Out of stock. Three dreaded words that everyone hates and that spell a lost sale (and customer, probably) for your business. Getting your inventory right has long been a challenge, but never more so with today’s channel-hopping customer.

Picture this scenario: a customer walks into your store having researched a product (and its availability) on your fancy, responsive-design based website, compared prices on your super slick mobile app, and checked out reviews on your fun and social Facebook page. Then they get in store only to find out that the product isn’t available there. That’s a lost sale right there, even with all the work you’ve put into having an engaging omni-channel experience. Or they walk into your store expecting to be able to return the product they bought via the mobile app. Nope, no can do: another lost sale and a very unhappy customer.

“Fulfillment is an often overlooked aspect of running an online business,” says Sangram Kadam co-founder of inventory management platform Ordoro. “New retailers put in a lot of effort in getting the buying experience just right. But failure to deliver the purchase dents consumer confidence, and causes irreparable harm to the business.”

Where’s my stuff?

In this omni-channel world, there is no “typical” customer journey, which means you must be more agile with your inventory – both in terms of moving it across channels and having real-time visibility of where it is so you can update your channels. By not achieving this, you run the risk of either fulfilling orders from high-cost inventory areas, or losing the sale altogether.

If you want to get ahead of the competition, you need to allow your customers to research, purchase, and return through any channel. Easier said than done, of course. According to research, only 55 percent of companies have cross-channel inventory visibility and can transfer this inventory across channels. Meanwhile, 44 percent of respondents confirmed they are still unable to integrate inventory and order management across all channels.

Breaking down silos and embracing integration

But integrating inventory management across channels can be achieved, meaning you can use inventory for one channel in another. It may not mean a complete end to lost sales, but it will help meet the needs of today’s channel-hopping consumer. This approach involves breaking down the divisions between in-store and digital teams, having a pool of inventory that can be used for any channel, and implementing an ecommerce solution that provides real-time visibility into where your inventory is, while automatically updating this information across all touchpoints.

Sync your inventory across channels

Ordoro’s Unified Inventory management, syncs inventory across all of your storefronts, so when a change is made in one part, it updates across all your shopping carts and marketplaces. “Ordoro acts as your inventory master – monitoring orders coming in from across all your channels as well as inventory received from purchase orders – thus maintaining an accurate picture of what your inventory looks like,” explains Kadam. “This inventory is constantly updated across all sales channels to avoid overselling situations.”

The benefits of achieving this include not only turning potential customers into loyal ones by ensuring you fulfill their order no matter which channel they shop in, but also getting ahead of your competitors and picking up any lost sales that come from customers that have come up against the out-of-stock issue.

One company that is reaping the benefits is marketing and advertising firm PPL. “The best part about it all is that my customers are happier and much more likely to leave favorable reviews, reorder, and try different products we order,” comments creative director and co-founder Floyd Sanchez.

Here to help

Kadam believes that Ordoro is poised to help more companies like PPL keep customers happy, not just by providing an experience that they want now, but adapting to future trends and developments in this area.

“Consumer buying behavior has changed over the past few years – from retail stores, to online purchases to social media,” he says. “How people used to buy is very different from how they buy today and will be very different ten years from now. We are Ordoro are committed to helping retailers adapt to this evolution and grow their business by enabling them to provide a great customer experience.”

This post was brought to you in conjunction with ecommerce software provider Ordoro.

The post How to manage your inventory in an omni-channel world appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.

Never heard of the subscription economy? If you’re reading this article after watching Netflix, listening to music on Spotify, or working on Office 365, then you’re already part of it.

That’s right, that recurring fee (whether it be weekly, monthly, or yearly) you’re paying for these services instead of a one-off flat price is exactly what the subscription economy is all about. And more businesses than ever are adopting this model, helped by the ability to deliver these services online via the cloud. Research has found that 51% of businesses are changing how they price and deliver goods and services, of which 40% are integrating a subscription-based model.

From sharing to subscriptions

You may have already heard of the sharing economy through the likes of Airbnb and Uber, and the subscription economy is, in a way, an extension of that. Consumers are looking for convenience and flexibility in terms of product purchasing and so are less likely to pay out a one-off fee for goods.

Businesses that have switched to the subscription model include Adobe, which now only makes its major products available through its Creative Cloud subscription service. Zipcar is another success story of the subscription economy. Instead of buying a car outright, members can pay monthly or yearly to “rent” cars by the hour or day.

The benefits to your business of offering your products via a subscription include access to new revenue streams and customer segments, as well as the ability to engage with customers on a more regular basis. Other advantages include more accurate revenue prediction and guaranteed monthly revenue even during times of stunted growth.

SaaS is the answer

To succeed in the subscription economy, you may need to update your billing software to find an app that allows you to handle recurring payments. Most startups today are inclined toward building their own recurring billing systems instead of buying one. While this may initially seem fairly simple to pull off, companies can soon run into problems with the complexity of the situation.

If you invest in a SaaS billing solution, you not only can get up and running quickly, since you don’t have to install any software, you also get support from whatever vendor you choose to help navigate the stormy waters when your business is only getting going.

However, many SaaS billing solutions lack the flexibility to enable recurring payments at different price points and time periods. “Subscriptions and billing are two of the most under-appreciated aspects of a business in terms of complexity, because as long as the process is smooth, the billing experience is good,” says Krish Subramanian, co-founder of ChargeBee, a recurring billing solution provider. “But the moment the customer wants a change, like a change of address or card details, lack of immediate support can cause a glitch in customer relationship.”

The advantages of the right recurring payments solution include the ability to more easily change price plans, more accurate customer billing, better customer service as you have access to more customer information, and the potential to more easily cross sell and upsell products.

What to look for in a recurring billing solution

There’s a plethora of features you should look for in a SaaS billing app, including flexible billing frequency, automated invoicing, PCI-compliant payments, automatic failed transaction management, discounts and promotions management, and integration with your shopping cart on your website.

Once you have this subscription billing system in place, there’s a number of factors that you’ll need to consider. These include what reporting and metrics you need (with data being key to profitability in the subscription economy), what to do in the case of declined payments, any other necessary financial management capabilities, integration with legacy systems, and proper revenue tracking.

If all this sounds like music to your ears, why not check out ChargeBee’s recurring billing system which offers these features and more.

This post was brought to you in conjunction with ChargeBee.  

The post What is the subscription economy and why it matters for your business appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.

By her own admissions, Hope Gray – founder of sorority jewelry design company A-List – ignored her finances for the first year after getting her business off the ground. When A-List started to expand at a rate faster than she had ever imagined, Gray realized that an accounting and bookkeeping solution was called for.

Since implementing Xero’s cloud-based accounting solution in 2014, Gray has never looked back. Here she reveals her biggest challenges and inspirations – as well as how the Amazon Fire TV Stick gets her and her team through the working day!

Can you tell me a bit about your business, how it started, and how it got to where it is today?

A-List started because I have always been passionate about Greek life since my time in a sorority, and I wanted to create pieces for Greek women that they will love, but which also showcase their love of their sorority. It was time to give more variety and a fresher look to sorority jewelry.

I worked with a team of local collegiate sorority women to launch and grow the brand, and we used remote team management tools and social media to cultivate relationships with sorority women across the country – discussing design ideas with them and brainstorming ways to get the word out about our business.

We develop products based on the ideas and feedback directed to us from our customers. Our adaptable and flexible approach has helped us grow faster than we ever anticipated.

Why did you chose Xero and what challenges were you facing before you started using it?

Before finding Xero I had basically ignored the financial side of the business. I had operated for a year as a sole proprietor thinking that it would be several years before I generated enough business to warrant incorporating or forming a legal business entity.

The transition from sole proprietor to LLC involved finding a business solution for my accounting and bookkeeping. We were also expanding and getting wholesale inquiries so we needed a process to invoice these new accounts. I needed an accounting software that integrated with my other cloud based software – my inventory management, ecommerce shopping cart, and payment gateway. When I looked into Xero I discovered that it would connect seamlessly to my existing infrastructure. I was also looking to hire employees so I needed a software that would demystify payroll and make it easy for me to grow in that way.

When did you go live on the system and how long did implementation/user adoption take?

I started using Xero in 2014. It was easy to get started using Xero for the purpose of setting up payroll and invoicing my wholesale clients. It was also easy to get my business accounts in and have my transactions imported. However, because I had ignored my finances for the first year of my business, it took several months to untangle the mess I made of my accounts, but ultimately Xero’s interface and system allowed me to reconcile my transactions from the beginning.

What benefits have you seen since its implementation?

Now I have an accurate picture of where the business was, and the day-to-day upkeep is minimal. Before using Xero, I was basically operating the business in the dark as to whether we were making any money.

In conjunction with my inventory system, Xero has allowed me to analyze my spending so I can lower my costs as well as adjust my pricing model to make sure that all my margins are where they need to be. I can see a real-time status of my sales and spending each day. Payroll is quick and easy and invoicing is organized and simple. The system has eliminated the guesswork and allows me to plan for growth with all the information that I was lacking before.

Are there any further benefits you hope to gain from the system as you continue to use it?

I love that Xero allows me flexibility in the chart of accounts so that I can easily define my sales channels and see the sales from each. This will especially benefit our company as we expand our sales channels into more diverse areas of the industry. We are expanding so that we will have offices in two locations – California and Florida – and Xero will allow me to manage the finances from anywhere, and easily have payroll and employees in both states.

What would you say are the biggest challenges you are facing at the moment in your business?

The biggest challenge we face is keeping up with our growth and implementing new ideas while not ignoring the original concept. We are expanding faster than we had planned for and with that comes expenses and risks that are intimidating. Not only that but we want to ensure that we maintain the level of freshness and trendiness in our product so that we are meeting the demands of our market.

Who has inspired you the most throughout your career or who do you most admire professionally?

I would say that my biggest inspiration is, and has always been, my dad. He took over his family’s business and started his own companies. From a young age I always wanted to be my own boss and set my own schedule like he did. He worked hard but his work went towards something he was passionate about and that he built. Now that I own my own business (with actual customers!) every day I think I need to pinch myself so that I wake up from this dream. I feel so lucky.

What is your favorite piece of technology you use either at work or at home?

My Amazon Fire TV Stick. I have one in our office/studio. We can listen to music (Taylor Swift on repeat) and watch long TV marathons of Friends on Netflix while we hand stamp, package and ship large group orders. I also have one for my personal TV so I can watch my shows at night to unwind or while working on my laptop.

If you could travel to anywhere in the world, where would it be?

I’m sure there are a lot of inspiring and amazing places to see but I haven’t been on a vacation in 10 years so I’m craving sun and endless blue waters. I just want to relax on the ocean in the Maldives and disconnect from everything for a few days. Luckily, I have a honeymoon coming up so I can do just that!

This post is brought to you in conjunction with online accounting software provider Xero.

The post From Xero to Hero: How smart accounting helped a startup join the business A-list appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.

The right project management software can make or break a business. It’s a strong statement but if your competitors are on the case with the latest tech to create a smooth project from beginning to end, ensuring better collaboration, communication, scheduling, and tracking for employees and clients, then sticking with emails and file sharing isn’t going to cut it.

But choosing project management software is not something you should rush into. Here are 10 things you should ask yourself before you take the next step.

1. Can I try before I buy?

This is essential for trying project management software for the first time, as if you pay up front and you find your app too complicated or lacking in features there is little you can do. Look out for software that has a free trial or even a free platform for limited members of staff so you can try it out first.

2. Can I continue to use my known and trusted accounting software?

If you have a tried and trusted system it could be a nightmare to have to transfer all of your staff and customer information from one to the other. So look for software with great integrations.

3. Can I collaborate with different people on different projects?

Choose a project management software where you can pick which employees you want to work on each project, and where you can also invite customers to get involved and collaborate.

4. I pay my staff by the hour, how can project management software help me with this?

Some apps and software have built-in time-tracking capabilities so you can measure each member of staff and pay them correctly. You can also use time-tracking to cost out projects for your customers.

5. How can I store and share files in one place?

Choose software which allows for file uploads or integrates with your existing file storage such as Dropbox, Google Drive or Box. Having all of your important information in one place will save you time.

6. How can I reduce billing errors?

If you use an app that can generate invoices directly from your time tracked working for customers, you will cut out human error and save the embarrassment of putting wrong information on a bill.

7. Can I measure staff effectiveness and profits?

Of course you can! When you have project management software that tracks time, performance and generates invoices, you can accurately measure what is going in and out of your company to the nearest cent.

8. How can it help me save time and money?

Good project management software will improve collaboration – internally with your teams and departments, as well as in different locations, in your supply chain, and with your customers – which will then cut out hours of work every week and therefore save you money.

9. If my projects are in different countries, can I use project management software?

For global and virtual teams, having really great project management software can make your business. Not working together in the same office, or even the same country, means communication has to be faultless so get it together, all on one platform, for seamless, smooth running projects.

10. How can project management software help me improve communication?

Project management software will cut out the hours you spend emailing your team and replying to emails sent to you. It will reduce problems caused by lost documents, instructions or information. It will reduce poor communication by creating clear and precise tasks and deadlines and it will allow you to accurately pay your employees and invoice your customers via great time-tracking and automatically generated invoicing systems.

If, after all that, you are looking for a project management app, why not try WorkflowMax? The SaaS app is an affordable choice for freelancers or small to mid-sized businesses.

Project management software in action

New Zealand civil engineering firm Chester Consultants uses WorkflowMax to run its engineering firm in Auckland. Company director Steven Rankin explains the benefits it has delivered to the company: “WorkflowMax has increased efficiency, compared to what we used to do, it’s far more efficient for quoting, invoicing, and finding data. Just being able to look at a quote and then look at time, and then assign individuals to a job. Before, we didn’t have the ability to essentially allocate a job to staff, and then have that come up in their list, whereas now, obviously, we can do that.”

Toronto-based engineering and training firm APT Training has  also benefited from WorkflowMax’s time-tracking functionality. Kyle Probart, APT’s director, explains: “For our customers, traceability in timesheets is a key benefit. The time-tracker adds credibility as it’s a real-time recorded, not just block entries made by staff.”

This post is brought to you in conjunction with workflow management software provider WorkflowMax.

The post 10 tips to help you choose project management software appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.

While technology can help, one of the greatest limitations for construction businesses using software on a single computer is that the information can only be accessed from one location. Cloud-based construction software allows remote access to this information, meaning employees can work collaboratively without being tied to a specific physical location.

These cloud apps are more sophisticated and feature rich than ever before, and can be access from any device, anytime, anywhere. The only thing you need is an internet access. Here we suggest cloud construction management apps to help meet your needs, no matter what size or type of construction business you are running.

If you want an all-in-one solution

Procore

Managing projects in an efficient and collaborative way is key for any construction company. Procore aims to be the one-stop-shop for a wide range of different businesses in the industry, with a ton of useful features including budgeting, document management, bidding, email tracking, and change and contract management.

Procore integrates with a host of useful solutions you may already be using in your business, such as SAGE for accounting, Box for collaboration and file sharing, and Microsoft Project for project management.

If you want to manage your mobile workers

Synchroteam

Workers in the construction industry are a mobile bunch. This is where Synchroteam steps in, as it helps construction companies to more efficiently manage their mobile workers, simplify their processes, and optimize their costs per revenue. This intuitive field service solution comes with scheduling, dispatching, tracking and reporting capabilities.

If you want to automate your processes

Corecon V7

Corecon V7 is a cloud-based suite of software for estimating, project management, job cost control, scheduling, and collaboration. It is specifically designed for general contractors, construction managers, subcontractors, homebuilders, architects, and engineers who are looking to automate their entire field and back-office operations.

If you’re a custom builder

Co-construct

If your company focuses on custom building, rather than working on mass-produced structures, then you should consider Co-construct. The software is designed to accommodate plans and materials that change constantly, with a raft of useful features to help including scheduling, client communication from with the app, budgeting, photo/file sharing, and warranty tracking.

If you’re a residential construction company

BuilderTrend

BuilderTrend combines features for pre-sales so you can land more jobs and get more accurate estimates for how much these jobs will costs; for project management to enable you to keep track of exactly where you are on a job; and for CRM so you can get feedback from your clients and track payments. While the software is web based, it has complementary mobile apps for Android and iOS.

If you want to improve collaboration

Textura

Textura can help boost productivity and improve collaboration (which is key when communicating with other sites, contractors, and customers) with its set of tools for the construction industry. These tools cover the entire project lifecycle – from design and pre-qualification to bid management, submittals and payment – on a single, integrated platform.

If you want an all-round ERP for construction

PENTA

Going beyond traditional construction industry ERP software, PENTA also incorporates enterprise-wide document, content and business process management capabilities. This  helps to ensure that engineering and construction firms’ best practices are leveraged more consistently.

If you want to manage contractor bids

SmartBidNet

Commercial builders rejoice: SmartBidNet provides easy-to-use and fully-featured construction bid software. The cloud-based dashboard provides an overview and access to all documents related to projects and subcontractors, while also allowing you to pre-qualify subcontractors and invite them to bid.

If you want a Dropbox alternative for construction

SKYSITE

Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, Box, or the variety of other file sharing and document repository solutions serve their purpose, but what if you could have a product that was specifically geared towards the construction industry? Enter SKYSITE, which allows you to access up-to-date drawings, specs, and other documents from any device in real time. It’s really easy to search, share, and organize documents, while offering security and IT management features.

If you want to keep visual records of what you’re building

Multivista

Keeping visual records of your construction projects from start to finish is key, which is where Multivista’s photography, video, and webcam services come in. The video and webcam services offer on demand access to the site anytime, anywhere, while the photographs are inspection-grade quality. The cloud-based solution hosts all of the documentation online, allowing 24/7 access.

If none of these apps hit the spot, why not take a look at what else GetApp has to offer for your construction business.

This post was originally published on March 6th 2012, and has been updated.

The post 10 best cloud construction apps appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.

Have you ever found yourself nodding off during a conversation about project management but secretly you’re wondering what everyone is talking about? Agile project management – what is that? And how does it differ from – what is it called again – oh yeah, waterfall project management? Kanban? What on earth is that? And Scrum – isn’t that some sort of sports terminology? If that sounds familiar, then fear not as we explain all the project management methodologies and terms that you’ve always wanted to know, but been too afraid to ask.

Traditional project management

Let’s start off with the waterfall approach, which is generally regarded as traditional project management. Waterfall project management originated when the military needed to build large structures (such as buildings and vessels) that had to be built to certain specs with almost no margin for error. If you make a mistake when constructing a building, you can’t just go back and delete it.

“This style of project management is very process oriented, repeatable, and predictable, with a lot of documentation,” explains Kayvon Ghaffari, senior program manager, product team at LiquidPlanner. “For example, if you’re building a house, chances are you can use the same plan to construct more of them. Even if the specific floor plan changes, you’ll still have a basis for estimating and planning the construction of the next building.”

Going agile

Agile project management arose with the advent of software, apps, and – to some extent – hardware. “Waterfall project management just didn’t fit here, as every new piece of software is new – it’s not like building a house where you can use the plans again and again,” says Ghaffari.

“The focus of agile is more on individuals and interactions rather than processes and tools, as is the case in waterfall. It’s flexible (delivering small chunks of value ever few weeks or months rather than all in one go), relies less on documentation, and focuses on collaboration with customers over contract management. The idea is then to take this feedback on board and make any necessary alterations – rather than sticking to a specified plan. This is where the term agile comes in, and it’s a philosophy more than a methodology.”

What is (and isn’t) agile project management?

There are several misconceptions surrounding project management that it’s important to debunk, the first being that agile should be the methodology of choice for all companies and projects. “The waterfall methodology is more suitable for building physical objects,” says Ghaffari. “I want my house to be built following traditional project management processes, for example.”

The second myth is that using agile will automatically make your projects go faster and your people more efficient. “Agile must be implemented right if it’s to be effective,” says Ghaffari. “But some organizations treat it in the same way as waterfall, just without all the documentation and planning.”

Agile terminology: introducing Kanban and Scrum

There are several flavors of project management: Kanban and Scrum being two of the most common. “Kanban is meant to be simple and lightweight,” explains Ghaffari. “It begins with a stack-ranked list of tasks to be completed by the team. These tasks are usually represented by cards on a board, with columns that represent stages of work; the most basic version is Not Started / In Progress / Complete, but more nuanced stages can be added based on the needs of the team. A team member with availability picks up the highest priority task, marks it as “in progress”, then works on it until it is complete. In LiquidPlanner, our kanban board mode is called “Card View”.”

According to Ghaffari, Scrum is a bit more formal. There are specific scrum meetings called ceremonies, consisting of Sprint Planning at the beginning, the Daily Stand Up (or scrum) during the sprint, and the Product Demo and Retrospective at the end.

“Sprint planning is run by a Scrum Master and is a collaborative session with the team to figure out which User Stories (customer-centric descriptions of features) will be worked on during the sprint,” says Ghaffari. “The Daily Stand Up is a quick check in every day to ensure the sprint is running smoothly–and if it isn’t, how to remove the roadblocks in the way. The Product Demo and Retrospective is a two part meeting; the Demo consists of showing the team and stakeholders that the new features are built (and actually work), and the Retro is for the team to discuss what went well and what could be improved on in the next sprint.”

The LiquidPlanner way

However, what Ghaffari believes is one of the strengths of LiquidPlanner’s software is that it allows a company to run both agile and waterfall within the same plan and project. “LiquidPlanner also logs all activity automatically, while our advanced analytics capabilities allow project managers to keep on top of deadlines, and access dashboards with all the relevant information,” he says. “It’s also more collaborative and transparent – both internally and externally – meaning that two people working on different projects can build their project plans without stepping on each other’s toes in terms of structure, methodology, and workflow, but they can see resource scheduling conflicts between projects right away and take action to fix them.”

And LiquidPlanner practices what it preaches, using its own project management suite to run its internal projects as it develops its product. “We have four week sprint cycles, and once a month we release a new suite of features,” says Ghaffari. “We iterate on everything from the most minor features, right up to complete redesigns. But this doesn’t mean that all the work for each project needs to be complete in four weeks – more complex ones can take a couple of months. Using LiquidPlanner, each area of these complex projects can be developed in its own feature branch and then merged into the sprint when they’re done.”

More than just project management

It’s not just the project team that uses LiquidPlanner software, as Ghaffari explains: “Our employees that aren’t working on projects and are using other systems – the sales team in our CRM system for example – still log their time in LiquidPlanner. This means if employees in a specific department (project oriented or not) are working a lot of overtime, we can make the case for additional resources. We run our whole business out of it and it provides so many benefits.”

This post is brought to you in conjunction with project management software provider LiquidPlanner.

The post Agile vs waterfall – project management methodologies explained appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.

Time for an email overhaul

While email shows no sign of dying just yet, the way we use it at work needs to radically change. It’s a useful tool for one-to-one communication, but not so great when it comes to working together as a team to serve customers. For example, a client that sends an email to a team inbox ends up being bombarded with multiple replies, because there is no visibility into what everyone is doing. Or worse, the email goes unanswered because it’s stuck in the inbox of someone who is on holiday.

The same goes for CRM. Think about how you feel at the end of a long conference, when you’re almost collapsing under the weight of inputting each of your very valuable contacts into your CRM system. By the time you’ve done this, the leads have gone from hot to stone cold.

“Like email, CRM systems are meant to improve transparency, enable better collaboration, and build and manage customer relationships but, used in the wrong way, they can end up having a negative effect,” says Geoff McQueen, CEO of AffinityLive. “Having to manually input information, and a lack of access to archived conversations are two major issues.”

Keep your email and CRM in sync

But there is a way to simplify the communication problems between employees and teams: integrate your CRM system with your email. This is just the problem that apps like AffinityLive Sync, which integrates with Gmail, Outlook, and Office 365, aim to solve.

Brendon O’Sullivan, CEO of online business solution developer Bosweb, explains that AffinifyLive Sync: “automatically tracks and exposes what emails were sent, to which client and how much time it takes to send an email. It has completely eliminated the administrative tasks surrounding email and helped us streamline our processes.”

“We love the way it collects all emails to and from clients, how easy it is to track time, and the visibility it gives us over our whole operation,” adds Trent Allan, Partner Services at Ziller, a specialist online marketing company.

Improve collaboration

Sync doesn’t just reduce the admin burden, it enables better collaboration between teams by tracking not just emails sent, but also attachments. It also allows you to filter emails according to whether they are open, closed, or waiting for a response. The system automatically adds new contact details if they come from the same domain as clients you have previously contacted.

“Working with clients is a team sport, but by default emails are isolated in individual inboxes,” says Geoff McQueen. “AffinityLive automatically brings client email conversations together in one place, getting your whole client service team on the same page. By automatically tracking client emails, important information for your team is available in a user-friendly stream – cutting down on CC hell and the misery of having to constantly copy and paste into CRM and project software.”

The social side of email

The record of these emails are organized in an easy to access way that will be familiar to anyone who has used popular social media sites. “AffinityLive gives users a Facebook-like stream of all of the client activities going on; now you don’t need to call a meeting to find out what’s going on with any client account,” says McQueen.

AffinityLive Sync comes with a host of other useful features, such as the ability to turn an email into a task, integration with Twitter that shows all the Tweets you’ve sent about a client, a Yammer widget that allows you to track activity related to your customer, and integration with Google Calendar and Microsoft Exchange/Outlook so when you schedule meetings in AffinityLive, they show up there as well.

“Email is the number one way to work with our clients – now we have a CRM that works the way we do,” adds Rebecca Angelos,vice president of Operations at HDMZ, a healthcare and life science marketing agency.

This post is brought to you in collaboration with professional service automation provider Affinity Live.

The post Is email dead? Not if you sync it with your CRM appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.

With the help of the experts at WorkflowMax and the customers that use the software, here are five ways you can improve project management at your company.

1. Use the right tools

There are tons of project management apps out there so take a little time to find the right software to fit your company. Make sure your tech has all of the tools you need and, if it doesn’t, make sure it integrates with any extras you need.

Stuart Leo, owner of creative consultants Blirt, says of WorkflowMax: “We run Box as our server and we connect our master client jobs folder, and all our different WorkflowMax accounts all talk to the same folder on Box. When you have to collaborate together it’s very, very easy.”

2. Plan your projects carefully

Set out your goals and deadlines on day one of each project. Carefully outline exactly what you need to be done and when you need it to be done by. After that it should be smooth sailing. Using project management software lets you share your thoughts and ideas with the people who will be working on a project, keeping all the vital information visible and accessible to all.

Chris O’Neil, operations manager at engineering service provider Hydronumerics, says: “Scheduling tasks and sharing emails, documents and project information is something we look to WorkflowMax to do.”

3. Assign tasks to the right person for the job

You may have 100 employees but only need five for a particular project. Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of your team will help you to assign the right person to each job. Using software to manage projects will allow you to see who has the necessary skills and can give you the most for your time and money.

Ian Morris, owner of brand design agency Threerooms, says: “Now that we have WorkflowMax in place, as a business owner I feel I’ve been able to empower our staff enough so that they can manage everything themselves and do the best job in it.”

4. Carefully measure time spent on each project

Tracking time worked by employees and spent on projects for clients can be hit and miss at the best of times. Don’t leave it to chance and guess work to accurately measure how much to pay your staff or charge your clients. Time-tracking software will produce accurate invoices so you can cut out human error and pay and be paid as you should.

Libby Sinclair, a designer at brand agency Ellen&Ellen, says: “We used to draw up our workflow on a whiteboard, which become really hard to track when you have a lot of clients. We did manual time sheets for three months, and that was difficult. Then our accountants put us onto WorkflowMax.”

5. Communicate, communicate, communicate

It’s so easy to lose vital information in huge email streams, especially when you are working on multiple projects at once. Putting all of your files, tasks, conversations and information in one place has revolutionized the way we work today. Keep all of your project information in one place and make it accessible to everyone who needs to see it. No more lost email excuses!

David Spear, CEO of surveyors Fraser Coast Opportunities, says this of WorkflowMax: “People are much clearer as to who is in charge of tasks, and what is required of them, well in advance.”

This post is brought to you in conjunction with workflow management software provider WorkflowMax.

The post 5 tips to improve project management appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.

The reality is that sales reps are often burdened with cumbersome administrative tasks, such as data entry and managing their pipeline. But the pay off for automating these processes is significant, with the same CSO Insights study suggesting that increasing selling time to more than 45 percent would mean that, on average, seven percent more of your reps would hit or exceed quota.

The importance, then, of sales force automation software, is clear in terms of improving selling speed and efficiency, something that many companies have already recognized. In fact, in a Software Advice survey, sales automation software was the most requested type of business application, with 76 percent of respondents looking for this kind of app.

As demand for tools that offer sales automation in the cloud increases, existing platforms are feeling the pressure to keep up. Here is our selection of the best apps for sales automation in the cloud.

Zoho CRM

As part of its CRM solution, Zoho offers sales force automation functionality, which automates processes such as lead management, speeding up the time it takes from generating a lead to closing the deal. Other automated processes include pipeline analysis, quota management, and real-time forecasting.

Salesforce Sales Cloud

Salesforce Sales Cloud is a sales force automation app with a strong focus on managing not just leads, but also all the information you need to improve your sales process. With the Visual Workflow feature, you can automate these processes by just dragging and dropping them, while when the system also automatically assigns leads to sales people when the clients are ready to be contacted.

Pipedrive

Aimed at boosting sales speed and efficiency, Pipedrive’s sales automation app includes activity reminders that automatically alert you if you need to make contact with a client or need to advance goals you have set (such as deals closed, people contacted etc). The visual pipeline also shows where you are in the sales process, while the system can be integrated with other platforms to get more updates.

Infusionsoft

Through Infusionsoft’s Sales Pipeline feature, the company enables not only sales process automation, but also an integration of this into the overall marketing automation strategy. This functionality allows sales reps to understand at a glance exactly where all their clients are at in the pipeline so they can know who they need to talk to next.

ForceManager

ForceManager’s strength lies in its ability to automate sales reports that free up reps time to actually focus on selling. This sales automation system does this by automatically collecting relevant data to provide a deep analysis (in real time if necessary) that helps your workers better understand the impact of their client interactions.

Pipeliner

Pipeliner is another in the line of CRM systems that comes with sales (and marketing) automation features baked in. The way this cloud app works is by allowing your business to pre-design messages appropriate for all stages of the process, and then enabling automatic sending of these messages. This saves the sales force the time it takes to compose messages or wait for marketing to approve the copy they are sending out.

RelateIQ

One of the key ways that RelateIQ uses automation to improve sales productivity is by not only automatically linking email addresses with the CRM system, but also helping sales reps automatically track their interactions with clients. It does this by creating tasks based on previous interactions with emails that clients have not responded to in a while, and giving the whole team visibility of the history and status of all client communication.

Nutshell CRM

Nutshell is a great app for automating your sales workflow and processes, so your sales reps always know how to handle leads and what actions they need to take for each one. You can either automate the pre-configured workflows included with this app, or easily build your own processes, which can be tailored to your business needs.

If you don’t see what you’re looking for in our list, don’t worry as we have other sales force automation options for you on GetApp, and find out how to optimize your leads by following these CRM best practices.

Update: This article was originally published on November 21st 2013. It was updated on July 3rd 2015.

The post 8 sales automation apps that will bring your leads to life appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.

Today, we are delighted to announce that Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT), the leading provider of research and analysis on the global information technology industry, has acquired GetApp.

The acquisition of GetApp is consistent with Gartner’s strategy of investing in world-class products and services that help clients make the right technology-related decisions, every day.

Over the coming months, Gartner will invest substantial resources in our team, programs and technology in order for us to provide greater value to you.

This is an exciting time for Manuel, me and the whole team at GetApp. We are sincerely grateful for your business and look forward to continuing to provide you with exceptional campaigns that help you to grow your business.

Christophe and Manuel

CEO and COO

The post Gartner Acquires GetApp appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.

If you’ve watched any reality TV show in the last few years, you’ll know that the journey is a key part of any experience. For small businesses, it’s the customer purchasing journey that counts, and this (sometimes rocky) voyage extends past the transaction, right into post-sales support.

Post-sales support involves proactively reaching out to your customer to make sure their experience (ie journey) lived up to their expectations; providing personalized and tailored support; engaging across all channels at the time that suits them; and following up with relevant and tailored offers to turn a one-time purchase into a beautiful relationship.

We’ve identified the apps that can help you improve that post-sales experience so you can make customers more likely to come back, time and time again.

Freshdesk

Freshdesk’s integration with Box

Freshdesk has added integration with cloud storage offering Box to allow customer support teams to work even closer with customers in the after-sales market. The way it works is that customer service agents can attach files directly from their company’s Box account to the support ticket, meaning they’ll be sharing via the cloud rather than send unwieldy attachments direct to their customers. This is particularly useful for large items, such as video tutorials and support guides.

Journey Sales Smart Room

What makes Journey Sales Smart Room an interesting prospect is what it calls its “digital body language analysis”. This consists of an algorithm, which predicts customer behavior throughout the entire buying journey (even after the purchase has been completed) and identifies what kind of needs they might have or roadblocks you might come up against with this customer.

It also includes a feature called Smart Rooms, which is a kind of chat room where you can share content with your customer relevant to where they are in their journey and based on real-time analytics that shows what they are looking for.

UserVoice

Analytics is key to learning more about and better understanding your customers. Not only can UserVoice’s reporting functionality help improve customer satisfaction and engagement, they also allow you to learn about areas of customer service you can improve on by showing how agents are handling customer queries, with metrics including response time and ticket volume.

TeamSupport.com

TeamSupport provides a 360-degree view of the customer

TeamSupport is a veritable goldmine of useful features when it comes to supporting your customer after they have made the sale. By providing a complete 360-degree view of your customer and all the interactions they have had with your company from the very first moment of contact as well as the products they have bought from you, the relationship post sale is more personal and tailored. No longer is a customer just a ticket number, they are now a real person.

Other neat features include integrated video, so the customer can provide a screencast of their problem, as well as intelligent article suggestions where articles are automatically suggested based on the problem the customer is describing.

Thunderhead

By building the most complete profile of a consumer that it can, such as preferences, context, profile information, buying history, and location, Thunderhead enables your customer service agents to provide better post-sale help and answers based on a real situation. This information is drawn from different departments, such as sales, and call center, meaning that all interactions with a customer are captured and stored in one place. The response and content you provide can also be country-specific and tailored according to language.

Zoho Support

Zoho Support offers multi-channel ticket management

Communicating with your customers no matter what channel they want to talk to you is a key part of after-sales support – whether they are tweeting their annoyance with a late delivery, emailing you about a problem, or merely asking you to explain some features.

With Zoho, customer chat from email, social media, live chat, and phone support can all be automatically turned into service tickets and assigned a due date. As it integrates with Zoho CRM, you have access to customer information at your fingertips. Zoho can also help you improve the quality of your self-service portal through its integration with Google Analytics by allowing you to identify pages that are performing well, as well as keywords that your customers are using to search.

CustomerSure

CustomerSure is all about customer retention and making sure they keep coming back to you by allowing them to provide feedback at any point in the purchasing journey (including after you have bought the product). Delivered through integration with your website, with CustomerSure customers can not only raise complaints and queries but also see how you have responded to other issues, keeping you on your toes in terms of going the extra mile in customer service.

If you still haven’t found what you’re looking for then check out our list of customer management applications, or see how they compare in our GetRank ratings.

The post After sales or after thought? 7 apps that keep your customers coming back for more appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.

Effective collaboration is a building block of innovation, but it doesn’t just happen. Sharing ideas, working towards a common goal, building relationships of trust across departments, locations, and companies: these are all key components. Not quite there yet? Here are five ways workflow management software can help.

Manage your projects effectively

Collaboration on team projects and having all of the information in one place for all to see is the new black. Emailing back and forth with your team and having one-to-one conversations is yesterday’s news. Today we are way more efficient than that because we all use apps to manage our joint projects, collaborate with staff (and clients), check progress  of tasks,and store all of our files in one place – don’t we? Chirag Ahuja, head of marketing at WorkflowMax, says: ”As a leader in your business, it’s up to you to set the tone for collaboration in your team.”

Track time and therefore money

We’ve all had a sneaky peek at Facebook when we’re supposed to be focusing on a task. Most people do it, but what if those five or ten minutes every hour are costing you money? Using a time tracking app which lets you know when your allocated time is about to run out sure makes your team get on with the job in hand. You can use stopwatches and mobile time trackers to accurately cost out projects and jobs and pay the people who work the hardest, the most money, it’s only fair!

Invoice accurately, no more mistakes

How many of you business owners out there have had trouble with invoicing in the past? Mistakes are easily made and doesn’t your blood run cold when you have invoiced the wrong amount, especially if you have undercharged! Invoicing both clients and employees is now easier than ever with workflow management software, which generates its own invoices from time tracked and which you can customize perfectly to match your brand.

Better communication with clients and staff

If you are a serial emailer you will forgive your team for losing important information from time-to-time. After all it’s easy to do when they get 100+ emails a day from you. Stop all that to-ing and fro-ing on long email threads and put all the information in one accessible-to-all place so nobody will ever have an excuse to lose that crucial info again.

It’s not easy introducing new technology to your team, Monica Shepherd, a marketer at WorkflowMax, says: “Sorting through and dealing with emails can become a time-consuming and unproductive task. While ‘Inbox Zero’ may seem like an unattainable goal, a clean and manageable inbox is within everyone’s grasp.”

Get accurate and essential reporting

So it might look like you’re streamlining communications but where’s the proof? You need an app with a powerful reporting tool which lets you know exactly what is coming and going in your business. On top of that you need to be able to have accurate performance management to be able to reward the employees and the clients that are generating the most income for you.

WorkflowMax can help you manage those important projects as a team, and it integrates with other cloud-based apps to make your life that little bit easier.

Workflow management in practice

Steelcraft, an engineering, fabrication and machining company, streamlined its processes and saved $50k a year through using WorkflowMax solutions. When its business expanded, WorkflowMax allowed it to keep tabs on its cash flow, and create invoices and reports in a timely and efficient way. Darren George, director of Steelcraft, says: “When we grew rapidly huge problems started cropping up. Luckily, WorkflowMax came along.”

IT services company Conquest Solutions cut its quoting time by 66% with WorkflowMax templates, which handles its quotes, leads, and purchase orders.. Lance Retter, co-founder of Conquest Solutions, explains: “WorkflowMax is the core of our business.”

Then GWA uses WorkflowMax to create an efficient administration system that allows for transparency and accountability in its Sydney-based architecture practice. Georgina Wilson, director and lead architect at GWA, says of WorkflowMax: “It’s not complicated; it’s very user-friendly and intuitive. You don’t feel as though there’s an enormous training exercise to get familiar with the product.”

Improve collaboration across departments, locations, and companies

Whether your team is in one office or all over the world, your communication, collaboration and project management needs to flow smoothly and work for you, your employees and your customers. Having clear goals, excellent communication with the whole team and accurate time tracking and invoicing can really make you stand out from the crowd, whatever business you’re in. Choose your project management software wisely and your business will bloom. Happy teams plus happy customers equals successful, profitable and happy you!

Of course there are other options if WorkflowMax isn’t the right fit for you. Have a browse through GetApp’s extensive software choices and  compare WorkflowMax with other apps in the same category.

This post is brought to you in conjunction with workflow management software provider WorkflowMax.

The post 5 ways workflow management software can improve collaboration appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.

So let’s talk about how to make this investment smart. You’ve accepted the promise of the CRM as a tool to track everything, organize your sales flow and process, overcome hurdles to reporting, and enable reliable forecasting. It’s a new world.

Your spreadsheet software didn’t cost you; now you’re ready to invest. But wait. Here be dragons. Buying CRM is not the same as buying Excel. You don’t even know what you don’t know, and it’s easy to take expensive missteps.

What you don’t know can hurt you

Say your CRM implementation is underway, when you find out that your tier doesn’t allow historical reporting or territory management – that’s a higher price. You can’t create profiles and page layouts tailored to your needs either – the invoice doubles with those, per seat. Custom app development or integration via web service – extra. Additional data storage? Your monthly bill just quadrupled. Need to integrate your email? That’ll be more money, thank you.

Price should not be a black box

When you’re looking for a new piece of software, you want the pricing structure to be as transparent and easy to understand as possible, with all the costs mentioned upfront so you can avoid this exact situation. Be aware that some vendors aren’t out to make it easy to understand – purposefully. You know you them when you see bewilderingly long documents explaining the various tiers and pricing models, some as long as a 29-page PDF – for pricing! And if the pricing document is impenetrable…. well, what can you be sure of?

If you’re looking for advice, there is a short, printable checklist and practical CRM buying guide you might find helpful as you compare features and pricing.

Beware the hidden costs

Hidden costs come in a number of shapes and forms, here are the most common.

• Onboarding – Do you need an IT admin to set up the system? Or can member of the sales team, do it on their own? An outsourced programmer or IT professional equals unforeseen costs. If the sales team can handle it themselves, you’ll save money.
• Training – Does your vendor charge per person or per hour? If it’s per person, you need to make very sure that the people you choose can pass on their knowledge to the rest of your team. And if they charge per hour you need to make sure the system is quick to get up and running.
• Integration Fees – Will your vendor charge to use APIs and integrate with other solutions you use, such as email or helpdesk?
• Features – Are there features that are more costly than they first appear? For example, do you need a feature (for example, an integrated phone system) that’s an expensive option?
• Hidden Costs for Added Capability – If you want the ability to configure, say, permissions, will you be required to move to an enterprise version of the product – a move that takes the price into the stratosphere?

Test the waters with a cost comparison calculation

SaaS CRM systems can ease the headache; the rental model is more predictable so your CFO won’t get any nasty surprises, and you don’t have to worry about upgrading and downgrading features according to price. But, if you’re still struggling to come to grips with how much your CRM system will cost, Pipeliner CRM has introduced a cost comparison calculator that compares its solution with Salesforce, SugarCRM, and Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

The calculator not only provides a side-by-side comparison of license costs, onboarding, training, administration, and customization, but also shows you the price savings according to how many users you have.

Pricing, the Pipeliner way

Pipeliner CRM charges a flat fee of $35 for each user on a monthly basis, which includes all features (and as features are added they become part of the core product), plugins, the mobile CRM app, and integration. You also don’t need an IT admin to set it up, a sales rep can do it and perform any customizations, while Pipeliner charges an hourly fee for training – no matter how many people are involved.

As Eric McDowell, national sales manager at electrical sales and distribution firm S. Sterling Company, says: “With Pipeliner, I found that I was getting excited about the possibilities, the flexibility and the ability to customize the various stages in the sales pipeline, and being able to make it our own without having to pay a lot of programming fees and what-have-you to truly create our own system. ”

Choosing the right CRM is a crucial step for your company and your sales team, so consider all the factors that might affect productivity and the bottom line. Pipeliner has created a free ebook to help, along with a checklist to print out as you conduct research.

This post is brought to you in conjunction with CRM provider Pipeliner.

The post Demystifying CRM pricing structures: true cost versus smoke and mirrors appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.

Skype might be good enough for your Grandma, but can it really be trusted for your business communications?

On paper, Skype is now a tempting choice for a company, as well as being the go-to tool for catching up with tech-fearing relatives. While some businesses may be using the familiar consumer version (which is also available as a web service), the app also comes in another flavor: Skype for Business, which is part of the Office 365 platform. Skype for Business is a rebranded version of Lync, Microsoft’s previous business communication tool. It was launched in mid 2015 and brought with it a whole host of enterprise security and IT control features, and includes some great tools for company collaboration.

But Skype (in both forms) is by no means without its issues (many of which are well documented), such as poor call quality, out-of-control notifications, poor connections, problems with Skype credit, and so on. The good news is that there are many communication apps that are credible alternatives to Microsoft’s popular product. Here are some of the best of the bunch.

GoToMeeting

As the name suggests, GoToMeeting is all about arranging meetings and it makes it pretty easy, too. With the ability to virtually meet with up to 25 people, you can either chose to chat via video or VoIP, or join with your mobile phone. There’s a plethora of other useful features, including screen sharing, personal “chat rooms”, and the ability to record the meeting and share it with those people who were unable to attend. It’s straightforward and simple to use.

Zoho Meeting

There are a couple of features that make Zoho Meeting a particularly interesting alternative to Skype. First of all, as Zoho offers a number of other apps such as CRM, Chat, and Calendar, you can start the meeting directly from there, as well as other integrations such as Google Apps. What makes it a useful business tool is that you can rebrand the app according to your company brand, as well as easily manage users and create customized reports. Then it also comes with all the usual features, such as VoIP, video chat, and screen sharing.

Cisco WebEx

Cisco WebEx has a strong focus on HD video calling, with a key feature being its ability to show seven screens at a time. It also comes with audio and video recording options, as well as annotation, note taking, and whiteboarding tools. The screen sharing feature is pretty cool, allowing you to only share certain apps on your screen, instead of your whole desktop, as is the “call me” option, which has a phone call you instead of you having to dial in.

Join.me

While Join.me may market itself as a simple solution that is super easy to use, it actually boasts features to rival its more “complicated” competitors. It has the usual VoIP, screensharing, video chat, and file transfer features, plus record functionality, the ability to chat with up to 250 participants, calendar plug ins, Salesforce.com integration, cloud storage, and personal chat rooms, along with integrated mobile apps. Overall, it’s a fully-featured program that is suitable even for tech novices.

Aircall

Aircall’s VoIP solution is an excellent way to simplify and localize the way you connect with your customer. From providing you with local phone numbers in up-to 30 countries, to cascading phone calls through team members, to the shared inbox option where multiple employees can access voice messages, Aircall has a strong feature set. There are also no limits to the amount of calls you can make at one time, while desktop notifications mean that you can always be aware of when your customers are calling.

Phone.com

Phone.com is all about VoIP rather than video chat, focusing on providing the a fully-featured conference call service for your business. Innovative features include conference calling for up to 500 people, SMS messaging to your Phone.com number, the ability to send and receive faxes from your account, and integration with the Phone.com mobile app, which allows you to start group messaging chats. While you can use traditional landlines and mobile phones, the good news is that by downloading Phone.com’s software, you computer can serve this purpose just as well.

8×8

8×8 helps you to better service your customers with a smattering of intuitive features and a squeaky clean interface. It’s a fully-featured VoIP application that provides more than just phone service. 8×8 also includes first-class web conferencing, faxing and mobile integration. If you’re switching from Skype, you’ll appreciate the improved audio quality, which sounds clear as a bell, thanks to its audio compression methods. Add to that excellent iOS and Android integration, and 8×8 quickly becomes a worthy alternative to Skype for business.

RingCentral

RingCentral is an voice-focused alternative to Skype that brings a professional edge to VoIP for business. The solution emphasizes security, as well as ease of use, focusing on voice calling, text messaging and conference. And those are tasks that RingCentral does exceptionally well. Overall, it’s solid, reliable, and flexible.

If you still haven’t found what you’re looking for, check out GetApp’s full list of communication apps, or see how customer service, CRM, and call center apps are rated on GetRank, GetApp’s quarterly ranking of business apps.

The post See you Skype: 8 alternatives that are worth the hype appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.

Does anyone actually give a crap about what you write on your company blog? Looking at your traffic figures it might seem like they don’t. But that doesn’t mean your writing is awful or your topics are boring. It could just come down to your email newsletter strategy. You do have an email newsletter strategy, right?

If you’ve got a blog (and you should: done well, it gives your business the chance to shine), you’ll also most likely have some kind of interrelated email strategy, most often a newsletter, highlighting the best bits of content, or a simple email alert, letting your customers or clients know that something fresh is on the blog. If you don’t, or if you’re not doing it properly, you could be missing out on a ton of potential traffic.

So how can you integrate email and blogging strategies?

Making sure this passage of information is smooth and simple is essential. One of the cardinal sins of blogging is creating a glorious abundance of content, but having a starkly contrasting lack of readers. Getting people to see, consume and share your blogging efforts is key. So what can you do to ensure that your lovingly crafted content gets the audience it deserves?

Aesthetics

Responsively designed email newsletters and blogs give your customers the best experience on every device

You need to give a lot of thought to how your blog appears and, more specifically, how it appears via email. Simply redesigning those email alerts or newsletters can make a huge deal of difference – did you know that Campaign Monitor, a company that has experience in the area, saw a 127% rise in CTR after an email re-design? And as you can see, it didn’t do anything radical – it just took an objective look and made some common-sense changes.

Another significant aspect is how your blog looks once it has been accessed via a mailing. Many people read email on the go, on mobile devices, and if they click through, only to find a blog post that’s been stripped of images and rendered in Comic Sans, you might not be able to sustain their interest as you would if they were looking at it in a browser. If you’re not sure if your blog and emails are designed responsively, check with your development team. If you don’t have a development team, don’t worry. If you make your emails and blogs “by hand” using an email marketing tool like Campaign Monitor, they’ll likely do all the work for you.

N.B. Worst case scenario: grab a bunch of devices, and check out your email and the pieces of content it links to. It should be readily obvious if you need some outside help.

Headings and titles

Some bloggers argue that the success of a post is almost entirely decided by the heading. Headings are no easy business. Countless famous media outlets (such as Upworthy and its 25 headlines per post – a practice said to have come from The Onion, where every writer had to write 25 headlines for each post, in the hope that a small percentage would actually be any good!) have extolled the virtue of the perfect headline. It pulls people in, and gets them to click. Try to improve yours by getting some training in the area, employing professional bloggers, and doing some A/B testing to see what works best for your audience. Campaign Monitor also has some great ideas on this, as it maintains that email communications are the perfect place to do this A/B testing, giving you yet another reason as to why you should spend some time perfecting your email/blog integration.

Segmentation

Finally, make sure your blog posts are actually reaching their perfect audience via email. Sure, you can blast everyone on your mailing list with every piece of content you produce, but your readers will get sick of that fairly quickly. Segmentation is key here, so try to collect helpful material on your readers and clients all along their customer journey so that when it comes to disseminating your content, you’re getting the best of your blog posts to the people who really matter. All of the best mailing apps allow for significant segmentation, so don’t waste the opportunity.

That’s how your business will triumph. Little moves and little tweaks, all adding up to make your company the best of its kind. Email/blog integration is as good a place to start as any, and allows even small businesses to make small changes that add up to something greater. Give it a try!

This post is brought to you in conjunction with email marketing software, Campaign Monitor.

The post No readers? No problem! Email marketing secrets to drive visitors to your blog appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.

Imagine this scenario: your dream has always been to open a dog grooming salon. You’re crazy about animals and you want to share your expertise by providing this service to customers.

However, when you finally achieve your lifelong goal of opening the salon, you find yourself knee deep in admin, spending most of your time manually inputting information, fielding irrelevant phone calls, and spending time filling in forms, all while chained to your desk. It’s not what you imagined when you first thought about opening your own business, and you realize your dream has turned into a nightmare.

If you recognize this scenario, you’re not alone – it’s a common problem. Many small business owners in the service industry often start their own company because of a love of their trade but then find themselves drowning in paperwork.

But the problems don’t stop with the admin headache, they extend all the way to the experience your business provides its customers (or the lack of). Many customers work similar hours to your opening times, meaning it’s more convenient to book out of hours. If your company doesn’t offer 24/7 booking across different devices, think about all the business you’re missing out on. “Consumers want to book, and spend money, and most businesses just aren’t bookable,” explains Josh McCarter, CEO of online booking management system, Booker.

Booker enables businesses in the service industry to better manage and schedule their bookings

There is help at hand courtesy of an online booking system, which can bring a raft of benefits to your small business.

Better client/employee management
You’ve gone to the same hairdressing salon a few times before, but when you call them up they don’t have any idea who you are. Not great customer service, is it? An online booking system allows you to keep better customer records, which means you can provide a more personalized experience tailored to your customer. Employee scheduling can also help you better organize your staff, by knowing who is where and when.

Improve productivity
Being able to book appointments online removes the need to manually input appointments, saving time and effort and benefiting both customers and employees. And the ability to send automated booking reminders to customers means you can reduce no-shows and last-minute reschedules.

Increase sales
We all lead busy lives and sometimes we just don’t have time to book that appointment in the 9-5 windows most businesses are open. With 24/7 booking availability, appointments can be made beyond business hours at the customers’ convenience, resulting in a decline in lost business, and an increase in sales.

Booker offers both client-facing and internal company mobile apps

Mobile capabilities
With a customer-facing mobile app, consumers can book appointments anytime, anywhere, and get reminders about their booking. With an employee-facing mobile app, your staff are not chained to their desks and can manage their workload remotely, doing things such as processing payments and finding out more about your customers.

Online booking systems in the field

If you’re still not sold on the idea of an online booking system, the story of Dominican Republic-based U Spa Barcelo might change your mind. Since integrating Booker’s Facebook booking app with the booking calendar on their website in August 2011, the company has seen a 40% reduction in time spent on admin. In the first year after implementing the online booking solution, it also saw a 90% increase in bookings and between 2011 and 2013, online bookings increased by 273%.

Booker’s Facebook widget allows customers to book appointments more easily

The U Spa Barcelo case highlights a key trend in the online booking system space: the ability to book straight from a company’s Facebook page. Not only does Booker offer this social integration, it also partners with listing sites such as Yelp to allow customers to book services through these domains.

Other key features in this all-in-one service commerce platform include mobile apps for customers and employees, inventory management, custom reports, email marketing campaign tools, membership and loyalty rewards, and integrated point-of-sale.

Implementing Booker’s cloud-based online booking system can also help improve the customer experience, as Skin Spa New York found when it implemented the solution in April 2012. The spa has been able to use the solution to help it better manage customer data and this make more informed choices on what services and products it offers. The numbers also speak for themselves: Skin Spa has seen a 22% increase in bookings, a 36% increase in revenue, and a 28% increase in completed bookings year-over-year since it started using Booker in April 2012.

And if you’re still having doubts or just want to find out more, you can check out a video demo of Booker Software in action.

This post is brought to you in conjunction with online booking platform, Booker.

The post Why online booking systems are filling schedules for service businesses appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.

Is your call center software fiercely independent? Then it’s wasting your time. Talk to experts in any area of business – customer support, eCommerce, human resources – and they’ll all tell you the same thing. Integrating the business tools YOU use with the business tools your OTHER employees use is key. This is true from the big hitters, such as your CRM, to smaller aspects that can all too easily be forgotten – such as your call center software, for example. Let’s take a look at why.

1. Integrated systems make employees look good

Nothing makes a call center worker look worse than missing data, slow retrieval or out-of-date information. Make sure your call center software is integrated with all the other tools that provide customer information. Talkdesk, which provides call center software, has written a series of articles on how important this is, so check out its examination of integration with CRM, e-commerce systems and other customer support tools, such as live chat.

Make sure that when a record is updated in one system, it automatically gets updated in all – if you use a call center tool like Talkdesk integrated with Salesforce, for instance, when a customer support agent makes a change after a call, the kids over in sales will know about it too.

Even if you receive a message via voicemail, if you’re using the right tools, it will automatically be transformed into a help desk ticket or CRM entry – and that’s before you’ve even had a conversation – impressive, right?

2. Automation is your friend

Automation frees up your customer service agent’s time to focus more on the consumer

Automation is a hot concept right now, but don’t dismiss it as a passing trend. It frees up your call center agents to be helpful and quick, by letting a tool like Talkdesk take care of boring tasks all by itself. That across-the-board updating we were talking about? Automatic. Those helpdesk tickets and CRM cases? Automatic.

If your call center tool isn’t freeing your staff of tasks, what’s the point in even having it? Automation also reduces human error, which is never a bad thing, and it improves workflow between geographically diverse locations, which is growing in importance in today’s multinational business environment.

3. A 360-degree view of the customer for personalized service

In hyper-competitive markets, the little details are what sets you apart from the competition. When your call center support agents are dealing with a customer or client and using a tool like Talkdesk, it will automatically pull up the “little details” from previous interactions, such as support requests, chat transcripts and call logs, giving agents a helping hand by providing both streamlined information and the personal touch.

It’s hard to keep things personal and friendly in large organizations, but with a little care and the right choice of tools – and employees – it can absolutely be done. Like Shauna Geraghty, Talkdesk marketeer, says: “Companies need a 360-degree view of the customer so agents can provide personalized service, which is important for customer satisfaction”. She’s completely right!

4. Real time updates keep things seamless

Real-time metrics helps with inter-departmental collaboration

People generally don’t call your business unless they have a question or something has gone wrong. It’s in everybody’s best interests to make interaction between departments – whether you’re getting information on an order from sales, or handing a customer over to technical support – as seamless as possible.

Real-time updating makes that possible – you don’t need to put your poor caller on hold while you update the next person in the chain or worse, hand them over to someone who has no idea who they are or what they want. Your software should take care of all that for you.

Integration is big news in business software today and everyone knows it. It’s easy to see the benefits – and implement the systems – when you’re looking at an area that gets lots of attention, like sales and their ubiquitous CRMs. But it’s the small, less glamorous areas, like call centers and field service departments that risk getting forgotten and ultimately bringing your carefully-oiled business beast to its knees. Don’t let it happen to you!

The post 4 reasons call center software integration is a must appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.

The touchy subject of employee sick leave and the often laborious admin tasks that go with it can be enough to have many companies tearing their hair out. With California becoming the second state to introduce mandatory sick pay for its employees, this issue has the potential to become a lot more complicated, especially if you don’t have a top-notch HR solution in place.

Not only does the Healthy Workplace, Healthy Family Act of 2014 (AB 1522) – which comes into effect on July 1, 2015 – affect the way that employees are paid when they take sick days, it also has an impact on payroll procedures because this information must be included on a pay stub. Time and attendance procedures need to be dealt with too. The law states that employees must either be paid at a rate of one hour for every 30 hours worked, or companies must offer a lump sum of three days/24 hours.

Here are some of the best cloud-based HR suites out there that can help you stay keep on top of this new legislation:

e-days

e-days allows you to produce automated reports detailing sick days recorded in a year

e-days is a nifty HR suite that makes keeping track of your employees’ sick leave easier than ever through its online absence reporting system. It has the added benefit of allowing employees to choose categories of illness, helping companies understand what may be causing these absences and to work to find a resolution. Prevention is better than cure, after all.

Reducing the admin nightmare is another key advantage. e-day’s features include automated sick leave reports detailing days or hours taken, pre-populated return-to-work forms, and the ability to send notifications to management and HR in the case of absences.

WinTeam

WinTeam includes a raft of features that provide an extra helping hand in navigating the stormy waters of California’s paid sick leave law. These include the benefits feature, which allows organizations to measure how many sick days an employee has accrued; as well as a payroll module that records sick leave accrual and usage on a pay check. Then there is the human resources module that automatically caps paid sick leave at the number of days or hours specified by the company.

Time-Off Manager

Time-Off Manager enables you to more accurately monitor sick days taken by employees

Less paperwork is music to everyone’s ears, which is where Time-Off Manager comes in. Instead of spending time manually inputting employees’ sick days to ensure they are paid what they are due, this cloud suite can automate the more time-consuming processes.

One of Time-Off Manager’s key features is its ability to automatically notify HR and management when an employee has taken a certain amount of time off sick, meaning they can adhere to the specific mandatory minimums set out by law. As it is a highly flexible and configurable program, not only can companies specifically dedicate a category within the system to tracking sick leave, this can also be customized according to employee type.

breatheHR

With breatheHR, employees can record their sickness days and reasons for illness through an online portal

breatheHR takes the (often considerable) headache out of monitoring sickness across a company. With an intuitive dashboard, it’s designed to help both HR and employees track sickness, with an online process for reporting illness, and automatic notifications for the company.

Diving deeper, breatheHR also provides analyses and reports that help companies spot trends and problems, enabling them to proactively prevent issues arising, and act quickly when problems do occur. Data is stored for 12 months, so both employees and the company can review records at their leisure.

Bamboo HR

Monitor when an employee started and how many paid sick days they are due with BambooHR

With Bamboo HR, companies can easily keep on top of each employees’ sick leave with automatic tracking, automated reports, and accrual policies, all of which are fully customizable. As a one-stop-shop for all your HR needs, Bamboo HR combines time management features with payroll data support, applicant tracking for new job openings, alerts for important events and issues, and access based on job role permissions.

Empcenter

There are three different ways that employees can provide pay sick leave to their employees under the law, and Empcenter can help with all of them with just one system. The idea behind the program is to provide a central place where you can keep all your time and attendance records in one place.

The benefit for companies? Less time searching for those all important documents to help you keep track of employees’ attendance and – by choosing SaaS deployment – you will get added compliance features to ensure peace of mind.

FinancialForce HCM

FinancialForce HCM aims to promote a healthy company culture to reduce the likelihood of employees taking sick days

It may seem like a cliché, but a happier worker makes a healthy and more productive worker. With FinancialForce HCM, you have a vast array of options to make this happen, from ensuring you recruit the right people that will be a good fit with your company’s culture to managing their performance right through to ensuring that each employee is developing their skills.

Being built on the Salesforce.com platform means that the same login can be used for several applications and provides a familiar user interface, reducing the time it takes to get up and running.

Tribe HR

Making employees feel more connected to their colleagues, combined with automatic sick leave recording, is key in Tribe HR

It doesn’t hurt to add a bit of fun into the mix, even when it comes to HR software. Tribe HR aims to bring a more social element to traditional, time-consuming HR processes, such as reporting and recording sick leave. With useful features such as automatic leave requests and approvals (sickness and holiday), it also gives your employees a boost, by allowing them to give each other some “kudos” when they are doing a good job.

Is your HR suite moving with the times?

It’s easy to see how easily companies could slip into administration hell without a comprehensive HR suite to automate processes and reports to help them stay the right side of the law. We hope some of the above solutions has caught your eye, but if not, GetApp has compiled a full range of HR suites to help make your decision easier.

The post Cure Cali’s paid sick leave law with HR apps appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.

When John F. Kennedy said that “the time to repair the roof is while the sun is shining” in his State of the Union address, application development was probably the last thing on his mind. Yet his notion of preparing in advance to pre-empt tough times is something that can certainly be applied to the world of app development.

As modern application development grows more intense because of the demands on services, platforms, access, and ubiquity, so too does the intensity of scrutiny placed on product deployment. The specter of poor performance, or worse, error-strewn “meltdown” once an app goes live has a direct impact on customer or user satisfaction, trust, and loyalty.

Watch for early warning signs

Naturally then, the practices of application performance monitoring and management of errors and logs are being taken much more seriously, earlier in the development lifecycle.

“The purpose of application performance monitoring and log monitoring is largely viewed as a “reactive” approach,” says Craig Ferril, COO of Stackify, a cloud-based monitoring and troubleshooting software.

“Historically if you think about how developers have learned or been kind of conditioned to view errors and logs, for example, it’s been viewed as the thing that you do, that you put out there as your lifeline or breadcrumb trail to look at after bad things have happened.”

It’s clear developers should take a more active role in the app monitoring process instead of pushing out code to QA, staging, or production and waiting to be tapped on the shoulder to fix a problem. This proactive philosophy requires a certain amount of collaboration, but also access and the empowerment of developers to instrument their apps to leverage information.

Craig adds: “If you think about being able to monitor application performance as well as your errors and logs earlier in the lifecycle, you can really start to build trends and this body of information that tells you how your application looks from release to release.”

Why choose an integrated tool?

Tooling, of course, plays a vital role here, with a number of off-the-shelf application monitoring solutions available. While a majority of project environments use a myriad of these tools for application and server monitoring, performance metrics, errors and log management, all-in-one products, such as Stackify provide an added value.

According to Stackify’s own December Application Troubleshooting Report, 59 percent of organizations use standalone tools, despite integrated solutions showing significant gains on time to fix and impact on users. In addition, while 37 percent of developers are still learning about application issues from users, 46 percent lean instead on application monitoring and alerting to stay ahead of the curve.

A SaaS-based, cross-server, cross-application suite, Stackify slots effortlessly alongside popular technology stacks within cloud, on-premise, or hybrid setups. Teams can get a synchronised overview of performance, errors and logs within a single pane of glass, very quickly and with minimal fuss.

“The first things we suggest are that developers integrate Stackify’s error monitoring and log aggregation functionality into the product,” advises Craig. “That’s as simple as just grabbing a package from Stackify that integrates into your product and it gets built-in.”

Stackify’s APM dashboard gives you an overview of performance issues, errors, and logs

Errors and logs: the saviors of development

While development roles and IT remain ultimately where application support is administered, arming developers with information is critical. Errors and logs represent the most common sources here for resolution, before server performance, stack trace, web requests, etc. So rather than viewing this information as a “breadcrumb trail” to help rectify a fault after a problem has occurred, developers can begin identifying trends beforehand.

Craig explains how that once you’ve plugged Stackify into your existing logging framework, “you’ll know if you’ve introduced new exceptions, new errors that were never seen before per environment – at each stage of the process, so in development you’re going to identify and solve more new errors than you would maybe later in the lifecycle, making your production app better”.

“But by the time you get into QA and staging, things should start to stabilize,” Craig adds. “Once you get into that QA, staging, and maybe you have a load test environment, you’ll want to, of course, continue to monitor errors and logs there with your application and you’ll know if new things have occurred, if log rates have gone up or if new errors have emerged, have slipped through development unit testing, or if errors that you thought were gone have come back.”

Where an integrated tool such as Stackify proves beneficial is in shining a light on the error “black hole” your logs can be. New or regressed, you can drill down the when and where with stack trace, url, mvc route, query string, headers, cookies, context data, related log statement details, and much more.

Stackify’s log dashboard

Metrics matter

Top errors as well as error rates can be visualised graphically and quickly correlated to application performance and key metrics, so developers know what happened before and after.

“You can instrument your code with custom application metrics, kind of like KPIs for your code,” says Craig. “So you’ll know things like if you’re tracking specific actions within your code that are important to you but not easy to monitor from the “outside looking in”.

“There’s that old mantra of “if it moves measure it” – so in Stackify not only can you measure it but you can also monitor it, so if you get outside of a certain bounds and you want to be notified or alerted to that you can see that.”

How should it be used?

Using an integrated solution like Stackify needn’t require an overnight sea change in the way you develop. It can be a natural evolution, perhaps even starting from a “reactive” standpoint that gradually becomes woven into the process. By instrumenting, measuring and monitoring from here such tools can be “baked in” going forward, building up a useful body of proactive queries and monitors across application iterations or releases.

Stackify then goes a stage further by enabling developers to monitor code behavior and query results, isolating problems at the code or query level.

“When you think of the typical reactive process of troubleshooting an application, one of the places a lot of developers find themselves investigating problems is in the database,” says Craig.

“If you find yourself trying to track down issues/problems in production by looking at the contents of the database you can actually monitor the contents of a table, the results of a query and do data integrity monitoring. So you can monitor the results of queries and know if there are some things that have created a problem at data level.”

The error dashboard within Stackify

On the code side, logging debug data goes beyond merely strings and text to logging objects. Proactive logging of any constructions, state changes, and key events at points in time facilitates the kind of pseudo-debugging useful for tracing object-level exceptions.

Monitoring of message queues is another useful technique, along with simply monitoring known events and setting thresholds perhaps for key events deemed “normal” until excessive.

“We tend to encourage people to monitor things like their queues, such as if you have a message queue system,” says Craig. “One of the early indicators of a problem is a message queue that is filling up – messages are coming into it but they are not coming out of it, so monitoring those kinds of message queues is really important.”

By then feeding all these things back into application performance, it’s all about giving proactive power to developers keen to monitor and measure before things go wrong. So that leaky roof won’t be an issue when the rains come!

This post is brought to you in collaboration with Stackify. Learn more about the software and its benefits here.

The post Prepare for the worst: How to future-proof your app to prevent performance issues appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.

For a rare breed of person, accounting is a business process that represents a joyful challenge. For the rest of us, just the thought of managing accounts leaves us reaching for an aspirin. But does accounting have to be that troubling? Actually, it doesn’t. If you’re willing to ditch your spreadsheet app in favor of a purpose-built cloud accounting app, you’ll find your head will stop throbbing without the need for medical intervention. What’s more, you could be saving yourself a considerable amount of time each week.

The biggest headache you’ll have is the initial step of choosing a small business accounting app. There are plenty apps out there to choose from, but luckily, many are excellent, replete with handy features, and gorgeously simple interfaces which – dare I say it – can actually make doing your company accounts enjoyable.

In this article, we’re serving up a list of the ten best accounting apps. Many have free trials so that you can check them out for yourself before deciding whether to adopt that solution. Give them a try and learn how to love accounting!

FreshBooks

FreshBooks is a delight to use. The software is simple to understand, even if you haven’t used any accounting software before. FreshBooks features an easy-to-understand dashboard and brilliant visualizations, which make it rewarding to use.

FreshBooks allows you to quickly create professional-looking invoices and set up credit card payment support. Other features include repeat invoicing, estimation, and one-click snail mail sending.

FreeAgent

FreeAgent makes it easy to invoice customers, track expenses, synchronize your bank accounts, and even chase payments, all from one intuitive interface.

FreeAgent offers excellent user support on demand, and the app backs up your data regularly so that you never have to worry about losing it. There’s also a time tracking element to FreeAgent, which records every minute that you work so that you can be completely accurate when billing.

QuickBooks Online

QuickBooks Online handles accounting, billing, and invoicing, all from the same spot. Its colorful, user-friendly interface is home to a powerful set of features. These include estimates invoicing, time tracking, accounts payable, reporting, inventory, contacts, sales, and tax.

Thanks to QuickBooks Online’s online banking integration, you can hook up your online bank to the software to automatically download details of financial transactions. This makes for an effortless way to track the comings and goings of your company’s finances.

Xero

Xero is an online accounting application that’s designed to offer a more efficient and enjoyable way for a small business to manage its accounts. The app imports all your financial transactions into its database and links them to the corresponding accounting transactions.

Xero’s slick dashboard allows you to get a complete, easy-to-view picture of key accounts, income and expense reports, upcoming bills, and pending invoices. Xero has its own add-on marketplace, allowing you to boost the functionality of the application.

Nutcache

If you’re looking for a free online app for invoicing and time management, Nutcache is worth a nibble. It allows you to create an unlimited number of invoices, adding your logo, and sending them in bulk to your various clients.

Besides invoicing and time tracking tools, Nutcache includes features for expenses, reporting, and online payments. One of the great things about the app (other than being free) is its multilingual interface, allowing you to communicate and coordinate with customers globally.

KashFlow

KashFlow is a seriously powerful accounting app that is specifically aimed at UK small businesses. KashFlow listens to its customers and only includes features that are most requested. What’s more, KashFlow handles UK taxation effortlessly, with VAT reports built right in.

If you’re a small business based in the UK, KashFlow is worth considering, especially since it bills itself as “no accounting knowledge required!”

Sage One

Sage One is an accounting app that operates on a curious principle. Acknowledging that small business accounting is mostly a snore, a laborious residual of doing business, Sage One aims to put the dull aspects of being in business– accounting task– largely on autopilot.

Sage One puts simplicity ahead of other considerations. If you’re not a lover of bookkeeping, you can still keep it all organized and accurate with Sage One.

Zoho Books

Zoho Books is another super simple accounting app. Zoho Books also benefits from integrating with Zoho’s other business apps, which are perhaps the most notable alternatives to Google Apps for Business. Zoho Books, together with the other apps in Zoho’s growing Web app ecosystem, can help you keep it simple at every stage of small business accounting.

From invoicing to tax reporting, Zoho Books puts everything you need at your fingertips.

Sellsy Invoicing

Sellsy Invoicing is suitable for the simplest of all small business (and freelancer) needs. If all you need is to send invoices, take payments, and occasionally send payment reminders, it gets no simpler than with Sellsy Invoicing. Sellsy Invoicing also offers estimating tools as part of its easy feature set.

FinancialForce Accounting

FinancialForce Accounting rounds out our list of the ten best accounting apps for small business owners who hate bookkeeping largely because it plays so nicely with SalesForce.com. As a matter of fact, FinancialForce is made for SalesForce integration. If your business is one of the many using Salesforce for customer relationship management (CRM), you owe it to yourself to check out FinancialForce Accounting.

Are you a small business owner who HATES bookkeeping?

It’s okay not to love bookkeeping. After all, unless you happen to be an accountant, bookkeeping is probably not why you got into business in the first place.

We hope this list of the ten best accounting apps has helped. If you don’t see the perfect app for your business on this list, be sure you check GetApp’s full coverage of small business accounting software currently on the market.

More tips for small business accounting:

• 3 Recurring & Subscription Management Apps for Websites
• Top Small Business Accounting Influencers
• New Breed of Small Business Accounting Apps: 5 Spreadsheet Killers in the Cloud
• How Secure is Your Small Business Accounting App?

This post was originally published on October 30th 2014, and has been updated.

The post The Ten Best Accounting Apps for Small Business Owners Who HATE Bookkeeping appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.

A business without customers is like a car without an engine: it’s going nowhere. Serving your customers well is the crux of any business, and your ability to deliver on what you promise your customers is what differentiates you from your competitors.

Just like servicing a car engine, you’ll need to the right tools for the job. A good customer service app can mean the difference between an excellent customer experience, and a level of service that grinds your business to a halt – you don’t want to end up on the next list of customer service horror stories!

Here are seven top customer service apps that can help you ensure that your customer’s journey through your business is as smooth and enjoyable as can be. The list is based on the best customer service apps identified in GetApp’s GetRank quarterly ranking system of top business software.

Zendesk

Is there enough ‘Zen’ within your customer service department? Choose Zendesk and you can be at peace with your customers, treating them to the high quality service that they deserve.

Zendesk, which topped the Q1 2015 GetRank report, is very easy to use, even for the first-time SaaS customer service app user. Add to that great customization options and robust language support, and it’s easy to see why Zendesk is so popular with businesses of all sizes.

Zendesk already services more than 40,000 businesses worldwide, including the likes of Vodafone, Shopify, and Groupon. The app can be scaled for use by as many customer service representatives as your business demands.

Help Scout

Help Scout is a cloud-based customer service app that focuses on conversations. It’s an email-based help desk solution where you can manage multiple inboxes, tracking all conversations with customers and assisting team collaboration.

Help Scout is about conversations rather than ticket numbers. The ethos is that customers feel like they’re being listened to rather than being just another number in a long waiting list.

Features of the app include an integrated knowledge base for creating step-by-step tutorials and articles, real-time reporting, and Gmail filter-style ‘workflows’ for automating responses to customer enquiries. There’s also a ‘collision detection’ feature that sends an alert if two staff members are working on the same task.

Desk.com

Salesforce.com‘s Desk.com is among the best customer service apps around. Developed by Salesforce, the biggest name in online CRM software, the solution gives owners of small and medium-sized businesses the ability to outsource their customer service needs.

Desk.com is a multi-channel customer service app that makes fielding requests via email, social media, phone, and online chat easy. With Desk.com, you can add agents as needed to scale in accordance with customer demand.

Desk.com has the ability to nurture relationships by tapping into what Salesforce does best–customer history and other data. Its performance dashboards allow you to get a simple overview of your entire customer service operation, allowing you to easily determine where customers aren’t being dealt with effectively.

UserVoice

Billed as “a customer engagement infrastructure,” UserVoice gives you the power to understand your customers’ relationships with your business.

UserVoice is in use by more than 160,000 organizations around the world, and prides itself on its customer satisfaction features. You can use the software to view satisfaction ratings of customers over the previous 30 days, and the app even gives you tips on how to improve these ratings.

It also includes features such as crowd-sourced user insights, for getting feedback on product development from your customers; and ‘Instant Answers’, which allows users to clear up their questions by tapping into your knowledge base.

TeamSupport

Customer service is a collaborative customer support app that encourages teams to work together effectively in order to meet the demands of your customers.

TeamSupport allows you to create customer service portals that can operate out of hours. These portals help customers to help themselves (and each other) to resolve their problems and find answers to their questions.

TeamSupport brings self-help ticketing, live chat, ticket management and automation, and reporting and analytics together in a package aimed largely at the business-to-business sector, though potentially helpful to all types of businesses.

Freshdesk

Freshdesk helps you gamify your customer service activities. It features a user-friendly ticketing system with a simple user interface.

Freshdesk brings multi-channel customer support into one package with website-based, email, social, mobile, and chat-based customer support ticketing. The app has solid self-service ticketing built right in, and offers a range of customization features, allowing you you to brand your various customer support portals our own logos and themes, and even code (CSS and Javascript).

Freshdesk delivers advanced reporting, including a time-tracking tool that allows your agents to record the time they spend working on support tasks.

Cayzu Help Desk

Cayzu takes the strain out of dealing with customer requests across multiple channels such as web, email, Twitter, Facebook, etc. It’s an easy-to-use ticketing system that allows the support team to collaborate more simply.

Real-time reporting in Cayzu allows your business to monitor the effectiveness of your helpdesk activities. You can easily view the number of tickets received in a given time frame along with stats such as the number of open/resolved tickets, average response time from agents, and average number of customer interactions.

Cayzu also includes a brandable end-user knowledge so you can assist your customers in finding out answers to their own questions.

GetApp has an extensive list of head-to-head comparisons of customer service apps, as well as a complete list of customer service apps, with links to free trials, full reviews and downloads.

This post was originally published on May 22nd, 2014 and has been edited to reflect the results of the Q1 2015 GetRank customer service app ranking system.

The post Seven best customer service apps to create lasting customer relationships appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.

According to ReTargeter only 2 percent of website visitors convert on their first visit. Scary, right?

Do you ever get the impression that you’re bleeding possible customers as they wind their way through your website? Unfortunately, you are. Every step, from the first touch down on your website, to actually converting, whatever that might mean for your particular business, is fraught with lost opportunities. It’s not encouraging, I’ll give you that. But have hope, because you can do something about it.

In fact, Campaign Monitor, a cloud-based email marketing platform that aims to help with precisely this kind of problem, perfectly outlines the four problem areas where it saw that the company itself was losing clients:

• Visitor – A person (who isn’t an existing customer returning to log in) visits our marketing website.
• Sign-up – A person signs up for a free Campaign Monitor account (or for something else).
• Activated – A person uses the product sufficiently enough that they would have realized the value the product offers.
• Customer – A person pays us money to send an email marketing campaign (or to use your product, etc.).

“At each stage of the process, people drop off and it’s not uncommon for many SaaS products to be able to convert less than 10% of their signups into paying customers”, says Campaign Monitor.

So what can you do to increase your conversion rate?

It’s a tough question, and one that doesn’t have a simple answer. Getting people to your website and then actually getting them to convert can be a complicated process. Just as there are various points in the process where you can lose visitors, there are also points where you can try to keep them focused and on-track – your track, of course.

To get started, here’s a fix for each of Campaign Monitor’s points. Try them out, and see if you can grow your conversion rate:

Visitors

This is probably the most widely-understood step in the process. It’s basic website good practice – make sure you are getting as many visitors as possible by keeping content fresh and helpful, being active on social media, and ensuring your site has adequate SEO, so people can find it through organic searches. Obviously, make sure it also looks good, and is easy to navigate in a sensible, user-friendly way. There’s no bigger turn-off than a frustrating website.

Sign-up

Whether you want people to try your product, sign up for a newsletter, become a member, request a call-back or download a trial, you have the same job ahead of you – to get them interested enough to investigate further. Once you’ve lost a visitor, however, you can no longer rely on your website to convince them of this, so you’re going to have to tackle them elsewhere, often via targeted ads.

An interesting point highlighted by a case study of ConversionLab is that if you do target lost visitors via ads, simply bringing them back to the homepage is unlikely to work. When they were there the first time, you didn’t manage to capture their attention, so why expect it to work now?

ConversionLab, used its ads to redirect visitors to a specific landing page with a clear, no strings attached offer, which saw vastly improved conversion rates, and this in turn led neatly, and efficiently, to the next stage…activated users. This precise tactic might not work for your specific market, but everyone should bear it in mind. If something didn’t work the first time, try something different until it does!

ConversionLab used email automation to convert lost visitors into $120,000 of revenue.

Activated

Once you have achieved the “sign-up”, you need to use the opportunity to show your visitor/client the true worth of your product. This is where contact – but the right amount, and only truly helpful contact – will be key. If doing this by hand isn’t feasible, congratulations (you have enough customers to keep you busy!) – but check out some email automation tools. This particular area has seen huge development in recent time, and is extremely customizable, meaning that not only can everything happen automatically, it can also be minutely personalized to individual customers.

A word of warning: the overuse of email automation – or automation of the wrong material – will have your visitors hitting “unsubscribe” quicker than you can blink. If you decide to automate some or all of your email communications, especially at this delicate stage, where visitors are not yet loyal supporters, get plenty of advice about how to do it properly. A great place to start is this Campaign Monitor article about automation best practice.

Customers

If you get the other steps right, those 98% (ouch!) of visitors who saw your website once and left, never planning to return, will have been gently shown the value of your product and come home to roost. If you did it especially well, they will now want to part with their hard-earned cash to become fully-fledged and paid up customers. If you’ve made it this far, awesome! Now make sure they never have reason to regret the decision. Continue to guide, help and provide support, while of course continuing to work on the development of your product. If you’re doing the automation right, you’ll have plenty of time on your hands!

This post is brought to you in conjunction with email marketing platform, Campaign Monitor. Learn more about the software and its benefits here.

The post How to turn lost visitors into happy customers appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.

According to Businesss Insider, The US Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that millennials will make up approximately 75% of the workforce by 2030.

If you work in HR and you’re looking to the future – and why wouldn’t you? – it can’t have escaped you that millennials will make up the vast majority of your employees – three quarters of the whole workforce by 2030. Sounds futuristic, but depressingly, 2030 isn’t that far away!

One of recruiters and HR professionals’ major weapons in the search for bright new talent is in your company’s benefits. As HR solution Zenefits says in a recent – and excellent – white paper on the subject

“Millennials are clearly listening for your benefits pitch. So what are you saying? And what are you doing to make your benefits stand out?”.

Does your organization have a good answer?

Any employee can be tempted by excellent benefits, but millennials are often believed to be among the most demanding benefits “customers”. There’s a lot of conflicting information, mainly spurred by out-of-date thinking that leads people to believe that millennials are single college kids who live in their parents’ basements, motivated mainly by on-site goldfish tanks and free Xboxes. Back when the concept of millennials came about, that might have been true. But that was 10 years ago – and we’ve grown up!

So what can a company do today to attract dynamic, engaged and loyal talent through excellent benefits? Well, Xboxes aside, I’ve got a few ideas for you.

Remember that a one-size benefit package doesn’t fit all

People today are less likely to fall into generalized, homogeneous peer groups, marrying and having kids later – or if at all. One-size health insurance, life insurance and other benefits, like employee parking and retirement plans are less likely to be the right thing for the majority of your employees. Try to find solutions that are flexible and, better still, offer guidance about helping new recruits genuinely choose the best option for them. If flexibility hasn’t traditionally been your company’s strong point, take a look at this impressive list from the people over at Career Attraction. I’ll admit, at first glance, I thought it was ridiculous but, sure enough, I’ve come across most of these perks at various companies. If these suggestions don’t give you ideas as to how your company can be flexible, there’s no helping you!

Remember that today’s world is instant

So how does that translate to your company benefits? We’ll, as mentioned before, there is nothing that exasperates professionals more than having to waste time on complex, multi-layered, multi-step HR processes like benefits processing and onboarding. As they mention over at HREOnline,

“The challenge is that Gen Y-ers want a lot…stereotyping a bit here, but generally they want as much information as possible, they want that information customized to their unique needs and they want that information available to them 24/7/365, e.g., through texting, online chat, phone or social media, depending on how they are seeking the information at that moment.”

That may be an extreme view, but Kecia has a point. Making employees trudge through drawn-out processes on multiple tools is as annoying for them as it is exhausting for you, which is why you should seriously think about automating your HR system, so employees can “self-serve” whenever and whatever they need.

Remember people are looking closely at your benefits package pitch

If you put all this effort into offering great, customized benefits that are easy to access and perfectly incorporated into your HR solution – congratulations! Now you need to let prospective employees know about it. Make sure it’s easy for them to see and appreciate at the first step of the recruitment process, and as recruitment progresses, consider making it even more explicit. Zenefits has a great idea regarding this – the company suggests outlining the “cash value” of your all your benefits. This will help possible employees see the long-term value of the job offer, encouraging candidates who are really looking to make a mark on your business.

Despite lots of rumors to the contrary, I believe that most employees – millennials included – look for more in a job than a cushy benefits package – but hey, a cushy, personalized, easy-to-access benefits package will never hurt. If you do it right, not only will you attract the brightest and best employees for your business culture, but you’ll also create a positive brand image from a HR point of view, which is an invaluable – and somewhat intangible – asset for any company.

It’s an area that’s well worth putting effort into. Start by freeing up your time and processes with an automated HR system, and then sit down and decide what would really matter (or what does really matter) to your ideal employees. Get it right, and you’ll have them queuing up at the door.

This post is brought to you by Zenefits. Learn more about the software and its benefits here.

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“If your HR processes aren’t automated, you’re already behind.”

Strong words from Charlie Judy, Chief HR Officer, Baker Tilly. But you know what? He’s 100% right. Automating your HR processes is one of the single most beneficial things you can do for your organization.

It will bring your company benefits you hadn’t even considered, making the business leaner, smarter and more efficient. Still not convinced? Charlie doesn’t mince words. In fact, when I asked him about why he thought companies should automate their HR processes, he hit me back with: “give me six reasons why you shouldn’t automate HR processes. They don’t exist.”

He’s right. Old-style manual HR is time-consuming, uses valuable intellectual resources on repetitive, routine tasks, and is open to human error and privacy breaches. There are more reasons, but enough of the negatives. Lets swap positions, and let’s focus on the most important BENEFITS of automating your HR systems.

To find out exactly how it was helping them, HR automation solution Zenefits did some research into the subject. In its recent whitepaper, the software company found that all of respondents’ main concerns – paperwork overwhelm, software clashes, employee frustration and more – could be solved by the use of a solid, cloud-based HR solution. But although Zenefits does make such a solution, it’s not just sales talk  – a great software solution WILL significantly benefit your business. Let’s look at the benefits:

Benefit 1 – Get more value from your staff

It frees up time to let specialists specialize, instead of doing donkey work your software solution could manage. As Charlie says: “free up your intellectual capital to focus on stuff computers can’t.”

Benefit 2 – Save time and money

It saves time, and therefore money, leaving your business free to spend that cash on things that really matter.

Benefit 3 – Make employees happier

It keeps employees happy by making their lives easier. Old-fashioned, outdated software packages can be mind-numbingly frustrating, driving employees mad and keeping dissatisfaction high. That’s no way to do business. Happier employees will make your whole company stronger and better.

Benefit 4 – Improve decision-making

Automating your HR makes recruitment and related processes seamless, low-involvement events. Charlie points out that “if it’s a process, you shouldn’t even have to think about it. and automation lets you do that.” Think of all the other stuff that your people could get done – the number one activity that occurs to me here is spending more time on analyzing data, so that the HR decisions that you make from here on in are even better.

Benefit 5 – Avoid security and privacy issues

A self-contained automated HR process is safer and more private. There’s less scope for human error – things like confidential documents being sent to the wrong person, paper documents getting lost or destroyed, or the people accessing information that they’re not supposed to be party to!

Benefit 6 – Improve workflows between locations

Improved processes for geographically diverse locations. Trying to sync the Chicago office with the Irish datacentre on paper is a messy, unreliable task that quickly becomes totally unmanageable. Your HR solution doesn’t care where anyone is, or what time of the day it is. It just gets the job done.

Not ready to make the move to HR automation?

If moving to an automated, cloud-based HR system isn’t an option right now, there are other changes that will help – but not solve – your problems. Among the solutions that Zenefits discovered are: hiring a HR generalist to take care of the time-consuming, bitty tasks that take attention away from more important things, optimizing the HR software you currently use by making sure it is updated and/or the best you can get for your business (although it’s worth pointing out that unless you get a completely automated system, the different programs (for payroll, onboarding, compliance, etc.) won’t “talk” to each other. Finally, it’s worth having a member of the HR department make a comprehensive list of pain points, then sitting down and brainstorming some short-term, in-house solutions.

Zenefits is an example of an automation tool that can ease HR headaches.

Ultimately, an automated system is where you should be looking in the long-term. HR is a complex, multi-faceted area of business that is essential to retaining and finding talent, which is what will make your business grow. By leaving it on paper or a dissonant group of rag-tag software solutions, people, opportunities, time and money will slip through the cracks.

Ultimately, as Charlie Judy puts it, it will make you “stronger. faster. better. period.” And what ambitious business wouldn’t want that?

This post is brought to you by Zenefits. Learn more about the software and its benefits here.

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Interview and advice from Howler Brothers CMO

From working in a medical device startup, to starting an investment fund, Rick Wittenbraker is a man with a lot experience building companies. Rick is now the marketing director at Howler Brothers apparel company, and he’s our guest on this episode of GetCast.

Starting out with startups

[00:02:23] Rick started his career with a job in a private equity firm. He explains how from there, he decided to move back to Austin to connect with some friends and lead their medical device startup in areas of marketing and business development.

[00:06:14] Not satisfied with working in a startup, Rick and his brother decided to take a bigger role and invest. Together, they pooled their money and established Stage One Capital, investing in a variety of startups.

[00:10:30] During his time as an investor, Rick listened to a lot of pitches and learned a thing or two about what successful companies need to do to grow. Here, Rick shares some advice for those that take the Lean Startup methodology to heart. (Hint: this is what will get you closer to generating revenue.)

Moving out of the cooler

[00:16:13] In 2014, Rick left the awesome ice chest company, Yeti Coolers, but before he left, he picked up one interesting piece of insight: his most avid customers were online shoppers. They were the ones who came online to buy all the add-ons and accessories.

Rick left Yeti Coolers to join the apparel company Howler Brothers, which creates products for people who love the outdoors.

The secrets of marketing an eCommerce store

[00:22:41] Rick was fortunate to be an early investor in one of the most fresh and dynamic clothing companies, Bonobos. He explains how over the years, he was able to discover the marketing tactics responsible for 80 percent of its revenue.

A day in the life of a marketing expert

[00:29:27] Today, Rick is dedicated to understanding why a customer buys something. His day always starts by checking out Howler Brothers’ Shopify data to monitor what’s been bought.

Rick also mentions that part of the company’s growth and success is due to improving operations. Since starting to use Ordoro for inventory management, Rick has noticed an increase in productivity. He explains why Ordoro is a good fit for anyone doing their own fulfillment and wanting to automate tedious manual tasks.

[00:35:30] Rick reveals some of the other apps that Howler Brothers use, including Basecamp and Highrise for internal project management and communication, and MailChimp for email marketing analytics and aesthetics.

Why automatic tweets are a marketing no-no

[00:39:54] Rick suggests some simple marketing tips for anyone building an eCommerce business: “Take people behind the scenes of what’s going on, and be transparent,” he says. “Breathe a real life human element into what you’re doing.”

Additionally, Rick blasted auto-tweeters, saying: “if you’re pushing your tweets out a week in advance, it’s a waste of time. If you’re not having a true dialog, why do it?”

Some suggested blogs

[00:44:04] As a big “product guy”, it’s only natural that one of Rick’s favorite blogs is product related. Kuiu is a hunting brand that, in Rick’s own words, “is doing amazing product marketing”. Definitely go and check out how Kuiu is doing things.

The other blog that Rick frequently visits and highly recommends to entrepreneurs is Both Sides of The Table, written from the real life lessons of Mark Suster.

How to choose a business app

[00:48:46] The last bit of advice that Rick has is about knowing which apps to buy. He recommends identifying the bottlenecks in your business, or the areas holding you back and taking up the most resources and time.

“Don’t be afraid to spend money for the right tool that will help you save time.”

Wise final words from the marketing manager at www.HowlerBros.com.

The post GetCast: Advice on brand building and marketing from Howler Brothers CMO appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.

WordPress web design for small businesses

Julian Kingman is a GetApp community member who left a review for ActiveCampaign and is now joining us on this episode of our podcast. Julian is a web designer and developer who uses WordPress to help small businesses reach their goals.

How to get more clients

Julian offers up these tip, based on his experience in getting more customers to his freelance studio, Design Man Can:

• Practice work ethics that will deliver results and get word of mouth referrals.
• Create profiles on TaskRabbit and Craigslist to get discovered by new clients.
• Network with your local community through Meetup.com.

How to keep clients happy

Julian points out that a big part of his work was dedicated initially to discovering the real reason his clients need websites. In the podcast he explains how he uses Evernote to keep track of conversations and client needs/ideas/feedback, and Trello as a multitasking project management tool (CRM, project management and lead pipeline).

How to power-up WordPress for added functionality

Solving design and functionality issues is crucial to keeping his customers happy and referring him to their friends. Julian recommends Pageline CMS for drag and drop custom theme creation, and Piklist to build web apps with WordPress.

Why Julian loves ActiveCampaign for sales automation

What initially brought Julian to GetApp was his desire to express how much of a fan he and his client were of ActiveCampaign for sales automation. It was so much so that he left a review and now recommends it because Marketo was too pricey. The single thing Julian loves most about ActiveCampaign is the ability to track user behavior onsite to then send automatic and hyper-relevant promotional messages based on what they did/saw on site.

Make sure to check out Julian’s work at www.DesignManCan.com

The post GetCast: Tips to build a winning WordPress web design business appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.

Key research findings:

• Over 86% of managers of small and medium-sized businesses think that their business software should have a mobile app

• More than 40% of of this majority think that a business app is absolutely essential

• Only 13% don’t mind either way

More details about the research:

Answers to the question: “How important is it that your business software (CRM, Accountancy software, etc) has a mobile app?”

#1: It would be nice but not necessary (50.7%)

#2: It’s absolutely necessary (36.2%)

#3: It doesn’t matter either way (13.1%)

Demographics: 1,000 US-based respondents from a panel of managers of small and medium-sized businesses. Respondents are aged between 25 and 54 and have an average inferred annual income of $50k – $150k.

This GetData research was conducted to help better understand the importance of cloud software mobile accessibility.

For more information on this research, please get in contact with Sançar at sancar.sahin@getapp.com.

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Key research findings:

• Almost 75% of managers of small businesses access their work data from a mobile device on a daily basis

• 15% use mobile to access their work data at least once or twice a week

More details about the research:

Answers to the question: “How often do you access your work data from your mobile device?”

#1: Daily (73.5%)

#2: Once or twice a week (15%)

#3: Never (4.9%)

#4: Once or twice a month (3.3%)

#5: Sporadically throughout the year (3.3%)

Demographics: 1,000 US-based respondents from a panel of managers of small and medium-sized businesses. Respondents are aged between 25 and 54 and have an average inferred annual income of $50k – $150k.

This GetData research was conducted to help better understand the importance of cloud software mobile accessibility.

For more information on this research, please get in contact with Sançar at sancar.sahin@getapp.com.

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Being proactive about developing talent you need

Cain Ullah is the CEO and co-founder of Red Badger, a software development company helping enterprise intrapreneurs. Cain joins us on this episode to talk about how he built Red Badger and how the company proactively handles recruiting.

Here’s what you expect from the podcast:

How to close more deals

How can a new software company be taken seriously when it has no track record or credibility? Cain points to live demos, thanks to the benefit of hindsight: “Live software examples would have made pitching the value of Red Badger to partners much easier.”

Apps to reduce infrastructure costs while starting up

As a software company, Red Badger has always utilized cloud based apps to reduce operational costs. As Cain says, apps are a really important part of their business: ”We hold quarterly company-wide tech round tables to evaluate libraries, frameworks and apps.”

Some apps that Cain recommends:

• FreeAgent is the accounting app that Red Badger uses to manage payroll, expenses and budgets.
• Slack has almost completely replaced email for communication.
• NewRelic is used for cloud-based analytics and dashboards at Fortnum & Mason.

No more hiring out of a spreadsheet

As a GetApp user and community member, Cain reviewed Workable, and he’s still in love with it. Red Badger is using Workable to replace spreadsheets, for its analytics, and for talent tracking features. Cain says that “with more talent coming into our funnel and conversion increasing, Workable pays for itself.”

Cain also mentions some of the other apps that Red Badger loves, including GitHub to manage internal source code, and PipeDrive to manage its sales process with Zapier integration to sync data through the mobile app.

How to build your own talent

Red Badger had one big problem– it couldn’t find as many talented developers as it needed. Its solution was to do something that does not scale: build the Badger Academy.

This 10-week intensive full time coaching program takes in university students and gives them modern web app development techniques. The goal is to have them graduate with real world skills and quickly become productive team members.

One of the projects that students work on is called Badger Time. This is an in-house project that builds an integration into FreeAgent through its API to manage Red Badger’s resourcing and profitability of all of its projects. The goal is to know who worked on what, how much time they put in, and how much to pay each person per project.

To find out more about Red Badger’s services, visit www.Red-Badger.com

The post GetCast: How Red Badger is hiring and developing talent to build apps appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.

New GetData research has identified that although a large percentage of students claim to have had an idea for a business app or software, only a small minority can afford to create it.

Key research findings:

• More than 70 percent of students said they have had an idea for an app that could improve business

• Just over 15 percent can actually afford to create their app

As part of GetApp’s independent research program, GetData, new research has been released revealing that more than 70 percent of US college students have had an app or software idea that could improve business. The research also identified that, although a large percentage of students have had business app ideas, only 15 percent feel they have the financial means to create and develop their idea.

More details about the research:

Answers to the question: “Have you ever had an idea for a business app or software that could improve business?”

Yes: 70.2%

No: 29.8%

Answers to the question: “Do you feel that you could afford to create your app idea?”

Yes: 15.6%

No: 84.4%

Demographics: 2000 US-based male (60%) and female (40%) respondents from a panel of students between the ages of 18 and 25.

This GetData research was conducted to help better understand the extent to which financial barriers are disrupting the emergence of new cloud business apps in the SaaS industry.

For more information on this research, please see the full press release here or get in contact with Sançar at sancar.sahin@getapp.com.

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Encouraging staff members to try out and use new systems is always a challenge. A social intranet can be particularly intimidating and difficult to establish, especially if you have a large number of employees. How then, do you help get employees on board, keep them engaged with your new software, and make your social intranet an interesting and informative place to hang out?

1. Make it user friendly

Not everyone in your company will be completely tech savvy. For those who aren’t, a new software application can be intimidating and cause more stress than it solves. To ease their fears, provide an information training package to walk the more nervous staff members though the ins and outs of your new social intranet. Make it clear and concise so that you don’t intimidate them, keeping in mind that you’re trying to get your entire team on board.

2. Create and share interesting content…

….and encourage your staff to do the same. Have a section of your social intranet specifically for content sharing, whether it is original or curated from other places, to get your staff involved. It doesn’t necessarily need to be work-related– give your employees an outlet for their creativity and let them share their own blog posts or YouTube videos. It will build engagement between staff members, get everyone involved, and build rapport with employers and employees.

3. Don’t make it all about work

Get social! Most people have busy lives, and work is often a main source of social interaction. Utilize your social intranet as a platform where staff can share things like social events and get-togethers. Your staff will appreciated the gesture, and it ensures that everyone gets involved.

4. Give the people what they want

Ask your staff what they want from their social intranet. Find out what people want to use it for by asking questions or running surveys– whatever it takes to engage your team and get them interested and enthusiastic about what you are doing, will work to your advantage.

5. Encourage remote working

Social intranets allow your staff to be better connected, meaning that you can let your staff work from home if they’re sick, or have access while they’re attending an event or meeting outside the office. You can also use this as a way to leverage remote workers; here, a social intranet can function as an online office with the ability to share and store files and documents in one place. Another bonus? Overhead costs will significantly decrease.

Social intranets in the field

Lots of organizations (and, more specifically, their employees) are already reaping the benefits of social collaboration tools like eXo Platform. eXo is a social collaboration app designed to be user-friendly, professional and social. For example, the local government of Val d’Oise chose eXo Platform to provide its employees with a new collaborative intranet. This serves as a “virtual office” for staff members working in a variety of departments and locations across the region. Employees benefit from a single access point to institutional information, third-party business applications, collaboration tools, and dedicated social workspaces for various local projects.

Over 5,000 government employees of Val d’Oise now rely on the eXo-based intranet for daily access to information, resources, and collaborations with colleagues. At the same time, the solution provides citizens with visibility into local government initiatives, enabling feedback and participation, while keeping certain types of information secure. New information is regularly shared with citizens through customized content publication workflow and built-in CMS capabilities.

eXo was also successfully rolled out to all HSBC France employees and ex-employees. The bank needed a platform where users could access information about their retirement plans and manage them. In particular, it wanted to be able to provide a number of investment vehicles with different risk profiles. Users needed to access information about their retirement savings portfolios in real time and allocate investments by choosing from the investment vehicles provided. Today, the platform serves more than 10,000 users, providing them with a secure and user-friendly way of accessing real-time information about their portfolios and managing them.

Axero Solutions have more great ideas about how you can benefit from using a social intranet. eXo explains how you can make a success of a social intranet, and GetApp even talks about how internal social networks can boost employee satisfaction. Check them out to get some great ideas for how to implement your social intranet.

You can’t lose sight of having a social intranet to increase productivity by providing an effective means to collaborate and communicate within your business, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be fun.

The post 5 ways to encourage your staff to use social intranets appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.

1234. 123456. qwerty. Password. Are any of these your passwords? If so, you’ve unfortunately got one of the worst passwords of 2014. Are you also one of the 55 percent that use the same password for almost every website you visit? 

It’s time to change.

For better or worse, we live and (figuratively) die by our passwords. A good password is the barrier between your emails, private photos, your bank account, or your company’s data. As people sign up for (and later forget) more websites, it can be an absolute hassle to keep up with all your passwords.
A way to solve and manage this problem is through password managers which centralize access to your sites and apps.

How they work

On Google’s page about how to make a strong password, the company makes an excellent point:

“Choosing the same password for each of your online accounts is like using the same key to lock your home, car and office – if a criminal gains access to one, all of them are compromised.”

To avoid using the same key for everything, password managers work as a keychain that takes care of all your different passwords. That means that as long as you have your keychain, you’ll have access to all your sites. Ironically, this means that you’ll need a master password to access your password manager.

Password managers such as Dashlane (pictured above) are cross-platform and save passwords for popular sites.

Assuming that you’re using a decent password manager, your passwords will be stored and encrypted either on their servers or locally on your computer. Even if they wanted to, employees of the password manager can’t access your passwords.

Another important feature to consider when choosing a password manager is two factor, or multifactor, authentication. In case someone gets access to your master password, two factor authentication adds another step to the logging in process.

Save time and headaches

Security issues aside, password managers are becoming more common across different companies because they’re very practical. One example of this practicality is that password managers such as LastPass will let you know if you have matching passwords and will generate a newer password and stronger password for you.

“Every time a team member has to sign up for a new account or service, they can just generate a new password with LastPass, save it to their LastPass vault, and then LastPass will remember it and autofill it when they return to the site. So they are saving time and hassle at multiple steps – when signing up, and when logging in to any website,” LastPass’s marketing manager Amber Gott said.

LastPass manages multiple user app permissions and passwords.

Another perk of your password manager generating new passwords is that it makes regularly changing your password (even if it might not be too helpful) much easier. Determining how often you should change your password is tricky business; making someone change their password too often can lead to people forgetting their passwords or choosing passwords that are easier to remember, but far more vulnerable. A password manager takes care of this by generating strong passwords and remembering them for you.

Some password managers also support shared accounts. For example, your company might use a bunch of different programs which all require separate logins. Instead of you sending out sensitive password information to your employees for access to a company app, you can use your password manager to assign access to different users. This can be as simple as setting up one email address and password which can be shared with all employees. As long as they have the password manager, they can access the site. The employee who gains access never actually sees the password that the company has chosen.

What’s out there

There are lots of password managers out there and I’d recommend that you do plenty of research before you commit to anything, especially when considering it for your business. Here are some options from the big players in the password management game:

LastPass is probably the most popular of the bunch. It has plenty of helpful features and is easy-to-use.

Dashlane is another popular password manager with a sleek design and interesting wallet integration.

KeePass sports a retro look but it’s free and open-source with a long and respected history.

1Password is multiplatform and sports a practical design. Aside from some reported kinks with OS X updates (not 1Pass’s fault), 1Password receives tons of positive reviews.

Sticky Password was PCMag’s editor’s choice for password managers due to its strong security features. It also supports importing passwords from its rivals, such as LastPass.

The post Security and convenience: it’s time to use a password manager appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.

Payroll can be a headache. Seasoned schedulers can spend whole careers refining the way they control payroll expenses. Payroll’s effect on the bottom line rests on your ability to pull together effective scheduling that addresses customer demands and logistical needs. You also need to ensure your employees’ accuracy in recording their time worked.

As your schedule is put into action, things change. New tasks crop up, and workers trade shifts with each other on-the-fly, making payroll dynamic by nature. Consequently, your ability to adapt to the challenges of scheduling team members has a direct outcome on your balance sheet.

Fortunately, there are time-tracking apps that help you keep tabs on an employee’s time worked, letting you take command of your payroll expenses with ease. When many employees hear the term ‘time-tracking’, they might panic at first, thinking of the “command and control” mentality (the outdated, militaristic way of managing payroll). However, modern time-tracking software such as VeriClock offers features that your employees will like as much as you do.

Benefits to you and how to sell time-tracking to your employees

If your business is one that has difficulty keeping payroll within budget, enamoring your team with a time clock software like VeriClock can improve the accuracy of employee hours. This is important because, like poor scheduling, employee error (and sadly, on occasion, time theft) is among the leading factors driving payroll costs up. Manual timesheet processing is a factor that can hurt profits because it not only takes up time itself, but also lends itself to human error. By adopting a time-tracking tool, you can automate this process, reassuring your staff that every minute of their time will be compensated for.

Vericlock, for example, lets your employees punch-in via the cloud, from either their mobile device or their desktops. This can help to greatly reduce clocking errors while eliminating manual processing and its costs. Employees will dig this because it means an end to laborious manual clock-punching.

With GPS time-tracking, you can get a real time overview of your employee clock-in status, giving those employees who might be tempted to cheat the clock, fewer opportunities to do so without being caught. This, of course, acts as a preventative measure against employee dishonesty at the time clock, because they’re aware that they’re being tracked. As a result, your entire workforce will gain confidence that other employees are not ‘cheating the system’ and that everything is fair and above-board.

Of course, invasion of privacy can be a big concern among employees. Employees who drive their company vehicle home have every right not to be tracked when they are officially off-the-clock, but mobile phone-based tracking solutions (remember the old Sprint/Nextel television commercials about “tracking the dots”?) offer little in the way of after-hours privacy.

In fact, many time-tracking applications offer customizable reporting that turns off time (or mileage) tracking when employees are off the clock. This reduces the dreaded “big brother” concerns of time and location tracking, reassuring team members of their privacy. VeriClock’s built-in customization allows you to set various rules, all in compliance with your own company policies, from the app’s convenient dashboard.

Cloud-based tracking gives you a wealth of reporting and analytic overviews that can be reviewed after the fact, which can help create improved schedules in the future.

VeriClock also integrates with popular accounting apps including QuickBooks Online and Sage 50.

How time tracking helped a small business

A Washington-based small business, Northwest Painting Company, run by founder Travis Kunkel, was among the first to adopt VeriClock. In the time since, VeriClock, as Travis recently told GetApp.com, has offered measurable results to the business.

“VeriClock has had a significant impact on my business,” Travis told us.

“I’ve definitely had my share of issues, being a small painting company. I’m the owner, operator, and bookkeeper. In the beginning, I would pick up time cards on the job site on Fridays, and I’d see guys filling out their time cards on the spot. They’d be guessing, rounding up to the next 15-minute interval. Based on some fairly simple calculations, I figured this guessing was costing me more than $3,000 per annum.”

Travis added that adding a time-tracking app to the equation has helped recoup some of the yearly expense on “guessing”.

“Vericlock solves that issue. The employees get to the job site, they call the number, clock in, and it’s accurate to the minute,” said Travis.

When asked how his employees initially reacted to the switch to time-tracking software, Travis says he was pleasantly surprised.

“I thought it would be negative, because you are tracking people closely,” he continued, “but with maybe one exception, it was no problem.”

The one employee who did not appreciate the transition, Travis also told us, was the one that VeriClock helped expose for stealing time off the clock. Leveraging phone-based time tracking, Travis was able to observe time theft over the course of a week and was justified in terminating that employee, with electronic records to substantiate the case against the former employee.

Travis’ company favors the phone-in method of employee clocking over the mobile option, for reasons of both employee privacy and local regulations.

“We don’t use GPS; they clock in when they reach the job site. They don’t get paid for the return trip, which is in line with the laws here, and so we’re all fine with that.”

Travis also added that as an early adopter of VeriClock, he was astonished when, after being surveyed about feature requests, VeriClock’s next update sported QuickBooks Online integration, a suggestion he had made. The app maker rolled out an update, specifically because one of its earliest customers had asked.

Is time tracking right for your business?

To put this all in perspective, let’s recap the advantages (for everyone in your organization) of implementing a GPS time-tracking app like Vericlock:

•      Reduces manual punching in/out
•      Reduces manual time card processing
•      Cuts down on errors
•      Encourages employee honesty
•      Respects employee privacy
•      Improves future scheduling accuracy
•      Eliminates time theft (AKA: “Buddy Punching”)

This post is brought to you in conjunction with time-tracking app, Vericlock. Learn more about the software and its benefits here.

The post Why you and your staff will fall in love with time tracking appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.

We’d like to extend our thanks to John for mentioning GetApp in his insightful piece, which focuses on three of the trickiest issues facing small businesses during tax season. Take a look to find out how an inventory management app like Stitch Labs or Unleashed can help you separate assets, track inventory intelligently, and calculate losses more effectively.

The post GetApp CEO talks stock control on Entrepreneur.com appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.

Whether it’s an invasion of privacy or a business owner’s right, monitoring staff conversations via internal chat tools is an option that’s here to stay. But do business owners really want that option?

Key research findings:

• 50 percent of business owners either monitor staff conversations or would like the option
• Just over 27 percent of those who do monitor conversations do so on an occasional basis
• More than a third of small business owners are not interested in monitoring staff conversations

With the aim of understanding how often business owners log in to their internal chat tools and monitor their staff’s conversations, GetApp has released new research findings. The research, conducted with a panel of 500 small and medium-sized business owners, has identified that 50 percent of respondents claim to monitor staff conversations in some way.

Although half of the panel say that they monitor staff chats either on an occasional or regular basis, just over 20 percent say that they don’t have the option to monitor staff conversations and would never want it.

More details about the research:

Answers to the question: “Select what is most true regarding the amount of access you have to your staff’s conversations on internal communication tools”

#1: No access and I don’t want it (20.8%)

#2: I have access but never monitor conversations:(16.2%)

#3: I only check for specific incidents (14.6%)

#4: N/A (13%)

#5: I occasionally check conversations (12.6%)

#6: I have access and monitor regularly (12.6%)

#7: I don’t have access but would like the feature (10.2%)

Demographics: 500 US-based respondents from a panel of business owners between the ages of 25 and 54 with an average inferred annual income of between $49-$150k+.

For more information on this research, please see our full press release here or get in contact with Sançar at sancar.sahin@getapp.com.

The post [NEW RESEARCH – GetData]: Do business owners really want to monitor staff conversations? appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.

For many small businesses, the problem of tackling social media isn’t finding the right platform, it’s finding the time to like, post and share. If you’re not already networking on social media, you’re completely missing the boat.

Existing customers and future leads, are already looking for you online, especially on social channels, so you need to make an appearance or risk being left on the dock, out there rusting in the cold.

Consider that 50 percent of all purchases made are based on recommendations found on social media sites. Furthermore, brand names are mentioned an average of 90 times per week in conversations with friends, family and coworkers. These valuable conversations are already happening and it’s vital that you’re part of these discussions.

Decisions, decisions

For those of us who are pondering the possibilities of the many different platforms available, Facebook and Linkedin are great places to start, especially for businesses. Once you have a command of either one of these two platforms, you can branch out to others like Twitter and Pinterest, or consider using a tool that allows you to manage multiple platforms from one location, like Social Mention.

As the title of this post suggests, we can use a simple four-hour social media strategy to budget our time wisely and get the most out of social media marketing. Once you’ve set up your account, it’s time to employ our four-hour social media strategy and soon we will master these platforms:

Hour One: Cultivating

After we’ve set up our account(s), we need to find the best content that is relevant to our business or industry and what our audience will find interesting or useful. Possible sources include Google Trends and Buzzfeed where you can input your relative business, industry or service into a search bar and see what topics are hot and trending on the internet.

Alternatively, you could employ a content curation publishing platform, such as Scoop.it, which allows you to quickly discover content relevant to your business, curate it, and publish it straight to your social media channel.

We asked Ian Cleary, Founder of Marketing & Tech blog, RazorSocial, which tools he uses for cultivating content for social media. Ian picked out the following services:

• Trendspottr: “Based on complex algorithms, it finds content that is about to trend. It’s always interesting to see content before it takes off.”
• Buzzsumo – “Buzzsumo allows me to filter on content related to keywords that have the most shares for the current day.”
• Contentgems – “Based on keywords, it sends you an email each day with popular content.”

While cultivating content, use this time to consider scheduling. Different social media platforms have better engagement and acceptance rates than others. According to this infographic:

• Facebook is flying high on weekdays between 1 PM and 4 PM, peaking on Wednesdays at 3 PM, while early in the morning and late at night on the weekends it’s pretty stagnant.

• LinkedIn is better Tuesday through Thursdays, peaking from noon to 6 PM. Rates during the Monday rush and Friday weekend anticipation are the slowest.

• The Twitterverse lights up Monday through Thursday in the afternoon between 1pm and 3 PM, while daily after 8 PM and Fridays after 3 PM, tweeps are sleepy.  “To identify the best time to post on Twitter I use Socialbro, which shows when most of my audience is online,” said Ian Cleary.

Utilizing this type of important data can help avoid content falling upon blind eyes and deaf ears.

Hour 2 – Generating

Once we’ve located our material, we need to craft it into an actual form of readable data and be sure to include photos, videos, infographics and/or other images that will further entertain our audience. Kissmetric reports that social posts with photos get 53 percent more likes, 104 percent more comments and 84 percent more clicks than mere text alone.

“Consider how you present your data for your reader”, said Lilach Bullock, Co-Founder & Director of Digital Marketing Agency, Comms Axis. “Rather than displaying data in text form it’s worthwhile making it much more visual. Infographics are great for this, particularly animated video infographics. Short and succinct, they can convert data quickly whilst capturing the reader’s attention.

Hour 3 – Communicating

Time needs be spent communicating with our followers and friends. It is best to split this hour into ten or fifteen minutes daily to check in online. Make your presence known on social media platforms, respond to posts, thank users for their likes, and offer opinions and helpful advice. If you happen to come across something negative, don’t delete it, instead offer a solution to the problem.

Hour 4 – Management

To properly manage our social media platforms, take time to find others to follow that are relevant to our business or industry. Connecting with them will increase exposure and gather more followers along the way. As mentioned above, this type of management allows you to quickly nip problems in the bud before they go viral and become an embarrassment.

Take a moment to look into what strategies are the most effective and which could use some more work. A little bit of attention, perhaps a change-up or some polishing and attention to detail can go a long way.

Bonus tip!

To truly succeed on social platforms, refrain from going after a hard sale and instead approach this strategy as being a helpful advisor and friend. People remember this type of outreach and will value your brand and business and recommend you to others with sharing.

Nick Rojas is a business consultant and writer who lives in Los Angeles. He has advised small and medium-sized businesses for over twenty years. He has  contributed articles to Visual.ly, Entrepreneur, and TechCrunch. You can follow him on Twitter @NickARojas, or you can reach him at NickAndrewRojas@gmail.com.

The post How to master the four-hour social media strategy appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.

When it comes to monitoring internal chat conversations within a business, the decade-old question of privacy versus practicality comes into play. You want your employees to have a place where they feel comfortable communicating one on one, but you also want the ability to retrospectively look at their conversations in case any issues arise.

Communication in industries like finance is regulated by governmental bodies, meaning that the information communicated within and between these companies is subject to monitoring, but how do small companies in non-regulated industries deal with the competing desires of privacy and protection?

Popular internal communication and chat apps like HipChat, Slack, and Yammer all offer varying degrees of monitoring options in their internal messaging tools. In a blog post early last year, HipChat explained its changing terms of service, which went from a subpoena-only petition for requesting historical chat transcripts, to something a bit more lax. Now, anyone who’s been OKed by their company can request access to chat transcripts without a court-ordered subpoena.

According to HipChat, the reason for taking a more lax approach is because “many companies need access to all the conversations that occur through their systems for regulatory or legal reasons”. Considering HipChat’s approach, the idea of ‘live monitoring’ probably isn’t the norm, but the frequency with which a company requests any type of historical communication data is still in question.

To get a bit more clarity, and as part of our GetData research program, we surveyed 500 business owners to get their opinions regarding internal messaging tools. Asking employers how they feel about monitoring employee conversations on internal messaging apps, 38 percent say that they feel like it’s an invasion of privacy, while 18 percent say the opposite, that they always monitor conversations to protect their company. Similar to HipChat’s approach to providing this data, the remaining 43 percent of respondents say that they’d only ever check conversations when necessary.

How, then, do these opinions play themselves out in reality? Again surveying 500 small business owners, we wanted to get a sense of a company’s practices when it comes to monitoring employee chats. As it turns out, the results are quite mixed: 20 percent of employers don’t have access and don’t want it, compared to only 10 percent that don’t have access but would like to have it. Of those that do have access, 16 percent never check conversations, while roughly 27 percent admit to checking conversations occasionally or for specific incidents.

Speaking with small-business owner and co-founder of 24symbols Justo Hidalgo, he says that his company “understands [that] there might be legal requirements in terms of how private conversations are stored… but beyond this, we believe conversations are private and should not be monitored…”

On the flip side, Luis Rivera Gurrea-Nozaleda, former manager of startup accelerator TetuanValley, says that during his time at the company, “almost everything was both recorded and open source so [that] you could leverage previous efforts in new tasks.” As Robert J. Thomas and Yaarit Silverstone note in a recent article in the Harvard Business Review, keeping this kind of information out in the open can actually save time and spark innovation, as well as empower employees.

The contrast is stark, but what it really comes down to– aside from the law, in some cases– is company culture. Employers have the right to check historical conversations, but that doesn’t mean they always (or even occasionally) will. TetuanValley may have been recording all of its staff’s conversations, but they were looking less for wrongdoing than they were for things that could propel the company forward. Hidalgo, on the other hand, points out that “protecting my company should start much earlier than having to monitor the conversations of my employees. If I have to get to that point, I’ve already done something wrong.”

Realistically, the whole idea of ‘monitoring’ drags you into murky waters, and crossing the line between privacy and necessity can quickly turn into biting off more than one can chew. As our survey results show, the majority of employers who don’t have access to employee chats don’t want it, and those that do have it, use it sparingly. Given the NSA-laden climate of online ‘monitoring’ and the Orwellian-like doomsday atmosphere that comes along with it, let’s consider this a breath of fresh air when it comes to monitoring communications.

The post From Orwell to NSA, how much of your workplace communication is being monitored? appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.

Mobile World Congress 2015 wrapped up in Barcelona last week, showcasing all sorts of new tech. Despite the dominance of Samsung, LG, Huawei, and other hardware manufacturers who stole much of the spotlight, there was also plenty of attention given to cybersecurity, the Internet of Things (IoT), and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD).

Sound familiar? In any case, I was at MWC to see the technical spectacle in all its glitzy glory. Aside from all the cool and crazy new tech that was showcased for the end-user, there were also plenty of interesting stories that came up concerning businesses ranging from SMBs to the Enterprise level.

I’ve picked out five stories from MWC 2015 that are worth checking out:

Jasper, a SaaS IoT company, announced that it was integrating its software with Salesforce and SAP products. This opens up plenty of interesting data for salespeople to better understand their customers.

Salesforce, SAP to get a shot of IoT data

“Connected devices can turn one-time hardware purchases into ongoing services, like when offices rent copiers instead of buying them. It can also allow manufacturers to keep collecting service fees from things they already sold, as when an automaker sells a roadside assistance and concierge service. Enterprises, and some consumers, now want to buy things the same way they used to buy software: as a service, said Macario Namie, Jasper’s vice president of strategy.

A device that constantly reports back to its maker can provide real-time data on its condition, its operation and how much and when it’s being used. Today, a salesperson may know that a sale was made but not know whether the customer is using the product or whether it’s ever broken down, Namie said.

Information like that could give the vendor a much deeper understanding of its customers and their situation, helping them improve service and products.”

 GetApp’s James wrote about which apps up-and-coming businesses are using to keep up on work outside of the office. What quickly became clear is that the line between B2C and B2B is becoming blurred.

Beyond the four walls: the consumer apps that are making the mobile industry mobile

“…popular consumer communication and productivity apps, not traditional business software, are playing the biggest role in helping companies break through those figurative four walls.

We spoke to several up-and-coming mobile businesses at MWC 2015 about what they were using to run their operations on the go, and the same app names kept coming up. Gmail and Google Drive are huge, and almost everyone we spoke to cited these Google apps as crucial to the mobility of their business. Communication apps like Skype and WhatsApp were also popular among the respondents at the conference.”

 When’s the last time you read the terms and conditions of a piece of software that you use? Unsurprisingly, most people probably don’t. Although it’s often an afterthought, customer and employees not properly understanding the T&C’s could lead to legal problems down the line. Mozilla is working on simplifying the process.

The Business Of Privacy on Show At MWC

“One area she said Mozilla has been working on is making its privacy policies more accessible and intelligible for mobile users — by, for instance, writing them using a ninth grade reading model and using bullet points to condense and foreground key points, to offer a digested and accessible summary ahead of the full T&Cs. They also actively size policies to fit on small mobile screens.

Dixon-Thayer said a lot more needs to be done generally in the digital space to get technology users reading and understanding the implications of what they are agreeing to.

She called for more creative approaches to engage users by making privacy policies “simple and interesting enough” — perhaps using contextual alerts, or pictures to help convey the implications of data sharing in a more immediately graspable way.”

Most of the coverage regarding wearables has been about flashy new smartwatches targeted towards consumers. GetApp’s Suzie took a look at how other types of not-so-flashy wearables could (and are) being used in the workplace.

Wearables at work: ugly, but practical

“Fortune has already talked about the usefulness of wearables for training a new generation of blue-collar workers with the need for experienced on-site training for industries like maintenance. A potential solution? Smart glasses that use bluetooth and video streaming to help train new workers in the field, without experts having to physically be there to train them.” 

 Startup-focused 4 Years From Now (4YFN), a GSMA satellite event, attracted lots of attention from investors. CRM ForceManager is adding functionality, rather than just glitz, to smartwatches in the workplace.

11 innovative startups to remember from this year’s Mobile World Congress

“ForceManager is a multi-platform CRM — which is way more interesting and innovative than it sounds. In practical terms, it helps salespeople easily log data about their prospects and clients, which can then be managed from any device. This includes computers and tablets, but also smartwatches.

In a live demo at Spain’s MWC pavillion, CEO Oscar Macia showed us how quickly he could check into a meeting from his Moto 360 watch and use Google’s voice recognition system to dictate short notes, which appeared in an instant in his computer’s dashboard.”

And finally, I couldn’t resist taking a photo with some trolls as part of a campaign by Kaspersky to combat cyberbullying

The post GetApp’s MWC 2015 Roundup appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.

The future of bigger businesses

Erica Dhawan has discovered something fascinating. As a Harvard researcher studying the future of work and models of leadership, she found that people were harnessing relationships, resources and networks in revolutionary new ways.

Cotential: helping accelerate employee connections

This discovery is what Erica, and co-founder/co-author Saj-nicole Joni, coined as ‘Connectional Intelligence’. Their company, Cotential, takes this model of Connectional Intelligence and applies it to companies and workforces.

Get Big Things Done: beyond crowdsourcing

Together Erica and Saj-nicole have co-authored Get Big Things Done: The Power of Connectional Intelligence. The book takes crowdsourcing and the hive mind to the next level. Erica and Saj-Nicole demonstrate how Connectional Intelligence is the step after crowdsourcing; the step that actually generates the breakthroughs. The book is available now on Amazon.

Cotential talks apps 

We caught up with Erica, who explained more about the Connectional Intelligence, and shed some light on the apps Cotential uses. The company has employed apps such as Evernote, Basecamp, Asana and Slack to manage their business.

A big part of getting notes down quickly and staying productive was done with the Elements text editor. Erica explains her love of the app, and how syncing it with Dropbox has helped her stay organized. 

Erica is also a huge fan of Duolingo, an app which has the power to help translate a large media site like BuzzFeed, while helping the workforce learn a new language. Erica loves this free language learning app, which comes bundled with a clever text translation service. She explains how it can help a large, engaged groups of people solve a business problem for a group of companies.

Erica Dhawan’s recommended reading

• Cognitive Surplus: How Technology Makes Consumers into Collaborators
• Choose Yourself!
• The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

Free Giveaway: Team Guide + Assesment

US residents text 66866 and type in Erica to receive this free guide which teams and individuals can use to see how Get Big Things Done ready you are.

Get in touch

• Erica Dhawan
• Cotential
• Get Big Things Done

The post GetCast: How to connect people to get big things done, the step after crowdsourcing appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.

Beyond the flash of wearables like the leather-strapped LG Watch Urbane or the gold metal framed Huawei TalkBand B2, the idea of a more practical use for wearables in the workplace has taken a back seat to conversations about data security at this year’s Mobile World Congress. Aside from the inherent security concerns of employees bringing and using their wearables in the workplace, can a wearable device actually help an employee work?

From what was shown at this year’s MWC, it’s likely that not every industry will benefit from wearables in the workplace in the same way. Things like productivity have the potential for improvement with smart watches that make checking messages or answering an email just a glance away, but there’ll be certain industries that could see an even bigger impact.

Fortune has already talked about the usefulness of wearables for training a new generation of blue-collar workers with the need for experienced on-site training for industries like maintenance. A potential solution? Smart glasses that use bluetooth and video streaming to help train new workers in the field, without experts having to physically be there to train them.

Another industry with huge potential is inventory management, something which our GetApp colleague Matt got to experience first hand at MWC. Trying out Sony’s SmartEyeGlass augmented reality glasses, and with a simulated warehouse projected on a TV screen in front of him, Matt was able to navigate through the ‘warehouse’ to quickly locate a product he was asked to collect. In this case, directions that help you maneuver through a packed warehouse to find a product while wearing smart glasses speeds up the process. Similarly, Virgin Atlantic airlines has already talked about equipping its engineers with the Sony glasses.

Field services management– where keeping track of employees, vehicles, or products in the field is imperative– could see similar benefits by letting you track and manage things from data gathered via wearable devices.

For typically white collar industries, an entirely different discussion about wearables at work is taking place, where the idea of revolutionizing the workplace takes a back seat to security. In situations where employees are bringing their own wearable devices, it’s inevitable that there’ll be security concerns regarding the vulnerability of data being transferred between company owned property and personal devices like a smart watch.

A study done by Trend Micro for MWC 2015 claims that 79% of European employers are seeing more employees bring their wearable devices to work, while 90% of employers recognize the need to change their security policies (notably, the BYOD policies that many companies are adopting) to incorporate wearables. Here, increasing productivity is still a key benefit, but it’s apparent that desk jobs won’t be revolutionized by wearables as much as on-site work.

What’s interesting is that with the definitive role of wearables like the unsightly Sony glasses (they’re straight from the ‘future’ of the 80s), its practical use eliminates the idea of ‘flash’ in favor of ‘functionality’ for a new take on wearables that could revolutionize the workplace.

The post Wearables at work: ugly, but practical appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.

Team communication is essential for the smooth running of a business, especially now that teams are working remotely more often. But what’s the best way to communicate and collaborate as a team? As an employer, how do you manage your team and make sure everyone has their say?

Corporate intranets were very popular a few years ago, but with the arrival of web apps that allowed for internal communication and collaboration, the intranet fell out of favor. Now, intranets are back in style, and not only that, but they’re shinier, more intelligent, and more social than ever.

Internal social networks allow remote workers and busy networkers to communicate from a distance, and with mobile apps, you don’t even need your laptop to communicate with your colleagues. According to research done by McKinsey and Company, using social collaboration tools can improve a company’s productivity by 30 to 35 percent when searching for and gathering information, while communication and internal collaboration productivity has risen by 25 to 35 percent.

The amount of time employees spend ploughing through their inbox can also be reduced by switching to an internal social network. Information from IBM tells us that the amount of time spent checking inboxes and dealing with emails has dramatically dropped as email intake has gone from 100 or more down to 10-15 per day. How can an internal social network help the productivity of your team?

Collaboration

Internal social networks give you the ability to work alone in a workspace, or invite colleagues and customers to collaborate. You also have the option to use voice call, video call, or text chat. Using the integrated functions of document sharing, management, and calendars, you can make sure that each team member is completely in the loop on every project. Knowledge is power, so keeping everyone in your team up-to-date is important for team satisfaction.

Events

A lot of apps let you post events in a shared calendar to make sure that every member of your team knows about the important events in your work calendar. Whether it’s a conference, a seminar, a launch, or a birthday lunch, you can almost guarantee that everyone knows (or at least has no excuse not to know) what’s going on.

Brainstorming

Because there’s nothing worse than not having your voice heard at work, using internal social networks takes away the need to be pushy or over-confident to get your point across. An internal social network puts everyone on an even keel and gives the entire team the chance to contribute and share their ideas without feeling intimidated by more vocal team members. It also gives employees from different seniority levels the chance to make suggestions to people higher up in the work chain.

Transparency

Keeping everyone in the loop makes great business sense, and sharing all the ‘need to know’ information with your entire team is crucial for productivity. Internal social networks can eradicate the “I didn’t know about…” or “no one told me…” problem; everyone will know exactly what they need to know, when they need to know it.

You can also create smaller groups to share information with only the management team or certain departments, for example. Here, everyone can have open discussions and share information that may not be imperative to the rest of the team.

Socializing

Lots of companies use their social intranets to build relationships between management and staff, departments, and branches. Organizing social events creates a bond between employers and employees, making for a healthy working environment and a huge increase in productivity. If you plan to use a social intranet, don’t forget to have a section purely for social purposes where people can go to disconnect from work discussions.

Does it really make a difference?

We asked companies who use eXo Web Collaboration Software to provide us with insights into how the social intranet features have helped with the running of their business and the collaboration between team members. Here are some real world examples of the impact that implementing the software has made:

The company: OCIT

The challenge: OCIT (part of telecom company Orange) wanted to enrich its sales workstation by allowing users to access client information through a single point of entry. The goal was to improve an agent’s productivity and client satisfaction.

The solution: What OCIT got by implementing the eXo solution was improved efficiency and client response time. OCIT’s entire sales department– more than 1 000 employees in four locations– now uses eXo daily. Account managers now have direct and easy access to customer information from a single point, and are able to exchange information and collaborate on enterprise sales deals. Fast access to information has greatly improved efficiency and client response time.

The company: Caixa

The challenge: Brazilian bank Caixa required an intranet to serve its 20 000 employees working in multiple agencies across the country.

The solution: The eXo portals have proven their worth in improving Caixa employee collaboration and communication. IT has seen consistent use, and it’s become an indispensable client management tool. Its also provided critical security protection. After the intranet success, Caixa built nine additional intranet and extranet projects using eXo.

The company: Mutavie

The challenge: Mutavie, which manages contracts for retail insurance agencies, wanted to offer a document collaboration space for its partners. Each partner wanted to be able to access documents like contracts, product data sheets, training documents, and marketing materials using permission-based access.

The solution: The first project was put into production for partner Macif’s 6 000 users. It was a success, particularly because it improved Macif’s sales performance. Mutavie then rolled out the project to partner Matmut, and continues to open the space to new partners.

Keeping your team happy can only increase productivity. If you don’t already have a social intranet set up in your company, now would be an ideal time to start thinking about it.

 
This post is brought to you in conjunction with web collaboration software eXo. Learn more about the software and its benefits here.

The post How internal social networks can boost employee satisfaction appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.

Have you ever daydreamed about a world where you’re not chained to a desk in an office? Thankfully, this vision of a working nirvana isn’t a million miles away. In fact, it’s all right there in that little device in your pocket.

It’s now realistically possible to use your phone or tablet to run a business remotely from the comfort of your home, car, or even on the beach, as we found out at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Whether it’s staying on top of your pipeline, collaborating with the team, or taking care of administrative tasks, there are plenty of apps that can help you run a company without being a slave to the office. Apps that work in the cloud allow you to manage your business across different devices, syncing information in real time.

The consumer apps takeover

But what’s the best app setup to get you working effectively in your new desk-less paradise?  The vibe from Mobile World Congress 2015 is that popular consumer communication and productivity apps, not traditional business software, are playing the biggest role in helping companies break through those figurative four walls.

We spoke to several up-and-coming mobile businesses at MWC 2015 about what they were using to run their operations on the go, and the same app names kept coming up. Gmail and Google Drive are huge, and almost everyone we spoke to cited these Google apps as crucial to the mobility of their business. Communication apps like Skype and WhatsApp were also popular among the respondents at the conference.

“We mostly use Gmail and Drive,” said Blandine Weill, Partnership Development Director at app developer Cellfish. “We use it because it’s reliable and, simply put: it works”

Fernando Sanchez-Teran, CEO of mobile marketing platform iadbox, said that WhatsApp had transformed his ability to do business on the move mainly because of its user base:

“Its a matter of critical mass,” he said. “The number of users is incredibly high and it just makes sense. I also like Skype because of its inherent VOIP capabilities”.

Security concerns

The trend towards the ‘consumerization of IT’ was picked up on by Mike Foreman, General Manager of AVG Business in his address to the Mobile Security Forum at MWC 2015. Foreman recognized that the adoption of consumer cloud apps are freeing businesses to work without walls. But he pointed out that the adoption of non-business apps by employees and BYOD policies that allow employees to use their own devices at work can cause huge security headaches.

“Mass ownership of personal mobile devices, the adoption of popular consumer cloud services like Skype and Dropbox for business purposes, and the impact of the Internet of Things have been the catalysts for true ‘businesses without walls’,” said Foreman, who was announcing the release of the new AVG Business SSO (Secure Sign-On) at the event.

“Business in a fully connected environment puts smaller firms at risk of data breaches. AVG Business SSO for the first time makes it simple for businesses without big budgets or in-house IT staff to keep company-confidential data safe, private, and within their control, even while it is shared with employee-owned mobile devices and externally hosted cloud services.”

Once security issues are addressed, it’s clear that the likes of Skype, WhatsApp, and Gmail have the user volume, feature sets, and consumer confidence to make them viable tools to help businesses move out of their four walls. Of course, that’s not to say that these are the only tools that a business needs to make the move towards mobility. For instance, cloud collaboration software opens up a world of corporate social networks where employees can engage and share ideas remotely; project management apps allow you to track business tasks from outside the confines of the meeting room; and inventory management applications can help you track stock without so much as walking past a warehouse.

The post Beyond the four walls: the consumer apps that are making the mobile industry mobile appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.

Jodie Hebbard is a certified life coach running her own business from her home in Canada. We learn about how Jodie got started with her life coaching business, the process of starting up and the challenges of getting her name out there. Jodie gives us her thoughts on with rejection and coming out on top.

Offering her coaching services remotely to people all around the world has come with its own set of problems. Scheduling clients across multiple time zones led Jodie to discover her favorite client scheduling app, Acuity Scheduling. Listen in to discover how she started to look for it and what led her to choose Acuity Scheduling.

Links to know more about Jodie Hebbard…

• Jodie Hebbard Life Coaching
• Acuity Scheduling, client scheduling app

The post GetCast 11: What a life coach finds most important in her client scheduling app appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.

Building up a loyal list of email subscribers can be a challenging task, not least because to make your efforts scalable, you have to understand what it is that motivates people to hit the subscribe button.

Key research findings:

• Nearly a quarter of mailing list subscriptions are ‘accidental’

• Women are more likely than men to subscribe to get deals and special offers

• Getting access to restricted content is the least likely motivator for mailing list subscriptions

According to GetApp’s latest research, nearly a quarter of people who have signed up to a mailing list have been auto-subscribed, especially when it comes to men. The panel, made up of 500 people between the ages of 25 and 44, chose ‘auto-subscription’ (being subscribed ‘unwillingly’ as the result of sending a support email, downloading a file, etc.) as the main reason for being part of a newsletter mailing list.

Interestingly, when the results are segmented by gender, the outcomes change slightly. For men, who make up 62.8 percent of the panel, ‘auto-subscription’ is still the main reason for being part of a mailing list. For the remaining 37.2 percent of the panel– all women– it’s ‘deals or special offers‘ that are the key motivator for hitting the subscribe button.

More details about the research:

Answers to the question: “What’s the most common reason you subscribe to an email newsletter?”

Segment: All panel

#1: Auto-subscribe, I didn’t choose to (24.8%)

#2: For deals or special offers (22.6%)

#3: To get news updates (21.4%)

#4: Interesting articles or content (21%)

#5: To get access to restricted content (7.6%)

#6: Other (2.6%)

Segment: Male respondents

#1: Auto-subscribe, I didn’t choose to (26.8%)

#2: To get news updates (21%)

#3: Interesting articles or content (20.7%)

#4: For deals or special offers (20.1%)

#5: To get access to restricted content (7.6%)

#6: Other (3.8%)

Segment: Female respondents

#1: For deals or special offers (26.9%)

#2: To get news updates (22%)

#3: Interesting articles or content (21.5%)

#4: Auto-subscribe, I didn’t choose to (21.5%)

#5: To get access to restricted content (7.5%)

#6: Other (0.5%)

Demographics: 500 US-based male (62.8%) and female (37.2%) respondents from a panel of internet users between the ages of 25 and 44 with an average inferred annual income between $25 000 and $100k.

This research was conducted as part of GetApp’s independent research program, GetData. The research was carried out to better understand how users react to different email marketing techniques.

For more information on this research, please take a look at our press release here or get in contact with Sançar at sancar.sahin[AT]getapp.com.

The post [NEW RESEARCH – GetData]: Why do people subscribe to email newsletters? appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.

Newsletter unsubscribes are a huge problem for any business that wants to engage their customers. We all report on open, click and unsubscribe rates but we rarely agree on the reasons users break up with us.

Key research findings:

• Receiving too many emails is the #1 reason people choose to unsubscribe

• Subscribers are unlikely to give ‘spammy’ emails a chance

• Quantity of content is not an issue, as long as it’s relevant 

According to our latest research, receiving too many emails is the number one reason people decide to unsubscribe from an email newsletter, more than 3 times higher than any other cause. Just under 50% of respondents said that excessive email frequency was to blame for their decision to unsubscribe from a mailing list. Let’s look at the complete results:

More details about the research:

Answers to the question: “What’s the most common reason you unsubscribe from an email newsletter?”

#1: Too many emails (46.4%)

#2: Looks like spam (17.2%)

#3: Irrelevant content (15.8%)

#4: I didn’t know I was subscribing (9.1%)

#5: Not tailored to my preferences (7.2%)

#6: Too much or too little content (4.3%)

Demographics: Over 500 US-based respondents from a panel of internet users, between the ages of 25 and 44 with an average inferred annual income of between $25k-$100k.

This research was conducted as part of GetApp’s independent research program, GetData. The research was carried out to better understand how users react to different email marketing techniques.

For more information on this research, please take a look at our press release or feel free to get in contact with Sançar, at sancar.sahin[AT]getapp.com.

The post [NEW RESEARCH – GetData]: Why do people unsubscribe from email newsletters? appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.

Email marketing is a tough nut to crack– one misstep, and users will be hitting the unsubscribe button quicker than you can say “newsletter”. It’s not really a matter of keeping subscribers; the analytical tools available in email marketing apps like Mailchimp or Pinpointe give you statistics about open rates and click throughs which can show that, despite having a large number of subscribers, your users aren’t actually interacting with your content.

At this point, it’s probably safe to admit something glaringly obvious: they’re just not that into you. Whether it’s the content, the layout, or the rate of distribution, there are countless reasons to explain why your users aren’t interacting with your content.

The first question you should be asking is: do they actually want that content in the first place?

To find out, we conducted a survey asking 500 respondents about the most common reason they subscribe to an email newsletter. Almost 25 percent of respondents claim that the only reason they’ve subscribed to a newsletter is ‘by default’, meaning that it was done automatically after having conducted some other online transaction. A stat like that doesn’t bode well for user interaction, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that they don’t want the information.

In fact, 23 percent of users say they subscribe to get deals or special offers, 22 percent to get news updates, and 21 percent to get interesting articles and content. This means that two thirds of your newsletter subscribers actively chose to sign up because of some value attached to your product or service.

But if that’s really the case, then why are open and click-through rates so low? To answer that question, we conducted a second survey, this time asking 500 respondents the most common reason that they unsubscribe to an email newsletter. An overwhelming 50 percent of respondents said it was because they’re getting too many emails, followed by 15 percent who said it looks too much like spam, another 15 percent said that the content is irrelevant, 10 percent who said that they didn’t know they were subscribing in the first place, and 6 percent saying that it wasn’t tailored to their preferences.

Given the contrast between why people subscribe to an email newsletter, and the reasons that lead them to hit that unsubscribe button, how can you reconcile these viewpoints to make sure that your content is reaching an interested and interactive target audience?

Send fewer emails

There’s a reason that 50 percent of users unsubscribe when they get too many emails: most people get flooded with countless mails every day, and receiving one promotional email after another– no matter how good the content is– could inevitably lead to an unsubscribe.

Depending on your product or service, make sure that you set relatively reasonable expectations for your subscribers. A daily deal, for example, might be better than a daily digest. Most people won’t sit down for 30 minutes a day reading every piece of content in your newsletter, so highlight the most important ones and send them in a weekly round-up.

Avoid being ‘spammy’

Aside from writing an attention-grabbing headline (Newsletter Volume 2, Issue 1 doesn’t exactly spell excitement), if you’re not selling a product, make sure that your content doesn’t come across as a sales pitch. If you’re simply trying to share content, find things that are relevant to the user and not things that are part of a marketing deal with a partnering company. Your readers will almost always be able to see through a sales pitch branded as quality content.

If, on the other hand, you are selling a product, make clear exactly what you’re offering without sounding overzealous. Be enthusiastic but realistic about the offer so that it doesn’t come across as ‘spammy’.

On top of that, make sure you have a visually appealing (and mobile-friendly) design. Don’t be afraid to try A/B testing to see which format gets the best interaction from users.

Offer content that reflects your product

Your subscribers probably subscribed because they’re interested in your product or service. In this regard, make sure that your newsletter content doesn’t stray too far away from your core product or service. Ultimately, email marketing is just that: marketing. And if you want your users to engage with your product, you have to give them content that will help them do exactly that. This will also help make sure that your target audience is the one that’s engaging with your newsletter.

Don’t be afraid of unsubscribers

As you start tailoring your mailouts to fit the specific needs of your users, you should notice more user interaction with your email content. Still, it’s inevitable that you’ll have people who, for whatever reason, just aren’t interested. That’s OK. The whole point of email marketing is to reach people who are interested in your content, and it’s very likely that a portion of your subscribers landed there by accident. Don’t worry about losing subscribers unless you see a mass exodus over a short period time, and always look at analytics to see what works and what doesn’t.

At the end of the day, it’s much better to have a smaller, more active list of subscribers than a huge, inactive one. Taking the ‘build it and they will come’ approach will only work if you have the right mix of content and delivery frequency to provide your subscribers with useful information.

The post Email marketing: they’re just not that into you appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.

As a small or medium-sized business, choosing cloud software– whether it’s to manage your client portfolio, keep up-to-date with your HR processes or to keep your finances in check– can be a time-consuming and, to many, a daunting process.

Key Research Findings:

• SMBs want easy-to-use cloud software that focusses on keeping their data secure

• Scalability isn’t that important

• SMBs want cloud apps that work ‘out of the box’, without having to rely on customer support

GetApp’s latest research has shown that security is the top most considered factor by SMBs (Small and Medium-Sized Businesses) when on-boarding new business apps, with over 21 percent of respondents agreeing. Additionally, and perhaps surprisingly, a cloud app having ‘good customer support‘ was only important to 5.3 percent of the panel asked, suggesting that SMBs demand a product that works ‘out of the box‘ and don’t expect to have much interaction with support staff.

More details about the research:

Answers to the question: “When choosing a cloud-based solution for your business, what do you value most?”

#1: Security (21.2%)

#2: Ease of use (20.7%)

#3: Affordability (13.3%)

#4: Range of features (13.2%)

#5: Flexibility (7.1%)

#6: Integrations available (6.3%)

#7: Good customer support (5.3%)

#8: Peer reviews (5.2%)

#9: Speed of implementation (3.9%)

#10: Scalability (3.8%)

Demographics: 1000 USA-based respondents from a panel of small and medium-sized business owners, between the ages of 24 and 54, with an average inferred income of between $50k-$150k+.

This research was conducted as part of GetApp’s independent research program, GetData. The research was carried out to better understand what SMBs consider to be important when choosing cloud business apps for their organizations.

For more information on this research, please take a look at our press release or feel free to get in contact with Sançar, at sancar.sahin[AT]getapp.com.

The post [NEW RESEARCH – GetData]: Top 10 factors considered by small businesses when choosing cloud apps appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.

In this GetCast we catch up with Brandon Dierickx, director of Ascent Real Estate Solutions, who reveals how Zengine helped grow his business. Brandon’s business is dedicated to helping people with numerous properties navigate and comply with local laws, functioning as a complete property manager for his clients.

Ascent’s information, employee, and field worker management system is crucial. When Brandon was shopping around he discovered Zengine, which has become an integral part of his business. So much so that he’s joining us on this show to share with us the story of his company, and the role of Zengine’s awesome customer service in helping him understand the platform.

Links to Brandon Dierickx…

• Brandon Dierickx
• Ascent Real Estate Solutions
• Zengine

Subscribe to the GetCast free on iTunes

The post GetCast 10: Why awesome customer service means more business appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.

You don’t often find someone with over 12 years of experience in the SaaS industry. Rick Chapman is a SaaS expert who has been there from the dot-com bust to today’s world of hyper appification.

Rick joined us on this episode of the GetCast to talk about the evolution of SaaS, sharing his predictions about the future of the industry, and offering insider tips to anyone looking to build applications to serve the coveted ‘Generation X’ market.

We also talked about some of the apps that Rick has used over the years while working with large teams. You’ll definitely want to listen to the reasons he gave in making those decisions.

Rick has released the second edition of his SaaS Entrepreneur book, which is intended to help entrepreneurs build successful SaaS businesses.

Links to Rick Chapman…

• SaaS Entrepreneur book
• SaaS University
• Softletter, information and news for the SaaS industry.
• Rick on Twitter @rickchapman53

Subscribe, rate and review the podcast on iTunes.

The post GetCast 9: Interview with Rick Chapman, author of the SaaS Entrepreneur book appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.

How much money does your business bring in each month? Considering that revenue is a metric that most business owners follow closely, chances are that you can answer this question within a few hundred dollars of the actual amount.

But what other numbers should you be tracking in your business? Suppose you own a service-based company such as a yoga studio or a CrossFit gym? Here are some important metrics, aside from revenue, that matter.

Financial Metrics

Without adequate incoming revenue, your business won’t be able to meet its expenses each month. Aside from seasonal peaks and valleys, revenue in a service business — in particular, a membership-based business — tends to be fairly consistent, ideally trending upward each month as new members are added.

Aside from monthly gross, here are some important ways to look at your revenue.

Revenue trends by month and by quarter

After several months of using a software platform to manage your business, you’ll have enough data in the system to see revenue trends, whether good or bad. This historical data gives some great context year after year.

Looking at revenue quarterly tells a bit of a different story than just looking at it by month. Perhaps July was slow, but August saw an unusually large number of sales because of folks returning from vacation, so you’ll notice a big difference in monthly revenue for July and August. Second and third quarter revenues, however, might not differ that greatly. By looking at your revenue both ways, you can better assess whether any underlying issues need to be addressed.

Revenue by category

Another way to look at your revenue is by breaking it down according to the different categories of services that you offer, like appointments and classes. This provides more insight into the service categories that generate the most revenue for your business. If you use accounting software to run your business, be sure to take the time to carefully assign your service offerings to revenue categories — it makes all the difference when you’re looking at your financial reports.

Average revenue per member

If you sell recurring memberships you’ll want to keep track of your average revenue per member — an important metric for projecting how both revenue and net profit will grow in your business. It can also help inform your pricing decisions for membership plan offerings. The greater this number, the fewer members you need in order to reach your revenue target.

You likely have a handful of membership plans with different price points and visit restrictions — perhaps an unlimited plan that you sell for $150 per month and a two-visits-per-week plan that you sell for $99 per month. For projection purposes you need to know what each member is paying on average — this will depend on how many members you have on the $150 per month plan versus the $99 per month plan.

Fortunately, it’s an easy number to get. You just need to take the total dollar value of membership revenue and divide by the total number of member: (total value of membership revenue)/(total number of members).

For example, let’s say that last month you had 134 members paying a total of $14,698 in membership plan sales. That means that last month your average revenue per member was $109.69. If in the following month you sell 10 additional memberships at $150 per month you’ll see this number rise.

Uncollected revenue

In most membership-based service businesses, clients often pay for the month upfront automatically with auto debit or EFT, and that tends to minimize account receivables. There are, however, many unforeseen circumstances; sometimes client credit cards expire or payments fail, so it’s important to be able to quickly see any unpaid invoices and collect that revenue.

Visit metrics

Tracking attendance and the number of visits to your business is critical in a yoga studio or CrossFit gym. Not only does diligent attendance tracking help ensure that all visits are paid for and that membership plans aren’t being abused, but tracking total visits gives you a greater sense of how your business is growing.

If total visits are trending upward, existing clients are probably coming frequently and you’re likely adding new clients, a great indicator that business is going well.

If total visits are trending downward, you might be experiencing some seasonal variation (perhaps it’s summertime or right before the holidays when many people go on vacation). Or, the downward trend could be a symptom of a bigger problem (unpopular staff are instructing during key hours, or clients are choosing a different studio with greater proximity to work, for example). You’ll want to do some digging and find out why people aren’t coming as often as before.

If you’ve been in business for a year or longer, you’ll be better equipped to see possible seasonality trends, be better able to prepare for your busiest months, and budget for those months when business slows down.

Busiest days

Knowing the busiest days of the week is great information to have. Send out an email letting clients with more flexible schedules know which days and times are a bit less crowded. Knowing the busiest days and times can also help you make decisions about which new classes to open and when. If you have data at your fingertips showing current demand for classes, you can make schedule changes with confidence.

More metrics that matter

Most profitable services

Do you know which of your services or service types are most profitable? If not, go through this exercise to calculate your gross margins on each of your services or service types. Knowing which services add more money to your business’ bottom line can help you decide how to best allocate space in your studio or gym.

For this, you need to measure the total earned revenue per service (revenue from sessions that were completed) and the total cost to provide the service (labor costs per service type for the same date range). Take the earned revenue and subtract the costs, and then divide that number by the earned revenue: (i.e. earned revenue – labor costs)/earned revenue.

Net profit

Net profit is the amount left over after you’ve paid labor on your services, as well as all of your operating expenses. A great indicator of the health of your business, net profit, shows how well you’re managing your expenses relative to revenue. If you’re able to keep your operating expenses fairly consistent month after month and if you’re able to grow revenue at a steady pace, you’ll see net profits increase as well.

Your business, your metrics

Depending on your business you’ll probably want to track several other metrics regularly. One of the benefits to using business management software with customizable reports is that you can view your business data exactly how you like.

If you aren’t yet using a cloud CRM application to manage your service business, I urge you to start (and to check out FrontDesk!). It’s incredibly valuable to have access to your data wherever you are and to have the ability to look back one year, two years, or even five years from now, see trends, and evaluate your business’s performance over time. Not only can you see how far you’ve come, you can plan for where you want to go next!

Nicki Violetti is a co-founder of FrontDesk.  She also co-owns NorCal Strength & Conditioning in Chico, CA, which Men’s Health named one of the Top 30 gyms in America. She resides in Reno, Nevada with her husband Robb Wolf and her daughters Zoe and Sagan.

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