All too often, certain words and catchphrases are overused in business meetings to the point they have become trite and serve little to no real purpose. These words and phrases are used in business blogs, articles, websites, and day-to-day business emails. One such term, "client-focused", is thrown around as a marketing gimmick for professional services firms, but what does it really mean to be client-focused?

Before we get too far, here’s what you need to know:

1. There is a difference between saying you’re a client-focused firm and actually being client-focused.
2. Your firm’s culture dictates the level of service your clients receive. 
3. If your firm isn’t using technology to support your client relationships, you’re already behind.

The Firm-Focused vs. Client-Focused Professional Services Firm

Being truly client-focused depends on how your firm sees their clients. Sure, it is easy to talk the talk, but putting words into action is where things tend to get difficult.

When a firm places an enormous emphasis on the needs of their clients, they are firm-focused. A firm-focused business makes decisions based on the benefits to themselves and not with their client’s best interest in mind. 

On the contrary, truly "client-focused" firms make decisions that are determined by their client’s needs, as they are at the center of all such business decisions. They understand exactly what their clients need which helps to promote a symbiotic relationship between the firm and the clients.

Through the delivery of top-notch service aimed directly at the needs of their clients, a company will see a simultaneous rise in business performance. After all, the services provided were determined with the client and their needs in mind.  

Living the Firm’s Culture

Who are your clients? The answer might surprise you, but in the business world, there are two types: internal and external clients. 

Internal clients are members of your organization that rely on the help of other members to perform their job. These individuals can fall anywhere on the spectrum of your chain of command, from coworkers to upper management and executives. 

On the other hand, external clients are clients in the traditional sense of the term. They are the buyer of the services your firm provides. 

Do you feel you receive great service from the other internal customers within your firm? If you’re not receiving great service from within your own organization, imagine the service your external clients are receiving. Your firm’s culture is a reflected by the employees, and your clients can see if you live by the values you market.

If you’re not satisfied with your internal customer service, start communicating and living the values that define your firm. Your clients will notice the difference.

How Technology is Changing Playing Field  

Keep up with the Joneses - In order to be competitive and effective within an industry, your firm needs to ensure it is using innovative technology that helps promote success. Failing to innovate hinders a firms’ ability to adapt and grow while the "Joneses," aka your competitors, employ the use of industry leading technology enabling them to leave you in the dust. 

With a Client Relationship Management (CRM) software, you can take your company to the next level by keeping the functions of your company in a centralized system. This helps promote a conducive work environment in which the sales and marketing teams, and administration and finance teams can better work together to achieve client-focused results. To learn more about the basics to Deltek Vision CRM, click here.

An additional benefit of using innovative technology and software is that it enables you to access your work on-the-go. Today we have access to everything on our smartphone devices. From banking to entertainment, email to ordering pizza and everything in between, we can do incredible things with just one, single device. Having mobile access to your CRM allows you to -update client information on-the-go and enables other members of your organization access to the most up-to-date information about your clients. 

The Takeaway 

The importance of understanding what it means to be "client-focused" cannot be overstated. Your firm should define itself by its actions and not by catchphrases.

The goal of being client-focused is to nurture client relationships to retain clients and win more work. Remember, your existing clients are the lifeblood of your organization. According to Bain & Company, it cost 6 to 7 time more to acquire a new customer than retain an existing one. It seems smart to try to keep the clients you already have.

Sometimes life’s not fair. We’ve all been told this before, and if you are part of the human resources (HR) department, I’m sure you hear about fairness all the time. But what about you - the HR professional performing manual processes and navigating through a sea of paper work. Why do the accounting and operations departments have sophisticated software to make their lives easier? It’s just another one of life’s injustices, but it doesn’t have to be. That’s right, talent management systems are now being integrated into those awesome Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions your counterparts in other departments are using and are changing the way companies manage their human capital.

So how does managing talent with an ERP benefit your company? Let me explain. The purpose of a talent management system is to attract, retain, and develop a skilled workforce to ensure a company has the talent needed in order to grow in the future. More specifically, these systems are integrated software suites that address the three core areas of managing talent: recruitment, performance tracking, and employee development. Let’s look at how a talent management system can ease headaches for the HR department and can increase workforce engagement. 

Recruitment – Talent Acquisition

Admit it, the recruitment process is a daunting task and selecting the best candidate isn’t easy. One job posting can generate hundreds of responses from candidates with varying levels of skills, and reviewing all those resumes is a time consuming process. Why continue spending precious hours on the tedious recruitment process when a talent management system can reduce these headaches.

Talent management systems can eliminate several of the time consuming and tedious tasks related to the recruitment process. For starters, advertising new positions over multiple job board sites and social media sites happens with just one click, therefore reducing the time to advertise new positions. Speaking of saving time, the most time consuming component of the recruitment process is reviewing numerous cover letters and resumes. Quickly reduce the resume review time by eliminating underqualified candidates using pre-screening questions, and using standardized resume templates to enable an apples-to-apples comparison of qualified candidates.

Performance Tracking – Employee Acknowledgement and Engagement

When a company has an inconsistent appraisal processes, employees have a tendency to lose motivation. It’s human nature to desire to achieve goals and receive recognition for their accomplishments. Even worse, no one likes giving or receiving an unexpected poor review. Put an end to the inconsistent appraisal processes and create a process that motivates employee improvement.

By utilizing a talent management solution, the employee performance tracking program can increase accountability and the entire process is documented within one system, which ensures that the appraisal process is consistent across all departments. Talent management solutions are also designed to make sure the business goals align with employee goals and these individual impacts on the company bottom line are measured. Additionally, goals are tracked throughout the year enabling a multistage approach to the appraisal process so employees are aware their performance throughout the year.     

Employee Development – Succession Planning and Workforce Motivation

There’s nothing more demotivating at work than feeling pigeon-holed into a position. Sure, that recent raise was nice and even the bonus. But let’s get real, no one wants to be doing the same task day-in and day-out for an eternity and employees have aspirations of climbing the corporate ladder. Furthermore, employee development is a critical factor in succession planning. How does senior management identify the skills and talents of individual employees in rapidly growing organizations?  

The employee development component of a talent management system is critical for identifying top performing talent. For starters, these systems allow employees to build individual talent profiles where they add their skills and career goals to ensure alignment with their development plan. These profiles allow managers to create individual development plans based on the employee’s personal goals, strengths and weaknesses. As a result, employee learning and development are tracked within one centralized database where the employee and management can see their progress.  

Conclusion – Managing Talent by the Numbers

How important is it to have an effective talent management system in place? According to Josh Bersin, “Organizations with superior talent management practices generate 26% higher revenue per employee, 40% lower turnover among high potential employees and 29% higher employee engagement than their peers.” (Bersin by Deloitte 2013) Based on these stats, it only seems fair for HR to have a sophisticated ERP system. 

Full Sail Partners' VP of Sales and Marketing, Sarah Gonnella, spoke with Cathy Cushing, Office Manager; Malcolm Whyte, Executive Vice President; and Saul Macias, Vice President of Professional Services from SharedHR to discuss the human resources consulting services they provide to small- to medium-sized business and how having a project-based ERP system is critical to their success. 

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SharedHR is an experienced management consulting and human resource services firm. They believe the essence of an organization’s success rests with attracting, developing, and retaining the right talent. SharedHR takes the time to learn about your company and its culture in order to provide customized, service-orient- ed support to foster your success. SharedHR can supplement your payroll, benefits, and HR team or fully outsource your HR function. The SharedHR methodology streamlines your administrative processes using our cloud-based HR platform. Their approach offers flexible solutions to match the needs of your small to mid-sized business. They pair each client with a dedicated and experienced associate who offers access to the combined knowledge and resources of our entire knowledge base and senior team. SharedHR leverages paperless, cloud-based technology to integrate and optimize your HR and administrative processes so you can focus on high-value business priorities. 

The digital age has revolutionized every aspect of our lives. If you want to know something, simply search for the answer on the internet. Email and social media are now prevalent ways to communicate, and are becoming increasingly effective marketing channels. This revolution has changed how we conduct business. More importantly, the way we market our business evolves daily and has created a new role called the marketing technologist. 

The Impact of More Data

A Forrester Research study found that 96% of CMOs surveyed agreed that the pace of change in technology and marketing will continue to accelerate. As a result, firms cannot rely on mass marketing techniques that provide little return on investment. A wealth of information about your prospects and their level of interest is readily available with the right tools and knowledge. This modern marketing world is becoming more strategic and performance-driven. So with the rise of performance-driven marketing, marketing decisions are based on extremely accurate data. This new era of marketing has given birth to a new breed of marketing professionals known as marketing technologist.

What is Required of a Marketing Technologist?

A marketing technologist is a unique individual that is characterized as analytic and creative. They have a background that is a blend between information technology and marketing. Furthermore, a marketing technologist is the secret to staying ahead the technology curve and your competition. They know how to analyze the data collected from marketing campaigns to gain a deeper understanding of your customers. In fact, they can use this data to determine the level of interest of a potential lead to create a nurturing campaign that guides the lead through the business development process. In addition to creating content and evaluating campaign performance, marketing technologist are tech savvy and understand how new marketing technologies work. This increased ability to collect accurate data in near real-time is the direct result of the digital age and the advent of new technologies.

Why the Growing Demand of the Marketing Technologist

The marketing technology software industry is booming. International Data Corporation (IDC) recently reported that organizations worldwide will spend over $130 billion on software over the next five years for marketing departments alone. Today, having a website and a few social media accounts is the norm for business. Now there is a never ending sea of content management and marketing automation platforms that allows for all types of new creative ways to engage customers. More importantly, these platforms can be integrated with internal CRM solutions to increase marketing effectiveness by:

• Enabling lead nurturing before the sales team gets involved in the sales process.
• Gathering data about potential leads by tracking their web activities, browsing habits, and responses to marketing efforts.
• Prioritizing leads by scoring them based on their recorded activities and recognizing when a lead is ready to be engaged by the sales team.

As more technologies enter the marketplace, the demand for marketing technologist will grow.

The Future of the Marketing Technologist

Even though SHRM, the leading organization for human resources professionals, does not recognize “Marketing Technologist” as a job title, there are job postings on employment websites with similar job descriptions across the country. According to a recent study by Gartner analyst Laura McLellan, CMOs will be spend more on information technology than their counterpart CIOs by 2017. Marketing departments are spending more on technology than information technology departments - that is saying a lot about the future of marketing and is indicative of the future growth of the marketing technologist role. As companies invest more into their marketing technology, having a qualified individuals will be a requirement.

A current trend in many organizations is to closely align the marketing and technology departments to work together as a team. Not because they do not want to hire a marketing technologist, but rather the result of having a limited amount of people to choose from with experience in both marketing and information technology. The title of a recent article posted on Forbes, “The Rise of the Unicorns – Why Marketing Technologists will Rule Modern Marketing” supports this assertion and supports the real growth in the marketing technologist role.