If you ever played a computer game, you know that great games start easy, and incrementally introduce new complexities. As Nolan K. Bushnell coined the phrase to describe the best games: "easy to learn, difficult to master". So what does this have to do with business applications? Surely, ...

I have been in the business of implementing business solution for over 25 years. During this time, I have been amazed at two things: 1). the incredible speed of innovation in this sector, and 2). the incredible inertia of silly requirements that keep us from utilising these innovations. No - this is...

When you change your business model from advisory to full software sales, implementation and support partner, it is not a trivial change. Added to that, a full technology change from Microsoft to Zoho, it is an opportunity that does not come without risk. The numbers are in, and it is looking very p...

Ransomware is creeping into business and government systems seemingly unimpaired by the counter measures they put in place. Antivirus and malware protection are not a luxury, but they can only keep up with the newly released infections, at best. The weak point remains the user as entry point, and sy...

Over the last decade or so, many technology vendors have made significant investments in Customer Success Management Teams, but the definition of customer success varies from vendor to vendor. In his book "The Outcome Generation", Paul starts by clearly defining the three generations of su...

Customer success teams are here to stay. It is inevitable that the vendor of a subscription based software application takes a keen interest in the success that has been achieved with that software. After all, even the most specialised software application is in danger of being "commoditised...

Zoho has recently released MarketingHub - the one stop app for building and maintaining your marketing funnel. As we are used from Zoho - the MarketingHub is a powerful product in itself, managing the entire marketing funnel - but it is also integrated with other Zoho applications to provide an inte...

CRM  (Customer Relationship Management) Solutions have been around for over two decades (in one form or another - I started my journey in sales activity management (SAM) in 1996 - and the solutions have evolved significantly since that time). CRM may have evolved, a lot of the questions regardi...

"We know why projects fail; we know how to prevent their failure - so why do they still fail?" - Martin Cobb

If you are involved in delivering ICT projects, you must have heard this phrase coined more than once - I came across this well over a decade ago (and it was not a new discovery then...

November is the second month of Spring here in Australia - and over the weekend we had temperatures soaring to the mid-to high 30's (even over 40's at the hottest point point of the day Friday - this is degrees Celsius, about 100 degrees Fahrenheit). One cannot help but to want for a nice cold water...

NOTE: from February 15 2019 the Zoho has updated the price list for Zoho One, and the minimum requirement for 5 users is no longer in place. To  read more: https://www.aurelian-group.com/blogs/post/zoho-has-updated-the-price-of-zoho-one-again-and-it-is-great-news  

This week, Zoho intr...

Agile has been around for a while - quite a while indeed. And it is still, for a lack of a better word, "fashionable" as an implementation method for business applications. Is it successful? The proliferation of Agile as method of choice seems to indicate success, but are "agile"...

Wiise is a new integrated business application aimed at small business launched in Australia - it comes forth from the collaborative efforts of KPMG, Microsoft, and CBA (created by KPMG, built on Microsoft, supported by CBA). You may have seen the press surrounding the launch of Wiise - not in the l...

So, you have a website - as does every other business. You spend time, effort, and perhaps money into directing traffic to your online presence. You use Google Analytics (or Bing Webmaster... or both) to see the traffic results on your website... but exactly who is visiting you? And what do they do ...

Start with the Customer Journey

Alexi Boyd interviewed Matt Koopmans, and together they explored the opportunities and the pitfalls of selecting business applications. What is your strategy for selecting applications to run your business? Did it start with accounting, and then additional applications...

With the introduction of "cloud" we have seen the promise of commoditised business applications - just like you get your power out of the socket in the wall, you get business applications that are "just ready to go" - well, almost. At least, that was the promise. Yet, the impleme...

Choice is a strange thing - when there is none, we all wish we had it. When there is choice abound, we tend to stick to what we know (or think we know). Too much choice of seemingly similar things, and we tend to paralyse like a deer in front of headlights. The choice for business applications prove...

Selecting a business application traditionally was based on features versus cost. Already at this stage the selection process is leading into major disappointment. Selecting according to features is a comparison of the candidate applications to your current application's abilities with a few bonus &...

The final post in the "Lean CRM" series. In previous posts we have discussed the importance of simplicity of the system, consistency of the generated data, engagement of the team, and relevance/accuracy of the data in order to retain a return on the CRM investment. With all these things in...