Revolutionizing Your Business with Tech, Automation, and NetSuite

Revolutionizing Your Business with Tech, Automation, and NetSuite - Dive into the world of tech and automation with Chris as he talks about his role at Celigo and their integration platform, Integrator.io. Chris emphasizes the importance of customer service and building strong relationships when working on complex projects, drawing from his experience developing a custom online booking system for his limousine service.

Lastly, don't miss out on Chris's best business advice that has helped him succeed in the challenging world of entrepreneurship. Discover the power of challenging the status quo, empowering people to do the right thing, and making small yet impactful changes to boost your business. Gain valuable insights that can help you overcome the challenges of implementing and adopting systems like NetSuite, and ultimately transform your business for the better.

Don’t Hyper Focus on Your Competition

At CloudExtend, they have a product board where customers can come in, add their ideas, and upvote them, so they know what customers are requesting. But in speaking with customers, they also know if an idea is a priority or not.

“We would have lost three, four months' momentum trying to build an application a competitor was releasing. Since our customers did not see it as a priority, we doubled down on our vision and did not hyper-focusing on our competition.”

Listen to the Needs of Your Customers

The customer is not necessarily always right. It's really more of customers reinforcing what your company is thinking because you've been doing this a long time and you've got our own internal roadmap. Obviously, there are some limitations, but you can discover a larger need across your customer base.

Do the Right Thing. Always.

Chris shared, “We had this round table where we wanted to build a mission statement. So we had all these convoluted ‘we want to be like the company that changes the world’... which sounds great, (but) very hard to do. In the end, we just decided on the mission statement, ‘Do the right thing.’” 

By empowering people to do the right thing, and always backing them up, Chris believes this is the best piece of business advice. Remember, the customer isn’t necessarily always right. “One of my regrets is that we had a customer who was actually very aggressive with one of our coworkers and made this coworker so upset that they were in tears. I should have just cut ties then and there with that customer. So that would have been an example of following my best business advice and doing the right thing.”

Challenge the Status Quo

“What worked last year is probably not going to work this year, and you've got to be able to recognize whether it's working or not. I think the best companies, the best business people out there are making lots of small minor adjustments and then doubling down on what works.” Chris commented. Start with minor tweaks. Tweak a pricing model, and find a pricing discount, as long as you are ensuring that your company still gets the revenue that it needs to build and enhance your products, why not try? 

Don’t Let Your Data Walk Out The Door…Literally

“Some people have this idea that, hey, I read that this product's going to help me, or if a competitor purchases this, so we're going to purchase it too and stay a step ahead of them, or at least stay up with them. But you've got to be serious about actually using the product and that buy-ins really got to come in from the top level down.” Chris shared that NetSuite is their single source of truth. You cannot let an employee leave the company, and their emails go with them. 

“You're not going to see the benefits right away. The benefits are going to come maybe two months, three, four months down the road when someone needs that piece of information and either that person's not there anymore, or their application, or they send that individual in the company an email saying, hey, did you ever ask the customer this question? and what was the response? But it's right there in Netsuite because they attached that email or they attached that file. So you've got to start using the product before you can really start seeing the benefit. Some customers will stop early because they don't have anyone on their side really enforcing the usage until the adoption increases because they see the benefit.”

Transparency is Key to Successful Change Management

Being transparent is the best change management practice you can have according to Chris. “Our business metrics are all available for anyone on the team to see. So, in short, if we're making a change, that writing has been on the wall for everyone to see for some time and everyone's had some input. While we're not a democracy, we're also not a dictatorship. People have a voice and there's lots of transparency.”

Training Can Make or Break You

Chris shared, “Go through the training, learn how to use it. Stick with it for a few months so you can start to see the benefit. Ensure you get those executives to track their metrics and say, okay, well, we bought 20 licenses. Who are the two users that aren't using this? and why not?” When a business invests in a new idea or technology, the buy-in and execution are imperative to the success and return on investment. Time is money, and sometimes you need to go slow in order to go fast later.

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