Managing Your Customers with CRM Software

My good buddy recently sent me an email bragging about an Intranet solution for managing your customers. Best of all, it’s an Open Source project so the price is $0. :)

The product is called vTiger CRM and these are its main strengths:

• Sales force Automation (orders, potentials, leads, contacts, etc.)
• Marketing Automation (campaigns, leads, etc.)
• Customer Support & Service (FAQs, trouble tickets, etc.)
• Order Management (sales, purchase, etc.)
• Inventory Management (products, vendors, etc.)
• Analytics & Reports (sales, inventory, leads, tickets, quotes, etc.)
  and much more…
  

After reading more about the product, I decided to install it on my home PC. My first impression is that the program is very polished, intuitive and powerful. I can see our company using something like this to really keep us ahead of the competition.
The best thing about vTiger is its Intranet-based architecture. Just install it on a PC with a web server (Apache, IIS, etc.), and the MySQL database. Personally, I would install it on Ubuntu Linux (free) with Windows Server 2003 as my second option.
You can start using the product’s many CRM (Customer Relationship Management) features by pointing your web browser to the correct internal URL from any desktop PC in the office.
After an employee logs in with their user id and password, she will be taken to a personal dashboard (see attached image) where she has access to everything (campaigns, trouble tickets, leads, quotes, orders, etc.) about her customers.
Right now, I don’t think there’s another application like vTiger here in Kenya. I look forward to writing more about this powerful Intranet application after I spend a little more time with it.

By the way, is your company using a CRM application?

A Quick Look at Information Architecture

Although Accounting is my main point of focus, I find the ICT field very exciting. I did hear somewhere that accountants are boring. Now that can't be true. Well, thank goodness that doesn't apply to me.

I just recently started reading an interesting book called "Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, 2nd Ed." I’m hoping to take the vast organizational knowledge in this book and apply it to future projects here at the office or, perhaps, on a side project. Here’s how the book (pg. 19) defined IA:

"If you're new to the field, you may still be wondering: what exactly is information architecture? This section is for you.

in·for·ma·tion ar·chi·tec·ture n.

1. The combination of organization, labeling, and navigation schemes within an information system.
2. The structural design of an information space to facilitate task completion and intuitive access to content.
3. The art and science of structuring and classifying web sites and intranets to help people find and manage information.
4. An emerging discipline and community of practice focused on bringing principles of design and architecture to the digital landscape.

Were you expecting a single definition? Something short and sweet? A few words that succinctly capture the essence and expanse of the field of information architecture? Keep dreaming!"

Are you still confused? Remember that architects and engineers are trained to have detailed plans (schematic, etc.) before any cement is poured. But in ICT, things are not as organized yet. I guess that’s what IA is all about: Organising information.
Just keep your eyes here over the next few weeks (or months) and I will try to regurgitate some of the book’s finer points. That’s if I have time. :-)
By the way, what book are you reading right now? Let me guess: Harry Potter? :-)

ERPs

The buzzword in IT for sometime now has been fully integrated systems and more recently the ERPs. Meaning that all the systems read basically from the same database – that once data has been posted in to the system, that information is available to all modules and users who might need it.

For example, a cash sale by salesman, once captured at the point of sales, updates your cash balance, turnover figures, stocks and payroll data with the sales-man commission etc. It also means that, where your organisation is involved in different business lines, any common information for the various lines of business, needs only be captured once into the system. And that all this information is available to the financial module and can be summarised at a click of a button without user intervention into financial reports – profit and loss statement and a balance sheet.

To what extent have various organisations achieved this?
In my view, this ideal situation is more easily achievable for trading enterprises particularly where the organisation is dealing in fairly similar products.

However, my experience in the service industry has been that this ideal situation has been quite elusive.

The major stumbling block to my mind has been the tendency of most solution providers to start by trying to meet the most complicated and involving demands of the users and then trying to work their way towards achieving the basics.

This is like climbing the legendary tree from the top. A more logical way of doing it and for which I believe the technology now exists is to start by achieving the basics and building in the complication of the industry as you go along.

The systems I have in mind here are all necessarily financial, where the end and most important report are the performance reports of the institution in financial terms.

A computerisation project to my mind should therefore start with meeting the basics of financial reporting i.e. a Profit & Loss Account and a Balance Sheet. It should concern itself with processing the data of each line of these financial statements before proceeding to other enhancements, utilities and aesthetic qualities.

My experience on the contrary has been that solution providers are so keen on showing you how the system will be able to auto generate standard letters to the client or other such superficial issues, they forget to address the basics. So that at the end of it, the user has to export data to excel for example just to work out the turnover for the current month and then after that post a manual journal in order to capture the information for financial reporting purposes.

Taking an example from an organisation I know, the noble desire to computerise has led to situations where fairly complicated documentation and reports are now available from the system but where the accuracy and understandability of some basic reports for example debtors and creditors statements and aged summaries, period transactions listings, period income or turnover reports etc have been greatly compromised. The organisation has resulted to managing their payables using excel spreadsheets and they have to rework their income and turnover for each reporting period manually. And now they are too far-gone in the implementation to ditch the project.

The situation has further been worsened by the existence of foreign share-holders from more ‘advanced’ countries who believe they have the ultimate solution from their countries to solve our IT needs. And the locals suffering from inferiority complex of sorts unquestioningly accept their wisdom. . . .Recipe for disaster!

An Accountant for President

What we need in Kenya for a good leader is a good manager. To work towards positioning Kenya on the road to economic prosperity etc etc.
It is debatable of course, but to my mind accountants make excellent managers!
So elect an accountant as the next president and sit back and watch . .
Then after that our next president can be anyone, maybe a social scientist – heck! even a musician or a comedian, anyone who can relate to Kenyan from all walks of life.
His/her task? To bring all Kenyans together; to think of their tribes only as a source of their beautiful traditions and cultures
. . . . . and thus to live and enjoy life . . . .

Too Many Wires

My desktop computer in the office contributes a total of about ten unwieldy cables to my work environment. One comes from the power point to the UPS, another from the UPS to the CPU, another from the UPS to the VDU, another from the CPU to the VDU, another for my key board, another for the mouse, another for the printer, another power cable from the UPS to the printer, another for the network connection.
Most of these wire are extra long, and bulky.
In contrast, my laptop has only three.
Why do we need more wires for the desktop? Is anyone working at reducing them?
A starting point would be to have one power cable for the CPU and the VDU. The cable from the CPU to the VDU should double as the power cable for the VDU.
Next would be to have built in UPS/ batteries for the desktops. If we can squeeze in a battery on a laptop, shouldn't it be much easier to fit in one on a desktop?
Just like the laptop, we can have a mouse thing on the keyboard with of course an option to fix the traditional one for the conservatives.
On the extreme we can have the option of wireless mouse and keyboards and Internet connection.
Where we cannot do away with the wires completely (yet), someone should apply their brains to making the cables less bulky without compromising safety, durability and performance and then by perfecting retraction technology, ensure that any unwanted length of wire is tucked away neatly out of sight.
Of course, the technology already exists to do away with a large number of wires on the standard desktops, but my big question is - how long or what will it take to make 'wirelessness' the norm rather than the exception?

Corruption*?!$#&!@#$

Ask anyone (well, maybe not everyone and maybe they would have to think it over for a bit) and they will tell you that they would expect the accountant today to be at the forefront in the fight against corruption. Some will go even further as to lay a significant portion of blame for the current level of corruption on accountants.

Their argument would go something like this; the accountants have failed in the first instance to put in place good systems to keep graft at bay. In the second instance they have failed in detection of corrupt practices and bringing to book corrupt officials or that they are necessarily implicated whenever there have been cases of corrupt practices.

You see, to the man in the street a most apparent and significant form of graft is one involving fraudulent or unfair monetary gain to the perpetrators. To the man in the streets again whenever you mention money, particularly institutional money, you are talking about accountants. To the man in the streets therefore, for an institution to lose (or for that matter gain) money through corrupt practices an accountant or a person with an accounting role needs necessarily to have been implicated compromised or side stepped. In other words, the institution’s accounting function failed in some way - probably because either the institution lacked qualified accountants or the accountant were themselves corrupt or ineffective.

Further, it can be argued that, accountants are already among the best-equipped group of professionals through their training and experience to participate in a major way in the fight against corruption. As Accountants, auditors or consultants they are trained to put in place good (internal control) systems to prevent corrupt practices and to detect weakness in existing systems. Further, their training can come in hardy in giving early warning of corrupt dealings in organisations and also in following audit trails to uncover corrupt deals and to catch the perpetrators.

What it all boils down to is that however much we might want to pretend otherwise, accountants are right in the middle of the corruption saga; either in what they have actually done or failed to do or in what the man in the streets perceives them to have done or failed to do.

In view of the foregoing the accountants, possibly through professional bodies, must strive to put the accountant at the frontline of the fight against corruption.

At the risk of being branded an opportunist, I am of the opinion that, accountants can even turn the whole thing to their advantage; they can style themselves as the ultimate anti-corruption professionals; the people to call when faced with corruption problems. That is to fend off corruption or to investigate cases of corruption. To my mind, top-notch accountants should be heading the anti-corruption out-fits alongside the lawyers!

Seriously though, the accounting bodies need to take deliberate steps to address corruption. Such steps include but are not limited to

• Working towards making it mandatory for public companies and the government to hire only qualified and registered accountants to head accounting functions of these institutions,
• Castigating or suspending Accountants implicated in corrupt practices,
• Demanding explanations from accountants whose organisations are involved in corrupt practices while under their watch whether such accountants were directly involved or not,
• Putting together a code of best practice (manual or standards) as a guide in procedures most abused by corrupt officials.
• Including work ethics as an examinable part of the CPA syllabus
  

In wrapping up, whatever road the accountants through the accounting bodies may choose to take, what is clearly apparent is that they are not and cannot be bystanders in the fight against corruption.

SMEs Accounting Tips

Generally, SMEs appear to appreciate the least the need for good accounting system.

One of the reasons frequently cited is that qualified accountants and the elaborate structures which go with them are far too costly; that the costs outstrip the benefits.

SMEs also fear that the greater transparency resulting from good accounting systems will expose them to higher tax liabilities.

The fact is SMEs need good accounting systems probably even more desperately than the bigger organizations due to inherent risks arising from (among other causes);

• Lack of separation of ownership and management
• Blurred lines between family and business relationships
• Existence of informal governance practices
• Impracticability of elaborate framework for controls and reporting e.g. segregation of duties.

To counter these risks SMEs should strive to

• Separate the business assets from own assets particularly so the business cash
• Operate a separate business bank account.
• Always bank cash takings and whenever possible settle all bills by cheque. This shifts some of the accounting responsibilities to the bank.
• Where major bills have to be paid or purchases made for cash, draw exact cash from the bank for the particular purpose.
• Otherwise to operate a petty cash system to meet daily expenses. Every coin taken from cash box to be accounted for and receipts filed ASAP latest by the next business working day
• Account for all inputs i.e. investments into the business
• As much as possible, assign a cost to all resources put into the business including own time, that of spouse and other family members, rent for part of home used for business, maintenance and fuel for personal motor vehicle used for business etc.
• Account for all drawings, whether cash or in kind
• Put in place a formal structure if only to clarify custodial responsibilities for the organizations assets for instance and most importantly cash.

It is vital that SMEs recognize accounting as their invaluable management tool. It is essential for safeguarding of the organization’s asset, and for ensuring their efficiency and effectiveness in utilizing resources.

In turn, this enhances the SMEs’ competitive edge in order to survive and to compete with the large corporates who have more going for them in terms of economies of scale, ability to raise capital and to recruit highly qualified staff.