Business Talk Spring 2013: Communication - Good for Business

SPrinG

thE lAtESt nEWS & ViEWS For bUSinESS lEADErS in thE UK

commUnicAtion – GooD For bUSinESS PAGE 00

Dean Foreman, Capital Support

Welcome... ...to your quarterly magazine Business Talk Welcome to the Spring issue of Business Talk from Capital Support.

In this edition we look at the role IT plays in your company communications and how it can transform ways of connecting with customers and colleagues.

We start by examining how technology can assist in making the most out of your contacts with customers and prospects, helping you identify the more profitable ones and ensuring that no lead or enquiry is wasted.

Everyone has their favourite device, be it a smartphone, tablet or laptop so our second article examines how more and more businesses are allowing their staff to use their own device at work.

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With ever increasing ways of communicating, keeping on top of all your messages and calls is almost a full time job in itself. We explore how Unified Communications can come to your aid and help streamline the communications within your organisation.

And finally, we touch on the importance of your business’s connection with the Internet; something we all take for granted but without it our business would quickly grind to a halt.

As always, please feel free to contact us to discuss any of these topics.

7 communication – good FOR BUSINESS

10

Know your customers and grow your business

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Get ready for the revolution

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Bringing it all together

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Getting connected, staying connected

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Dean Foreman Capital Support

Call 020 7458 1250 or go online at www.capitalsupport.com

Call 020 7458 1250 or go online at www.capitalsupport.com

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KnoW YoUr cUStomErS

...AnD GroW YoUr bUSinESS For any business today, even non-profit organisations, retaining and winning customers has never been more critical to their future survival – business has never been so fierce and customers never so demanding and unpredictable.

i

T’S SURPRISInG then that the majority of small and medium sized businesses don’t follow in the footsteps of their bigger brethren and have a more robust, systematic and methodical way of managing their customers and prospects. Instead, most rely on a mishmash of email trails, spread sheets, accountancy records and personal memory.

But by building a richer, more in-depth understanding of your existing customers, you will not only be able to look after and sell more to them, but can also determine which are the more profitable ones, enabling you to focus your efforts and direct your marketing and sales towards gaining more of the same. After all, it typically costs six times more to win a new customer than to retain an existing one.

At the same time, keeping tabs on exactly who your prospects are will help keep the pipeline of new customers flowing, enabling your business to grow and prosper.

the right tool for the right job Customer Relationship management or CRm is the buzz phrase that encompasses the practice

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Call 020 7458 1250 or go online at www.capitalsupport.com

of managing a business’s interaction with its customers, both current and future. It involves the processes, systems and organisational culture in managing, automating and synchronising sales, marketing and customer service and support.

Through a properly implemented CRm strategy, organisations can keep track of every customer interaction, whether it’s a phone call, an email, a letter, a meeting or even a tweet. you can then analyse this valuable information to understand your customers better, getting closer to them and ultimately servicing and selling to them in a more profitable way.

By bringing all your customer intelligence into one place and by utilising the powerful tools that CRm technology offers, every aspect of your customer-facing operation will be streamlined, made more efficient and costeffective, delivering a joined up approach where anyone in the organisation can see the latest situation on any customer.

CRm will also give you whole new insights into your business, enabling you to get to grips with the who, how, what and why behind your revenue streams and every day operating costs.

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is crm for me?

There’s no simple answer to this.

However, some form of CRm system is likely to deliver tangible benefits in the vast majority of cases and its use is certainly not limited to call centre operations.

Increasingly, CRm is being adopted across all types of business, from professional services dealing with a smaller volume of higher value clients through to consumer-based businesses interacting with many thousands of customers.

So the question is less ‘would CRm help my business?’ and more ‘what functionality do I need from a CRm system?’

To help determine whether you would benefit from a CRm system, ask yourself a few questions, such as: ● Is all your contact information held in one central place? ● In the last six months, do you know how many sales you’ve lost and why? ● do you know which sales people are under-performing and may need extra support? ● If someone leaves your business, do you have all the details of their customers? ● Are you able to easily spot trends, e.g. customer support issues? ● Can you be sure that all leads and prospects are being properly followed up? ● Are you certain that everyone’s keeping on top of communications with customers and prospects? ● do you know how effective your marketing campaigns are?

If you answered ‘no’ to some of the above, then it’s likely that you should review your CRm practices.

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run campaigns Generate leads measure effectiveness create databases

mArKEtinG

GEt rEADY For thE rEVolUtion

SAlES

track opportunities Assign, qualify and convert leads Up-sell and cross-sell Gather customer intelligence

SErVicE

manage cases Deliver service Keep in touch Develop customer knowledge

crm in a nutshell

CRm stands for Customer Relationship management. CRm entails all aspects of interaction that a company has with its customers and prospects, whether it is sales or service-related. CRm is a business strategy that enables businesses to: ● ●

● ●

●

Understand their customers Retain customers through better customer experience Attract new customers Win new clients and contracts, increasing profitability Reduce customer management costs

Are you getting the most from your customers and prospects? Discuss with us how crm could benefit your business.

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if you hadn’t already noticed there’s a revolution happening. And it’s happening all around us – in the street, at home and in the workplace. it is, of course, mobile technology.

A

nd THIS REVoLUTIon is gathering pace.

Cleverer devices, whether it’s the smartphone, tablet or the latest laptop connecting to ever faster networks, are enabling us to communicate in ways that just a few years ago we wouldn’t have thought possible. The days of the simple ‘talk and text’ mobile and hunting for a LAn connection for your cumbersome laptop are over.

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Security is often cited as the main concern.

What happens if a device is lost or stolen?

Typically, a company provided device will have built-in safeguards such as encryption and data back-ups but this can’t be relied upon when staff use their own device. one answer is to put all data and documents in the Cloud, allowing easy and secure access to company information from any location and a secure online storage. The Cloud can also host day-today PC applications such as email and office applications, so they no longer need to reside on individual devices used by employees. This also makes it easy to manage the roll-out of any new software.

Businesses are increasingly waking up to this revolution and recognising the serious competitive advantages that mobile working can deliver – greater flexibility, improved responsiveness and increased productivity.

Coupled with this is a new paradigm in working. no longer is it the hours people work or the place they work, but rather the focus is on achieving outcomes and giving workers the freedom to work in a way that is most effective for them.

Which mobile device?

So if the future is the flexibility of mobile working, the question becomes “which device is best for your mobile workers”? one approach that is gaining popularity is a trend termed ‘Bring your own device’ or Byod. With Byod, your employee uses

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‘the trend for Byod is being driven not by the business but by highly networked employees’ their personally owned device to work from – their own smartphone, tablet or laptop.

The argument here is that they will work more effectively and more productively with the device they feel most comfortable and most familiar using.

The trend for Byod is being driven not by the business but by highly networked

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A further issue is who pays the mobile bill? There is no single answer here as it depends on the particular circumstance of how Byod will work for any individual business. In most cases it is best to consider a range of combinations, from ‘the company pays it all’ (for many there’ll be no change here) through to a shared payment scheme or one where the employee is happy to pick up the tab as they’ll already have calls and data bundled in to their mobile package. employees, from the CEo to the new intern, buying (or being given) the latest mobile technology for private use and then wanting to use it for work because it’s convenient and, from a purely practical point, they don’t want two of everything.

From a fi nancial point of view this sounds like utopia for any company, with considerable savings to be made not only with reduced capital expenditure but also the potential for enhanced productivity and therefore revenues and profitability.

no free lunch of course there’s no such thing as a free lunch! So, what’s the downside of Byod?

The honest answer is very little.

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Where now?

Research suggests that as many as four out of five employees already use their smartphones for work-related activities.

What this means is that most companies have already hopped on the so-called Byod movement, whether they realise it or not.

The trick now is for businesses to harness this new way of working to the benefit of their bottom-line and their employees.

call us to understand more about the benefits and potential pitfalls of bYoD

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It seems that as each year rolls by a new way of communicating comes along. Long gone are the simple days of just the office phone and the fax (or telex for the longer toothed of us!).

T

oday, we can communicate through a whole myriad of ways. As well as the trusty desk phone and email, we can turn to mobile, texting, instant messaging, voice mail, Skype, audio, video and web conferencing, and now the latest medium to arrive on the scene – social media, with Twitter and LinkedIn being the primary applications used by businesses.

Coping with this burgeoning collection of communication tools is, for most of us, becoming ever more complicated and timeconsuming. Not only are we expected to juggle a range of different devices, user interfaces and media but, for many, we need to keep tabs with all our communications wherever we happen to be and at whatever time of day it may be.

There must be a better way!

Unified communications While technology is the root cause of these issues, at the same time it is also providing the solution – something called Unified Communications or UC. UC brings all the various modes of communication together into a single, joined up system. By doing so, it enables businesses and

bringing it all together PAGE 10

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Call 020 7458 1250 or go online at www.capitalsupport.com

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through just a single contact point, being sure that their message will reach the intended recipient in the quickest way possible – it’s called ‘Single number Reach’.

the concept of presence

the people who work in them to communicate and collaborate in a more streamlined, efficient and effective way.

In itself, UC isn’t a product but rather a solution that integrates all your existing communication and collaboration tools – as well as introducing new tools that can be of benefit to you – enabling you to interact through a single, consistent interface and experience.

So, for example, you can: ● ● ● ● ●

give people just one number to reach you wherever you are receive voicemails and faxes straight into your email inbox tell instantly who’s available to take a call regardless of where they may be simply and easily bring extra people into a conversation collaborate and share documents making amendments in real-time.

These and other benefits are particularly useful for mobile workers who also need instant access to information as well as being easily accessible by clients and co-workers. Sales people, consultants, senior executives and other away-from-base workers no longer need to wrestle with multiple devices and applications when checking for voicemails, emails, making a call or sending an email or fax.

A key element of UC is the concept of ‘presence’. Presence is simply about letting other people in your ‘network’, such as colleagues, clients, suppliers, friends and family, know about your availability (and willingness) to communicate. In other words it’s a status indicator. Presence can even show where someone is geographically.

It is also possible to choose what status you give for different people to see. For example, if you’re in a meeting but expecting an important call from your boss or a client then they will be informed that you are available but to others you’ll be seen as busy.

A colleague, perhaps a secretary, is also able to see exactly who is available and how each person can be contacted. This is very useful if, for example, a quick conference call needs to be set up to discuss an urgent matter or get a quick decision made. The net result is that business is progressed more quickly and more efficiently.

Pc and phone convergence Another feature of UC is the greater integration of communication tools such as your phone with your PC (or laptop or tablet). Two manifestations of this integration are ‘Voice over IP’ or VoIP and ‘Click to Connect’.

Similarly, people wanting to get in touch with these often ‘hard to reach’ individuals can do so

VoIP is where voice calls and conference calls are carried over the Internet rather than the traditional telephone network. Skype is probably the most prominent example of this, enabling significant savings on call charges (free if calls are made between Skype parties) as well as allowing calls to be enhanced with video, document sharing and other collaborative tools.

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cASE StUDY benenden School Deployment of unified Communications delivers 40% saving on new phone system Problem: Benenden is a leading independent school which recognises that state-of-the-art information and communications technology are vital to its success. a pressing challenge was to find a replacement for its current phone system, providing 250 phones for 300 staff.

Head of it, Wade nash, explained: “From our research we could see the potential benefits of unified communications, including presence awareness, instant messaging and conferencing.” solution: Benenden took advice from a microsoft lync specialist who carried out a proof of concept study. after a successful pilot project,

meanwhile, Click to Connect enables you to connect to someone else simply by clicking on their name – perhaps displayed in an email or an instant message, or held in your outlook Contacts.

The days of punching out the telephone number on your desk phone are indeed numbered!

business benefits UC therefore heralds a new dawn in how we communicate. The technology already exists and is increasingly being adopted by businesses that recognise the real business and fi nancial benefits it offers.

a tailored unified Communications solution was deployed. nash says: “i was surprised at how seamless the rollout was. We worked with our provider in overcoming some issues and accommodating the specific needs of users.”

Benefits: Benenden deployed microsoft lync to replace its existing phone system at 40 per cent less than the lowest quote from a range of PBX vendors. Staff have rapidly adopted the unified Communications features and now have a flexible and sustainable voice and collaboration infrastructure that in future will be extended to students. teaching and administration staff are working more productively, especially staff who need to be mobile.

instant Messaging

Voice Video

Fax

Click to Connect

Text

unified Communications

Presence

email

Conferencing

For more information on how Unified communications could benefit your business, contact us today.

VOiP social Media

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Mobile

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in today’s 24 hour world where consumers and clients alike expect near-instant service, having your business, your people and your data connected 24/7 has become mission critical.

Your internet connection is now as essential as your electricity supply – business simply can’t be done without it.

So it’s important that how you connect to the internet is right. to the inexperienced eye one internet connection may seem to be the same as another but there is in fact a wide range of options and choices.

into the cloud

on initial consideration, price may be the influencing factor. however, look behind the price and there’s a range of key factors that should be considered, including:

With the cloud, email, data and applications no longer reside on the Pc or laptop but are hosted on remote servers which, amongst many other benefits, means that users are no longer shackled to their desks but have the freedom to work from anywhere – so, good internet accessibility will be important.

● ● ●

● ●

Support – how quickly can things be fixed when they go wrong?

Speed – too slow and productivity can be severely impacted Symmetry – symmetric connections offer the same speed for upload as download; however, most low cost connections are asymmetric reliability – like your electricity, it needs to be on 24/7/365 Accessibility – it needs to available from wherever you work which, with flexible and mobile working, means anywhere and everywhere

GEttinG connEctED StAYinG connEctED

reliance on a good internet connection is now set to become even more mission critical as more and more businesses look to migrate to ‘the cloud’.

At the end of the day, as with most things, you get what you pay for. however, when your business relies on something it’s worth paying that little bit extra.

types of internet connection local area networks (lans) – providing the backbone for most companies giving access to the internet within a limited area such as an office building. traditionally, lans have been wired using cables and wall sockets but increasingly wireless lans using WiFi technology are used to provide greater flexibility and cost savings.

Fixed line Broadband – encompassing a range of technologies that provide high speed connectivity to the internet. Broadband can be delivered in a variety of ways, from standard phone lines (using digital Subscriber line technology such as adSl) to dedicated or leased line connections using co-axial or fibre optic cables.

Wireless Broadband – similar to above in terms of providing high speed access to the internet but using wireless connections such as WiFi. often available publicly, e.g. in coffee shops and airports, with open access or password managed access.

Mobile Broadband – mobile broadband is the marketing term for wireless internet access through a mobile phone, smartphone, tablet or uSB ‘dongle’. Currently available through 3g networks in the uK although 4g superfast broadband is now becoming available that allows, for example, video.

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Call 020 7458 1250 or go online at www.capitalsupport.com

Call 020 7458 1250 or go online at www.capitalsupport.com

is your broadband letting your business down? let us carry out an audit of your internet connectivity and advise on how it could be optimised.

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If you would like to find out more call 020 7458 1250 or go online at www.capitalsupport.com

All content copyright of Capital Support Limited 2013