Welcome to the first post for the Consona CRM Every Experience Counts blog. I’ll be your host and I’m looking forward to making this a valuable experience for all of us. I’ll start by telling you a little bit about myself and then cover the plan for the topics that I intend to include in the blog over the next year or so. I’ll finish up with a preview of the first topic which is: Customer Intimacy.

I work for Consona Corporation as the General Manager of the Consona CRM division. I live in the headquarters city for Consona, Indianapolis, Indiana and have two sons (22 and 18 years old). My older son is working on obtaining a masters degree at Duke University’s Divinity School (go Blue Devils!). My younger son is a senior in high school and will likely attend college next year with a major in music recording engineering. If you’re into metal music, you can check out his band here: http://www.myspace.com/darkprocessionor for ambient music fans his other band: http://www.myspace.com/avling. I’m not at all musically inclined, so in my spare time, I like to workout, read and play golf.

I started my career as a programmer analyst and then project manager in the information systems department at Texas Instruments. My career has benefited greatly from my early years at TI because of the experience that I gained from both developing new systems and implementing them across a variety of businesses that included semiconductors, computers and printers, consumer products, industrial automation products and defense products. After several years in the IS department, I was looking to take advantage of my MBA from Southern Methodist University by moving to a software products company in a sales and marketing role. As it turned out, around this time TI had started a software division focused on providing computer aided software engineering development tool products and I transferred to that division in a sales role. I experienced a great ride in sales and sales management with the TI software division as it doubled in revenue each of its first five years and eventually reached $250M. My favorite position at TI was the last one that I had as the general manager of a new business unit that I developed the business plan for, obtained funding for, and was just successfully getting off the ground when the software division was sold to Sterling Software. Sterling shut down all of the new initiatives TI had and asked me to join them as VP of sales and services for North America in the Application Management division. My experience with acquisitions at Sterling allowed me to gain further valuable experience in strategy development, market analysis and product planning. I left Sterling when they were acquired by CA, promptly went on the startup path, and went zero for four in terms of success over a three year period.

I joined Consona Corporation as VP of sales and marketing five years ago when it was formed through the acquisition of Made2Manage Systems by Battery Ventures. I worked with our CEO to develop our business model, strategy and operating principles for the company. I’ve also been involved in a number of acquisitions in the areas of due diligence, integration and operations. I led the executive team that integrated Onyx into Consona back in 2006 and am enjoying my current role as general manager.

When I reflect on my career, I sometimes feel that I’ve learned more about what not to do than what to do. After all, I worked for an organization that went from zero to $250M in revenue as fast as any software startup and then lost $60M in its last two years of existence. I then followed that up by working for four startups that all had multiple strategy and execution issues that resulted in their downfall. Upon further review though, I’ve had a mix of positive and negative experiences in my career that have combined to result in the development of very definite views on business strategy and execution. My goal in this blog is to share those views with a specific focus on delivering excellent customer experiences. And, I hope to stir up a fair amount of debate so that readers benefit from multiple viewpoints.

The topics that I plan to cover over the next year range from defining excellent customer service as a value and strategy to specific inputs on how to execute on delivering valuable customer experiences. So far, the list of topics that will be included is:

• Customer Intimacy
• Measuring customer satisfaction
• My personal experiences as a customer
• Building excellent customer experiences
• Customers sharing their stories

Next week we’ll start with “Customer Intimacy” as our initial topic. I’ll talk about my experiences implementing a customer centric strategy based upon the books The Discipline of Market Leaders and Blue Ocean Strategy. I’ll address why business practices based on customer intimacy are not required for all companies to deliver excellent customer experiences, but are an absolute must for businesses with a customer centric strategy. And I’ll explain my views on how customer intimacy results in an experience that goes well beyond excellent customer service.

Welcome and thanks for reading the initial post.