Are They All Healed When You Pray?

01.05.09 | Comments Off

Are They All Healed When You Pray?

Everyone in the healing ministry experiences failure when praying with others
for healing. “Failure” in this connection is simply not seeing the healing happen
that you prayed for. “Failure” in prayer is never absolute because God always
recognises our genuine efforts.

But we can reduce the percentage of failures by giving attention to the possible
causes. This article briefly discusses some of the causes and suggests some
solutions.

1. Faith
The disciples once asked Jesus to increase their faith (Luke 17. 5). His reply
may seem somewhat obtuse. He certainly did not respond to them as they
expected, telling them what they could do if they had even the tiniest amount
of faith.

Is there a lesson for us here? Most certainly! It is, perhaps, twofold. Firstly,
we use what faith we have got at the time. An obvious implication since Jesus
did not do what they asked. Secondly, we need to improve the quality of the
faith we have. Another clear, perhaps even clearer implication of Jesus’
response.

How? Not easy to give a short answer. But look at the life of someone like
Smith Wigglesworth. (Never heard of him? You really do need to get down
to your nearest Christian book shop!). Reading the biographies about create
considerable enthusiasm in oneself - at first. Then you might begin to get
frustrated after the first four or five. Why? Because none of the writers (can?)
tell you how he came to have such great faith. He certainly did not start with it!

In conversation recently a lady pointed to the real reason: “I felt disgusted with
myself,” she said, “because of the great love he had for the Lord”. That is the
ultimate key.

2. Time
We do not, however, love God in isolation from his people. In his first
letter, at 4. 20 John tells us that a person is a liar who says he loves God
while hating his brother. Indeed, he says that anyone who does not love his
brother, whom he has seen, cannot claim to love God, whom he has never
seen.

We need to love those we pray with enough to spend whatever
amount of time is necessary to get to the root of their problem and so pray
effectively for them. Failure here is an important cause of
nonhealing.Yet Jesus has commanded us that: anyone who loves
God must also love his brother.

3. Unfocussed Prayer
In fact, this follows from the last point. We need to spend time making an
adequate assessment of what is wrong with the person only so
that we can pray specifically into that situation. This is something my wife
and I lay considerable stress on in our book “The Keys To Praying For Healing”.
Is importance cannot be overlooked.

One can spend considerable time teaching individuals how to pray with
other for healing, laying stress on how specific the prayer should be. But
so many people, when it comes to actually praying, fall back into something
like “Oh Lord, please heal him/her in all the ways he/she needs healing”.

Somehow, God is so good that no prayer is a waste of time, but this kind
of prayer probably comes very close! Certainly, praying like that will not
result in many healings.

Focus your prayer exactly on the problem. If they have cancer,
or a damaged vertebrae, or Aids, or a cold, pray exactly into that!

Letting God Be God
Anyone can pray with another for healing. And anyone can see that healing
take place - because God’s love for us is so great. However, his knowledge
and wisdom are also very great and he sees things differently to us. So we
shall not always know why a particular healing does not happen. Sometimes
it is down to the factors we are discussing here. Sometimes it is due to similar
ones we do not have space to included here.

But sometimes nonhealing is due to something which we shall never know
about. We need to do all we can, certainly. But when that has been done,
there will always be cases which defy explanation. On the other hand, there
will also be cases where God works in such a sovereign way that we are left
speechless at the “how” and the “why” of it.

Sometimes, in either of these instances, we just have to let God be God”

5.Gifting
Anyone can pray with another for healing. But if we feel called into the
healing ministry, we really ought to get ourselves prayed with for a gift of
healing.

Just as God can heal without us, so he can empower us without any
assistance from anyone else! But unless we know ourselves to have been
specifically blessed in this way, we really ought to seek the prayers of others.

What others? Well, any Christian who know what he/she is about. But there
does seem to be a definite advantage in being prayed with by someone known
to have a gift of healing themselves. Many healers will themselves
testify to this. God can give when anyone asks, but…

About The Author
A K Whitehead
Web Site: www.christianword.co.uk
Experience: Over twenty years in Christian healing and teaching.
Qualifications: B.A., M.Phil., Camb Univ Cert in Religious Studies
Conditions of use: This article may be reproduced on condition
that it is unaltered and that all this information is included.

About the Author

A K Whitehead
Web Site: www.christianword.co.uk
Experience: Over twenty years in Christian healing and teaching.
Qualifications: B.A., M.Phil., Camb Univ Cert in Religious Studies
Conditions of use: This article may be reproduced on condition
that it is unaltered and that all this information is included.

Try Different Forms of Exercise for Success

01.04.09 | Comments Off

If you have always used free weights, then switch it up and try training with machines like “Hammer Strength” or “Nautilus”. These are excellent weight resistance machines and they will really work your muscles from different angles and different intensities. You should always strive to find new and exciting ways to workout your body. Try doing all body-weight movements, which are a really great way to build quality strength. The military uses mainly body-weight movements during their training. These include pushups, situps and pullups. The three main body-weight movements will really give you a great overall body workout!

You can also choose from many different forms of training such as using workout bands. If you’re just starting out, these are an excellent way to learn the basic movements and get the true “feel” to each exercise. Exercise bands allow you to get a full body workout with the convenience of only needing a very limited amount of space. You can review some exercises using workout bands below:

http://www.shapefit.com/quick-workouts-elastic-bands.html

These portable exercises are great for anyone who wants to workout at home or anyone who travels frequently. Using an exercise band, you can get a great workout in your hotel room, living room or anywhere else.

Kris Bierek is a fitness specialist for the health and fitness site http://www.ShapeFit.com where you can find FREE fitness tools like fitness newsletters, dieting tips, weight loss help, exercise questions and a free fitness analysis to help you get into the best shape of your life!

CRM Software Solutions

01.04.09 | Comments Off

It is a well known fact that software alone will not single-handedly save the fate of a business. A business needs a competent management team who make the right decisions, and having the right information is vital to the decision-making process Customer relations management software offers all this and more. Companies who accept CRM software solutions are more able to effectively anticipate their customer’s needs, realign their business process for improvement over their entire system and make the right moves for the business to maximize customer satisfaction and profitability.

Any company providing CRM solutions should have experts to gather data, as well as do research and analysis. These experts will be the ones helping your company make informed business decisions. They will recommend the types of solutions you will need to obtain an in-depth analysis and actionable advice for your business.

Since the software solutions company you choose will be giving you advice on customer relations, make sure they are experts in deploying customer-driven strategy. You will need a company that has a clearly defined approach that takes into account all of the factors that lead to success. They will also need to interpret their findings in an accurate and understandable way, so that the information will be used accordingly.

The success of your business relies on how you relate to your customers. A bad customer relations experience could mean losing your most valued customers. For businesses, losing customers is an unacceptable, and low customer satisfaction will cause you to lose potential customers to your competitors. A competent CRM software solution will guarantee that your senior management has all the necessary information they need to make the right decisions for your company.

Gaming Hall Gambling: a Guide to the Pastimes of Luck Betting Devotees Enjoy Revelling in

01.03.09 | Comments Off

Assuming that you have not figured out gambling house games, read on.

fun casino

The most common definition of a betting establishment is a structure that presents games of chance. Here, clients will enjoy themselves by challenging slot machines or another betting pastimes. Gambling saloon games normally include fully transparent chances included which guarantee the casino keeps hold of a above the gambling enthusiasts. A large number betting establishment games can incite you into being addicted very rapidly. Take the vintage one-armed bandit, a cash operated instrument with three plus gears that circumvolve when a crank hitched to it is operated. This contraption in the main recompenses corresponding with a given series of emblems discernible on the display of the machine. Lamentably, betting establishment pastimes tend to push the false impression of ascendancy, thus conning the betting aficionado: the participant is provided with decisions, but actually these don’t nix the customer’s long-term negative odds. This is induced by the betting establishment not paying up the full amount as expected. This systematic arrangement is usually noticeable in well-known casino games such as stud poker, dice, roulette or blackjack.

Seven-card stud poker is a very an immensely fashionable casino pastime. The patrons, holding partially guarded hands, are placing bets into a central pot that is then bestowed onto the prevailing participant carrying the highest set of cards. (Obviously, the shameless bluffer may well prevail as well!) Comparable to Texas hold’em, blackjack is likewise an incredibly fashionable casino game. Plenty of its reputation is thanks to the mix of luck and cleverness and choice making, not to forget a practise dubbed “card counting”. It is a pretty complicated mode of playing gaming tactics by which gamblers will reverse the chances of the card game in their favor both by wagering & fundamental opetations in accordance with the hands shown. “Craps” is a well known casino pastime utilizing the throw of dice. Customers have to bet money on the outcome of of one roll, or on a string of spins of 2 dice. Contrary to blackjack, there’s absolutely no credible bona fide winning betting system punters can capitalize on to ramp up the chances. Roulette is an immensely popular casino pastime - a croupier will spin a roulette wheel encompassing a set of precisely 37 (in the case of European roulette) or precisely thirtyeight (as applicable to American or Vegas roulette) uniquely numbered receptacles in which a ball will finally come to settle, which determines the winner and the other chances that will always come with it. When a gamer has placed a chip on a single number and actually is successful so it is lucky, the guaranteed remuneration is going to be thirty five to one, the bet being returned. Hence in total it is increased by 36.

So be vigilant however, for these casino pastimes should be deemed somewhat dependency building. Plenty of lives may have been demolished thru gambling & even if it indisputably might be enjoyable, do please attempt to govern oneself.

Bryan Ellis - Virtual Real Estate Investing vs. Physical Real Estate Investing

01.02.09 | Comments Off

A relatively new concept in the online world is “Virtual Real Estate Investing“. What is meant by “Virtual Real Estate Investing” ranges from online games like SecondLife (where real profit can be made) to the use of internet technologies to make normal real estate investors more profitable.

To get the facts, I sought out the man generally considered to be the father of virtual real estate investing: Bryan Ellis.

“I began using the term ‘virtual real estate investing’ in the late 1990’s when I realized the clear similiarities in profit strategies, regardless of whether the “real estate” is “virtual” or “physical” said Ellis.

One example of the parallels between virtual and physical real estate Bryan Ellis cites is the similarity between the monetization of domain names versus physical property. “There’s a huge difference between a website and a piece of real estate, but the ways you can profit from them are similar: ‘flipping’, rental/leasing, advertising sales, etc…all of these apply to both markets” he states.

The similarities really are obvious. Consider: A valuable piece of real estate is valuable largely due to the interest that other people have in that specific location. Likewise, if you own a desirable domain name, others will find value in it because it serves their purposes. So it doesn’t matter if you own physical real estate or virtual real estate - you’ll likely use similar strategies to turn them into money in your pocket.

In our next installment of this series on virtual real estate investing, Bryan Ellis will share the internet analogies to the physical concept of real estate development.

Buy the Best Fridges Online

01.02.09 | Comments Off

Should you be looking for the optimal deal on fridges and freezers browsing online might well be an amazing way to conserve precious time and money. Do not choose to blow your treasured time looking around legions of high street businesses in search of the very best bargains - all you need to do is simply get to your laptop and log on and a whole brand new world of fridges awaits you on-line.

Nonetheless, with countless on-line options how do you conceivably look into which retailer might well not waste your money on fridges whilst even so ensuring you pick up an outstanding quality product. As usual best practice if you buy from an outlet on the high-street then you certainly shouldn’t realistically have many concerns about purchasing from their site, and as you all realise that you can ordinarily find much lower prices on the internet

Quickly looking at a good shoppers guide is always a cracking place to begin when you’re surveying the marketplace for fridges - buyers guides are generally stuffed with a wealth of information and raise issues you might well not have thought about independently. These can include; energy usage, other features and total capacity amongst further things. This is a good place to start when looking for fridges online.

Don’t choose to consistently go with the cheapest offer - profoundly oftentimes the first cost you behold on a web-site will probably not include value added tax or home delivery fees furthermore, when you reach the payment point in the process you conceivably might often be paying a lot more than you first thought.

When do you need it by? Not all on line retailers guarantee speedy home delivery and if your current fridge has just broken down you possibly may not want to wait three weeks for your brand new fridge So consistently check what your estimated home delivery day shall be.

Check the returns policy - fridges are a tricky thing to purchase; sometimes they appear fantastic in the showroom or on a web-site but once you get it to your house you come to the realisation it does not match your home at all. Therefore, you should always be prudent.

Pagers - How Do They Work?

01.01.09 | Comments Off

How do those beeping things work that people carry around on their belts? There are several types of pagers but, basically, it’s all done by good, old- fashioned radio waves. Someone sends you a text message with a touch-tone phone - or it can also be sent by email - and the message is forwarded to the thing on your belt, which then emits a beep or vibration to tell you you’ve got a message. This is achieved through a cooperation of communication technologies - basically, messages are broadcast on a certain radio frequency through a group of radio base stations, and the pager receives that message.

The pager has a LCD screen which displays the phone number or text message you are receiving. The simplicity or complexity of the kind of message the pager can receive depends, in part, on whether it is a numeric pager or an alphanumeric pager. If it is numeric, the caller’s numeric message is what you receive (usually their phone number for you to call them back). If you have an alphanumeric pager, a text message is transmitted to you by a carrier operator’s transcription of a telephonic message. Or text can be sent to you through an alpha entry terminal or a modem. Other options are two-way pagers which function through a PCS band, and interactive pagers which are like tiny computers, allowing telephone-free communications.

You can store a number of messages in your pager - which include the time and date the message was sent - and some have expanded memory to allow you to store even more. This way you can keep phone numbers and information you will need again.

Pagers run a long time on a small battery. One reason is that pagers function through the use of data blocks called codewords. There is a decoder that can determine whether the incoming codewords are for your pager or not and shut
off if they are not. Thus, the battery’s life is extended.

How far can you travel with your pager? The distance between your pager and the transmitter for which it has been programmed can vary. When you purchase your pager package, you can ask for local, regional or national coverage - at,
of course, increasing costs for your paging service and pager. It all depends on what you need - the beauty of it is you can purchase a pager that will exactly fit your personal, professional and geographic requirements.

http://pagershq.com Pagers, how they work and where to buy them from!

Energy Aware and Waste Wise

01.01.09 | Comments Off

Constantly bombarded with negative information about the environment, finances and natural resources? Feeling overwhelmed? Each and every one of us can do something to help our world - starting right where we are, right now. Though not everyone can afford to donate cash or time to a cause, there are endless tactics that will decrease an individual’s contribution to the landfill and their resource consumption.

Mirrors, placed strategically in a room can be used to make use of natural lighting more efficiently, and reduce energy use as well. When placed near indoor plants, mirrors act like a second window creating better growing conditions while giving the illusion of increased space and greenery to the ambiance of a room.

When loading the clothes dryer, fluff the wet and tangled laundry before tossing into the machine. This allows for immediate and more efficient use of dryer energy. Very hot settings (which can actually shrink clothing) can thus be avoided.

Typically, the heated air from a clothes dryer is pumped outside and wasted. Consider purchasing a dryer vent converter - available at most hardware stores. These are little boxes that divert the heated air from the dryer into the house during the cold and dry winter months - making better use of your energy dollar while saving a little on heating costs. Be warned that this air is moist, and this may not be appropriate in all situations. Homes with dry static air or wood heat would benefit from the moisture, but buildings that already have a moisture problem (evident by mould and mildew or sweating and frosted windows) will only have their issues compounded by doing this.

Instead of buying disposable dryer sheets for static control, consider using a liquid fabric softener with a reused rag or sock. Pour a Tablespoon of the liquid on the rag, roll it up and squeeze (to soak up all the softener) and toss in the dryer. Wash the rag periodically by throwing it in with a normal load. Just imagine the number of dryer sheets, the packaging they came in, along with the costs, energy and resources to produce them that can be avoided by this one simple act.

There are many other little things we can do around our home, to save money and reduce waste. Instead of purchasing a plastic drip tray for potted plants, reuse plastic lids from peanut butter or mayonnaise. Often, just the right size of lid can be found for each potted plant, and most of these are dishwasher safe. Foil food trays also serve this purpose.

Plastic containers that fresh herbs are sold in make useful storage packages in the kitchen. Dried herbs and vegetables store well in these containers as long as the seal is airtight. We once bought some very nice fresh ginger in Vancouver’s Chinatown and could not use it all in one recipe. Dave placed the peeled and sliced root in the herb containers covering it with red wine vinegar. Stored in the refrigerator it kept for months this way and made it easy to add fresh tasting ginger to any dish.

These are just a few ideas to demonstrate how easy it is to make a difference while saving some money. Imagine how many other small things you can do around the home or office. Once the ideas have begun to flow, they will cause a ripple effect cascading into other aspects of your life. Then, hopefully, you will think twice before throwing anything into the trash.

– Written by Dave and Lillian Brummet based on the concept of their book, Trash Talk. The book offers useful solutions for the individual to reduce waste and better manage resources. A guide for anyone concerned about their impact on the environment. (www.sunshinecable.com/~drumit)

Data Quality Best Practices for Salesforce.com

12.30.08 | Comments Off

Executive Summary

An effective plan for entering, cleaning and updating the data for your salesforce.com (SFDC) system is critical for achieving success with SFDC. According to industry experts poor planning for managing the data entry/data quality issue has historically been one of the largest reasons for failure with CRM systems.

The data entry/data quality challenges faced by a SFDC customer, and the corresponding solutions and best practices to be considered will vary depending on the company sales process and size. However applying data management best practices can be instrumental for creating revenue growth and a competitive advantage with your SFDC investment.

Why Does Data Quality Matter for Salesforce.com Customers?
This whitepaper concentrates on the data impact and benefits to sales and marketing users selling to other businesses. Although SFDC is used by a variety of other company functions, such as service and support, this analysis focuses on the best practice recommendations for sales and marketing.

There are two main reasons why current stakeholders in a SFDC project should have a strategy for addressing the quality of data in their SFDC system.

1) Historical Lessons Learned from Prior CRM Project Failures:

There is a growing body of research from industry analysts that “data entry/data quality” is one the top, if not the top factor determining the success or failure for a CRM project.

CSO Insights, a research firm that specializes in benchmarking sales & marketing excellence, published its annual study of sales organizations worldwide on January 12, 2004. The 2004 Sales Excellence Report, which includes responses from over 1,300 sales executives, cited the number one challenge for CRM initiatives was populating systems with accurate data and then maintaining the accuracy of that information. Another research study from the company called, “Increasing Sales Effectiveness Through Optimized Sales Knowledge Management”, highlighted three key process improvements desired by the study participants tied to using technology for higher sales effectiveness.

• Dynamic Process. “Over half the organizations surveyed stated that their top improvement objective was to develop ways to manage sales knowledge delivery in a much more instantaneous, as-the-world-is-changing manner. Annual, quarterly, even monthly postings of information are not frequent enough to meet the needs of the rate of change in the marketplace.”

• Easier Access. “As noted in past studies, access to information still needs to be improved…In a perfect world there would be one place to go for knowledge, and while it might pull information from several sources, the linking would be transparent to the sales team member…”

• Distribute More Easily. “…a mechanism needs to be in place for notifying salespeople when specific pieces of sales knowledge in which they are interested become available. Individual preferences can be identified by a user-defined profile…”

There was a tendency for buyers of CRM solutions in the 1990s to focus on the functionality of a CRM application and not on the sources and updating of data that would enable the users and management to achieve their CRM objectives. Sales and marketing executives with multiple CRM initiatives under their belt have indicated CRM software is somewhat like an empty spreadsheet where the true value is gained only when populated with effective data.

2) End User Satisfaction Drives CRM Success

From the author’s personal experience, CRM applications have historically had a bad reputation among sales users. During the 1990’s, Sales Executives were quick to adopt Sales Force Automation solutions (a subset of today’s CRM market). Sales reps were subsequently required to do a tremendous amount of research and manual data entry to get each of their leads, accounts, contacts and opportunities into the CRM application. The end result of all of this manual, time consuming work was to provide sales management with pipeline and forecast reports. As a result, reps resented the CRM application because of the data entry requirement and that it didn’t provide any productivity benefit to them.

In many cases companies migrated data from legacy contact management applications like ACT, Goldmine or MS Outlook without deduplicating the records and cleaning the data. This caused the users to loose confidence in the CRM application all together due to crippling data problems. Without reps entering data or having confidence in their CRM solution, many CRM projects died or had marginal success. The CRM project sponsors lost trust in the CRM vendor for the failure when the root issue was a data entry or quality problem.

Conversely, if marketing and sales end users are freed up as much as possible from the administrative part of entering, updating and cleaning data, and instead are provided accurate data and intelligence within SFDC for their deals they have an additional reason to be excited about using SFDC.

Parameters that Determine Data Quality
There are numerous data management best practices we introduce later in this whitepaper that can automate getting data into a SFDC system and keeping that data accurate over time. Before we discuss these best practices let’s touch on four main attributes that affect the quality of data.

• Completeness of a Record. Does the record have data for all the desired fields? Typical examples of an incomplete record include missing countries or zip codes associated with a street address.

• Accuracy of Data Elements. Is the value in the field correct? Typically examples of incorrect values can be old revenue numbers for a company, a phone number with an old area code, and a contact no longer at company. The passage of time and changes at a company account for the majority of inaccurate data about a company. Dun & Bradstreet indicates that a company record in its Worldbase database of 80M company sites gets changed on average 4.6 times a year.

• Number of Duplicate Records. The most common problem with duplicates is account records entered with different company names, ex HP, Hewlett-Packard. Unless you establish a company naming standard that is applied when creating or importing records it is easy to create numerous duplicates.

• Record Linkage. Our definition of record linkage means obtaining related data elements of value from the account record. Examples of linked records include contacts, credit reports, or other global sites within a corporate family tree such as a Johnson & Johnson. Providing the linked attributes around account records enables marketing to define and report progress in target markets and sales to better qualify prospects and determine decision-makers.

Pyramid of Data Quality Issues

SFDC offers a very scalable CRM solution that can be used effectively by companies with 5 to 5000 users. The data entry and quality issues vary considerably though for companies based on how data intensive their sales methodology is, and the volume of records. The later point assumes a company with lots of sales users and groups will have a larger volume of records. As a result there are corresponding different data management best practices for each tier.

Small SFDC Customers:

(Simple sales cycle and low volumes of data, typically 100s to 10k records)

Challenge: Getting data into SFDC.
As pointed out earlier, you should avoid having your sales or marketing users manually enter data into SFDC as much as possible, especially for basic account data. The users will resent the time required for data entry and perceived low marginal benefit to them.

Best practices:

• Load as many current and complete account records as possible during the initial SFDC implementation. Typical sources for these records are your internal billing or financial system as well as existing contact management systems like ACT, Goldmine, Outlook or even Excel spreadsheets from marketing or other functions. If the records are believed to be old, say greater than 18 months old, or substantially incomplete, then a decision should be made on their value and whether to import them or not. The SFDC import wizards do a good job entering batches of records.

• If you have account data coming from multiple sources then you should consider applying deduplication logic to avoid migrating redundant records into SFDC. You can license deduplication software tools from SFDC partners like Demand Tools, RingLead, and Active Prime, or you can use project oriented services such as InsideScoop’s Customer Cleanse service if you don’t want to maintain software over time. Customer Cleanse can also match account records to the D&B DUNS # (see description below) which will add any missing record data elements, update the latest data on revenues and employees, and append (add) additional account records to your criteria. The result of these efforts is a critical mass of complete, unique, and accurate account records.

• Another solution for consideration is to automate how lead, account and contact data is viewed and saved within SFDC by the end users. Sales users are often asked to conduct research on Internet based websites, such as Hoovers, and then copy/paste desired data into SFDC. InsideScoop’s Customer Connection service is sForce certified against the SFDC API and provides data from market leading data providers such as D&B within the SFDC screens. With one mouse click users can save lead, account or contact data they wish directly into SFDC. All background research about accounts and contacts is now provided within SFDC providing large time-savings and account intelligence to sales. In addition all the standard SFDC lead, account and contact fields can now be consistently filled in with data to assure 100% record completeness. Marketing can now get data attributes such as SIC codes and industry categories filled in automatically for lead records by having integrated data sources.

Medium SFDC Customers:

(Moderate sales cycle complexity and record volumes, typically 10k to 50k records)

Challenge: Cleansing account and contact data coming from multiple sources.
Companies with this range of users typically have lead or account records coming from former contact or CRM applications like ACT, Goldmine, or Siebel when deploying SFDC initially, or a billing/ERP system, a web site, and purchased lead lists while in production. As a result the prevalence of duplicate records increases significantly especially after a few years of accumulating data. Manual procedures for deduplicating records one at a time do not scale well when you have 20k to 150k account records to manage. Matching redundant account records using a company name and address can be difficult given different legal, “doing business as” names, or trade names in use for a company site.

Best Practices: Implementing an account naming data standard and an automated process to eliminate duplicate records will enable a SFDC customer to manage the record redundancy issue for large volumes of records. One of the best data standards for company names, addresses and related information on a global basis is D&B. They spend $250M a year to manage and update a “DUNS Number” for 80M organizational sites globally.

The DUNS # is a unique 9 digit number associated with an organization’s name and address. This number has become the de facto standard amongst businesses for tracking organization sites, much like the social security number is the unique ID for US citizens. There are DUNS #s assigned for companies as small as a 2 employee private startup up to the entire site hierarchy for the world’s biggest public companies, governments, non-profits and educational organizations.

D&B is able to track from the DUNS # both legal and tradestyle names for a site, the physical and mailing addresses, economic metrics like revenue, employees, SIC codes and industries, as well as corporate linkage to provide a few examples of company data available. The corporate linkage feature can indicate the level in a family hierarchy, ex, global ultimate, headquarters, division, etc., and pull together as many tiers as needed under the global ultimate site. Hewlett-Packard has 761 linked sites within their US operations alone! Interested parties can see how corporate hierarchies look in SFDC through the white papers or free trials of Customer Connection offered on our website, www.insidescoop.com.

There are several benefits to using the D&B DUNS # data standard:

• Companies using the DUNS # can link related company names together, ex the legal name with various tradestyle names, ex HP, and have the option of using one naming convention going forward.

• The DUNS # provides a unique ID for driving the deduplication process before importing batches of records as well as by looking at the lead, account and contact records already in SFDC.

• A company selling to Fortune1000 global conglomerates like General Motors, Deutsche Bank, and Sony Electronics can now get access to the 1000s of sites reporting into the global ultimate site, with the hierarchy viewable within SFDC.

• Contacts and related financial or installed base data can now be linked to a specific site within SFDC. The linking of data attributes tied to the same site enables creating composite records of valuable customer intelligence for marketing or sales use.

InsideScoop’s Customer Cleanse service is based around the D&B DUNS #, and can be used for cleansing data before it’s entered into SFDC, or cleansing existing data within a production SFDC system. The service maps and transforms data from D&B so the data is meaningful to SFDC users. For example, existing account records can now be linked together to view corporate families within SFDC. Lead records that are added from D&B can be applied against territory mapping rules to determine the lead owner, as another example.

Large SFDC Customers:

(Complex sales cycle and large record volumes, typically greater than 50k records)

Challenge: Companies with years of CRM program experience strive to gain a competitive advantage through their Salesforce.com investment.

These companies realize that having access to the right data is a key ingredient for achieving this competitive advantage. If marketing defines a target market or set of accounts for sales to concentrate on, they can embed the prospect records for that market within SFDC. This allows sales to focus on selling into accounts that will be most receptive to your product or service. With the prospect records for a target market loaded into SFDC, management can generate penetration reports demonstrating the progress being made into these markets.

This sounds like a logical process, but executing this process has challenges. A database provider will sell you a file with these prospect records then you or some expensive consultants have to figure out how to map the data to the proper SFDC fields. Even companies with large budgets have not been able to solve this process easily.

Best practice: Marketing and sales management need to identify the common attributes behind those customers where your sales force is gaining momentum selling your product or service. These attributes should be used to define a target market and the prospects in that market that are mostly likely to be receptive to your product or service. The common attributes used to define these prospects are their size (ex, employees or revenue), industry (ex, SIC or NAIC code), geography, or corporate linkage (ex, divisions of Johnson & Johnson). Market leading database providers like D&B can supply the prospect records to these sort criteria. They can also “suppress” the customer records you already own so you only purchase incremental records of interest.

Here are two examples of what D&B can supply for prospect records:

• All public and private companies in the pharmaceutical industry with revenues > $100M in the US and Canada.

• The global, domestic ultimate and subsidiary sites for IBM in the top 13 industrialized European countries.

Let’s imagine two divisions of IBM in Europe have bought your product or service. With these other IBM sites in SFDC you can now cross-sell and get the decision-makers at the other IBM country headquarters and subsidiaries within the European countries you are targeting.

InsideScoop, which resells D&B data, also provides software and services in its Customer Cleanse offering necessary to transform and process D&B data into a customer’s SFDC system. The DUNS # is used as the unique account ID to determine what new records are desired from an external datasource like D&B while suppressing the existing account records already owned by the customer. New lead or account records can be applied to territory mapping rules so the leads are assigned properly.

The D&B corporate linkage feature can be leveraged to build named account hierarchies using the SFDC parent/child relationships. The SIC codes from D&B can be mapped to the industry categories used within SFDC. The Customer Cleanse process dedupes and merges/purges new records relative to the existing lead, account and contact records already within SFDC. Once new records are properly loaded into SFDC then penetration reports can be run for target markets or accounts identifying the progress or gaps that sales is making into these markets.

The combination of Customer Cleanse and Customer Connection creates a complete data management solution to clean data at hand, keep it clean over time, as well as create composite intelligence about customer sites using multiple data sources. SFDC customers who are interested can get a complimentary data quality audit of their data or a free trial access of Customer Connection by contacting InsideScoop sales, sales@insidescoop.com, or going to the InsideScoop website, www.insidescoop.com. If readers of this whitepaper would like to share their data challenges or best practices with us at InsideScoop please contact the author at cbadger@insidescoop.com.

Chris Badger, CEO and cofounder of InsideScoop, has over 20 years of sales and marketing experience working for high tech firms. He was one of the first sales personnel at Clarify, an early CRM market leader, and subsequently held sales management positions for Clarify and gForce/Docent. Chris has led or participated in 5 internal CRM deployments including a Salesforce.com implementation at gForce in 2001 and InsideScoop in 2003, in addition to selling CRM solutions to Hewlett-Packard, 3Com, Sony America, and Siemans Electronics. He holds an MS in Engineering Management from Stanford University and a BA in Engineering Sciences from Dartmouth College.

Window curtains, rods and drapes are a simple solution to home décor needs.

12.29.08 | Comments Off

Adding safety and style is exactly what window curtains are all about. Dress up your windows with exquisite lace and extravagant ruffles. Window drapes are a covering that can allow you to match up your home with the other aspects of it. Maybe you are looking to color coat a room? The options are endless with the variety of curtain rods that you will have access to. With curtain sets you can definitely create a delicate pattern of coordinated decor. Just imagine the compliments you will receive on your home.

The need for curtain rods with the ability to hold heavy fabric and accommodate large curtain pockets emerged. This spurred various different inventions. Window curtains are definitely also a nice selling feature when you are in the position of putting your home in the real estate market. If you do not want to spend the big bucks, then by utilizing the affordability of window drapes is worth consideration. Where else can you decorate for less?

Some tips for choosing curtain rods include taking these few things into consideration. Take a look at style, fabric and design. Try to figure out the place of the window you are covering and how much light is let in through it. This will help in choosing the correct fabric or deciding to get lined or unlined window curtains. The measurements of the window and how much of the window frame you want to cover with curtains will help with choosing a curtain design. Finish off any room in your home with these great window curtain ideas. Now you can learn with our help and information regarding on how you will ca utilize the huge variety of choices in material, fabric, color, size, options, and hardware or making over your home.