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Make Your Networking Sustainable

By Tim Wieringa

Doing business in Shanghai is very focused on networking. That's also the reason why you're using this web service. So, we all collect a lot of name cards and try to keep in touch with the contacts we collect every day. But how are you doing this? With a name card book? In your e-mail application? And how do you update your colleagues with the activities within your business network?

In this field, many small organisations are struggling. They're losing out on efficiency due to ill-designed communication channels. Here are my suggestions on how to improve work efficiency:

Store your customer data in a central location
Switch from communication to collaboration
Use cost-effective web applications
Think about all your collaboration needs
Build solutions around the users

Yes, We Are Collaborating

Information about the people you meet during networking is essential to make networking successful. How can you work with this data efficiently?

The important thing when dealing with business data is that we are not alone. We have colleagues, business partners, and customers with whom we exchange information. Don't hide your information on paper or in e-mails. Move this data to a central location.

Store all business information on a central platform to allow instant sharing

Sharing is a good start, though not enough for working efficiently with that network you are creating. Potential customer information is not a static thing limited to an address and phone number. Many more details will be collected and results from phone calls and meetings should be added to this information. Therefore...

Collaborate instead of just communicating to achieve a better common result.

The Essentials of Collaboration

Many companies still rely heavily on e-mail and file storage. E-mail storage has the huge disadvantage of limited sharing capabilities. Organising files in a network drive itself is a first step to sharing. But files are only one aspect of collaboration and the association to e-mails, contacts, tasks gets lost. If you want to start collaborating with your team members it is essential that all have access to the same centralised information. The easiest way to achieve this is using a dedicated application with specific functions.

Customer Relationship Management

After collecting all these name cards during your networking you should organise these contacts in a central application - normally, these are called CRM tools. The basic functions are:

central collection of customer data
gathering of client-related activities like meetings, e-mails, phone calls; planning of tasks related to companies & individuals
managed sharing of this data among colleagues & partners

These functions let you cope with the major problems I have experienced talking to companies:
a) leaving employees disappear with their client contacts.
b) client-related activities are not well managed.

Therefore, on the one hand CRM tools allow you to quickly store and share the contacts you are collecting during networking, while on the other hand these applications allow you to plan and maintain the relationships in your network.

Web Application Introduction

What kind of tool is suitable to manage your contacts? I suggest using a web application which is a cost-effective solution, especially for small companies. These CRM tools are available on the internet upon registration only and provide the following advantages:

no investment in software licenses and hardware
pay for the effective usage
no server maintenance
improved security regarding data loss and data access

Some providers of CRM applications on the web are 37signals , Zoho and Salesforce.com - to name just a few. These applications allow you to start immediately with a new solution providing central storage of info and ubiquitous access for collaboration.

Making Your Solution Successful

Now, you are convinced you need a new solution to start managing your network. What are the important things to observe?

First, don't try to build a custom system. 95% of what you need is already thought of and available for use. Off-the-shelf applications normally have better functionality and are more affordable than custom-built solutions as they supply to a large user-base.

The second important point is preparation. Think about your entire needs on sharing and collaboration and plan the design of the solution you want to achieve. Don't forget to involve the power users.

Once you have your ideal solution you need to make sure your people are using it. That is actually the main point where your investment will finally pay off! Don’t forget that any solution should primarily benefit the users.

I hope I've offered you a short but good insight on making your networking activities pay off. I know it takes a huge effort to go out there and meet all these new people. Therefore don't forget to share and manage these contacts in order to make your business grow!

About the Author

Tim Wieringa is the person behind Zurigo On-demand Consulting. He has been working for 7 years in the fields of workflow management, online collaboration, customer channel management, and CRM. Due to his versatile experience he is a specialist in linking management with the IT world.

Contact Details: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ; +86 138 1897 4099; www.on-demand.cn

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