‘Financial CRM’ Category

In the wake of news reports that Venture Capital fund raising had its lowest quarter since ‘03, you might be surprised that very sophisticated buy-side firms such as Hedge Funds, Venture Capital firms and Private Equity firms often rely on the must rudimentary, home made fund raising methods (see article: Only 17 venture capital firms raise money in Q3 — fewest in 15 years.) For example, many firms are still tracking their efforts in Excel or via notes in Outlook. It’s a very manual, time consuming and arduous way to track and manage their efforts.

Ironically, this is happening at a time when it has never been easier for a Venture firm to switch to better systems with almost no effort. The same browser they use to search for news and research can also be used for the industry’s most sophisticated CRM. No hardware needed other than the laptops they are now using and access to the Internet.

Whether they use our service built on the force.com platform or on top of salesforce.com or some of the other services out there, you have to wonder why, during this time of great stress they are still trying to make do with Excel and Outlook. If it is cost that is holding them back, you really have to wonder. We have priced our service at about the price of a couple of cups of coffee a day on Wall Street. On top of that, our Marketing Department is launching a “buy one get one free” promotion.

If you are in one of these financial firms and suffering from the funding drought – maybe it’s time to think about improving your pumping equipment?

At least 5 people asked me that question in the last 2 weeks.  These people are customers, competitors as well as our partners. Everyone has been surprised at our success in the Financial market with our Force.com based services (or products, as some would call them) to manage operations for Capital Markets and Asset Management firms. But then, they figured it makes sense since Navatar is offering the lowest cost option to those who have no money to spend these days.

Is it true then, that our Financial Services solutions for Force.com are popular because they’re low cost? Of course. Navatar’s solutions to manage CRM, Operations and Portfolio for these firms are probably the most cost effective alternatives. They deliver on the Cloud Computing promise – to lower costs and enable scalability as financial firms navigate the turbulent waters of today and prepare for the future. You can read about how Transparent Value, a Guggenheim Partners Company is achieving this, in the article, Asset Management Firm Moving Apps to the Cloud, written by Penny Crosman at Wall Street & Technology.

However, there is another important aspect to all of this.  Around 60% of our financial customers bought from us since someone (another firm) recommended us.  You would think the recommender probably said, “Yes, indeed, the cost is low and the product has all the features we need.”  In reality, our recommenders endorse us for much more than that - they are happy to recommend us for the combination of product features and the service they receive from folks well versed in Financial Services. They like the idea of a one-stop-shop they can turn to, for anything related to running their operations efficiently. And it’s all baked into the cost of the service.

The service aspect really is the crux of the Cloud Computing model.   A cloud service provider is a company that delivers cloud services as part of its business model. The public “Cloud” will be an abstract place through which service providers will deliver things like storage as a service, software as a service, or maybe even sushi as a service in Indiana one day.  But the common link between all those things is, and ever shall be, the delivery of “service”.  That quote is from an article Delivering Cloud Services: ISVs – Change or Die or both! written by Daryl Plummer at Gartner.

So, let’s ask the question again. Is it really the cost?  My answer is that the big differentiator is the value that the Cloud Computing model enables us to provide.  It makes us successful and it is exactly that value which will help our Financial Services customers take advantage of the new upcoming opportunities in this downturn.

Jim Sinur from Gartner poses some very good questions about IT’s role in the Cloud world, in his blog entry The Secret is Out: The Business is Building Processes and Applications. The question is: Will IT continue to play an important role within their organization, when the business now has the option of getting their apps developed on platforms such as Force.com, without IT involvement?

Jim also poses more great questions, such as:

“As the business relies more heavily on these new infrastructures, will they be able to hold up to high scale? Will the business folks really want to take on the tasks to maintain these processes and applications? Who is going to build the integration components to glue these new processes apps together? Will the business folks build and IT be stuck with the results? How does one make sure there is not rampant duplication of processes and applications?”

Another good blog post Force.com – CiO’s dream or nightmare? by Ian Gotts (who heads Nimbus Partners) also outlines some important implications for a CIO, in the new cloud world order.

I do agree with Jim and Ian about the change that’s looming. CIOs need to do some serious thinking and figure out how they’d add value. It seems to me that there’s clearly an anchor role that needs to be played so that all of this comes together within an organization. Take the example of large banks such as Citi or JPMorgan Chase. Retail banking and investment banking are two disparate business functions within each bank and neither function really cares what the other is implementing technologically. But someone would have to figure out how to get these two functions (and others) within a bank to play together so the bank can benefit from a coherent cloud strategy. I also think that that someone would most logically be the CIO (although large Cloud Service Providers may compete for that role in future – outsourcers want that role but they’re unlikely candidates in my view).

Ian provides some very good pointers for the CIO. Another great post when it comes to pointers, is from Thomas Bittman (also, from Gartner) titled If You Build a Private Cloud, Will Anyone Come.  “We’ve got to get our IT people to stop thinking about products and technologies and even architectures first, and instead to focus on understanding their service requirements first,” says Thomas.  I completely agree. Thomas advocates making ROI decisions based on SLAs and costs for each service, before getting mired in architectures.

I think this is a big paradigm shift for a CIO.  But then, aren’t CIOs smart people? If I can figure this out, so can they.  What may be harder for a CIO, though, is to change their IT organization to become more service-focused and less obsessed with ownership. If a CIO can pull off that change, he/she will be in the drivers seat.  Otherwise they will open opportunities for others.

A couple of weeks ago we launched the first Online Event Registration product on Force.com Sites (view demo). After launching some pioneering Financial Service products for Private Equity, Hedge Funds, Mutual Funds, M&A and Capital Markets on the Force.com platform, this is yet another “first” from Navatar Group on Force.com sites. We were flooded with inquiries in the very first week. Everyone was very intrigued and interested, but also confused. I thought it would be worthwhile compiling some common questions that prospects have been asking.

Does the world really need another Online Event Registration system? Yes, the world needs an Online Event Registration system that is integrated with your salesforce CRM. Let me ask you this. Wouldn’t you want to track attendance in events, conferences, webinars or trainings, in your salesforce system? It would help you understand your customers and prospects for upselling, cross-selling or better service. Navatar’s Online Event Registration system built on Force.com Sites is completely integrated with salesforce.

Aren’t there other existing Event Registration systems that are already integrated with Salesforce? Sure, there are. The key difference is that Navatar’s Online Event Registration system runs on Salesforce.com’s cloud. In other words, it is completely native and is hosted on the Salesforce.com servers. You do not need any other hardware, software or integration solution. It is all done for you.

So how can the event registration system help me? Try to answer the questions listed below. If you find yourself answering yes to some of them, this system may be for you.

1      Publishing events: Do you want to, without IT’s involvement and with a few clicks, publish an event on your website, open it for registrations and then remove it after the event is over?

2      Event Marketing: Do you want to prepare a list of participants based on last year’s events attendees?  Do you want to further filter this list to filter out email opt-outs? Do you want to drive email marketing campaigns to send out mass email invitations?

3      Multiple Sessions: Do you want to manage multi-session conferences? Do you want to allow participants to register for multiple sessions within an event?

4      Multiple Discount Types: Do you want to allow for various kinds of discounts based on the number of registrants, type of registrant, and type of registration- full/partial?

5      Multiple Payment Types: Do you want to give the registrant multiple payment options to choose from? Do you want to provide online credit card processing?

6      Registration Confirmation: Do you want to automatically send out acknowledgement mails confirming event registration?

7      Event Attendance: Do you want to track attendance and no-shows for the event?

8      Private Events: Do you want a mechanism to facilitate online registrations for a private event that won’t be posted on your website?

9      Event Analytics: Do you want to run analytics to gauge an event’s success? Do you want to generate a list of confirmed attendees to prepare a seating chart? Do you want to know how many different types of meals to order for an event? Do you want to know the names of registrants for each session of your event?

If you want to learn more about the product, you can view an online demo.

For further inquiries, you can reach our sales team at sales@navatargroup.com or 212 461 2140.  You can also write to me directly at skumar@navatargroup.com.

“No one’s social (yet),” says CRM Magazine’s Marshall Lager in the June edition. In other words, based on a study by ES Research, social media isn’t a big factor in closing B-to-B sales … yet.

But, it’s clear that going “social” is the new bandwagon to jump on.

Below Marshall’s article there’s a big excerpt from The Facebook Era by Clara Shih, the head of social media alliances and product strategy at salesforce.com. The full (and really long) title of her book is, The Facebook Era: Tapping Online Social Networks to Build Better Products, Reach New Audiences, and Sell More Stuff.

According to one reviewer on Amazon, (Adam Smith,Bainbridge Island, WA), “The Facebook Era is a bleeding edge guide to how social networking portals such as Facebook can give astute businesses a leg up.”

We know a trend we see one. The “no software” folks are leading the charge into social media CRM selling.

Expect a tidal wave of new sales books coming out with titles like Strategic Conceptual Facebook Selling for Complex Sales.

Seriously though, we have just downloaded Shih’s book onto our Kindle2 and look forward to reading it during the commute home from Wall Street tonight.

Have a great day!

Allan Siegert

Placement Agents have been in the news a lot recently and some of the stories haven’t been particularly friendly to the profession. Now, there’s some good news – a product that will make their jobs easier.

The product is designed to:

Manage prospective clients (both sell side and buy side)
Manage sell and buy side relationships
Manage fund sales
Conduct Due Diligence on Funds (Fund Managers)
Quickly and easily generate client reports and client metrics (dashboards)
Track CRM activity including calls, meetings and emails Mass mailings

Navatar Group has built this product on top of the force.com platform (it is 100% native to the salesforce.com programming). We are long-time salesforce.com partners headquartered in New York (44 Wall Street). We specialize in financial markets (hedge funds, fund of funds, mutual funds and private equity).

Allan Siegert

During a late afternoon conversation, the CFO of a Private Equity firm tells us what starts off easily quickly becomes like a complicated Russian novel. Toss in lots of emails and attachments and it really becomes headache inducing. Especially when you have to create reports.

“You have to track who you talked to when and what you talked about. Later, are those people you talked to still interested in investing or not? And, ultimately track what they chose to invest in or not and as what entity and in what fund.”

Helping you easily keep all this straight is the problem we solve for essentially the price of a daily cup of coffee (we are talking about the one we used to buy across the street at Starbucks on Wall Street, not the lower priced McDonalds in Westport, CT). Navatar’s Private Equity is built on the salesforce.com platform so all you need to access your data is a browser. Of course, seeing is believing. We are always happy to give a quick demo so please don’t hesitate to ask.

Allan Siegert

Sometimes we get criticized in the salesforce.com world about not highlighting all the good things that Navatar does. Yes, we are shy at times. So this time, let us draw your attention to some good things being said about us – a recent one related to one of our most popular products, the Private Equity CRM for salesforce.com, which continues to ride high. It was great to receive a glowing review from Glenn Oken, one of the most seasoned Private Equity pros and Managing Director at Mangrove Equity Partners, LLC, a Tampa-Florida based lower middle market private equity fund. Here is what Glenn had to say:

Thank you Glenn. It is great to have you as a customer.

Oh yes, and to learn more about Navatar Private Equity for salesforce.com, or to see a demo please visit:

http://navatargroup.com/industry_solutions_private_equity.html

Alok Misra.

We have always been cynical about mobile CRM.

Maybe it’s a left over feeling from the early mobile stock market devices we sold for Reuters … they were the size and weight of a brick and if you moved too far from a window, they blanked out – of course, that was about a decade ago.

We have been playing with mobile CRM on a Blackberry and it’s surprisingly good. Okay, we are not an early adopter of this salesforce.com mobile but we now like it a lot. You can see data or add data regardless of connectivity. That’s because the application and the data are loaded on your device. So, for example, you can quickly add a meeting report during an airline flight. The data synchronizes immediately when you land and are connected again.

The only problem is that we have a Pearl (8130). That’s the one with the really small screen (about the size of two postage stamps) – so, we have to carry a magnifying glass to see our accounts and tasks. Maybe this is an excuse to upgrade to a new phone.

Allan Siegert

Here we are at the month end and sales reps in many firms are going to be instructed to do what it takes to close deals. So, there’s this quote that we literally ripped out of Ron Hubsher’s book, Closing Time that might help.

Ron says:

1. Sales is about creating an eager buyer. By creating an artificial timeline to get a discount for the buyer, you have not created any real value to the buyer. If the buyer was convinced you were the best choice and was ready to choose your offering, you have needlessly given away 20% of your revenue.

2. If the buyer is not ready to commit to you, you have dropped your pants. What do you think will happen next? If the buyer eventually decides to choose your solution, will he pay full price? Probably not. What minimum discount will he start with?

Ron goes on to say that you will have trained your buyer to delay his purchase and ask for a larger discount.

So … best of luck from all of us at Navatar Group on creating a winning month!

Allan Siegert

Oh, one more thing.

More about Ron’s book at: http://www.salesog.com/bookpage. By the way, he has a killer list of blurbs that any author would die for; here is just one of them:

“An outstanding system for negotiating and closing sales opportunities on a global basis. I would recommend it to executives looking to drive revenues, command price premiums, and increase shareholder value. It is easy to understand, easy to use, and easy to implement. It is a must read.”
– Jim Steele: Chief Customer Officer, Salesforce.com

Data center issues often prevent firms from creating new financial software products.
We are talking about issues like data center space (if there is any) and the up-front costs of buying servers, switches, firewalls and the like before you can go “wheels up” with your new offering.
What’s nice about the Cloud model is that you can build your product and not have to worry about the ongoing data center cost of running it. Nor do you worry about adding new customers. You pay “by the seat” as you ramp up. So, all of a sudden, bringing a new product to market becomes a whole lot easier.
We know, we have done it. We would like to hear your thoughts on this topic.

Allan Siegert

NEW YORK, April 21, 2009 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Navatar Group, a global salesforce.com partner in financial services, today announced several new customers, including KStone Partners, Kelvingrove Partners and Zebra Capital. The firms are using Navatar’s customized CRM for Hedge Funds, a cloud computing application to manage hedge fund and fund of funds operations. Navatar CRM for Hedge Funds is built and run entirely on the Force.com platform from salesforce.com and is available on the Force.com AppExchange. http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/news.html?d=163434

It was at the same place the G-20 met but there were no protesters.

The attendance was massive and from some of the largest firms in Europe. Some estimates were 4,000 people. Discussions were lively! We’d tell you more but the true spirit of the event is well captured by the force.com blog – so we’ll point you there: http://blog.sforce.com.

Have a great weekend!