Knowledge, Power, Success and Personal Security – ERP and the Front Office

Recently I ran across a Facebook posting advising the reader to “never share everything you know” as a survival rule. The implication was that knowledge is power, power is not shared without diminishing its value and that exclusivity of knowledge made it all the more valuable.

I suppose in the spy infested worlds of Robert Ludlum or John le Carre there may be some logic to this thinking. Smart spies never give it all up because they need some insurance to extend their usefulness to their spymasters. In that trade, information is currency. Saving some for a rainy day only makes sense.

The rest of us, those that live in the real world making our way working in organizations of assorted size and complexity, may be tempted to follow that rule as well. This is unfortunate because we all ultimately lose when someone is hoarding knowledge for purposes of personal gain or security. It is also unfortunate for the hoarder because it seldom works over the long run and ultimately may cost you your job.

There are instances where exclusive knowledge is more difficult to share because of the volume involved or the complexity involved in putting that knowledge to effective use for the organization. Things that appear simple on the outside are sometimes not simple at all in reality. In these cases it may appear someone is hoarding knowledge but in reality they are protecting the interests of the organization by limiting access to certain knowledge they possess.

It is important to understand the difference between these two behaviors. One is deviously destructive of opportunities for success and the other is critical to assuring ongoing success. Let’s look at both of these in practice.

Bob is a sales guy the represents a company selling high end building management systems. These products help maintain building security, reduce heating bills by pulling heat from their server rooms and using it to heat other areas. They also monitor rooms for movement and shut down lighting if there has been no movement within the room for any period longer than three minutes.

Bob loves selling these systems, because he can easily show a low TCO and a very fast ROI. Lately, Bob became aware of a major expansion planned by one of his customers. They were planning on opening offices in about twenty cities around the country and another ten cities in Europe and Asia.

Bob reviewed the list of locations and determined that his company had offices set up to serve every single location on the list. Bob’s company had a major account program for multi-site clients that was very successful at getting additional sites sold for many of their accounts. The program coordinated the sales and implementation process using the local reps in concert with the primary account rep who was typically the rep making the initial sale into a company.

Now Bob should have approached this project with that program in mind. But, being a greedy guy, Bob wanted to handle the whole thing himself. By doing this he would retain all of the sales commission dollars for himself rather than splitting them with the local reps in the field.

So, Bob kept his knowledge of the customer’s expansion plans to himself. He figured over the next two years he would sell every site and retains the entire commission for himself.

So, when the first new site announced their selection for a building management system Bob was disappointed to find that one of his competitors had won the business. Talking with his contact made him feel even worse. His contact explained that the competitor was offering a National Account status to them which included a ten percent off the top line discount, coordinated installation and training for every site converted.

Bob had one very long afternoon meeting with his sales manager explaining how he had actually known about the expansion and trying to justify his exclusivity strategy by promising better customer service.

Later that day, Bob cleared out his desk and joined the ranks of the unemployed.

So when is it permissible to keep that knowledge off the street so to speak? Let’s look at Bill and how he does his job.

Bill works in the Finance area and covers leasing operations for the company. Many of their customers opted to lease instead of buy for various reasons. The way the program worked was simple. Early in the sales cycle the sales reps would test the waters for any interest in leasing. If they felt like the customer was interested, they would go to Bill for a lease quote.

Bill had a reputation throughout the company sales force of being thorough to the point of obsession. Bill would ask question after question related to the price of the product, the ongoing maintenance plan, term of the lease and the payment frequency expectations of the prospect. Bill insisted he needed all of that information to construct his lease payment.

The feeling around the company was that Bill was just protecting himself and his job. Many of the sales reps grumbled that Bill should just give them a “factor” to apply to a list price in order to derive a lease payment.

What they didn’t understand is that using factors in a leasing system with variable terms, payment frequency and optional add-ons like multi-year maintenance plans is virtually impossible. This is because all of those conditions directly affect the payment calculation. Add in the interest rates, administrative fees and other factors, the lease payment calculation is a complex operation requiring some level of expert knowledge to properly prepare.

Bill’s insistence on personally handling the leases himself actually protected the company from signing bad business and protected the sales force from expensive errors in their pricing proposal.

Both of these examples involve expert knowledge within the sales process. Both demonstrate the potential for catastrophic results by failing to involve the expert knowledge in the sales cycle.

Advanced CPQ systems, tied into CRM and ERP systems can also protect companies from this type of problem. Bringing the expert into the sales meeting in the form of sales automation and guided selling is what the Cincom Business Suite accomplishes so well for manufacturers of complex products.

The human being will likely always be a part of the complex sale. But that does not mean the complex sale can’t be improved with the proper controls and systems in place.

For Bob, the greedy guy who lost the multisite account sale, the system would have informed all concerned that there was great potential beyond the one site. For Bill, many of his questions could be reduced to a form which would trigger the proper calculations to arrive at the correct payment for the lease.

Both of these would beg for additional human intervention to fine tune the strategy to best assure a successful outcome. But, the requirement is still shared knowledge, not knowledge hoarding. We don’t survive in our jobs because we are indispensable; we survive because we deliver value to our co-workers and customers.

The post Knowledge, Power, Success and Personal Security – ERP and the Front Office appeared first on goERPcloud.