Enabling Technologies Corp — New website leads to phenomenal visitor increases

Enabling Technologies Corp, a Microsoft Gold Partner, is a fast-growing global IT consulting practice focused on providing messaging solutions for medium and large enterprises.

The IT firm, the 2009 Microsoft Unified Communications Solutions Award winner, recently turned to Intellicore Design Consulting to design a new website and the results are phenomenal.

The new site recently scored 1,414 visitors between May 1 through July 15, 2009 — and this is 1078% of the total visitors in the entire previous 6 months. Enabling has also captured 144 conversions — Contact Us requests — during the same 45-day period, up from about 12 per year with the old site.

Click here to read the complete case study.

How to calculate the ROI on collaboration software – Building the business case

One of the big questions on social media software solutions is ROI.  The general thought is it’s hard to determine.  I disagree.

Just so we’re on the same page, by collaborative software I’m thinking of feature functionality like wikis, file sharing, and discussions.

What you want for a return on any business investment is either revenue generation or cost savings. 

 

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How social media helps customer service - Up close examples

I just bought a new cell phone – starting with an AT&T Pantech Matrix Pro before switching to an iPhone.  My goal, beyond making phone calls, was to download emails from multiple email accounts, send text messages, and Twitter.

Guess what?  I experienced configuration problems.  No surprise there, what with a new phone and all. Besides, that’s what tech support is for.

In trying to solve my problems, though, I experienced an up close and personal view in how three companies – AT&T, Pantech, and Rackspace Email – use Twitter’s social media channel to their benefit...or in the case of one company, to its detriment.

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Community-enhanced versus traditional websites – what’s the what

One of our Intellicore Design Consulting clients needed help in understanding the value of a community-enhanced website versus their traditional website.  You know, “community” as in social media outreach.

I put together a short PowerPoint presentation to explain what’s the what and thought others might also want in on the whata.

Check it out.

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GroupSwim released version 6.1 - Cool beans!

GroupSwim, developer of social software for business, released a version 6.1 of their nifty collaboration and community software suite last week.  The platform just keeps getting better and better.

Intellicore Design Consulting is also a GroupSwim partner.  For those of you who are new to GroupSwim, Gartner selected the developer as one of its Cool Vendors in Social Software for 2009. 

We likey GroupSwim for a lot of collaborative communication reasons and you can read more here.  Add to that list, the following new functionality is:

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Automate & collaborate a la Intellicore Design Consulting

In response to queries about the solution sets offered by Intellicore Design Consulting, I prepared a video to give folks and up close and personal look.  Our solutions focus on on-demand business automation, collaboration, and eCommerce.

The slide below is taken out of the presentation and gives you the quick answer.  The presentation gives you more information, hosted by moi.

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How communication styles impact collaboration

I love my mother but some conversations with her drives me crazy.  She needs to explain everything is in excruciating detail, even when I get it, or she provides me with such a minutia of detail that I lose sight of her point.  She can take 5 minutes what it takes me 15 seconds to convey.

The reason?  She and I have conflicting communication styles that require us to work hard to adjust for each others.

While that’s a personal example, variations in communication styles directly impact in the business world and on the ease of collaboration within a group.

There are four primary styles of communication.  Different folks have variable names for them but I playfully call the styles Airheads, Firebrands, Waterways, and Earthworks. Let’s explore how each style is conveyed and the stylistic impacts on social media and internal collaboration.

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Should you fire clients? – Salesforce insights

Jeremiah Owyang wrote a recent article about the strategic value of firing problematic clients during a recession.

In particular, the best candidates for termination are those who lead to some sort of net negative that lowers profitability.

Makes sense to me – although I’d look at the situation in any economic environment.  The question then is how you determine who those net-neg clients are.  The answer is to balance anecdotal information with hard analytics.

Let me show you how you can use your Salesforce solution to determine a thumbs up or down on a client.

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