Solvis Consulting, LLC

Como usar el Social CRM para el Community Management

Como usar Social CRM para el Manejo de Comunidades from Solvis Consulting, LLC

Our Solvis Affiliates in Latin America

In the last 5 years, Solvis has developed a network of companies in the region with a vast experience in CRM and Call Center, including social media and Social CRM. Some of the services we provide are social media monitoring, conversations maps, training and workshops. These services include strategy engagement and implementation of different CRM packages, including Radian6.

Our local affiliates are:

Solvis Mexico: focus on CRM services from social media to Social CRM and from call center assessments to CRM implementations.

e-Sofia - Solvis Colombia: focus on Business strategies to IT assessments, including Business Intelligence.

Performace Solution - Solvis Peru: focus call center outsourcing, Six Sigma, BPM, software development and CRM services.

Centro de Formación de Call Center - Solvis Argentina: focus on call center training, selection and outsourcing, including CRM services.

All affiliates provide local support Radian6 sales and support.

For more information contact us here.

Some of our posts at our Social CRM Seminar Blog

Image by solvisconsulting via Flickr

Here are some of our most recent Spanish posts about Social Media and Social CRM at our Social CRM Seminar Blog:

• Social Media y las oportunidades en el negocio
• Cómo usar las redes sociales para potenciar la gestión de clientes | LAVOZ.com.ar - Jesús Hoyos - CRM en Latinoamérica
• Video - Colaboración corporativa: un nuevo paradigma de las redes sociales
• Charla de Jose Corona sobre el Social CRM
• Hay que tener objetivos de negocio para las redes sociales
• Cuatro Tipos de CRM
• Los centros de contacto se están transformando en social media centers
• Panel en #140mexico con Jesus Hoyos sobre las marcas en Twitter
• Fotos: 5to Seminario de Social CRM y Social Media en Mexico

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• Upcoming Seminar: How to Leverage Social Media to Expand Partner Ecosystems (pamil-visions.net)
• Guide to Understanding Social CRM, Now Embedable and Shareable on Slideshare! (customerthink.com)
• CRM or Social CRM, What's the Difference? (jmorganmarketing.com)
• From Team work to Autopoiesis in the Social Firm (customerthink.com)
• Influence Me This - Social Media Speaks Up About #InfluencerProject (customerthink.com)
• The Bees Awards - International Social Media Event (jesushoyos.posterous.com)
• Our CRM and Social Media Services (solvisconsulting.typepad.com)
• 10 Recommendations For Introducing New Tech Into The Latin American Market V2.0 via @tropicalgringo (jesushoyos.posterous.com)
• Why are more web companies placing bets on Latin America? | VentureBeat (jesushoyos.posterous.com)
• Organic Social Media (customerthink.com)

The Scrum Framework for CRM in 10 Minutes or Less

We here at Solvis have mentioned before that when implementing Social Media or CRM SaaS solutions, we support the use of the Agile Methodology and particularly the Scrum Framework. So how can one learn this in 10 minutes or less? Read on:

Lance Dacy, a certified Scrum Master and Product Owner based in Dallas, TX, (DFW Scrum Alliance) has been a great mentor for us in implementing Scrum. He recently shared the following with us regarding a summary of The Framework:

"Scrum uses the real-world progress of a project — not a best guess or uninformed forecast — to plan and schedule releases. In Scrum, projects are divided into succinct work cadences, known as sprints, which are typically one week, two weeks, or three weeks in duration. At the end of each sprint, stakeholders and team members meet to assess the progress of a project and plan its next steps. This allows a project’s direction to be adjusted or reoriented based on completed work, not speculation or predictions.


Philosophically, this emphasis on an ongoing assessment of completed work is largely responsible for its popularity with managers and developers alike. But what allows the Scrum methodology to really work is a set of roles, responsibilities, and meetings that never change. If Scrum’s capacity for adaption and flexibility makes it an appealing option, the stability of its practices give teams something to lean on when development gets chaotic."

Also, there has been a video that has gone "viral" in the Scrum-world recently, that does a great job demonstrating the Scrum concepts in 8 minutes (be sure to click on the "HD" button on the bottom right side of the screen for better visibility), please click below for the video:

Scrum in 8 Minutes at YouTube

Social Media Maturity Level - an experiment by destinationCRM

Take a look at this post -  Social Media Maturity Model: 30 Posts, 30 People, 30 Day, by Joshua Weinberger (Managing Editor, CRM magazine). He is conducting an interesting experiment - discuss and create conversations in 30 days about a proposed Social Media Maturity Level. The participants of the discussions are a roster of CRM and social media all-stars, plus your comments - great idea by destinationCRM and Joshua Weinberger - crowdsourcing in action!

The conversation already started - see this post by Michael Faoscette - Social Media Maturity Model: The Conversation Begins. We will be updating this post's comments with every conversation from this experiment.

We believe that Social Media (Social CRM or CRM 2.0) is still evolving but with the different contributions from PR, CRM, Advertising, Marketing, Sales and Customer Service folks, and most important, the contributions from consumers. The Social Media Maturity Level takes all of these contributions into account, but let's see how it evolves in the next 30 days.

Update: Jesus Hoyos will be taking part of the conversations. You can also follow the conversations via this RSS feed: http://sn.im/303030feed

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Managing International CRM Projects

By Jesus Hoyos

During the last 15 years, I had participated in many CRM projects in Latin America.  Many of these CRM projects were deployed by Latin American and U.S. multi-nationals implementing many technologies and programs.  Two typical characteristics of international CRM projects are the ability for the CRM software to have multi-language capabilities and roll-up forecasting for different countries or regions. What this means? Well, many CRM projects focus on functionality that take advantage of easy configurations such as business units, multi-region reports, multi-level security, role-based access, collaboration within opportunities and territory management, among others. 

Unfortunately, many international projects do not take into consideration the other parts of CRM: people, data, metrics and local culture. I have compiled a list of areas to take into consideration when deploying an international CRM project, especially in Latin America.

20 areas to consider for your International CRM Project:

1. Consider in-country and region cultural differences. Doing business in Medellin is different from Bogotá, and doing business in Perú is not the same as doing business in México. There are many business and cultural differences in Latin America. Do not make the mistake of thinking that all countries and regions in Latin America are the same.
2. Address Formatting. Many CRM systems are design to only manage US and Canadian addresses. You need to consider the different address formats for each country. Look for local address validation software or services in each country. The same goes for Name (First and Last Name, Company Name) formatting for both personal and company names – your dup logic needs to take into consideration Portuguese, Spanish and English names.
3. Use local Project Managers from you own company and I strongly suggest you use a Program Manager that is from Latin America. This will help you assimilate the local cultures and business practices.
4. Make sure you have a realistic budget for processes, technology, training, change management and data conversion. Your budget must include travel expenses. Webex and Gotomeeting  are all good, but you need to have a lot of face-to-face meetings in Latin America.
5. Internal Politics. Make sure you have an excellent change management process to manage internal politics. Politics will kill your project if they are not well managed.
6. Geopolitical risks. Make sure you have developed scenarios and what-if situations for all kind of economic or political situations.
7. Design your CRM program and software globally but deploy it locally. Your strategy needs to be aligned with all business units. I have seen projects failed when one business unit is customer-centric and the another one is focused 100% in cutting costs.
8. Make sure you have standard processes that can be adjusted to the realities of each country.
9. Make sure that the functionality deployed can be changed quickly. You do not want the local business unit to wait six months for new functionality.
10. Involve all type if users with conference room pilots to get their feedback and buy-in.
11. Many CRM practices in U.S. are not really best practices in Latin America.Best practices some time are bad practices when deployed in many countries. Make sure you monitor all processes and functionality to make sure if they all make sense as best practices.
12. Validate the differences between SaaS and OnPremise for your deployment.  I have seen SaaS software to be more successful with international projects. No software, database or hardware to worry about.
13. Do not push your CRM projects to the countries. HQ and the local business units need to buy-in the project and a good change management process need to be in place.
14. Select 2 or 3 business units or countries to run pilots. Compare results, made adjustments, re-deploy. Have a phased approach after you get the final results of the pilots.
15. Training, training, and training. Have local companies do the end-user training. Use your software vendor for the technical training.
16. I think you heard this one before – “Start with the early adopters or power-users”. I will recommend the contrary, start with the employees that will give you problems with change management or adopting the CRM strategy. You need to start early with the late adopters, then bring the early adopters to close the loop with change management.
17. Support. Needs to be local and in the local language. Use HQ or area regions for Level 2 or 3 support.
18. Your CRM software needs to consider the different definitions for customers and segments for each country or region. But make sure you at least have a base definition for reporting purposes.
19. Communicate, communicate and communicate. Employees need to know the details of the implementation and strategy. Not knowing creates dissatisfaction between business units and countries.
20. Data & Information sharing is a must, especially when your customer base is the same across business units.

In summary, you must be sure you apply project management standards to manage your international project taking into account my 20 suggestions. You must also understand that international CRM projects are risky and complex, but if you keep your project simple and consider the local nuances and business practices of each country, you will at least have won part of the battle. 

Many companies will try to standardize functionally and processes - this could help your project fail. Just make sure you have the basic functionality and process are covered, and then allow the business units or countries to adjust them to their local requirements.

Twitter conversations about crm and project management.

This post was originally written for myCRMCareer.

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Tweets from Sapphire 2009

Jesus Hoyos, Solvis Managing Partner, had the opportunity to participate at Sapphire 2009 in Orlando as a blogger. Follow here his tweets from the conference this past week. Also go to his blog in Spanish about his meetings with SAP Latin America Executives and customers.

Neighborhood America wins its second consecutive CODiE Award for 'Best Social Networking Solution' for enterprises.

Our social network partner, Neighborgood America, wins its second CODiE Award.



May 7, 2009 - Neighborhood America announces today that it has won its second consecutive CODiE Award for 'Best Social Networking Solution' for enterprises. The company accepted the prestigious award Tuesday evening in San Francisco at the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) Summit, emerging from the competition as the recognized leader in the enterprise social computing industry.

More here

If you are looking for Social Networking solution for your enterprise contact us.

CRM 2.0 Services  
How Solvis can help with your CRM initiatives?

Production Support Services

During the last few years, Solvis has participated in many CRM production support engagements with different types of CRM systems and in different industries.

1. Salesforce.com - Telecommunications, Software
2. SAS Marketing Automation - Retail Banking
3. Amdocs/Clarify - Telecommunications
4. Peoplesoft CRM - Government and Education
5. Vantive - Telecommunications, Software

We have the capabilities to provide CRM Production Support services in United States and Latin America. We follow industry standards such as ITIL, Project Management Institute and Change Management procedures. Our services include remote and on-site support for both functional and technical activities.

Other technologies where we can also help: Siebel, Oracle, DBA and BI.

How Solvis can help your company? Contact us. We can help identify your production support needs with our Business and Technical Assessment - it is a 2-day free assessment that will cover 8 tactical CRM areas, including your CRM technical solution. Based on this assessment, we will give you options to help you with your productions support needs.

Brent Leary writes about Neighborhood America & MS CRM Dynamics

Recently our social networking partner, Neighboorhood America, announced the integration between Dynamics CRM and Elevate. Elevate is Neighboorhood America's social networking platform. Brent Leary, CRM expert in the social CRM, writes about the integration between both applications.

Read Brent Leary post: Social CRM in Practice - Microsoft and Neighborhood America