This last month Blue Tent launched a new client program. We need to show our clients more ROI and more personal attention. The hard question is how do you decide which  customers get the limited attention time you have?

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This last week Blue Tent Marketing had our final meeting with our CPA to wrap up the 2009 end of year tax picture. I would assume many of you are at that point in the year as well. Both my CPA and I laughed at the nightmare of the old days of doing business when we used to have to send him a back up Quick Books file…..then NOT work on it for a few days while he got everything he needed from our business records. Read more »

I saw this week that Netsuite is moving toward a tighter integration with Google Apps. This news was of interest to me as Blue Tent Marketing is moving all of our 35 employees to Google Apps this week. As a company we are always looking to avoid the nightmares of software and application changes and this move seems like a natural one for us. We have spent the better part of the last six months getting our Netsuite tuned up very very tight. Our CRM functions are going so well, our financial reports and accounting, nailed.....our projects, on track. Read more »

This year more than any in the past ten years, it's going to be so important to have a tight and workable customer service program. In 2009 Blue Tent went through a restructure that allowed our employees to leverage Netsuite more than ever to help with the day in / day out customer service needs. I thought it was interesting to find that many of our employees had many different descriptions of what customer service is and how we should operate. This makes sense. Someone in accounting may see customer service as having quick access to a Read more »

Like many in the Netsuite Nation, Blue Tent has been working on closing up our books to officially move on from 2009! This process made me think about the nightmares we used to face without an integrated online financial system. This year we were able to wrap things up fast, easier and more effectively than ever before. The ability for us to coordinate and collaborate with our accounting team and bookkeepers paid huge dividends in both time savings and completion dates. As you know any Read more »

I have to admit I am now a true believer in what a single system with all of your customer, accounting and project information will bring to any business owner. The ability to dig into your business and see on your dashboards key performance indicators is always a joyful reminder of what you get when you take this step. Now, whats next and how can you improve your forecasting and planning methods. Blue Tent is an internet marketing and web development agency, we sell hours and people. It's ALWAYS been a struggle for us to forecast workloads so that we can properly staff the company to be the most efficient use of some very smart and expensive people. Read more »

This week I am feeling very bullish on our Netsuite software package. Our COO Jay Scherrer is going the extra distance to really fold the software application to our specific needs. It occurred to me that we really have made so much progress with the accounting system, the project tasks and the CRM tools that we can almost raise the “Mission Accomplished” banner! Read more »

As Blue Tent continues to integrate the project management tools that Netsuite continues to refine and grow, I wanted to outline some of the processes and insight we are gaining from this transition and see if any other Netsuite customers are seeing the same. It starts with the fundamental business process of your company. In Blue Tent’s case we are a service and consulting company. We build websites, put clients at the top of Google and send relevant email messages. Read more »

As Blue Tent continues to dive deeper into Netsuite’s business software and really take advantage of all the accounting tools that we have available to us, I have noticed a few things that I thought I would share. To save you from having the nightmare of too many cooks in the kitchen, here are some good tips to help you get the most out of your on-demand software:

-Appoint a single person for Sales Order entry
-Make sure that you outline the roles so that your operations team does not screw up with your accounting team is trying to do Read more »

As we have moved our entire company to the on-demand software of Netsuite, I am going to keep you posted on our progress. It can be a nightmare to move systems, but I can tell you that in this case the move from our onsite project management software to the Netsuite project system has been pretty smooth. We have had to tweak the system a bit to meet our business software needs. Read more »