The last few years have been exciting for the auto industry. Growing by leaps and bounds and then facing the recessionary heat. In the Indian subcontinent though the auto industry has gained over the past few months and have posted good results. While the industry is gaining ground and rising back, there have been crucial changes in the way business is conducted.
More and more companies are looking at making their processes more efficient in the light of saving cost and increasing efficiency.
In more ways than one, one of the influential points of sale for the automotive industry are the various auto dealerships, which the customer walks in and interacts with and takes the buying decision at. The way to be successful in managing an automotive leadership is good organization in terms of products, contacts, prices, inventory etc. Much of the time is spent in arranging these important features. Companies spend a lot of time, energy as well as money to train sales people to do these jobs.
The 21st Century Smart Organization
But today more and more organizations are training their employees in Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Leveraging the power of the CRM, many tasks can be easily streamlined and automated. For eg: the inventory can easily be organized and uploaded with the customer contacts, ids and all the information in a much better fashion with CRM solution. Having a good CRM solution helps automotive organizations to also remember their previous customers and target them with new products.
Remembering your customer and wishing him on his birthday, is a small thing, which is forgotten, a strong CRM system, lets you remember this, amongst many other things that it does.
Helping you Win in this World Of Intense Competition
In the intense world of competition it is an absolute essential to retain your customers and deliver and create more value which a strong CRM software helps you achieve. For the automotive industry and the related organizations the CRM software helps them become more competitive, differentiate themselves from others as well as achieve high productivity in their business.
To know more, how you can leverage the power of CRM for your business, talk to our experts at: +91 11 40712488
The World is Changing to Web 3.0, but Why Should You Bother?
The world is becoming more and more social as the number of social networking sites and other online platforms increase. From the concept of Web 2.0, we are moving to the concept of Web 3.0. A very high number of customers prefer using a product based on word – of – mouth rather than just watching an advertisement. This has made organizations work rigorously to change their strategies towards retaining their present customers as well as acquiring new customers.
CUSTOMER is the KEY
In Social CRM, the key is the CUSTOMER. It is very important to look at the points and places of discussion for the customer. Most importantly, organizations should concentrate and work towards improving the experience for a customer who they think has the highest potential and value for improving their productivity. This way the organization can avoid wastage of time and resources on the other unwanted customers as well as target the right customers.
Where is Social CRM leading to for the IT and BPO sectors?
Social CRM is leading to a sort of revolution in the world of IT and BPO service providers as well. They are looking at this as an opportunity to extend and improve their CRM and BPO services to include the social networks and platforms.
More and more organizations are realising that the rules to engage with the customers and with their communities are changing. The faster they innovate, the more competitive and productive they would get. This is turning out to be the CRM 2.0 or the social network CRM.
But Why Should You Bother at all?
Customer acquisition is the key to the success of any business. With the world going flat, and customers interacting with each other in real-time on various social networks and other channels, engaging a customer is the first step towards a successful customer acquisition strategy.
Your customers are talking about what they need, what they like and also about you! The key to effective lead generation and also solid customer service, while reducing the operational cost of the delivery, is to be where your customers are. And Social CRM empowers your business to do just that!
To know more, how you can leverage the power of CRM for your business, talk to our experts at: +91 11 40712488
In the current recessionary world, more and more people are looking to work for the value their work provides rather than looking at just the salary figure quoted by the organization. But compensation still forms a crucial part of the decision making by the employee and often causes problems in the employee trust and loyalty towards the organizations, if not handled well. Therefore having a strong and efficient payroll system which maintains the records of the salaries, wages, bonuses, Taxes and deductions is a necessity for any business.
Why is maintaining Payroll a big task for the SME?
Payroll services can be a big problem for many small businesses especially since they may not have a dedicated Human Resources Department. The common human errors may range from giving a wrong slip to an employee or even putting a wrong tax code.
What does it take to Create and Establish a Strong and scalable Payroll system?
Solid business understanding, along with a lot of concentration and effort is required in choosing the right payroll software for your organization. One of the most important factors a good payroll system takes into account is the number of employee hours given to the organization that is the number of overtimes as well as the number of under times, the times of sick leave, attendance etc.
How Does a Smart Payroll Software Solution Help Your Business?
For any SME maintaining and charting out the productivity of employees and retaining the existing internal clients, is always a priority. A good payroll software, other than automating the payroll system in your organization, has far reaching implications, towards employee retention and cost reduction.
Best Payroll Software Solution in India, meeting all statutory requirements!
With more than 300 customers in India, meeting all statutory requirements for Payroll in India, Sage Pocket is one of the strongest Payroll Software solutions for your business.
In today’s challenging and competitive business environment, the best run organizations are continuously focusing on their most prized possessions – their customers. Organizations realise that improving the customer interaction, customer support and thus the entire customer experience will help them enhance their productivity and beat the competition in the market. CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is a strategy employed to improve the company’s interaction with its various customers.
Some of the benefits of CRM include –
Develops better communication channels
Makes it easy to collect customer related data more efficiently
Helps create detailed profiles of individual customers
Results in increased customer satisfaction
Provides access to customer account history, order information, and customer information at all touch points
Helps identify new selling opportunities
Results in increased market share and profit margin
Helps in increasing revenues
There are three kinds of CRMs – Operation CRM, Analytical CRM and Collaborative CRM.
The operational application of CRM enables effective interaction with customers. For this purpose various tools are used. These contact management tools help to reduce costs by improving process efficiency and use of media based communication channels. These are also aimed to provide customers with a consistent interface across all communication channels. To achieve this relevant customer data is collected and also displayed at all customer touch points. This is the customer master data. Another set of data where employees’ contact with customers is also logged. This has information like topics discussed, customer requirements, soft customer data like hobbies, preferences, interests, details about children and other minor stuffs. The data collected here is analyzed to segment customers. Eg: Banks are an exemplary implementation of CRM as customer contact management.
Analytical solutions provided for different organizations are an integrated view of customers across all channels and applications, campaign performance analysis, customer profitability analysis, cross-selling and up selling. The analytical solutions help answer questions like:
Who are their best customers?
Whom they are likely to loose?
How to retain them?
Collaborative CRM helps the various departments of company like the sales, technical support, and marketing, share the information they collect about customers. The objective is to improve the quality of customer service and increase customer loyalty and thus collaborate the activities of the different departments together.
CRM softwares help organizations not only to reduce cost and increase decision making capability but also help companies achieve differentiated capabilities which would help it to compete effectively against others over the long term.
The use of CRM will keep on increasing as the future of the global economy is decided by the value an organization provides to the customers. Therefore, as we go forward, the companies that constantly innovate to improve their customer interaction will succeed.
Navigating through turbulent times is never easy, but today’s economic conditions are more challenging than most companies have ever faced. The instinctive reaction is switch to defensive mode; cut all strategic projects and then wait until things improve. But retreating behind the bailey could actually prove to be more detrimental in the long term. These turbulent times present new opportunities for companies that invest wisely in information technologies.
We explore, how business enhancement technologies help Small and Medium Enterprises to protect and grow their revenues during turbulent times as well.
CRM enables companies to:
deliver exceptional and personalised service consistently to their customers during these challenging times
increase their customer revenue share through highly focussed business development programmes
extend the reach and effectiveness of new business programmes
achieve significant cost savings and on-going productivity improvements.
What is the Challenge for SMEs?
Unlike bigger companies, where more cash on the balance sheet provides some degree of insulation, SMBs have seen a rapid decline in cash flow as a result of slowing customer demand and evaporating lines of credit.
Cost reduction on its own will not steer a business safely through the economic downturn. Businesses also need to examine how they can safeguard revenues and profitability, and particularly within their own customer base. Otherwise, they are just delaying the inevitable: more painful cost reductions and the very real possibility of sliding into an irrevocable decline.
What Can a SME do?
Cutting costs while maintaining growth is a formidable challenge at the best of times, but during a downturn, it can seem almost impossible. To meet these goals, SMBs will need to look for practical solutions that will help them to drive productivity and increase effectiveness across their operations.
Increasingly, companies like yours are turning to business software and CRM applications in particular, to drive through the kind of operational improvements needed to survive and accelerate out of the downturn. By optimising revenue-generating activities at a lower cost to your company, CRM is uniquely positioned to assist you during the most challenging market conditions.
And Why CRM?
CRM helps you to protect revenues from your current customers by ensuring that you are delivering exceptional service and safeguarding their loyalty notwithstanding increasing cost pressures. Additionally, by providing deeper insight into your customers, CRM enables you to unearth latent revenue opportunities within your customer base for complementary products and services.
Selling more to existing customers may be the first priority during a downturn, but the important task of acquiring new customers cannot be overlooked. Without growth in customer numbers, any business runs the risk of exhausting its revenue base over the medium term. Selling to new prospects, however, is generally regarded as being five to ten times more costly than selling to an existing customer, so improving sales and marketing efficiency will be vital for growing your customer numbers during the downturn.
In a downturn, therefore, CRM enables you to:
Grow your revenue share within your existing customer base
Understand the true cross-sell and up-sell opportunity of every one of your customers in order to maximise the profitability of every relationship
Dramatically reduce your cost-per-lead by delivering highly targeted marketing communications to specific customers or customer segments.
Cut the amount of time and cost it takes to resolve service issues without compromising an exceptional service experience that keeps your customers loyal.
Provide decentralised empowerment to your customer-facing staff in a way that will drive their productivity and effectiveness while still retaining central control over headline resource, performance and budget management.
2.Capture new businesses at a far lower cost-of-sale than was possible previously
Lower your cost-of-sale by always ensuring that your sales team is focussed on the opportunities that are most likely to close
Dramatically reduce your cost-per-lead by delivering highly targeted and consistent marketing messages to specific prospects or market segments.
Introduce marketing accountability, so you can ensure that you are getting the right level of return from every marketing dollar that you spend.
Ensure consistent processes are followed, with clear key performance indicators (KPI) which create solid discipline and greater predictability for sales and service personnel.
Strip administration out of your organisation, so there’s less paperwork, errors and task repetition, and less cost as a result.
Provide decentralised empowerment to your business development staff in a way that will drive their productivity and effectiveness while still retaining central control over headline resource, performance and budget management.
Choice of the right CRM for your business can go a long way in affecting multiple business issues and processes. Learn more how the right CRM can take your business to the next level!
Cutting costs while maintaining growth is a formidable challenge at the best of times, but during a downturn, it can seem almost impossible. To meet these goals, SMBs will need to look for practical solutions that will help them to drive productivity and increase effectiveness across their operations.
Increasingly, companies like yours are turning to business software and CRM applications in particular, to drive through the kind of operational improvements needed to survive and accelerate out of the downturn. By optimising revenue-generating activities at a lower cost to your company, CRM is uniquely positioned to assist you during the most challenging market conditions.
Selecting the best accounting software for your organization is one of the most critical business decisions you face.
Why change your accounting system at all?
Who should consider choosing a new accounting system? Do any of these describe you and your organization?
You want the freedom to choose among multiple operating systems, databases, and applications as your business
expands or changes.
You are a fast-growing company and need a system that can grow with you.
You have international requirements that aren’t being properly met.
Your company has outgrown your current system.
Your processes have changed the way you do business.
You want an e-business solution with an integrated financial backend.
You’re using DOS software.
You’re using a PC-based spreadsheet (for example, Lotus or Microsoft Excel) or an introductory accounting package
(for example, QuickBooks ).
You’ve got a legacy system—some “old iron” customized for your organization—which people may not necessarily like,but they understand and can use without much effort.
Many Organizations stay with their accounting systems for long and don’t evolve due to fear of change and the significant time and resources involved in the same.
What should an ideal system be like?
In order for a system to meet your business needs, it should mesh with your existing business practices and adapt to technological innovations. Ideally a software application should be simple, intuitive and must be able to closely match your business practices.
Better decision making capabilities
Improved cash flow
More accurate information
More control
Scalable foundation for future growth
These are the capabilities which your accounting system, must enable you with.
The six steps to successfully selecting an accounting software, which best fits your organisational needs are:
Involve the right people
There are in general 5 groups of people who should be involved in the selection process
System users
System managers
System customers
System sign-offs
IS Staff
Define the challenge
The questions to ask while defining the challenge are
Which manual tasks would benefit the organization by becoming automated?
Where in the accounting cycle are you experiencing the highest productivity loss and the highest number of errors?
How are inaccuracies negatively impacting your organization?
What information/reports are being requested that currently cannot be created/delivered?
How could your accounting solution integrate with your e-business initiatives?
Choose a consultant
A good software consultant with the right expertise can help considerably in majorly the following steps:
Evaluate and select the best accounting system for your organization.
Save time and money during system installing and subsequent training.
Get the most out of your new system based on the system’s capabilities and your organization’s requirements.
Evaluate application performance
The key considerations that you must take while evaluating the applications are:
Are you familiar with the company which makes the software?
How long has it been in business?
What are the lineage of products it commands?
Scalability as a product?
does the software manufacturer have a family of products that your organization can upgrade to over time in a logical, easy, and cost-effective manner
whether the family of software allows for scalability out—can you add elements to enhance the existing software?
Ease of Use
How simple and easy to use is the software interface, the primary screens where data is entered or otherwise managed?
How easily does navigation take place between modules of the software?
What type of software documentation and training will be provided?
How strong are the software company’s technical support and customer satisfaction departments?
Choose a software vendor
No technology Lock-in
you should make sure that your selection does not leave you tied to a particular solution or vendor. Doing so can be risky and uncertain
A large installed database
If the company you’re considering has a large installed base of current users, it’s an obvious sign that it is probably doing something right
Frequent updates\
Before you make a purchase, find out if the software publisher has a maintenance program in place that gives you access to updates as they become available.
An upgrade path
A software upgrade—where you move to a similar but more powerful product—can give your company flexibility as it grows.
A good technical support team
Questions to ask regarding the vendor’s support team include the following:
How many people are in technical support?
How quickly do they take calls from customers?
What are their hours of operation?
What options are available for after-hours questions or concerns?
What charges or service plans are involved?
Implement the system
Postpone modifications
One of the most common mistakes companies make is requesting extensive changes to packaged programs before installing and using them
Provide good training
Please note that different people within your organization will have different skills and levels of experience with computers; one training class will probably not be right for every system user. Ask your consultant or software vendor for a training plan that will get everyone up to speed (at his or her own level) quickly.
Keep people informed
Frequent review meetings during the implementation phase will also help people become familiar with the new system. Don’t surprise users—let them know when changes will occur. As well, keep your management team involved during the implementation process through meetings, attending the training, etc.
We empower our customers to take the right decisions by calculating all pros and cons in an open and engaging manner. To get the best business enhancing applications for your business, contact us: sales@sagesoftware.co.in
the most critical business decisions you face. We created this guide to provide you with the essential information you need to
make the best decision possible.
You may be wondering, “Why would Sage distribute a booklet that doesn’t promote its own products?” We know how
important great information is to making great decisions. What’s more, we’re confident that the more people know about
accounting software, the more likely they are to seriously consider—and ultimately choose—Sage accounting and e-business
software solutions. In other words, our software solutions stand up to the most stringent selection criteria.
We look forward to helping you succeed in choosing the best accounting and e-business software solution for your organizatio
The business scenario today is a complex one. Especially for the SMEs and Start-ups, it is particularly challenging.
There are several thoughts which a small business goes through, before taking any decision. Even the smallest of the decisions are critical and take crucial shape when it comes to execution and implementing them.
One of the most important business objectives for any business is to reduce cost and increase efficiency, but not many know how to best leverage technology to achieve it
Customers for any business are the lifeline. Your business has customers, we know, but how well, do you maintain them and how good you are at it, is a separate story. The dynamics of doing business are changing with engagement with the customer being of prime importance. Its not just about filling the gap and the need anymore.
Its also about evolving with the customer expectation and understanding, while creating the right expectations. But how will you do it, till you know your customer the best?!
Can technology be of help??
Well, YES! for many SMEs today a solid and robust Customer Relationship Management solution has provided answer to many of their business problems. CRM in the SME though, needs to be handled with utmost care and can not just simply be adopted, just because it is a need of a growing business.
A strong knitted customer handling strategy is what the CRM helps in setting up and hence the first and hte most major problem for the SMEs is to find a CRM solution which suits their business needs the best!
We hence explore, what do SMEs Need to do to Ensure that they Adopt CRM the Right Way?
Clearly define your customer handling strategy and set realistic expectations
In the line-up towards acquiring business and scaling up fast, many SMEs falter on the way to taking a stable decision on how to leverage technology in the right manner. These are growing organizations and hence should be the technology, which should be able to adapt to their needs. At such times, considerable time and money is wasted.
SMEs hence must set realistic expectations and time frame with the right objectives.
Understanding the target segment
Before actually taking a decision on purchasing a CRM solution it is crucial to study the various customer needs and preferences. A CRM solution that hence helps the business to achieve those needs is essential.
When organizations opting for CRM fail to do this, is that they find themselves implementing a solution that is barely catering to the requirements of their customers.
The approach should not be, a short term one. Your CRM must evolve with your business in future
As a business when you look forward to establish a solid relationship with your customer for a lifetime, you should look at a CRM solution in the similar light. Categorizing the managing of customer relations as a mere sales effort is wrong. Every department across the organization is responsible for carrying out efforts needed to support the CRM.
Choose a CRM application which fits your business needs not Vice Versa
Organizations make the fundamental mistake of trying to adjust their business needs to the CRM solutions available. This is fundamentally wrong. You must find a CRM solution that caters to the organization needs not the other way around.
Understand that the CRM is not a machine which will work on its own, there are users (employees) to use it
A fundamental which SME’s must adhere to while choosing a CRM solution is the user friendliness. It is vital to choose software that can be easily understood by the organization employees who will be eventually using it. This is crucially important as merely handing over a CRM solution to marketing, service or sales employees will serve no purpose.
All these points must be ensured before taking a decision to adopt a CRM solution for your business. To ensure you, take the right decision, TALK to Our EXPERTS!
As the organizations grow in size, the business transactions, both internal and external become complex. There are more people involved at every stage. Complex collaboration can effectively be implemented and leveraged only when there are solid processes defined and implemented.
Payroll processing and management is one such process. No organization can work without people. As the organization grows in Size, so does the number of employees and people working. Its a given fact, where there are employees, along comes the process of the payroll, which is a critical process for any company and is a time consuming effort too. There is collaboration required within teams, complex flow of information and there is information which needs to be looked after from the past and also the new one that gets generated.
Understandably this requires, much process management and time from various sections of the organization. And this can also take shape of a major hurdle in the growth of smaller (growing) organizations.
What if this all gets automated? What if You could manage the content which gets generated? What if you could define processes and automate parts of it to save on time and cost?
A Business Payroll Software helps you do just that. It is just a way to simplify the tasks related to payroll activities in any organization.
There are numerous advantages of a strong Payroll Software. Apart from the obvious use of automating the employee salary generation process and preparing of salary slips etc. it goes a great way in terms of tax deductions and other factors which take a lot of time, while being done manually. Reporting becomes a function as you can powerfully automate common reports, hence saving on time and cost.
Saving personnel records is another area, which can easily be automated and can go a long way in helping you streamline data and information in your organization. And this is one of the crucial reasoning factors, which goes towards making the decision of when to get the Payroll software for your company.
Another thing which you must consider before making a decision towards buying a payroll software for your company is the complexity of the employee structure in your organization.
An important trend in payroll solutions is integration with HR applications. For progressive organizations HR, Payroll and Benefit functions have tremendous overlap and sharing the data ensures that all systems are in sync and using the most recent and accurate data. There are many benefits of having integrated HR capabilities with the payroll software or service, including:
No duplicate data entry – Changes made to the common HR and payroll database need to be entered only once. This eliminates errors and the need for duplicate entry of employee, pay rate, benefits and deduction information
Less paperwork — With payroll and HR data stored in the same database you can reduce unnecessary paperwork. For example, if HR enters a new benefit for an employee, the payroll deduction amount can be automatically established as part of the benefit plan. There is no need to submit another paper document to the payroll department.
Integrated Reporting — Consolidated reporting is valuable to management, but is virtually impossible without an integrated database and reporting tools. For example, management needs a report outlining each employee’s “total compensation package.” This report must contain employee information, benefits data from HR and compensation data including regular, overtime, bonus, commissions from payroll. You can only create this type of consolidated reporting with an integrated solution.
Payroll Automation with Employee Self-Service
Another notable business trend is the move towards streamlining the payroll process using web-based employee self-service (ESS) technology with integrated workflow features. Automating payroll processes with ESS disperses routine tasks back to the employees. This strategy can lower payroll costs without taking anything away from employees, making it a very attractive cost-containment strategy.
The key benefits of payroll with ESS that can contribute to the company’s bottom line are:
Reduced payroll call volume – Employees have direct access to a greater amount of their payroll information, so they can request changes online and answer most of their own routine payroll-oriented questions.
Reduced transaction costs – Partially or completely replacing paper-based paycheck distribution with direct deposits through bank transfers. ESS eliminates the need to take print copies of paychecks and compliance worksheets as the same is available to employees online.
ESS also reduces the costs of copying, routing and filing paper forms. For example, employees can request to change his training requirements or any new academic/professional qualification.
Submitting Claims and Requesting Leaves – Claims for travel, medical and other expenses can be filed online for managerial approval, defined as per the team hierarchy (managerial) workflow. All accepted bills can be pulled out by finance for disbursal.
Similarly, the leave requisitions can also be filed online and submitted to respective managers. The Payroll department need not get into the mundane exercise of collecting the leave records manually as at any point of time they can view reports pertaining to leave registers and ledgers. This improves productivity and reduces errors.
When searching for a payroll solution, consider the integrated HR and ESS capabilities the solution offers, and how your company can benefit from the solution now and in the future.
The Article has been Contributed by: Ms. Manu Ashok (Sage India)
Another notable business trend is the move towards streamlining the payroll process using web-based employee self-service (ESS) technology with integrated workflow features. Automating payroll processes with ESS disperses routine tasks back to the employees. This strategy can lower payroll costs without taking anything away from employees, making it a very attractive cost-containment strategy.
The key benefits of payroll with ESS that can contribute to the company’s bottom line are:
Technology is an enabler and that is the most powerful role it plays. Technology is not only for the profit making businesses, it is as much relevant and effective in addressing many small issues and problems for Non Profits as well.
The Non-profit establishment is though different from a profit making business, but the basic needs of a business with the various challenges remain the same. Non profits and NGOs can make their processes much refined and effective by making use of relevant business applications/ tools which helps them increase their productivity.
NGOs have multiple set of challenges in terms of:
Raising funds
Attracting people
Following up with donors – giving them access to monthly reports
Executing online campaigns
Keeping track of their processes, delivering the best within the constrained resources
When you cannot have a dedicated IT resource and a separate budget for IT, a simple CRM tool will be great help for the Non Profits
An easy to use and effective tool will help Non Profits maintain multiple processes and keep track of their expenditure etc. while increasing the efficiency and effectiveness. A simple activity of keeping track of all donors and sending Email notifications of their investments, etc while generating receipts etc. can be easily automated, which is done in a cumbersome way by using excel sheets etc by these NGOs as of now!
But Can a Tool Help a Non Profit Reach Out to Masses through word of Mouth through their Existing Supporters?
Well, YES! the emerging Social CRM tools, ensure that the NGOs and Non Profits can keep in touch, very personally with their existing supporters online, from simply remembering to always wish a happy birthday to a donor to sending regular updates, social networking capabilities merged with a CRM becomes a powerful tool, giving many capabilities to the organisation.
We invite you to explore new possibilities of an easy yet powerful Social CRM tool for your Non Profit today!
