If you live in a metropolitan area of the U.S., you’re probably
fortunate in that you don’t have to think about where your power comes from,
and only occasionally do you think about where your connectivity comes from.…
Cloud computing and productivity revolution
“You can quote them; disagree with them; glorify or vilify them. But the only thing you can’t do is ignore them” (thanks, Apple, for that eccentric commercial). Cloud computing isn’t as new as it seems and is popular among businesses of all types and sizes. Legacy or conventional desktop computing has been trending for longer than it should have been. Thankfully, it is fast changing. Changing to cloud computing. Cloud computing refers to software services and platforms offered through the Internet and is available to organizations on the basis of subscription. The cloud has been around for quite a while now, and is becoming the preferred choice for many businesses. Why are these organizations, that were doing fine with installed software, now turning to the cloud? What in cloud computing has won them over?…
Build Order Forms, Increase Sales: Zoho Creator Payment Module
Just recently, the
payment module in Zoho Creator was introduced. With the help of this module, users can set up a payment gateway using their PayPal account. Once this gateway is set up, users can build a variety of applications that involve collecting payments, donations, etc. Our enthusiastic users have come up with a dozen applications that use the payment module in innovative ways. Today, I am showcasing a simple e-commerce application using your familiar Zoho Creator forms.
The heart of the application is an order form. Potential customers can place their orders for the goods offered for sale through this form. Not just that, they can also pay for the orders that they placed. In this sample application that I created, I am offering discounts on bulk orders, sending email confirmations of the order and generating invoices to send to the customers.…
Is Double-Entry Accounting here for eternity?
Take any popular
accounting software today, be it a SAAS player like us or our desktop counterparts or even the entreprisey ERP solutions, and I bet they all are based on double-entry accounting. For the uninitiated, double-entry accounting is a system of bookkeeping that enforces recording two aspects of a financial transaction – one that indicates the source of amount involved and another to indicate how it is put to use. It is said that this method was first codified by Luca Pacioli, an Italian monk in the fifteenth century (and I’ll leave it to The Almighty
Wikipedia to explain the rest).
It is fascinating to see that a system devised to catch financial inaccuracies six centuries back still finds its place in the world of accounting software and remains largely untouched. This when accounting software by itself is undergoing a transformation of sorts from desktop to the web.…
Discipline your customer strategy with a financially directed approach
B2B company’s guide to getting up and running with CRM
When it comes to rolling out CRM, you need to “think big, but implement in stages,” says John Johnston, eBusiness Marketing Manager for Volvo Construction Equipment .
As you’re building out your integrated CRM strategy for your whole organization, think about what your database is and the inputs you create. Will they or will they not integrate with your CRM system? You want to integrate with as many systems as possible. “The goal is to use CRM to compliment, not replace, your existing data,” Johnston explains.
“Next step is to identify your key deliverables/key performance indicators (KPIs) and synchronize them with your CRM application to make your customer relation campaigns measurable,” Johnston adds.
Got the “big picture”? Test it out with a small group of people and then roll it out in stages to others.…
Can Small Businesses Benefit from Custom Software Apps?
Every business can benefit from custom software applications, regardless of the service or product it offers. However, if you are a small business, spending on the right applications is particularly crucial due to a tighter IT budget and being more vulnerable in the dynamic corporate world. This could lead to conflict about whether you should spend on generic desktop software or custom web software.
To resolve this conflict, we look at the key performance indicators of any business: the data about its customer-practices and business process management. What the organization has learned about its customers and how effectively it uses this data to provide better and relevant solutions to its users is what keeps them on the charts. In such data-centric times, an organization’s data is distributed across various inevitable software solutions it uses: CRM, accounting applications, project management, inventory management and resource allocation, support ticket management, enterprise resource planning, revenue, expense and commission trackers and much more.
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