Tag Archives: success
Work Remotely with Microsoft Teams During COVID-19: Tips for Success
Working from Home During COVID-19? Follow These Tips for Success with Microsoft Teams
A week ago, to more than 50,000 employees in the Seattle area. In short, it asked them to start working from home if possible. While Microsoft’s employees were already using Microsoft Teams, the almost immediate transition to working remotely meant the company quickly saw a major uptick in both chat and video meeting usage.
With so many of us now working remotely, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President for Microsoft 365, Jared Spataro, has taken the time to share some tips for how to work from home effectively with the help of Microsoft Teams. We’ve summarized his advice below.
How to Get Started with Working from Home
Working remotely can be intimidating, especially when you’re first getting started. To make the transition from office-based to home-based work as smooth as possible, follow these three tips.
First, be sure to set aside a dedicated space for your home office. Microsoft Teams provides you with access to the documents and files you need, making it easy to get up and running with your ‘virtual’ office right away. It’s fine if you don’t have a proper home office already set up — just be sure to devote a specific space to working remotely, whether it’s a spare bedroom, the corner of your dining table, or another space in your home.
Next, be sure to communicate clearly with your team members. Let everyone know what your schedule is, and stick to whatever schedule you set. Provide your teammates with regular project updates directly in the relevant Teams channel. This makes it easy for team members to look back through the channel history later to get a sense of how everyone’s progressing with a given project.
Lastly, don’t forget to set boundaries from day one. When you first start working from home, it’s easy to find yourself working outside of normal office hours. But more time devoted to work isn’t necessarily better. Failing to set boundaries will quickly lead to burnout, which will ultimately reduce your long-term productivity. Be sure to mentally ‘clock out’ from your work each day, and set your laptop aside until the next morning.
Keep Meetings Focused and Effective
We’ve all been on our share of conference calls, but shifting to a 100% virtual meeting schedule can be a challenge.
There are a few things to keep in mind in order to maximize the efficiency and productivity of meetings. First, be sure to give everyone a join option in Teams, and encourage participants to use video. Being able to see people face-to-face is important. If you’re the meeting organizer, do your best to make everyone feel included. It’s easy for people to feel ignored, and some participants will struggle to make themselves heard or take part in a virtual meeting environment. Consider recording your Teams meetings (so long as your organization allows it). This gives team members the chance to review what was discussed at a later date.
Stay in Touch Socially
Working remotely can lead to feelings of isolation, which is why it’s so important to stay socially connected with coworkers. Instead of only checking in via chat when you need a question answered or have a project update to offer, be sure to make casual conversation with your coworkers, too. Sitting down to lunch? Invite everyone to ‘meet for lunch’ via video.
Keep It Fun
With all the stress that comes with the transition to working remotely, don’t forget to make an effort to keep things light and positive in the virtual workplace. Share personal updates via the Teams General channel, and invite other team members to make suggestions for how to keep the digital workplace fun and engaging.
Making the Transition to Teams
Is your organization ? JourneyTEAM can help you make the transition quickly and easily. Plus, we can offer your organization access to a 6-month free trial of Microsoft Teams. to learn more about work from home solutions.
Article by: Dave Bollard – Head of Marketing | 801-436-6636
JourneyTEAM is an award-winning consulting firm with proven technology and measurable results. They take Microsoft products; Dynamics 365, SharePoint intranet, Office 365, Azure, CRM, GP, NAV, SL, AX, and modify them to work for you. The team has expert level, Microsoft Gold certified consultants that dive deep into the dynamics of your organization and solve complex issues. They have solutions for sales, marketing, productivity, collaboration, analytics, accounting, security and more.
Rights And Royalty Management: The Intersection Of Data And Movie Success
From studio consolidation to growing variation of revenue streams, the film entertainment industry is far from the traditional beeline between theatrical releases and revenue. If studios can get a handle on their rights and royalty management practices now, they can take advantage of one of the most transformational opportunities in their recent history.
For an industry used to sure bets reaching blockbuster status, this past decade has turned any movie into a precarious investment. Big-name actors and actresses are no longer a guarantee for box office success – and neither are sequels and remakes of past box-office hits.
But don’t be fooled: The problem is not the scripts, directors, or even the actors. Moviegoers are playing by an entirely different set of rules, where films serve as a revenue-generating platform for merchandise sales, episodic shows, and streaming access long after they leave theaters.
While this new reality is nowhere as straightforward as the early days of cinema, it’s still possible to accurately determine which movie investments will be profitable. The secret? Good data, underpinned by state-of-the-art analytics, such as machine learning and predictive models.
Redefining how movies make money with rights and royalty data
The movie business, for the most part, is built on the idea that today’s “big thing” needs to stay “the big thing” for as long as possible. However, as media channels continue to grow in number, expand in reach, and diversify in access, this line of thinking is no longer relevant. Now, it’s a matter of finding films and timing their release in ways that will maximize their revenue potential outside of the theater-going experience.
This is where rights and royalty management technology come into play. Solutions, such as an intelligent ERP for rights and royalty management, offer a unique approach to managing intellectual property rights, contracts, royalties information, and copyright use – as well as storing transactional data. And all this insight is available within a digital core providing a single source of real-time truth and turning insights into actions.
For example, if captured correctly, rights and royalty management data can help improve the confidence and speed of making decisions on movies during the greenlight and distribution process. Studio executives can gain the predictive insight they need to make the right decisions and optimize a movie’s profitability.
Setting the right foundation for a new era of growth
For most traditional media companies, technology infrastructure has grown up around siloed business areas. In contrast, new entrants are often architected as digital-first businesses with advanced analytics embedded.
Recently, one of our customers asked me, “How do I make this transformation when I have more than 100 years of legacy to manage?” While this is certainly a valid question, it’s clear that a foundation based on a digital core for managing the business is a key step. Direct-to-consumer (D2C) business models require more focus on the customer experience (CX). Businesses must market and test new offerings within very short time frames, and support a financial background that can react in days — not weeks, months, or even years.
For example, studios using an intelligent ERP for rights and royalty management can maximize the return on their intellectual property, regardless of format or business unit. The digital framework, known as the Intelligent Enterprise, provides digitalized best practices for automating, validating, and facilitating the processes that make the difference between profitability and loss.
More importantly, information from every interaction and transaction is processed immediately to accurately analyze royalties and rights performance through digital capabilities such as:
- Predictive analytics and machine learning: Immediately identify white spaces in content asset licensing and determine how to monetize content assets as soon as possible.
- Enterprise-wide collaborative connectivity: Gain timely and accurate visibility to better manage rights availability and restrictions as well as royalty obligations.
- Real-time Big Data processing and analytics: Calculate potential revenue from each sales category, while considering usage fees, residuals, copyright terms, as well as guild rules and contracted agreements.
Transformations are not meant to be tranquil – and that certainly includes the movie industry. But with the right insights from your intelligent enterprise, including rights and royalties management data, you can rest assured that your studio is building a future of revenue and long-term growth.
Find out how SAP S4/HANA for rights and royalty management by Vistex can help your movie studio create franchises that turn moviegoers into lifelong fans and films into cultural phenomena.
This article originally appeared on Media and Entertainment Services Alliances and is republished with the authors’ permission.
Sustainable Manufacturer BioPak Unpacks Success with 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.
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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4 Marketing Automation Tools for SMB Success in 2020
Marketing automation isn’t a thing of the future — it’s very much a part of the here and now for small and midsized businesses (SMBs) across the world. However, many are unaware of a variety of marketing automation tools that can help SMBs reach customers in a timely and effective way.
In order for SMBs to compete with larger firms when it comes to customer reach, they need to approach their marketing plan with a strategic mindset.
Marketing automation not only provides important opportunities for interaction with the customer, but also saves time. That’s especially important when running a small business. Time saved on marketing means being able to capture new business and have more time to commit to other vital tasks.
Following are just a few of the many benefits marketing automation provides:
- Drives sales productivity;
- Helps guide sales and marketing teams work together for a common goal;
- Increases conversions;
- Boosts ROI by doing the work of a large marketing staff; and
- Compiles a complete view of customer behavior.
If you’re interested in taking advantage of marketing automation but don’t know where to start, consider these four marketing automation solutions geared toward SMBs.
1. One-Stop Social Media Shop
A social media management tool can be indispensable to small businesses trying to make the most out of their online presence. Having effective and timely social content is imperative in 2020, as many customers are more likely to buy from brands they follow on social media and to increase their spending with those brands.
Securing a tool that will help manage this important customer connection is essential. This type of tool prevents you from having to post at an exact time across multiple platforms, and instead lets you schedule content in advance.
That means businesses can plan their social media a week or month out, and not worry about interrupting their weekends, holidays and busy workdays to post on social sites. These programs also can provide SMBs the opportunity to create an organized posting strategy, analyze performance and respond to customers across multiple platforms from one easy-to-use interface.
2. CRM With Email Marketing
Capturing important customer information in one localized place can help SMBs deliver an excellent customer experience and boost sales revenue. The right customer relationship management software can track all customer interactions and purchases. Some even offer predictive analytics technology that can help determine potential next steps and drive transactions.
You’ll also want a CRM that integrates email marketing automation, which will enhance the customer experience and increase the success rate of your email and follow-up campaigns. Email is a fantastic way to reach customers because it requires the reader to opt-in and allows for several layers of personalization.
Marketers potentially can see a return of US$ 32 for every $ 1 spent on email marketing, research indicates, so having a CRM that facilitates this type of communication is imperative.
3. Would You Like to Take a Survey?
Customer feedback is a vital way for companies to improve. Small businesses often can achieve significant growth simply by soliciting — and heeding — the feedback of their customers. The challenge is that in-depth market research can be costly.
Enter the online survey! This tool allows SMBs to gain valuable insights from customers without having to invest in lengthy market research programs. An online survey is convenient for the consumer and allows the data to be tracked and analyzed for insights.
Do your customers like your most recent product upgrade? Is the packaging holding up during shipping? Do they feel the product was represented accurately online? How was their experience with your customer service associate?
All of these questions and more can be answered through a short online survey. Small businesses can create different surveys for different customer interactions, allowing for customized feedback to propel growth.
4. Let’s Chat
Chat is another marketing automation tool that can strengthen the customer journey. Through the power of artificial intelligence, a chatbot gives a personalized experience and can field a variety of frequently asked customer questions directly from your website.
Chatbots also can gather customer data for future marketing efforts, as well as help businesses reach their sales goals. A chatbot gives customers an instant response to their requests and can send links to make a purchase, or transfer customers to a live associate if needed.
The Year of Automation
2020 is here and it’s time to embrace the new decade with the tools that will set up your business for sustained success in the new decade. Small businesses that invest in, and take advantage of, these four marketing automation solutions will be more likely to see the sales results and ROI they want this year.
Marketing automation offers a variety of benefits, including time savings, the ability to drive more meaningful customer interactions that lead to transactions, and the opportunity to gain customer feedback and track behavior. These four automated tools can help pave an SMB’s path to success in 2020 and beyond.
Chatbot or Human? Combine Both to Achieve Customer Service Success
Companies across industries are shifting toward an automated approach to customer relations. With the help of chatbots, businesses
can reduce their customer service costs by up to 30 percent and save both employees’ and customers’ valuable time.
In fact, many customers welcome chatbots in the customer service process.
So, if chatbots offer all of these advantages, why not scrap your customer service team altogether and automate everything?
Not so fast. While chatbots certainly have their benefits for customer service, they are still a long way from being sophisticated enough to deal with all client interactions — and many customers still prefer speaking to an actual human.
In fact, an increasing number of consumers
prefer a combination of automation and human-led interactions. Both of these approaches can help companies reach the top of their customer service game.
First, what actually are chatbots, and how is AI advancing them?
Chatbots Have a Lot to Offer
Chatbots are applications that interact with humans via text through various platforms and for various purposes. These days, businesses primarily use chatbots to facilitate online ordering, make product suggestions, offer personal finance assistance, maintain schedules, and of course — provide customer support.
The chatbot industry is booming, with market value estimated
to reach $ 10.08 billion by 2026. From startups to enterprises, businesses across the spectrum are realizing the value of chatbots for driving efficiency and their bottom lines.
In fact, 80 percent of business decision-makers planned to start using a chatbot in some way or another by 2020, an Oracle survey found.
So, how are chatbots proving to be so beneficial?
When used correctly, customer service chatbots can save companies serious amounts of time and money. A well-developed chatbot can improve response time and customer satisfaction, and help retain vital customers.
Being a technology, and not a human representative, chatbots have infinitely more scaling potential. Think of it like this: A human-based customer service interaction is one to one, between live agent and customer. A chatbot has the ability to interact with hundreds or thousands of people at the same time, who never will experience a drop in quality or response time.
Just to give an indication of how much time can be saved by chatbots: In an average 6-minute customer service call, 75 percent of the time is spent
doing manual research, while only 25 percent is devoted to customer interaction. Not to mention, the wait time customers have to spend to get through to an agent in the first place is non-existent with chatbots.
This not only saves companies the resources they’d otherwise channel into employing human agents, but also makes their business contactable 24/7. Chatbots for customer service
will help businesses save an astounding total of US$ 8 billion per year by 2022, research from IBM indicates.
However, it’s important to note that chatbots can vary wildly in their capabilities, and companies looking for top-of-the-range tech should be prioritizing the inclusion of technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP). Let’s take a look at what chatbots need to include to please customers rather than push them away.
All Chatbots Are Not Created Equal
When looking to leverage chatbots to drive efficiency in customer service, businesses often deploy rudimentary, path-based bots that are unable to engage in natural-sounding conversation and deliver accurate responses.
Using such chatbots can be risky. Seventy-three percent of users recently surveyed
would not return to a chatbot they deemed unhelpful the first time they used it. Bad chatbots could end up driving your customers away.
So, what makes good chatbots good?
Advanced AI and NLP technologies ensure that customer-chatbot interactions are more informative and fluid. Chatbots embedded with these functionalities can understand the context around requests, engage in free-flowing conversation, and learn from the data they collect over time. This means that in many cases, customers can get meaningful and relevant answers in a matter of milliseconds.
When should businesses apply chatbot technology, and when they should opt for human-led interactions?
When to Use Chatbots
As they currently stand, the majority of chatbots are great for answering simple requests and minor troubleshooting. In fact, many customers prefer to troubleshoot on their own before talking to a live agent, which is when chatbots can be incredibly useful.
For example, basic chatbots can answer high-frequency questions on things like opening hours and location, which don’t require human intervention to explain. Businesses that experience many of these types of low-value queries would benefit greatly from chatbots.
A top-of-the-line chatbot that includes AI and NLP can respond to customer requests using conversational language or handle more complex queries involving specific products.
Chatbots are a great option for when customer service representatives are offline or overloaded with work. Chatbots can deal with multiple requests at a time, and never need time off. You can utilize them as a tool that allows your customers to contact your business at any time.
When Human-Led Customer Service Is Best
Despite the time and money-saving potential of chatbots for businesses, the reality is that many people still want to speak to an actual person, especially when the issue is complicated. Customers found that live chats with humans consistently outperformed chatbots for a range of reasons, including great customer experience and ease of communication, according to this 2019
report.
Evidently, people are still wary that a chatbot won’t be able to resolve their query from start to finish. It pays to make sure your customers have access to a live agent when a complex or technical request requires human judgment and intuition.
Most chatbots are unable to detect when someone is becoming irate. They cannot manage delicate situations, or determine when to offer a discount or upgrade to dissatisfied customers in the same way a human can.
Customers often spend time attempting to resolve an issue with a chatbot, only to be transferred to a live agent after having failed to get an answer from the bot, at which point they already are frustrated. In cases like these, it’s best to have an agent on the case from the beginning.
People generally had good experiences with chatbots — up to a point, based on one
recent poll. Of the people surveyed, 51 percent said they were open to using a chatbot when the issue was a simple one, whereas with more complex problems, 57 percent said they would prefer to wait 10 minutes to get help from a human.
Human customer service representatives are better at identifying upselling opportunities and giving a conversation a personal touch that could make customers more receptive to additional purchases. While AI chatbot technology is developing fast, it’s still a long way from being able to match the nuances of human-led conversations.
Generational Preferences
While it’s clear that consumers have distinct preferences when it comes to chatbot or human-led interactions, there is some variation across demographics on these choices. Businesses should take this into account and look at their customer segments. Are their customers likely to feel more comfortable with a human on the line, or are they open to chatbots?
Unsurprisingly, millennials and generation Z are leading the way in chatbot usage, with the number of consumers that prefer a live agent declining with each older generation. Younger generations, however, are more demanding when it comes to a seamless digital experience switching between channels. This means that if you’re offering a combined chatbot and human agent customer service experience, the transition between the two should be easy and straightforward.
Better Together
Ultimately, you shouldn’t feel that you have to choose between chatbots and humans in your customer service strategy. If you are considering using a chatbot, make sure you first have identified the problem area it will help to address. Will it be dealing with the simple queries your agents often receive? Or does it need to have specialized knowledge on a certain product?
Once you have the goals and purposes of your chatbot clear, you can ensure that your live agents spend their time efficiently and use the technology to complement their own tasks. With the time and money-saving promise of chatbots, along with live agents’ guarantee of a great customer experience, you’ll be well on your way to customer service success.
Jay Reeder is CEO of
VoiceNation.
5 Tips to Help Make Your Next Customer Event a Success
2. Take Advantage of Having Your Customers in the Room and Emphasize the Power of Networking
Customer events provide a rare opportunity for your current customers to connect with peers who are using similar solutions. For people who are part of a small team (or, many times, the only user of your solution), it can be very exciting to network with other customers and share best practices.
But how does encouraging your customers to network help you at the end of the day? While it might not seem obvious at first, creating opportunities for your customers to connect with their peers to share tips and ideas opens the door for them to be more active users of your product or service. That’s because as your customers talk to each other, they’ll discover new and exciting ways to leverage what you provide.
For example, you might have a customer who is experiencing a pain point that they might not know your solution can solve. However, a new friend they just met at the event has the perfect use case for your product or service that will help them resolve their problem. While this customer might have otherwise been inclined to search for a new vendor, this new discovery will remind them how great it is to be your customer.
3. Leverage Your Social Channels to Create Buzz Before, During, and After the Event
Customer events are a great opportunity to create community, but you don’t have to wait to get all your people in a room to get them talking and raving about your brand. Leveraging social media is a great way to get your attendees excited before the event, invite them to share special moments once they’re there, and keep the momentum going long after the big day is over.
To encourage customers to look forward to your event, you should develop a social media campaign sharing the event location, date, and any highlights you think will motivate your target audience to sign up. In these posts, include a link to a dedicated landing page where your customers can go to discover more details and register for the event.
Although it’s easy to create one or two posts to promote your event, seeing the same message over and over again can tire out your audience. To avoid getting unfollowed or blocked by your social media followers, diversify the content of your posts promoting the event and spread them out over time.
Creating a dedicated hashtag for your event is an excellent way to motivate attendees to share moments from throughout the day. You can further incentivize them to share content on their social media profiles by hosting a photo contest or automatically entering them into a raffle every time they post.
Finally, it’s just as important to follow up through social media as it is through email. After your event, make sure to write a post thanking customers who attended your event and tag them and/or their companies if possible. Not only will this allow you to increase engagement on your post, but it’s also a great way to keep the conversation going. You’ll also find that many customers will want to share what they enjoyed about your event. Having their feedback front and center is a great way to motivate those who didn’t attend to register for one of your events in the future.
You might be thinking that managing all the activities I just mentioned is more than you can handle. However, the right social media management tool, such as Act-On’s Advanced Social Media Module, can help you automate most of these activities so you can stay on top of your social media game without having to spend all day in front of your computer.
The Secret to Fantasy Football Success? APIs
Is (fantasy) football season your favorite time of year? These days, it isn’t just the team playing in the stadium you’re invested in, it’s the team on your screen, the one you so carefully crafted and drafted, as well. Perhaps the most exciting way to get into the football spirit today is through fantasy football. But, have you ever considered just how all of those statistics appear on your phone immediately after your starting QB throws that game-tying touchdown?
For starters, why is fantasy football so popular?
E-sports connect the real world with the digital world, allowing regular Janes and Joes to feel like they are part of something bigger. That connection is made possible by modern technology, and real-time stats and the need to make snap decisions in your fantasy lineup requires just as much strategy as the game itself.
You can access current player and team rankings, pulling in not only team wins and losses, but individual player stats, including injury updates. Adding, dropping, and trading players can all be done at the touch of a button (and maybe a bit of haggling with a teammate, if you’re going for the trade). Winning your fantasy league is almost as exciting as having your favorite team take home the Super Bowl Championship, right?
APIs Make E-Sports Possible
Your fantasy football league is made possible by APIs, which provide secure access to the massive amounts of data provided by the leading sports leagues. It all starts with the fantasy football app on your phone. You have access to the endless amount of data on players, teams, and trends in the palm of your hand, in real time.
Your fantasy team isn’t the only way professional sports are taking advantage of APIs; they enable many of the technologies underpinning modern sports today. Without them, the way we consume sports—in a hands-on manner with additional stakes at play—wouldn’t exist. For example, official league partners, like Sportradar, use API management platforms to create products that distribute data, making the data more consumable to a broad audience. Check out this webinar to see how Sportradar, the official stat provider of several professional leagues including the NFL, uses APIs.
Just like Fantasy Football, without APIs, your digital business would not be possible today. Download your free trial of TIBCO Cloud™ Mashery® to see what API management can do for you.
Sydney Water: Customer Success In 5 Easy Steps
For any modern business, the level of customer experience it provides is crucial for success. Battling a negative net promoter score (NPS), Sydney Water was looking for an opportunity to improve its customer experience with a seamless, efficient, and reliable technology solution. As Australia’s largest water and wastewater service provider, Sydney Water supplies water, wastewater, recycled water, and some stormwater services to more than five million people in Sydney, the Illawarra, and the Blue Mountains.
Through implementing TIBCO ActiveMatrix® BPM software, the company was able to streamline its complex business processes and sort through a large volume of case data. Not only was Sydney Water able to improve customer service outcomes, but it also increased its net promoter score by a remarkable 127 points. What’s more, it took only nine weeks for the company to develop new customer-focused processes, where it now takes fewer than five steps for users to complete a case.
In addition to these positive business outcomes, the company saw additional significant benefits, including:
- Improved customer experience by creating a single view of operations and case management solutions.
- Increased transparency by giving its customers more visibility into their water usage.
- Development efficiencies through showing forms and components to the business quickly, incorporating feedback and easy reuse of components in other parts of the workflow.
Sydney Water was also awarded a 2019 TIBCO Trailblazer Award at TIBCO NOW Singapore. According to Sydney Water digital project manager Simon Dewey, “winning a TIBCO Trailblazer Award is a very humbling experience. It reaffirmed what we already felt about how far we’ve come and the experience we delivered.”
Like Sydney Water, you too can create a single view of operations and case management solutions so your customers have more transparency and visibility into product usage.
To learn more about how Sydney Water was able to increase its net promoter score and provide customers with a better experience, see the full case study.
Atlanta Business Circulators Finds Sweet Success Migrating Off of QuickBooks
Posted by Barney Beal, Content Director
When marketing consultant Robert Lee bought an established mail fulfillment house last year, he was really buying the company’s customer base. What he definitely was not buying was their antiquated financial system.
Not long after his ultra-small Lexis Direct Marketing purchased not-quite-as-small Atlanta Business Circulators of Marietta, Ga., Lee (no relation to the famous Civil War general) realized that the desktop QuickBooks deployment ABC was relying on was no longer going to cut it.
He envisioned creating a one-stop shop for customers’ direct mail campaign needs, from concept and design through delivery and fulfillment, but ABC’s existing financial system just wasn’t going to deliver the flexibility and visibility Lee needed to make his vision a reality.
He immediately moved the newly combined company onto QuickBooks online in order to modernize just a bit, and to put data in his hands when on the go. While this solved some issues, the lack of customizability still held the company back.
“We were kind of stuck in QuickBooks Online’s way of doing things, which was fine on the accounting side, but for production management, it was just absolutely ineffective,” Lee said.
NetSuite was already on Lee’s radar, and he ended up comparing it to a direct mail fulfillment-specific ERP system that offered a lot of needed functionality, but wasn’t as customizable as NetSuite, and was built for a larger company. Ultimately, Lee went with NetSuite, tapping the SuiteSuccess methodology to help ensure a smooth deployment.
Technology That Works How the Customer Needs
Not only was NetSuite up within a few months; NetSuite Professional Services consultants also worked closely with Lee and his small team, ensuring that any questions got answered. One specific piece of help they provided was in customizing ABC’s item fulfillment process. Since the company didn’t need functionality that supported picking and packing of items, they were able to tweak the pick and pack buttons to mark work orders as being completed by the data and production departments.
“This makes it very simple for me to be able to go in and say, ‘Where are these jobs?’ if a customer calls and what’s to know what’s going on,” Lee said.
Lee described the implementation as simple and smooth, although it was made simpler by the fact that ABC had no integration needs during deployment. But Lee did have one regret: He wishes he’d invested more in training from NetSuite consultants, in large part because of the ease with which small business workers fall into their old habits.
One integration Lee would like to pursue down the line is to add a payment processing tool that plays nice with NetSuite. As of now, the company is continuing to work with a payment processor that’s priced right, but integration isn’t an option.
In the meantime, Lee is focused on a five-year plan that NetSuite makes possible, namely building a small outside sales team that will help to build the company’s brand across a larger portion of the state of Georgia. NetSuite will allow that sales team to build better customer data, and will also enable better collaboration on estimates, and improved visibility into the pipeline.
That future capability, Lee, said, is more important than what NetSuite has already delivered to the business.
“I didn’t necessarily need something that made us better today,” he said. “I needed something that we could grow into.”
A System For the Future That’s Paying Off Now
Not that he isn’t enjoying today. Not only does he have that improved visibility and flexibility, but Lee is also benefitting from the ability to customize any transaction he needs to support and to capture the information needed for any particular job or estimate.
Once ABC delivers on its five-year plan by establishing the sales force, Lee said the second five years will focus on more advanced functionality for managing growth, such as the ability to better track costs and inventory. Eventually, he foresees NetSuite supporting a growth-by-acquisition strategy that could enable ABC to gain a foothold in other states.
And then there’s what Lee said is perhaps the greatest peace of mind NetSuite provides: its ability to insulate ABC from the impact of any future economic recession. He believes having NetSuite in place better positions ABC to survive a 12- to 18-month dip in the business.
“I’m confident that we have everything we need right in front of us so that we can actually forecast enough to be able right-size ourselves through any kind of economic downturn,” said Lee. “It will at least allow us to understand the impact of what we’re facing just by virtue of the fact that we can see those trends.”
by NetSuite filed under
Oracle NetSuite helps ANZ partners maximize customer success
Oracle NetSuite today announced that new and existing partners in ANZ are rapidly adopting SuiteLife, a new partner initiative, to maximize customer success. With SuiteLife, new NetSuite partners in ANZ are able to start selling and delivering NetSuite to customers in only 90 days, while existing partners have benefited from innovative new offerings to expand their NetSuite practice and amplify their growth. To further enhance collaboration with partners in ANZ, NetSuite has also launched a partner council to give solution providers in the region a platform for greater voice and influence with NetSuite’s regional leadership team.
“Our partners play a critical role in helping put the power of cloud ERP into the hands of more organizations across the world,” said Vijay Raghvani, JAPAC Senior Director – Channels, Oracle NetSuite. “Since launching SuiteLife in ANZ, we’ve had great feedback from new and existing partners as they take advantage of the new program to quickly and easily gain the knowledge and expertise required to help customers succeed, differentiate their practices and expand their business.”
SuiteLife delivers a comprehensive set of resources, certified training and tools that enable NetSuite partners to develop expertise around specific business functions, product areas and industries. With SuiteLife, NetSuite partners in ANZ can quickly and easily gain the knowledge and expertise required to help customers succeed, differentiate their practices and expand their business. Since introducing SuiteLife for ANZ partners in April 2019, over 80 per cent of existing partners have signed up for the program.
“SuiteLife has helped us expand our NetSuite practice and amplify growth, for both our business and that of our customers,” says Matthew Owens, Sales and Marketing director, Annexa. “The demand for cloud is growing at an exponential rate and having all the resources in the right place means we can better serve our customers and help them maximize their success.”
“NetSuite has always been a supportive partner and we see SuiteLife as a perfect extension of our work together as we pursue the same end goal – ensuring we deliver the best outcomes to our customers.” says Grant Robertson, executive director, Fusion5.
SuiteLife is the next stage in our long association with NetSuite. “We’ve been working with NetSuite for over 15 years and programs like SuiteLife are taking us to the next stage through increased education offerings,” says Stuart Mallet, managing director, Applejack. “Access to SuiteAnswers gives our team the additional knowledge needed to help customers achieve success.”
SuiteLife represents the largest investment NetSuite has ever made in its partner ecosystem and encompasses a number of the NetSuite Partner Programs, which include more than 550 partners in 85 countries. SuiteLife includes:
- SuiteSuccess Alignment: Enables partners to leverage SuiteSuccess, a pre-configured industry cloud solution that helps organizations achieve the benefits of the cloud in as little as 45 days. SuiteSuccess is built on industry-leading practices, which combine deep domain knowledge with pre-built workflows, KPIs and dashboards.
- Accelerated New Product Introduction: A structured program that helps partners expedite the roll out and delivery of new products.
- Partner Support Programs: New services that help partners save time and lower risk on customer engagements by providing anytime access to NetSuite’s library of training and network of industry experts.
- Simplified and Holistic Program Structure: One subscription for all the enablement, tools, assets and support a partner will need to grow without having to compromize.
“We always take a best practice approach to helping our customers. With SuiteLife, we now have more resources available to do this which is invaluable in delivering exceptional customer service,” says Guarav Srivastava, CEO at Absolute Vision Technologies.
In addition to SuiteLife, NetSuite partners in ANZ can also take advantage the newly established JAPAC Provider Council. The council consists of channel partner representatives that serves as the voice of the channel by providing a path for relevant feedback to improve and strengthen the partner ecosystem through ongoing enablement programs. Committee members will leverage their deep local insights to become a central, local body representing channel partners in ANZ.
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 18,000 customers in 203 countries and dependent territories.
For more information, please visit https://www.netsuite.com.
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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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