Feed for content matching tag 'collaboration'

Business Pundit's "Top 10 Business Collaboration Web Tools"

officemedium — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 22:27:03 GMT

Hi,

Business Pundit recently published an amazing resource for entrepreneurs and business owners. They compiled and reviewed the top 10 business collaboration web tools.

You can view the article here:

http://www.businesspundit.com/the-10-best-collaborative-web-tools-for-business/

Have you used any of the tools? Submit your reviews below..

Need help: CRM application collaboration tips

j_glass — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 22:04:16 GMT

Hello all,

We're a small company with just 5 salespeople (plus a sales manager). We use salesforce.com to manage each of our accounts, leads, contacts, cases, etc. I'm hoping to get advice on how to efficiently address one of the issues we're facing.

Oftentimes, the same object (say, an account or a case) is modified by more than some one else. Example: the manager may be on the phone with a customer, and may discover that a case has been resolved, so she'll change the status of the case to 'closed', though the case is owned by one her salespeople. This is fine (we're a very informal company), except that the salesperson who actually owns the 'object' is unaware of this. We resolve this by the usual means: phone calls, emails ('Hey, I just updated the status info in this case'), text messages, or daily team meetings.

Do you run into a similar issue (not necessarily with salesforce.com, but with any CRM suite that has multiple modules with shared objects)? If so, what are your tips and tricks to collaborate about such changes?

Thanks,
John

New Technology for Small Business on a tight budget.

SamNam — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 21:57:58 GMT

With this slow economy, small business owners are looking into ways that will help them lower cost and maximize efficiency. Today, more and more small companies are looking into SaaS. SaaS stands for Software as a Service. Also known as Webware and Online Software. It's a licence based software service and you pay as you grow. With Saas there's no need for buying servers, extra bandwidth, or hiring IT people who are usually in charge of setting up company software. All you need is your computer and an internet connection and from anywhere in the world you can have access to applications that allow you to organize and conduct business and collaborate with your employees.

StreetSmart 7 is a webware suite of applications, SmartApps, such as Company Dashboard, Document Sharing, Workflow & Tasks, CRM, Calendar & Scheduling, Email & Email Archiving just to name a few.

These days you hear about the 4 day work week and telecommuting. With StreetSmart you can now have your employees work from home one day of the week without loosing productivity.

Has anyone who has started a new business incorporated Saas or adapted webware into their existing business? What are your thoughts?

Best,
Sam Namazikhah
(818) 776-8080 ext. 241
saman@infostreet.com
www.infostreet.com

Virtual workspace

isquires — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 01:10:21 GMT

You guys might check out GeniusRoom. I think it's a great tool for startups and small business without IT or a conference bridge. They basically give you a free online room to manage projects, store files, and conduct meetings - pretty neat.

http://www.geniusroom.com/

Internal collaboration for small businesses

jarothbart — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 23:39:55 GMT

Hello everyone,

My name is Jason and I'm new to this site. I'm
curious what members use to collaborate internally when starting a new
business. By collaborate, I mean working on and capturing all the good
information you create and debate as a team. I suspect email is the
most common answer but I would love to hear how you do it.

Also,
if you decide you want to use a more powerful collaboration solution,
where would you look or how would you search? Are there good resources
(other than this site of course) where you would look for resources and
advice. I'm asking as we are in the process of marketing planning and I
could really use the feedback on where to spend? Personally, I'm
leaning towards spending on smaller conferences, email campaigns and
targeted web ads versus Google ad words. Thanks in advance for your
advice.

Jason
groupswim.com

Grow Fast-Lesson learned from

jarothbart — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 18:36:56 GMT

Discovery Mining (DM) is a software company headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area. They were founded in May 2001 and have 56 employees and growing rapidly. DM is performing extremely well in its market (automated discovery software for the legal field) and was #188 on the Inc. 2007 500 fastest growing companies list. They have offices in San Francisco, Washington, New York, Chicago and London.

DM's sales team was obviously doing well but Andy Jenks (Co-Founder and Senior Vice President of Sales) felt the team wasn't effectively collaborating with him or each other. People were wasting time asking the same questions over and over again, best practices weren't effectively shared, and prospects were getting inconsistent information; these factors affected the top line. The team meant well, but being distributed and lacking a centralized knowledge store impeded their ability to work together effectively. They collaborated through email, a corporate wiki, a marketing encyclopedia portal, internal documents, and files. Developing timely, well-written responses with a consistent message across the company was key but involved sifting through too many sources of information and required Andy's heavy involvement.

Objectives
Discovery Mining started using GroupSwim in early November of 2007. Andy initially rolled-out to his sales team and then added Marketing and Operations. The objectives for using GroupSwim were:

1. Provide one place to get information on the DM solution, sales process and RFI responses

2. Reinforce consistent messaging across the sales team

3. Reduce management time answering redundant questions

4. Share best practices and success stories across the teams

5. Leverage email-in functionality to smooth transition process

Challenges
The primary barrier was breaking the team's habit of relying on emails to get questions answered and treating each question as unrelated to others previously fielded. Andy had to train his team to first look at the knowledge already consolidated in GroupSwim and attempt to answer questions for themselves. The adaption took some effort to reinforce and change behavior.

Results
GroupSwim is now the "brain" for sales. The team consistently goes to GroupSwim to find answers and share information. By embracing the "email is for communication; not for information" mantra, the team has streamlined their email traffic and increased consistency across their communications. Andy estimates that he has gained "2 hours a day" from using GroupSwim. DM's product and customer requirements are complex, so questions and answers can vary widely. Since GroupSwim automatically tags all content and suggests related discussions and documents, the team is very successful finding the information it needs.

GroupSwim has also accelerated DM's ability to train new team members quickly and effectively. GroupSwim provides an ideal knowledge base for Andy's new team members to learn about DM's product, sales process, and company operations. Since RFIs, best practices, competitive information, technical explanations, and feature request/discussions are all in one place, DM has a perfect place for new employees and partners to learn.

Summary
Based on the team's newfound efficiency and freeing up Andy's time, Discovery Mining realized quantifiable value in the following
ways:

1. Increased deal flow - Andy has 40 hours a month he didn't have prior to GroupSwim. He thinks he is able to close at least 2 to 3 deals a month more with his newfound time and ability to focus on specific deals

2. Increased add-on sales - DM has experienced a measurable increase in sales from customers the team recently signed. He attributes a portion of this uptick to consistent messaging and expectation setting in the initial deal that they didn't have prior to implementing GroupSwim.

3. Accelerated training - Andy is able to get sales executives selling effectively in a matter of days versus weeks. This translates into faster productivity and more sales as his team hits the street quickly and efficiently.

Request for Comments on Entriki.com

TMDarke — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 05:22:33 GMT

In 2008, I was one of the original founders of a lifeguard management company in Atlanta. My younger brother and I had been lifeguards during college summer breaks. We decided we could do better. Starting with a few hundred dollars, borrowed from our credit cards, we ended up grossing about $140K in our second year. There's more to the story, which I hope to talk about later, but I ended up leaving the company in exchange for a steady paycheck and many years of enjoyable employment in various roles at two fortune 500 companies. However, managing my own company has been the most rewarding experience of my professional career.

As you can imagine, two college students starting a business in the '80s, before most people had ever heard of the Internet, was incredibly challenging. We lacked access to much needed information regarding how to run that type of business, much less any type of business. I will never forget asking our previous boss, now a competitor, for advice. He actually obliged, giving us valuable advice, contacts at his chemical distributors, even where to buy insurance.

What I learned is that being an entrepreneur is not about winning at someone else's expense, it's about succeeding while giving back, which is a big part of why I have created Entriki.com.

The reason for this post is that I'd like to ask for your help. Please visit my site and let me know what you think. Although the site is public, it is really in beta. For Entriki.com to succeed as a valuable resource for you, it needs your direction. Please visit www.entriki.com and provide feedback.

Thank You

Btw - I posted this from my I-Phone