Techaisle Blog

Solution for End-to-End Lead-to-Cash Workflow

As part of our Pick of the Week series, we requested an online demonstration of what sounded to be too easy, and were privy to a demo of Dell’s DCBA (Dell Cloud Business Applications) to see the lead to cash process from building customer awareness to sales contract. We were impressed at how far the industry, and Dell, has come in the last few years at solving the practical challenges around marketing and sales integration. Dell is providing enterprise-level CRM capabilities to SMBs that might have run into seven figures (and a year-long implementation) only 10 years ago. And going even further by tying all this front-office activity together with accounting to synchronize invoicing and billing into the process, insuring that sales staff can be paid without spending 12 hours a week updating their CRM records, and Finance does not have to chase down account managers for collections and accounts receivable updates on the 29^th of every month.

Small and Mid-Market Companies Choose Online CRM as the Shortest Path to Revenue



The killer Enterprise Application to emerge at the end of the Client/Server era was CRM, which spawned a huge ecosystem of sales process, configuration and customization experts. The next step was online CRM solutions led by Salesforce.com, a true multi-tenant architecture and Cloud ecosystem in and of itself. The ample supply of CRM expertise, along with the market needs to generate revenue as quickly as possible resulted in a wave of online CRM start ups and then pure-play Marketing Automation vendors that were eager to plug into the accelerating number of customers opting for a services model.

 

Falling Through the Cracks

Even with the best CRM software and a lot of customization, even for those who spent the most on these systems, and especially large organizations, getting to a state of accurate and current information has always been a challenge. The perpetrators tend to be too many steps in the process, unclear roles and responsibilities, limitations in the software that force workarounds, ineffective hand-off of customer relationships, different levels of process and software maturity, and many others. Much of this was caused by contention for capital budgets, the complexity and expense of internal systems integration and never being able to get ahead of the technology curve, resulting in a large percentage of CRM implementations failing outright. Properly selected and integrated Cloud-based Applications like this one from Dell have already gone a long way to eliminate many of these challenges by offering a shared customer database approach from the very beginning.



 

Following the image above, it is quickly apparent that the demand and supply cycles are covered by this approach: Lead to Opportunity, to Proposal, to Customer Support, which is good for the customer. The internal operational cycle is also enabled from Marketing to Sales to Invoicing and Billing, to Customer Service, which makes life a lot easier for everyone involved.

The demonstration was recorded and we have included relevant excerpts that follow the process. Dell offers Pardot, a leading Marketing Automation Solution for marketing which connects automatically to Salesforce.com by synchronizing User-IDs from each component, in less than a minute. Sales Funnel, Alerts, Dashboard, Forecast are coordinated out-of-the-box, and rules are customizable between the applications.

Next comes Conga, which merges customer information, selected products and services, proposal template and cover letter into a print-ready quotation that shares all data with the appropriate customer and pipeline records.

EchoSign, an e-Signature solution from Adobe follows, allowing the customer to authorize the order securely and purchase immediately, which is always a good thing in Sales.

The next part of the solution solves the ever-present issue of ensuring the Sales and Accounting Systems contain and report the same information. This is accomplished using the process integration presented below:

 



Dell SMB Lead to Cash Process Automation 1 from Techaisle on Vimeo.

 

As shown in the image, the same information that is incrementally collected throughout the marketing and sales process is used to auto-populate the agreement, invoice and collections data within the accounting package, for our demo, this was done using QuickBooks Online, one of several pre-configured packaged integrations that do not require manual intervention except for company-specific policies and table structures.

Again, seeing it is more impressive than reading about it:



Dell SMB Lead to Cash Process Automation 2 from Techaisle on Vimeo.

What was the name of your company again?

The benefits of sharing information between Marketing, Sales and Accounting are equally or more important with Customer Service, which is the lifeblood of all companies’ online reputation these days. Taking the data one step further into customer service affords the advantage of having the full customer history at your fingertips while fielding support calls – which provides a higher level of satisfaction and smarter service capabilities.

 



Dell SMB Lead to Cash Process Automation 3 from Techaisle on Vimeo.

 

Why this is Important

This is important because it goes back to some basic principles that improve information system management, including:

Move Data, don’t type it more than once. Whether using drop downs to input categories and exact descriptions or whole sections of records or groups of records, moving data will result in fewer errors than typing it into the system. In addition to the accuracy this offers, it eliminates a lot of the drudgery associated with maintaining CRM systems and allows sales people to get back to selling.

Build Information Incrementally. Capturing the same data repeatedly will annoy customers and staff, records should be built up over time and sections of data moved to populate application modules as they are brought online. Dell’s solution does this through progressive web forms for customer records and by sharing data between marketing, sales, accounting and customer service.

Centralize Data. Trying to manage multiple customer databases is confusing, inefficient and causes a lot of frustration. Accuracy, Consistency, Reliability and Timeless are hallmarks of data quality and all suffer from running disparate databases of the same information. While data tends to take on a life of its’ own with volume and increased usage, starting with a design that shares information between systems will eliminate problems down the line and can actually give Small and Mid-Market businessesan advantage over Enterprise customers who have been wrestling with huge CRM database and internal IT for the past 15 years.     

Keep it Simple, Get Going Fast. In a recent survey 77% of SMB complained that even there has been a lot of progress in the past few years, complexity managing IT has grown faster than the problems it is designed to eliminate. SMBs want to spend money on revenue generating activities and reducing costs, which means focus on the core business, not hiring people to manage IT adoption that cannot stay engaged full time on building the business. We were surprised at how easily this whole integrated solution came online, easy enough for a power user to manage and available to use in a matter of days, quicker for those who are familiar with CRM systems.  The Dell solution comes with fixed fee, fixed scope implementation services for all of the applications they sell, making it easy for SMBs to get going quickly with a single vendor for support.

The Bottom Line

Dell’s DCBA solution was announced last September and has come a long way since introduction. In this example the demo provisioned a new account without need for any coding; userIDs tied Sales and Marketing together.  Customers signed the necessary paperwork and and Invoicing data was moved automatically once the new account was opened in QuickBooks. For small and medium sized organizations, finding ways to make best use of their IT investments-- to streamline their sales processes, as in this example here, can be the path to increased sales and help them realize greater business success, and is certainly much easier and cost effective than it used to be.

 

While unveiling a very lucid product and service strategy today, Citrix announced several significant products and alliances that fill gaps in the SMB Cloud Computing marketplace. These include:

• An expanded Me@Work mobile applications suite, with new and improved apps,
• A strategic alliance with Microsoft to distribute Windows and Office365 as Cloud Services through XenDesktop,
• A VDI-embedded and secure Ultrabook Client,
• Next generation Gateway and next generation cross-cloud bridge,
• A certified cloud platform developed in collaboration with Apache CloudStack,
• Improvements to the NetScaler line.

And the most consequential announcement of the day - a wide and deep strategic alliance with Cisco that if well executed, will offer a true 1+1=3 result for both sides and have a major impact in the industry.

As the Cloud matures, Techaisle believes that integration is key and the market will coalesce around virtual versions of the client and server concepts – with communication at the core of the client suite and a collaborative, front office multi-user suite in the middle of the Server environment. With today’s announcements, Citrix moves us closer to this concept.

We will focus on three of the announcements with a point of view on how we consider them to be both strategic and timely, and finish up with huge potential impact of the slew of new alliance announcements.

Part of the achieving the vision is to ensure collaboration is possible across all hardware environments, that application objects can be executed regardless of proprietary operating systems and formats. By supporting all the formats shown here through their Receiver, Citrix already enables apps and data on three billion devices, which is expected to grow to ten billion in the next five years – Like many Korean manufacturers, Citrix is thinking in terms of screens, and knows that consumers are driving adoption of connected screens as part of the lifestyle – my teenage daughter has a MacBook, iPhone, and Satellite TV running all at the same time, each screen running multiple applications. When selecting a workplace, surveys show this generation would rather give up a more lucrative employment opportunity than give up their devices or right to use social media. As Kevin Kelly observed in his visionary work, New Rules of the New Economy, back in 1998:

“Because communication—which in the end is what the digital technology
and media are all about—is not just a sector of the economy. Communication is the economy.”
- Kevin Kelly, New Rules for the New Economy, 1998

We could not agree more, and the ME@Work announcement shows Citrix is taking the long view.

The ME@Work mobile app suite includes several productivity and collaborative applications, including the #1 web-conferencing solution, GoToMeeting. We found it interesting that Citrix is simultaneously introducing some competitive products in conjunction with the partnership; an email client – most important component of the collaborative desktop – as well as strong offers in file sharing, personal collaboration, and web conferencing. It is a bold move; for those of us who have been watching the industry for a while,  we remember when there was a triumvirate – Windows, Intel and Novell - and then there was NT with OS-embedded LAN capabilities - and then there were two. And then Netscape came out swinging with a better web browser that seriously pressured Microsoft - and then there was Windows-embedded Explorer - and then there was one.

But Microsoft gets a lot out of these announcements, especially if execution can follow strategy. Microsoft revenue is over 25 times that of Citrix, but they can use the excitement brought by a fast-growing, deeply technical, and cloud-focused next-generation partner. Especially in the SMB space - the 100-249 & 500-999 segments of the mid-market are a real sweet spot for this partnership.

By partnering with Microsoft to bring Windows, Office365 and the SkyDrive to market, Citrix benefits from the practically ubiquitous Windows installed base and opportunity for widespread adoption of Office365, (which we expect to have a banner year in 2013). And access to the most mature global software distribution ecosystem in the world. Microsoft gains an ally that provides substantial support and momentum against Google Apps, a catalyst to move away from packaged software,  additional credibility in collaboration, and adds 10,000 channel partners at the same time.

The Ultrabook client is a strategic offer because it supports the tide of BYOD and it is another route to market for XenDesktop VDI. It also aligns Citrix with Intel and the major OEMs who are looking for returns on large investments in the Ultrabook line.

While the Microsoft news is a big deal, the even larger news was a strategic alliance with Cisco that involves major commitments of joint R&D, integration of product lines and joint manufacturing in the future. Key Points:

Citrix and Cisco announced broad cooperation in three major areas: Mobile WorkStyles, Cloud Orchestration and Cloud Networking.

Mobile WorkStyles
The big idea here is any data on any device (the billions of screens mentioned above) to support the growing BYOD wave, and leveraging joint strengths to deliver a unified secure environment for applications, data, voice and collaboration. Cisco contributes Jabber and substantial collaboration expertise gained from the Webex acquisition, Virtual Experience Infrastructure (VXI) technology, and MediaNet Technology. For Mobile WorkStyles, Citrix brings a new and improved CloudGateway and Receiver, a new and improved ShareFile service and XenApp & XenDesktop. The alliance aims to bring a richer experience with seamless security and a leveraged support infrastructure than covers the entire stack 24x7 on a global basis.

From a business perspective, Citrix can ride on the back of the 800 pound gorilla straight into the Enterprise, leveraging the industrial-strength performance of Cisco’s premium product lines at a reduced price point. As with Microsoft, Citrix is aligning itself with an old-guard industry titan, in this case, one whose revenue is 16 times that of Citrix. And as with Microsoft, the deal looks like a win for both sides. Our opinion is that it could help revitalize Cisco, whose foray in to software based business created some great products in Webex, but the model was different enough to shake them up. We continue to write on the rise of the digital channel at the expense of a traditional HW VAR Channel. When Cisco acquired Webex they entered a software-based, inbound sales, price sensitive, online-marketed, sold and delivered, six-week sales cycle, user-configured business model that was almost the antithesis of what they were best at: premium quality enterprise hardware-based solutions that are differentiated by making the value of the whole network exceed the sum of its’ parts - sold by an enterprise sales force and delivered by top shelf VARs and SIs. Especially within SMBs, the right combination of price and SLA to solve business, not technical problems, are overriding criteria when buying, and traditional hands-on VARs might not even be called - cut out by online marketing and inbound sales teams. In hardware, it is more about scale economies, quality engineering and brand management - software is all about market share and developing accelerating returns and an ecosystem of fellow travelers.

Cloud Orchestration
The second key area of cooperation is in what is being called Cloud Orchestration, where the objective is to manage the traditional data center functions of computing, network, storage, security, and management, delivered across physical, virtual and cloud environments using Unified Computing, Unified Management and Unified Fabric. This is clearly Cisco’s home territory and they bring expertise and technology including Unified Computing System (UCS), Open Network Environment (ONE) and the Nexus Series of switch technologies to bear on these challenges. Citrix contributes the newest CloudPlatform, a new open source CloudStack and the XenServer to this effort. Using Cloud Orchestration, the alliance aims to deploy Public, Private and Hybrid Cloud environments with unified management that reduces complexity and improves agility, something SMB customers will be happy to see. Embracing Open Source is also a good move for Citrix to increase the footprint.

Cloud Networking
The third leg of the alliance is centered on the Citrix NetScaler Cloud Networking Platform. Here the objective is to adopt NetScaler as the go-to technology and jointly develop the next generation through the alliance. This will be accomplished by offering NetScaler as a strategic component within the Cisco Cloud Network Services Architecture, with seamless integration at the product level in areas including Security and WAN optimization. The order of implementation is that Cisco will adopt, sell and market the NetScaler, it will be manufactured according to a certified Cisco Design specification followed by a joint road-map for product interoperability, development and go-to-market strategy over the long term.

Through these announcements, Citrix has taken several steps to advance Cloud-based services and fill gaps in the market; they have introduced a new channel for Windows and Office365, brought to market their own collaborative suite, and a VDI-embedded client to further the VDI and BYO trends in the SMB space. Other technology announcements were also significant but for reasons of brevity we have not covered them in detail. One thing is for sure - no one can accuse Citrix of being timid. Of course, when snuggling up with the big guys the way they are, Citrix themselves said it best in the announcement: "POs are better than PR". It all falls on execution at this point.

Delivering Work-Life Harmony through Enabling Technology

Citrix calls it Life Slicing, a form of work-life harmony. And it is on a relentless pursuit of creating continuities between devices, location, apps, data, events and culture irrespective of place, time and environment. Mark Templeton, CEO says that he and his team are busy designing solutions that create customer experiences that will differentiate Citrix from its competitors and in the process reduce cost and increase simplicity for end-users.

It is not an easy objective to achieve. However it is the right objective. Citrix is either a leader in some categories or second in others and a relatively new entrant in yet other areas. It is confident that a focus on delighting the customer with tools that conform to the way end-users work in a multi-modal collaborative world, pining for utmost simplicity will make Citrix the winner.

To achieve its vision, Citrix has set its eyes on six key areas.

• Social Collaboration: with carefully selected and integrated product line consisting of – GoToMeeting, GoToTraining, GoToAssist, GoToWebinar, ShareFile and Podio. While GoToMeeting was Citrix’s first foray into collaboration (when collaboration was not yet a must have), recent acquisition Podio extends the collaboration to teams.

• Data Sharing: ShareFile is Citrix’s answer to enterprise-grade Dropbox that Citrix hopes will win on security, ease of use and customer service. ShareFile enables employees to send, share, sync files with business features such as follow-me data, access from any device, encrypted in transit and at rest, remote wipe and account locking.

• Enterprise Mobility: a strategy built on Citrix Receiver, a client software app that allows access to data, apps from any device for the unbridled, fast growing BYOD market. Citrix Receiver uses XenApp and XenDesktop to deliver self-service apps and data to over 3 billion devices. Add to it CloudGateway for provisioning that is identity-based, scenario-based and secure serving of data on apps whether the device is windows, mobile, web or HTML5.

• Windows-as-a-Service: an area which is the bread and butter of Citrix, a leader in the space with maximum number of products – XenDesktop, XenApp, XenClient, VDI-in-a-Box. Citrix is furiously working on delivering Windows apps and desktops as a true cloud service. RingCube and Kaviza acquisitions helped Citrix accelerate its presence in the VDI marketplace and eliminated the trade-offs with VDI to allow both shared and fixed desktops to be managed. In addition its HDX technology aims to deliver high-definition virtualization experience and its FlexCast delivery technology makes possible individual user configuration.

• Cloud Networking: echoing the thoughts of many others that the future network will be fast and flat Citrix is betting on NetScaler, ByteMobile and CloudBridge solutions to deliver a network fabric that meets or exceeds the demands of a mobile world with ever-growing bandwidth requirements from devices, data and applications that are in constant motion.

• Cloud Platforms:  staking on its belief that Open platforms will win, Citrix has CloudStack addressing the needs of both traditional and cloud workloads. Specifically, Citrix has also rolled out a Cloud Portal specifically designed for service providers that is a single self-service interface for cloud deployments.

Routes-to-Market for SMBs

The channel comprising of VARs, Systems Integrators (SIs), dealers, resellers and retailers form the essential cogs of an IT vendor’s eco-system that puts products and solutions in the hands of the customers. This is particularly true in the small and medium business market (SMB) where the vast majority of opportunity can only be addressed through the channel. Selling direct is not economical. So it makes complete sense that Citrix is trying to find ways to engage and involve the channel in their cloud efforts. With over 10,000 channel partners globally Citrix is concentrating on three different yet complementary efforts: 1/ Strengthen the VAR and SP channels; 2/ Build strategic alliances; 3/ Reach the SMB channels. The third point is most noticeable as Citrix has launched two new channel programs:

1. SMB Specialist

1. Cloud Advisor

SMBs have made the leap to cloud-based infrastructure and will rapidly move to multiple services that leverage their investments. The new solution stack is virtual and relatively standalone at this point; the next stage will require integration of more complex applications. As new Cloud Services are rolled out it will not be possible for most SMBs to maintain the internal expertise to make the most appropriate choices. Helping customers emerge without being overwhelmed and providing relevant knowledge of how to effectively apply the new technology will strengthen the SMB customer-channel-vendor relationship. And Citrix is building that channel handbook to enable its partners to be those trusted advisors.

In addition it has developed and released a Partner 360 Dashboard with real-time analytics. Its channel measurement and incentive metrics are based both on fulfillment and influence. Borrowing a leaf from the SMB transformation phenomenon, Citrix is enabling its partners to shift their focus from just operating to implementing and therefore helping them define their respective roles in the cloud.

Techaisle Take

SMBs are going through a transformation in terms of their work style, behavior and IT usage. Citrix is addressing the transformation. SMBs traditionally started off their journey into IT unknowingly using single building block concepts. The process for an SMB growth and its relative steps to absorb IT were steady and predictable. Some SMBs stacked their blocks faster than the others but the steps to get to the top block were always the same.

Enter flat IT. Cloud, mobility, virtualization, managed services have effectively toppled the blocks down in one fell swoop and have laid everything flat on the table. SMBs have moved from enablement to empowerment. Now it is not a race to the top, but how can an SMB reach its full potential in the shortest period of time. The process of an SMB’s growth and steps to absorb IT are no longer steady and predictable.

The SMBs are looking for value shift, moving from enablement to empowerment. They have moved from individual productivity to group productivity. Work from anywhere, anytime is more prevalent today than ever before. SMBs are no longer clustered in one location. It took 10 years for percentage of SMBs allowing telecommuting to double itself but only 3 years to again double to reach 77% in the US. The average number of locations has gone up from 1.05 to 1.85 in 5 years. Another important number to note – 15% of SMB employees always work from home, that is, 11 million SMB employees.  SMB executives have also accepted work at home culture. And they see it as a benefit for the company as well as employees. 46% agree that it benefits companies, 37% say that tasks can be accomplished from anywhere. And 28% say that the technology used by employees is more advanced than that offered by workplace. It is known as Consumerization of IT but it has implications on how IT is absorbed and how IT vendors offer support and training. SMBs use multiple devices & applications to collaborate when traveling or telecommuting, many of which did not exist 5 years ago. Mobility is at the SMB doorstep.

To address the SMB transformation Citrix has it all: Collaboration, Data sharing, Mobility, Virtualization and even flavors of managed services. In the process, it is introducing simplicity and mobility along with driving down the cost. But what about the routes-to-SMB-customer? This is where Citrix has some work to do. Recognizing the shortcoming, Citrix has launched a somewhat thought out campaign to serve the needs of the channel partners that cater to the SMB community. What it already has in its favor is the tail wind. But any fellow traveler can easily testify that the tail wind can turn into a head wind. Citrix has its work cut out for itself, making sure that the channel partner tail wind is maintained.

Anurag Agrawal
Techaisle

Current penetration of Marketing Automation in the Mid-Market is higher than Small Business across the board and determines overall ranking within SMB segments. The “Currently Use” below represents either standalone applications or functions that have been enabled within Marketing Automation Suites. Our research shows that the number of applications, or enabled functions, has steadily increased from 2 in 2010, to 5 in 2011 and survey results suggest that will move to between 7 and 8 as an overall average for SMBs across all size segments. Once a quick win is apparent there is a lot of enthusiasm to move forward with new efforts.

We have also uncovered some interesting trends that will be the subject of upcoming posts and our SMB Marketing Automation report and Updates. These trends include a fairly consistent relationship between the adoption of applications, an order of operations if you will, between several categories of cloud based services and applications; once SMBs are unfettered from the linear HW, SW, NW, Integration cycle, they are able to adopt technologies in a much more strategic way. For example, adopters of SaaS CRM start immediately investigating Business Intelligence options as soon as they are up-and-running with their CRM Dashboards and Reporting – this previously unavailable functionality spurs investment in an effort to get more visibility into other parts of the business. Also, opportunity in Integration Services abounds as SMBs commit to Cloud-based architecture.

Current Use Key Points:

Only Email Marketing, Segmentation and De-Duping are more widely used by Small Businesses in the Survey, Mid-Market companies are far more likely to use the rest of the features.

For those who use Marketing Automation, Email Marketing, Campaign Management, Message Personalization, SEO and CRM Integration are the most adopted Marketing Automation Functions – driven largely by more aggressive usage within mid-market companies.

While the market is maturing and relatively new, basic requirements like the Top 10 listed above are laying the foundation for all SMBs, but soon after there is a divergence as requirements of small businesses, typically building out their block-and-tackle marketing productivity by enabling individuals, evolve into a need to build effective teams by tightening up process and collaborative capabilities in Mid-Market companies.

Needs Evolve with Size of Company and Level of Maturity

While Web-based Lead Capture and Campaign ROI Reporting were common objectives between the Small Businesses and Mid-Market Firms, other in the Top Five were different; SBs looking for more Web-based functionality like Social Media Monitoring, SEO and Analytics Dashboard, while the MBs were looking for more data-oriented functionality such as De-duping, Segmentation and Lead Scoring.

Level of integration value added opportunity for these scenarios is also different, and obviously grows as companies look to improve collaboration.