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A New Mindset for SMBs

Small businesses face tough choices. Often faced with limited resources, companies with small workforces used to trail in CRM deployments. That doesn’t seem to be the case today. Affordable and accessible technologies have made it possible for SMBs to grow their businesses. But for SMBs to jump in the race, also requires a change of mindset. Take Altman Lighting, for example. The 52-year-old family owned and operated commercial lighting with 140 full-time employees and 400 customer accounts worldwide had no system in place to funnel leads or integrate the customer database until recently. With the help of Exact Software, Altman employees log every customer communication—whether it is fax, email, phone—into an interface. Now communications are clear and hot prospects don’t get passed over. I spoke to Altman’s Assistant General Manager Roger Pujol last week who explained that the corporate mindset had to first change before the company deployed any technology. “The old way things got done was by saying ‘who do I go to to get something done? What is it that I want done?’ With the use of workflows, if someone needs something done, there’s a specific task for that and they just enter the task,” he said. Stowe Mountain Resort’s corporate mindset also changed when it embarked on a $100 million revitalization last year. The organization realized that the culture had to change along with the physical aspects. As a result, Stowe started taking the pulse of its visitors to find out what they actually wanted in a resort—essentially to create a total ski experience. Stowe has been making changes based on the new customer insight. Stowe and Altman are just two examples of SMBs changing their cultural mindsets of how they approach customer strategies. They’re also proof that technology, together with strategy, is the key to ensuring a small businesses can operate with more efficiency and create room to grow.