, might be a sign that “they aren’t really that into you”.

Keep your Finger on the pulse …with CRM

In order to monitor the customer’s interaction with you, you need to have all the touch points that your customer would use to be plumbed into your CRM.

So ask yourself the following:

  1. Are you automatically tracking in CRM all the phone calls received and made in your business against your customers record?
  2. Are tracking your customers when they open your emails or newsletters?
  3. Would you know when a customer visited your websites including Blog and Help files?
  4. Does your Point of Sale send info to your CRM?
  5. Does your Accounting system and CRM talk to each other and share data?
  6. Has a good payer of bills started to become a bad payer?
  7. Are you tracking the buying habits of your customers including what they buy and how frequent?
  8. Have you formulated acceptable KPI for your customer that if they are not met trigger your attention?
  9. Do you ever survey your customers and ask them how they are going?
  10. Do you ever speak to them or do you do everything via email or not at all?
  11. When was the last time you paid them a visit if ever?

Perhaps by reading this you’ve thought of a few other indicators that a customer might use to show that they are less than happy or that they have found another to love.

If so, feel free to share. The important thing in all this is that you’re powerless, if you don’t have the right structure in your business to monitor and have the knowledge to act.

So here are four things you need in place to monitor this:

  1. Have every touch points and every system or data source flowing into CRM.
  2. Create Reports or Dashboards on the Data that you’ve collected, that reveal your customers’ interactions with you as per some of the of the ways mentioned above.
  3. Set up KPI against the customer “health metrics” that you’ve identified and are monitoring so when they changing in a Negative direction, then the CRM will have it recorded and lastly…
  4. Set up triggers that will alert you to these significant changes against the KPI’s you’ve setup and have a workflow bring this to you or your team’s attention.

If you are providing a great service, a great product and at the right price, then a system like this may validate that. However, if you feel that you’re not as across your business as you should be or you don’t currently have the correct infrastructure then perhaps you should speak to one of our Business Analysis to help work out a game plan.

Getting customers is an expensive business, so it makes sense that you nurture the ones you do have. While this doesn’t help nurture your customers, it does tell you, who you need to give an extra bit of love to before you get the “Dear John” letter.

Tall Emu in the News: Pastabilities goes Live with CRM and Ecommerce Website

This entry was posted in CRM Intergations, Uncategorized on by .

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We recently launched the new website (which we designed and built) and completed the Tall Emu CRM integration for the premium fresh pasta company, Pastabilities.

Here we have listed several articles that have been written about this project.

 

CRM and ecommerce platform to cook up customer growth for Pastabilities

Investment into a home-grown CRM platform and ecommerce portal is helping making it easier for customers to cook up new orders with Australian pasta brand, Pastabilities … More
Source: CMO Australia – Addresses the unique marketing, technology and leadership challenges chief marketers face

Implementing our first CRM system, by Pastabilities director Luciano Schettini: My Best Tech

Recently in TechCompany, I looked at some statistics examining why small businesses are installing CRM (customer relationship management) systems … More
Source: SmartCompany – Business news, business advice and information for Australian SMEs

Highly awarded gourmet pasta producer Pastabilities, has gone live with a Tall Emu CRM system and a new fully integrated eCommerce website.

Both of these new developments will deliver significant process efficiencies to the growing gourmet pasta … More
Source: B&T – B&T is a 64 year old brand that provides an integrated briefing on marketing, media and advertising

Pastabilities spreads its wings with Tall Emu CRM

Australian gourmet food business, Pastabilities, has gone live with a new Tall Emu CRM system and e-commerce website.
Tall Emu, an Aussie software company founded in 2001, has automated many of Pastabilities’ internal processes, including integrating its new CRM system and website with its existing MYOB accounting… More
Source: ARN – The source for IT industry news, views and analysis across the channel, business and technology

Many pastabilities with Tall Emu CRM

Tall Emu has automated many of Pastabilities’ internal processes, including integrating its new CRM system and website with its existing MYOB accounting system, allowing Pastabilities to have immediate visibility of all customer data including order history, product preferences and comprehensive contact information… More
Source: iTWire – Technology news, trends, reviews, jobs

Tall Emu in the News: How PCS is finetuning lead management with CRM

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We are in the news! Go here to see … How Port Container Services is finetuning lead management with Tall Emu CRM

The article is written by Brad Howarth from CMO which is dedicated to the issues and challenges faced by the chief marketers officers in their efforts to align their own practices and insights with those of the business.

Port Container Services is a company that never stopped evolving its business, despite their early success.  Their future success however, was not assured, due to their inability to scale the business with the business structure of those early days. In true PCS style, they just hit the problem head on and started looking for answers.

We are very proud that with our CRM Software and our automation and integration skills, we worked together to create an awesome business system. As a client of Tall Emu they are a test case that big vision, constant engagement and guts goes go a long way in being industry leaders.

 

 

10 Tips for better Online Success

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“80% of Success is Showing up” Woody Allen

online success

The following tips are written assuming that you already believe in using the internet for selling online and acquiring qualified and engaged leads. It also assumes that you have a website (or want one).I am hoping that you’ve accepted that Search Engine Marketing (SEM) or SEO is the best sales and marketing channel available to you, that it’s mandatory and that if you didn’t do it, you would be consigning your business to an early grave.

If you were not nodding to that last paragraph then I offer you an hour of my time for free via a Goto Meeting to persuade you otherwise.I’ve decided to add a bonus tip which is more important than any of the others so if you’re really short of time go straight there.

David Northmore, Marketing Director & E-commerce Consultant Tall Emu

Tip One – Set KPI’s for your Website

You wouldn’t have an employee without some goals for them to achieve and a timeframe in which to achieve them…treat your website and your online advertising like an employee. Set KPI’s and review regularly.

Tip Two – Understand what influences your KPI’s

If you set a goal for 1000 more visitors through SEO (free organic visitor) per month for your website but you’ve ignored your SEO consultant’s advice of writing more content, then you have misunderstood what influences this particular KPI.

This element might take time to feel like you understand the connection, but having the KPIs in the first place means you can ask the question of your consultant. What are the road blocks that might be preventing us hitting our targets?

Tip Three – Set the right KPIs for your business/website.

I often see other consultants talking to their clients about metrics that are next to meaningless to the businesses objectives. If they only report on Visits, Impressions, Click through rate (CTR), Cost per click (CPC), Time on site, Bounce rate and nothing else, then you should find someone else.

You need to be looking at outcomes from your online efforts. The really meaningful statistics are no. of enquires & leads, Newsletter signups, Brochure downloads or Online sales.

If you have Tall Emu CRM then even your offline sales, which were as a consequence of your online marketing efforts, can be capture and measured.

In other words you need to know what revenue can be attributed to online marketing and are you doing it at a sustainable rate i.e. getting a positive return on Investment (ROI)?

Tip Four – Research your market online.

Online marketing is very transparent. It’s amazing what data and intelligence is available to you. For instance, you can find out:

  • How many searches there are for your product in the geographical areas you supply?
  • Is there demand for a new product line before you invest in it?
  • How successful are your competitors?
  • How strongly recognised is your brand over others (if at all)?
  • How do your customers talk about your products, service or industry?

Sometimes I find that the terms used by my clients don’t accord with their customers.

Tip Five – Set up Goals in Google Analytics.

Google Analytics is your friend but it does have a lot of data in it. While it is interesting on its own doesn’t always lead you to any decisions. In fact you may draw the wrong conclusions. One of the ways to add meaning to this data is to configure Google Analytics to record events and goals that do have meaning to you.

Tip Six – Involve your SEO consultant before you design or build your website.

If you have a great consultant that you trust, it’s essential to get them involved early in your discussions regarding any new website.  It will save time and money if you do and if they are any good then you will actually make more money by doing so.

A good SEO consultant will want to influence the platform the website is built on, the structure of the menu’s and what we call the “Information Architecture”. The conversion techniques or sales funnel of the website, the content that’s written for it.

Tip Seven – Who are you selling to?

In the trade we call them Persona’s and defining them helps you write compelling content that matches their needs. List down who would buy from you, who is involved in the sale, who influences the sale. This will influence how you present information, the language you use, the medium that you use (picture, video or text or perhaps a combination of all three).

Tip Eight – Every page is a Landing Page

People often forget that visitors can enter a website from any page of your website (published and indexed). This maybe their first time to your website, so you need to be as concerned about these pages not just the home page.

Tip Nine – Don’t fatigue the visitor

People’s attention span online is minimal. If your website is slow to load, navigate or work out what you actually sell, then they will not hang around. You are but a click away from oblivion.

Tip Ten – Calculate Customers Lifetime Value (LTV)

If you spent $100 for a $500 dollar sale, on which you made a 25% margin being $125, then you minus the $100 you spent, you’d have only made $25.

On the face of it, that doesn’t look all that impressive.

However, if by the end of the year that new customer spent another $1,000 (perhaps over multiple purchases) then the LTV for this client is $1,025. Now that’s a bit more impressive.

There are lots of models for working out the LTV of an individual customer or customer base. The point is however, the initial acquisition cost is less important when you know the average LTV of your customers.

Bonus Tip

Like the Woody Allen quotes above, to be a success online you have to turn up…but you also have to stay there.

Your success online will only come if you are committed, keep engaged, keep working on it, with continuous analysis and tweaking. I work in this field full time, its forever changing and so are your competitors.  It’s okay to make mistakes, but online marketing is transparent so poor performance is visible but so are the solutions.

David Northmore, Director and Ecommerce Consultant at Tall Emu

David brings over 12 years’ of experience in website useability, e-commerce and online marketing, including search engine marketing and search engine optimisation.

David is now combining his e-commerce expertise with the Tall Emu CRM capabilities to build a powerful lead management system and sales attribution reporting. The idea being that more leads are converted and the understanding on what channel is actually bringing in the business is then known; even if the sale was completed offline.

With a keen focus on ROI, David gives his clients the support, guidance and training they need to win online.