Solvis Consulting, LLC

The Scrum Framework for CRM in 10 Minutes or Less

We here at Solvis have mentioned before that when implementing Social Media or CRM SaaS solutions, we support the use of the Agile Methodology and particularly the Scrum Framework. So how can one learn this in 10 minutes or less? Read on:

Lance Dacy, a certified Scrum Master and Product Owner based in Dallas, TX, (DFW Scrum Alliance) has been a great mentor for us in implementing Scrum. He recently shared the following with us regarding a summary of The Framework:

"Scrum uses the real-world progress of a project — not a best guess or uninformed forecast — to plan and schedule releases. In Scrum, projects are divided into succinct work cadences, known as sprints, which are typically one week, two weeks, or three weeks in duration. At the end of each sprint, stakeholders and team members meet to assess the progress of a project and plan its next steps. This allows a project’s direction to be adjusted or reoriented based on completed work, not speculation or predictions.


Philosophically, this emphasis on an ongoing assessment of completed work is largely responsible for its popularity with managers and developers alike. But what allows the Scrum methodology to really work is a set of roles, responsibilities, and meetings that never change. If Scrum’s capacity for adaption and flexibility makes it an appealing option, the stability of its practices give teams something to lean on when development gets chaotic."

Also, there has been a video that has gone "viral" in the Scrum-world recently, that does a great job demonstrating the Scrum concepts in 8 minutes (be sure to click on the "HD" button on the bottom right side of the screen for better visibility), please click below for the video:

Scrum in 8 Minutes at YouTube

Salesforce.com Day Mexico 2009

Salesforce.com Day Mexico 2009
Originally uploaded by solvisconsulting

On June 23 in Mexico City, Salesforce.com had a seminar to preview the new release and demo the Service Cloud solution which integrates Facebook and Twitter with the traditional CRM.

Follow the tweets from the event here (Spanish): #sfdcmx and #mx0609.

Listen to the Podcast (English): Salesforce Day in Mexico with Lindsey Armstrong and Jesus Hoyos.

Managing International CRM Projects

By Jesus Hoyos

During the last 15 years, I had participated in many CRM projects in Latin America.  Many of these CRM projects were deployed by Latin American and U.S. multi-nationals implementing many technologies and programs.  Two typical characteristics of international CRM projects are the ability for the CRM software to have multi-language capabilities and roll-up forecasting for different countries or regions. What this means? Well, many CRM projects focus on functionality that take advantage of easy configurations such as business units, multi-region reports, multi-level security, role-based access, collaboration within opportunities and territory management, among others. 

Unfortunately, many international projects do not take into consideration the other parts of CRM: people, data, metrics and local culture. I have compiled a list of areas to take into consideration when deploying an international CRM project, especially in Latin America.

20 areas to consider for your International CRM Project:

1. Consider in-country and region cultural differences. Doing business in Medellin is different from Bogotá, and doing business in Perú is not the same as doing business in México. There are many business and cultural differences in Latin America. Do not make the mistake of thinking that all countries and regions in Latin America are the same.
2. Address Formatting. Many CRM systems are design to only manage US and Canadian addresses. You need to consider the different address formats for each country. Look for local address validation software or services in each country. The same goes for Name (First and Last Name, Company Name) formatting for both personal and company names – your dup logic needs to take into consideration Portuguese, Spanish and English names.
3. Use local Project Managers from you own company and I strongly suggest you use a Program Manager that is from Latin America. This will help you assimilate the local cultures and business practices.
4. Make sure you have a realistic budget for processes, technology, training, change management and data conversion. Your budget must include travel expenses. Webex and Gotomeeting  are all good, but you need to have a lot of face-to-face meetings in Latin America.
5. Internal Politics. Make sure you have an excellent change management process to manage internal politics. Politics will kill your project if they are not well managed.
6. Geopolitical risks. Make sure you have developed scenarios and what-if situations for all kind of economic or political situations.
7. Design your CRM program and software globally but deploy it locally. Your strategy needs to be aligned with all business units. I have seen projects failed when one business unit is customer-centric and the another one is focused 100% in cutting costs.
8. Make sure you have standard processes that can be adjusted to the realities of each country.
9. Make sure that the functionality deployed can be changed quickly. You do not want the local business unit to wait six months for new functionality.
10. Involve all type if users with conference room pilots to get their feedback and buy-in.
11. Many CRM practices in U.S. are not really best practices in Latin America.Best practices some time are bad practices when deployed in many countries. Make sure you monitor all processes and functionality to make sure if they all make sense as best practices.
12. Validate the differences between SaaS and OnPremise for your deployment.  I have seen SaaS software to be more successful with international projects. No software, database or hardware to worry about.
13. Do not push your CRM projects to the countries. HQ and the local business units need to buy-in the project and a good change management process need to be in place.
14. Select 2 or 3 business units or countries to run pilots. Compare results, made adjustments, re-deploy. Have a phased approach after you get the final results of the pilots.
15. Training, training, and training. Have local companies do the end-user training. Use your software vendor for the technical training.
16. I think you heard this one before – “Start with the early adopters or power-users”. I will recommend the contrary, start with the employees that will give you problems with change management or adopting the CRM strategy. You need to start early with the late adopters, then bring the early adopters to close the loop with change management.
17. Support. Needs to be local and in the local language. Use HQ or area regions for Level 2 or 3 support.
18. Your CRM software needs to consider the different definitions for customers and segments for each country or region. But make sure you at least have a base definition for reporting purposes.
19. Communicate, communicate and communicate. Employees need to know the details of the implementation and strategy. Not knowing creates dissatisfaction between business units and countries.
20. Data & Information sharing is a must, especially when your customer base is the same across business units.

In summary, you must be sure you apply project management standards to manage your international project taking into account my 20 suggestions. You must also understand that international CRM projects are risky and complex, but if you keep your project simple and consider the local nuances and business practices of each country, you will at least have won part of the battle. 

Many companies will try to standardize functionally and processes - this could help your project fail. Just make sure you have the basic functionality and process are covered, and then allow the business units or countries to adjust them to their local requirements.

Twitter conversations about crm and project management.

This post was originally written for myCRMCareer.

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Congratulations to Marco A. Cruz!

Congratulations to Marco A. Cruz - winner of the Grange Prize Award!The Grange Prize is a Canadian and International Internet Award that recognizes the work of two Canadian and two international photographers, awarding CAD $50,000 to a winner chosen through an internet public vote. This year they had 2 Mexican photographers. Marco A. Cruz was the winner!

Early in the year Marco A.Cruz contacted us to help him with his Social Media presence and CRM activities. Marco had already a site managed by himself with a focus on documental photography. Marco realized that photography and the internet go well together and he needed to expand his presence in the Internet to promote his work and must important start conversations about his work and in this case, Mexican photography.

Marco is a clear example of using personal branding, social media and CRM to promote his work and engage in conversations. For this, Solvis prepared a Social CRM Strategy based on Marco's core values and objectives to promote his photography.  We are in the process of developing a case study but here are some of the tactics that we used within the defined strategy:

1. Optimized Wordpress to better manage his blog content
2. Made changes to the navegation menus at his website
3. Created a Facebook strategy for Marco A, Cruz, the photographer
4. Established presence on Twitter
5. Used tools like HootSuite, Mr. Tweet, Search.Twiiter and Tweedeck to manage conversations, followers and tweets
6. Used different Google tools to understand conversations around photography
7. Had a plan to measure conversations and some key metrics
8. Used ZohoCRM as the CRM tool with a Landing Page
9. Zoho for Project Management

Marco's blog is http://www.marcoacruz.com/blog/.

We are extemely happy to contribute to Marco's efforts and expand his precence in the Internet via Social Media. Our work is not done yet, we are now moving into the next phase to help Marco with other social media channels and tactics.

More: How Solvis can help you with your CRM and Social Media Strategies

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• 5 Tips for Building up an Online Following (lookuppage.com)
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Neighborhood America wins its second consecutive CODiE Award for 'Best Social Networking Solution' for enterprises.

Our social network partner, Neighborgood America, wins its second CODiE Award.



May 7, 2009 - Neighborhood America announces today that it has won its second consecutive CODiE Award for 'Best Social Networking Solution' for enterprises. The company accepted the prestigious award Tuesday evening in San Francisco at the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) Summit, emerging from the competition as the recognized leader in the enterprise social computing industry.

More here

If you are looking for Social Networking solution for your enterprise contact us.

CRM 2.0 Services  
How Solvis can help with your CRM initiatives?

Brent Leary writes about Neighborhood America & MS CRM Dynamics

Recently our social networking partner, Neighboorhood America, announced the integration between Dynamics CRM and Elevate. Elevate is Neighboorhood America's social networking platform. Brent Leary, CRM expert in the social CRM, writes about the integration between both applications.

Read Brent Leary post: Social CRM in Practice - Microsoft and Neighborhood America

How Solvis can help with your CRM initiatives?

Don't know where to start with your next CRM initiative? Solvis can help your company in many ways, from educational programs to CRM strategies, and from software selection to the implementation of technologies, processes or change management.

The three main types of services we offer to help you with your CRM needs are: education, strategy and implementation. All three services are designed to provide quick implementation of your customer retention or acquisition initiatives.

If your organization is a small business in United States or Latin America, don't worry, we have different versions and options of these services based on your budget. At Solvis we have experience working with small companies, enterprises and holdings, as many organizations are looking to integrate their CRM synergies with technology and processes.

CRM & Social Media Education

We offer 2 types of educational seminars where we can bring our CRM experts on-site.

SaaS, Cloud Computing, On-Premise?

Presentation about SaaS and Cloud Computing (Spanish) given at the Mundo-Contact CRM event last year (November 2008).

Que Es SaaS V2.1

View more presentations from Jesus Hoyos. (tags: crm hoyos)

CRM Vendor Selection Process (SaaS vs OnPremise)

Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, SugarCRM, Salesforce.com, Aplicor and many other CRM packages now offer multiple options of CRM software to choose from. You have single-tenancy vs multi-tenancy, open-source, and SaaS vs OnPremise options. Within each vendor you have different options regarding modules and functionality. The good news is that you have choices based on your requirements, needs, priorities, IT policies and budget.

We at Solvis can help you decide which CRM vendor (software package or service) you need. We have a Software Selection Methodology that looks into processes and functionality that will help your business (small or large) select the proper software. Our methodology offers quick steps to make decisions. We can start with a short or large list of vendors, and we can offer proof-of-concepts and pilot programs for your implementation.

No matter what your software needs are, we can help your business select any CRM vendor: operational, analytical, collaborative and interactive - from call center to marketing automation and from SFA to customer service under any model: SaaS or OnPremise.

Our methodology includes the following steps:

1. Gather Requirements and Functionality
2. Identify Key Decision Criteria
3. Determine Weighting
4. Prepare and Send Out RFI
5. Refine Process Flows, Scenarios and Functionality
6. Conduct Vendor Demos
7. Complete Scorecards
8. Perform Reference Checks (Due Diligence)
9. Perform Gap Analysis
10. Conduct Vendor or Reference Site Visits
11. Evaluate and Select Vendor
12. Refine Business Case
13. Develop Proof-of-Concept
14. Develop Pilot

Depending of your business needs, some of the above steps are optional. We can also work with your software or implementation vendor in developing the proof-of-concept and pilot (quick win), before any major implementation. Time frames also depends on your business needs, but we can help you select software solutions from 5 to 8 weeks, or, we can just help you make a decision if you already have a short list of vendors.

Note: we have templates, tools and related documentation to facilitate a smooth selection process for all 14 steps of our methodology,

For more information contact us.

What is CRM?

Check out this presentation - What is CRM?

What Is CRM ?

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: sales marketing)