Friday, 29 June 2012

Business Intelligence of leading-edge organizations goes mobile

BI, as most of us know is defined as the ability for an organization to take all its capabilities and convert them into knowledge, ultimately, getting the right information to the right people, at the right time, via the right channel. It majorly involves using computers to identify, extract and analyze business information and data. In plain terms, intelligence in business involves computers analyzing data. With too much having said and told about Business Intelligence, let us take a dive and see the progression in this domain— Mobile Business Intelligence

What is mobile BI?
Mobile business intelligence software extends desktop business intelligence (BI) to mobile devices. They optimize traditional BI reports so they can be viewed easily on a small screen and are ideal for displaying Key Performance Indicators and alerts with simple charts, graphs and spark lines. 

The use of mobile BI software on an upswing!!
Of late, the use of mobile business intelligence (BI) software has been on an upswing and it’s easy to see why. The following major factors have combined to create a potent fertilizer for fuelling the technology’s growth namely:
  • The rise of smartphones and tablet computers usage that provides anytime anywhere access and ease of usage
  • Demand from business users for up-to-the-minute data to help support decision-making have

According to David Roe, four major trends will emerge in 2014. He notes that Gartner Inc. predicts that mobile analytics will be one of the leading trends. This predication suggests that mobile BI is likely to be adopted throughout entire enterprises with multiple business units adopting mobile BI. By 2014, 33% of business intelligence will be garnered through mobile devices. This adoption and utilization will not be limited to C-level executives.

To take this one step further, Aberdeen’s research suggests that the organizations with mobile business intelligence in place or those currently considering it:
  • Have high performers deploy and then refine role-specific systems that provide the appropriate analytics to the appropriate employees to help in decision making;
  • Track productivity gains and demonstrate return on investment;
  • Ensure that the BI infrastructure can support the mobile BI challenge.
 
Top trends in Mobile BI
By far, the number one trend in mobile BI is how rapidly top-level executives make decisions using it. Because information is readily available to organizations utilizing mobile BI, they take, on average, about one-third of the time to make decisions than organizations that have not employed mobile BI strategies.
Mobile BI addresses a big complaint against analytics and information management for many years – not being easy to consume, chart and data overload, devices not secure.  Not anymore. Tablet devices are just right for mobile BI – small enough to carry and large enough to be effective. The early success of the iPad for BI has caught many experts by surprise.

Tablets’ big screen size and touch screen facility makes Mobile BI applications more user-friendly and easy-to-use. There are many Mobile BI apps coming in the market, but we need to mention Apples’ iPad, for growing popularity of tablets among users. Other Mobile BI apps include BIRT Mobile, Roambi, Micro Strategy Mobile, SAS Mobile, IBM Cognos 8 Go!

With senior/middle management employers kept available on a 24×7 basis, more organizations will are adopting this technology and Mobile BI will continue to grow rapidly which is transforming the BI platform for the better.

Thursday, 21 June 2012

Benefit from a real fusion of Blackberry, CRM and Social Media


Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is one of the significant components that deserve complete attention, and that can impact the success of an organization. To reduce sales downtime, increase customer relationship and win more deals, you need mobile CRM to move your business forward while team members are on the road. CRM software centralises all the information within an organization to give one coherent, 360-degree view, of each customer in real-time.

Mobile CRM takes that one step further by enabling your staff to access customer and other key information at any time or place using mobile devices such as a PDA, Blackberry, Apple iPhone or any mobile device that can access the internet to improve customer service and loyalty.

By making use of the Blackberry CRM software, establishments are well placed to make use of this tool and win the confidence of customers. BlackBerry Mobile CRM options provide more than just email and scheduling capabilities like access and update sales opportunities, forecasts, customer service cases, notes and documents. BlackBerry CRM offers several options for today's BlackBerry mobile devices and Smartphone’s.

BlackBerry Mobile CRM features:

This BlackBerry mobile CRM solution offers both offline and online access to all the essential organizational tools needed to effectively manage your business.
  • Easy to use and user-friendly navigation
  • Monitor the status of your business leads and sales opportunities
  • Real-time access to customer information
  • Easily search Clients and Contacts
  • Access and update your contacts and leads
  • Access accounts, appointments, notes
  • Create new contacts, sales opportunities and cases from BlackBerry emails, address book entries and phone records as a BlackBerry contact manager.
  • Diary Management — to make appointments
  • Task management — to manage your activities and reminders
  • Complete customisation. Mobile users see only what they need to see
  • Mobile Dashboards
  • Easy deployment
  • Increase Customer Relationships


Social Media with your BlackBerry CRM

Social Media and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) are walking hand-in-hand in the current digital marketing of business. Communicating with your customers has never been easier using your BlackBerry device and all of the available social media applications, including Social Feeds.
Check out to use your BlackBerry CRM to join the conversation and help grow your business.
Top CRM Blackberry minds agree that online social communities and conversations carry heavy consequences for companies. They must be monitored for real-time marketplace feedback and trends.

Since there is a rapid and enormous growth in social media as well as the social networking forced BlackBerry CRM product companies to integrate "social" features into their traditional CRM systems (Social CRM). Some of the first features added are social network monitoring feeds like Twitter timeline and MySpace, typically built into the system dashboard. Even many apps were developed and incorporated with BlackBerry CRM and started using on BlackBerry devices to stay connected with customers on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Linked, MySpace, Digg, Reddit, Google Plus (Google+), as well as using BlackBerry Messenger (BBM).

It’s not enough to ask people to “like us” or “follow us” – rather give them great reasons to do so. And that may mean needing to change how to approach them – not just the technology we use to interact with them, but also what we say and how we say it. Using new technology to deliver old messages won’t get you very far today, so it’s important to match social behaviour with social tools to really connect with today’s customer.

Lastly, really explore how you can maximize the use of your BlackBerry devices. There are a good number of business apps in “BlackBerry App World” that can help you be more productive, more social and more responsive to the needs of your customers. Many of these services are free or very low in cost, which makes it even more important to see how they can assist you in building great customer relationships today.


Android CRM- Get your business going from anywhere anytime


Android CRM is a mobile CRM access that helps you manage your business from anywhere anytime.
Android CRM for mobile phones or tablets gives you the power of complete CRM in your hand. With Android CRM, you can access the same key information like Contacts, Accounts, Tasks, Events, and Leads Reports you use every day in real-time to your business from wherever you need to work. It helps you stay connected and informed, ready to move the deal forward. By simply viewing the mobile optimized login page, you can do everything with your Android CRM.
The applications lets you View, Create, Edit and Delete records in all supported modules and also provides access to customer information even when offline like Tasks, Events, Notes, Adding/Modifying customer information, etc.

Mobile CRM Software for Android
Mobile CRM Software for Android OS devices is a mobile friendly extension for all your Sales and deals related activities. Having an android CRM with great functionality at your fingertips makes for a productive salesperson or business owner.
Android CRM is fully mobile-optimized to keep you connected and in sync, delivering the same powerful information, detailed reports, and more just like you have in your office all in real-time.
You can review meeting notes, download documents, view reports and more—in real-time. The power of your mobile device lets you quickly update the opportunities, view new leads and do more.

Mobile CRM software you can really work with
Android CRM gives you the flexibility to work from anywhere without being out of touch. And because Mobile CRM is already simple to use, using your Android device to get to your information is even easier.
  • Easy to use and familiar navigation – The intuitive interface was designed for the mobile user, making it easy to get to your information in the fewest clicks.
  • Complete account and contact information – Access complete profiles of your clients, customers, and accounts including all related notes and updates – in real-time.
  • Review your reports – Review the same reports you use every day to stay informed and on top of your sales pipeline.
  • Add and update – Easily create new opportunities, update existing ones, and add notes to the system.
  • Review Correspondence Associated With Your Deals and Contacts – Stay up-to-date and informed with easy access to all of your correspondence, including notes, emails and more.
  • Manage and Update Your Opportunities – Keep your contact and customer information up to date easily and effectively. Update Deal Value & Confidence, Process Progress, Forecast Date, Contacts, Notes and Emails, Tasks, Events and more.

Friday, 15 June 2012

iPhone CRM- Make the most of your Customer Relationship & Business activities on the move


IDC released the findings of its latest Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker report, and the firm predicts that Smartphone shipments will reach 686 million units in 2012. Enterprises, catching the pulse of latest Technology and business trends are increasingly adopting mobile devices for business and thus Mobile applications are growing to be more important than ever before. Companies are thus mobilizing their workforce with Mobile CRM on the latest Windows Mobile, iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Nokia and other mobile devices. 

Major CRM applications like Microsoft Dynamics CRM, SAP CRM, Saleforce.com CRM, Sage SalesLogix, and Zoho CRM are user-friendly for iPhone mobile devices. Gartner's analysis of global Q4 2011 smartphone sales shows that iOS holds 23.8% of the total Smartphones’ market share and this explains exclusive mobile applications coming up for iPhone devices.

iPhone CRM solutions help you achieve exceptional contact and customer satisfactions, empowering your sales and distributed business teams with access to your latest client interactions and company activities. iPhone CRM gives you anytime, anywhere access to the real-time key information on your customers and business you use every day - from wherever you need to work.

It can be completely tailored to your company through simple, point-and-click business user configurations, saving you the hassle and high cost of other mobile CRM providers. iPhone CRM is an on-demand, service offering that can literally be setup in hours or delivered to you on-premises.

Now, no matter how iPhone CRM has grown over the years, no one is really arguing that the device is more secure than a BlackBerry. And while iPhone CRM is a hot commodity right now, it might never surpass BlackBerry status unless the phones are equally as secure. Aside from the security issue, though, we wonder if there are many other functions that stand between the iPhone and the enterprise throne.

We have plenty of iPhone CRM Apps in the market with useful features for sales & services people. Sales CRM Apps let you manage and track your sales opportunities and produce specific sales forecasts & sales app features are very useful for sales professionals.

iPhone CRM for Sales has the following features
  • Remote access for your sales
  • Manage contacts, companies, service cases, meetings
  • Helps to increase your productivity
  • Track your daily appointments
  • Record notes & follow ups
  • Plan and track your daily activity based on your targets
  • Track your activities automatically
  • Import existing contacts from Excel or Outlook
  • Track your leads for each product
  • Automatically assign emails to contacts
  • Maintain customer relationship

The Benefits of CRM iPhone Apps

If your sales reps did not have to return to the office to update a lead, close a sale, place an order or update a customer account, how much more productive could they be in a day? iPhone CRM apps enables your in-the-field professionals to gain access to customer accounts and contact information, updating leads, opportunities, financial information, accounting data, marketing lists, competitors, products and more, all while on the go. This ensures your in-house support staff has instant access to updated information in real-time, before the rep ever leaves the customer site.

Why choose Windows Mobile CRM for your Enterprise?

 

Mobile CRM Options

Today’s workforce is more mobile than ever. To reduce sales downtime, increase customer face time and win more deals, you need mobile CRM to move your business forward while team members are on the road. Mobile CRM options provide more than just email and scheduling capabilities: access and update sales opportunities, forecasts, customer service cases, notes and documents. Mobile CRM is available for several mobile devices and smartphones like BlackBerry, iPhone, Windows Mobile, Google Android and Nokia (Symbian OS) smartphones.
The real time access feature of Mobile CRM through any web browser enabled smartphone such as Windows Mobile, Google Android and Nokia (Symbian OS) smartphones is very helpful.


Window Mobile CRM
Today we will learn more about windows mobile CRM and its advantages. The wireless web-browser of your smartphone can help you access, view and update your customer database in real time. Thus, with Mobile CRM you can expand the capabilities of your Google Android, Nokia, Windows Mobile or other smartphones and make them valuable business tools.

Advantages of Windows Mobile CRM:

·         Real-time access and updates to your CRM contacts, tasks, calendar, sales opportunities and customer service cases on-the-fly through your mobile Smartphone’s wireless web browser Monitor key business KPIs in real-time from any location with Mobile Dashboards and take immediate action
·         One-click access to maps and directions from customer records
·         No synchronization, local data or extra software to install on your device
·         Wireless Access is included when you purchase CRM
·         The CRM contacts, tasks, sales opportunities and customer service cases can be accessed and updated in real-time anywhere with your Smartphone's wireless web-browser
·         Customer records can be accessed on a single click to get maps and directions
·         There is no need for any synchronization or extra software to be installed on the device you use
·         Windows Mobile CRM has an in-built wireless access

Business on Your Move: Get Smarter with Mobile Solutions



The advent of mobile solutions technology is revolutionizing the public and private sectors service delivery. Organizations are increasingly adopting mobile technologies with the numerous advantages that they bring along. 

Productivity perks up in when workers make use of mobile solutions. A field force of mobile workers generating real time information for a single, shared IT system has distinct efficiency advantages. They no longer will have to duplicate information in the office set-up which not only saves time but also makes an optimal use of staff resources.

In today’s cut-throat business world, no two businesses function alike and thus have different needs too. Mobile solutions offer tangible and intangible benefits to all types of businesses. Businesses that aspire for positive results and high ROI should never miss the benefits of the up-coming technologies. Such businesses should make sure that they avail mobile application development from a professional mobile solutions company. Companies offer huge benefits to your business operations regardless of your unique needs, all of which will be covered.

Mobile computing provides many benefits to the employees, enabling them to carry out day-to-day duties remotely, either from home or an ‘on-site’ location.

Mobile computing provides many benefits to the employees, enabling them to carry out day-to-day duties remotely, either from home or an ‘on-site’ location.
There are several mobile strategies that businesses should look at when considering a mobile solution. The most important benefits that businesses can gain from mobile application development or mobile solutions are:
  • Real-time data capture: With mobile access to the service management system, data can be captured and communicated in real-time, reducing paperwork and return trips to the office. A mobile application provides an accurate audit trail, recording the exact time the technician arrives and leaves, which is important to track compliance with service-level agreements (SLAs) for response and resolution time.
  • Increasing sales: A survey of consumer home services conducted by TSIA found that field service agents sell extremely well. Customers were much more likely to accept up-sell and cross-sell offers for additional products, services, and extended warranties from on-site technicians than from other types of sales channels. Mobile devices not only allow users to finalize the deal and accept signature and payment but also identify new sales opportunities.
  • Connects you with consumers: Mobile technology today gives us all a unique chance to never depart from our customers. This was never possible before but now smartphones and apps are capable to market your products and services to all mobile users so they are aware of what you offer them. Any powerful marketing strategy can get your customers to interact more and offer you with more business.
  • Increasing customer satisfaction: Mobile apps and solutions increases the overall function of the app, enhances customer relation and is capable to provide immediate response to all customer queries, questions or complaints. Thus customers are more satisfied and content.
  • Empowers employees and make them work collaboratively: There is mobile strategy enough to transform any business internally as well create fast, more efficient and collaborative process. Employees can instantly access tools and information that are important, use them for better operational efficiency and result into profitable business. With all these benefits, they get on time and in budget.
  • Better relationships with vendors: There are some businesses totally dependent on vendors and needs highly responsive communications with their suppliers. With the help of mobile phones suppliers and vendors can stay in touch all the time irrespective of their place and time. They can exchange information, important data and access whatever they desire rapidly and in budget. While also they are aware of all updates on products and services.

Thursday, 14 June 2012

Dynamics RMS Add-ons for a better e-Commerce Business



Microsoft Dynamics RMS is designed to manage store activities from start to finish. Those in retail understand that although often grouped together, there are many areas of retail that offer completely different challenges, yet the biggest from an IT standpoint has to be that as the retail organisation grows the needs and demands of the back office function change exponentially and therefore any retail ERP system must be geared to handle these changes.

The following add-ons are being developed and supplied by Dynamics RMS Partners Worldwide. With more new add-ons coming out every day, following are few major add-ons of Dynamics RMS till date: 

 
24SevenCart
LAN Services, LLC prepared the initial architecture and went for the actual development process for a shopping cart solution while strictly adhering to these details:
  • Customization support
  • Payment processing
  • Point-of-sale integration
  • SEO and web marketing
  • After-sale customer support
  • Software as a service (SaaS)
The development process for 24SevenCart has always been a continuous one. That means the integration process of a new feature is pre-scheduled and all the features are periodically reviewed for enhancements. This gives the solution dynamism towards enriching customer experience and building a trust for future business opportunities.

Customer Reward
The Jean Holland Group, LLC Customer Loyalty Module is extremely flexible, allowing complete control over your loyalty program and rewards to your customer. By setting a few options you can
accumulate points based on a customer’s purchases or by each visit. You can set a maximum and minimum requirement for accumulated points. Set up a reward item that enforces the purchase of a particular stock item in order to be redeemed. Set up multiple rewards that can be selected at the checkout station. This module will keep your customers coming back.

RMS Signature Capture
ZSL’s Microsoft Dynamics RMS Signature Capture is an add-on component developed to address the supplemental business needs of the small and mid-size retailers by providing them integrated solution to manage operations within one store or across a chain of stores. This add-on solution helps you to have the receipts printed with the respective customer’s signature.

ZSL designed Microsoft Dynamics RMS Signature add-on component to help you automate and accelerate your administrative operations while dealing with credit card and other types of payments. It gives you and your customers more reliable proof on the transactions done by the customers in the store.

  • Scans the customer signature against the respective transactions and stores it in the Microsoft RMS database
  • Customer signatures are stored in the encrypted format
  • The encrypted format is decoded and printed as image in the receipts
  • Customer signature capture and printing on receipts is governed by a set of well-built business rules
  • Capability of storing huge volume of data
  • Repeated customer’s signature are fetched from the database and printed on the receipt
  • Easy integration with RMS POS receipt
 
RMS Mobile Purchase Order 
Create and receive purchase orders on your handheld device in real time. Wirelessly transmit updated orders to your central office for accurate record-keeping. This is an excellent solution for convention orders and travelling sales reps. You can print store item labels from the receiving purchase order for expedited inventory management.

Ecommerce Integration
Kosmos Central's integration software was designed to upload point of sale data (Inventory, prices, descriptions, categories, etc.) to your online shopping cart and download orders from the shopping cart's database to your point of sale system. 

How It Works:
o   Web Integrator and Image Utility runs on a scheduler with your point of sale system.

Web Integrator was designed to send and receive point of sale data from the online shopping cart. Image Utility automatically creates product thumbnails and re-sizes product images for the Web.

Dispatcher Suite allows for additional control over how your data displays on the Web. This includes field mappings from point of sale and the creation of custom rule sets for your products. Kosmos Web Service runs with your shopping cart software and was designed to send and receive shopping cart data from the point of sale system.

RMSStore
RMSStore is a division of Art Dynamics Ltd, UK specializing in Microsoft RMS reselling, implementation and customization. The RMSStore team has been working in the retail epos market for more than 10 years now. Microsoft RMS was the solution identified to meet the requirements of modern day retailer because of its scalability, powerful features and the fact that it was running on the latest technology. We took upon customizing, implementing the product around 10 years back when it used to be called quick sell commerce (Before Microsoft bought the product)only resell Microsoft RMS solution for the retailers. Since then the product has undergone many changes to its current Microsoft RMS 2.0 and POS 2009 versions.


XL Reporting
BI360 comes with out-of-the-box integrations to many ERP products including all Microsoft Dynamics solutions and takes only a fraction of the time to implement compared to typical BI suites. Using BI360, management teams can help their organizations maximize performance through world-class planning, reporting and analysis.

Features:
  • Microsoft Excel-based
  • Live Financial Reporting (GL)
  • Live Operational Reporting (AP, AR, Sales, Projects, etc...)
  • Drill to transaction detail
  • Drag and Drop report design
  • On-Demand reporting for end-users
  • Security integrates with Active Directory
  • Multi-company/Multi-currency consolidations
  • Out-of-the-box integration
  • Microsoft Dynamics (AX, GP, NAV, SL, CRM)
  • BI360 Data Warehouse
  • Other major ERPs
  • Integration tool connects BI360 Reporting ‘live’ to custom tables or other sources!

Hero Points
Hero Points for Dynamics RMS is a cash-spent based loyalty program that rewards your customers with a configurable number of points per item purchased. Once they collect a threshold amount of points, they can redeem them for a preset discount at the POS.

Benefits are:
• Increases customer visitation
• Fully automated and user-friendly
• Complete customer purchase tracking and reporting capabilities
• Provides customers with a concrete ‘goal’ to work towards

Features:
• Fully customizable point-collection schedule including accelerators, bonus and welcome points
• Flexible points redemption schedule allows assigning a gift item for a specific number of points.

NitroSell eCommerce
NitroSell eCommerce is all that you need to manage a feature-rich WebStore. It has been designed to offer complete flexibility with your very own WebStore. Not only does NitroSell eCommerce manage the look and feel of your store, it also ensures that your stock and pricing information is updated as often as you need, giving your customers a superior shopping experience. NitroSell hosts and manages your WebStore for you, ensuring that you receive a totally resilient solution that is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with the capacity to cope with peak demands.