Earlier this month, Pat Scherz and I traveled to Portland, Oregon as sponsors of Connections 2018, the Bennett/Porter & Associates, Inc. user conference. The educational event was celebratory as well: this past February, Bennett/Porter celebrated 30 years in business – and it was made clear to us last week that the group has mastered the components of an excellent conference!

April proved to be a fantastic month for connecting with our partners! With two events the same week, we were able to answer questions about CIMcloud in person, and we of course left time for fun as well. 

We are pleased to introduce the first episode of our new podcast: CIMcast - The B2B Software Podcast. This episode covers what we call "the B2B dilemma", which addresses the fractured state of software solutions available to SMB companies that work in the B2B space.

On October 25^th, Vrakas/Blum Computer Consulting, Inc. (VBCC) held their 2017 User Conference in Waukesha WI. CIMcloud had a wonderful time taking part as a sponsor. Dinner the night before, informative sessions, lunch with customers, and a fun happy hour and raffle provided ample opportunities for us to network with VBCC employees, Sage representatives, fellow sponsors, and of course attendees.  

Attention CIMcloud (and Website Pipeline) site owners! We’ve got a security update in the works that we wanted to share, and more importantly, describe how it could impact your website.

In a nutshell, the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI-SSC) recently released FAQs ahead of changes to their data security standards. Among their recommendations, the Security Council heavily encouraged hosting providers to upgrade their Transport Layer Security (TLS) as soon as possible.

CIMcloud CEO, Brian Seidel, joined the Enterprise Software Podcast as their guest for this week's episode titled "Citizenship and CIMcloud". The Enterprise Software Podcast is hosted by our good friends Darcy Boerio (DAB Partners), Bob McAdam (Dynamic Communities) and Todd McDaniel (Dynavistics), giving their audience an opportunity to hear valuable insights and information on various Enterprise Software topics.

We've all been in a situation where you are placing an order and think to yourself, "I'm not sure they're going to get my order right". Regardless of industry, customers now have more leverage than ever due to the amount of competition in the market and therefore won't settle for subpar experiences. When you mess up a customer order, or even leave them thinking you did, their perception of your organization will be changed and you may have lost a customer for life. 

Businesses, and particularly ones that sell B2B, need to do everything in their power to proactively remove any doubt customers may have about their ability to deliver on expectations. An easy way to accomplish this is to offer self-service alternatives (like a Customer Portal) that empower customers to order whenever they want and places responsibility for the actual input of the order in their hands, not your employees. Giving customers the ability to order online can be a massive differentiator for your organization and goes a long way towards protecting your business from the pitfalls of unavoidable human errors. 

Maintaining long-term relationships with customers is a challenge for B2B companies that has and always will exist, regardless of who your customers are or what you sell to them. 

Technological advances have allowed the emergence of solutions like Customer Relationship Management (CRM), designed to provide employees with a tool to more efficiently keep and grow these relationships. While traditional CRM software has removed the need to track customer information on handwritten notes, it still falls short of the goal to "maintain and perfect customer relationships" for one key reason: It lacks integration with customer-specific data sources, like your ERP accounting system and other business applications. 

Daniel Carton has been part of the CIMcloud team for over a year, serving as an intern before coming on full time in January of 2017. Before joining the team, Daniel worked in a software lab at the University of South Carolina while he was working on his undergraduate and graduate degrees. 

As a member of the CIMcloud Small Development Team, Daniel works with sites that are not yet live to the public doing site enhancements. He spends a large part of his days working on custom development and code base alterations, doing everything from rearranging site elements to a completely new implementation. Daniel brings a high level of expertise and has already accomplished a lot in his various roles here, and is a survivor of the the infamous Intern Nerf Assault.