Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is really an age old business practice of take care of your customer's requirements for a mutually beneficial relationship. However in the modern business, just like everything else, CRM also has evolved from being just a business strategy to a software dependent business strategy. So the future of CRM is also a glimpse of the future of technology. In the infographic below, we have covered 8 such trends that are as much about the future of CRM as they are about the Future of technology itself.
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Ecommerce is dominated by how the Amazons and Ebays of the world are changing the retail industry and how the world shops. In all geographies you will also find local e-tailers who aspire to be Amazon someday. Amidst all this clamor little attention has been paid to B2B ecommerce and how it is changing the way corporations supply and procure materials. Given below are some of the major opportunities and challenges in the B2B Ecommerce space.
B2B Ecommerce Opportunities1. Huge Market Opportunity According to Frost and Sullivan, B2B ecommerce market will reach double the size of B2C e-commerce market by 2020 and will amount to revenues of 6.7 trillion USD. It will also account for 27% of the total manufacturing trade globally. As is clearly evident from the above stats, there is a huge opportunity in B2B ecommerce space. The meteoric rise of Alibaba as the biggest B2B ecommerce marketplace and the successful IPO of the group in 2014 is a testimony to this fact. But with huge opportunities also comes some major challenges, meanly related to supply chain and technology integration. 2. Omni Channel Ecommerce Experience According to a study by Forrester Consulting for Accenture, B2B buyers, driver by omni channel B2C buying experience, expect the same experience for B2B ecommerce as well. 49% of buyers still do work related purchases on B2C websites. This presents a huge opportunity for B2B ecommerce platforms to develop a competitive advantage. B2B customers expect instant online payment options (instead of purchase order or invoices, typically the norm for B2B sales), enhanced search functionality, ratings, personalized recommendations, automated pricing optimization, etc The successful B2B ecommerce platform of the future will be the one which provides an omni channel (integrations with wholesalers and distributors) and automated buying experience. 3. Online Payment Options One of the biggest challenges of the traditional B2B trade is also one of the biggest opportunities when it comes to B2B Ecommerce. Traditional B2B transactions involve a cumbersome process incorporating sales and purchase invoices. Processing an invoice costs approximately 14 $ today. For companies that process hundreds of thousands of invoices, this represents a significant expenditure. With Online payment and order processing options this process becomes simpler and represents a significant cost-cutting opportunity. So the successful B2B marketplace of the future will incorporate a highly advanced and secure online order generation and payment processing interface. B2B Ecommerce Challenges1. Variable Pricing for Customers B2B suppliers adopt a variable pricing strategy where larger customer get more discounts than smaller ones. B2B customers also often negotiate prices by placing repeat orders. Incorporating this buying process online is a challenge. And to overcome it, the ecommerce platform needs to be equipped with variable pricing i.e. prices which change as you place bigger orders or prices which change based on the type of discount the seller is offering. This make the system more complex, but is indispensable for a B2B ecommerce platform to be successful. 2. Delivering products in bulk Once the finished product is made the next phase is to deliver the product to the customer at the right time and at the right place. As it is B2B ecommerce, it’s obvious that the orders will be in bulk. Quick and efficient delivery of the product is another major challenge. To tackle this your ecommerce store may allow scheduled order delivery. You should also consider freight shipping for bulk orders. You also need to include shipping rules in your site in order to get accurate estimates and this, again, makes the system more complex. 3. Handling Large Number of SKUs and Data As a B2B online store you may have to deal with hundreds of thousands of stock keeping units (SKUs) and their various attributes like dimensions, weight, availability, rates, discounts, etc not to mention the various ordering options. If you have a marketplace where other B2B sellers are selling their goods, all this becomes even more complex. The challenge here is to build an ecommerce platform that is advanced and robust enough to handle all this data. 4. Technology Integrations customer support portal Another key challenge of a B2B marketplace is that it has to be integrated with other IT systems like CRM, ERP and accounting system and any other tool that helps run your business smoothly. Without proper integration you may have to deal with so much disparate data and have to do so much data entry that it will become too cumbersome and costly to handle.
In today's digital economy when e-commerce industry is witnessing an ever increasing growth, especially in developing countries like India and China, one of the biggest challenges is acquiring and retaining highly valued customers. A plethora of online stores, big and small, are gunning for the same set of customers. In such a competitive environment, those who offer more, get to retain their customers and acquire more. E-commerce personalization is an effective strategy in this regard, that ensures differentiation in a highly commoditized and competitive market.
When everyone selling more or less the same things in more or less the same way, offering customized shopping experience goes a long way in brand building and enhancing customer loyalty. The biggest advantage brick-and-mortar stores have over online stores is their ability to offer personalized services to their customers based on their wants and preferences. So What Can The Online Stores Do? To start with they can implement personalization options in their storefront design. Some suggestions include:
What Else Can Be Personalized? Online Stores can greatly improve customer satisfaction by going out of their way in keeping their customers happy. Here are a couple of suggestions:
There are many other ways personalized services can be offered to e-commerce customers. You just have to be more creative in your approach and a little more thoughtful about your customers wants. Think of how you will service your customers if they came to your shop, had a cup of coffee and chatted with you, all the while shopping their favourite items. Replicate such experiences online and you will have a winner!
Mobile CRM is changing the way salespeople manage leads, opportunities and customers. Smartphones, tablets and mobile apps are making CRM accessible anytime, anywhere resulting in enhanced customer relationships and more business opportunities.
Today having an advanced and feature rich CRM software is not enough if you don't have a mobile CRM app. A CRM system today is more likely to succeed if it takes into consideration the processes, systems and the working style of the organization as a whole. Similarly, it is more likely to be successful if it also incorporates a mobile strategy to empower the salespeople better. But is mobile readiness really as critical an element as it is made out to be? Let's have a look at some of the research that have been done in this regard and let the numbers speak. 1.According to a Forrester Research Survey of more than 1000 European organizations, mobile CRM leads to 74% increase in customer satisfaction and 84% increase in sales and employee productivity. Software Advice conducted a survey of 1940 salespeople who use mobile CRM to understand the benefits of mobile CRM and here's what they found: 2.82% of the people using mobile CRM say that being able to access their system on mobile or tablet greatly or moderately improves the quality of their CRM data. 3.Salespeople using their CRM on both tablet and mobile realize more benefits like increased efficiency, better decision-making, better follow-ups, higher end-user adoption, etc than those that use either mobile or tablet. 4.Sales content management (37%) is the most used feature of the CRM, even ahead of adding or reviewing contact information (31%). 5.The top 3 requirements from a mobile enabled CRM include “seamless data synchronization across all devices”, an easy-to-use native mobile application for the CRM system and offline access. A 2015 study commissioned by FollowAnalytics, revealed the role of mobile in managing the lifetime value of the customer. Some of the key findings include: 6.64% salespeople cited the primary purpose of their mobile usage as being able to manage existing customers better through improved customer service and nurturing loyalty. 7.77% respondents considered mobile CRM an important component of their marketing toolkit because mobility allowed them to give a seamless experience to their customers across multiple devices and helped in uplifting digital marketing campaigns. 8.97% respondents considered it extremely or moderately important to update their CRM system with mobile data. 9.91% respondents agreed that their mobile campaigns would be more successful if the customer data from their CRM system could be used to inform mobile campaigns. 10.53% respondents considered technical limitations as the biggest roadblock in integrating customer data from CRM systems to enhance mobile campaigns. As the above data clearly point out, there is an undoubted business benefit of mobile CRM and one of the major hurdles in mobile CRM adoption and integration is the lack of technical prowess. But mobile CRM apps are becoming more and more adept at seamless integration with the enterprise CRM suite and that's a clear indication of how the future is going to be.
All eCommerce stores continuously strive to implement innovative features in their online store that help them attract more buyers and help them differentiate themselves from the competition. In this respect, giving customers the ability to customize their products is a great way to provide value and attract more business. In an era of increasingly personalized solutions, there is no reason why ecommerce should be left behind.
This is the reason why custom product designer tools are becoming increasingly popular as they are a great way to offer what your customers want. Using such tools, customers can play with the product features and benefit from custom made products. This is more true for certain product categories like apparel, paper and stationary, gifting and mobile and laptop accessories. Since Magento is one of the most popular ecommerce platforms, there is quite a demand for Magento product designer extensions. Fortunately there are quite a few options as well for such extensions. Given below is a brief overview of 5 such extensions (in no particular order) which give your online store the “coolness factor” it deserves. Brush Your Ideas Brush Your Ideas from Biztech is one of the leading Magento custom product designer tools available in the market. It is an advanced tool to design T-Shirts, mugs, covers/cases of mobile and laptop, business cards, greeting cards, posters, etc. You can add any graphics on your product with masking & text effects, creative templates, cliparts, images and many other features. Biztech is known for it's high quality support for all its product and its true for Brush Your Ideas as well. Brush Your Ideas is available in three price packages - Professional, Professional Plus and Ultimate with prices ranging from $375 to $999. The Ultimate version has some unique features like multiple design area, brush tool, and design templates. All the 3 versions have 6 months free support and 12 month free upgrades. Biztech also provides additional customization services for Brush Your Ideas. GoMage Product Designer With GoMage Product Designer from GoMage is another product design tools with similar features like Brush Your Ideas and 6 month free support and 12 month free upgrades. GoMage Product Designer allows uploading of your own images and clipart along with texts. However they do no provide any clipart of their own. GoMage Product Designer is priced at $399 and comes with a 14 days case-by-case money back guarantee. inkXE inkXE is one of the most feature rich Magento product designer tools available in the market but comes at a premium price of $1999. They also have a monthly pricing option for $199. Product installation from the inkXE team is also chargable at $500. In terms of features they have a plethora of text and image customization features and a clipart gallery of 5000 items. Their product video explains quite a lot but if you want a real time demo of the product you will have to schedule a demo session with the inkXE team. Product Designer Canvas Full of features like any good product designer should, Product Designer Canvas offers text, clipart and images customization, photo upload, social sharing and many other features. It comes in four pricing packages - Standard, Pro, Enterprise and X3, with the price ranging from $399 - $1099. Installation is free for all editions except standard. Products Designer Pro Product Designer Pro is not as feature rich as other extensions in this list and the product website and demo experience also is not upto the mark. PDP also comes in 3 pricing packages - the full suite “Enterprise” version costing $899. The base version PDP “Standard” comes for $399. Like others they also provide customization services for extra charge. However the overall experience of PDP leaves much to be desired.
In this digital - mobile world, mobile apps are an integral part in personal and professional lives. In fact, people are so much involved in their smart phones, tablets and other gadgets that they get every second’s information on-the-go and on-the-fly. Literally, mobile apps make sense when they are of wide use for all. In majority cases, mobile usages are found helping grow sales team across the globe. And because of this, enterprise mobile apps are built in CRM to reinforce the business growth and agility. Mobile CRM applications appear to be cool to run business from any nook and corner of the world.
Know What Recent Survey Stats Mobile CRM is growing super fast and there is no denial that, the market is also looking for such significant applications which come with SuiteCRM instance and help access business processes on mobile! As per the latest survey, in 2014, sales topped $23 billion; and he has predicted that, market will enlarge to 36. $ billion by the end of 2017 with a bigger picture of enterprise apps! More importantly, apps that help manage customers’ data on-the-move. Why SuiteCRM Mobile Apps? Mobile apps built on SuiteCRM help operate businesses remotely! Not only this, such apps let users have dynamic functionalities while accessing customers’ data. Different CRM apps come with different modules like, contacts, leads, accounting, etc.; all these can be easily accessed smoothly from distant places. Efficient Mobility With SuiteCRM Apps CRM is a new wave of technological revolution that has been evolving rapidly. SuiteCRM is on the top of the list since it boosts the productivity of businesses by 27%! Another benefit is, it makes business owners proactive and vigilant on-the-go. Even in critical situations, such apps are a great boon to the businesses. Core Benefits · Works In All Situations: It works offline and online. Customers’ data can be accessed all the time on the field. · Synchronization: Automated and constant synchronization whenever internet connectivity is available. · Pocket Friendly: Easy on the pockets of businesses! Cost effective, reliable and scalable A Few Stats By 2020, mobile CRM applications will be the new standard for every business sector to manage their customers’ data remotely. By 2025, 55% of sales people will access sales apps importantly through their devices. CRM mobility will be of great customer driven, cost saving and productive gains! Stay connected with the newest technology trends and discover, how a mobile CRM helps you keep track of your business deals, nurture your business and so much more!
A Mobile CRM application is one of the recent advancements in Customer Relationship Management systems. Advances in technology are increasingly providing customers with greater conveniences have changed the way in which the business operates. Today, a mobile phone or any other mobile device such as a tablet has become a must for people. The advantage of this to the business is that, it's simpler than ever to create a genuine mobile workforce. But you still need to give your sales persons the tools they need. And for any business using CRM, with sales people and other employees often on the move, CRM on their Phone has become a much important need.
Services that a Mobile CRM offer, plays an important role in a new drift which aims to create and manage personalized customer relationships. With the ability to easily define access preferences to individuals and groups of users, anyone who needs to interact with customer data can use the application. This includes executives and sales managers, field service technicians, executives, CEOs and other employees. CRM apps can support your business objectives like increasing sales productivity, sales effectiveness and well-timed follow-up of leads or improved lead conversion rates, gaining a competitive edge, or even reducing the costs associated with sales staff turnover. “SuiteMob Pro” by Biztech is a CRM app solution that lets your mobile or remote sales workers or employees use mobile devices to access, update and interact with customer data wherever they are. It lets them do everything they could do with Customer Relationship Management at their desktop, with the addition of advanced mobile CRM features. Key attractions of SuiteMob Pro are mentioned below.
Fulfilling customers’ high expectations is a vital parameter for customer satisfaction when it comes to the ecommerce industry. In this regard, shipping is a very important component of the customer order fulfillment journey. How fast the products are shipped and how error free the process is, decides, to a large extent, how satisfied the customer is.
For ecommerce store owners in Australia, Australia Post is a popular shipping partner. A large number of Australian online store owners have shipping methods fulfilled by Australia Post. Keeping this in mind, Biztech came up with a Magento Australia Post Shipping Extension for online store owners of Australia who ship parcels to domestic & international markets. This extension is particularly helpful in keeping pace with the frequently changing Australia Post regulations. Store owners can configure Australia Post Shipping Extension in their online store for domestic as well as international parcels and set their own handling charges, flat rate etc. offering improved shopping experience to their customers. In our previous blog, we talked about all the features and benefits of Australia Post Shipping Extension. In this post we will talk about two value added services which store owners can avail of along with the extension. Value Added Services of Australia Post Shipping Extension
Thus, when you integrate Australia Post Shipping extension in your own online store, you not only get enhanced functionalities but also get value added services that give customers an enhanced buying experience thereby driving customer satisfaction.
There are countless entrepreneurs, whose only aim is to have a business which allows them to live with a difference! eCommerce market tends to be amazingly booming to such aims. If you want to turn your online store into a huge business, then the only thing that one must think of is, start putting in the time and effort to uplift your online store.
eCommerce Stores With Certain Online Practices eCommerce store owners specifically, big scale business owners find it tough to handle online orders from the back end. And that is why order delivery date tools have been introduced in the market to help streamline product orders management processes and save a lot of time and money of customers as well as store owners. Generally, such extension is found in Magento, developed with best programming practices and latest coding standards. Online tools make it convenient to handle delivery dates both for admin and customers. To boost sales conversion rates, it becomes necessary to manage delivery dates of orders so that, your customers feel relaxed and good about your online service. Delivery time slots, of course a great pick when it comes to offering flexible or seasonal shipping. However, with order deliveries, many things are attached to help buyers and keep them happy. Using such extensions, online store owners can make a remarkable shopping experience and checkout process! This plays an important role. Defining delivery times can make your buyers amazed and contended. To provide your buyers particular delivery certainty, can make them satisfied too. Smart Gains From On-time Order Deliveries With the help of Delivery Scheduler, your visitors can specify delivery time and days when they would like to receive the orders. Store owners can exclude particular days of delivery, time intervals with date! Moreover, delivery intervals can easily be set with minimal and maximal intervals, this can be shown to buyers. Merchants can allow their customers to choose delivery time easily by sophisticated delivery dates. They can provide flexible delivery time options, effective management of number of orders per slot, delay time to deliveries and more. Thus, multiple delivery options are the most optimal for all customers these days. Customer services can be improved with convenient options.
Now manage your WordPress customers better by offering the access to specific customers thus retaining data confidentiality. Reduce the time and effort in getting connected with your customers for any module related update as they can themselves update the data and you can view it in SuiteCRM instantly. Provide clients with a self-service customer portal to submit new cases and view the status & progress of cases managed in CRM, view invoices, read knowledge-base articles and more.
Customer Portal Software is an accumulation point for content, functions, and features using web-based technology. In easier terms, it’s a key place for making all types of information accessible, allowing organizations to broaden business processes to the internet, expand their range, and reduce costs across sales, service and marketing. CRM integrated Customer Portal Solutions are no longer a dream. It’s a snap crack. Manage all your customer issues with an easy to setup and use Portal. With secure login verified from SuiteCRM, your sales or service teams will be instantly notified about customer’s issues and your customers will be able to know as soon as their issues have been dealt with. Key benefits bagged by Customer Portal Pro Plugin Set Accessible Modules Access of which module should be provided to which customer can be decided by WordPress User Group module in SuiteCRM Set WP Login Credentials Set Username and Password field in record view or create view by your own to set these fields in Record layout Secure Login Safe and secure Portal Login for customers.
Customers will be displayed only those modules which are assigned to them by the administrator. Accessibility to different modules for different user groups can be set from the SuiteCRM backend Manage Your Profile Easily manage your profile from the Portal. Customers can edit their profile directly from the Portal and all the changes made in the Portal will reflect in the backend automatically. Different Module Layouts Set Portal Layouts for each accessible module. You can set Layouts for List, Edit, & Detail view from SuiteCRM and the same will be displayed in the Portal. |
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