When owning a small business it is important that you have the right tools to help you manage all aspects of the business.
Many owners of a small business try different ways of control their business and often turn to CRM solutions such as Salesforce and Sugar CRM. These are good applications but can be too complicated. Small businesses need a CRM solution that is easy to use. They need a fully integrated central system that can be acessed from anywhere in the world. BT BizBox is a web based application that takes the hassles and stress out of running a small to medium sized business.
How can BT BizBox help you control your business??
1. Increased productivity – use the project feature to track projects from creation to completion and see who is responsible for it. No more missed deadlines due to deadline alerts.
2. Centralise your business – run your business from BT BizBox and be in total control where ever you are in the world with an internet connection.
3. Improve contact relationships – with BT BizBox’s address book you can store details of last customer contact through email, telephone or letter and attach a picture of customers so you never forget a face again.
4. Share the workload – as all calendars are fully integrated you can see at a glance which projects your workforce is working on and move resources if there is an approaching deadline that needs more work.
5. Increase cash flow – using BT BizBox’s quoting and invoicing tools you can create invoices and attach them to customer records. Invoices are created automatically and saved for ease of retrieval. Invoices that remain unpaid after a set deadline will appear on your unpaid invoices list for the appropriate action.
6. Never lose an important document again – BT BizBox’s document storage facility allows you to save documents either to their own file or attach them to a customer, meeting or project record so that the information you need is a just a click away.
November 10, 2008 | Filed Under
BTBizBox Updates,
ERP |
Leave a Comment The morning commute to work is a ritual that is cemented throughout almost every society, yet the trend of telecommuting continues to chip away at that old routine as the way we live and work changes rapidly.
In the UK, U.S. and everywhere in between, technological evolution has allowed a workplace revolution to take place in the form of telecommuting. The workplace of the future has gone beyond the cubicle and corner office. It’s at home, the coffee shop, the beach and anywhere the mobile worker can flip open his or her notebook computer or wireless handheld device.
The crush of cars on freeways and highways has no doubt led to the telecommuting – also called teleworking – trend that has reached more that 12 million employees in the United States that spend more than 8 hours per week working away from the office, according to Gartner Dataquest, a leading information technology research and advisory company in the U.S. The number from Gartner shows a dramatic increase from the year 2000, when just 6 million Americans put in 8 hours a week outside the office.
Meanwhile in the UK, more than 2.1 million Brits work from home and around 8 million more spend at least some of their working week in their homes instead of at the office, according to the Office of National Statistics.
“The growth in employees working outside the office in both the U.S. and UK is substantial,” said Sarah Laycock of Tierlinear, a UK tech company which has developed a business productivity tool ideal for today’s telecommuters called the BT BizBox. “Telecommuting is going to be a fact of life for all businesses; it’s just a matter of time.”
The numbers certainly point in that direction. According to Gartner, 27.5 percent of Americans will be teleworking by 2009. The trend is likely to continue in the UK as well, as more and more employers in both countries are coming on board. A survey from the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) reported in September 2007 that 46 percent of British firms now offer workers the opportunity of telecommuting, compared to just 11 percent in 2004.
As is the case in the U.S., the stimulus behind the popularity of working outside the office are due to inadequate transportation systems and advances in digital and mobile technology.
“That teleworking has quadrupled in three years is testament to how far and fast firms have come in adopting new technologies for the benefit of staff and the business,” CBI deputy director general John Cridland said in the report.
It’s technologies like Tierlinear’s BT BizBox that has made businesses more comfortable and confident with the idea of telecommuting. The BizBox incorporates several methods of functionality for the small and medium-size business, with secure forms of customer, employee and contact management, as well as quoting, invoicing and scheduling mechanisms. It’s a simple solution that works in sync with the 21st century mobile world.
“BT BizBox is an online web-based application, which can be accessed from anywhere by any Internet enabled device,” said Laycock. “This makes it ideal for the rising number of home/flexible workers as they can access all the centrally stored company information away from the office making them more productive. BT BizBox is also launching new functionality that helps the traveling sales people by providing them with an easy to use route optimization tool.”
The phrase “telecommuting” was coined by Jack Niles, who in 1973 was Director for Interdisciplinary Research at the University of Southern California. Niles began his research into telecommuting and teleworking during the early 70s in an area primed for such an event. The Southern California basin, with its notorious traffic congestion, high fuel costs and parking problems, was where telecommuting had the opportunity to really take off.
After a slow start, the rise of personal computer, followed by the Internet and mobile devices has put telecommuting into overdrive. The improvement now in broadband is offering workers new choices in the way they live and work. Tierlinear’s partner, British Telecom, is fostering that mobile environment with advances that have increased bandwidth and other high-speed broadband services throughout Europe.
Telecommuting has its pluses and minus, but at its current state, the advantages are outweighing the disadvantages for both worker and business. Telecommuting provides employee flexibility, allows working parents more freedom, increases employee productivity and allows companies to outsource and hire employees that would otherwise not be available.
One of telecommuting’s major drawbacks is ensuring a secure environment for company data. With a workforce more spread out and less centralized, companies face an increased risk of confidential data being lost or misused. It’s an issue that companies supporting the teleworking world like Tierlinear are well-versed in.
“Security is of utmost concern with BT BizBox,” said Laycock. “All data is securely behind firewalls and is monitored 24 hours per day by security specialists. Software, hardware and human intrusion detection systems and methodologies constantly monitor the systems ensuring no one is accessing the servers that is not supposed to be.”
Along with products like the BT BizBox, a host of other products like webcams and video conferencing software will see a sharp rise over the next decade as companies downsize office space and increase workers’ ability to access remote locations.
With all these tech toys, along with PDAs and email, the teleworker could conceivably be on the clock 24 hours a day. Telecommuting may give the sense that workers can basically do whatever they want if they don’t have the boss looking over their shoulders. But the reality is that workers are going to have to prove that they’re worth their salaries by communicating their value.
“Telecommunicating doesn’t come without its pitfalls for the worker,” said Laycock. “It’s going to be an environment where you have to sell your self-worth a little harder, while setting limits and boundaries to avoid burnout.”
Leonardo da Vinci said that “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” If that is indeed the case, the new generation of Customer Relationship Management has become quite refined.
CRM has transformed from bulky to business friendly, as the applications have become easier to implement, allowing users to build a line of business workflow that can be picked up and used almost instantly. In a nutshell, CRM is keeping things simple, which is exactly what businesses and their customers have demanded.
“The biggest single reason CRM is getting better in the new generation is because there are many competitive offerings in the market at all levels,” said Tierlinear, maker of the CRM Solution BT BizBox. “With having to understand your customer being critical to survival, all businesses large or small are now looking to CRM solutions to help them stay competitive.”
Solutions used to be one-size fits all. Buyers were stuck with bloated software that had more flash than substance and too many unusable bells and whistles that stupefied users and slowed down the workflow. But the revolution of CRM being built on platforms that are completely customizable has taken the challenge out of the game.
The Web 2.0 concept of “collaborative functionality” has streamlined CRM applications like Tierlinear’s web-based BizBox. Its CRM solution can be accessed by any company member from anywhere they have access to an Internet enabled device. Meanwhile, it’s affordable for the small business. The BizBox solution also covers a wide area of functionality, which means customers only have to invest in one CRM solution to cover all their business needs. BT BizBox is also a simple to use solution, which has been built on customer requirements. Therefore, the function it contains is actually demanded and required by customers.
“The Web 2.0 concept engages the customer in forums and discussions on all aspects of the product development to make sure that a solution is purely built to meet the needs of a customer,” said Tierlinear. “With the need for CRM solutions increasing in small businesses, the need to make sure they are suitable for them is critical. Furthermore, with the increasing number of competitor offerings in the marketplace, the easiest and quickest way to engage with your customers is via forums and blogs. As more and more small businesses move to the Internet, the more they rely on forums and online support for their applications.”
Connection with consumers online has become an absolute necessity. The retail industry uses customer reviews as a powerful marketing tool, taking its cue from a recent survey that said almost half who recalled seeing customer product reviews cited them as the primary factor in their decision to purchase.
Giving power to the people when creating a product doesn’t stop at reviews and software applications. These days, it cuts across all industries, even taking flight. In 2006, Virgin America, a new low-cost airline launched by British entrepreneur Richard Branson, operated under the mantra to “build an airline people will love.” Building from the ground up, Virgin didn’t just consult industry insiders and airline executives. They went to the people. In fact, the company message to travelers on its website reads: “In building a brand new airline from the ground up, our goal was to bring the fun back to flying. To get there, we knew we had to ask a different kind of question: How would you design an airline? ”
Apparently, the people wanted these planes wired. USB ports, two WiFi access points on board, Ethernet at every seat, along with comfy leather seats and mood lighting. Virgin measures everything by connecting online with its customers, responding to how they feel about fares to the interactive components of their Web site. The airline even had its customers name its fleet by launching their “nameourplanes.com” initiative.
Getting the customer involved in creation has been Tierlinear’s goal with BT BizBox from the outset. Further development of the product has been and will continue to be generated through various forms, including the BT BizBox User Community.
The latest planned functions being unveiled at BT BizBox are wide-ranging, and include a new form of customer reporting that will have the ability to be exported into PDF files. BT BizBox will also implement a document creation tool and British Telecom’s conference call system in its next upgrade.
“The improved reporting will help our customers to manage their customers by fully understanding their behaviour,” said Tierlinear. “Ability to email will allow BT BizBox customers to run marketing campaigns. The conference call functionality will provide more way of staying in contact with their customers and the route optimization, permissions tool and document creation will all help to increase the effectiveness of the customer, which in turn will enable them to better serve their customers.”
January 11, 2008 | Filed Under
CRM,
ERP,
News |
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