Farewell SDM! You will be missed!

Friday night was the SDM wake (December 1 spells the end of the SDM brand). It was great to catch up with all the ex SDM’ers, some of whom I haven’t seen for a long time and some I just saw that day! It was also a sad day though as I was saying goodbye to a company that was one of my favourite to work for. I loved my time at SDM and I met some fantastic people there who I know I will keep in touch with for a long time to come. It got me thinking, what made SDM such a great company? How would you go about emulating SDM’s success – and I know many of us will try? For me it comes down to one thing and one thing alone; SDM had extraordinary people. From senior management, to its account management team, project team, to the delivery teams, SDM had fantastic people! There was a passion at SDM that you could actually feel as you walked through the door. Everyone loved what they were doing and did it with contagious enthusiasm. A big difference for me personally was the attitude of the experienced staff at SDM. There was a real belief in mentoring and helping and for many of us that meant learning and growing. I know that I have learnt many valuable lessons that I will use throughout my career thanks to the time that individuals took to help and teach me along the way. And for that I will always be grateful.

So what has this got to do with CRM? Well probably not a lot and admittedly this is a bit of write and release but there is similarity between successfully managing customers and employees. The broad definition of CRM is “A strategy to assist an organisation in managing relationships with customers to maximise profit”. The same can go for employees. In order to maximise company profit you need to find superior talent, build solid relationships with the acquired talent and help that talent grow. The hard part in all of that, in my experience, is finding and keeping the right talent. The right talent doesn’t always mean the best money can get, but rather its more about getting the mix right. It’s about finding passionate people who complement each other and can cover for the areas that they are weaker. I believe this is where SDM really got it right. They had a good mix of techies, business and sales all of whom complimented each other.

Farewell SDM, you will be missed! I hope to work for you again someday!