Vendorification

We do an amazing job tracking our clients. Meanwhile, we do a terrible job tracking our vendors and more often miss out on the potential opportunities to grow our business together. Some of you choose your vendors poorly and see them as an obstacle that is trying to screw you out of money – I can’t help with that – but the people we work with closely are strategically important to us and we need a better way of keeping in touch with them. Specifically:

It is one of my long term goals to be efficiently impersonated by my staff so I can play with toys all day long with the cloneVlad does all the CEO stuff.

Now, Shockey Monkey as you know is the core of everything we do. And with 2013, as you’re able to sell Shockey Monkey to any company on earth, it needs to be able to track any kind of a vendor.

Here is what I’m thinking:

The problem with dealing with vendors in small business is that all the engagements are initiated by the CEO or decision makers – all of whom are the least likely to efficiently organize documents or access credentials.

ExchangeDefender was started 15 years ago, I’m still asked to search my Inbox for some random vendor we got started with in the 1990’s.

We are adding a new module to Shockey Monkey to track vendors, vendor contacts, vendor resources and notes & documents:

Vendor data: Mailing address, fax numbers, phone numbers, web site.

Contacts: Vendor sales, support, procurement, shipping personnel contact info, both phones and social stuff to keep an eye on and annoy at will.

Resources: Key. There are more outlets that companies are using to distribute information and being able to pay attention to all the LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Web site, Blogs, Pinterest, Support Portal, Billing Portal, Shopping Cart, Youtube Marketing, Youtube Training, ecommerce catalog, support knowledge base, NOC twitter account, CEO blog.. I think you’re starting to get it! There is a lot of stuff to track and having it all in one place so that any employee (with permission) can access credentials to perform their job – EFFICIENTLY – in a secure, documented and ACL respectful way that is easilly accessible through search.. is key.

Notes & Documents: If you suck, and most of us do, only the person that filed the paperwork can actually file it. Yes, one day we’ll all be riding around in our hover cars and rocketships and you’ll have an efficient edocument library, until then the collection of emails, contracts, faxes, images you snapped with your phone at their booth and voicemails will need to be organized.

Simple, right?

Every CRM out there is absolutely awesome at tracking clients. Typically for sales purposes.

Small business exists beyond the “Sales” department and if we treated all of our operations with the same level of accountability and performance bonus promises.. well, Shockey Monkey is there to help you do just that. Regardless of if you’re an MSP or a plumber or a baker or firearms dealer.