eEnterprise: Superior Customer Service Provided By Web-Based Software

“The ability to deliver exceptional customer service is the key differentiator between small- and medium-sized enterprises and large companies,” says Michael Emaus, CEO of eEnterprise (www.eEnterprise.com), a division of NetSuite global reseller Skyytek Worldwide. “Yet as those businesses grow, they often find it difficult to maintain the internal communication necessary to successfully serve their customer bases. When the capability for effective customer service management erodes, so does the profitability of the enterprise.”According to Emaus, growing companies can maintain their customer service advantage by implementing an integrated solution like NetSuite, the world’s leading on-demand, Web-based business management software. “NetSuite integrates back-office operations with front-office activities, while providing employees with varying levels of access necessary for their job functions,” he says. “The information is made available on customer ‘dashboards’ that can reveal customizable information, such as key performance indicators and report snapshots, which allow managers to gauge the health of any given customer relationship.”

Best of all, NetSuite can track all points of contact between a company’s sales force and its customers. “This snapshot enables anyone to quickly review the events, tasks, and calls that have taken place and that are scheduled to close a deal,” says Emaus. “And, when a sale requires a team effort, the activities of each team member are available to more efficiently and effectively make the sale.”

Further, because NetSuite integrates customer transactions native to a company’s CRM product, customer service representatives are aided by historic transaction and upsell opportunities. “This functionality encourages the opportunity to support and grow sales through enhanced customer service capabilities,” notes Emaus.

While it’s inevitable that customer complaints will arise, with an integrated CRM system, those complaints won’t fall through the cracks. “NetSuite has a closed-loop process that ensures that problems will be effectively tracked and resolved,” says Emaus. “This is light years ahead of manual tracking, and moreover, NetSuite even allows customers to follow the resolution process through a self-service portal.”

For many companies, customer service begins with the prospecting phase of sales. NetSuite recognizes this, and has integrated several functions to more quickly turn website visitors into customers. By giving businesses the capability to customize their website’s search function and to receive reports on frequent searches and results returned, company owners can keep their fingers on the pulse of their customers and potential customers.

Moreover, with companies increasingly relying on paid search keyword campaigns to market their products and services, it’s important for businesses to know which keyword campaigns are generating both leads and revenue. “NetSuite recognizes that more traffic doesn’t necessarily mean more sales, and that tracking the effectiveness of keyword campaigns is crucial to the bottom line,” says Emaus.

Emaus concludes, “Regardless of the size of an enterprise, fully integrated customer service management is critical to both growth and profitability. NetSuite ensures that CRM is both streamlined and effective.”

About the Author

Kris Nickerson is the Editor-in-Chief of Press Direct International (http://www.pressdirectinternational.org), a global information website that provides reliable information tailored to professionals in financial, media, and corporate markets. His thorough knowledge of industries ranging from health care and travel to real estate and financial investing enables him to quickly grasp the nuances of emerging markets and technologies.


How Branding, MarComm and CRM Relate

The most important single distinction we must make in our target group for any brand is the one between prospects and customers. This is because these two groups play very different roles in our business building program.

There are two broad strategic activities involved in increasing our brands’ market share. We have to keep getting more revenues. And we have to avoid losing revenues we are already getting.

We will never grow our market share if we don’t keep in-creasing our revenues. We will also never grow our market share if we keep losing more revenues than we are getting.

Each of these two strategic activities involves two functions:

There are two broad ways to keep getting more revenues:
1. We have to convert more prospects into customers.
2. We have to get our existing customers to use more of our products or services.

And there are two broad ways to avoid losing revenues we are already getting:
3. We have to avoid disappointing customers’ experience of our products or services.
4. We have to avoid disappointing customers in all the other the experiences they might associate with our brand.

Of the four strategic functions, the first, that of converting more prospects into customers, is, by far, more difficult than the other three.

This is because this function involves overcoming two major barriers:
a) prospects have little or no interest in or any relation-ship with our brand;
b) prospects are already engaged in another activity that we will have to discontinue, typically that of using our competitor’s product or services.

This is the function that focuses on our prospects, the people who possess the money that is not yet being transmuted into our revenues, and are therefore the most important target toward increasing the market share of our brand.

Prospects have to made to notice our brand, they have to be made to get interested in our brand, they have to be made to desire our brand, and they have to be made to prefer our brand over its competitors, and ultimately, of course, they have to be made to purchase our brand, which is when their money becomes our revenues, and when prospects become our customers.

The remaining three strategic functions, that of increasing customers’ usage, and avoiding disappointing them either with our products/services or in any other way, are, relatively, significantly easier. This is because all three of them involve dealing with people who, as existing customers, are already in a relationship with us. As such, these three strategic functions involve a degree of receptivity toward us from the people we are addressing. Indeed, with today’s interactive media, it has become easier for us to know them individually by name, know where they live, how to reach them, and be familiar with their demographics of gender, age, education, lifestyle, and other habits; and their psycho-graphics of values, interests and other preferences.

Coming back to the first strategic function, that of converting prospects into customers, we have literally to transform their existing disinterest toward our brand into a relationship. This toughest business challenge involves, above all, the WHAT of branding, and the HOW of MarComm, advertising, sales promotions, merchandising, pricing, distribution, packaging and other marketing and communications media and activities.

Branding is the most important of these because it is the conceptual essence of the entire business building effort. Branding comprises the cluster of concepts and signals that have the challenge of overcoming the greatest barriers between us and the prospect – those of their disinterest and pre-existing preferences and habits. The disciplines and media of sales, advertising, sales promotions, distribution, pricing, merchandising and packaging, etc. then have to deliver this brand communications essence to the prospect so that it can break through the barriers of disinterest and prior practice.

CRM, or customer relationship management should cover all the HOWs involved in maintaining and strengthening the relationship with the customer, once branding has broken through and established the relationship.

In this, CRM must remain consistent with the brand communications essence, which lives on in the customer as a cluster of expectations and signals, which is the de facto the brand. Just as the above mentioned sales, marketing and communications functions must deliver the brand through media and locations, CRM must deliver, and stay true to the brand essence through all its human and other experiential interactions with the customer.

So every element of the functioning relationship with the customer, the ease of opening the package, the ease of use of the product, the performance of the product, the disposal of the packaging, the messages received by the customer, the experiences of the customer with customer service staff, with billing staff, with credit control staff, with collections staff, with vehicles bearing our brand’s logo, all must not only avoid negative residue, but also regard themselves as brand communications as well, and deliver all these activity-media in ways that are consistent with the brand.

It must be noted that CRM can also contribute indirectly to increasing revenues and market share as well. This can be accomplished by fulfilling the brand essence vis a vis the customer so thoroughly via the latter’s experiences, that customers are delighted enough to make the effort to recommend it to other people who also happen to be prospects.

About the Author:Over 30 years world-class experience in strategic marketing, market research, branding, communications, and design for top global companies across the world; specifically, USA, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Egypt, Middle East, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, India and Afghanistan.

Participated in launching or building scores of major global brands, including AT&T, IBM, Kodak, CitiBank, ICI, AT&T Wireless, AT&T Business, Sperry Rand, Remington, Memorex, Frito-Lays, Pampers, Tide, Camay, Mr, Clean, Dash, Spic ‘n Span, Ariel, Head & Shoulders, Vicks Vaporub, Good Year Tyres, Band-Aid, Horlicks, Aga Lux Batteries, Saridon, Aspro, Shell Oil and Cadburys.

Formerly: CEO Saatchi & Saatchi ME. Management Director, Young & Rubicam Germany. Account Director, Young & Rubicam, NY, USA. Regional Brand Director, Asia Pacific, AT&T Corp. Frankfurter Ring, Frankfurt, Germany. Commissioner of Civil Rights, Princeton, NJ USA. Director of the Board of Ethics, Princeton, NJ, USA. Treasurer, Ethical Culture Fellowship. Princeton. USA.

Currently, EVP, Senior Operations Strategist, Stealing Share, NY, USA

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ravi_Arapurakal

Why MS Project Sucks for Software Development?

- How is the project going?
- Fine.
[translated] We don’t know what we are doing at the moment and are a little confused because our key clients changed the requirements yesterday. But, don’t panic. Last time we got a requirements change we managed to drop off some other requirements so we seemed to be back on track. [...] To summarize, no one has gone crazy yet and we are pretty confident that we’ll all survive … so go away.

Part I. So What’s Wrong With MS Project?

Microsoft Project is a leading software on project management market. And almost all PM’s over the world use MS Project to create plans and track progress. I used MS Project with various successes during three years, but I quit. It is just sucks. Maybe you think I “don’t get it”, but that’s not true. I know how to level resources, create resource pool, analyze Critical Path and track progress over baseline. I even know about Earned Value technique. To be honest, MS Project is quite easy to use and very powerful, but it isn’t designed for software development. More precise, almost all business assumptions that lie under MS Project do not work for software development.

ProblemsWhat reasons did you hear against MS Project? Here are some of them:

  • “Things change very often and I spent too much time on re-planning everything. I am feeling like wasting my time”
  • “I use MS Project, but my team doesn’t. So no one but me see the plan. They don’t “feel” project schedule”.
  • “Did you see Gantt chart for large or medium project? With more than 500 tasks and with tasks as “Bug fixing” - 34d? They are so damned complex!”
  • “Oh, it seems I never learn all that features. MS Project is a huge thing, I think I should read really heavy book to get it”
  • “I won’t update real progress manually! It is a crap!”.

All complains could be divided on three problematic areas.

  • Desktop application
  • Complexity
  • Waterfall as a natural methodology

MS Project based on WaterfallWaterfall maybe the main disease in MS Project. MS Project fully focused on Waterfall model in all parts. It teaches newbie project managers how to create complete plans up front. It does not mention other approaches anywhere in tutorial or help. Books about MS Project do not mention anything but Waterfall. In fact they did not mention “Waterfall” term as well, but all the details direct to it. As a result, almost all software project mangers start from Waterfall. In general, it is the same as trying to win a motograndprix on a bicycle.

Reason 1: Wrong process. Waterfall is a bad process for most software projects. MS Projects based on Waterfall approach, so it is bad for software projects as well.

MS Project is Desktop ApplicationWaterfall is not the only reason against MS Project. This tool makes plans almost invisible for team. You likely will not print out the plan on large sheet of paper and put it on the wall. In most cases team doesn’t see the horizon, but only some assigned tasks. But even if you will print the plan, things won’t change, since nobody will understand that big and complex Gantt chart. Plan invisibility impedances people involvement into project.

And you should do your best to integrate MS Project with any kind of time tracking software. Otherwise you will get stuck on actual effort measurement

Reason 2: Wrong platform. It is very hard to track real progress in MS Project on a daily basis. Only PM can work with project plan.

MS Project is not IntegratedWell, this is not an obvious concern. How many tools you as PM have to deal with to get all important information about project state? Project planning tool for sure (MS Project). What’s next? Bug tracking tool to get some metrics about project quality (Bugzilla). Test Case management tool (usually Excel) to know how many tests already passed and what the real problematic areas are. Automated risk management tool is a blue dream for most of us. Often we use MS Word or Excel for risk management, which is not very convenient. Requirements management tool (RequisitePro).

Now it is easier to see the real problem. We have a bunch of separate tools. We spend much time to get real project state. We want something integrated and easy to use. I personally want to get all required stats with several mouse clicks. I am sure such tools will appear in near future. And I don’t see how MS Project may stands on this way.

Reason 3: Isolated tool. It is not integrated with all other software product management tools.

Hummer and Warm WaxLet’s take an average software project with full plan created up-front. It appeast that it is hard to support project plan in actual state using MS Project. It is hard to reflect real progress. But why? MS Project is great software, it should be easy. And it is easy in many cases, but not in software development. MS Project is useful when:

  1. Project is very small (a month or two). But in this case maybe it is not required. Use Excel, make simple features list with estimates and that is it.
  2. Project is very large and requires high-level plan. You may create very good project plan for Bridge building, Airplane or Space Shuttle construction. PERT is great in this case and project plan reflects phases, not tasks.

But most software projects have specifics:

  • Average project duration is several months
  • They change a lot and require fine-grained plans (”This feature will be implemented by two people. Joe will create GUI screen within 1d and Matt will program controller within 2d”).
  • As a result, it is very hard to keep fine-grained plan in actual state for medium and large projects for WHOLE project life-cycle (the keyword is WHOLE of course).

No matter what tool you are trying to use. Most managers and executives improperly think that Waterfall requires such detailed plan somewhere in the beginning. Waterfall is not the best way for software development, but incorrectly understood and implemented it becomes a real pain in the neck.

You may say that MS Project is just a tool and all I wrote above do not directly depend on MS Project, but on methodology and process. I partially agree, but, once again, MS Project was not designed to support anything but Waterfall or its modifications. It is used for Waterfall and not so many people tried to use it for something else. MS Project + Waterfall = Hummer, but software development in most cases is not a nail, it is a warm wax. You can’t make anything but a flat from wax using a hummer.

As you see, there are plenty more reasons to find a better way. Let’s step back and look at another process.

Iterative Development

If we can’t have fine-grained plan for whole medium/large software project, let’s split it on chunks and create fine-grained plan for each chunk when it will be necessary. This idea is not new and called Iterative Development. Whole project splitted on iterations (exact iteration duration depends on many factors, but usually it varies from 1 week to 3 months) and iteration planned just before start.

This may sound astonishing for some executives. “So we don’t know project end date??? We don’t have a plan??? Our customers will not deal with our company! What the hell you are talking me?” How can anyone answer these questions? There are two ways to go.

On the first road there is no exact project end date and this road called Customer Satisfaction. You respect them, trust them and produce software they want. Feature by feature, iteration by iteration. Exact date of final release is not required since customer knows that you’ll implement as many features as possible based on defined priorities. It is real trust and it is quite rare.

On another road there are many signs with a big red “Deadline” in the end. While everyone wants to be on Customer Satisfaction road, most of us are on Deadline road in fact. This is a real world and, while we changing it, we have to drive some projects on this road. Can we apply iterative development? Yes, but with some restrictions, since there is less trust between developer and customer. Customer expects a fancy project plan, so we will create one, but low-grained. MS Project is good for low-grained plans. The plan will contain project phases and major milestones and, of course, it will contain end date. If customer asks why there are no tasks, you answer that you don’t like micro-management and fine-grained plan will be developed later. In fact, customer doesn’t care about exact plan, it does care about delivery dates and you’ve already provided them. Then you may break down each release on iterations and follow first road.

Some off topic. The other trick is to leave project/release scope flexible and this is really hard to achieve. It is harder than make a sculpture from warm wax with a hummer. If customer insists that he should get these features till that date without any deviations - you are in trouble. All you may vary in this case are people and process. And often you can’t vary people as well. So the process becomes a single life-saver for you and your team. While it is powerful life-saver, it may not help. Once again, do your best to leave scope or date flexible and focus on Business Value whenever it possible. If not, use iterative development anyway and try to release something useful as early as possible. Maybe customer will appreciate your effort, trust you and you slowly turn to Customer Satisfaction road.

“OK, we may use MS Project for low-grained plans. But what should we use for fine-grained plans?”

I can’t point Best-of-the-Best solution, but some important things that your tool of choice should do:

  • Fine-grained plan for iteration should be visible and understandable for all developers without any restrictions
  • Person who performs a task should track time spent on the task. PM shouldn’t ask everyone how many times he/she spent on this and that.
  • Plan should be easy-to-change (no dependencies, easy re-allocation)
  • Iteration status should be visible for all (and preferably tracked automatically)
  • Iterative planning should be supported by the tool

In short, the tool should be opposite to MS Project, it should be strong in those areas where MS Project becomes frustrating.

Stop! I Can Plan Iterations in MS Project!

Yes, go ahead and try. You’ll quickly discover how it is useful for iterative development and how it is designed for iterative development.

I’ve planed iterations in MS Project for several projects and it somewhat worked, but this method lacks visibility. Developers don’t see plan and don’t see progress. You should update actual effort manually and assign tasks using Outlook.

How many features in MS Project you will use for Iterative Development? Gantt Chart, Resources and Tasks. That’s it. Tasks will be independent, so critical path is useless and Gantt chart is not very helpful. Leveling… OK, sometimes it helps, but in most cases conflicts may be resolved very easily for one iteration. Reports? Useless in most cases, but you may need something for executives. It appears, that MS Project is too complex and don’t bring enough value to justify its usage in iterative planning.

On the other hand, there are many features that you’d better have for iterative planning:

  • Product/Release backlog. The main issue. If you use MS Project, you will have to store backlog in Excel or somewhere else and copy/paste features when required.
  • Integrated time tracking. May be resolved programmatically and with help of MS Project Server, but this is an additional effort and MSP Server used not so often.
  • Work remaining tracking. This practice is very useful to know actual iteration state. Can be resolved the same way as previous item.
  • Iteration velocity concept. If you create an iteration in MS Project, Effort will be Iteration Velocity in fact. But you don’t have clear velocity progress picture

So you really may plan iterations in MS Project, but it will be not so simple and natural. MS Project just will not help you much.

Editor’s Note: I have not tried the author’s product for agile software project management, but I understand the value proposition. If you are ready to leave MS Project, you might wish to consider ServiceCycle MGMT project management hosting as well.

About the Author

TargetProcess is a tool for agile software project management.
http://www.targetprocess.com

Content Management for Websites and the Importance for the Small Business

Through my years of Web Consulting, the leading complaint that I hear all the time from small business owners is that they cannot find good, reliable and affordable local Web help for their business. This issue has caused most small business websites to be old, out-of-date, and not reflect the branding and true image of their company.

Because of this troubling issue, the past five years has brought on the new idea of Content Management for websites, which has become a more widely used term in the Web Industry. Content Management, also known as CM, it is the process of creating, editing and storing information on the Web in a structured and orderly manner. For this article, I’m only going to discuss the importance of Content Management, in relation to the management of websites, and the need for the small business to effectively manage the content of their site for the future success of their business.

As with any new technology, Content Management first started with larger organizations and over the past five years has become more readily available to mid-sized businesses. Most of these companies used their existing in-house development resources to create Content Management Systems to manage the data on their website. This change in the way companies are able to manage their site(s) has allowed for mid and larger companies to reduce their website management costs and allows their sites to grow in a greater capacity than can be accomplished through hard-coding of text, images, and other website data, as was done in the past. This is one of the main reasons why these larger companies are able to grow their business online at such a tremendous and increasing rate.

As this is great for the mid to larger corporations, unfortunately, the problem still lies in the fact that small business owners continue to struggle to manage their data in a cost-effective and efficient manner. Most small business owners are still using local Web shops to help them maintain their websites, at a hefty cost and in a unreliable manner. As more and more small businesses need to manage their business online, there is a great need for Content Management solution providers that target the small business. The issue, however, is that small businesses cannot generally afford the standard Content Management conversion fees that apply to converting their website into a Content Management System, without using overseas development resources.

Editor’s Note: ServiceCycle CMS is affordable for small business. As of Dec 2006, pricing starts at $65/month.

Over the past few years, many websites have popped-up that allow small business owners to register online and create a template-driven website to manage the data of their website. The problems with these sites is the fact that they cannot truly be customized and lack the ability for the business to provide an image and branding of their company because the designs and layouts of these sites are what’s referred to as “template-driven” and look like every other site out there. Also, when a business needs to add a custom component, form or tool to their website these template-driven sites most likely lack the ability to provide the business with this ability.

Editor’s Note: completely agree with the above paragraph. ServiceCycle CMS can use your new or existing website design.

If a small business can find the resources to convert their website into a Content Management System, in a cost-effect and efficient manner, then they are 10 steps ahead of the game. With the ability to login to their own website to manage content, images, graphics, customer data, employee information, and much more, they are able to provide a return on their investment greater than when they had to hire a Web designer or developer to hard code their website data for them.

The next five years will cause some smaller Web development companies to transition and begin to offer Content Management for their clients, instead of providing static websites by hard-coding the data. This transition will allow small businesses to keep up with their competition, while reducing their overhead and in most cases provide a return on investment for their business. The importance for small businesses is to realize the importance of Content Management for the website today, begin to analyze their business, and locate the resources to help them convert their site into a Content Management System. The time is now and the importance is for them to stay ahead of their competition, while growing their website in conjunction with their business.

At Hudson Horizons, we provide website Content Management conversion for the small to mid-sized business to easily allow our clients the ability to manage the data of their website on a day-to-day basis.Hudson Horizons is an e-business product, solution and marketing company specializing in creating highly sophisticated customized websites, web-based software applications and providing e-marketing services for small and mid-sized businesses.

Our vision and ultimate ambition as a company is to always strive to be “The New Light for e-Business.”

By offering new, innovative and extremely competitive products and solutions to our customers, we provide better ways to run and operate their business online.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Daryl_H._Bryant

Customer Relation Management

This article is about the customer relationship management using web self-service. By using web self-service channel the customers can be kept satisfied and support costs can be lowered. The customers are looking for timely and consistent responses in their interaction with the company. 81% of the customers think that they can initiate their cases online. But sometimes when the customers do not get what they want online because of poor service, then they use costly phone support. Through cross-channel integration, business intelligence can be gathered to identify content gaps and create real-time opportunities to give customers what they want - information–when they want it.
Providing customers with the specific content they need or issue resolution within the self-service environment contributes to customer satisfaction. After five to seven resolution attempts in the Web self-service channel, the customer will leave the site unsatisfied and make a phone call. Most likely, that customer will not return to the Web self-service channel. With a dynamic Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section, customer interactions can be monitored and ranked continuously, allowing companies to determine what content is being consumed on a regular basis. A dynamic FAQ increases consumption of the knowledge base and reduces the need for customers to submit a case via e-mail or phone.
When properly implemented and maintained, Web self-service can fulfill the promise of improving customer satisfaction and lowering costs. By adding an e-mail deflection tool as many as 20-40 percent of customers can get the information they need before moving into the next level of support. By focusing on quickly and efficiently meeting the customer’s needs with in the self service environment, companies build customer loyalty and establish a pattern of giving their customers what they want, when they want it.
To satisfy the customer in a lower cost the web self-service is very necessary for the companies in today’s world. The customers of an organization can be spread all around the world, so there is a need of a customer support which can be accessed by all the customers. Internet is the only channel through which all the customers can be satisfied. Phone support is expensive but customers want the costs to be the least. If the customers do not get the expected response via the web then the customers will most probably not return to the web self-service channel. So an active and responsive web self-service is necessary and very useful for satisfying the customer needs and increasing the revenues.

About the Author

Hasan is currently studying in IBA one of the worst universities in Pakistan.