Choosing The Right Technology Partner For Your Business

July 21, 2016

In this ever evolving competitive business world, it is important that you stay updated..take your business along with you. How??? – With The Right Business App

In today’s landscape, we are definitely spoilt for choice with regards to digital technology. There are so many options that can make our businesses run more smoothly and enable us to create better value for our customers, from cloud to mobile solutions. The challenge is making the choice from so many options. Here are some ideas for how to approach this positive dilemma.

The Scenario With Small Business Owners When It Comes To Choosing The “Right Technology” – “Right Business App”

Small business owners may dismiss some tools as relevant to “big business” but not to their own operation. The scale may be different but the needs remain the same: digital marketing, sales, inventory, customer service and analytics capabilities are exactly the kinds of technology that could help all businesses, regardless of their size.

The challenge is making the choice from so many options. Here are some ideas for how to approach this positive dilemma.

Be strategic with your choice
It is often easy to get swept away by the buzz of particular technologies. You need to always keep in mind what you are hoping to achieve from the business app and how this aligns with your business goals. For instance, if your goal is to facilitate mobility and flexibility in your operations, look at technologies that will offer solutions in those areas.

Think short term and long term
When thinking about making right technology choices, consider your current requirements as well as your needs moving forward. Whatever choice you make now will involve time and energy, so you want the technology to be relevant in 12 months’ time.

Not Just Your Business bu Keep customer benefits in mind.
Utilizing right technologies can provide great efficiencies for business, but it’s also important to ensure that the customer benefits from any changes. If new efficiencies are being achieved through digital technologies, then does the customer benefit through a reduction in price, faster delivery or improved service? Balancing the advantages to business and benefits to the customer is important when making your the choices.

Matching the technology to you.
Some technologies require more understanding and technical skills than others and have differing levels of assistance. When making choices about what programs and tools you might use online, investigate access to the support should you require it. It is also helpful to determine the options for customizing the technology to your business needs if a one-size-fits-all doesn’t work.

Meet customer expectations.
Another factor to take into consideration when making choices; consider what are the expectations of your customers? Do they assume you will be fully leveraging, or do your customers fit in the ‘later to adopt technology’ categories and have lower expectations?

Consider future costs
A lot of technologies are free or low cost to start with, especially when you are using the technologies in a limited way. It’s always good to get an estimate of the minimum, average and highest category pricing to get an idea of the sort of money you may be up for when you expand your use or customer base.

Some things to look for include: number of users you are allowed at the base or free rate, cost per user after that, annual pricing versus monthly pricing and payment and invoicing methods. It can also be helpful to look at how easy it is to retrieve your data if you decide to change technologies.

Adopt one technology at a time.
It can be overwhelming to make multiple technology choices so prioritize your needs, and introduce technology at a pace that feels manageable for you.

Remember, it may take some time to get things working 100 %, but with a strategic approach, a little patience and perseverance you will see the benefits to both your business and customers.

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Make Smart Business Decisions

As for any business owner will tell you, running a business can be enormously rewarding but also incredibly challenging at times. Suddenly your personal and professional life is intertwined in a completely different way than if you were an employee. And when it comes to making critical business decisions, you have the last word. This can be liberating, but only if you have the right business app – CRM Implementations/ CRM Software is what your business needs.

image source:nasa.gov

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Which Are The Essential Features That Makes CRM – The Business App A “Right Technology” For Your Business

image source: crmimmigration.com

Choosing a right business app – “customer relationship management system” – CRM requires companies to take a hard look within. They need to dig into their business requirements and operational structure to determine what they really need in CRM system features.

Ultimately, companies need to determine how they can best nurture and maintain relationships with their customers in a variety of channels, in automated ways.

image source:http://blog.hubspot.com/sales/

There are lot of choices out there, so how can an entrepreneur especially a newbie know which features will be the best fit for their organization??

Cost
Ease of use
Contact-management features
Lead-generation tools
Sales and marketing tools
Employee-tracking capabilities
Customization options
Automation capabilities
Third-party integration
Reporting and analytics
Mobile access
Service limitations
Customer service

Keep in mind that not all platforms are going to have this full list of best business app – CRM features so you need to define what you need and do your research.

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The below mentioned is just a compilation of different yet vital Business APP features elaborated:

Contact management: This feature allows you to organize your contacts into groups and into any context that you see fit.
Sales Team & Customer opportunity management: Quantifying the opportunities that your sales team has with customers is a relatively new feature that is now available for business. You can now locate the customers that are most likely to convert using this technology.
Lead Management for determining high-quality leads: The technology now allows a business to determine the best customers to follow up with based upon demographic and pyschographic factors.

image source:http://blog.hubspot.com/sales/

Reports & Dashboards: Users can view statistics in a highly visual, engaging perspective using customized reports and dashboards.
Mobile CRM including a Mobile App & Alerts: Take customer relationship management on a remote device using mobile CRM programs. A user can also receive valuable alerts about a CRM program being managed from a central location on a mobile device.
Sales force automation: Your CRM platform has the ability to automate certain aspects of your sales including outgoing calls, follow up campaigns and the organization of data for more effective campaigns.
Sales forecasting: A large part of customer relationship management is determining a metric for success. Forecasting lets you know a benchmark by which you can determine whether your results are actually on par with your efforts.
Sales collaboration: Do business with the best associates through the collaboration features within your management program. You can attract more sales by putting together people who work well together by the numbers.
Email client integration, e.g. Outlook and Gmail: You now gain all of the automation and the organization of a dedicated email client inside of your CRM user interface.
Web-based / Cloud-Based CRM or on-premise CRM deployment: Use your CRM online through your desktop or mobile browser/app.
3rd Party Integrations: Attach other programs to your CRM for added functionality.
Email marketing integration: Pull in the full power of your dedicated email marketing platform.

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Benefits of Implementing “Right Technology- Right CRM” For Your Business

image source:http://blog.hubspot.com/sales/

Brief About Zoho

The above mentioned write-up has been inspired by Mr. Rajendran Dandapani (Director of Engineering), Zoho.

Zoho offers beautifully smart software to help you grow your business. With over 20 million users worldwide, Zoho’s 33+ products aid your sales and marketing, support and collaboration, finance and recruitment needs – letting you focus only on your business. Zoho CRM is their flagship service and has won many awards such as the 2012 CRM Magazine Market Leader Award and the 2012 Sleeter ‘Awesome Application’ Award.

Zoho Corporation is a privately-held and profitable company headquartered in Pleasanton, CA, with offices in North America and Asia.
Their specialties include: Online Office, Collaboration and Business Productivity suite, CRM, Productivity, Network Management, Sales, Enterprise IT Management, Social Media Management, Invoicing, Accounting, Email Marketing