Hitachi Consulting’s meaningful Values for a Winning Workforce

Dears,

I used to wonder why Executives spend too much time drafting, wordsmithing, and redrafting vision statements, mission statements, values statements and so on. Not that it is a waste of time to think through fundamental questions like, “What are our core values? What is our fundamental reason for existence? What do we aspire to achieve and become?” Indeed, these are very important questions—questions that drives every one of us towards a common goal of relentless pursuit for excellence in our work life.

Yet vision is one of the least understood-and most overused-terms in the language. Vision is simply a combination of three basic elements: (1) an organization’s fundamental reason for existence beyond just making money , (2) its timeless unchanging core values, and (3) huge and audacious—but ultimately achievable—aspirations for its own future. Of these, the most important to great, enduring organizations are its core values. 

When I set out to write this blog  article the drive is how these core values brought back the enthusiasm to my career and how things started looking positive when you attach yourself to our Hitachi Consulting Core Values.

The picture  above depicts our HCC core values. My attempt in this blog is not to define our values I believe they are already well defined and it’s purely my experience and transformation to a life when you realize and follow these values in day to day life.

Harmony is everything and without Harmony there is nothing. The first & foremost is Harmony with yourself by accepting what you are and making honest attempt to improve and grow. The next is harmony with our fellow worker and family, the sum is always greater than its parts and team work is no substitute to individual excellence, Harmony with your team makes you perform beyond the Individual capacity and that gives you real edge over the competition.

Sincerity: The true reflection of self is when you go to sleep everyday without a guilty feeling that you made best out of it. We tend to show our sincerity only towards the goals that would benefit us directly and majority of the times we pretend to do the best and leave the rest of our potential to decay without meaningful tasks. You always have something to contribute irrespective of you have something assigned to you and there is always a scope for improvement in the way you do things or there are lot more waiting for your attention to give it a shape. We are the sculptors all time waiting for the stone’s request.

Pioneering Spirit: Innovation is not to discover a new thing every day but to discover a new self every day. Exploring the possibility to create something new is the pioneering spirit and it’s like taking your newborn in your hands, it’s your own and may not excite the people around you but you know the importance of giving a new birth to your talents and experience. When you make someone to excel it’s really like a father holding his toddler hand and making him to take the first step and it’s not just about holding your team members forever, you must also know when to leave their hand for them to make their own decision and excel.  

“How do we get people to share our core values?” You don’t. Instead, the task is to find people who are already inclined to sharing our core values. You must attract and then retain these people and let those who aren’t predisposed to sharing your core values go elsewhere. What should change and what should never change? It’s a matter of distinguishing timeless core values from operating practices and cultural norms. Timeless core values should never change; operating practices and cultural norms should never stop changing.

Loving P&C

DC*

Oracle Fusion CRM, the New CRM Avatar

Dears,

I need to admit that the excitement I had few years back about Oracle Fusion is now back again and Team are quite excited to explore the functionalities in detail and take our league of crm experts  to the next level. Designed from the ground-up using the latest technology advances, Oracle Fusion Applications are 100 percent open-standards-based business applications that set a new standard for the way Team innovate, work, and adopt technology. Built on a set of unique design principles, only Oracle Fusion Applications set a new standard for business.

Oracle Fusion Customer Relationship Management (CRM), a component of the Oracle Fusion Applications suite, sets a new standard for CRM in sales performance management, enterprise integration, and business flexibility. How the existing Oracle CRM application will benefit with Fusion CRM coexistence.

• Maximize revenue potential: Siebel CRM and Oracle CRM On Demand customers can take advantage of Fusion CRM’s sales planning module to create optimized sales territory, incentive compensation, and quota recommendations
• Gain a single view of your customer across the enterprise: Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, and Siebel CRM customers can leverage Fusion Customer Hub to consolidate and cleanse customer data across the enterprise
• Centralize order orchestration across multiple capture and fulfillment systems: Fusion Distributed Order Orchestration provides Siebel CRM customers with faster time to revenue through optimized fulfillment processes and more accurate order promising through a global view of supply

When designing the Oracle Fusion CRM SFA products, the Oracle Fusion User Experience team employed a variety of user-centered techniques to explore the goals, needs, methodologies, and work environments of CRM users. They have interacted with people from large corporations to midsize businesses to mom-and-pop settings, where the president of the company was always within earshot of the person handling the phone. In addition, team conducted in-depth field studies to observe how end users, such as sales representatives, use their mobile and other wireless tools and devices when on the go. Altogether, the Oracle Fusion User Experience team conducted more than 70 usability studies for Oracle Fusion CRM. More than 250 customer organizations and more than 550 individual participants took part in these studies. One of the most pervasive themes from the usability research that Team conducted was that a CRM application will not be embraced unless its user experience results in increased sales.

Some of the User Experience principles incorporated to make Fusion CRM a best in class CRM Solution are discussed in this article.

The user-centered design (UCD) cycle begins with identifying who our users are, learning about their

characteristics, and then engaging in their worlds. For Oracle Fusion CRM, Team spent a lot of time with

people who sell and people who manage sales teams. Although the size of the companies, the scope of

territories, and the quotas and goals can vary considerably, Team found certain values and practices in

common across CRM users.

Deal is the Big Deal

Success in sales is clearly defined. Quotas are set at individual, group, and company levels. Many

metrics are employed to determine if sales goals are being met. Our users are laser-focused on selling.

Oracle Fusion CRM is designed to enable users to flow through and manage the sales process in a way

that models the techniques that they have honed and are familiar with. But there’s a modern twist: a

user experience that dramatically increases efficiency. With quick lead identification, easy step-by-step

creation of personalized sales campaigns, real-time access to information on products and customers,

and meticulous cross-checking before closing a deal, Oracle Fusion CRM brings the needed tools and

information right to the user in a centralized, integrated desktop. People who sell are generally not interested in technology for technology’s sake. What they are interested in are usable tools that help them sell more. As their environments change, salespeople need to access their CRM applications in different ways, such as through the Internet, mobile devices, or other desktop clients such as Microsoft Outlook e-mail or calendar. Team designed the Oracle Fusion CRM user experience to do exactly that: help users sell, wherever they are.

Oracle Fusion CRM saves the salesperson time by organizing and automating their daily tasks. The entire sales flow is laid out in a way that makes sense. For example, there is no need to leave the task at hand in order to hunt for needed information. Customer data is right at your fingertips. Relevant product information can be pulled in without wandering around the application to find it. Because the daily lives of salespeople are consumed with communicating, advanced social networking tools are included to facilitate real-time collaboration (pic). Convenient tools for tasks, such as qualifying leads with an easy question-and-answer-based interface and predicting customer requirements, are integrated into the user interface exactly where they are needed. And deciding which potential opportunities to focus on is made easier through the Oracle Fusion Sales Prediction Engine

Just like the people they manage, sales managers are driven by “making the numbers.” These sales

managers need a user experience that enables them to conveniently manage their territories; aggregate

information to help them train, lead, and motivate their sales staff; and produce revenue results that

grow their companies. Oracle Fusion CRM makes their jobs easier by organizing the information that

they need in a way that supports decision-making processes. For example, by providing a single place within the user interface to plan, align, and publish territory proposals, Oracle Fusion CRM helps

managers maximize revenue potential. Or, consider the perpetual challenge of forecasting. By taking

advantage of the Oracle Fusion CRM consolidated view of forecast details across territories and sales

representatives, sales managers can increase the accuracy of their forecasts.

Sales Coach

The Sales Coach concept in Oracle Fusion Sales helps salespersons learn their company sales processes by guiding and prompting them as they go along, thus improving sales performance and consistency across global teams. The ability to transfer knowledge from one user experience to another accelerates the learning process. With that in mind, Oracle Fusion CRM incorporates many of the conventions that sales representatives are familiar and comfortable with from the Internet. For example, new users generally already know how to send e-mail, search and navigate the Web, and interact with others in online communities. Users can perform these functions in much the same way in Oracle Fusion CRM. In fact, users can access Oracle Fusion CRM from within a Microsoft Outlook application. Also consider social networking, an indispensible online activity for a sales team. Oracle Fusion CRM provides social networking tools right within the application, such as embedded discussion forums that facilitate synergistic collaboration in the context of creating a compelling presentation associated with an opportunity. Users can easily access these tools and many other features from a desktop or from

mobile devices, such as an Apple iPhone or Research in Motion, Limited, or BlackBerry. Sales representatives will find even more Internet conveniences built into Oracle Fusion CRM. Want to

contact someone right away? Simply click the icon to the top left of the contact’s name, and all

available contact information about that person appears. Internet users are accustomed to searching.

Not only does Oracle Fusion CRM provide robust keyword and advanced search functionality, but

also it enables users to tag objects directly, providing for easier recognition, searching, and

organization.

A Smart and Adaptable User Experience Boosts Productivity

Productivity improves when people can organize their work environment the way that they like. The

Oracle Fusion User Experience team designed Oracle Fusion CRM to support the way that people in

sales perform their jobs. Users can personalize their desktops to suit their work styles by directly

manipulating the way information appears. They can perform basic customizations, such as reordering

and resizing table columns, as well as perform enhanced functions, such as personalizing and moving

regions on dashboards and embedded utilities. Here are some examples:

• Automated logging of customer interactions reduces manual data entry, leaving more time to actually

interact with customers.

• Users can search for opportunities that meet specified criteria, such as revenue potential and

opportunity status, and then save the search and set it to automatically run for future use with the

Oracle Fusion CRM personalized search utility.

• In-context user assistance provides a formula for a particular forecasting metric when your cursor

hovers over a field labels. Users don't need to leave a task and look elsewhere for explanations.

 

Master the Customer Data

One of the most challenging aspects of selling is keeping track of customers and filter through the

considerable amount of fragmented data that piles up based on multiple interactions over time. Oracle

Fusion CRM provides a practical, agile solution for this dilemma by keeping updated, robust

information about customers all in one convenient place. The centralized Customer Center enables users to stay put and brings everything that they need to know about a customer directly to the forefront. A collapsible pane on the left side of the Customer Center displays a navigation tree that

illustrates multiple aspects of a customer, such as contact information, associated service requests,

assets, leads, and opportunities, making it easy to quickly access needed information. Salespeople stay

well informed and current with their customers, further enhancing their relationships with them.

The Oracle Fusion Opportunity Management Detail page helps users quickly grow an opportunity by integrating relevant, key customer data and history with information about status, progress, available products, references, and competitors. Sales representatives can add discussion topics directly within the Opportunity Detail page and sales team members can collaborate about a related topic in preparation for a deal. Having all of the information, communication, and planning for an opportunity in one place helps users move the process along quickly and helps users track their opportunities every step of the way. In Oracle Fusion CRM, users will find useful analytics, such as interactive data visualization charts and graphs, graphical heat maps to identify and analyze system recommendations and prospects, and view switchers to help analyze different data dimensions. With tools such as these available within the context of a given task, salespeople can make well-informed decisions in a timely manner. Identifying the best opportunities to pursue is one of the most critical decisions that sales

representatives and sales managers need to make. The Oracle Fusion Sales Prediction Engine can look

at past sales transactions and compare them against account history to identify similar opportunities.

The Oracle Fusion Sales Prediction Engine can help users decide how to prioritize opportunities, increasing efficiency and success rates by focusing on the most promising things in the pipeline. Salespersons can use the thorough background provided by the Oracle Fusion Sales Prediction Engine

to demonstrate sensitive and informed insight into the needs of their customers, helping to make a compelling case for their next purchase.

I very well see there is a compelling case for every CRM customer to have a look at Fusion CRM and for Oracle customers ,Fusion CRM application is very much option to consider and enable their Salesforce to go beyond the conventional selling and embrace all the technology advancements provisioned by Fusion CRM.

Loving P&C

DC*

March Forward with Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Dears,

I was not admirer of Microsoft CRM Technologies but sometimes you just need to realize that you hang around with same perception about a technology without realizing that sometimes you become a laggard and technology march forward. This is true about Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Microsoft is betting big time on this technology. In 2009, the Microsoft customer relationship management (CRM) product, then at its fourth major release, grew notably and surpassed 1 million licensed users. In 2011, the product crossed the “2 million users” mark in more than 80 countries and 40 languages. The CRM software-as-a-service (SaaS) market has grown substantially in the last few years, and Microsoft Dynamics CRM has been the predominant beneficiary of that market demand.

Microsoft competitors and market observers might poke fun at the company’s occasional product flops and/or “to market” tardiness, but Microsoft Dynamics CRM would not be that example. Quite the contrary, the offering is seeing success in customers of all sizes, across many industries, and in all available geographies. The flexible CRM solution provides the power of productivity through familiar, intelligent, and connected experiences for organizations of all sizes. Another stellar product for Microsoft is Microsoft SharePoint. It is interesting to note that many customers use Microsoft Dynamics CRM and SharePoint in tandem, partly due to SharePoint’s Web site and portal capabilities.

 Meet Mr. Avatar 2011

In early 2011, Microsoft brought significant innovation and value to its customers with the launch of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 worldwide. This was another significant milestone for the Microsoft Dynamics CRM program. Why? Few points to consider.

·         New markets—Prior to the release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, the online version was available only in the United States (USA), Canada, and Puerto Rico; outside of North America, Microsoft partners had to host the solution for customers to use the product. As of Jan , 2011, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online is available in 40 markets and 41 languages.

·         Additional capabilities—The 2011 release delivered a broad range of new capabilities for its customers, including role-tailored dashboards, a new level of Microsoft Outlook integration, expanded business process management(BPM) through guided dialogs, and a brand new Performance Management module.

·         Customer wins—Customers reportedly continue to choose Microsoft Dynamics CRM over the competition. For example, Century Payments switched from salesforce.com to Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and is realizing $300,000 (USD) in annual savings. The switch took just 2 weeks and in the first 6 months, the company was able to triple the number of sales agents, from 50 to 160. In addition to using Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online for lead management, the company took advantage of the product’s flexibility and used it to support other business needs. Other examples of customers that have switched to Microsoft Dynamics CRM and are realizing financial benefits include Hitachi Consulting, BioMedix Vascular Solutions, Jones Lang LaSalle , and IGH Solutions.

·         Market success—The combination of new markets, customer wins, and additional capabilities has seen the continuing success of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM program overall. At its recent worldwide partner conference, Microsoft announced that the product had surpassed 30,000 customers, 2,000,000 users, and had achieved 29 consecutive quarters of double-digit growth. These results are a testament to the value customers see from Microsoft Dynamics CRM. One major revelation was Microsoft’s immense efforts in making Microsoft Dynamics CRM social in terms of collaboration and crowd sourcing (to listen to their customers). The vendor admits that salesforce.com might have sucked the air out of the social CRM room with its Salesforce Chatter and “Social Enterprise” themes. If anything, Microsoft believes to be ahead of the game with its Office 365 integration capabilities (Chatter is not yet in the unified communications [UC] game).Another revelation was in regard to the product’s lesser-known customer service (care) capabilities, which even entail knowledge management (KM) capabilities. Again, RightNow (soon to be part of Oracle), salesforce.com’s Service Cloud 3,KANA Software ,Consona CRM , and Oracle (with Siebel CRM and the recent acquisition of InQuira) typically come to mind as leaders in that space. Native marketing effectiveness capabilities are also notable.

In late October 2011, Microsoft announced the general availability of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM November 2011 Service Update. This release delivers new integrated social collaboration capabilities, as well as a common experience with Office 365 and enhancements for enterprises using Microsoft Dynamics CRM in the cloud. These new features are delivered at no additional cost to customers and are directly integrated into the tools they’re already using.With the new release, Microsoft Dynamics CRM introduces new social collaboration capabilities that include:

·         Activity Feeds: Configurable, real-time notifications on important relationships and significant business events via a blended view of micro-blog posts and all interactions for a person, customer, or sales opportunity.

·         Micro-blogging: Status updates and notifications regarding business events and actions, bringing simple experiences for users similar to Facebook and Twitter.

·         Conversations: Users can post questions, observations, suggestions, and status updates, allowing them to collaborate quickly and efficiently, locate information or expertise, and gather feedback from others.

·         Automated activity updates: Users can post information directly to the activity feed based on configurable event rules, e.g., when a sales opportunity is closed. People can subscribe to or “follow” these activity feeds, and consume them in a variety of ways.

·         Mobile Activity Feeds: A new Microsoft Dynamics CRM Activity Feeds for mobile application for Windows Phone 7 allows users to be able to view their activity feeds while away from the office.

 Some “Real Deal” CRM Capabilities

·         Mobile Express for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011—provides users with a Web-based CRM client that works on any HTML rendering device, small or large. The UI can be customized to show only the types of objects that an organization wants to expose to mobile users.

·         Microsoft Dynamics CRM Activity Feeds—The November 2011 Service Update will deliver the first of several waves of social innovation for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. This release will deliver activity feeds, which simplify business insight and collaboration across internal communities. Activity feeds will enable a user to follow and listen in on important activities that take place around the people, accounts, contacts, leads, sales deals (opportunities), or anything else that they care about. This frees users from having to keep track of a lot of information—instead they can utilize Microsoft Dynamics CRM to provide them with the information they need in an intelligent and timely manner. The status for all activity feeds can be posted manually by users or automatically updated based on predefined system rules through workflow, e.g., post a status when an opportunity is won. Activity feeds can also be posted to/by external applications through the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Web services API. Activity feeds expose Microsoft Lync presence functionality so that users can initiate communication activities such as instant messenger (IM), phone calls, e-mails, etc. Like all other functionality in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Activity Feeds respect the core security model to ensure that the right information is shared with the right people. These capabilities will be available for both online and on-premise customers.

·         Mobile Activity Feeds for Microsoft Dynamics CRM—Coupled with the new internal social collaboration capabilities provided by activity feeds, the November 2011 Service Update will deliver a mobile client for activity feeds that runs on Windows Phone 7.5. This application enables real-time views of activity feeds that the user has subscribed to in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Users can post statuses, questions, answers, and comments directly from their phone into CRM Activity Feeds. Additionally, users will have read-only access Accounts, Contacts, Leads, and Opportunities to allow them to stay on top of key customer information even when they are out of the office. Finally, the forms for the mobile application are configured in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, just like any other form for the Web and Outlook clients. This application is available for both online and on-premise customers.

The  CRM accelerators having been enthusiastically embraced by the market. There are the following three stages of support:

1. Dynamics lab program—Many accelerators, including partner relationship management (PRM), eService, event management, and customer care, were added to the Microsoft Dynamics lab program and updated over time.
2. Added to the current release—Analytics, business data auditing, and workflow tools were absorbed into the core product and added as base features in the 2011 release.
3. Planned for a future release—Social networking, enterprise search, and news feed dashboards have been incorporated into the future product roadmap and will be released as core features during the next 3–24 months.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM also meets the changing expectations of customers with a service solution that is robust and flexible. It includes the following capabilities:

·         Service Scheduling: Managing field service appointments, facilities, and resources with the powerful unified service scheduling feature.

·         Streamlined Case Management: Taking advantage of intuitive case management capabilities to streamline case creation, tracking, resolution, and escalation.

·         Native Outlook Client: Centrally managing contacts, calendaring, service tasks, and e-mail through a familiar Microsoft Outlook interface for improved efficiencies.

·         Advanced Personalization: Spending less time looking for information and more time serving customers with personal views, most recently used lists, and record pinning.

·         Full Interaction History: Tracking the details of every interaction, including offers, orders, contracts, and cases, so you can provide the right service at the right time.

·         Service Response: Enabling faster, more effective responses with built-in mail-merge, e-mail templates, and one-click conversion of e-mail messages to cases.

·         Purchase History: Tracking product purchasing history, contracts, and key renewal dates so agents can take proactive action and offer relevant services or products.

·         Insightful Service Analytics: Deepening insight with out-of-the-box or configurable dashboards, drill-down analysis, and inline data visualization capabilities.

·         Service Queue Management: Building queues against any entity, user, or team and streamlining work state management for improved efficiency.

·         Service Record Auditing: Improving visibility into service and support activities and effectively meeting service level agreements(SLAs) with system-wide auditing.

·         Guided Service Processes: Streamlining case resolution and escalations with guided dialogs, automated processes, and conditional formatting rules.

·         Service Goal Management: Instantly tracking service goals, such as first call resolution, average call time, and more with comprehensive goal management capabilities.

·         Centralized Document Management: Managing cases, service contracts, FAQs, and more with embedded Microsoft SharePoint document management capabilities.

·         Knowledge Management: Up-leveling your customer service skills by creating, retrieving, and sharing knowledge through a shared knowledge repository.

·         Service Team Management: Facilitating internal collaboration and coordinated problem resolution with team management capabilities and real-time communication tools.

·         Web Self-Service: Empowering customers to find answers, create their own cases, and schedule service appointments through the Web 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

·         Unified Desktop: Using your CRM solution to deliver a unified service desktop that combines service applications within a single, streamlined interface. Users have the capability to create desktop clients for contact center employees via the customer care accelerator.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 includes a strong set of basic marketing capabilities. These were enhanced in this release to include support for dynamic marketing lists, more flexible segmentation tools, and richer dashboards and analytics. They offer a robust solution for companies conducting many business-to-business (B2B) marketing activities, such as web-to-lead processes. Where customers have a requirement for complex multichannel and/or high volume business-to-consumer (B2C) activities (e.g., e-mail campaigns), they often supplement core functionality with excellent partner add-ons from our extensive ecosystem.

MS Dynamics CRM is definitely a true challenger to all the Marque CRM suites out in the Market. A true technologist is one who embraces a technology that transform businesses and I strongly advocate every CRM professional to have a look at this technology.

Loving P&C

DC*