Archive for the ‘Analysis’ Category
Social media should be inherent to all companies’ marketing campaigns. Consumers have come to expect a presence on social media platforms to as much a degree as they expect to be able to telephone or write in case of a problem. How simple it is to just fire off a quick tweet to a company whilst on the move. And as there will usually be someone monitoring the Twitter account, the person will usually get a timely response. So much quicker than using conventional telephone or postal mail methods.
Whilst complaints and calls for an improvement in service are perhaps the most likely use for social media, it should not always be seen in a negative light. Social media can be a valuable source of feedback and an efficient marketing tool. Take, for example, the success that Ford has seen through its social media marketing campaigns.
Ford’s Fiesta Movement Campaign was, most social media commentators agree, a triumph. On launching its new Fiesta, Ford allowed 100 members of the public the use of the new model to drive, and then review, using social media. This resulted in 700 videos being produced with over 7 million views on Youtube. It could be argued that this will make zero difference to sales figures, however Ford are using this as more of a relationship tool that a strict sales method. It has long been known in marketing circles that the more a consumer interacts with a company the better opinion they have of that company, and word of mouth is one of the more powerful marketing tools. A person is much more likely to listen to a friend if they have had a good experience than if they view an advert that has not been targeted directly at them.
‘Ninety percent of social media is just showing up’ says Scott Monty, Global Digital Communications for the Ford Motor Company. Indeed, Ford has shown up. They showed up relatively early. A large part of their success through the medium can be attributed to not only having this presence but actually having someone respond to queries through the medium in what people would consider a ‘reasonable time’. In addition, senior executives from the company have been taking part in online question and answer sessions over Twitter, another move to bring them closer to their consumer base.
Ford describe their strategy is ‘to humanize the company by connecting consumers with Ford employees and with each other when possible, providing value in the process’, another example of keeping close to the consumer. The importance of this is paramount; the average company’s awareness of social media will usually be restricted to Facebook and Twitter. These are the most popular services but a company, as in Ford’s case, should look to others such as Flickr, Delicious, Foursquare, the list goes on. Keeping on top of trends ensures longevity.
Consumers will be talking about your company, both in a good and bad light. A company needs to have a social media presence; otherwise the voice of the company comes from its customers.
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SME’s have long been able to out-compete larger businesses in terms of their personal contact with and knowledge of their customers, but there comes a point in the growth of a business where the level of personal contact starts to diminish as the number of clients grows. To address this problem and maintain the levels of contact and interaction which the customers have come to expect from your business, an SME can implement a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.
The ethos of a CRM is to hold all information relevant to each customer in a centralised database which may be accessed by any part of your business. This data will make available, to anyone within your business who needs it, all the details for each of your customers, so regardless of whether they want to know about orders, service, updates, marketing or anything else, the database will share that information with those who need to know.
Information is vital for an SME to be able to provide a personalised service to each customer and to make the customer feel valued by your business, yet as SMEs grow it is one of the things which suffers if not handled carefully. If customers have to contact different departments within your business for separate services, it is easy to lose track of who they are and how their business benefits yours. Once that happens your customers can feel under-valued and become dissatisfied with their relationship with you.
Having centralised data stored in and accessed via a CRM means that any member of your staff can handle any question raised by any customer. It means that any of your salesmen can make the most appropriate offer to your customer. It means that any of your support team can offer guidance and advice about any problem which your customer may raise with you. It also means that you as management can make judgements based on your knowledge of your customers’ dealings with your business. How much is each customer worth to you in real income terms? How prompt are they in paying their invoices? How many hours support do they cost you each year? How many new customers have you gained through recommendations from each of your existing customers?
Having centrally accessed data means a more efficient service for your customers – they can speak to one person who can access everything they want to know. No need for them to be put on hold and transferred to another department, or have their email forwarded to the right person. No delays because the person who deals with that customer account is on holiday or off sick. Using a CRM also means it is possible for all contacts to be handled by a call centre or single point of contact rather than having each call routed through to each department to be dealt with, so this can result in cost savings to your business, as well as increased efficiency and maintaining those all-important excellent relationships with your customers.
This article was written by Workbooks, leading supplier of web-based CRM software.
One of the best and most basic personal finance tools available right now is Microsoft Excel. If you have PC, you’ve probably already got it installed on your computer. Unfortunately, many people don’t have more than a basic proficiency with this valuable tool. We’re here to remedy that. There are lots of personal finance things you can do with Excel, so here are just a few things to try today:
1. Make a Budget
Making a budget in Excel is nice because you can set it up to automatically do the math for you. All you need here is a line by line account of your spending. It can be nice to put it in different categories so that you can see how much you’re spending on housing, food, entertainment, etc.
To make a basic budget in Excel, first decide on what broad and minute categories you’ll have. For instance, you might have a Food category with the smaller categories Groceries, Eating Out, Fast Food, and Coffee underneath. This helps break things down and keep them more organized.
The simplest way to do this is to use the left hand column for your budget categories. In bold, make your top category, and then list each subcategory under it. If you want your budget sheet to go across rather than down in endless lines, you can leave four or five columns between and then start another list of budgeting items. Then, beside each item, you simply have to write in the amount you’d like to spend on each category in a month, a week, or two weeks – depending on how your paychecks come.
After you’ve finished a line for a category, highlight all of the budgets for that category and then click the Auto Sum button. It will automatically total up the amount of money you’ve budgeted for that broad category.
Once all your categories are summed up like this, you simply need to add up the category totals to make sure that your budgeted spending is equal to or less than your actual income for the period. If not, do some adjusting. The Auto Sum button is helpful here because it takes much of the work out of the math involved.
2. Track Your Spending
Once you’ve made a budget, you can actually set up Excel to help you track your spending. This is much more complicated, so you might want to use a template that’s available on Microsoft’s website. There are several personal and household budgeting templates available there that can be helpful for tracking your spending. Often, you just plug in the actual spending numbers, and the spreadsheet will automatically track how much of your budget is left, or it will show where you’ve over-spent.
Tracking your budget in Excel is pretty simple, and it’s free, which is always budget-friendly. You may want to try out a few templates and work on customizing one for your needs so that you know exactly what you have available to spend each month. At the end of the month, look back over your spreadsheet to see where you spent less or more than you allotted. Can you cut back on spending, or are there areas where you need to shift funds around? Keep your spreadsheets in the same folder so you can track spending over time.
3. Snowball Your Debt
You can also use Excel templates to snowball your debt or manage it properly. If you’re trying to pay down debts, one of the best ways to do it is by paying down the smallest first, and then adding in payments as you get to your larger debts. There is an Excel template that you can plug your debt numbers into so you can see how long it will take to pay off your debts.
Debt management spreadsheets can be helpful for working with your credit cards. These sheets can help you track all your credit card information in one place. At a glance, you’ll be able to see which has the best interest rate, and which balances need to be paid down a bit to save your credit score. These templates can be incredibly helpful because, again, they’ll do much of the math for you as long as you plug in the proper numbers.
This post is from Abigail Hall, writer at CreditDonkey.com. Visit CreditDonkey to find credit card tips to budget, track your spending and manage your debt.
When you open an Internet browser you might not realise, but you are using an SaaS (Software as a service). SaaS is typically described as a method of delivering applications to users over, most commonly the Internet, (but not necessarily) without the requirement for the user to install, maintain and develop the software and associated infrastructure.
SaaS runs on the companies servers and they control the software as a whole. i.e. OS patching; firmware updates etc; ensuring availability of the application. The end user benefits are clear, with SaaS consumers not requiring any of the initial infrastructure outlay or application development costs, the only requirement being that of connectivity, e.g. Internet, MPLS VPN. As one of the key typical characteristics of SaaS is connecting to the SaaS application over the Internet, a reliable internet connection becomes paramount to the consuming business. Whereas, when the application was ‘in-house’, a greater risk revolved around server resilience over that of LAN / WAN the converse is true with SaaS, no WAN connectivity and you cannot access your SaaS.
Im sure we have heard about the merger between AT&T and T-Mobile. Well here is an infographic that outlines some of the details.
It seems like the music industry revenues are on a decline as a whole at the moment, but digital growth is up and will continue to rise over the coming years. Well that is what the IFPI is saying anyways, after their annual Recording Industry In Numbers report.
Global music sales are now 29 percent digital, though that is 49 percent (the same as physical) in the U.S.. Digital sales are 25 percent of the total in the UK, up by a fifth in 2010.
It has been reported by AIM (Association of Independent Music) that iTunes, Amazon and Spotify, make up 94.4% of all indie digital revenues in the UK. Thus, the other services arent really worth worrying about at the moment.
Alison Wenham, head of the UK-based consortium, pointed to a lopsided logjam. “There are now a series of monopolies and it is jolly hard for anyone else to get a slice of the market”.
In the US there is still no Spotify presence and it seems as though eMusic is the third largest player, but Im sure they will change when Spotify finally enter the US this year.
via RouteNote
There have been so many different rumours about the iPhone 5. Here is a quick infographic to let everyone know what the rumours have been so far.
What rumours do you think are going to come true?
Here is a great infographic from the team at Onlinemba. As you can see it outlines how Demand Media works in simple terms and why their model makes financial sense.
Mozilla Firefox 4 is quickly become one of the most popular browsers in the world. Pingdom has put together a great infographic that outliens the growth over Firefox 4 within 24 hours of release.
Within the first 24 hours Firefox 4 was downloaded more than 7.1 million times and now its upto 14 million and rising fast.
