King Cody, Kilkenny hurling manager’s road to greatness

Learning from winners

Malachy Clerkin talks to Billy Linehan and a number of top managers to find out what makes this serial winner so special

Excerpt from the Sunday Tribune, 29 August 2010

“Billy Linehan of Celtar business consultants is a board member of the Institute of Management Consultants and Advisers. He compares managing a county team to being in charge of a small or medium-sized business and sees in Cody a natural leader more so than a manager. “A leader challenges the status quo,” he says, quoting another management guru, “a manager accepts it”. I think if you are going to be successful on a continuous basis, you need to be challenging it.

“There’s an honesty and a consistency in the way he treats people and that’s the key to keeping people involved and motivated over a long period of time. You rarely hear about tensions between clubs in Kilkenny or hear people complaining that their man didn’t get a fair shot at making the team or even the panel. All you can take from that is that there’s a general acceptance across the board that the man at the top is a man of integrity. That he’s prepared to treat everyone with consistency. I think his personal style is a huge factor. There’s very little mouthing off or bringing attention to himself. You never hear him telling the rest of the world how good he is and all the different ways he’s affected the team.”

For full article see http://www.tribune.ie/sport/hurling/article/2010/aug/29/king-cody/

For more on Celtar business and management consultants see www.Celtar.ie . Celtar provides management advice to leaders of organisations, assisting them to reach their goals.

For more on the Institute of Management Consultants and Advisers see

www.IMCA.ie

 

Work placement programmes from FAS and IBEC

 These programmes from FAS and IBEC appear to be similar except for the branding. The IBEC Gradlink is open only to companies who are IBEC or SFA members. Whilst the FAS scheme is open to all companies and  offers a work placement programme for non graduates as well as graduates.

 Eligble graduates who have signed on for at least 3 months would continue to receive their social welfare benefits while participating in the programme, and there is no cost to a company.

Unlike other government initiatives for business, companies of all sizes may participate.

There is no specific minimum but the recommended period is about nine months

 Looking at the information available on both sites there is no information on prospective employers on the FAS website, and the IBEC site gives more information including  a profile of each participating company. (The FAS website is very clunky and an update is well overdue). 

See details

on FAS scheme www.fas.ie/en/WPP/

on IBEC Gradlink  www.ibec.ie/GradLink

 Celtar business and management consultants, info@celtar.ie

The right way to implement a CRM system

 

Wouldn’t it would be great if we could just buy a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system, switch it on and find that it does everything that we wanted it to without changing any settings?

 

Well unfortunately that just doesn’t happen in practice and you need to follow a process beforehand to firstly specify what you want and secondly to select a supplier who will get as close as possible to what you want.

 

A few hints and tips to get you going in the right direction.

 

Is There an Easy Way?

The answer is, of course, No.

 

 

1. Write down your requirements, ideally as a Request for Quotation

2. Send it out to get quotations

3. Select carefully from the responses, involve your key users

4. Create a short list of those that fit your written requirements

5. Invite to give demonstration

6. Make final selection

7. Contract

8. Implement!

 

So, are there any short cuts?

No there aren’t. In my opinion there is no short cut for writing down your requirements – if you don’t, can’t or won’t write down what you want your CRM system to do for your business, then you will only have yourself to blame if the chosen solution doesn’t do what you want.

 

So, having written your requirements down, are there any short cuts?

Absolutely not! If your business already has a Business Management solution of some sort, whether its Sage Financials or full blown ERP then ask your supplier if there is a CRM module, or a stand alone solution, which can easily be integrated with it. If there is, you will avoid the huge pitfall of having customer data in 2 systems and avoid the need for special code to integrate them. You must still confirm that it meets all the requirements you have written down (you have written them down now haven’t you?). If it does, then it should be a good fit for your business.

 

Are there any short cuts if you don’t have a Business management solution?

You’re persistent aren’t you? The real answer is No. However, if you want to learn more about CRM and are fairly technically minded you could try putting in an Open Source solution (e.g. vTiger or SugarCRM) which will have no licence fee but can be tricky to get running. You could also try a low cost hosted system (e.g. SugarCRM or TactileCRM), paying monthly, and making sure you can get out of the contract when you want to. Both these approaches will allow you to gain an understanding of CRM at a practical level before you write down your requirements. You may even be lucky and find it does all you need – but don’t bank on it.

 

Why should SMEs be using Customer Relationship Management?

Demand and interest in Customer Relationship Management (or CRM) has grown noticeably in the last 2 years. Until recently CRM was always the realm

of the large companies – so what has changed?

 

Background

There seem to be two main reasons for the increase in interest in CRM among our SME client. One is the rise of a huge range of low cost solutions, be they Open Source, web-based or server-based. Another is the increase in awareness being created by

IT solution providers, including Microsoft and Sage, who have conducted major marketing campaigns to promote their solutions.

I don’t believe that is all though – SMEs are canny and have started to realise that analysing and understanding their customer base, and using that knowledge for marketing is good for business. They are also realising that CRM can be used largely ‘Out of the Box’ or in minutes from the web.

 

So what are the business issues that are attracting SMEs to CRM?

Customer Analysis

First is the very simple concept of having one database of all customers in a single place, accessible by all staff, even if they are out of the office; a database that can be integrated directly to e-Commerce websites so there is an automatic record of who

bought what and when. This is a perfect vehicle for identifying groups of like-minded customers to target with, say, an e-mail marketing campaign – which the CRM solution can usually handle too.

Lots of companies miss out on the opportunity to sell more to existing customers and the ability to “segment” clients in your CRM allows you spot the opportunities much more quickly.

 

Contact-to-Contract

Second, for businesses who can’t sell their products or services directly from a website but need to find and respond to leads and enquiries is the capability to manage a lead from receipt to (hopefully!) order. CRM can give a view at any time of the status

of each and every lead whether it has just come in, or a quote is being put together, or you are waiting with bated breath for that huge new order.

For bigger businesses this ability to enforce’ a common sales process on a sales team is very important. It dramatically reduces the likelihood that opportunities will “fall between the gaps” because you can assign responsibility to specific people and check

whether they have done what they are supposed to.

 

Campaign Management

Third, if you are actively seeking new customers CRM can be used to manage that process too. You might buy a database of appropriate target customers, enter it into your CRM system and use it to manage the process of contacting everyone on the

list. You might use an initial telephone contact possibly using a call centre, then follow up with a brochure through the post and then an e-mail or phone call using the CRM so you know who has been contacted and the exact and current status of each

potential customer.

Web-based CRM systems, in particular, make it very easy to use contract or agency staff to manage the peaks of activity during campaigns. They can get access to systems via their internet browser and you can limit their access to just the information they need to do their job.

 

Summary

There has never been a better time to consider implementing your own CRM system. There are lots of providers offering a variety of ways of implementing systems out there to choose from. And, better still, all of this competition means that there is

loads of information to help you make your choice and have a successful implementation.

 

This straightforward description was written by  Steve Orriss, consultant at the UK National B2B Centre and CRM expert, for more information check out the very useful site www.nb2bc.co.uk

Social networking and health

A article based on research into personal happness was published a couple of months ago in the British Medical Journal (BMJ).Most peope are searching for personal happiness in their lives and this piece might give us a lift  and show us where to find it in these days of slowdown, credit squeeze and recession.

The concept of the self-management of “mood” and it’s effect on colleagues in the workplace appears to be supported by this study comments Billy Linehan of Celtar management consultants.

 

And of course a cynic might say that you have to find a happy person first?

Happiness really does rub off-a person’s happiness depends on the happiness of others with whom they are connected.

Happiness is not just an individual experience or choice, but is dependent on the happiness of others to whom individuals are connected directly and indirectly, and requires close proximity to spread, say the authors. For example, a friend who becomes happy and lives within a mile increases your likelihood of happiness by 25%.

Professor Nicholas Christakis from Harvard Medical School and Professor James Fowler from the University of California, analysed data collected in the Framingham Heart Study to find out if happiness can spread from person to person and if clusters of happiness form within social networks*.

In the Framingham Heart Study** 5,124 adults aged 21-70 were recruited and followed between 1971 and 2003, to examine various aspects of their life and health. Participants were asked to identify their relatives, “close friends,” place of residence, and place of work to ensure they could be contacted every two to four years for follow-up. The authors found 53,228 social ties between the 5,124 participants and a total of 12,067 people. They focused on 4,739 people followed from 1983 to 2003.

Additional data on mental health, collected using a depression rating scale during the original study, recorded agreement or disagreement with four statements “I felt hopeful about the future,” “I was happy,” “I enjoyed life,” “I felt that I was just as good as other people.” In this BMJ paper, the authors defined happiness as a perfect score for all four statements.

Using statistical analysis the researchers measured how social networks were correlated with reported happiness. They found that live-in partners who become happy increase the likelihood of their partner being happy by 8%, similar effects were seen for siblings who live close by (14%) and neighbours (34%). Work colleagues did not affect happiness levels suggesting that social context may curtail the spread of emotional states.

Interestingly, it is not only immediate social ties that have an impact on happiness levels, the relationship between people’s happiness can extend up to three degrees of separation (to the friend of one’s friends’ friend). Indeed, people who are surrounded by happy people are likely to become happy in the future.

Importantly, they report that close physical proximity is essential for happiness to spread. A person is 42% more likely to be happy if a friend who lives less than half a mile away becomes happy, the effect is only 22% for friends who live less than two miles away, and this effect declines and becomes insignificant at greater distances.

The findings suggest that clusters of happiness result from the spread of happiness and not just a tendency for people to associate with similar individuals.

The authors say: “Changes in individual happiness can ripple through social networks and generate large scale structure in the network, giving rise to clusters of happy and unhappy individuals.”

They conclude: “Most important from our perspective is the recognition that people are embedded in social networks and that the health and wellbeing of one person affects the health and wellbeing of others. This fundamental fact of existence provides a fundamental conceptual justification for the specialty of public health. Human happiness is not merely the province of isolated individuals.”

Other views

In an accompanying editorial, Professor Andrew Steptoe from University College London and Professor Ana Diez Roux from University of Michigan School of Public Health, say that the study is “groundbreaking”: “If, [as these findings suggest] happiness is indeed transmitted through social connections, it could indirectly contribute to the social transmission of health”, and has serious implications for the design of policies and interventions.

However, in another research paper, Jason Fletcher from Yale University and Ethan Cohen-Cole from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, caution that the methods used to detect social network effects in Christakis and Fowler’s study are subject to “potentially large biases…that might produce effects where none exist.”

They examined whether network effects can be detected for three health outcomes-headaches, skin problems, and height. They found that, for example, a friend’s acne problems increased the likelihood of an individual’s acne problems and that the likelihood that an individual had headaches also increased with the presence of a friend with headaches. But after controlling for environmental confounders these social network effects disappeared. They conclude: “These methods might produce premature claims of social network effects in health outcomes.”

Notes

*The basic idea in social network analysis is that behaviours may spread over time from one person to another through immediate and more distant social contacts.

**The Framingham Heart Study, based in Framingham, Massachusetts, began in 1948 and is still running. Much of what we know about the effects of lifestyle and treatments on the risk of heart disease has come from this longitudinal study . Started by the US National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the study has continued in collaboration with Boston University since the 1970s.

Research paper: Dynamic spread of happiness in a large social network: longitudinal analysis of the Framingham Heart Study social network
BMJ Online

Research paper: Detecting implausible social network effects in acne, height and headaches: longitudinal analysis
BMJ Online

Editorial: Happiness, social networks and health
BMJ Online

British Medical Journal

A year of challenge

 

This year will be a challenging one for many of us; in fact survival will be the objective of many small businesses. Here I have gathered ideas and approaches – which are being implemented by clients – to demonstrate that proactive actions can have positive returns. Many of the ideas are as much about changing attitudes and behaviours as about taking decisive action.

 

Why should anyone buy from us this year?

This was the question for a recent workshop I facilitated. Yes it is good to know your USP (unique selling proposition) as it is a reason why people buy from you. But for most businesses their selling proposition is not unique. Location, accessibility, quality, convenience, customer service, price, reputation all contribute to purchasing decisions by customers. Make sure you know which elements of this package influence your customers.

 

Increase customer focus

Customer focus is a clear requirement, and I think it is more spoken about then actually delivered. Aim to provide excellent customer service to all existing customers and maintain relations with ex-customers. In fact go out of your way to be in contact with ex-customers, they still have potential to be won back, so aim to stay on their supplier list.

 

Business connections

In my mind much networking has limited business value and is social in nature (and there is nothing wrong with that!) – I suggest you focus on connections where they are of value to your business (or to your customer’s business). It is not how many connections you have on Linkedin but what is their potential value to you and your network.

 

Staff communications

Communicate to your staff: through the hard times talk to your staff more, share your plans and targets, and engage with them how objectives are to be achieved. United teams where conversation is open and ideas shared will weather the stormy months ahead.

 

Be online

Work out what makes sense for your business (blogs, LinkedIn, facebook, web directories, google maps etc). If you are selling to the mass market, put your message everywhere, if you are selling to a niche market make sure your potential customers know of your products/services and why they should buy from you. Attractive and cheap websites are available to all using software such as Joomla templates.

 

Suppliers

Treat key suppliers as valued customers. Forming partnership type relationships with your suppliers is more important now, make sure you have agency and distributorship agreements signed up and confirmed. There is little point in building a market for an OEM and then losing the agency because of poor communications and key supplier management.

 

Cash flow management

Yes, cash is the lifeblood of a business. Prepare your budget and update your cash flow projections at least monthly. Regularly updated cash flow forecasts and management of working capital are key to business survival this year.

 

Cutting costs

Several clients of Celtar have made considerable savings by renegotiating their rent in the middle of lease periods. Rent for commercial property has fallen everywhere back to the levels of five or more years ago. You are now in the driving seat and can use professional negotiators such as (only the more commercially minded of) solicitors to negotiate on your behalf.  

 

Shop around for professional services

One client has reduced auditor fees by 30% by shopping around, and staying with his current auditor. Negotiate solicitor’s fees upfront so you know what you are getting. For value for money advice on employment law join the SFA (www.sfa.ie) or ISME (www.isme.ie) and avail of their well regarded services.

 

Staffing reviews

In previous recessions layoffs and redundancies were the usual reaction to a slowdown. Now business owners are looking to a more flexible series of options. Why? Because there is a strong belief that the economy will recover sooner so keeping the talent that has been recruited and developed makes sense.

Reductions in salary, of 10 to 30%, are commonplace amongst Irish SMEs. In technology companies salary cuts are made reflecting today’s market rate for a job and bring salaries back to what they were in 2004. Often the senior positions are taking the most severe cuts, directors and managers are bearing the greatest decreases and are sharing the pain of dropped income.

 

Working time flexibility

Salary reductions are also being made through the introduction of three day weeks and other flexible working arrangements.

Frequently staff are put on three day weeks to cut costs. This option of making staff work part time needs to be managed effectively so productivity is maintained or increased.

Offering unpaid leave to your staff is a way to temporarily reduce your wage bill. If you are overstaffed at the moment, but expect you need staff in a year’s time when the economy picks up some staff may find the option of unpaid leave attractive.

Introduce customer focused flex-time as a competitive response to the downturn: an organisation’s opening hours could be extended without increasing cost. Implementing flexi-time should have the effect of creating longer open hours. As a customer I would like to see this happening for banks, accountants and solicitors.

 

Remember you are not alone

There are many experienced business advisers out there who will listen, advise and stimulate your ideas and activities.

So ignore the radio and TV reporters who appear to luxuriate in the bad news announcements, and get on with doing the business.

 

This is part of a series of articles on managing a business through the recession by Billy Linehan of Celtar, business and management consultants.

 

Billy Linehan is a specialist SME adviser who has been working with small businesses in Ireland and the UK for nearly 20 years. A director of the Institute of Management Consultants and Advisers, as well as managing a private consulting practice Billy provides a mentoring service to clients of the IMI and the Dublin City Enterprise Board.