At work, the way we communicate is changing. Because more employees telecommuting and flex-timing, interoperability and seamless communication are becoming more important to each company’s success. Recent improvements to and availability of mobile technology and cloud-based managed services are providing the infrastructure needed to fuel this transformation, making employee remote collaboration possible. Familiarity + Usability = Better User Experience Currently, 1.2 billion daily users all over the world are using MSOffice, Outlook, Skype, Yammer, and OneDrive to communicate, collaborate, and get things done for work. One reason for the popularity is the importance that Microsoft places on user experience. Recently, the commitment they made to creating a person-centric IT is becoming more evident. While maintaining the familiar MS Office branding, they have updated their interface to simplify the usability and create more engagement. Microsoft Office 365 has built in all of the tools necessary for the modern workplace, while providing new users with a familiar interface and low-cost training for easy onboarding. MS Office 365 could be the key differentiator for businesses seeking to improve productivity, streamline operations, and promote opportunities for real-time collaboration. Real-time Co-authoring to Streamline Projects In this global and increasingly mobile work environment, in-person collaboration is less and less possible. When information or content needs to be shared, and feedback needed immediately, the real-time, multichannel communication offered by MS Office 365, is crucial. The feature, which has been available to MS Office users for several years, has been upgraded to include all of Office 365, OneDrive, and Skype users. The access to each other and the exact working document is truly the closest approximation to real in-person collaboration. Thanks to MS Office 365, it is no longer required to wait days or even hours for revisions, and it virtually eliminates miscommunication, which is a boon to the efficiency and productivity of your small business. Communication Interoperability The newest version of the cloud-based MS Office is built for collaboration. These tools offer any company —regardless of size, an optimal workplace experience. Whether in-house or on-the-go, your employees are able to effortlessly communicate with each other. Since all of the content created is kept in the cloud, sharing with co-workers is a breeze. This capability extends to shared calendars, a feature which is integral to collaboration and makes the functionality and reliability offered by Microsoft Office 365 integration attractive. Yammer, where the workplace meets social media is another option for content sharing. The social media-style platform designed for sharing and communicating makes it a fun addition to traditional interoffice communication methods. Outlook’s Massive Storage Because it is entirely cloud based, Office 365’s mail product, Outlook is perfect for use with mobile devices. Users receive 50GB of storage and it allows sending attachments as large as 150MB. Fully integrated with all of the other Office 365 tools and applications, Outlook can be accessed from any application or program, or through the main single portal interface. Single Portal Interface From this single portal interface users can sign-on to multiple applications, send mail, […]
As your business grows, business process automation (BPA) becomes increasingly important. While it’s relatively simple to manually manage and enter your business processes as they occur with just a few customers, the same cannot be said for a growing business managing an increasing number of both customers and processes. The key, then, is finding a software solution that allows you to automate the process. Keep reading to learn how business process automation can benefit both small and medium-sized businesses, along with the functions a reliable system should include to maximize these benefits. 6 Undeniable Benefits of Business Process Automation 1. Increased efficiency Naturally, automating your business processes will increase the efficiency with which you can run your business. If you know that a number of essential functions will be taken care of in the background, you can focus your attention on marketing and other activities that help to grow your business. As this collection of case studies shows, BPA consistently increased efficiency for businesses who embrace the concept. Everyday tasks require less human touches, which can be better focused elsewhere. 2. Reduced Labor and Time Commitment Automating your business processes will take time initially. But after the transition, it will save both the labor and the time (and, ultimately, your budget) required for these tasks. If, for example, you decide to automate your sales flow from lead to customer, your marketing and sales team can spend their time focusing on actual customer outreach instead of having to calculate lead qualifications to determine which contacts they should reach out to. 3. Customer-Centric Advantages Ultimately, thanks to the above shift in priorities, BPA helps improve your ability to reach out and interact with your customers. That, in turn, will result in greater satisfaction by your audience, who will appreciate a more personal approach that is customized to their needs. 4. Cross-Departmental Benefits Too often, BPA software like a Customer Relationship Management solution is viewed with limited scope. It is ultimately a sales tool, helping you automate and personalize your outreach. But in reality, a number of other department and areas within your business can benefit as well. Marketing automation, for example, reduces the need to send emails to new and existing leads. Software like Microsoft Dynamics CRM can also help you track HR processes, collect and sort documents, and manage orders from your suppliers. In short, it can benefit a number of departments within your growing business. 5. Consistency When relying on manual business processes, consistency is almost impossible. Each employee will work on and complete these processes a little different from the other, making it difficult to come up with a set of universal rules and guidelines that apply to everyone in the process. With BPA, that problem doesn’t exist. Every aspect of the automated process is identical to the ones preceding and following it. If you set up a singular lead scoring process, for example, each lead will be evaluated for its sales-readiness in the exact same way. Compare that to manual lead scoring, in which inexact […]
Implementing Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, particularly for small businesses, is not always easy. It’s a comprehensive process that, while ultimately benefiting your operations and customers in a variety of ways, can quickly become frustrating. But it doesn’t have to be. If you approach your CRM implementation strategically, you can ensure a successful process that ultimately benefits both your business and your stakeholders with minimal friction. To help in that process, here are 6 ways to prepare your small business for a CRM implementation. 1. Understand Your Goals As any strategic process, planning your implementation has to begin with goal setting. Exactly what do you want to get out of the new software? Try to stay away from general answers such as improving business practices, and get specific instead. Which processes could and should be automated? Which current problems do you face in interacting with current and potential customers? To succeed in this step, we recommend following the SMART goals framework. Each objective of the CRM implementation should be specific, measurable, agreed upon, realistic, and set within a specific time frame. Only once you understand exactly what you are looking to get out of the software should you proceed with the implementation. 2. Examine Your Current Processes Implementing your CRM will likely include at least some process automation. A core reason why businesses take this step is to move away from manual outreach to potential and current customers, or hand recording of relevant information about this audience and their interactions with your brand. To ensure lasting success, examine what exact processes you are currently undertaking, and how they are structured. For example, you may send a weekly email newsletter to current customers with coupons and other loyalty-based promotional items. You may also have a lead nurturing strategy in place that helps you increase your contact-to-customer conversions. In the course of your CRM implementation, you can automate these processes, but only if you know exactly how they are constructed. Examine the processes you look to implement, in order to smoothen the project as it occurs. 3. Strategize Your Timing There is no perfect timing for a major software implementation. The long-term benefits of a CRM are significant, but that doesn’t take away from the resources and efforts you will need to get it up and running. There is, however, a least bad time for your implementation. Don’t start your project without first understanding when that time would be. For example, you would not want your employees occupied and sales systems down during the holiday season. Most businesses experience lulls in revenue, which tend to be great opportunities to divert resources that may be difficult to give up in the short term, but encourage long-term growth. You should also keep in mind the employees who will need to spend time on the implementation, and whether their time is needed elsewhere during your suggested frame. 4. Choose the Right Product A large part of your implementation preparation should be dedicated to finding the right […]
A business grows by expanding its customer base and keeping repeat customers. To do this, it has to keep track of leads, add new customers to its information base, and track their activity. This is what Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is for. The advantages of CRM A CRM system keeps all your information in one place, organized for easy access and analysis. You can see who your best customers are, what orders are pending, who’s behind in payment, and much more. You can update customers’ contact and shipping information as necessary. You can give them preferred status and select them for special offers based on their history, or flag them as having a poor payment record. If you’re working just from a spreadsheet, it isn’t easy to do all these things. The result is better customer communication and service. You can resolve issues more quickly and provide the information to employees as needed. If a customer has had a similar problem before, such as a delivery error, a record of past events can help to identify and fix it. Everything goes more smoothly with a good record of past transactions. Adding CRM to WordPress WordPress is the most popular tool in the world for creating business websites. Perhaps you’re already using a contact page on a WordPress site to hear from interested people. If you’re collecting the information into a spreadsheet or simple database, that’s a good start, but there’s a lot more you could be doing with it. Simple forms processing to collect contacts leaves you with a lot of work to do by hand. It works as long as your customer base is small enough, but as it grows, the job gets more difficult. Moving to a CRM system and connecting it up with WordPress saves effort and gives you more ways to use the information. When potential customers fill in a contact form, the information will go straight into the CRM. It can send an automated email response, refer the information to the appropriate department based on the request type, or add the prospect to an electronic or physical mailing list. If you have an e-commerce site under WordPress, you may be able to integrate it with CRM. This will let you update the customer’s order history and retrieve any special information about the customer. Plugins are available which provide CRM capability entirely within WordPress. Their functionality tends to be limited, so they’re best suited for very small businesses that want a little more than a spreadsheet. More serious businesses will want separate CRM. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Microsoft Dynamics is a popular and trusted family of CRM systems. It’s available in both on-premises and cloud versions, with pricing packages for businesses of all sizes. Both versions have rich feature sets, including: Customized reports Contact and lead management Sales partner management Analytic tools Role-based security Email integration It works easily with other Microsoft products. The Dynamics 365 bundle combines Dynamics with Microsoft’s ERP software and Office 365 […]
You need marketing automation. But why? It’s easy to make that claim; backing it up, however, is more important. Especially if you are looking to grow your business and connect with your customers, automating your digital communications with interested members of your target audience should be a key part of your marketing efforts. What is Marketing Automation? Put simply, marketing automation describes the process of setting up automated workflows that send out regular messages on your behalf. Here’s how HubSpot, a leader in the field, describes the concept: [Marketing automation allows companies] to nurture prospects with highly personalized, useful content that helps convert prospects to customers and turn customers into delighted customers. This type of marketing automation typically generates significant new revenue for companies, and provides an excellent return on the investment required. Typically, the process depends on emails that are triggered by audience actions. For example, a lead entering your database may trigger a workflow to send them a set of automated emails designed to guide them through the sales funnel and become a customer. Similarly, a customer’s purchase may trigger emails that encourage them to return. As business communication has increasingly moved into the digital realm, marketing automation has risen in importance. It can be a crucial part of helping your business grow, and here are statistics that back that up. 1) Email Marketing Continues to Succeed Marketing automation, as described above, relies heavily on mass-customized emails to reach your leads and drive them through the sales funnel. Its success relies on the continued prevalence of email marketing as a whole, which is why it’s comforting to know just how powerful commercial emails can be in today’s digital environment. A study by the American Direct Mail Association, for example, showed that emails had an average return on investment of $38 for every $1 spent. Especially compared to other digital marketing opportunities, email is relatively affordable; but its continued preference by audiences everywhere continues to drive that success. Research firm MarketingSherpa found that 72% of customers prefer email as their prevalent source of business communication, far ahead of second-place direct mail. Marketing automation, in other words, works because the medium it uses continues to be successful. 2) Audiences are Cutting Out Ads Part of the reason email marketing has continued to be so successful across industries is the decline which many digital ads have seen over the past few years. Ad blocking is on the rise, in large part due to the fact that audiences are becoming increasingly cynical toward banners and other types of paid advertisements. The outlook is bleak. This summer, eMarketer found that almost 70 million Americans use an ad blocker, a 35% growth over 2015. In 2017, the research firm projects another 24% increase. How do you reach an audience that does not want to see your ads? Simple: through more relevant content that reaches them in a more effective spot. Marketing automation builds on leads who have already expressed interest in your company, and will be receptive to more […]
