Author: Onit

Sales force automation is a powerful concept. The promise of keeping sales focused on the important areas of their job (working with customers and closing deals) while minimizing the administrative areas (updating records, transcribing notes) has spawned an industry of CRM vendors. These systems often become all encompassing within a company, sending out tendrils to every department. They become the system of record.

This has laid the groundwork for building a cohesive customer experience across all stages. Each different department is able to access the data from previous and concurrent interactions. As the holistic customer experience becomes the organizational focus, more is needed out of a sales automation system than tracking the data. 

The interactions that begin to happen between groups and departments needs tools that clearly define, track, and report on who is responsible at each step and who is taking over. This is driving the shift towards systems of engagement that manage the human aspect of processes. 

The primary function of any systems or Apps that add a layer of engagement onto a system of record is to make the processes happening around the data clear. A system of record is only as good as the data included into it. Without clear (and simple) process for capturing and sharing data, the records in a database can quickly get outdated. This can cause internal confusion and have a negative impact on the customer experience.

With the rise of Enterprise Apps – SaaS software focused on specific tasks that are easy to implement and run – adding the engagement layer to a system of record does not require major infrastructure changes. Apps can provide an easy-to-use front-end for your internal users, while pushing back relevant data to the system of record already in place.

With an App platform, each department or group can build exactly what it needs to get its work done. Updating the system of record happens behind the scenes without affecting the front-end workflow. The flexibility of Apps means that they can also be changed quickly – sometimes even on the fly by end-users – without disrupting the entire system or process.

Data collection in a system of record has been, and continues to be, an important element of sales operations. As more departments get involved in the customer experience, matching process with that data will become increasingly important to companies who want to maintain their advantage. 

Come see how Onit Apps can help you transition to a system of engagement.

It’s an odd thought that in this world of hyper-communications (hello smart phones, texts, social media), it can still be difficult to meaningfully connect. Sentences can be misread. Calls cut off. Intentions unclear.

Consider your personal life. How often have you run into situations like this? Maybe an autocorrected message from your spouse led you to buy rum instead of milk or Rice Krispies instead of brown rice. Or a terse tweet led to an even terser DM.

Which is why I personally find this video hilarious. An ordinary guy roams the airport cell phone crashing – which is basically sitting next to people and joining their conversation as he hears one side of it. The responses vary, with the “victims” doing everything from shifting uncomfortably to flat-out denial that someone is overhearing his/her conversation.

Now imagine discordance like this but with 20, 30, 100, 500 people on different lines. It’s not a disturbance I’d want to be anywhere around, but strangely, this analogy is reflective of the selection process of enterprise software. There are often multiple decision makers, multiple departments affected, multiple integrations and multiple agendas and expectations involved.

Tony Byrne of Real Story Group hit the nail on the head in his article for Information Week titled “6 More Enduring Truths about Selecting Enterprise Software.” He runs through different aspects of adopting enterprise software that can be evaluation challenges – from determining a vendor’s financial health to the strength of their integrations to deciding if you even have a problem this technology fix.

At Onit, we believe that software should be responsive, adaptive, easy to use and effective. That’s why we offer Smart Process Apps that can deploy in a day, be easily customizable by just about anyone and truly fit with your business. These Apps can handle processes from contract management to employee on-boarding to legal process outsourcing.

I invite you to give us a test drive with this free trial. Then you can see how Smart Process Apps can eliminate the uncertainties of enterprise software selection. 

Imagine if a famous movie director asked you to do what you do for a living on camera.  Instead of (for example) ensuring that important contracts are finalized or that an important sales quote is approved, you’d be doing that on an expensive set surrounded by bright lights, a camera crew, a director, other actors and more.

For a majority of us with no professional acting experience, it might take you completely out of your element and bring on a serious case of nerves.

That’s exactly what happened when Stanley Kubrick asked Frank Miller to voice mission control for 2001: A Space Odyssey. The military man and real-life mission controller manifested his nervousness by constantly tapping his foot while reading his lines. That’s not an unreasonable reaction. However, the sound of the shoe’s sole hitting the floor bled through into the sound track like the sound of water dripping from a faucet.

How did Kubrick solve this dilemma? He took a simple course of action and placed a towel under Miller’s feet.

Oftentimes, it is the simplest solution that solves problems. Consider, for example, the tasks you face at work. Getting dozens of contracts approved worth millions of dollars is a time-consuming, arduous process often taxed with multiple reviewers and even more edits.

Sure, there are options.

You could handle the whole process manually with spreadsheets, emails and documents. But that can lead to long hours, multiple versions of important information and documents being capture across multiple, disparate silos.

You could also rely on enterprise software to help shepherd the process to completion. But that means you’re typically working with an expensive solution that is hard to customize and use.

So what’s the simple solution? Smart Process Apps from Onit. You can create and deploy them in hours. They are extremely user friendly and offer a unified repository for information. And they can significantly reduce the time and effort expended by professionals to complete standard processes necessary to a business’ health.

With this in mind, we created our own tribute to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Take a look at it here and let us know what you think.