Summary: A look at how e-commerce packages can benefit businesses.
By 2011 shoppers in the United Kingdom will be spending approximately €263 billion online. Figures like this should convince you that you need an online presence for your business. But if that doesn’t convince you, these benefits might.
Better customer relationship management. New e-commerce tools allow you to interact with customers in real time just as you would in a shop. A well-designed online store can enhance the customer experience. You can also monitor customer purchase histories and preferences to plan more effective sales strategies for the future.
Security of payments. Ignore the hype about online fraud. Traditional forms of receiving payments via credit card are sometimes more insecure than the encrypted, secure and efficiently managed payment methodologies adopted for online transactions.
Reduced marketing and customer acquisition costs. You can easily drive significant traffic to your Web store with simple search-engine optimisation techniques. A good online marketing strategy can lead to new customer acquisition at a much lower cost than with marketing an offline business. By offering several language choices, you can expand your market reach at no extra cost. And because your online store remains open all day, you can reach a much wider market with minimal outlay.
Lower business costs. Manpower, rental, administration and other costs for online stores are much lower than for traditional “bricks and mortar” businesses.
Efficient and simple business management. Your Web store can be integrated with back-office management such as accounting, CRM, logistics and supply chain packages. This leads to better management and administration reports. This in turn makes it easier to identify factors that lead to increased sales and reduced costs.
Supplier and dealer integration. An online presence can avoid unnecessary middlemen in the sales chain. But online information can also aid better communication with suppliers and dealers. Special tools allow you to manage your sourcing and supply strategies in real time based on instant and easily accessible sales information.
CRM, or customer relationship management, can be defined simply as a strategy that focuses on how you interact with your customers. But there’s much more to it than that. And to put your CRM strategy into action, you’ll need software tools that track the responses and actions of customers, employees and others involved in your business relationships.
Good CRM also requires the broader process of monitoring and analysing the data that these tracking tools record. By obtaining valuable feedback on transaction behaviour and how customers and employees think and interact, you can develop relationships and increase repeat business through greater customer satisfaction. Thus, not only will CRM save you money through increased staff efficiency, it will also bring you more money through increased business.
Traditionally, only larger enterprises could think about implementing CRM. But nowadays, all businesses are realising the importance of this technology. With the internet revolution changing the options for businesses like yours, CRM has become more accessible. You now have access to Web-based CRM tools and packages that allow you to easily organise your client data.
Another option available to you is hosted CRM solutions. With these, the data resides with your service provider and is hosted in a well-protected environment. In effect, this does away with the need for IT infrastructure development costs and allows you to save money by transferring that cost to the provider.
Major names to look out for in the CRM market include Siebel, Salesforce.com, Microsoft, RightNow Technologies, NetSuite and open-source player SugarCRM. You’ll hear terms like operational CRM, analytical CRM, collaborative CRM, hosted CRM, on-premises CRM and CRM on demand. This probably sounds rather overwhelming, which is why we’ve created this buy guide to help you make the right choices.
Selecting software packages can be very tricky. It often requires you to re-engineer your business processes, human resources and operational systems to achieve the desired results. When selecting an application that is your direct interface with customers, it becomes increasingly imperative to adopt a systematic approach to package and vendor selection. The luxury of pouring financial resources to fix initial errors may not be an option, especially for a small business.
Let us look in greater detail at how to go about selecting the right product and service providers.
Needs Assessment: All levels of your organisation and all departments must be engaged in this process. This is important not only to recognise departmental objectives, but also to communicate the importance of the CRM initiative.
Budget: Make sure you look for hidden costs in addition to costs for items such as licenses, hardware and other infrastructure. These could include costs for implementation, training employees and customers, business re-engineering, increased service requirements from infrastructure vendors and internal IT support.
Implementation: This involves tasks such as system installation, printer installations, user configurations, preliminary training and system testing. While planning, keep in mind the importance of effective implementation. Many companies do not get the expected results out of a CRM solution simply because of faulty implementation by the vendor. Take references and cross-check success rates of prior implementations done by your short-listed vendors. You may also consider purchasing the application from an OEM and having it implemented by a specialised provider.
Technical and Functional Considerations: Ensure you have considered the product both from a functional as well as usability perspective. Functionality will tell you what a product can do and usability tells you how user-friendly it is. Some other considerations may be:
Scalability – such as volumes of data it can handle
Supported communication channels – such as phone, WAP and SMS
Interoperability – such as the ability to import and export data to and from other applications
Help resources – ample self-help resources during implementation and future advanced learning
Support: Product support refers to both functional as well as technical support. Negotiate both as a package. If you are using different consultants for product implementation and IT infrastructure, make sure you clearly define responsibilities and vendor accountability.
You might think that CRM is an over-hyped contact management system. But any business manager realizes that increased customer satisfaction, better co-ordination between employees and well-informed staff will boost an organization’s profits. All these benefits can be realised through CRM. A CRM solution goes beyond simple contact management. It also affects departmental functions such as sales, marketing and HR to make your organization increasingly customer-focussed through the use of technology.
Customer services: Any good CRM solution will cover the full spectrum of customer services, from complaint management to providing better product information. Customer service levels can be enhanced by automated communication systems, prompt reporting of customer problems and more effective responses to those problems. The customer experience is enriched by a system that makes management and employees accountable and service-oriented. This leads to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Marketing: By providing information on business environment, competitors and industry trends, marketing automation can help you remain competitive. And watch out for enterprise feedback management (EFM) tools. EFM looks at the reasons behind customer behaviour. You need to understand these reasons so that you can provide personalised solutions and a higher degree of service, which will help you differentiate yourself from competitors.
Sales: CRM can also help with the automation of sales functions, from tracking customer preferences to quote management. Employees’ time is better managed by support from the systems and some of the chaos surrounding sales leads is lifted. Sales leads become more structured and all contact with potential customers is recorded and stored, which means it can also be analysed. All of this can save you money in the long run. Furthermore, organised documentation and easy access to the latest client information and communication records will lead to better time management, which will result in improved client interactions, savings and even more sales.
Some of the benefits of CRM for a business like yours are:
·More effective sales calls
·Increased sales through repeat business from past customers
·Improved ability to provide a higher level of customer service
·Greater customer satisfaction because you understand their unique needs
·Enhanced and up-to-date communication
·Accurate client account records
In this highly competitive business environment, an in-depth understanding of customers and their preferences has never been more critical. If you don’t utilize current technology to generate timely and effective information about your customers, you will lose out to competitors.
Voice over internet protocol (VoIP) is a communications technology that uses the internet to transfer voice signals in the form of bits and bytes. It delivers these bits and bytes to a specified internet address rather than a telephone number. It’s easier to think of it as being like sending e-mail from one computer to another, but in real time and using voice instead of text. The technology that most likely runs your existing switchboard and phones is a traditional public switched telephone network (PSTN) service. VoIP’s advantage over this is its ability to combine several services, such as voice mail, video, e-mail and conferencing. This instantly increases your ability to collaborate and can result in higher productivity.
You’ve probably used VoIP services without even realizing it. Every time you’ve used an instant messenger program to initiate a voice conversation or sent a voice mail, you’ve used this cutting-edge technology.
But how can this benefit your company? Well, for starters, it’s likely to lead to lower phone bills. And it could reduce the need to travel, too. If you have branch offices, they can be connected either through a dedicated lease line or virtual private network (VPN). Since all calls routed over the internet, irrespective of the network, are free, this leads to significant savings over existing voice services for inter-company communications and makes use of any under-utilised network capacity that you’re paying for.
VoIP technology is not new, but some work may be needed before it achieves the reliability of traditional phone systems. Dealing with lots of hardware and service providers as well as handling technology considerations like the integration of VoIP networks with traditional phone systems may sound intimidating. However, with a little help, you will realize that the products on offer are easy to use.
Key requirements in the move to VoIP remain lower costs, abundance of choices, bundled services, high quality, reliability and availability. Most of these issues have already been addressed by VoIP service providers. And if you let them help you implement VoIP services correctly, it can lead to significant savings.
Once you’ve made the decision to switch to voice over internet protocol (VoIP) telephony, you must perform due diligence to ensure you pick the right service provider and solution. Clearly, cost savings are topmost on your mind, but you need to consider overall efficiency as well. Your options are wide-ranging and every vendor has a slightly different solution to offer. And this can be extremely confusing.
In choosing the solution that most closely fits the needs and scale of your company, you should aim to focus on three major aspects:
The provider’s technical expertise: This will show the commitment of the vendor towards internet telephony. Solutions offered must provide scalability and flexibility.
How responsive its support team is: Examine how complete its suite of support services are. Also, look for a responsive and accessible after-sales support team.
Whether the provider has a customer-focused approach: A customer-friendly, interactive and alert approach is likely to signify the vendor’s level of interest in forming a long-term relationship with you.
A provider should also demonstrate a solid understanding of your businesses needs and the ability to build solutions to match those needs. You must also ensure that the solution can scale up as your company grows.
In preparing to purchase a VoIP system, you need to clearly define your business needs for both the present and the future. Aligning your convergence systems with realistic growth goals and organizational vision is a worthwhile exercise.
When you come to choose a solution, you should look out for:
A complete suite of communications and business applications
Back-up options for emergencies or system failures
High reliability and availability records
Flexibility and scalability
Multi-vendor interoperability
Excellent voice quality
Easy implementation and management
Integrated networking between sites
Clarity about total costs and the payback period
Guarantees of quality and service levels
Robust support options
You need to get this right because if you end up with an unsuitable IP telephony system, skilful implementation or competent service will not solve the problem.
The days of businesses having to spend large amounts on communications due to a lack of affordable, flexible options are over. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and IP telephony allows the creation of appropriately scaled services to meet the requirements of businesses everywhere, especially multi-site ones. Advantages of migrating to VoIP include:
Lower costs
Improved control over technology
Simpler system management
Bundled services
Improved network efficiency
Potential for future application enhancement and development.
VoIP solutions offer businesses the chance to select a scaled-down system that does not rely on large volumes to provide better pricing, unlike wire-line public switched telephone networks (PSTNs). Further, network convergence technology means that the business’s phone systems provider will also take care of data service needs. A single connection will be the delivery channel for multiple service offerings — data, telephony, and video — and this immediately reduces telecommunication costs. Moreover, fewer specialized staff resources are required to manage the systems.
A company’s network will be utilised to its full capacity. This offers improved efficiency in addition to standard features such as teleconferencing, integrated voice mail, e-mail, fax and messaging options, encryption and integrated information services. It also bypasses long-distance phone charges. And once a VoIP platform is in place, it’s incredibly easy to add further applications or upgrade system settings.
But there are some downsides that must be considered. One drawback is that if the network is down, neither the computers nor the phones will work. Further, although there have been dramatic improvements in voice clarity and quality, some vendors’ systems are better than others in terms of infrastructure robustness and service reliability. To overcome these concerns, many providers offer guarantees and certified assurances of quality of service (QoS) and availability.
But most problems are related to lack of clarity on actual user requirements and attempts to simply throw bandwidth at the problem. Before choosing a platform, you need to determine your usage requirements. Once you’ve done this, you can work with a VoIP vendor to choose the most appropriate solution for your needs.
