Why is EquityTouch the ultimate business solution for the private equity, venture capital, and any other business for that matter? It’s because our CRM SaaS solution offers a multitude of features and advantages that place it ahead of the competition. Our “gems” as we like to call them.

Download the white paper here for more information.   Raising the Bar

MYTH: CRMs are only for salespeople

If you think CRMs are only useful if you’re a salesperson, you probably think the only thing the software is used for is to manage customers, but this just isn’t true! Even though it’s called Customer Relationship Management, it is not necessarily about managing customers. CRMs can be a great tool for a salesperson to use, but it’s really all about managing relationships – which anyone from any profession can and will have with external parties. EquityTouch, a CRM designed by Touch Ahead Software, is all about managing interactions, specifically for the private asset community (i.e. managing interactions which will help improve deal sourcing ability and more).

Further, if you’re not using CRM software to manage personal, detailed interactions with clients or customers, you’re not using it to it’s full potential. Recording every time you called someone and left a message or sent an email isn’t enough. Getting on a more personal level with a business contact and managing that relationship leads to better business. CRM makes this possible.

MYTH: Technology breeds/builds relationships1

Technology doesn’t breed OR build relationships – YOU do! Implementing a CRM strategy is only the first step in the right direction. It’s like social media – just because you have a Facebook page and a Twitter handle doesn’t mean that people are going to Like, Follow and engage in a conversation with you. When it comes to CRM, since you are using it to monitor the interactions that occur between you and another party, you must be having those interactions. The technology you use will help foster that relationship, in that it assists you in further transactions – but it won’t magically make deals happen.

Look at it this way: Say you have one really great meeting with an entrepreneur and you’re thinking about investing in his venture. You record a few notes about that meeting in EquityTouch, as what we refer to as a Touch. Then, when you email that entrepreneur a week or so later, you refer to that Touch and use the information recorded to generate a detailed follow-up email. All of the resulting transactions between you and this entrepreneur proceed in this fashion, and the relationship grows exponentially because of your effective use of a CRM. Amazing, isn’t it?

MYTH: People (employees) will always adapt to and adopt the new technology¹

People, in my experience, are not always thrilled to adapt to a new bit of technology – especially since there’s always something new to learn. Though many people these days tout their ability to adapt to any new site, service or software with the click of a mouse, my guess is that there is still a large majority of people who are not as willing to adapt.

I know this sounds discouraging, but fear not! With CRM software like EquityTouch, we make it super easy for you and all of your employees to adapt to the program. Because EquityTouch is run completely off the cloud, you don’t have to do any downloading; just open up your web browser and go. Our software allows users to customize any and all of the data entry fields, which allows different people to see what they want when they want to see it. One size never fits all – we get that. Need information pronto? Type Ahead Search generates a list of data when you type in the first three characters of your inquiry, which makes finding things easy as 1-2-3 when you can only remember a small piece of what you’re looking for. When it comes to convincing people to use a new piece of software, it’s crucial to show them how easy and manageable that software is – and EquityTouch is most definitely that.

MYTH: CRM Databases do not need to be monitored; they are just a means of storing contact information

This position is totally opposite of what a CRM can potentially do for your business! Yes, CRMs are a great way of keeping track of the people you do business with, but like I said before, it’s not about recording when you called them, what was said, etc. In addition to serving as a way of developing deeper relationships and engaging with your clients, customers, whoever, CRM also serves as a wonderful way to reflect on the past and forecast future trends in your business. Further, it can be used to track potential deals in the pipeline, helping people like venture capitalists and PEs better deal source.

MYTH: CRM is just another separate tool to add to the programs you’re already using

WRONG! CRM not only works with all of the programs you already use, but it’s also an opportunity to get rid of some of the outdated ones. Still using Excel spreadsheets to document your interactions with clients? Right click, “Move to Trash.” These are totally unnecessary, and messy at best. There are too many things to keep track of when you’re monitoring your business relationships, and columns and rows just won’t cut it. It’s so easy to integrate your CRM with the programs you currently use. EquityTouch is designed to interoperate with programs like Outlook and social media and has a flexible API (Application Programming Interface), which means whatever program you’re using can be easily integrated into the EquityTouch program. It’s all about optimizing these programs in order to improve your business relationships.

In the end, whether your CRM implementation will be a success or not depends on how you view these myths. If you choose to believe in the myths of CRM, sadly, there’s no way it will work to it’s fullest potential and deliver you the highest ROI. On the other hand, when you work with your CRM and disregard these falsehoods, your relationships with all of your business contacts should improve exponentially.

For more CRM myths debunked, check out these articles:

The Seven Myths
Five myths of CRM

Photo credit: http://lisenstromberg.wordpress.com/2011/08/29/my-neighbor-steve-jobs/

In the less than 24 hours since Jobs’ death was announced, the web was truly inundated with sentiments and memories of the late CEO, so it’s difficult, maybe even impossible, to say something about him that hasn’t already been said. But in the spirit of thinking different, I’ll give it my best shot. Steve would have wanted it that way. So here goes…

Let me start it with this: let’s face it – we’re all, to some extent, a bunch of misfits. We all have ideas, values, morals, likes and dislikes that don’t always fit in with the “status quo.” Still, when it comes down to it, there are two types of people in this world: the ones who alter who they are in order to be one of the majority, and the ones who remain misfits. Steve Jobs was and is and forever will be the savior of the latter population. He said:

“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes … the ones who see things differently – they’re not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status quo. … You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things. … They push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the people who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

Even if you don’t use or like Apple products, this statement must make you stop and think, and feel a little bit of a connection to the man. It’s true what Steve says: you cannot ignore him. If you told me that you could leave your home and go to a public place and not see one Apple product, I would be dumbfounded. I can’t get from point A to point B without seeing at least five iPods.

A recent iPhone/MacBook convert, I find myself feeling a strange, unspoken connection to other Apple users I encounter. This isn’t a coincidence – it’s a phenomenon stemming from Steve Jobs’ leadership, a lifestyle embraced across continents. His ability to connect a world of people through technology is unmatched. And it’s his craziness, and genius and prescient knowledge that moved (and will continue to move) us all and truly has pushed the human race forward for the past 40 years or so.

Working for Touch Ahead Software has given me another perspective on how Steve Jobs pioneered the industry itself. Every day I come in and am surrounded by developers and programmers pounding away at their keyboards, discovering and delivering new technology that is used to make a difference in the lives and businesses of our clients.

Our CEO Nancy Keddy has built a team of people from wildly different backgrounds with different interests and hobbies, who share (at least) one thing in common: their ability to create technology. It’s like she took a page straight out of Jobs’ book: “I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world” (“Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires,” 1996).

Bringing together a team of people, who might, at first glance, seem like a misfit for one another, was exactly what Jobs did that made him different, not only as a creator of technology but as a leader. The most we can do at this point is look back at his success and try to replicate and build upon it, try to reinvent it, and hope that maybe one day, someone might almost measure up. And we must always remember this:

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. … Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”

Articles cited:

Steve Jobs: 20 Best Quotes

The Irreplaceable Steve Jobs

• Extending the company’s value across the firm through data integration
• Increasing customer retention and loyalty
• Responding effectively to competition in the marketplace

Specifically, there are seven (and of course, more) CRM software benefits that result from superior customer data collection, which in turn creates a successful CRM solution.

1. Increased revenue and profits: Finding the right CRM software that matches companies’ objectives allows management to develop a plan for profits in the long term. CRM software allows sales data and information to be immediately accessible.
2. Improved capture of sales leads: As companies generate a great amount of leads, they can in turn increase their sales and revenues. CRM software enables the sales team to view leads on the computer screen, and then see those exact leads disappear once they become customers! In addition, CRM software allows the sales team to manage CRM generated reports that give complete, concise information.
3. Flexibility through scalability: Scalability is an especially important factor for expanding small-and medium-sized businesses who wish to develop their customer offerings in the near future without spending a great deal of money for CRM software.
4. Improved customer service: The CRM software should include access to centralized customer data. This allows associates to quickly key in on important customer details.
5. Increased cross-selling and up-selling opportunities for existing customers: It is a known fact that businesses make money when they keep their customers through loyalty, as opposed to depleting valuable resources trying to find new customers.
6. Accessible decision-driving information: CRM software includes access to important resources that can drive future success.
7. Improved customer profiling and target marketing: In order to know your customers and serve their needs, the CRM software must capture relevant customer details and information.

Although the concept of CRM has existed in the business world for a long time, it has recently grown due to better technology access and database integration. It is important that companies consider CRM solutions in order to keep their existing customers happy, serving their many needs. By focusing on delivering exceptional service that is specifically tailored for customers, this will build loyalty which will then build profit in the long run. All in all, CRM software solutions allow companies to escape drastic decreases in revenues by capturing new customers, retaining existing customers and by better managing their business.

• department structures including account management plans
• sales methodologies
• established customer processes
• deal sourcing strategies

In addition, every business has its own special requirements needed to keep them on the road to success. One of the elements needed to stay on this road to success is the need for a regular evaluation, or a “tune-up” of the CRM application you are using. Firms are able to improve and adapt to ever changing business environments when tune-ups and evaluations are scheduled on a regular basis.

As stated by Jim Dickie in the May 2010 issue of CRM Magazine, “We often find that companies are realizing only a fraction of the potential that CRM provides.” Today, CRM applications are quickly evolving to meet changing business requirements. The following represent key trends in the present CRM landscape:

1. Mobility – Today there are CRM software applications that allow real-time access to customer profiles? This enables you to access important information via any mobile device anywhere, anytime!
2. Real-time insight – Having the ability to search in real-time, giving you up-to-the-minute information to drive decisions through rich data sets and actionable intelligence.
3. Simple Customization – CRM software that is intuitive and easy to mange for all of its users,where executives and managers can create and modify dashboards and customize fields themselves as business needs arise without reliance on a developer or IT.
4. Social Media – One of the newest and most popular benefits of a CRM capabilities. It takes traditional CRM one step further, users are now are able to manage the interactions they have with their socially engaged customer or audience. This strategy allows customers to speak directly to companies about their wants and needs.
5. Knowledge Management – Last, but certainly not least, users are able to receive sought after information from efficient self-service web-based knowledge sources about the leads and customers they are working with. Making it extremely easy to update information for companies and contacts.

The ability to clearly understand your organization’s CRM obstacles and put the tools and processes in place to get the most out of your CRM, will lead you towards the path of achieving success in today’s business world. Be sure to evaluate your current CRM situation, so that you may identify and pursue opportunities for improvement!

The pressure on firms to put capital to use along with the rise in the number of active players in the market has made it more challenging with competition so intense. To be successful, companies need to have a great network in the industries that they specialize in and a great reputation in the markets. Deal Sourcing firms agree that the ability to source deals through proprietary channels and form strong relationships with potential acquisitions at an early stage is more important than ever as it improves a Venture Capital on Private Equity Firm’s ability to differentiate themselves from the competition.

The most common sources of deals are personal and business networks. Personal relationships are of the utmost importance when it comes to sourcing and winning deals. The competition rises everyday and the influences that networking and personal relationships can have on the ability to effectively source deals is certainly changing. Effective management of these relationships is imperative – CRM systems are considered a valuable tool for efficient relationship management.

As changing attitudes to working practices is never straightforward, it is essential that firms are implementing the right kind of software that can be integrated into current working practices in order to effectively utilize the full potential of CRM. Utilizing CRM systems especially for logging meetings, phone calls, emails and maintaining client contact deals and marketing purposes is extremely important.

For firms operating in today’s business world, it will be vital that their existing practices in managing relationships and sourcing deal flow are regularly assessed in order to ensure that they remain best practice. Firms are seeking CRM as a means of leveraging networks and relationships, helping them to move quickly and better organize their deal flow opportunities. In such a competitive market, a deal sourcing CRM could certainly prove to be an effective tool in providing the extra insight necessary for firms to make better decisions more quickly.

Have you ever wondered what happens behind the scenes of a web page or web application when you click a button, sort a table, or navigate from one page to another? Have you ever looked behind the scenes and read the code to render a web page? Someone who is not a developer would think that they were reading a foreign language. Even the developers who can write and translate the code sometimes feel that way, because there are so many different types of languages that can and are being used to create websites and web applications.

Which is why everyone here at EquityTouch® is SO excited about Bootstrap from Twitter.

Bootstrap from Twitter is a Framework. It was created as a toolkit to help scale and maintain individual web languages. “At its core, Bootstrap is just CSS, but it’s built with ‘Less’, which is a flexible pre-processor that offers much more power and flexibility than regular CSS”. And it is Open Source! Any web developer can use it to rapidly develop web applications. Bootstrap uses some of the latest browser techniques to provide designers and viewers alike, with stylish typography, buttons, tables, navigation, and much, much more.

In the early stages of Twitter, engineers used any web language library they were familiar with in order to create its front-end. However, there were many inconsistencies with the individual applications, and making it extremely difficult to scale and maintain all the libraries. Bootstrap became the answer to such challenges and began to arise during Twitter’s first testing week, known as “Hackweek”. By the end of the testing week, Twitter’s Bootstrap had accelerated to the point where a stable version of the web language library had been reached that engineers could use across the company.

With the help and feedback of engineers, Bootstrap has improved significantly. It includes basic and elegant styles and design patterns that developers can use in creating web pages and web applications. Bootstrap is extremely easy to implement; just drop in your code and go. It works by providing a uniform solution to the most common everyday tasks that developers come across.

Although Bootstrap is extensive, meaning that there are many options to choose from, it is flexible to work with for many unique designs. It is a very simple way to promote quick, clean and highly usable applications. Bootstrap is one of the most complete front-end toolkits out there with dozens of fully functional components ready to be put to use.

The developers here at Touch Ahead are excited because:

• uses “Less”, which is faster
• supports mobile devices
• organizes all the front end framework
• organizes all the languages we use to create EquityTouch
• AND Like Twitter, “we love building awesome products on the web.”

Image taken from: http://www.webresourcesdepot.com/twitter-bootstrap-a-css-toolkit-by-twitter/

Despite being a CEO, as well as the founder and developer of three successful technology services companies, Nancy S. Keddy does not talk a lot about herself.

But ask her about her latest venture, Touch Ahead Software LLC, and she gushes with information about the company’s revolutionary Web-based service known as “EquityTouch.”

Keddy describes EquityTouch as a uniquely intuitive, fast and customizable product that not only tracks “touches” or contacts with customers, but “all of the people and organizations involved in deals, identifying how they relate to each other.” It sounds like a giant step beyond customer/client relationship management (“CRM”) software.

The former technology developer for TA Associates, one of the world’s largest global private equity firms, notes that her cloud-based software service was originally developed to supply a rich and robust box of information to meet the sophisticated demands of the alternative asset community (private equity firms, venture capitalists and other asset managers). Deal-making professionals in this field can benefit greatly from having a Web-based tool at their fingertips which can shine a light on all the invisible gossamer threads that tie together the deal-makers in the world of asset management and investing, including lawyers, bankers, accountants, and investment advisers.

Thus, Keddy and her team developed a tool that can upload and analyze all kinds of targeted data from Web-based sources of information, such as Hoover’s, Dow Jones or LinkedIn, Twitter and other social media. EquityTouch can also tie the data – ranging from financial data to social relationship information – to targeted companies or individuals as well. It can also track a target company’s progress from private letter of intent to going public.

EquityTouch might just as well be called Legal Touch, HR Touch or Touch Them All because, as Keddy explains, “The ability to customize this program and upload data enables us to fulfill the uniquely simple or complex needs of any company or industry that must track and manage multiple layers of relationships.” She adds, “Our solution layers lots of pieces together and allows the customer to reslice them in any way they like, allowing them to track and view data according to need.”

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One of the main contributors to this industry’s rebound was the slow economic recovery. Growth is being driven by investments in systems and equipment to improve customer relationships, especially after companies lost customers during the economic recession. Due to this, companies will want to gain business through customers, old and new. Another contributor to the industry’s growth is the move towards more cloud-based applications. There are many advantages in cloud-based applications, such as the requirement of a smaller investment, making the technology more affordable to mid-sized, and even small, businesses. Currently, 38 percent of CRM services are provided in the cloud, however that number is expected to increase within the next few years.

In addition, integrating social networks and social media monitoring into CRM applications has also contributed to an improvement in the industry. This allows companies to monitor and respond to mentions of their brands on sites such as Facebook and Twitter. With this real-time aspect, it allows companies to respond more quickly to clients. Last, but certainly not least, another attractive element of cloud-based systems is the overall ability for employees to log in remotely from anywhere in the world. This allows firms many opportunities, such as extending the work-at-home option to more employees.

So even though consumer behavior has changed since the recession, it is important for firms to become even more involved in customer relations, and what better way than CRM applications!

As we all know, in today’s business world there are more and more competitors entering markets. Therefore, it is important to remain ahead of the competition, and the major way to do so is by winning over customers.

1. Context Services Will Provide a Clearer Picture of Customers

One of the major aspects of CRM is that it tracks information about potential, current and even past clients. With CRM software, one is able to track company and employee information, financial data, manage contacts and scheduling, to name a few. Fortunately, with an addition of context services, there is even more information that one is able to track about another company. Context services derive information from social media, location-based services and mobile devices, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare, etc. This will result in an even richer customer profile as such additional context allows one to track the information that others are providing, in regards to their location, relationships, behavior, etc. Having such services leads to promotion opportunities for companies as one is able to view interactions and behaviors of customers they wish to track. Ray Wang, Principal Analyst & CEO at Constellation Research predicts that within the next five years we will see major growth in context services and the data they provide thanks to mobile devices. It is predicted that by 2015, 1.8 billion people will have smart phones, with 40% of those owners choosing to use context services that track their activities. Growth is expected to double, continuing through 2017 and thus creating the mobile CRM industry.

2. Real-time Customer Intelligence Will Become a Reality

As we all know, the amount of customer data is exploding, which means that companies are going to try to integrate it into their marketing campaigns and other customer-facing processes. In order to do this, however, firms will need systems that are able to process such amounts of customer data, making actionable recommendations. Esteban Kolsky, Principal & Founder of ThinkJar LLC believes that we need to build the infrastructure to make sure there is value in the technology. It is predicted that within the next 5 years, more powerful mobile and Cloud based computing applications will become available. It is also predicted that we will see in-memory technologies that will be able to deliver faster information processing capabilities, so that real-time customer intelligence will become a reality.

3. TV Will Become the Next Big Channel in Customer Engagement

Although it may not seem true, the popularity of television hasn’t yet declined considering several popular social media and marketing channels. It is predicted that within the next five years, CRM integration with television will be developed. Brent Leary, owner at CRM Essentials, predicts that the TV will be added to the mix of channels used to engage customers. He predicts that companies will expand to improve the customer experience, such as by interacting with customers through Internet-connected TVs. CRM software vendors will create technology to enable this, allowing users to engage with customers through a television while managing and tracking the success of the interactions.

4. Virtual Meetings Will Change the Way People Do Business

Recently, companies have attempted to scale back travel budgets and thus have turned to applications such as WebEx, Skype and other video conferencing means. It is predicted that within the next five years, this trend will continue with the growth of unified communications (UC), the integration of multichannel capabilities with location services and social media tools. For example, although customers today interact with service agents over the phone or by e-mail, within the next five years it is predicted that they will be able to jump into a fully-interactive virtual meeting with multiple service agents instead, or even with other customers. As one can see, there are interesting opportunities for UC in CRM processes.

5. Gamification Will Go from Buzz to Business Strategy

Last but certainly not least, it is predicted that in the next five years, we will see gaming become an essential business strategy. Thus far, gamification has been used as a marketing tool; however Brian Solis, Principal at Altimeter Group, states that it is going to extend beyond marketing to improve loyalty through integrated social rewards programs for example. Such data from these games will provide companies with more insight into consumer behavior. All in all, there are many changes that are predicted to take place within the next five years that will significantly change CRM as we know of it today.

Image: http://neurogadget.com/2012/01/09/ibms-next-5-in-5-predicts-smaller-mind-reading-devices-by-2017/3416