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The Key to Success in Choosing the Right CRM Partner For Your Dynamics 365 Purchase

May 27, 2020 CRM News and Info

When speaking with a potential CRM partner, you may feel you know exactly what to ask. After all, you know what you want to achieve through the implementation, and you know the budget your company can work with. All too often though, companies end up with a CRM partner that doesn’t deliver on their expectations, even though they felt confident in their ability to choose a qualified partner. How can you avoid that outcome and find the right partner for your company?

By asking the right questions from the start.

What do we mean by “ask the right questions”? Organizations often fail to ask the truly important questions to their potential CRM partners, questions that can give valuable insight into whether they are a good fit. The fact is, every partner is ready for the common questions. Questions about costs, experience, and implementation methodology are simple and commonplace. Partners have plenty of experience answering those questions- and making the answers sound good. But deeper questions that force partners to think will uncover far more about their business practices and commitment to client success.

A great technology partner, one that is going to deliver on your goals and expectations, will welcome the tough questions. They will be eager to share with you what makes them unique. They will engage the services team to help provide you with complete, honest responses. So what are some of these tough questions?

You aren’t left to guess. 18 industry experts have contributed their insights and ideas to give you a list of 9 questions to ask your potential CRM partner. These questions can be the key to finding the perfect partner for your company. In addition, you will find warning signs to watch out for so you know when to start running in the other direction.

It is true, choosing the right CRM partner isn’t easy, but it can be done. To find the questions you should be asking, download the eBook “9 Questions Nobody Asks Their CRM Partner… But Should” at www.crmsoftwareblog.com/9Questions.

Then check our directory of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Partners specializing in CRM to find the right partner to start the conversation.

By CRM Blog Writer, www.crmsoftwareblog.com

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CRM Software Blog | Dynamics 365

Epitopes.world taps AI to predict COVID-19 vaccine success

May 6, 2020 Big Data

A team of researchers hailing from Harvard and Université de Montréal today launched Epitopes.world, an AI-powered, interactive platform designed to facilitate COVID-19 vaccine development. It’s built atop an algorithm — CAMAP — that generates predictions for potential vaccine targets, enabling researchers to identify which parts of the virus are more likely to be exposed at the surface (epitopes) of infected cells.

Project lead Dr. Tariq Daouda, who worked alongside doctorates in machine learning, immunobiologists, and bioinformaticians to build Epitopes.world, hopes the platform will reduce the time and expense involved in creating vaccine candidates. Fewer than 12% of all drugs entering clinical trials end up in pharmacies, and it takes at least 10 years for medicines to complete the journey from discovery to the marketplace. Clinical trials alone take six to seven years, on average, putting the cost of R&D at roughly $ 2.6 billion, according to the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.

CAMAP, which Daouda developed while obtaining his Ph.D. at the Université de Montréal, was originally applied to cancer immunotherapy. But its aptitude for learning immune system patterns made it an ideal fit for revealing viruses’ weaknesses.

“The COVID-19 pandemic stresses the need to accelerate the design of vaccines and therapies to reduce the human and economic impact of global pandemics,” said Daouda in a statement. “People infected with COVID-19 tend to have [fewer] immune cells, making it difficult to get enough infected cells to study them appropriately in a lab — and because they are so rare, labs are in competition with each other to obtain them.”

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Epitopes.world doesn’t synthesize vaccine candidates itself, but its predictions could be used to generate a list of epitope targets to test. The trained CAMAP model draws on a data set of 1.5 million candidate epitopes and their metadata, including approximately 78,000 from SARS-COVID-2 and SARS-COVID-1 (two variants of coronavirus) and 104,000 from normal human sequences — all of which is hosted on ArangoDB’s Oasis service.

To this end, a recent preprint paper published by researchers at NEC OncoImmunity and NEC Laboratories Europe describes work to identify COVID-19 vaccine candidates from epitopes. The team repurposed an algorithm similar to CAMAP to analyze COVID-19 sequences and isolate epitopes with optimal immune responses, which they believe could inform development of both current and future strains.

“Epitopes.world makes code the petri dish — utilizing open source technologies to connect machine learning to biomedicine to help accelerate learnings and findings,” said Daouda.

Epitopes.world — which also provides visualizations that allow researchers to plot results and use them for further research — is available on GitHub. A public API is available, and Daouda’s team plans to introduce new tools in the future.

In addition to ArangoDB, Digital Ocean, Explor.ai, and Slack are listed as sponsors. Both ArangoDB and Digital Ocean have pledged free cloud hosting and database management to the project.

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Big Data – VentureBeat

How One Family-Owned Business Laid its Foundation for Success

May 1, 2020 TIBCO Spotfire

Reading Time: 2 minutes

If you would have asked the founders of a raw marble slab wholesale business where they thought the company would be in 40 years, you might not have expected to hear ‘doing international business through a virtual showroom.’ However, that is exactly how the family-owned Cosentino Group, now a $ 1 billion-dollar global business, finds itself; interacting seamlessly and virtually through its state-of-the-art online kitchen and bath showroom with customers from all over the world.

The company that got its start selling to stonemasons in the regions surrounding the Sierra Nevada mountains in southern Europe has gone through several transformations since its beginning. Much of this is due to the shift kitchens and baths have seen over recent decades, going from utilitarian necessities to luxurious statement makers. With high-end materials in high demand, the family-owned business took off.

The stone slabs themselves weren’t the only thing in demand—customers wanted a full experience. To view inventory, envision what their homes might look like with surface upgrades, and interact with the business to learn more about their options. This meant complete business reinvention for Cosentino.

As business grew, the company had to set up new distribution centers around the world—and hire people to work at them—in order to keep up with demand. Going global has its set of challenges, though. Cosentino needed to extend its holistic approach to business around the world while also adhering to local regulations. To keep the family-owned culture intact, the company implemented an integration system to keep everything (and everyone) connected.

Cosentino tried a few different solution providers before ultimately settling with TIBCO. TIBCO offers a single-platform, cloud-based solution that comes with IT support, including off-site maintenance and upgrades (a must for a company with headquarters in a secluded Spanish valley). But for Cosentino, it wasn’t purely a decision based on the quality of the technology—cultural alignment between the company and TIBCO played a role in the success of the project as well. Learn how Cosentino Group went from wholesale granite miners to international digital influencers with the help of TIBCO.

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The TIBCO Blog

How to Drive Business Success in Light of Constant Change

April 22, 2020 TIBCO Spotfire

Reading Time: 5 minutes

It’s no secret that we are in a period where business needs are drastically changing. Physical events are going virtual, more and more people are working remotely, and businesses need to find ways to adapt and fast. One vivid example of an organization that constantly navigates the pressures of change in ever-evolving environments and continually rises to the top is the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One (F1) team.

Below, we’ll explore several key catalysts for change that organizations of all kinds may face, and illustrate how the six-time World Champion Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 team has overcome similar business and technical challenges. The team provides relevant lessons that can be extrapolated to help businesses of all types manage the pressures and complications of change. Industries of all varieties can look to the sport of F1 as an example for managing change successfully through the innovative use of technology.

Changing Customer Needs

In the last few decades, customer demands have shifted dramatically. Emerging technologies such as cloud, mobile, and even social media have given way to a culture where consumers want everything fast and personalized. More than ever, organizations need to adapt their systems to keep up with changing demands and mobile lifestyles. For example, as the “nation’s first 5G network”, TIBCO customer T-Mobile needed to keep up with its 72.6 million customers. It turned to a container-based integration solution from TIBCO that enabled the mobile carrier to handle an increase of peak volume by up to ten times. This helped T-Mobile scale and meet new customer demand, which came in handy when a new version of the iPhone was released; because of it’s flexible infrastructure, the company was able to successfully meet its tight phone delivery deadlines.

The ability to scale and meet new challenges around evolving customer demands is something the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 team has also done well. Since their comeback to the racing circuit, they have been able to leverage the most cutting-edge technologies in order to deliver new interactive opportunities for fans to engage with the team, like never before. For instance, the team started a post-race debrief series on YouTube, giving fans insights into race strategy and the impact on individual race outcomes, all made possible by cloud, mobile, and other new technologies.

Organizational Changes

In the fast paced world of high end manufacturing, perhaps no greater catalyst for organizational upheaval and competitive differentiation has been the ability to digitally transform. Consider the high-end brake manufacturer Brembo, who saw massive business potential by turning its factory into a smart factory with the help of TIBCO. Brembo now leads its competition with Industry 4.0 capabilities and can evolve its analytic infrastructure to meet goals for improved performance and user-friendliness, while maintaining its high standard of quality for production outputs. To make this shift effectively Brembo implemented a robust visual analytics platform that is adaptable to a multitude of use cases and user types. Today, thousands of users are empowered with visual analytics throughout the company, allowing Brembo to monitor all aspects of brake production and understand the vast universe of information affecting both the manufacturing process and the supply chain.

Similarly, as an organization, F1 isn’t just about racing, it’s also about manufacturing, fabrication, engineering, testing/quality control, production, and assembly. So, it’s up to teams to create smart factories of the highest caliber to support the technological capabilities that these advanced cars require. And they excel at this. They excel at getting the huge amount of data from its machines into computer systems where the data can be quickly and easily analysed. This requires a very networked infrastructure and a powerful analytics platform where they can examine production and make alterations in processes in real time.

Changing and Evolving Industries

Unconventional is the new normal. While companies are adjusting to significant changes in their industries, many are finding innovative ways to adapt, contribute, and overcome. Pharmaceutical company Gilead is responding to industry changes by spending time and resources to donate 1.5 million doses of an experimental drug that could potentially help COVID-19 patients. With analytics technology from TIBCO, it is able to determine the right drug at the right time and gain real-time visibility on results.

Similarly, Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 is participating in “Project Pitlane”, devoting time, factory resources, and innovative engineering to create over 10,000 respirators to be used in healthcare facilities. The device, known as Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP), has been used extensively in hospitals in Italy and China to help COVID-19 patients with serious lung infections to breathe more easily, when oxygen alone is insufficient. In true Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 fashion, the breathing aid was produced within a rapid timeframe; it took fewer than 100 hours from the initial meeting to production of the first device. The ability for companies to pivot and serve urgent new customer needs while not losing sight of their original business goals is a distinct characteristic separating industry leaders and laggards.

Material Goods Changes

Material changes can be an influencing factor for organizational success during non-crisis times. TIBCO customer Hemlock Semiconductor worked with healthcare facilities to assess their inventories and sent over 15,000 PPE items to healthcare workers in the Great Lakes area. However, in its day-to-day business, Hemlock uses Connected Intelligence to measure down to the micro-level, to implement incremental improvements in its silicon wafers. As a result, the company achieved centralized, self-service, governed analysis, revenue gains, cost savings, and more.

For F1 teams like Mercedes AMG-Petronas, material changes are heavily influenced not only by the regulations that are imposed yearly, but also in the teams’ own research and development teams. They use emerging technology as a platform for innovation, constantly looking to squeeze an incremental competitive edge in the development, testing, and deployment of experimental components. Constant testing of parts gives teams the insights into what is working in the car design and what isn’t. By paying attention to this, teams can gain a competitive advantage just by assessing and improving the reliability of car components.

Now is the Time to Be Agile and Adaptable

While the world of sport racing to some may not carry the weight and implications of change in other industries such as healthcare, high tech manufacturing, telecommunications and beyond, F1 can serve as the testing bed for prototyping technology innovations. Whether you’re Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 or any other organization that wants to be and stay at the top of your field, you keep pushing, keep using your data to extract insights and build a superior understanding that leads to better customer intimacy, operational excellence, and business reinvention.

But as anyone in any industry can attest, no matter how much data is available, it won’t make any difference if it’s not understood and put to good use.

“To win you need to understand what’s important, and what’s not. You need to make sure you’re adapting to the situation.”—James Vowles, Chief Strategist Mercedes-AMG Petronas. And to do that, you need to understand and use all your data.

Learn how Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 handles constant change to continuously innovate to create a better car design, improve agility in adapting to race conditions, and find the best car setup for each race using TIBCO solutions and contact us to learn how we can help your organization succeed in complex, ever-evolving environments.

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The TIBCO Blog

Work Remotely with Microsoft Teams During COVID-19: Tips for Success

April 3, 2020 Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Working from Home During COVID-19? Follow These Tips for Success with Microsoft Teams

A week ago, Microsoft sent out a message 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 ready to get started with Microsoft Teams? 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. Contact us now 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. www.journeyteam.com

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CRM Software Blog | Dynamics 365

Rights And Royalty Management: The Intersection Of Data And Movie Success

March 9, 2020 SAP

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.

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Digitalist Magazine

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.

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

January 15, 2020 CRM News and Info

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.

Chad Ruff is chief technology officer at
Swiftpage, which provides the cloud-enabled CRM and marketing automation platform
Act!.

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CRM Buyer

Chatbot or Human? Combine Both to Achieve Customer Service Success

January 8, 2020 CRM News and Info

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%20Reeder Chatbot or Human? Combine Both to Achieve Customer Service Success
Jay Reeder is CEO of
VoiceNation.

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5 Tips to Help Make Your Next Customer Event a Success

January 3, 2020 CRM News and Info

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.

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