…Clintelica is National Champion at the 2012/2013 European Business Awards.

Our business idea, which revolves around improving sales, recruiting and the quality of feedback, was filed in may 2012 under the UKTI Award for Innovation Category of the European Business Awards, the competition which has been promoting “success, innovation and ethics” in the European Business Community since 2007.

Clintelica’s Entry form highlighted the company’s business achievements, the key strategies, tactics & the key innovations which make us unique in a very competitive environment such as cloud technology, and a select number of judges, selected based on their business experience, have considered us to be National Champion in Sweden.

Next…

…we will go on to compete with other successful organizations also selected as National Champions across Europe. Judges will now meet in London between 3 and 7 December 2012 to deliberate and determine which of the National Champions will be selected as a recipient for the prestigious Ruban d’Honneur. Category winners will be announced on Thursday, January 10, 2013.

Thanks to the European Business Awards for creating a fresh and innovative business competition and, most of all, congratulations to the Clintelica team!

Our entry video for the Awards is here:

Well, imagine your company has just landed Volvo as a client and that the service you’re selling to them is suitable for other car manufacturers. At this point, if your sales people haven’t already made a list of related prospects yet, Clintelica’s system will analyze Volvo from a Twin Client perspective and will act as a special kind of watchlist, delivering you a list of results consisting of similar companies to Volvo from the following perspectives: industry type, activity, geographical region. These results are, in fact, hot leads, because you can access them through the company’s network of contacts.

In short, our application now helps users identify in their company network contacts prospects with a high probability to become clients. It’s like having a sales assistant with a huge memory, a huge database, huge search parameters, instant response time and no coffee break lag.

Basically, you will now have the most complete list of prospects to follow up on and you will never miss an opportunity. More than this, the Twin Client Feature comes with a cleaning functionality for the companies related to contacts from the company network. This means the system cleans company names and details by verifying all information with the Official National Database.

For the time being, this is only available for companies from Sweden and Romania and it can be done in two steps:

a. an initial automatic cleaning of all companies, replacing the company names retrieved from Social Networks with the correct officially registered company names supplied by the Registry of Commerce.

b. a label system which allows users to make the appropriate changes in case the match between the Registry of Commerce information and the names already stored in the system is not secure enough.

Breaking news: Clintelica has just won Logica’s Swedish Innovation Contest!

It’s true, we have won Innovation prizes before and we really hope to win many more in the months to come, but coming first in Logica’s Swedish Contest, one of the rounds of Logica’s Global Innovation Venture Partner Programme, is the kind of tipping point milestone for the history books.

Who is Logica?

Logica is a business and technology service company which has just been acquired by CGI. Together they have more than 72.000 employees in 40 countries. Logica provides business consulting, systems integration and outsourcing to clients around the world, and it finds ways to create value for clients by integrating people, businesses and technology.

What is the Global Innovation Venture Programme?

In a nutshell, the GIVP is Logica’s search for the business with the most innovative products and solution. For the fifth year in a row, Logica has opened its doors to companies from UK, France, Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Portugal, India, Norway, Spain, Morocco, in order to partner with the world’s most forward thinking enterprises.  It just so happens that in 2012, Clintelica ended up in the spotlight and won the first prize in Sweden. The nominated companies have been judged by a Logica panel of experts. The judges have looked for the “originality of the product, the potential of the idea and whether it is aligned to Logica’s client needs”.

Why is this award a tipping point in Clintelica’s life?

Because of the size and scope of the programme. For Clintelica, this means the realization of a very important strategic partnership and the open road to the big competition in London, on September 11. We will now be able to access a wider audience through Logica’s global sales resources, go-to-market support and we will have opportunities to engage with client organizations where appropriate. More than this, Clintelica will most likely become a Logica suggested solution, added to its Portfolio Catalogue. In the words of Andrei Postoaca, CEO @ Clintelica:

We are very proud to have won this year’s competition and we see tremendous potential working with Logica in the future to change the way marketing is done today. I am confident that with Logica’s technical excellence and our unique way to generate leads we will be able to change for the better the way companies around the world approach CRM systems. 

As for Logica, the partnership with Clintelica will add the most innovative and efficient sales increase solutions to an already well proven technology package concerning cost efficiency. This is what Johan Tullberg, VP of Business Development at Logica Sweden, had to say:

The competition is an important component to find new partners who are as committed to innovation as we are. This year we have been able to expand the number of participating countries, which testifies to the success of the competition. That’s why it is very exciting for us to announce Clintelica as this year’s winner, with their innovative service for lead generation. It will be a very strong Swedish contribution to the international finals in London, come September 11. 

For more information on this year’s competition, click here.

It was inevitable, really.

Just like CRM shifted from desktop applications to cloud a few years back, following an online trend which opened doors for huge growth in the next years, CRM analysts are now following the online in delivering their content on videos rather than text, images, infographics or presentations.

We’ve just stumbled upon CRMSoftware.TV, a comprehensive platform which brings in one place all the CRM software-related videos. Basically, here you can find out what CRM is all about, what are the differences between a sales force automation system and a full Customer Relationship Management software and, best of all, you can get up-to-date with most relevant CRM solutions available and decide which one suits your needs best, based on user friendly reviews.

Be sure to browse through all sections of the website, if you’re into CRM then it will give you a strong feeling you’re finally on the right tube. We’ve been there and we’ve also left our mark. See it here.

So, what are the best ways to connect with people outside your own network?

1. The Cold Calling Approach

Make up a list of prospects, make some research, find out who are the decision makers, make some more research and find out their contact details, decide wether you want to reach them through e-mail or phone, then start cold calling.

Efficiency: Very Low

2. The Business Meeting Type Approach

Make up a list of prospects, make some research on which business groups better in your city fit your business expectations, find out how much you have to pay to get in and then join the group and start networking in person. Some say it helps if you’ve ever participated in any kind of AA meeting beforehand, as the usual intro is: “Hi, my name is Dave and I sell biscuits. Today I’m interested in connecting with key buyers in supermarkets.”

Efficiency: Higher than cold calling, but time consuming

3. The Social Networking Approach

Make up your list of prospects, go online and use existing and successful social networks to start interacting.

Basically, all social networks these days revolve around the individual an his own network, and any kind of effort and time you put in socializing online can pay off, eventually. You just have to do it wisely and pursue your goal. For example, you could start by reading this kind of advice (good find by Robert Clay at Marketing Wisdom).

Alternatively, you could try our way:

4. The Clintelica Way

As opposed to the above, we:

- give sales people the chance to avoid cold calling and reach prospects through connections

- save time by giving sales people the opportunity to search though a huge database of people and create watchlists for people they want to reach

- shift the social perspective from the individual to the power of a company’s social capital

So:

a) make a list of prospects

b) set up a free account on Clintelica

c) download your company’s overall e-mail and social networking contacts & upload your prospect list

d) let the Predictive CRM system work it’s magic, crosscheck your contact database & prospect list for connections, follow up on all resulting leads and close deals through networking!

Clintelica uses patented innovative ideas to help companies get new clients through intelligent networking and Predictive CRM, manage & improve existing clients through relevant CRM solutions and improve existing business relationships through instant client feedback.

Today, we have released a Freemium version of our application, which gives entrepreneurs the opportunity to use all of our innovative features for free, for up to 3 users per company. More than this, we also offer a complete database of all companies in Sweden and Romania, as part of the CRM functionality. 

Just register on www.crm.clintelica.se and tell us what you think!

We’ve seen the efficiency of sales calls increasing exponentially, we’ve seen companies using the Feedback Module going for the Networking Module as well, and we’ve also seen our clients enjoying the powerful benefits of the Twin Client Analysis feature which generates new leads based on the existing clients.

Well, now we’ve gone a step further for our clients and integrated in the CRM access to the full list of companies from Sweden (1,4 million companies) and from Romania (610.000 companies).

Basically, this means that the Twin Client Analysis will be able to generate more relevant leads and more relevant connections to those prospect clients.

Stay tuned for more news about future developments.

Obviously, this comes as very exciting news for the whole Clintelica team, who has been working hard on all fronts to ensure the application is not only a fully functional, useful and productive tool for companies all over the world, but also unique.

The decision made by the US Patent and Trademark Office comes as confirmation that the ideas behind our contact management application are proper innovations. Basically, the USPTO has responded positively to our list of claims for patent:

- an application for managing and sharing electronic contacts (coming from external social networks, address book of e-mail accounts, mobile phones, business applications or other contact databases) of users of a group

- the processes of gathering, merging and sharing the contacts of users of a group

- the processes of searching and keeping active searches on specific terms in relation to these contacts

Of course, this gives us fuel to work on further developments to the application, which at this moment helps businesses all over the world not only to increase sales by selling through the innovative (and now patented) networking module, but also manage clients through Predictive CRM and keep clients happy through a Feedback Management System.

Read more about how Clintelica’s Networking Module can change Sales and Recruiting in a series of articles on this blog here.

It’s always good when you start the day with such news.

The European Business Awards has been promoting “success, innovation and ethics” in the European Business Community since 2007. Engaging with more than 15.000 organizations in over 30 countries in 2011 alone, opening a wide range of awards categories and inviting a select number of judges to participate based on their experience, business acumen and expertise, have all secured the EBA a top spot in the minds of European companies seeking recognition.

I have to say we are all excited to have gone in the next phase of the race for an European Business Award. As we speak, Clintelica is a National Finalist in the UKTI Award for Innovation category, which confirms that we are on the right track to changing sales, recruiting and networking for the years to come.

Stay tuned for more news on Clintelica’s participation at the European Business Awards and read more about the other Awards we’ve already won.

Click here for the complete list of finalists.

Far from being just a concept in management books, employee engagement is essential to a company’s productivity. There are extensive studies showing that organizations with high employee engagement significantly increase their odds of above-average performance across their businesses. Companies that understand and implement employee engagement as a core strategy are those companies whose employees will be more profitable, more customer-focused, more motivated to succeed and less likely to leave the organization.

Real life, though, is not that poetic. According to a recent survey on Employee Engagement in the US Workforce from Modern Survey‘, it seems that only 10% of US employees feel they are fully engaged in the company they work for. 24% are “moderately engaged”, 30% feel they are “disengaged” and a staggering 37% are “under engaged”.

Now, understanding that all effort to keep company staff satisfied increases productivity is the first logical step in engaging employees. The second one is to figure out how to do it and where to act. Measuring the engagement level in any organization is complicated business, but spending a couple of hours immersed in online studies can reveal several words that pop up as drivers in engagement, so it shouldn’t be that complicated to start working on the process. Why then, it happens that we have these catastrophic results? Why are, in fact, companies around the world struggling with this particular subject?

Well, taking a step back and looking at the big picture might shed some light and show all of us that in order for the engagement to work, there are two important things that need to happen:

1. First of all, companies have to make the first step.

2. Second, employees need to respond.

Now, the reason why we’re posting about employee engagement on the blog of a CRM company is because we believe things are so inextricably linked that it would be foolish of companies to lose sight of this.

Usually, companies only approach employee engagement in that they try to make the employee feel good about his particular job. Well, we feel the time has come to integrate the employee in the bigger goals of the company, be it sales, recruitment or whatever else. In the social networking world where CRM is becoming big business, employee networks are becoming more and more valuable and relevant to companies.

As long as privacy issues are addressed (as we’ve already explained here) companies and employees stand to benefit from understanding the networks that link their mutual interests.

What if…

…when hiring new employees, companies could have a system to analyze a candidate’s personal network of contacts and understand which position would be better suited for each candidate?

…there was a way to understand who knows who within the network of all employees?

…the first level of employee engagement measurement would be to understand how many employees share their networks visible or invisible (as explained here) with other colleagues, for the mutual benefit of all parties involved?

…when targeting a potential client, companies could search within the overall network of employees for connections at the respective company and what if the sales people could benefit from going into the meeting referred by a colleague, in order to avoid useless, inefficient cold calls?

…when closing a deal made through such a referral, the employee would also receive an incentive?

…when hiring new employees, HR departments would first of all look for candidates within the friends of actual employees, in order to find more relevant data and recommendations?

…when successfully finishing a hiring process done through an employee connection, the employee would receive a week-end trip to Paris, as an incentive?

These are scenarios happening now in Clintelica. As soon as companies understand that employees are social not only in their personal lives, but also at work, the engagement process will rocket to a whole new dimension. And CEO’s all over the world will elegantly avoid the drama of being told “you could have had my network for free”.

Photo: Shutterstock

For those that are not familiar with the concept, Vilfred Pareto observed in 1906 that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population. This lead him to extrapolate this to his well known principle, or his “law of the vital few”, or “the principle of factor sparsity”, that roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. This, in turn, opened the way for several other deep thinkers to extrapolate the principle to almost any domain, including business.

Well, Pareto was certainly right in his day, as his observation regarding land ownership in Italy can easily be verified. Other people might also have been right about applying this principle to business in the 40′s and concentrating their efforts in primarily keeping satisfied the 20% of their customers who brought in 80% of the business.

But in today’s business environment, this kind of approach is the best way to dig a company’s grave.

In a world of innovation, fast changing technology, rapidly shifting trends, companies cannot afford to focus only on the clients it considers today’s 20%, simply because in 5 years, they might all be gone. More than this, clients that will be important in 5 years from now can easily surface from the 80% not so important today. Just look at Instagram, the company started in 2010, which sold 2 years and 13 employees later for $1 billion.

So remember – whatever you do, keep all your clients happy and check out our feedback management solutions. It’s the least you can do.