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Global Food Solutions Puts Affordable, Nutritious Meals in the Hands of U.S. Students

February 22, 2020 NetSuite

Posted by Hayley Null, industry marketing lead manufacturing, food and beverage

Opportunity and challenge often go hand-in-hand — just ask Global Food Solutions. The Hauppage, N.Y.-based food distributor found itself at the crux of enormous opportunity a decade ago when the Obama Administration tightened school food regulations for the first time in a generation.

CEO Michael Levine saw an opening to take Global Food Solutions—then a young regional company looking to make waves with a healthy, sustainable approach to mass food production—to a new level. Levine knew that the big names in the space, companies like General Mills, Kellogg’s and Marriott, weren’t prepared for the changes that were coming.

“There was this massive demand that was about to hit the marketplace for better nutrition products on a massive scale for the school food service industry,” said Levine. “We saw this as a very unique opportunity to capitalize.”

So Global Food Solutions pounced. It started adding items to its list of product SKUs, adding school districts, and forming relationships with more distribution partners. Over the next several years, it found itself expanding across the country, and today it provides lunches for more than 5,000 schools, most located in underprivileged urban areas where student lunches are subsidized by the federal government.

Growth Breeds Complexity

But as the company grew, and its business became increasingly complex, its backend systems were not up to the task. It had been relying on a combination of QuickBooks and Excel spreadsheet to manage financials, and Global Food Solutions’ growth exposed the limitations of that setup.

“We had these pockets of software that were doing specific tasks in the business for us, but none of them were talking to each other. It was okay when we only had a handful of SKUs and it was one manufacturer and we were only shipping in one state and it was very controlled,” Levine said. “But as we expanded our model, we began to push these systems to — actually, not to, but well beyond — a breaking point.”

The problems this created were ubiquitous. The company had distribution challenges; it struggled to track inventory; and its workflow from orders to customer service were choppy and disconnected. Levine recalls the company having to put band-aids on multiple areas where the siloed systems couldn’t keep up with the business.

“It absolutely was not going to be a sustainable solution by any means,” he said. “It was almost kind of running away from us, and we needed to find a way to get a handle on it because we knew that we couldn’t scale to the next level and do all of the things we wanted to do without the right software provider and the right services.”

The Search for an Answer

Finally, in early 2018, Global Food Solutions began to search for a solution that would help the company bring all of those pieces together. It looked at several options, including a newer QuickBooks Premier product and SAP for Wholesale Distribution Products. Ultimately, however, it turned to NetSuite, not only because of its current capabilities, but the flexibility it would offer going forward.

This was critical, Levine said, because the business was looking at doing some new things. For example, it wanted to create a workflow that would support the assembly of meal kits, which would require multiple components of the business to be tightly integrated. Those kits would be delivered complete and handed out as after school snacks for economically disadvantaged students who might not have other snack options presented to them.

“The NetSuite system was able to do those things with ease,” said Levine. “It’s built in a way that is ready to expand with us as we get there. The other software companies that we evaluated, they were just not able to do that.”

With SuiteSuccess, Global Food Solutions worked closely with NetSuite and had its system deployed and live in 85 days, allowing it to work with the system before the start of the following school year. Levine said the NetSuite Professional Services team made a number of recommendations throughout the implementation process that have really helped the business take full advantage of the technology.

Swift Results

In the short time the company’s been on NetSuite, it has already seen significant improvements. The company has cut the time it takes to receive an order, create a PO and confirm with vendors by 75%. For the first time, it has clear visibility into inventory, with data delivered in clear dashboard reports. And because its data is in a single system, Global Food Solutions has cut the time it takes to resolve simple customer inquiries that once took up to 30 minutes to mere seconds.

“It’s just amazing how we feel we’re able to get so much more time back to focus on growth and creation for our business and not worrying about things being wrong,” said Levine.

NetSuite also enables Global Food Solutions to achieve the scale needed to serve so many lunches despite having just 20 employees. The company relies on manufacturing partners for production and for tapping into their buying power to purchase ingredients, and also works with a network of distribution partners.

NetSuite has become the secret ingredient to making Global Food Solutions’ network work together seamlessly. It’s integrated with the company’s CRM, enabling emails to be easily attached to customer records, and is exploring an integration with Box to bring more data into view.

Far From Done

Much more is on the horizon. The company plans to tap NetSuite’s ability to bring automation into its workflow process. It wants to expand upon its demand forecast and planning capabilities, set up auto-generated purchase orders that would maintain stock levels. It also is looking to integrate with NetSuite partner Tesorio, which will help it improve its management of cashflow and receivables.

For now, however, Levine is simply enjoying the contrast between the past experience of running the business on disconnected, stitched together components, and enjoying the integrated, data-rich environment NetSuite has enabled.

Said Levine: “It has been an incredible breath of fresh air.”

Posted on Wed, February 19, 2020
by NetSuite filed under

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Microsoft Injects New AI Features Into Dynamics 365

February 22, 2020 CRM News and Info

Microsoft on Wednesday unveiled several new artificial intelligence capabilities across Dynamics 365 applications and a new solution to help project-centric services organizations transform their operations.

The AI enhancements include first- and third-party data connections in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, Microsoft’s customer data platform (CDP).

“The work in AI and CDP is new and a key part of Microsoft taking their products to an AI-driven approach,” noted Ray Wang, principal analyst at Constellation Research.

The company also unveiled new manual and predictive forecasting capabilities for Dynamics 365 Sales and Dynamic 365 Sales Insights.

“Integration with the CDP is important, but more important will be the ability to automate transactions and apply AI to drive the next best action,” Wang told CRM Buyer. “We’re seeing a need to deliver on ambient experiences which are subtle, next best actions.”

Microsoft also is making Customer Insights available to government agencies that previously could not access this feature for their cloud computing environments.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations, which connects cross-functional project teams, will be generally available Oct. 1.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance Insights, slated for preview in May, will bring AI into an organization’s finance processes, automating or eliminating repetitive, time consuming and low-value daily activities so organizations can understand and act on their cash position and take proactive actions to improve it.

“Having a clear view from sales, service and finance for the marketer looking to drive growth through customer engagements that are both creative and contextual is pure gold,” observed Liz Miller, principal analyst at Constellation Research.

Making customer intelligence part of the workflow “helps to remove some of what makes bridging the gaps set up by data silos so hard,” she told CRM Buyer.

Beefing Up Customer Insights

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights’ new first- and third-party data connections add proprietary audience intelligence and data from third-party data sources to customer profiles that can be updated and activated in real time.

Integrating Microsoft Forms Pro will bring in the customer’s voice across channels so enterprises can act on insights based on customers’ changing behavior and perception.

Customer Insights can be used with Azure Synapse Analytics, which combines customer data with enterprise and streaming data, to improve data completeness, run high-speed analytical processing, and build custom machine learning models. Those models can predict customer needs and provide guidance on the next best action to reduce churn and maximize revenue opportunities.

“This shows Microsoft bringing the power of its whole portfolio to business applications, with Azure Synapse Analytics and Forms Pro,” remarked Rebecca Wettemann, principal at
Valoir.

“Synapse Analytics is SQL Data Warehouse, so companies — and Microsoft partners — with SQL skills and resources will be well positioned to take advantage of its speed and scale,” she told CRM Buyer.

Enterprises can use prebuilt APIs to act upon these insights in real time across multiple destinations to enable Website personalization, dynamic marketing campaigns, effective ad targeting, and dealing with clients on site, said James Phillips, president of Microsoft Business Applications.

“Microsoft’s tools by nature are comparatively easy to learn and use, and this should be consistent with those expectations,” noted Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.

However, “You break down silos with journeys and process, not integration of APIs,” Constellation’s Wang pointed out. “End-to-end flows that power decisions provide a solution.”

Tools for the Sales Team

Dynamics 365 extracts patterns from CRM data, current and historical leads, won or lost opportunities, contacts, accounts, customer interactions and other data sources, and projects these patterns into the future to provide predictive forecasting for Dynamics 365 Sales and Dynamic 365 Sales Insights.

These insights can be accessed without the need for data scientists or tech experts.

“The prediction and forecasting is only as good as the data, so training data will be key to success,” Wang observed. “You need more high-quality data sources in order to build precision decision models.”

A new engagement center provides sellers with their own AI-prioritized work queue — based on built-in predictive scoring from Dynamics 365 Sales Insights — that uses new, configurable sales cadences. Other embedded AI capabilities offer a path to a warm introduction and guidance from the assistant.

When considering AI, said Wang, almost every organization asks four questions:

When do I trust human judgment?
When do I augment human judgment with machines?
When do I augment a machine with a human?
When do I trust machine automation?

“Microsoft’s announcements bring us one step closer to this autonomous reality,” he remarked.

For Project Operations

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations is built on Microsoft’s unified business cloud and leverages its expertise in front- and back-office processes and project management.

It aims to break down data silos and to optimize operations from prospect to cash.

“Project Operations is where Microsoft’s breadth capabilities, from finance collaborations to project management, will really shine,” Valoir’s Wettemann noted. “It’s another example of Microsoft bringing its portfolio game to the business apps space. The value of end-to-end visibility and collaboration is broadly applicable.”

That said, “these are data and process flow tools, but silos are often more behavioral and political rather than technical,” Enderle told CRM Buyer. “So, while these tools will certainly help, to get the full benefit managers will have to continue to train people to break these data silos.”

Finance Insights

Finance Insights will bring AI into an organization’s finance processes, automating or eliminating repetitive, time consuming and low-value daily activities so organizations can focus on working with their cash position.

“Dynamic Finance Insights can really help companies move the needle where it matters, not just by automating manual tasks but by leveraging AI to rapidly understand finance data and act on it together manage cash,” Wettemann observed.

The Big Picture

The announcements “represent an important strategic move for Microsoft, trying to beat the bigger players — Salesforce, Oracle, SAP — by having a better integrated portfolio, though the proof is yet to come,” said Nicole France, principal analyst at Constellation Research.

Microsoft also is “competing with smaller, younger competitors such as Zoho, Freshworks and Zendesk, who have been building integrated capabilities that span marketing, sales, service and sometimes more, with consistent, straightforward interfaces for users,” she told CRM Buyer.

However, things like customer data integration “are not simply a technology or application integration challenge,” France noted. They require consistent definitions and improved process as well.

Good Microsoft technical skills are out there, and many enterprises already have significant internal Microsoft teams, she said, but “the big question is whether those organizations have tight links between technology experts and business experts.”

Richard%20Adhikari Microsoft Injects New AI Features Into Dynamics 365
Richard Adhikari has been an ECT News Network reporter since 2008. His areas of focus include cybersecurity, mobile technologies, CRM, databases, software development, mainframe and mid-range computing, and application development. He has written and edited for numerous publications, including Information Week and Computerworld. He is the author of two books on client/server technology.
Email Richard.

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The Art of Table Touch: How a Manager’s Time at the Table Can Create a Guest For Life

February 21, 2020 NetSuite

Posted by Brady Thomason, NetSuite Solution Manager, Restaurant & Hospitality

Consumers today are living in the experience economy. A term first coined more than 20 years ago, the experience economy symbolizes a shift in consumerism where the memory of a product or service becomes the product itself. Nowhere is the focus on customer experience more prevalent than the restaurant industry.

As participants in this experience economy, Americans value experiences over things. Check out these figures from a recent SevenRooms study, “Turning a Meal Into an Experience”:

Almost one-quarter of Americans have visited a restaurant because of the way the food or atmosphere looked on social media.

More than half responded that a waiter or waitress remembering their name would make their visit more memorable.

Nearly one-quarter wouldn’t return if their dining experience wasn’t “memorable or special.”

A key component of the restaurant experience is the interaction with staff. In addition to beautiful decor and ambiance, diners expect restaurants to engage, empower, hear, delight and know them in a personalized way.

re The Art of Table Touch: How a Manager’s Time at the Table Can Create a Guest For Life

Let’s face it: everyone wants to be Norm from Cheers. There’s nothing better than walking into a restaurant, being greeted by name and having exactly what you want (a cold beer in this case) placed in front of you.

With turnover rates hovering around 75% in the restaurant industry, many of these personalized experiences are tough to replicate. Restaurant staff are not sticking around long enough to get to know patrons. However, restaurants do have another important arrow in their quiver: the manager’s process of visiting and checking in on tables throughout service, otherwise known as table touching.

How Does Table Touching Support a Positive Restaurant Experience?

When performed well, a table touch enhances the restaurant experience for diners by bringing an additional human connection and an extra means of support and service to the table. Maybe the manager approaches a chatty group that wants to know more about when the restaurant opened, who the chef is and how the menu was developed. Or the waitstaff is backed up and a manager can step in and pre-bus, refill glasses and take dessert orders.

Even more important is the manager’s ability to correct a problem while guests are still at the table. Once they leave the restaurant, it’s too late. In our world of instant gratification via social media, a seemingly small slip can turn into a PR event that millions read if gone unchecked.

And those reviews and comments on platforms like Yelp can have a big impact:

Whatever the case, a table touch can be a supplement to the dining experience – like a vitamin. The manager might have the opportunity to boost guest interest, share special events, or even turn a negative experience into a positive one.

Consider these scenarios: a couple walks into a restaurant and is seated at a table but ends up waiting roughly 10-15 minutes to be served. After their food arrives, they alert the waitress that there’s a bug in the salad. At another table, a group of four enjoy their meal and hear about some mouth-watering dessert specials, but they’re too full to order.

The first couple lets the manager know about both the waitstaff delay and the bug in the food. They’re given half off their check and a complimentary dessert. The manager also gives the group of four a gift card to come back and try the decadent dessert. But without that manager’s table touch, the opportunity to create an experience—especially one patrons will share with others in a positive light—is lost.

So how do restaurant managers enable these interactions?

Pay Attention to Cues

One of the most important things a manager can do when visiting tables is to follow social cues from diners, including body language. A guest’s interest in attention can range from wanting to be completely left alone, to some conversation, to engagement whenever they see the manager.

Aside from how much guests want to interact, there’s also complaints that come up: cold or undercooked food, incorrect orders or long wait times. To ferret out these issues, managers should be scanning the area for faces of concern or patrons trying to get a waiter’s attention.

If managers are going to add to the experience with a table touch, it’s important that they observe these cues before approaching guests. Otherwise their presence might have a negative effect. There’s nothing like being in the middle of telling an engaging story only to be interrupted, or having a manager approach a guest who has only picked at their food and not ask how the meal tastes.

Gather Information Wherever Possible

As managers are making their rounds, it’s important not just to observe before approaching, but to ask questions once they get to the table. Going beyond the standard “How is everything this evening?” will go a long way towards giving managers the tools to create a memorable experience.

For guests who seem open to conversation, asking them if they are local or from out of town can provide an easy icebreaker. If they are local, a manager can share special events, loyalty programs or even follow-up with a discount code or gift card for their next visit. Learning if guests are at the restaurant for a special event like a birthday or anniversary, or attending a concert or play afterwards, can help managers with proactive ideas. Instead of “How does everything taste?” try: “Is your ribeye cooked to your liking?” or “Does that pan-roasted salmon taste as delicious as it smells?”

Going back to our group of four in the previous example, the manager learns that the group enjoyed their meal but unfortunately they’re stuffed, so they won’t be staying for dessert. He or she brings back a gift card to try the dessert on another visit. Sometimes capturing information means listening to guests and making an offer right away; other times managers can step away and think for a moment about how they can add value.

Tailor the Guest Experience

Don’t misinterpret: restaurant managers aren’t all of a sudden going to become mind readers, but there are little things they can do to customize each guest interaction that makes them feel special—and makes them want to return.

In a full-service restaurant, a manager might want to bring a complimentary dessert to a table where there was a delay in service or an error on the order. However, he or she recognizes that the guests are a family with small children. Mom might not want her already rambunctious children to have sugar so late in the evening. Instead of offering to the whole table, the manager asks her quietly if it would be alright to avoid the children overhearing.

In a quick-service restaurant, a manager can use a table touch to go above and beyond typical order-at-the-counter service norms by offering to refill a beverage, get more napkins or pre-bus empty trays.

The occasion or even the age of guests might also factor into how managers tailor the experience. The same restaurant might in one night serve a large group of very dressed-up high school students who are later attending the prom and also a very casually-dressed family with small children. The manager will likely act differently to demonstrate the importance of the prom versus the goal of helping a family have a successful meal out with children.

Table Touch Can Transform the Restaurant Experience

Today’s customers demand more than ever before from dining experiences. Restaurants have many tools in their arsenal to improve guest interactions and a manager’s table touch is just one of them. By paying attention to social cues, gathering information wherever they can and tailoring each guest’s experience, managers can increase the likelihood of a positive experience—and return visits down the line.

Posted on Thu, February 20, 2020
by NetSuite filed under

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Australian Chocolatier Belgian Delights Selects NetSuite to Sweeten Operations

February 20, 2020 NetSuite

Belgian Delights, an Australian specialty chocolate manufacturer, has implemented Oracle NetSuite to support its national and international growth strategy. With NetSuite, Belgian Delights has been able to increase the capacity of its small team and expand its range of customised authentic Belgian style chocolate lines by taking advantage of an integrated platform to streamline its core business and financial processes.

Founded in 1987 as a specialty chocolate and pastry shop, Belgian Delights opened a custom designed chocolate factory in 2000 in Molendinar, Queensland to offer a variety of Belgium chocolate lines, ranging from personalised, individually wrapped couverture chocolates, through to boxes of assorted truffles. To meet growing national and international demand, Belgian Delights needed to be able to streamline complex manufacturing processes and gain a complete view into operations across its rapidly expanding business. After careful evaluation, Belgian Delights selected NetSuite.

“Our business is inspired by a passion for chocolate sustained through three generations and we take the utmost pride in the quality of our products,” said Christophe Verstreken, General Manager, Belgian Delights. “As a family business, we want to continue this legacy and that requires us to focus on every detail. As our business expanded, maintaining that focus was becoming increasingly difficult and that’s why we had to rethink the way we run our operations. With NetSuite, we have been able to increase visibility, streamline financial and manufacturing processes, and most importantly of all, stay true to our family’s traditional chocolate making heritage.”

With NetSuite, Belgian Delights has been able to improve accounting, financial, CRM and manufacturing processes and enhance visibility across its growing operations. This has enabled Belgian Delights to minimise overhead costs and use data to gain a deeper understanding of its manufacturing processes, with customised information on nutrition and allergens able to be easily captured and processed. By providing a single source of truth across all core business processes, NetSuite has also enabled Belgian Delights to expand its range of customisation options for its wholesale customers, some major speciality retailers as well as some of Australia’s leading hotel groups. Belgian Delights worked with NetSuite partner JCurve Solutions to implement NetSuite.

“Australian manufacturers are an important part of our economy and require sophisticated systems to handle complex supply chain and financial operations,” said Jason Toshack, General Manager, Oracle NetSuite ANZ. “With NetSuite, the Belgian Delights team has been able to drive efficiencies across their business so they can focus on scaling operations and meet customer expectations. We’re happy to be playing our own small part in helping Australians enjoy their beloved chocolate.”

About Belgian Delights
Belgian Delights is a business inspired by a passion sustained through three generations, to create exquisite handmade Belgian style couverture chocolates to be shared and enjoyed. The company operates from a state-of-the-art HACCP certified factory in Molendinar and in 2009, began selling their chocolate lines online. The Belgian Delights retail and wholesale chocolate business continues to grow, staying true to the Verstreken family’s traditional chocolate making heritage.

About Oracle NetSuite
For more than 20 years, Oracle NetSuite has helped organizations grow, scale and adapt to change. NetSuite provides a suite of cloud-based applications, which includes financials / Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), HR, professional services automation and omnichannel commerce, used by more than 19,000 customers in 203 countries and dependent territories.

For more information, please visit https://www.netsuite.com.

Follow NetSuite’s Cloud blog, Facebook page and @NetSuite Twitter handle for real-time updates.

About Oracle
The Oracle Cloud offers complete SaaS application suites for ERP, HCM and CX, plus best-in-class database Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) from data centers throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information about Oracle (NYSE:ORCL), please visit us at oracle.com.

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Using Progressive Profiling for a Frictionless Customer Experience

February 20, 2020 CRM News and Info

How to Adapt Progressive Profiling to Your Buyer’s Journey

Let’s say your company provides video conferencing solutions for technology companies with at least 200 employees. Someone visits your site for the first time and submits a form embedded in one of your landing pages.

You might send them nurture emails with subject lines like:

“Why Video Conferencing Matters”
“How to improve productivity with real-time collaboration.”
“Easy ways to lead better sales discovery calls.”

Each of these emails is designed to educate your potential prospects and invite them back to your site where they can learn more. At this point, you only know their First Name, Last Name, Email, and maybe their company name if you have the right software in your tech stack. You know they’re interested, but you don’t know why they’re interested.

But everything changes once they return to your site and complete the second version of one of your adaptive forms. Now you can unenroll them from the first set of emails and add them to a campaign with more targeted content. This new series of emails can reference the information they shared in the second dynamic form as well as the pages they visited on their return visit:

Why {{ Industry }} leaders trust video conferencing solutions
5 reasons companies like {{ Company Name }} prefer real-time collaboration
Tips for deploying video conferencing solutions in large teams

These new emails would draw on information from their second form submission: Industry, Company Name, and the size of their team. This is the real power of progressive profiling. As you get more and more information from potential prospects, you can tailor your messaging based on details they’ve already shared with you.

And every time they submit a new form, you’ll be able to recommend even more valuable content based on where they are in the buyer’s journey. By the time they complete the third version of one of your dynamic forms, you’ll have a much better understanding of their willingness to purchase.

So, how does this strategy result in more qualified leads?

Let’s say you opt for a long, complex form instead of an adaptive form with progressive profiling. With a longer form, your conversion rate will be lower due to greater friction. But that’s okay because you have way more information, right?

So you send them emails like the ones above that reference Industry, Company Name, and Team Size… and nothing happens. Your click-through and open rates remain stagnant because most of the people who have completed these long forms are not ready for this kind of targeted content.

All they wanted was education. Treating everyone who completes one of these forms like they’re at the same stage of the buyer’s journey is misguided. If you ignore progressive profiling, you risk derailing the conversation before it even begins.

By aligning your messaging with each person’s stage on the buyer’s journey, you can show potential leads you’re willing to meet them on their terms.

But this leads to an even bigger question. Let’s say you build out your content plan to address every stage of the buyer’s journey. Then you build landing pages with dynamic forms using a platform like Act-On. Finally, you design Google and LinkedIn Retargeting ads to re-engage people who have already visited your site.

What if they still don’t engage?

Then they’re not ready!

Many companies interpret a form submission as an indication of intention, or even attraction. But when someone completes one of your forms for the first time, all you’ve gained is their attention. That’s it.

Don’t treat everyone at the top of the funnel like they’re ready to buy. For every person who completes one of your dynamic forms but never engages with any of your content again, that’s one less poorly-qualified lead you don’t need to send to your sales team. That’s a win-win for everyone.

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Sustainable Manufacturer BioPak Unpacks Success with NetSuite

February 19, 2020 NetSuite

BioPak, an Australian market leader in sustainable and compostable packing, is using Oracle NetSuite to support its mission to produce the most sustainable and environmentally friendly packaging on the market. With NetSuite, BioPak has been able to take advantage of an integrated business platform to drive efficiencies across its core operations while expanding both its range of products and services and the number of markets it serves.

Founded in 2006, BioPak manufactures sustainable and compostable packaging that provides an alternative to traditional plastic takeaway food packaging. As it continued to grow its business, BioPak has expanded the range of eco-friendly alternatives it offers its customers. For example, it recently launched an industrial composting collection service that helps turn food packaging and waste into nourishing compost. As it has added new products and services and expanded its operations domestically and internationally, BioPak has taken advantage of NetSuite to manage its entire business.

“We’re focussed on reducing fossil fuel-based plastic used in foodservice and are always looking at how we can offer our customers more sustainable alternatives,” said Gary Smith, CEO, BioPak. “As we have grown our business, NetSuite has allowed us to stay focused on our mission by providing us with accurate data across all products at all locations throughout Australia, Singapore, the U.K. and New Zealand. We run everything through NetSuite — from custom ordering portals, to procurement, we least cost freight, and automated analysis and monitoring — so we always have a complete view into our business and can ensure our customers never run out of product.”

With NetSuite, BioPak has been able to take advantage of a single business platform to streamline sales, warehouse, freight and marketing processes, create new products and services for its customers, and scale its business internationally. Using NetSuite, BioPak created a custom Carbon Calculator that pulls data to give its customers — such as Woolworths, Bunnings Warehouse, many Councils across Australia and New Zealand, Deliveroo, The Star, Mad Mex and many more — a complete picture of their environmental footprint. These impact statements put a tangible value on switching from regular packaging to BioPak through information such as carbon savings, amount of compost created, reduction in landfill waste and plastic avoided. With an integrated and flexible platform for all core business processes, BioPak has been able to focus on expanding its operations and recently launched in Singapore.

“We all know the damage packaging can have on the environment and that’s why it’s so important that organisations like BioPak provide eco-friendly alternatives,” said Jason Toshack, General Manager, Oracle NetSuite ANZ. “BioPak has championed innovative solutions for many years and a big part of that has been taking advantage of data to streamline operations and help its customers think about packaging in new ways. BioPak’s journey with us over the last nine years demonstrates how an organisation can focus on its core mission and deliver value directly to its customers by continually driving operational efficiencies.”

About BioPak
BioPak produces sustainable alternatives to conventional single-use packaging for the foodservice industry, offering carbon neutral compostable packaging solutions made from rapidly renewable, plant-based raw materials. In 2018, BioPak launched its own compost service in Australia & New Zealand, a recycling initiative designed to close the loop on waste and curb single-use packaging pollution.

For more information, please visit https://www.netsuite.com.

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New Year, New Growth Hacks for NetSuite ANZ Customers

February 18, 2020 NetSuite

It might be a new decade, but one thing that’s definitely not new is that our customers, regardless of size or industry, are constantly looking for ways to unlock growth.

And as 2020 kicks into full gear, it’s only fitting that we deliver new capabilities with NetSuite to help ANZ organisations take their business to the next level. The new SuiteSuccess additions we are introducing today give ANZ organisations access to years of industry leading practices. So how exactly does that work?

SuiteSuccess is a pre-configured industry cloud solution that is built on knowledge we have acquired working with more than 19,000 organisations and 1,000 partners over the last 20+ years. Or put another way, SuiteSuccess provides a powerful blueprint for growth that organisations can quickly take advantage of to unlock their potential.

And to top it all off, with pre-built KPIs and dashboards, SuiteSuccess helps organisations achieve the benefits of the cloud in as little as 45 days. In ANZ, our customers have embraced SuiteSuccess and are already seeing the benefits.

The latest innovations within the NetSuite platform include new SuiteSuccess financial management capabilities that are designed to help organisations in ANZ increase business efficiency, adapt to change and achieve faster time to value. Here’s what’s new in SuiteSuccess for our ANZ customers:

Inventory Management: A new pre-configured solution that helps organisations improve the accuracy and traceability of inventory management with lot and serial tracking, pick, pack and ship, and bin management features.
Work Orders & Assemblies: A new industry-specific solution that helps wholesale distributors and retailers gain greater control of their operations with new assembly item record, work order processing, and inventory features.
Project Management: A new pre-configured module allows professional service organisations to keep track of internal projects by taking advantage of project record management, task assignment, work calendar project billing and reporting capabilities.
Revenue Management: A new pre-configured solution help customers achieve real-time visibility into their financial status by streamlining revenue recognition and management.
Fixed Asset Management: A new fixed asset calculation engine with standard and custom depreciation methods gives customers access to a single source of truth for assets.
Demand Planning: A new pre-configured demand management solution helps customer gain greater control of inventory planning.
Financial Management: A new pre-configured role and dashboard solution helps customers automate financial processes, reduce costs, manage multiple budgets and improve reporting, accounting and allocation.

The latest innovations within the NetSuite platform include new SuiteSuccess vertical industry cloud solutions and financial management capabilities that are designed to help organisations in ANZ increase business efficiency, adapt to change and achieve faster time to value.

If you would like to learn more about the latest ANZ additions to SuiteSuccess, visit https://www.netsuite.com.au/portal/au/products/suitesuccess.shtml

For more information, please visit https://www.netsuite.com.

Follow NetSuite’s Cloud blog, Facebook page and @NetSuite Twitter handle for real-time updates.

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Using Video Marketing to Improve Engagement

February 18, 2020 CRM News and Info

by Helen Veyna

Last updated February 12, 2020

It’s getting harder and harder for marketers to capture the attention of their audience, especially in an environment where individuals are constantly being flooded with ads and promotional messaging. Marketers trying to improve marketing engagement have to do more than deliver the right message at the right time; they also need to provide their audience with content that is fun, eye-catching, and easy to consume.

Vlogging Using Video Marketing to Improve Engagement

That’s why video marketing is the perfect tool for marketers who want to stand out from the crowd and promote engagement. In a world where character limits and stock images reign supreme, video provides marketers with an opportunity to show their brand in a new light. This medium is extremely effective because it provides marketers a chance to deliver more creative and immersive storytelling and interact with their audience in a more personal way.

The best part is that any marketing team can take advantage of video marketing, regardless of their budget. Marketers now have access to cameras on their phone and free editing software (such as iMovie for iPhone), meaning that they don’t need an in-house videographer or expensive agency to harness this powerful marketing tactic.

So, if we’ve managed to convince you that you should at least learn more about how video might fit into your marketing strategy, you’re in luck! Today, we’re sharing a few easy ways you can leverage video marketing to improve engagement rates across all your marketing channels.

1. Use Video to Share Customer Reviews

Whether you’re business is B2B or B2C, one thing remains true — having a few good customer reviews under your belt can give you significant leverage over the competition. While written success stories or customer reviews are great to feature on product pages, video is a more eye-catching way to feature customer feedback on more prominent pages of your website and on social media.

Video Marketing Inline CTA Using Video Marketing to Improve Engagement

If you have the budget, a professional video (such as our PGA and Bisco Industries customer success videos) is a great way to put together content pieces that you can use in everything from email campaigns to social media to your website. But don’t despair if you don’t have the big bucks to produce a high-quality video. Your camera on your phone or laptop can be just as effective when it comes to capturing and creating great content.

For example, over the summer we reached out to some of our most active customer advocates asking them to tell us what they love about Act-On via a recorded conference call. The clips we collected helped us diversify our social media marketing efforts to garner some extra attention from our audience. In addition to being engaging, these videos were easy and affordable to produce, so we didn’t have to go out of our way to capture content or deplete our budget to get innovative with our marketing strategy.

2. Use Video as an Opportunity to Interact With Your Audience

Good marketing is always about delivering the right message at the right time. Segmentation and automated nurture campaigns are a great way to ensure that you are reaching your audience with personalized messaging and information that addresses their pain points and interests.

If you want to take your efforts one step further, however, you can create opportunities to have conversations with your audience. Live streaming, webinars, and social media are all great ways to have that “face-to-face” interaction with your audience without having to leave the comfort of your office.

These mediums aren’t created equal and how you use them depends on the type of content you want to create, who your target audience is, and what goals you have in mind. These are my suggestions:

Live Streaming: Going live on social media platforms such as Facebook or Instagram is an effective way of reaching your audience by giving a behind-the-scenes look at your organization or hosting a Q&A. This helps them get to know your brand and helps you establish credibility.

Copy of Hows it going Email banner 5 Using Video Marketing to Improve Engagement

Facebook and Instagram Stories: Instagram and Facebook allow you to give your audience a behind the scenes look and tell a story without the pressure of going Live. Stories are a great way to create hype around product releases, address frequently asked questions, and show your audience what your brand is all about.

A great way to get the most out of stories is to be consistent with your efforts to give your audience an idea of what they can expect to see if they keep engaging with your efforts. For example, clothing company, Everlane, hosts its Transparency Tuesday series as a way to answer any questions regarding their company and get people excited about future product launches. By making this an ongoing series, they are able to get their audience to tune in and engage with their efforts.

Webinars: If your goal is generating leads and growing your email lists, then webinars are the way to go. Webinars are effective because they allow you to provide your audience with unique and valuable content, giving them an incentive to hand over their contact information.

In addition to fueling your demand generation engine, webinars also allow you to have live interactions with your audience and address any questions or concerns that they may have. If you’ve been keeping up with our Automation Essentials series, you’ve probably noticed that our hosts don’t only take the time to address questions after their webinar, they also tailor their future content based on the feedback they’ve received from previous sessions.

3. Create a Content or Newsletter Recap

If you’re having trouble getting eyes on your content, there are a variety of things you can do. To start, take a good look at your distribution strategy to see if there are any good opportunities for improvement or channels that you can add to reach your audience. You should also perform an SEO audit to make sure that you’re using keywords that resonate with your audience and will help you rank high in search engine results.

BPwVauwiYH7h8vB5AfgubS Using Video Marketing to Improve Engagement

But sometimes, all your audience needs to take a look at your content is an extra push in the right direction. If you’re trying to get better engagement on your email newsletter or simply trying to build your email list, a video recap is a great way to give your target consumers a preview of what’s in store and entice them to learn more. You can link to this video at the top of your email or even promote it on social media as a way to motivate your audience to take a look at your blog, download an eBook, or visit a specific product page.

Act-On Can Help You Implement and Launch Your Video Marketing Efforts and So Much More

Your job as a marketer doesn’t stop at creating an engaging video. If you want your video marketing efforts to make a good impression, you have to deliver them to the right audience at the right time through the right channels.

Act-On makes it easy for you to launch multi-channel campaigns that attract and engage your audience. We give you all the tools you need to launch effective drip campaigns, host webinars, manage your social, create engaging landing pages, and more.

If you’d like to see what our platform can do for you, please go ahead and schedule a demo with one of our marketing automation experts. They’ll be more than happy to show you how Act-On makes it easy to innovate your marketing strategy.

Lead Nurturing Guide CTA Using Video Marketing to Improve Engagement

Service Update 0.13 for Microsoft Dynamics 365 9.0

February 17, 2020 Microsoft Dynamics CRM

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5 Ways to Optimize B2B Customer Experiences

February 16, 2020 CRM News and Info

You just started your Software as a Service company. With hard work and dedication, you’ve created a solid product that solves the challenges your business-to-business customers face on a daily basis. With any new product, questions arise on how to get the most from it. Your customers want the best experience possible, and they turn to you to deliver that experience.

It’s easy enough for your first few customers. They all have your phone number — you’re a call or text message away to handle any and all problems. Then you get a few more customers — and more after that. Suddenly, you’re spending most of your day solving customer issues and less time building your company’s next great feature or product.

By now, it’s probably clear to you that you need some customer service experts. You’ll be building a SaaS customer service team and hiring agents to solve customer issues. As your team grows, with multiple support agents covering the same customer accounts, you’ll need a tool to streamline communications and keep agents updated on all customer data.

With the right technology and training, you can enable your support agents to tackle the biggest product challenges and provide consistent and excellent service to your customers.

Following are five ways you can empower your B2B customer service teams to deliver exceptional customer support experiences.

1. Solve Problems With Screen Sharing

To offer great customer support, you need to go where the customer lives. Both you and your B2B customers live in software, so it makes sense to use software to solve problems. Customer support teams equipped with the right software can make quick work of a long support queue.

The customer support software your teams use should back up your agents and offer ways to better resolve your customers’ issues. For B2B customers, visual support is especially useful. Pictures and video let your customer support agents show exactly where the problem lies and makes it easy to follow steps to resolve it.

Imagine your customer is having trouble using a back-end feature of your product. If your team had to explain it over the phone, think of how many steps that would takes: Click here, scroll there, look in the upper left corner. Wouldn’t it be much easier — and less time-consuming — to show your customer where to go and what to do?

B2B customer support software with screen sharing as a native feature solves plenty of pain points in real time for your customers. It simplifies their journeys from problem to solution. Your support teams complete tickets faster and with less frustration. Relying on the clarity that video and screen sharing can provide is a win-win.

2. Keep It Simple

Founders love to try to help every part of the business. They’re passionate about the products they’re building, and they want to explain as much as possible about how it works. That goes over well in new customer meetings and conference talks. It’s less helpful when customers are frustrated and need support.

Customer support presents an excellent opportunity for a founder to step back and let the team go to work. While a founder is well-versed in the tech speak relevant to the company’s product, that high-detail form of communication doesn’t translate well into closing customer tickets. Tech can get complicated, and your customers are looking for simple answers.

Empower your customer support teams to keep it simple. You’ve trained your agents well — now let them use their intellect to deliver great service for your product. The best hires on support teams can take the complex and boil it down to terms and steps that customers easily can follow.

Let’s say you have a customer who’s asking about how to activate the most recently debuted product feature. A founder excitedly might share the valuable technology operating in the back end to enable the feature and highlight its use cases.

A trained customer service agent would break down the issue itself and walk the customer through the activation process. By enabling support agents to keep it simple, founders can focus their time on building the next product feature. Customers get the specific answers they want while having a positive experience with the company.

3. Support Takes a Team

When you’re first building your product, it can feel like you’re a team of one. While sometimes that is the case, you can achieve greater results through collaborative team efforts. This is as true in customer support as it is in any other business function.

B2B customer support thrives on collaboration. Even if the answers your customers get are simple, arriving at those answers could take several complex steps. Having access to the right minds at the right times can create effective and memorable support experiences.

Perhaps a customer has a question about a highly technical part of your product. While your support agents are well-trained, they’re not equipped to answer a question with that level of detail. A great customer support software product can connect the agent to one of your engineers without needing to switch between technologies. Together, they can work out a solution and send it back to the customer in a matter of minutes.

To be successful, you need to create an environment of trust with your customer service agents. They should feel comfortable when they seek advice from specialists who can provide better answers to customer questions. A team-of-one mentality would have the agent trying to field every single answer. A collaborative environment instead encourages the agent to connect with fellow agents and other teams to lean on their expertise to solve problems.

Your support software should encourage collaboration. That kind of software includes resources that allow agents to share information quickly. If you can create channels for easy collaboration, then agents can jump right into them and solve even the most difficult customer challenges through teamwork.

4. Take an Omnichannel Approach

Your customers live everywhere online, and they expect you to be the same way. When they have questions for your support team, they’ll use all sorts of channels to make contact. It’s easy for agents to feel bombarded in short order without a system to maintain order.

Customers will come from everywhere with their questions: email, phone,live chat and more. Even in the digital age, phone calls are one of the most popular ways customers contact teams for help. Software built to manage omnichannel customer support approaches will enable your agents to answer customers quickly and decisively, no matter where they started.

An omnichannel approach lets your agents easily switch between channels and reply to customers where they are, not missing a beat or needing to ask them to repeat information. Solutions will need to be presented in different ways depending on the channel. Agents who can share solutions over the phone and through email with equal clarity will propel your success.

Customers won’t be waiting as long if they get the answers through their preferred channels. In addition, your agents will resolve issues faster and maximize their agility. When there’s slow traffic in the chat program but plenty of phone calls pouring in, agents can focus on the most active source and resolve issues effectively.

If you want to lessen the burden on your channels even more, then help the customer help themselves with self-service solutions. Oftentimes, customers can solve the problem on their own, given the right resources.

Developing an online database of guides to common problems can remove a lot of stress from service agents who must answer the same questions repeatedly. Video content is especially helpful, as customers can walk themselves through the solution before they ever reach out to customer support.

5. Always Follow Up

The job isn’t finished even after the customer service agent solves a customer’s issue. One benefit of working at a SaaS company is that with the right technology in place, customer service agents can see when and how customers interact with your software. Your teams are given insights into how your customers use your product, which creates opportunities to provide additional value through education and continued support.

For example, let’s say a customer service agent resolves a customer’s issue with a simple solution. The agent checks in after a while to find that the customer hasn’t logged back into the software to try out the solution. What can an agent do about that?

This is a great time for agents to follow up with the customer. If the customer still isn’t sure how to use the solution, the agent can share additional guidance or educational pieces, like a webinar about the topic. These additional touches can improve the customer relationship by showing your customers that you care about their success in using your product.

Use your customer support software to track and manage procedures to follow up. Ensure that your agents feel they can make that outreach to customers. Build and update a healthy database of support content that agents can plug into messages. Following up is a powerful method of demonstrating the value each customer brings to your company.

Reap the Rewards

When you’re starting out, SaaS customer support can seem difficult. It’s certainly a lot of information and traffic to manage. However, it doesn’t need to be a tough process.

Give your support agents the best software and keep solutions simple. Let them collaborate with other teams on solutions and talk to customers across all channels. Always check in after the support ticket is closed.

The right technology and training let your company’s customer service agents offer your customers easy and practical solutions to even the most complex issues. You can save customers valuable time and build meaningful relationships, winning loyal B2B customers in the long run.

Robert C. Johnson is the cofounder and CEO of
TeamSupport, a cloud-based, B2B software application built to help customer-facing support teams serve clients better through stronger collaboration, superior teamwork, and faster issue resolution. A seasoned executive and entrepreneur who has founded and invested in numerous software and high-tech companies, Robert’s industry experience as a business leader and a customer inspired him to create TeamSupport to give support teams the tools and best practices to enhance customer loyalty and positively impact product sales.

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Using Video Marketing to Improve Engagement

1. Use Video to Share Customer Reviews

2. Use Video as an Opportunity to Interact With Your Audience

3. Create a Content or Newsletter Recap

Act-On Can Help You Implement and Launch Your Video Marketing Efforts and So Much More

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Service Update 0.13 for Microsoft Dynamics 365 9.0

5 Ways to Optimize B2B Customer Experiences

1. Solve Problems With Screen Sharing

2. Keep It Simple

3. Support Takes a Team

4. Take an Omnichannel Approach

5. Always Follow Up

Reap the Rewards

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