SIIA OnDemand Europe Conference – Notes from an SVP

By John McDowell – SVP of Global Sales for Astadia Consulting

I was half tempted to title this blog post “Notes from an SVP on a Small Island”! Yes, I’m in the UK visiting our EMEA team and as luck would have it I’ve chosen the coldest October week on record – what joy! Along with running from warm cab to rainy street and back again I was also invited to attend the SIIA OnDemand Europe Conference at London’s Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington, as a speaker for one of the panels. The conference is attended by executives from ISVs, SaaS, Web and Enterprise companies from across Europe, gathered to explore, debate and discuss all aspects of SaaS and Cloud Computing.

The overriding theme of the conference was that SaaS and Cloud Computing are here to stay and will continue to change the way we consume IT services in the future. However, with this change, Systems Integrators (SI) are faced with an ever-changing environment in which to grow, gain business and profit. My panel slot discussed how SIs can achieve this and what customers should be looking for when selecting an SI for a SaaS or Cloud-based project.

The ‘big boys’, the likes of Cap Gemini, Steria, Accenture and Deloitte, still reign king at the top of the tree, but what is becoming increasing apparent is the growth of new, smaller, more specialist SIs with real expertise in the SaaS and Cloud market space. In my role as Senior Vice President of Global Sales at Astadia Consulting, I have learnt there is more to being a profitable SI in today’s hi-tech market than we traditionally thought. Here’s a snippet from some of the panel questions and what my thoughts were:

Q: Why do you think there has been such growth in the smaller SIs for Cloud & Saas?

In todays cloud space it’s about being focused on one area of business; for Astadia we like to see ourselves as our customer’s first port of call for all things cloud. So when a company looks to step into the cloud space, we can help with the initial move and then look at what additional infrastructure can be leveraged once they’ve made the first step. Astadia are Salesforce.com largest implementation partner worldwide. Why has Salesforce taken off at such speed? Because, traditionally CRM is the easiest place to start the migration of your application infrastructure into the cloud; the nice part about Salesforce is the license model, as well as the integrated bolt-ons that are part of the Salesforce AppExchange.

The sheer nature of smaller SIs makes them more adept at partnering with the many cloud vendors in order to provide holistic solutions for the Cloud. A nice example of this is the Astadia Front-Office; where customers can quickly leverage a package of applications that help with Marketing Automation, lead generation and lead nurture through to Salesforce Automation, targeting and commission structures.

Q: What advice would you give to smaller start ups in this market?

You can’t be half-hearted in your approach to the Cloud. That’s why so many smaller SIs are making such big changes and growth spurts in this game; they focus solely on the Cloud. They are experts in their fields who have a range of applications, technical expertise and best practise knowledge designed specifically for the Cloud. That really is Astadia’s strong point.

You should also realise that one size SaaS vendor does not fit all. Certain products will fit well in some cases and not in others; the successful SI will be the one that knows how to place these products specifically for the customer’s requirements.

SIs also need to focus on what they want to achieve. Astadia is a Services company, not a product company. We don’t compete on selling products; we compete on the services we provide from an industry best practice standpoint.

Q: What industry verticals do you see growing the most in this market?

So far the fast movers have been the Telcos, Media, Not-for-Profit and Financial Services sectors. The laggards are healthcare and the public sector, which I’m sure, will change as they have the most to benefit from SaaS and Cloud computing. Particularly from a cost saving point-of-view; which I see is at the forefront of the British Government’s agenda of late; I was looking at the news this morning re the pending government cost cuts.

Q: How much of the work to migrate to the Cloud requires integration – Getting the data into one place?

As far as we see it, all projects start and end with data. This underpins the success of any Cloud project and that’s why we partner with a number of integration providers. There’s no point having a whiz-popping Cloud application that can be used mobile, at home, offline and so on, if it doesn’t have the relevant data stored in it. Data drives end user adoption and buy in; without this your project is doomed.

Chatter – Adoption is the Key!

By Ron Goldman – Service Cloud Director

I read an interesting blog recently from Sam Diaz from ZD Net about Salesforce’s Chatter application.

As far as I see, adoption is the key to unlocking the Power of Chatter. It’s a different way of thinking about collaborating in the enterprise; not forgetting that you’re also replacing a deeply ingrained tool, email!

I run Astadia’s line of business focused on implementing cloud computing for the contact centre and as part of that role; I’ve been using Chatter since April of this year. I use Chatter to communicate the availability of new sales tools, industry trends and product updates. I’ve had great success in getting our 20+ person sales team and our management team to follow me on chatter, meaning they’re getting live updates from me throughout the day. I’ve gotten valuable feedback from the team through Chatter to refine and update my materials. They see value, I see value and so adoption is happening naturally. I also follow sales opportunities for my line of the business so I get immediate updates whenever something changes on the opportunity.

I also realized that it would be great to selectively post some of the materials I was sharing internally to Astadia’s external communities on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. I had our development team put together a solution framework called ChatterConnect that is like a TweetDeck for Chatter so you can bi-directionally post between Chatter, Twitter and Facebook. You can also post to LinkedIn (their API is limited to only receiving posts). Bottom line is that we are finding Chatter extremely useful in its out-of-the-box state and even more powerful with the extensions we are building for our clients.

If you’d like to reach out to me directly please do at rgoldman@astadia.com. Thanks for reading, Ron Goldman!

Why poor call centre customer service isn’t always the agents fault

By Jonathan Grant – CEO of NewVoiceMedia

I can hear the groans already, but it’s true, poor customer service from call centre staff isn’t always the agents fault. Hard to believe I know!

We’ve all been on the end of one of those calls when your query just isn’t being dealt with and you’re getting more and more frustrated. I know it’s hard to believe but this isn’t always the fault of the agent, it’s the systems they use and the information they have to hand that is to blame.

There is one thing I will say however, before I start picking holes in todays call centres; the concept itself is a fantastic innvovation that has dramatically changed the shape of how we communicate today.

Think about it, how did we communicate with companies before the call centre existed? Hard to remember, isn’t it? Yet the first automatic call distribution systems went live only 30 years ago, and were not widely used until the mid-1990s.

Since then the call centre has become one of the most important touch points between a business and its customers. However, unfortunately, call centres have been slow to change. Inbound callers are highly critical of poor customer service, long queues and automated systems. This is painfully apparent when you consider that only 30 per cent of staff in UK based call centres have the relevant customer information in front of them when taking calls. Hence we’re back to the problem – The concept is great but the execution is poor.

From my perspective, as a consumer who regularly calls into contact centres and as the CEO of NewVoiceMedia, it seems preposterous that this should be the case. There are cost-effective, flexible solutions available, which mean that business shouldn’t be providing below par customer service.

For example, we work closely with Salesforce.com and have created a truly integrated telephony solution with the Salesforce CRM system. The solution seamlessly transforms the way contacts and customers are handled when they interact with an organisation. In a nut shell,  agents have access to a single central source of information for all customer communication, sharing valuable contact data across an organisation. Inbound calls are announced to the agent with a link to the caller’s details and customer data held in Salesforce. This dramatically improves efficiency and helps to improve the overall caller experience. Everything the agent needs to provide the highest level of customer service is right at their fingers tips.

For me, this should be a standard element of any call centre. How can managers expect their agents to provide a superior level of service if they don’t provide them with the correct information?

What have your experiences been – either as a consumer or within business? I’d be very interested to hear your experiences.

You could also join a webinar we are jointly hosting with Astadia - “The Six Reasons to move your contact centre to the Cloud” on Thursday 29^th July at 12 noon.  The webinar will include best practice for successful contact centres, based on customer experience.

Click to register