Business software
There’s no question that 2012 is going to be a challenging year for all businesses. Regardless of your Market or country you operate in, the worldwide credit crunch and chance of recession hangs over everybody in business.
In this post we explore some of the key business software that might just provide you with an advantage over the competition.
SaaS is short for Software as a Service, and it is often used interchangeably with the term Cloud Computing. It is the current trend of getting all of the Business Software you use in the company hosted and provided by a third party organization.
This company hosts all the software online, in a physical workspace entirely supervised by them, called an internet cloud. The software is then accessed on demand by the end users in your enterprise as and when it’s required. It’s thin client technology, meaning that there is no need to download software to your laptop.
The benefits of SaaS are many, not the least being that you don’t need your own in-house IT department. That’s the theory, but in practical terms you will need someone to manage and administer the service provided by the SaaS provider.
There are great cost benefits to this model of software supply, which may be leveraged through the economies of scale which the third party will bring to the table.
Enterprise Resource Planning, or ERP as its known, is a term for software that draws together the often disparate resources that the business has at its disposal. In essence it is one application which everybody in the organisation uses regardless of their role. It brings the resources necessary to complete the user’s task whenever they’re required and prevents duplication of procedures and resources.
ERP systems bring good benefits for an organisation since they allow diverse departments to see each other’s data and have interaction accordingly. Because of this the customer experience is way better and company policies can be much more simply and consistently integrated.
Customer Relationship Management software, or CRM, is a type of software that looks to build on current customer relationships whilst simultaneously acquiring new business. It involves automating and syncing the customer facing business processes so that they are highly effective and generate a great customer experience.
Research indicates the cost of acquiring a new customer is something like six to seven times that of retaining an existing customer. If an organization can concentrate upon growing its customer retention rates this often has a significant positive impact on its profitability. This is how CRM software can deliver considerable benefits and a quick return on the investment.
These are typically quite major implementations that may require substantial investment and preparation. Should you be serious about the competitiveness of your business however, they are definitely worth looking at further.