Web Alliance - Software Support
Posted on
29 November, 2021
How software improves your company culture
Company culture is almost impossible to measure. However, for long-term success it is a vital ingredient. Staff retention, collaboration, job satisfaction etc – all key elements of a healthy business are rooted in the culture of your company. If something is wrong behind the scenes it will inevitably impact the visible areas too. So how can we make sure we maintain a healthy culture throughout the organization, and how can software help this?
Systems underpin culture
In all areas of business, we rely on systems to operate efficiently. The same goes for people and relationships, only those systems are often much more complex than a flowchart or piece of computer code can ever explain. What does help, however, is having clear routines and operations that can guide the way we interact and work with each other.
This is where smart software systems can improve and strengthen successful human relationships in the business world.
Collaboration
At the core of any healthy culture, you will always find that sense of collaboration. The ability to work together towards common objectives and helping each other is central to making everyone feel valued and significant. By utilizing software that makes communication and collaboration easy you can avoid the stress that often comes with isolated or siloed teams.
A modern business library of collaboration tools includes at least one project management system. This is where each team member is able to access visual overviews of projects and share files and information.
Most modern collaboration systems enable conversation threads to grow within the system – keeping all relevant information in one place.
Another flavour of collaboration is of course instant communication. While this is particularly useful for distributed teams or working across long distances, it can also be a quick and easy way to send a short request across a building.
Fun and games
Few things help build morale as much as having fun together. Organising friendly competitions, draws and social gatherings can be made easy using online tournament systems and planning tools.
It’s becoming popular to apply a form of ‘gamification’ to both work and learning. It can be easy to create an interactive scoreboard for sales numbers, phone calls, bug fixes or other measurable areas of the business to encourage some friendly competition. For others, the gaming element could come in the form of learning achievements and knowledge badges.
Transparency
In businesses where a negative culture is brewing, transparency is often one of the first things to get overlooked. A lack of openness means that things get discussed in small cliques of people, where others feel left out. The best thing the business can do to counteract this behaviour is to instil a sense of transparency across the organisation.
Many businesses also use the reporting functionality in their CRM or business management systems to create visual representations of performance.
Training
Ongoing training is a huge part of nurturing a good company culture. This goes beyond basic skills and operations training, to also entail training on values and behaviour. This can be particularly important when a merge between two businesses occurs, or when the company is global and relies on people from different parts of the world being able to work comfortably together.
There are plenty of learning management systems (LMS) available, some which are specifically tailored to different industries.
Software as part of the business environment
As we see recurring examples of in the business world, culture is far from straight-forward. The complexity of human behaviour is hard to predict and sometimes impossible to understand. But although we can never eliminate the element of human carelessness, we can do our very best to create a business environment where the good qualities flourish and bad behaviour is quickly shut down – and software can help us do this in more ways today than ever before.
Posted on
12 October, 2021
‘I want new customers!’
Are you sure? How about making more of the old ones?
Who doesn’t want new customers? Almost everyone. Often it’s our single focus. How much of your valuable thinking time, energy and budget do you spend dreaming up and executing new marketing initiatives. Each one is designed to persuade more clients that they can’t live without the benefits of your products or services. These initiatives might be time-consuming and costly. But they’re always worth it in the end. Or are they? How often does the extra revenue they generate justify the outlay?
Meanwhile, back in the real world of day-to-day business – how are your ‘old’ customers faring?
“Oh, they’re fine – just steadily pottering along – some of them drop off, falling by the wayside. But, on the whole, they look after themselves.”
Hmmm … time to think again!
The single biggest mistake
Repeat surveys show that the single biggest mistake that businesses make is to neglect their current customers. Let’s look at some stats -
The customer focus of UK companies -
New business 44%
Retention 18%
A balance between the two 38%
It’s five times more effective to sell to a current customer than to find a new one.
Look at this comparison of the average time and expense between winning new customers and gaining extra business from existing customers –
|
To win new customers
|
New business from existing customers
|
Travel
|
100 miles
|
Nil
|
Marketing
|
£200
|
Negligible
|
Cost of Sale
|
£200
|
Negligible
|
Meetings & Presentations
|
30 hours
|
5 hours
|
As for the success of your efforts to generate new business, these are the relative chances -
60 to 70% if you pitch to your existing customer
5 to 20 % if you pitch to a new prospect
So, now you can see why just a 5% improvement in retention rate can provide 25-85% of profitability
Knowing all they need to know
What are the elements that contribute towards marketing to your existing clients?
A short sales cycle - Your prospect isn’t a prospect – they’re an existing customer. The relationship is already in place. Everything they need to know about you, they already know. They’re aware of your approach, your USP, your customer service, your reliability. You’ve almost closed the sale before you’ve started!
Cross sales and Up sales – You already know your customer. It will be relatively straightforward to devise and present additional, relevant and appropriate opportunities to cross-sell and up-sell.
Referrals – introductions - testimonials – Make your existing customers do the selling for you. Use their experience of your products, services as well as their knowledge of your approach to find you new customers.
A CRM system – your secret salesman
Your tailor-made Web Alliance CRM system will be the perfect tool for managing your efforts to market to your existing customers. We design our systems to work for you - not the other way round. You’ll have all the data, all the processes you need, at your fingertips, poised to work on your behalf.
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Talk to the software specialists
Web Alliance Limited is long established as one of the UK’s foremost providers of adaptable, bespoke software systems. We’ll put a system in place that will ensure you have everything you need to maximise of the potential income from your existing clients.
Pick up the phone. Let’s talk. After all, we’re here to help.
Phone – 0800 677 1786
Email – info@web-alliance.co.uk
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info@web-alliance.co.uk
