Mobile Employee Population Expected To Grow to 1.3 Billion by 2015

Analysts at the International Data Corporation (IDC), have predicted that the world's mobile employee population will reach a whopping 1.3 billion by 2015. If this is true, employees that operate remotely will inhabit 37% of the entire global workforce. We know this is obtainable as 1 billion people already work from home, as reported in 2010. This remote workforce combined with the advent of cloud technology truly opens up the marketplace and allows networking and sales to happen whenever and wherever.

Now, more than ever, the cleanliness of your data will be paramount as people throughout your company, on premises or otherwise, will be relying on the accuracy of your records to maintain good customer relationships. Using data cleansing products like Cloudingo and Dupecatcher can certainly help you clean up the records already in your database, and keep them clean as you look to the future of your CRM. 

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Brush Up Your Networking Skills for the Holidays

Chances are you’re going to be at all kinds of holiday parties this year, and if they’re not Aunt Gladice’s tree trimming party, they are probably business related functions.  Instead of making cocktails, maybe you should make contacts instead. Here’s a few tips on how to make the most out of these festive occasions through networking.

#1 Have a Plan

Not all parties are created equal so make sure you have an agenda for the evening. Ask yourself what your goals are. Are you looking for a partner, an investor, or just looking to get educated or inspired? Asking yourself these questions will help put you in the right frame of mind while mingling and will turn that party into possibilities.

#2 Be Your Own Wing-man

Yeah, it’s always great to bring a buddy with you to social gatherings, but doing so hinders you from meeting new people. When you go at it alone, you’re more likely to interact with others and are less intimidating to approach.

#3 Work the Room

Step out of your shell and meet as many people as you can at these events. Simple math will tell you that the more people you meet, the greater the likelihood of striking networking gold.  Here’s a tip: Don’t spend more than 5 to 7 minutes per conversation. That’s all the longer it takes to figure out what the person in front of you is about and if you guys could be beneficial to each other in any way.

#4 Jot Down Some Notes

This is a tried and true strategy. It’s nearly impossible to remember the specifics about everyone you meet at parties, so the best thing you can do is take down a few key notes on the back of their business card, but don’t do it in front of them. Directly after leaving the conversation find a discreet place to take down a few notes. Don’t have that luxury? Put in a few keywords on your phone’s “notes” section  and it’ll look like you’re sending a text.  

#5 Watch What You Sip

Moderation is key and for good reason.  Yes, there’s usually a nice selection of beers and wines to choose from at these events, but that doesn’t mean you need to drink them all. Yes, alcohol can make it easier to loosen up, but too much and you’ll wake up the next morning wondering, “What did I say to those people?” Don’t be that guy (or gal.)

#6 Follow Up

This is the most important step in making new connections, but is almost always one of the more difficult steps to actually complete. To make things feel less awkward when following up, reference a highlight of the party in your email, tweet, Facebook, or whatever. In addition to following up with your new contacts, be sure to thank the hosts of the party for inviting you, too. It’s a nice way to show them you appreciate their hard work and will hopefully land you in their good graces so that you’ll be invited to their next big shindig!

#7 Put that Contact in Your CRM System ASAP

Just because you have your contact's card with some notes on the back, doesn't mean you're making the most out of that information. Put all your contacts from the evening into your CRM system to keep them organzied and protected from the washing machine. This extra step will help you in the future if that contact becomes a client, a sponsor, or a great golf buddy.  If you're worried you're going to make duplicates try cleaning up your data with Cloudingo or stopping duplicates at the point of entry with Dupecatcher.

photo credit: PetitPlat - Stephanie Kilgast via photopin cc

Cloudingo just got better

Although I cover all different types of CRMs, I focus a lot on Salesforce.com. It's the system I've used the longest and it is making the most waves in the market. A few months back I wrote about a tool that was coming out called Cloudingo. Cloudingo is a cloud-based SaaS that connects to Salesforce.com and finds all the duplicate/similar data. These duplicates could consist of leads, contacts, accounts (either business or person). The reason I got so excited about Cloudingo is that it is, in my opinion - it's ahead of its time in this particular market segment. If you watch any Salesforce admin work for a prolonged period of time, you're going to see them jumping back and forth between about 5 different programs to get their work done. All those programs they use are desktop apps. Mind you, they all look like they were created 8 years ago. 

Cloudingo was created by a company called Symphonic Source. They get a lot of buzz for their other tool - DupeCatcher. It's one of those tools that every Salesforce admin knows about. When they announced Cloudingo I was all ears. I've been using it and showing it to people for the last two months and I'm sold. But wait, it just got better.

Symphonic Source published a new release of Cloudingo the other night and it has some cool stuff! Cloudingo now has built-in in-line editing. This allows you to look at a set of duplicate records (called a group), pick a master and finally edit values right there. If you don't like the final phone number - change it. If you have note you want to add, just add it. Pretty slick. If you decide you want to keep all the records and not merge anything, that is okay too. You can still edit fields and just save them.

The other awesome thing - Cloudingo now supports Salesforce.com Professional Edition. As of the previous posting I did, that was not true. If you're a Salesforce administrator and have not tried Cloudingo, I highly recommend you give it a test drive...

www.cloudingo.com

Cloudingo: CRM and data quality

I was reading an article a few days ago one the relationship between effective CRM and high data quality. The author came to the conclusion that CRM actually hinges on data quality. And as you may have experienced, data quality isn't easy to maintain. It's an arduous process to clean and maintain high quality data. 

Concidentaly, a little while later I was given a preview of Symphonic Source's latest offering, Cloudingo. The company has specialized in building Salesforce applications that control data quality. Their first offering, DupeCatcher, which I've mentioned before, blocks duplicate records from even entering Salesforce. This new app goes a step further and scans your existing data then merges duplicate records in Salesforce. 

Cloudingo comes with eight pre-set filters that scan your leads, contacts and accounts then compares them based on some major data. These are completely customizable if you are looking for something more specific or can be left as they are if you're not much of a developer. After your data is scanned, Cloudingo gives you the option to select the correct data then merge all of the existing entries. 

From a CRM standpoint, Cloudingo makes the whole endeavor much simpler. If data quality really is as vital to effective CRM as many articles have pointed out than any tool to help the process is great. Cloudingo in particular is good for data quality because of its proficiency. I didn't notice any duplicate records slipping by its filters. It works with you and your data to help make it more manageable. 

Cloudingo will be available soon at the Salesforce AppExchange. For a limited free trial, surf on over to the Cloudingo website. 

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Add-Ons Enhance Functionality and Productivity

One of the great things about Salesforce CRM is that when you subscribe to its service, you’re never really alone with it.  Because Salesforce has set itself up as a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) kind of product, there many possibilities for add-on applications to make life easier and business better.  With add-on applications, you can extend the functionality of Salesforce.  Further, Salesforce makes it relatively easy to integrate with other systems to improve dataflow and business intelligence.

Salesforce’s AppExchange marketplace has hundreds of add-on apps that extend functionality and productivity without having to build them yourself.  And what’s really great is many of them are free (I’ve mentioned one of my favorite free ones here before—a data quality app called DupeCatcher).  Typically you can view the details of an app, read reviews, see videos, screenshots, and documentation, and test out an app before committing to it.  No worries about data security as apps on the AppExchange have to pass a pretty strict security review conducted by Salesforce before they can be listed.  It’s a little like shopping on iTunes.

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