Sage Blog

David Beard, Sage CRM Expert

In all economic conditions, businesses think about WHAT they sell – their top products, consistent buyers, etc. However, thinking this way is really just “navel gazing” – only operating from an internal perspective.  A better question to ask is WHY customers buy, HOW they do this, WHAT their expectations are of a sale, and more. In essence, you need to think creatively, albeit Inside the Box of your chosen business environment.

OK – sounds like beginner’s Business Strategy, right?

Sure it does.  However, I think the day-to-day reality for many business operators is this – they are stuck with an internal narrative.  Many, when asked WHY they want to a process to work a certain way, just say “it’s what we have always done”.  Critically, there is often no real reference to the CUSTOMER’S experience of the sale. 

How did we end up not thinking from a customer perspective?

After listening to Radio 4’s In Business a few weeks back, I was struck by Russell Ackoff’s comment along the lines of “most managers don’t deal with complexity … they look for simple solutions”  What Mr Ackoff is suggesting is that innovation is hard work.  When you are busy executing & monitoring a business strategy, it’s often hard to step back and think differently.  After a while, usually when the same ideas fail to deliver the same results, the owner is left to contemplate the operating complexity of the real world.

How can people be innovative and run the day-to-day?

Mr Ackoff suggests synthetic thinking is required – studying the behaviour of the parts of a business as it relates to the functions of the whole.   At its most basic, it means mapping your customer’s journey through your  business- where does it cruise uninterrupted, when does it end up in a cul-de-sac, and the like.  And, in most knowledge-based businesses, these journeys are inextricably linked to employee engagement.  The most valuable mapping ideas are tied up in employee’s heads.  They know how that customer journey works – asking them to help improve the journey will shed light on the complex systems within a business. 

That should allow you to drive innovation from within, delivering a clearer view of the world in which your business operates & how best to focus your efforts.

David Beard, Sage CRM Expert

Stuart Lynn, Head of R&D, Sage's Mid Market Division

I was intrigued when reading a story recently which defined the meaning of innovation as the execution of an idea, whereas creativity was having the idea in the first place. Most people I speak to would instinctively lump these two things together and call them innovation. So, I went off to the web to check this out; here I found a number of meanings. A couple that jumped off the page were…

 “Innovation can be described as the result of some amount of time and effort into researching (R) an idea, plus some larger amount of time and effort into developing (D) this idea, plus some very large amount of time and effort into commercialising this idea into a market place with customers”.

Being from an R&D background, this strikes a chord with me as it combines the idea and the delivery, and more importantly it goes further to look at commercialising… I wonder how many companies put all of their effort into the first two parts and forget the last and arguably most important part?  I have to say that I’ve seen this happen on more than one occasion.

Building on this point, I came across another thought provoking statement…

“Innovation is the conversion of ideas into cash. Invention is the conversion of cash into ideas.”

How many businesses set out to innovate but end up inventing? How many people remember the £40 million ATP Train innovation or invention? How many businesses really turn ideas into cash? and how many innovations end up costing the company a small fortune?

A few weeks back, I was watching this youtube video posted by Dennis Howlett, It’s a chap called R “Ray” Wang presenting how a major software vendor had failed to commercialise some great ideas.

Why does this happen? Did they get it wrong from a customer perspective? Did they work with customers to see if the original ideas were valued before they went on to deliver them? Did they fail to commercialise them? Do the company see this as a failure? Or was it actually a ‘share of voice’ Marketing and PR success despite the ideas not being widely adopted? Plenty of food for thought, and only the vendor themselves will know the answers.

Is the secret behind innovating to ask customers what they want before you start?

Controversially, I would have to say no to this question, well not entirely anyway… Whilst, I would advocate speaking to customers at all times and involving them through the process to add value, you can’t always rely on customers as your only source of “innovative ideas”. What’s more the customer will most likely be focused on today’s issues as opposed to looking for step change innovation. Henry Ford’s classic quote sums this up nicely…

“If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me a faster horse.”

To be really successful in business I believe you have to continually innovate and generate new ideas, not by relying solely on customers to tell you what they want, but by understanding how your customers work, what they need today, and where they are headed in the future.

In my experience the best and most successful innovations are the ones where you deliver something that the customer didn’t know they needed but can’t live without.  

And what happens when you run out of ideas?

Go visit a bunch of customers!

Follow me on twitter @_Stuartlynn

Written by Stuart Lynn, Head of R&D, Sage Mid Market Division

Tina Welch, Sage HR Team

Throughout the last 10 years, the world of recruitment has transformed from paper based adverts, to specialist recruitment websites to now finding ourselves on a road of discovery with social networking and other web 2.0 technologies.  You can see how Blogs, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are all buzz words of today as suddenly the power of our people and our networks has come to life.

Whilst a new world of attraction strategies has opened itself up, as HR Professional it’s easy to find ourselves lost in a maize of online job boards, online recruitment blogs, webinars, enhanced and interactive web pages offering an array of advice and experiences.  The challenge is finding out what’s most effective, which mediums to use and how to use them! For us, the journey has only just started.

Some good places to start include (and thanks to hrzone, LinkUp_Molly and LizBridgen for these links):

• UK Recruiter
• Recruitment 2.0
• HR blogging comes of age
• Social Media Recruiting Paying Off at Crowe Horwath
• Twitter recruitment: a case study and Twitter recruitment really works
• Facebook Recruitment App

Our head office finds itself at the heart of ‘passionate people, passionate places’ in the North East but mid recession recruiting extraordinary talent continues to be a challenge.  As a UK based company with offices now spread throughout the UK, raising awareness of all sites, and disciplines as well as attracting people from the heights of London to the beauty of the North East continues to add to our challenges. We are now mid point of a complete review to of our recruitment strategy and we are hopeful that changing our approach to web based technologies will be a key part of our success.

At Sage, we are humbled that 47% of our recruitment already happens through direct recruitment, either through our www.sage.co.uk/careers or our recommend a friend scheme, but we are now hopeful that we can both reduce our recruitment costs and increase the quality of our applicants through using our existing advocates of the employer brand – who better to do this than our people. 

Twitter: Digital Content Manager Job at Sage UK

Whilst we are still at our infancy in tweeting jobs, and exploring the potential of accessible professional networks through LinkedIn, it’s our people, and our existing followers who best connect with the experiences of working with Sage; it’s a unique and exciting one!

The war on talent is far from over, and we know that we can not afford to be left behind when it comes to attraction strategies.  Expectations around the recruitment experience just keep on climbing higher, but we are ready to beat the challenge.

Written by Tina Welch from the Sage HR Team

Getting To Know Your Team

Jayne Archbold, MD Sage Accountants' Division

After starting my new role as MD for Sage Accountants’ Division on 5^th October, the first month was a challenging one in that I still had a lot to hand over in my previous role with commitments to our people and customers, so October was a tricky time trying to balance everything, be everywhere (multiple locations across the UK) and keeping my desire to throw myself into the new role with gusto. 

However I’ve lived to tell the tale.  To ensure the future success for Accountants’ Division, people for me are the most important element, if we treat our people right, they’re engaged and passionate then they will provide a great experience for our customers and in turn deliver profit for our shareholders.  So getting to know my team was the first priority on my agenda in the new role.

The first thing I did was meet individually with my direct reports, getting to know them as real people and not just the job, and sharing with them who I am as a person not just the MD.  Some were a little surprised at this.  Once I’d had some insight into my direct reports I then met with their direct reports in functional teams and I asked them some simple questions:

• What do you like about working for Accountants Division?
• What don’t you like or would make it a better place to work?

in addition to sharing with them my work experience and gave them a feel for who I am as a person.  I then repeated this with their direct reports and by mid November I’d met with virtually everyone within the business.  The information I gained from this was invaluable; it’s helped me review our business plan and reprioritise on the things that are really important to our people.

So what are the top tips for getting to know your team?

1. Be yourself

Share who you are as an individual, not just the job, ensuring people really get a feel for what you stand for, your values and beliefs and the things that are important to you, make sure you’re transparent when doing this

2. Listen

Really listen to your team, make sure you actively listen to everything, the name of their children, the dog, their fears, hopes and dreams, basically start to build a relationship by understanding the things that are important to them. People have a personal life, they may be having a bad time outside of work and this will get transmitted to colleagues and customers. 

 3. Involve

Involve people, don’t pay lip service.  Have rich and invigorating conversations.  If they’re involved then you start to build the team.

 4. Share your vision

Be clear on your own vision, and the objectives, so that people know what they’re aiming for and what to expect.   

 5. Set direction

Provide feedback, and give people the space to perform.  Be there to offer support.

 6. Role model

Make sure you’re a role model, that you demonstrate what you believe in, don’t ever ask people to do things that you’re not willing to do yourself.  This sets the foundations of how you operate

 7. Visibility

Make sure you’re visible and accessible, have a clear visible agenda, everyone should know the vision and how we’ll get there.

 8. Get to know your customers

Treat your customers as you would your people, see them as part of the team.

9. Remove

Review any barriers to achieving your vision, this means stopping doing activities that don’t form part of the plan, this might include people too, give them the opportunity to work on things but be clear about the consequences if they don’t or can’t.  

10. Celebrate success

Recognise & acknowledge people.  Thank them.  Celebrate achievements and have fun.  Positive reward generates positive behaviour.

Jayne Archbold, Managing Director Sage Accountants Division

It’s the New Year and to go with our new year’s resolution to get fit, here at Sage we’ve decided to train our business brains!

Train your business brains

As part of our ongoing Business Brains campaign, we’ve renewed our partnership with ITV and we’re really pleased to be funding a second series of The Krypton Factor, which returns tonight at 7.30pm on ITV1.

The first series was watched by 20 million of you, and more than half a million tested your own Business IQ on our trainyourbusinessbrain website.

We’ve heard from a reliable source that the second series of The Krypton Factor promises to be more challenging, tougher and even better:

ITV have invested more in the programme format and promotion of the show, so we’re expecting higher viewing figures for this series and greater brand awareness.

• The intelligence round will be played online, giving viewers a chance to test their skills against the contestants, driving more traffic to our dedicated website.
• There’s more time to engage with the contestants during the show, which makes for better TV viewing.
• The new assault course is tougher and run by all four contestants at the same time, making it even more exciting.

 Once again, we’ll have a presence in the opening and closing credits, and at the start and end of the commercial break.  We’ll be asking viewers will be to test your skills at www.trainyourbusinessbrain.com and we’ll be adding new games to the website after each show. 

Let us know what you think of the show…The Guardian have, do you agree?

Lisa Graveling, Sage UK PR Team