Imagine a successful company for a second – what are some of its characteristics? Innovation, organization, and automation are definitely at the top of the list. These are some of the things that make a company sustainable in the long run.

Another important aspect of a successful enterprise is the quality of their customer service, both offline and online. In today’s digital age, there are many tools that help companies stay in touch with their customers via the Internet. And the best part is that it increases their sales. Customer relations can really be broken down into three areas:

-        New client acquisitions: sales process

-        Improving current clients’ experience: building a strong base of loyal customers

-        Repeat-business: long-term retention strategies

Before we had the Internet, there were tons of books written on each of these three categories. The tactics improved with time, and new ideas were discovered, but the whole “customer service” process has not undergone a massive change until the era of the Internet.

With that, many companies are still clinging to the old ways of doing business and are simply “testing out the waters” with their online marketing. Others, on the other hand, are jumping in with both feet – and reaping the wonderful benefits of modern-day technology.

A very useful piece of software that has become an integral part of many company’s successful customer service process is called Salesforce Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software. It’s a web-based program that is integrated into your company’s website and eventually automates many of your operational tasks, which saves you a lot of time and money.

Here is a quick list of some of its most essential components:

• Sales process: this phase includes contact management, tracking of the sales process for new clients, and automatic price generation
• Marketing: automatically qualifying and generating leads and measuring your success with various marketing campaigns (on and off-line)
• Job scheduling: tracking of pertinent documents, scheduling and email correspondence between various departments; very useful for smooth collaboration between workers in remote locations
• Social Media integration: brings companies into their clients’ social world by carefully reaching out through various social media campaigns

Salesforce CRM works not only within the framework of a web browser, but also on various smart phone devices. Instead of trying to come up with different software applications and trying to figure out how to make them work together (and they usually don’t), Salesforce CRM takes care of all your sales, customer service and marketing needs in one program. Wouldn’t it be great to have these processes automated? Learn more about it HERE.  

There is so much talk nowadays about Cloud computing I thought it might be helpful to discuss the topic in a way that I think everyone can understand. So here is a three-part article on Cloud computing broken up in three topics: (1) What is Cloud computing, (2) What are the benefits of Cloud computing and (3) What is the future of Cloud computing?

According to Wikipedia, cloud computing is internet computing whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices on demand similar to an electricity grid.

Cloud computing is a paradigm shift following the shift from mainframe to client-server in the early 1980s. Details are abstracted from the users, who no longer have need for expertise in, or control over, the technology infrastructure “in the cloud” that supports them. Cloud computing describes a new supplement, consumption, and delivery model for IT services based on the Internet, and it typically involves over-the-Internet-provision of dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources. It is a byproduct and consequence of the ease-of-access to remote computing sites provided by the Internet.

The term “cloud” is used as a metaphor for the internet, based on the cloud drawing used in the past to represent the telephone network, and later to depict the Internet in computer network diagram as an abstraction of the underlying infrastructure it represents. Typical cloud computing providers deliver common business applications online that are accessed from another Web service or software such as a Web browser, while the software and data are stored on servers.

Most cloud computing infrastructure consists of services delivered through common centers and built on servers. Clouds often appear as single points of access for all consumers’ computing needs. Commercial offerings are generally expected to meet quality of service (QoS) requirements of customers and typically include SLAs. The major cloud-only service providers include Salesforce.com, Amazon and Google.

According to wikiinvest.com, a simple example of cloud computing is Yahoo email or Gmail. You don’t need software or a server to use them. All a consumer needs is an internet connection and you can start sending emails. The server and email management software is all on the cloud (internet) and is totally managed by the cloud service provider Yahoo, Google, etc. The consumer uses the software alone and enjoys the benefits.

Google Docs provides users with an easy way to share documents and files safely online. This remarkable program also eliminates the hassle of attaching and downloading files and gives everyone the ability to read and make changes. Salesforce gives you direct access to Google Docs through an easy tab browser.

Salesforce also lets you link these doc files to existing records or other Salesforce files, giving you greater ability to organize and crosslink clients and information. This integration also gives you the ability to search for Google Docs within the system and even helps you create quotes and proposals that you can post to Google Docs for use in collaboration with partners and associates. You can also use spreadsheets with this software feature, giving you even more flexibility for sharing information.

Google Calendar makes it easy to plan and organize important events and deadlines, and Salesforce helps you synchronize and exchange all your calendars through one convenient system. Simply update an event in Salesforce and set it to synchronize with a Google Calendar to share the events with others. You can also create timelines and deadlines for projects to help you visualize your workload.

Salesforce also allows you to customize your Google Start Page by displaying important dashboard components right when you open your browser. This feature gives you a fast, overall view of your Salesforce progress, deadlines, or task lists without having to open Salesforce separately.

Next article will discuss Salesforce and Google Adwords.