Why Your Company Needs a CRM

Your company’s lead sales person just quit on the spot. The business needs to reach out to all her accounts and contacts to maintain continuity. Are you panicking on where this wealth of phone numbers and emails might reside? Is your next step to rifle through a stack of business cards, or search through her Outlook contacts? If that’s the case, and this entire scenario gives you a bit of heartburn, it’s time to invest in a customer relationship management (CRM) system.

A CRM is many things, but at its root, is a simple premise building off the scenario above. No single person should ever “own” contact information. It should never be held on one sales person’s phone or desktop. Continuity of business – the if-you-were-hit-by-a-truck-today scenario – requires that contact information reside in a central location.

Additional benefits a CRM will bring to a business include:

Marketing Automation link – A CRM linked to your company’s marketing automation system will archive what campaigns, emails, and invites business contacts were included on. In addition, most will note when they visited your website, and what forms were completed. Basically, the CRM will give you a snapshot of marketing touches with each individual.

Running history of accounts – Many CRMs will archive emails, proposals, and calls to contacts, as well as offer a notes section. They also enable you categorize the account, for instance as a prospect, former customer, etc., as well as note what services (purchases) they bought. The benefit here is if a new sales manager takes over a particular account they can quickly get updated on previous, current, and future sales activity.

Lead management – What happens after a lead is handed off to a sales manager? Many CRMs can codify the process and be built to provide follow-up reminders for specific actions in the sales cycle. The end result is better accounting for leads once they enter your system.

Reporting – A CRM will allow you to run any number of reports from simple customer lists, prospects lists, sales opportunities, etc.

A well-maintained CRM will not only help sales and marketing work in sync, but also will ensure continuity of business. While staff is responsible for accounts and their respective contacts, by housing contact information in one spot, companies set the baseline expectation that the information is solely owned by the company.

What Should You Look For In a Transportation Management System?

Are you looking to streamline your transportation department with a transportation management system (TMS)? If so, it can often be difficult to know where to start. There are many different systems on the market – all with different functionalities, prices, and customer service. It might seem logical to choose the most popular system; however, top-tier systems are typically the most expensive and robust, which means you could be paying for features you don’t need.

It’s important to assess your requirements for a new TMS, and research systems that meet those needs to ensure you get the best value and the most use out of your system. Below are a few things to consider when you take on the task of selecting a new TMS. 

Customization – For companies like 3PL’s, which have multiple customers with different requirements to manage within their TMS, customization is essential to meet customers’ unique needs.

Cloud-based – If you want your customers to have access to their load information, it’s important to focus on cloud-based systems that offer a customer portal.  This gives them the ability to sign on to their account at any time, enter loads, check load statuses, look up invoices, POD (proof of delivery), and much more.

Automation – A highly automated system will be a huge time saver by performing functions such as sending carrier tenders, storing carrier and customer rates, automatic track and trace of loads, and invoicing.

Optimized loads –To get the best prices on loads, look for systems that provide a number of optimization options.  You want a system that easily identifies loads that can be consolidated into multi-stop shipments or backhaul options. 

Reporting – To keep track of key metrics, it’s necessary for your TMS to have robust reporting capabilities. Reports can show things like carrier costs, customer spend, specific lane volumes, and other important load information.

Customer service – As with any piece of technology, you are bound to run into questions and problems. Understanding the training and customer service that your TMS provides is key. You don’t want to lock into a system that provides little onboarding support and bills for every question you have.

Price – Once you have narrowed down your requirements, get quotes from all of the systems that meet your needs. Furthermore, ask each TMS supplier to provide you with a list of references. Ask around and see if each TMS provider was able to stay within their quoted amount and how happy the references are with their chosen system.

Be diligent in your research to ensure that your TMS has all of the functions you need now, while also considering how those needs may change in the future. Imagine spending numerous hours implementing and training on a new system, only to find out it is lacking in features you’ll need a year or two from now.

After you find the right system, be sure to thoroughly clean any data that will be imported into your new TMS, so you are set up for success from the start.   

Are your employee safety initiatives enough?

When we come to work, we expect it to be a safe environment. Although employee safety is largely up to employers to structure and enforce, it is also the responsibility of employees to take those initiatives seriously to ensure their own safety.

In manufacturing, logistics, and other industries, where employees are either operating heavy machinery, or handling hazardous materials, it’s critical to have a multi-level safety plan. The list below is just a snapshot of initiatives that should be in place to protect your staff.

Leadership training. Every successful safety plan needs to undergo continuous improvement to keep up with the needs of the company. This responsibility should be given to a head of operations or an executive team member that is dedicated to the initiative. This includes attending OSHA classes and other training to learn about best practices in safety that they can bring back to their team.

Employee training. All new hires should be trained on a company’s safety topics starting on day one. This includes completing any special certifications, such as forklift training, before they can hit the ground running. Safety training should also be kept top-of-mind by holding monthly refresher courses with employees on a variety of subjects.

Get employees involved. Leadership should ask for employee volunteers interested in additional OSHA safety training. These “safety advisors” will act as an extra set of eyes checking for hazards in the work environment. Employees not designated “safety advisors” should still be given regular, structured opportunities to voice any concerns they might have regarding safety in the workplace. You might be surprised what they uncover.

Utilize audits. An audit schedule should be put into place to keep employees focused on continuous improvement. Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) audits not only highlight food safety, but also personnel safety. Behavior Based Safety (BBS) audits ensure that employees are behaving as they were trained, to remain injury-free.

Injury diagnosis. When an injury does occur, utilizing a PC365 nurse (24/7/365 nurse hotline) allows for injuries to be diagnosed on-the-spot. This ensures an employee will get the proper care following a serious injury.

Although it is now against OSHA guidelines to incentivize employees to prevent injuries, it’s important for companies to set high, yet attainable safety goals so that everyone has a number to work toward. After all, safety is a team effort, and requires both leadership and employee cooperation in order to make work a safer place to be. 

Don’t let pests hitch a ride into your facility

The changing fall colors don’t just signal the coming of winter. In the supply chain industry, fall also means pests will be seeking shelter in your facilities. Among these pests are psocids, which are tiny insects that eat mold and mildew and love damp environments.

Often these hard-to-see pests will hitch a ride into production areas and distribution centers on pallets. However, a few simple steps can help supply chain professionals prevent them from entering facilities.

• Never store pallets outside. Leaving pallets out in the elements creates the perfect environment for psocids.
• Always use dry pallets. Again, dampness is the enemy. Bring damp pallets into your facility and you’ve opened your doors to psocids. Send product out the door on damp pallets and you are extending their domain into the supply chain, leaving them free to roam inside trailers and the warehouses receiving your product. Don’t do it.
• Inspect trailers before receiving product. Remember, a food safety plan is only as strong as its weakest link. Even the cleanest facility is under threat when something enters. Make sure to inspect shipments and trailers before receiving product. Reject anything that looks suspect.
• Training. Staff should know exactly what they are looking for when receiving product. Implement a set training plan and solid SOPs to provide staff with the tools to keep pests out of your facility and supply chain. Don’t forget to test them periodically to ensure SOPs are being followed.

If you are interested in learning how to properly inspect for Psocid bugs, there are three simple videos linked below. These videos will show you how to inspect pallets and what a Psocid looks like. The key to avoiding these pests is controlling the source of your pallets, making sure the wood is fully dried in the pallet construction process, and never using a pallet that has been stored outside. Please note that Psocids, though important to control, are not harmful to food products. 

Psocid Inspection
Psocid Inspection Part 2
Identifying a Psocid With a Flashlight 

Are you using the best techniques to make decisions?

We make hundreds of decisions every day. Some of them require little thought, while others need to be tackled more strategically in order to get the best result.

Before understanding the different factors that affect decisions, it’s important to know the four main decision making types, which include:

Authoritarian – Is made by a person who is in a legitimate position of power. The authority makes the choice based on the information that they have at their disposal.

Consultative – Is made by a person who is in a legitimate place of power, but seeks the opinions of others before rendering a decision.

Delegated – A choice made by a person in authority to assign control to another person.

Group – When two or more people follow a method that results in a mutually agreeable decision.

There are different factors that influence which decision making type you should use. It’s important to asses a situation and understand which of these factors exist in order to take the most effective approach.

Time – If time is of the essence, an authoritarian decision type is recommended.

Existence of expertise – If there is an individual who is a subject matter expert, the delegated decision type should be used.

Importance of decision quality – Generally speaking, group decisions tend to produce higher quality outcomes because they are more thought out, produce a greater selection of choices, and obtain group support. 

Support and participation – When a decision requires a great deal of support from multiple people, a group decision is highly recommended.

Lack of existing information – When there is a lack of expertise on a subject matter, using a group decision making process can be a beneficial way to gather and organize information necessary to make an informed choice.

By understanding the different types of decisions, and the factors that influence their use, your decision making will be much more efficient. 

How thorough are your trailer inspections?

A proper trailer inspection can mean the difference between a product arriving safely to its destination, or not.

Whether you are loading or unloading trailer, there are a few things that should be inspected to protect the integrity of the products going into the trailer, as well as those in the warehouse where the pallets are being unloaded.

1. Check for odor. This is likely the first thing someone will notice when opening a trailer for inspection. If the smell is off, there is probably an issue that needs to be investigated further.
2. Clean Floor. If the trailer is being loaded with product, the floors should be clean and free of debris. A flashlight should be used to check the corners for cleanliness.
3. Walls and door. Take a walk through the trailer and make sure there are no holes or jagged edges in the walls. It’s also important to check that the truck door holds a tight seal. Sometimes debris from the previous shipment can get lodged in the truck walls or under the door. That should be cleared before loading new product in.
4. No insects. Especially when it comes to food-grade products, it is imperative to do a thorough inspection for any signs of insects when loading and unloading a trailer.
5. Clean & sturdy pallets. When removing product from trailer, make sure pallets are clean before unloading them into the warehouse to avoid contaminating other products. They should also be in good, sturdy condition, so they can be safely moved.
6. Temperature control. When inspecting a refrigerated trailer, you should make sure the temperature is within the guidelines for the product you are transporting.

The best way to prevent product contamination while in transport is to have properly trained employees doing inspections. Taking the time to make sure each person has mastered what to look for will make all the difference. 

Web Analytics Offer Snapshot of Site Performance

Your company is pouring money into its website and SEO, but how often are you doing a checkup on the site’s performance? It’s simple to sign up for Google Analytics and start accumulating statistics on your site’s traffic, but what are the stats that are most meaningful?

What exactly do the numbers even represent? It only takes a few minutes within Google Analytics for eyes to glaze over at the vast amounts of data available. While you can dive as deep as you want into the analytics pool, below are few key numbers from the shallow end that you should be tracking.

Session – As you would expect, this is the number of visits to your website. Once a baseline average is established, the number becomes more meaningful, allowing you to compare it to set time periods (previous day, month, year, etc.). Tracking it enables you to see any drop-offs (or spikes) in visits, and course correct.

Pageviews – This category shows the number of views each page of your site received and can be listed as a percent of the total pages viewed. It is meaningful to determine if visitors are hitting the pages you want them to. If they aren’t, it’s time to make some changes to better feature important content.

Time on Page – Simply, how long visitors view each page. Again, this can reflect the quality of the page content as well as a visitor’s engagement with it.

Bounce Rate – This important figure is the number of visitors who view only a single page and leave the site. It’s a reflection of relevance of content and page design. Numbers can vary by industry, but generally, if your website has a bounce rate under 50 percent, you are doing pretty well. However, like all statistics, this once can be misleading. For instance, if the page is answering a specific question, the visitor got exactly what they needed and there was no reason to drill further into the site.

Six Steps to Keeping your CRM Data Clean

The customer relationship management (CRM) system is an invaluable tool in organizing customer contacts, tracking sales, and managing leads. This tool, however, is only as good as the quality of the information in it. Your CRM can quickly become a mess of outdated phone numbers and invalid emails if not managed properly.

This can seem daunting – especially considering many salespeople have hundreds, or even thousands of individual contacts to manage. But if you take small steps every day to keep the information clean, you will have a much more valuable tool.

1. Perform an audit. Twice a year, randomly draw 10 contacts for each salesperson, and reach out to each one to verify the accuracy of the information in your CRM. This is a great way to gauge how clean the data is in the system as a whole.
2. Check for missing information. Every quarter, salespeople should run a report of all their contacts in the system to check for ones that have important information missing (i.e. title, email, phone number, and address). Then, they can create a hit list of people to reach out to and fill in the blanks.
3. Track updates. Have your CRM administrator add a field to track the last time a contact’s information was verified. If the salesperson pulls up a contact and sees it’s been two years since they last confirmed the contact numbers, etc., it’s probably time for an update.
4. Send a mass email. Most CRM’s give users the ability to send out mass emails. Create a list of people whose information is likely out-of-date, and send an email asking them to verify key contact details. Then, you can update the database as their responses come in.
5. Customer visits. When sales staff makes their regular customer visits, they should print out a list of every contact they have for that customer. When they arrive for their meeting, the salesperson should hand that list to the receptionist to verify and edit.
6. Email signatures. This one is simple. Every time you receive an email from a contact, verify their email signature against the information in your database. 

A CRM system is a great tool, but you need to regularly put in work managing the quality of the data to make sure it continues to provide value to your company.

Benchmarking Warehouse Performance Starts With Data

Data is the cornerstone of getting a true snapshot of not only how well your distribution center is operating, but also the impression your company is leaving with customers.

However, in order to build toward the answers companies seek, they must start by laying that cornerstone and begin collecting data. Doing so brings a host of questions, including: What data is meaningful and what is just data? How often should we collect the information? What are acceptable numbers and what numbers are indicators of problems in need corrective actions? What do I do with this data to improve processes? All are important questions to ask and the answers may vary by company.

Below are a few important key performance indicators (KPIs) that can help companies get an idea of how their distribution centers are operating.

Shipping accuracy. Arguably one of the most important KPIs, shipping accuracy tracks that the shipment arrives at the destination exactly the way it was released, with the correct item and the correct quantity

Total damage compared to on-hand inventory. Simply, the amount of damage caused in the distribution center compared to the total on-hand inventory.

Inventory accuracy. How accurately is inventory managed? This KPI will review each inventory unit and check that it is in the correct location, has the correct count, and is the correct item compared to information in the warehouse management system.

On-time shipments. This is defined by each shipment leaving the distribution center at or before the scheduled appointment time.

Safety. Many operations will hold a standard of OSHA recordable injuries in a calendar year. While the goal of this KPI always will be zero, each company will set a standard based on past history.

Remember, while these are internal KPIs, each has an impact on how customers view your company.

How effective is your goal setting strategy?

Setting goals is the propelling force behind a company’s growth. Unfortunately, many companies don’t follow an organized process in creating them, or place too much emphasis on the future.

A better approach is to focus on making current operations more efficient. Each year, companies should identify 5 to 11 major goals that define their focus. These goals should be broken down into the following categories, where 80 percent of the efforts are focused on present issues:

                3-5 Current operational problems

                1-3 Marketing improvements for current products

                1-3 Future products and services

The goals created should be a culmination of ideas from a variety of sources and departments throughout the company, and an organized process should be followed to generate those ideas.

• Gathering and organizing potential goals. Executive staff members should each be tasked with creating a list of potential goals using the formula above.

• Aggregate the information. Create a master list of all the goals created by the executive staff and distribute it back to them with instructions to agree or disagree on the ideas of their counterparts.

• Creating the big picture. Schedule an uninterrupted day at an offsite location to conduct a brainstorming session with your executive staff.

• Finalizing selection process. At this stage, the CEO should review the company goals in private and create a final list, which sets the stage to begin planning for each goal.

• Planning business strategies. Re-create a template with company and corresponding departmental goals.

• Creating the master list. Consolidate the above information into a master list of goals, and publish it for the entire company to see. Creating organization-wide visibility ensures all employees are on the same page.

Goal creation, and communication of those goals, is critical to establishing an efficient working environment. With clear objectives, each staff member and department will have an understanding of what their role is within the bigger picture.