Our Education & Outreach Manager, Amin Rahmani, was recently a guest on the TechnologyAdvice Expert Interview Series to share his insight on data sharing. The TA Expert Interview Series is a podcast hosted by Clark Buckner that explores a variety of business and technology landscapes through conversations with industry leaders.
During the interview, Clark and Amin discuss data sharing and improving business relationships.
https://soundcloud.com/ta-expert-interviews/marketcircle-daylite-and-billings-pro
TechnologyAdvice: What do you think are some of the biggest specific challenges one and a half to fifteen people face with their CRM software, and how they are able to use that within their business?
Amin: One of the things that I hear often when I speak to people at the Apple Stores (or other places where we might meet potential customers) is that they are working on their own. If I ask them, “How do you track things now?” I hear a lot of, “Well, it’s all in my head.”
And that works fine when you’re one person. Where it starts to break down is when you add an assistant or a couple of people, or maybe several business partners who want to get together and start something. Because then, “It’s all in my head,” doesn’t help anyone but that person.
And so one of the challenges they have is with sharing data. How do we all stay on the same page? How do we all make sure that we are updating the same records? That we’re capturing history in the same place? And most of all— that we’re adding value to the business.
Because at the end of the day, a business that doesn’t show a rich customer history— a definition of all the relationships and connections that you’ve built in that business, a place where all the commitments that you’ve made to your customers is being tracked— without those things, there’s no surface value to the business. And this is one of the reasons why our product like Daylite is a good fit, because it allows all those things to happen. All that sharing is possible.
TA: What role do relationships in personal or business life play in a small businesses? Maybe someone in the design industry or focused on some sort of creative industry. What does the value of relationships look like to those types of customers that you have?
Amin: It’s absolutely critical. And it’s actually more critical in some of the industries that are fastest growing for us, like realtors. We got a lot of real estate agents using Daylite. We’ve got recruiting. We’ve got law, which is probably one of our biggest clients; which is interesting because we don’t necessarily have a specific application, called a Case Manager or Practice Manager. And yet these industries are finding us and realizing that they can customize the application to suit their business process.
So to answer your question, the value of relationships in any business: such as, who referred me, who have we done the most work with in the past, what opportunities out there for me to forge new relationships, and what are the steps I took in order to make that introduction happen and to nurture that relationship? All of these things are things that can be defined and tracked and reported on in Daylite. And that’s really why one of its key focuses are relationships, and the other side of that being commitments.
Listen to the entire show above in order to hear our full conversation, or download the show to listen later. You can subscribe to the TA Expert Interview Series via Soundcloud, in order to get alerts about new episodes.
This podcast was created and published by TechnologyAdvice. Interview conducted by Clark Buckner.
