How to know when you're on a winner

Written by Jon Lonergan


How to know when you're on a winner with sales managemnt changes

The catchword today for business is flexibility.

With changes in suppliers, customers, andrepparttar processes connecting them altering almost daily (or so it seems)repparttar 149474 future clearly belongs torepparttar 149475 organisations which can adjust to change quickly and effectively.

The good news for Call Centres is that, unlike more traditional sales organisations,repparttar 149476 modern Call Centre hasrepparttar 149477 equipment in place to measure this easily.

Instead of doing a sales training course and then waiting some weeks or months before you can reasonably evaluaterepparttar 149478 effectiveness ofrepparttar 149479 course,repparttar 149480 Call Centre can institute any change regarding CRMs and measure its effect on sales on a frequent, regular basis.

Inrepparttar 149481 traditional face-to-face small-scale operation,repparttar 149482 manager can makerepparttar 149483 change but not be sure of its effectiveness or whetherrepparttar 149484 change is due torepparttar 149485 changes instituted as things change anyway.

How do you knowrepparttar 149486 improvement in sales is due torepparttar 149487 new processes or due to something else? Or what if it is successful - how long does it last?

And what does this mean in practice?

At CustomCall (www.customcall.com.au), in line with its company Core Value of Continuous Innovation, this issue was dealt with inrepparttar 149488 following way: 6 CRMs from 4 different teams were brought together for 2 hrs for a workshop to improve their sales. Thenrepparttar 149489 sales conversion rates were measured over a one month, two month and three month period. These results were compared with their results for one two and three months precedingrepparttar 149490 workshop. This produced an improvement of one month + 11.43%

two months +22.04% three months +22.66%

Looks good but maybe everyone else changed too without any training.

Sorepparttar 149491 same comparison was done withrepparttar 149492 whole campaign. Comparing Campaign After-workshop-date to Before-workshop-date sales gaverepparttar 149493 figures one month -1.37% two months +05.80% three months +05.71%

What is the CMMI?

Written by Francis Dion


WHAT IS THE CMMI?

The CMMI is a model for improving and appraisingrepparttar performance of development organizations. It stands for "Capability Maturity Model Integration". It is published and developed byrepparttar 149270 Software Engineering Institute in Pittsburgh, PA.

The CMM (the original version ofrepparttar 149271 CMMI) was originally commissioned byrepparttar 149272 American Department of Defense to help them qualify software vendors' capabilities. From there it quickly evolved into a powerful tool to guide process improvement initiatives, not only for Software Development but for many related fields such as Systems Engineering, Product Acquisition, Team Management, Research and Development, etc.

Todayrepparttar 149273 CMMI is used aroundrepparttar 149274 world in military, commercial and government organizations. It has been shown to reducerepparttar 149275 risks associated with development projects, increase efficiency and improverepparttar 149276 overall quality of products and deliverables. Many civil industries such as transportation and telecommunications are making it a requirement for submissions to large tenders. Countries such as India and China are also using it to position themselves as dependable, trustworthy providers of world class outsourcing services.

The CMMI is best known for its five levels of organizational maturity (see figure below). Each level represents a coherent set of best practices organizations are expected to implement as they become better at what they do.

Level 1: Initial (Majority of Organizations) Level 2: Managed Process Level 3: Defined Process Level 4: Quantatively Managed Process Level 5: Optimizing Process (less than 5% of Organizations)

To each maturity level are associated a number of related process areas. The process areas can be viewed as very detailed checklists of what goals need to be achieved, what activities performed, and what artifact created and maintained to satisfyrepparttar 149277 requirements for a specific part ofrepparttar 149278 overall development process. The following listsrepparttar 149279 CMMI process areas organized by maturity level. (Source: CMMI version 1.1 SW/SE/IPPD Staged Representation )

Maturity Level 1: No process area associated withrepparttar 149280 maturity level 1

Maturity Level 2: Requirements Management Project Planning Project Monitoring and Control Supplier Agreement Management Measurements and Analysis Process and Product Quality Assurance Configuration Management

Maturity Level 3: Requirements Development Technical Solution Verification Validation Product Integration Organizational Process Focus Organizational Process Definition Organizational Training Integrated Project Management for IPPD Integrated Supplier Management Risk Management Decision Analysis and Resolution Integrated Teaming Organizational Environment for Integration

Maturity Level 4: Quantitative Project Management Organizational Process Performance

Maturity Level 5: Causal Analysis and Resolution Organizational Innovation and Deployment

The CMMI also include Generic Goals and Generic Practices. These model elements coverrepparttar 149281 organization's ability to perform, manage, share, measure and improve its processes.

A new feature ofrepparttar 149282 CMMI (as opposed torepparttar 149283 original CMM) isrepparttar 149284 ability to choose between two representations ofrepparttar 149285 model: Staged or Continuous. Generally speaking,repparttar 149286 Staged representation is better suited to focusrepparttar 149287 organization towards tangible yet high level goals, whilerepparttar 149288 Continuous representation allows forrepparttar 149289 precise customization of a process improvement program or appraisal to better meet an organization's specific requirements.

BENEFITS Here are some ofrepparttar 149290 major benefits you can achieve by using repparttar 149291 CMMI in your organization:

1. KNOWING YOUR TRADE Are you sure everybody involved in your projects knows exactly what their job is and how it relates with what everyone else is doing? Just go aroundrepparttar 149292 office and ask these simple questions…

… Torepparttar 149293 project managers: a. What isrepparttar 149294 difference between a plan and a schedule? b. What do you record aboutrepparttar 149295 estimates that are being made? c. Do you estimate size as well as effort when doing your planning? Do you monitor both attributes duringrepparttar 149296 life ofrepparttar 149297 project?

… Torepparttar 149298 configuration managers: a. What is a baseline? b. What isrepparttar 149299 purpose of a configuration audit? c. Who authorizes changes torepparttar 149300 configuration units?

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