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. 

Sage Summit has always been a huge event for our company, and this year's event was no different!

Check out this video for some behind the scenes footage and a recap of Sage Summit 2017 in Atlanta.

Sage Summit 2017 was one for the books!

The CIMcloud team hit the road last week for Sage Summit 2017 in Atlanta and, needless to say, it was an awesome couple of days. Sage Summit has always been a great chance to reconvene with some of our longtime customers and partners, but it's also a great opportunity to meet new people and share ideas. Between all the valuable information learned at the information sessions, and idea sharing throughout the days and nights, Sage Summit proved why it's a can't miss event each and every year.

Empowering customers and employees with tools can be an invaluable asset for your business, enabling more effective and efficient customer interactions. An E-Commerce presence and CRM solutions are just two examples of the vast amount of “tools” designed to improve the way customers and companies interact, but what is really needed for these tools to be valuable: DATA.

Whether it’s the data used to power the application, or the resulting information from usage, these tools are only as valuable as the information displayed to and resulting from users. So whether it’s due to a poor integration or re-keying errors, if the applications used by your employees and customers display inaccurate data, what are they really accomplishing?

Every company uses CRM, right? Salesforce is everywhere these days, and the promise of CRM is great: providing data and tools for increased sales rep visibility to drive sales and customer relationships.

But does CRM deliver on that promise?