The ERP Lifestyle Consultant

Early this morning one of the LinkedIn groups - Sage Partners, Employees & Alumni - which I participate in received an interesting new makeover.

Discussions have been greatly enhanced and brought to the front with large author cons prominently displaying beside each post.

It appears that LinkedIn has moved away from highlighting links that members may share in favor of one row of rotating shared discussion links.

Members now have the ability to vote on links that they like (or dislike) which will in return feature those links more prominently on your group’s home screen.

There is now a Top Influencers section which points ou those who start discussions that gather many comments from fellow members.

Perhaps most importantly it looks as if LinkedIn FINALLY did away with the ill-conceived feature which allowed any member to move a discussion from the regular posting area to the jobs section (the cause of many internal problems when well meaning members either unintentionally or intentionally moved postings out of sight of other members). UPDATE: Nope – LinkedIN just changed terminology – they still unwisely appear to allow any member to instantly move a post out of discussion and into the less trafficked Jobs. This is likely because many of their discussion areas a mess and overgrown with job after job and little readable content.

The ability now exists to flag a post as a job offer/inquiry but doing so no longer seems to automatically move it to the jobs section of your discussions.

Read the rest of this entry »

During May 17 – 20, 2010 we’ll be attending the annual Sage Insight reseller conference. This year it’s being held in Denver Colorado.

One of my pet peeves about conferences is that they’re so damn big that you can quickly lose people in the crowd. My favorite activity is to find friends and compare notes about sessions that we’ve attended and about ideas for the coming year.

None of this collaboration works well if you can’t find the people you want to compare notes with. Even entering the keynote sessions I’ve found it difficult to locate people in the sea of faces (over 2,000 people are expected at Insights).

This year I’ve started a test group to collaborate in real time using Google Wave to collaborate on Sage Insights sessions. So far we have 60 87 people who’ve joined our Insights Google Group.

Using Google Wave, anyone who is a member of the group can join, read, create and edit the notes that others take during the sessions. Have a question for another participant? Google Wave is a great place to ask other participants. Have an observation or question during the keynote? You’ll be able to share that with the group as everyone jointly creates notes and shares their thoughts on Wave.

This is strictly an unofficial group – Sage is not sponsoring it or endorsing it – though we invite them to steal the idea and improve upon it for next year’s conference.

You can take a quick peek at the main Insights 2010 Wave or join in the fun using these instructions to join the Sage Insights 2010 Google Wave. Or if you prefer you can follow the Twitter feeds (over 120 users) who will be at Insights and Twittering about the happenings by viewing our Sage Insights 2010 Twitter Feed Group.

In case you’ve missed it Google recently updated their search layout.

Instead of always returning standard search results as indexed within Google – the search giant now displays a total of 9 additional places that a searcher (aka prospective client) can find your company.

Nine!

Just when you thought that SEO was a snap and all you had to do was throw a few hundred keywords up on your firm’s home page – the game is suddenly changed.

Actually the game has been changing for years. Blogs have emerged as relevant research tools. Social media sites like Twitter and Facebook have enabled our customers to reach out to their friends for recommendations as opposed to relying upon raw searches through Google or other easily gamed Internet search engines.

Is there a way for you to keep up with all these changes? I think so – and it’s been right in front of your nose all along.

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LinkedIn has just released version 1.0 of their application for BlackBerry devices.

This version works with OS 4.3+ and requires either a Bold, Tour or Curve model (that’s right – no Storm support at the moment).

The application is  quite good. The main benefits over the iPhone version being deep integration to the native BlackBerry inbox (try that on the iPhone!).

LinkedIN for BlackBerry resembles the Facebook for BlackBerry program.

The design is not as pretty as that on the LinkedIn for iPhone interface — though the integration goes so much deeper that you’ll probably want to use the BlackBerry LinkedIN version.

In fact I’m going to declare the LinkedIn for BlackBerry application as a key reason (for those of us on LinkedIn)  to use a BlackBerry. I believe it’s going to be an essential business tool for almost any serious BlackBerry user.

Here’s why.

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Fixed fee consulting is the hottest new trend in the ERP world.

You’ll see it used with new deals – and you can see it in the post-sale consulting world where upgrade, projects and other services are increasingly offered for one fixed price.

Consulting based upon a pre-set (fixed) fee has advantages for both the customer and the consultant. The biggest customer advantage is the lack of any surprise costs and the removal of any motivation for the consultant to drag out an engagement for the purpose of billing hourly.

For the consulting firm there’s an opportunity to make more money – but to do so you must enter the fixed fee world with a plan.

After having worked for a while on several fixed fee engagements with my clients – here are what I found to be the top 10 secrets of making money on a fixed fee ERP project. Read the rest of this entry »

Many people wonder how Social Media can be used in their business. They think it’s cool to share things with their friends but aren’t really convinced that it can be used to create sales.

The best example that I’ve seen of someone using social media to promote their business is Scott Jordan.

He’s the owner of Scottevest which make jackets for geeks with lots of pockets to hold their cell phones and other gear.

http://www.scottevest.com

Take a look at Scott’s Facebook page to get an idea of the type and quantity of things that he posts that help him generate business (he claims much of his new sales increases have been driven by Twitter/Facebook).

Some things that I think are noteworthy. Read the rest of this entry »

ERP Lifestyle consultants are all about keeping customers happy and not about winning awards.

So then how did I manage to squeak out an invitation to  President’s Circle with Sage January 2010?

According to Paul Johnson of Sage I was selected from a pool of 140 partners who’d been nominated for the inaugural Sage Spirit Award.

This new category  was created by Sage to honor business partners that embody the five Sage principles of agility, innovation, simplicity, trust, and integrity. In other words it’s meant to recognize people who don’t sell millions in software but have other characteristics that Sage has determined justify them being honored.

I wrote about the Sage Inaugural Spirit Award on my main site so I won’t get into it in detail here. Suffice it to say that I was completely surprised and honored to receive the call from Paul Johnson.

Now on to Arizona  (assuming they accepted my reservation) where I’ll see if I can use my scary social media skills to  become the first Sage Business Partner ejected for live blogging about what goes on at President’s Circle. Full press release after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

This morning I awoke to a message in my email inbox (click the full image on the left to get an idea of what I’m talking about).

The email is from a company that serves as a lead gathering source for ERP VARS ( and probably software publishers too ). They’re certainly not the only company offering this service but since I happen to be on their email distribution list I’ll use them as an example.

This lead  they’re offering is a person looking to be better trained for future job opportunities. A noble request – but not exactly the type of lead most VARS would be looking for.

Which started me thinking.  Are  “pay leads” something VARS should be chasing? Maybe there was a time in the past that they worked. Are they still a valid marketing tool?

Services like the one that sent the email work by having end users  submit contact information online – usually doing so in exchange for some type of free white paper or other assistance with finding an ERP solution.

These prospects are then matched with one of several consulting firms who’ve paid to receive the names of companies  looking for  help in their area of expertise.

At least that’s how it’s supposed to work. Read the rest of this entry »

Conferences can be a great place to meet and network with colleagues – provided you  introduce yourself the right way.

Have you ever run into someone at a conference and they introduce themselves – and you have absolutely no idea who they are or if you’ve even met them before.

One tip that Michael Arrington makes in a great post over on Techcrunch is to always introduce yourself with your name and company — “Hi – Wayne Schulz from Schulz Consulting”. This relieves the person you’re speaking with from the awkward “who is this” feeling that can accompany a hectic conference introduction.

Check out the rest of Michaels tips. Some are common sense (never call a cell phone number on the business card you’ve just collected) to the less obvious (A mutual friend who introduces you by email or in person is far more effective than a cold self-introduction at a crowded event). Read the full post here

Beginning sometime later this month Google will start to index any spreadsheets, documents or presentations that you’ve created in your Google Apps account AND have shared publicly.

This doesn’t mean your documents will be shared with everyone. Rather Google is notifying their users that only publicly shared items will be indexed. Users should double check on any publicly shared items to make sure that they really should be public (here’s how).

While on the surface this may seem like an invasion of privacy, and it might be if you haven’t taken care to make sure you have not shared sensitive items, it also could be a great way for web visitors to search and find your site. Read the rest of this entry »