Monday 27 July 2015

Can Just a Logo Design Describe the Entire Brand?

Top marketers claim that a logo of a company speaks volumes about its brand story. Of course logo is the identity of your business in the market. It is important to focus on the logo design type before finalizing any design, as it will represent your brand or company worldwide. An uninspired and inappropriate logo cannot interact with and find place in the lives your customers. The same way, eye-catchy logo design will build the brand identity of your business and attract customers easily.

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Logo Design Describe the Entire Brand

Logo of a brand has the power to offer a business a professional look. A good logo is the one that tells the whole story of a business through just a graphical icon and builds an emotional bonding with the customers. The logo is the symbol of cause, strength and passion of a business.

Top Factors to be Considered for Logo Design

Message

Is your brand logo conveying the exact message you wish to deliver your customers? Does your logo explain about business brand? Does it describe the products and services you retail? The logo of any business should answer every question of the customers. Make them feel they are at the right place by offering an appropriate and suitable logo design. The logo design you incorporate should be packed with curiosity that tempts customer to know more about your brand.

Audience

Are customers considered an important factor for logo designing process? Of course yes! The brand popularity can be predicted by considering the mindset of the target audience. If you own a business that needs to approach females, the logo should be quite attractive with fresh and lively colors, whereas if you own a business and males are your target audience then choose the font style and color combination that would attract them. Thus, a strong and powerful logo design directly approaches the target audience. The same way, for kids’ brand, companies should impart attractive logo designs that are full of colors.

Colors

Choosing colors for logo is a tough decision. Human psychology is attached to every color chosen for the logo creation. Bright colors may attract the customers, but it does not seem to be sophisticated. Every color has different implications that can explain a brand thoroughly. A wrong color can convey a wrong message. We have listed 10 colors that are often used and their qualities will help you choose the appropriate color for logo creation.

  • Orange: creative, friendly, youthful, dynamic
  • Red: energetic, bold, exciting, warm
  • Blue: tranquil, professional, trustworthy, credibility
  • Green: organic, instructional, growth, adventurous
  • Brown: rural, historical, steady, safe
  • Black: credible, powerful, luxury, strength
  • Purple: spiritual, wise, evocative, mysterious
  • White: simple, clean, pure, elegance
  • Yellow: bright, inventive, optimism, encouraging
  • Pink: fun, nice, playful, tender

Know your brand intensely, choose the logo color smartly.

Typography

Like colors, fonts also convey various emotions. Few reasons why typography is crucial for logo designing is, it affects brand marketing, it conveys the exact message about your business, logos with typography along with the graphical icons are more impactful. There are other benefits too, but we have mentioned only few of them here.

Market research is important to make sure your logo is unique and distinct from any other brand’s logo, already present in the market. They are the mirrors of any brand. Just a graphical icon can leave great impacts on the customers. Its sizes, shapes and colors describe everything about the brand. Create a logo that suits your business as this icon represents the entire business.

Thursday 23 July 2015

ERP VS CRM

Modern businesses can leverage the advantages offered by advanced technology. Businesses can sustain in the tough competition by streamlining challenging processes with real time data. Data analysis techniques present, allows companies to forecast their future plans and strategies. Helpful tools like Customer Resource Management (CRM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) offers businesses the power to control the market.

ERP-Vs-CRM

Quick Insights

Though similar at a glance, ERP and CRM are distinctively different. To accomplish business goals and success, businesses need to rely on both the platforms (explained below).

CRM

Customer Resource Management (CRM) is a crucial tool, which allows companies to interact with their customers about either sales or services. Companies can improve its ROI by enhancing their products quality and customer services. Even customer acquisition is possible by deploying impactful CRM solution.

It offers myriads of features, which allow businesses to collect customer data, manage and use it to build unbeatable marketing strategies. Big data study trend, helps companies to streamline and simplify major business processes.

ERP

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is required to manage business. It integrates all the functions like product planning, development, human resources, sales and marketing. ERP solution helps companies to fulfill goals by managing multiple core operations – accounting, inventory etc. using single software.

It is designed to make business activities highly efficient. Allowing companies to focus on the crucial factor i.e. business data, it helps them managing real time data. It can be upgraded easily whenever updates are available.

Attractive Gains

Both ERP and CRM are feature packed business solutions. But, the features and functionality list varies from version to vendors. Let us have a look how it benefits businesses.

Benefits Offered by CRM

  • Desired Sales
  • Convenient Use
  • Save Time and Money
  • Simplified Goal-Setting
  • Better Platform Support
  • Secured Software Solution
  • Satisfactory Customer Service

Benefits Offered by ERP

  • Scalability
  • Business Analytics
  • Better Supply Chain
  • Reduced Complexity
  • Affordable Operations
  • Improved Data Access
  • Regulatory Compliance

Final Words

CRM and ERP both are the solutions that are significant for flawless business performance. Let us check which software should your enterprise use?

CRM

CRM solution is used by enterprises seeking effective marketing strategies. They use and manage the customer data collected. Thus, companies that identify business opportunity in retaining their existing customers can avail its benefits and can also acquire new customers.

If you need cost effective software that integrates customer data with other system for profitable outcome, CRM is the solution all sized businesses should implement.

ERP

ERP solution is for the organizations, having coherent workflow that involves each and every department for seamless business functioning and quick completion of processes. They even track inter-departmental activities to ensure its effective completion.

If you are in search of a business solution offering operational efficiency with improved consistency and accuracy, ERP is the perfect software fulfilling your challenging requirements.

Be it CRM or ERP, every business needs additional software solution other than manual activities to perform business processes effectively. Consult us today for best-in-class software –as-a-service (SaaS) with flexible packages with an aim to make your business performance better.

Wednesday 22 July 2015

6 Steps to Successful Company Culture

6 Steps to Successful Company Culture

Building a great organization might be a huge challenge for the business owners. Can it be created in a single day? No, not at all! It takes great deal of real efforts, relevant experiences and valuable time to create a favorable work environment. Company culture includes the way of behaving, treating and contributing to take the organization ahead on the path of success. No organization has a rulebook that teaches how to build winning company culture at the workplace.

What a Company Culture is All About?

A good and promising culture takes several factors like managers’ personality, interpersonal skills and understanding level to manage the employees and the enterprise effectively.

Step 1: Focus on the Principles

Being a businessman, it is only you who should initiate infusing your principles to make the company culture enjoyable. Depending on your personality and core values, work ethics should be managed. Balance the company culture between the work and playful environment. Only a creative and innovative boss finds it easy to balance both at a time. Do you want your company to be organized and dynamic? It is better to hire candidates having lively personality with a permanent smile on their faces. Know yourself and know your brand that will help you build a radiant culture that is efficient and exciting at the same time.

Step 2: Consider your Past

You might be having several experiences that might have not worked in the past. You can gain lessons from the past situations. If you are fresh entrepreneur, research and learn about the successful corporate businesses and find what cultures did they follow that helped them to get success. Implement the culture that can manage your organization flawlessly.

Step 3: Hire People Suiting your Company

Don’t make the mistake of hiring candidates having the same personality as yours. List out your qualities and also list the qualities you lack. Hire candidates having the qualities you lack to streamline work and the create company atmosphere. For instance, if you are lag behind in the management skills, appoint candidates having great management skills. No matter what the perspective of your employees is, share your principles to bring the best out of them.

Step 4: Interact with Employees

A good boss finds out what are the problems faced by their employees within the company premises. A culture where employees communicate and build professional relationship is considered to be profitable. Build a company culture that simplifies the relations between the employees and the top level management team to discard the problems and issues by resolving it efficiently.

Step 5: Treat your Employees as a Team

Business owners that treat their employees as a team can build trust and reliability among the employees for making the company culture. Team work together for the work related projects where they focus on the work quality rather than the credit they receive on completion. When several brains work together, the result you get is highly creative. It might be possible that not every member of the team holds similar work efficiency, skills and talents, but what matters is the work done by the TEAM.

Step 6: Keep the Standards and Language Common

When a young entrepreneur with a freshly started business enters the market competition, he needs to take care of the cultures followed by the competitors also. The language, standards and the behavior that build a company culture should be common for every employee appointed. Be it a junior candidate or a senior individual the culture followed should be similar for everyone in the entire organization. By practicing these similarities, you can make your workplace respectful with no diversities. Prevalent language, principles and standards helps in building a united culture in the organization. Whereas this method is already being practiced by long term players, managing the company culture effectively!

Entrepreneurs do not need to spare budgets to build up a professional environment. It’s his attitude and etiquettes that will do all the work!

Monday 20 July 2015

It’s Time to Give Your Business Online Exposure!

“Building an official business website costs too much”, this misconception is quite popular among small business vendors. They may even believe that an online business identity cannot affect much on their sales and revenue generation. Actually, digitization has affected every segment, including business without any online identity. Businesses getting digital exposure are benefiting while businesses not getting digital may lag behind.

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Internet is flooded with the online stores, along with the decision of making a business website, selecting a development platform is also a crucial decision. Magento, with the huge range of features and benefits, is the first choice of professional web developers. Magento eCommerce website solution being SEO friendly helps your business to gain visibility among popular search engines.

It can be said that building and running online store helps your business to make a footprint in the global eCommerce ecosystem. This article will make you understand the needs and benefits of a Magento store.

Credibility

Online shopping is the new trend followed by all the shopaholics. It is true that prior to checking the products at the brick and mortar stores, they opt in for the most attractive eCommerce websites for comparison. They can find great deals and discounts on the desired products that might not be offered by the local vendors. Thus, having a website of your business will enhance its credibility. Else, your potential customers will surely visit other Magento websites to fulfill their requirements. Give your business online identity through official business website.

Cost-effectiveness

As explained earlier, website making is expensive is just a myth. Well, budget is the biggest concern for small scale business owners. They would obviously think about the cost affordability. You would be amazed that making a business website will not cost you a fortune. But not having a website will cost you more as your business cannot afford losing customers. Your business website needs attractive design, quality content and flawless functionality, which will not affect the business budget. The money you invest for offline advertising like newspaper ads, brochure, flyers etc. can be invested on building a global business identity.

Business Updates

If you want to keep your customers updated with the latest happening in the business, website is the simplest and easiest way to give the updates to your customers. New arrivals, discounts, sale or product launches, your customers can be updated quickly. Whereas print media is now rather outdated in the era of digitization. Print ads are costly and time consuming. Websites can be given new looks whenever you want, which would add a fervor to your online identity.

24X7 Online Store Access

Isn’t it exciting? No physical store can be accessed 24X7. As internet can be accessed round the clock, your customers can check the products in your online eCommerce store, irrespective of the time. In today’s busy lifestyle, customers like the flexibility to shop anytime and anywhere, offered by the online stores.

Build an official website and boost your business and generate high profits!

Saturday 18 July 2015

Small Business Development – Secrets Revealed

Survival of any small business among giant businesses is no more a myth. Although , it was the case earlier, but today there are several tactics through which even small enterprises can make room in the global market dominated by big players. Sustainability program helps small scale companies to increase their profitability and improve their company culture. Even the employees can be encouraged to contribute that lets the enterprise grow.

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It is been observed that many business owners though have come up with an unbeatable idea, fail to grow their business to an extent. There might be several reasons behind this failure like an ineffective business idea, under qualified staff, less experienced management team or unmanageable business strategies.

Here we present few aspects that can help your business to get back on track.

Significant Aspects to Focus

Make Business Plan Simple

It is said that a simple business plan can be implemented easily and effectively. The probability of success increases with clear and foolproof business implementing plans. It is possible that a small scale enterprise might not be packed with modern resources, so formulating complex plan might not receive the proper execution, which would result in undesirable business solution.

Brand Identity is Crucial

Brand building is pivotal in any business whether it is small scale startup or a corporate level enterprise. According to the human psychology, buyers would trust and select the brand by reading their success stories rather than going for unknown brand though it might be having valuable products. So choose your target audience smartly, make public connections, influence your target audience and strengthen the brand image of small scale business solution.

Time Really Matters

It is difficult to identify the correct time to hit the market reeling under several ups and downs. But being difficult does not mean impossible! It needs intense research to find the right time as timing is the crucial factor that matters. Launching the product when there is a fierce competition might be risky. But to make the product or services successful, it is important to enter the market on the right time.

Customize Sales Generation

Do your thing you are done by just building the sales strategies? The truth is far different! Sales process is as crucial as the idea of the business. Sales process needs to be repetitive to add scalability to the business. Prior to deciding sales strategies, some major considerations include trained and experienced team of sales professionals, complete market research, important resources management etc. Focusing on these aspects will help your business generate desired revenue.

Only progress and improvement in your business can take your small scale business to the next level. Prepare yourself as it’s the time to give your business a vigorous push!

Friday 17 July 2015

Top Time Management Tips For Smart Project Managers

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Time management is the biggest quality of a smart project manager making him worth the designation he holds. Be it a small firm or a huge enterprise, it is the management department that makes every department function smoothly. For making the project development process function seamlessly, taking proactive measures becomes crucial. It takes right efforts, dedication and time management to work on the project and deliver within the deadlines.

Aspects that Help Develop Better Time Management

A Plan

Planning is the first step that helps to figure out the method for project accomplishment. If you have built a plan, moving accordingly will save time as well as avoid the confusions that occurs in the ongoing process. The well defined milestones will help you focus on priorities. Building an efficient plan will help both the project managers and team members to define a clear project development process.

The To-Do List

When you have a clear idea about the things to do, it is advisable to note it down on a paper. Once you have noted down, modification made, can have a track record to avoid missing any of the crucial task. Once the to-do list is ready, it should be scheduled without any delay. Give every task the right amount of time depending on their intensities. It also helps you decide the direction you are heading is correct or it needs some alterations. If the project managers work accordingly, nothing can stop from achieving success. This list not only helps managers, offering corporate business solutions, to fulfill their tasks on time but also helps the overall business to perform ethically.

The Tasks

It’s time for some action now. Once the planning is over, now is the time to execute the processes mentioned in the to-do list. It is advisable to accomplish one task at a time. As every important task needs sufficient focus, taking only one task at a time will help you avoid the pitfalls in the plan. Complete the entire task before starting with the next task. This will make the development process clear and efficient. Project managers can increase their and development team’s productivity remarkably.

The Distractions

Distractions are the biggest obstacle that affects the timely delivery of any project. Although, eliminating all the distraction is next to impossible for the project managers as they need to get involved in every task, communicate with every team member and solve their doubts, but they can also work on it. It s can be minimized by training an individual, which would help you spare time for your work. Being social unnecessarily can eat up your valuable time that could have made the work productive. Build impeccable strategies to complete the project within the deadline. Reduce communication to a greater extent to avoid distractions affecting your project development process, negatively.

The Communication

Team communication takes majority of the time. Focus on time management in the development process. Rather than investing time in unimportant interactions, invest it in some productive tasks. Schedule the time of communication with team members and higher authorities depending on the communication needs. Right time management of time will let the project managers manage the development process flawlessly.

The Preparation

Prior to starting any task, take some time in preparing yourself to get the desired results. This will help you know the importance of success before you start. Even ask yourself that whether the accomplished task delivered the expected results? If yes, you started off in the correct direction, and if no, try harder to achieve the desired results.

Hope these tips will help the project managers, looking for time management tips and techniques for successful project development process. If you are a manager and head a team of technical professionals, what are you waiting for? Implement all these tips in your development strategy to get the best of your skills and talent.

Thursday 16 July 2015

How 3D Printing Revolutionizes Medical Industry

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Have you ever thought of the era, where printing of the human organs, cells, tissues etc. would be possible? If not, prepare yourself for the most amazing and unbelievable invention, 3D printers. It is recently introduced in the market for commercial application. Printers that print 3D cells, organs and more, isn’t it amazing? It might sound like science-fiction, but it is reality. Scientists and researchers are working upon this new technology trend and trying to bring the biggest revolution in the medical industry.

3D printers have already entered the healthcare industry with numerous benefits. Limbs, hearing aids and other fixtures can be developed using 3D printed objects. The technology earlier allowed creating simple human organs, but the simultaneous evolution made this invention capable of even creating complex human tissues.

What can be printed?

Artificial Skin

Artificial Skin

Humans can receive artificial skins thus curing the skin diseases, burns etc. 3D printer can even print the artificial skin. Intense skin surgeries can become simple and more effective. Earlier severe burns were treated using the skin from the unaffected part of the body. But treating more affected areas were difficult. Artificial skin made through 3D printing can be produced faster as compared to the natural skin, which is implanted on the wounds or injuries. It can successfully replicate the human cell structure of epidermis. Computerized and laser-based printing method will make skin implementation quick and safe.

Human Embryo Stem Cells

Human Embryo Stem Cells

Now, it is possible to print the embryo stem cells that were earlier developed in a laboratory. These printed tissues can be used for creating important organs like kidney, heart etc. Scientists are working towards supporting an unbelievable reality, which is expected to revolutionize the medical industry. This invention could even make the drug testing process simple and easy. Reforming, replacing, regenerating tissues or organs is the biggest benefit 3D printing of embryo stem cells will offer.

Broken Bones

Broken Bones

Like other organs, even bones can be printed using 3D printers. This method allows ordinary people to build the prototypes of working models of the human ideas. The artificial and printed bones with biometric structures, varied by shapes and sizes of the bones, can be easily implanted into the human body. Tissue regeneration, new tissue creation etc. has become very easy using this ultra-modern innovation.

Blood Vessels

Blood Vessels

Yes, it is now possible to print blood vessels. As per the research, printed blood vessels and cardiac tissue sheets have been invented that actually beats like a real heart. Sooner this technique will hit the market strengthening the medical science with this new innovation. Artificial blood cells will save lives taking the technology to the next level.

Cancer Treatment

Cancer is one of the deadly diseases that affect human body severely. With 3D printing technique, cells can be created and used in developing therapies. This innovative modern technique helps scientists to research on the tumor cells in a structured environment and use them to test the medicines and drugs. The invention of 3D printers and printing techniques will help reducing the effects of this deadly disease.

Damaged Heart

Damaged Heart

3D printer can also be used to create a heart patch that can repair a damaged human heart. It is nothing less than a miracle. It is a computerized printing technique based on laser. It was tested on rats earlier that showed remarkable progress in the functioning of the damaged hearts. Thus, it was then approved to use on human hearts. It could repair millions of human hearts that suffered massive attacks. Human lives can be saved with this artificial heart tissue implantation technique.

What is Yet to Come?

3D printer will bring an unbelievable revolution. It would change the face of the medical industry. Artificial organs for the disables, printed tissues for the needful patients, artificial bones for injured or person with disabilities and more, isn’t it seems that technology have geared up to serve the entire world with innovative techniques bringing this revolution. The future of the 3D printing is packed with several benefits for medical industry. Saving lives will be quick and easy. 3D printing is the future next!

Wednesday 15 July 2015

How Smart Entrepreneurs Manage Their Underperforming Employees

Entrepreneurs

Not every employee can adjust and perform remarkably well in the company culture. The bitter reality is every huge company has best employees along with the underperforming employees. It takes the management skills of business owners that decide whether to manage underperforming employees as assets or let the company experience a downfall?

Factors like behavior, poor skills etc. are not the managements concern this might be the thinking of many business owners, but will it not affect the business performance? Obviously, it will. Such situations can be managed tactically. Considering their approach, floundered employees can be brought back to work efficiently through the ways mentioned below.

Ways to Manage Underperforming Employees

1.Provide Accurate Feedback

Prior to start criticizing the employee for their poor performance, give them the accurate feedback. Speak to the employee before the situation goes out of control and it affects work quality. It is better to drive their focus to the work by refreshing approach rather than reinforcing for no cause. Planning in the correct direction might save the employees getting poor performance tag.

2.Listen to them

Communication being a 2-way process, leaders should listen to their employees before getting judgmental. Allow them to explain the reasons and their point of view. Find out why the employee has stopped working efficiently as compared to their earlier performance. Is there any other reason, which stops them to flaunt their best skills? Understanding the problem is the key to successfully boosting the performance of employees.

3.Show Care and Concern to your Employees

If the corporate business solution finds an issue affecting several employees, company owners should solve it smartly. If an individual feels, he or she is overburdened with work; this might be felt by other employees too. This situation can be resolved by calling a meeting with heads of the department to discuss the working culture. Ask them to define the areas they need to progress and the strategies that are expected to be implemented. Then you can understand the facts and problems being raised by the employees and find the solution. Make your employees feel valued by solving their issues.

4.Find the Factors that Distract

It is very hard to find what factors are responsible for the change in employees working pattern. Figure out what is causing less performance by getting to the root of the problem. But improper diagnoses can lead to certain issues. Increasing pressure, if the employee is not putting efforts, might not help if the ability is the concern. If he or she is not able to work for the given job profile than pressurizing might the worst scenario. There might be several reasons like co-workers, company rules, difficult tasks, frequent deadlines etc. which would encourage them, not to work. Find such factors to resolve them as soon as possible.

5.Find the Factors that Motivate them

Once you find the factors that distract your employees and you find ways to resolve the situation, its time to find the factors that motivates them to work. Find their long term goals like where they would like to see themselves in next three to five years.

Motivation is the only key that helps employees to retain their work efficiency. This can be done by identifying the people who need performance boost. This technique will even help business owners to find whether the employees are provided with the correct roles and responsibilities.

6.Refresh Performance Goals

Rather than implying your own working methods and strategies in your organization, taking the inputs from your employees like how would they like to achieve targets, learn new skills or how they would like to improve will surely yield mutual beneficial results. Invite and engage your customers in developing methods that would motivate them for better work performance. Also offer them rewards like bonus or increment to keep their spirit of working, high.

7.Follow Up

A good leader is expected to follow up with their employees to avoid any further issues. This can be done once the goals are decided and strategies are made and followed to achieve these goals. Leaders should show interest in their employees work and help them achieve their targets. This will boost their moral and ultimately it would help a companys culture to progress. This behavior of the business owner will make the employees feel important and helps them boost their work efficiency.

8.React if Underperformance Persists

If the employee continues to underperform, the head of the department should notify them about this. Leaders can even inform their employees about the intolerable attitude and behavior. Departmental heads can even take some actions given the company rules and regulations. Such employees may even influence other hard working employees to behave the way they are doing. This kind of employee behavior should not be tolerated and should be tackled as soon as possible.

If you own an enterprise with such employees, the above stated points might help you to manage underperforming employees in a better way.

Tuesday 14 July 2015

Top 5 Factors to Consider for Startup Success

Have you made up your mind to be your own boss? Is your business idea strong and powerful? If it is, there is no harm in moving ahead and implementing the idea. Improperly planned business might lead to a bad experience. You might be worried about several elements like funds, staff, contacts etc. to build effective strategies. This article would sail you smoothly through your new venture and would help your business get desired success.

Factors-to-Consider-for-Startup-Success

5 Golden Words that will Change your Perspective

1.Idea

Here idea is the business idea, which would decide the future of your enterprise. All the successful entrepreneurs were at your place one day. It was the idea that drove them towards success.

But, an impressive business idea alone cannot help. Several other factors also matters. Startups seeking long term functioning, needs to build powerful business model and follow it diligently.

2.Passion

It is the passion that converts an idea into an empire. It fuels confidence, which ultimately helps entrepreneurs to brush up their leadership quality. It makes business owners earn trust and respect of their employees.

Passion imparts excitement to work upon the idea to build organized startup solution. Passionate entrepreneurs even encourage and guide the team members to work enthusiastically.

3.Contacts

Developing contacts or building helpful relationship would help your business get popularity within short time period. But, how can you build helpful contacts? Well, building network is very simple; you just need to fix the area that you would require for better business performance.

Plan the strategies to build your network by attending professional conferences, collecting social media contacts, participating in forums etc. These are some of the methods to gather contacts, there are many more, depending on your business type. Build relationships that would help your business rather than obstructing your company growth.

4.Funds

Every startup needs a huge capital is just a myth. But this is equally true that a business without funding cannot survive for long. It is considered to be the soul of business. You can start your business with fewer funds too. The other alternatives include convincing the investors, business loans etc.

You can explore several options when the business financing is considered. Attaining funding requires presentation of your business idea in front of potential investors. Have faith and confidence to represent your business to make investors rely on your idea and help them set up your business effectively.

5.Plan

This is the biggest factor responsible for the success of a startup. If you have a better idea that can be relied upon for success, it’s time to make a business plan that includes information like business outline for forthcoming years.

Is it possible to check whether the direction you selected is correct? Yes, it is! Ask yourself certain questions like, which is the target audience, what products or services you’ll retail, how powerful the marketing strategies are etc. the answers to all these question will help you know the startup performance.

These are the top 5 factors that would help a startup to achieve success. Develop idea, make contacts, work upon it passionately, gather funds, and implement the plan; starting a business requires only these steps to be taken seriously to start generating revenue. If every step accomplished accurately, there is nothing that can stop you!

Monday 13 July 2015

Prevent Your Startup from These Disasters!

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Any startup meeting a disaster is something not actually expected. It often strikes unknowingly and unexpectedly. Just like any natural calamity, it affects the startup business most miserably. It’s painful when it happens, but it is the time when any entrepreneur need to think what went wrong that could have been avoided first hand. Having a backup plan ready before hand is the most important solutions any startup should be equipped with.

Majority of the business disasters are preventable if some preventive measures have been taken up at the right time. In addition, there are several effective and affordable business startup solutions to deploy that can help you achieve your desired objective. Let’s have an insight what those disasters are and the respective preventive measures!

Disaster 1: Stealing Other’s Creativity

Stealing Other’s Creativity

What if you try the above explained point with other’s idea or creativity without their authorization? This would affect your startup badly as it can accuse of breaching copyright of someone else. This could be the disaster of your life earning you bad publicity before you start the business and leverage the profits.

No entrepreneur would do this purposely, majority of the times, it is done unknowingly. It may happen that, you choose a name but it is already used by other company’s brand, though it was just a mistake while market research, but it could take your startup towards the dead end. Spend more time in market research to initiate the unique approach that can prevent your business meeting such disaster.

Disaster 2: Your Creativity is Stolen

You might be very creative, but what if your creativity is being copied before you use it productively? It’s a serious situation to think over! If you have an idea of the business and in cease to speed up the process you forget to follow the trademark process, you might face severe repercussions. You might have disclosed it before your partner or friends without a non-disclosure policy. This scenario would lead to such situation. Anyone can steal your product design or the whole business idea. Your competitors might even sell it to the other interested companies under their name and copyright. And this is how your business idea will no more be solely yours.

Analyzing the market completely to brush-up an idea is a good method. Don’t let your excitement rush in before the completion of traditional trademarking process, which gives your business a brand identity and prevents your business from getting copied.

Disaster 3: Improper Fund Planning

Improper Fund Planning

Prior to stepping into the market, pre-planning is mandatory. Business idea, marketing strategies, fund required are the crucial factors that needs severe consideration. Out of which, fund is the biggest aspect that keeps your business run flawlessly. The improper fund planning might affect the business performance, but this disaster is controllable.

Some sudden developments in the business might shake your business fund planning completely. While some situations might arise due to improper planning while building business strategies. You will not be able to pay your employees or important bills in such case. Monitor the startup’s expenditures carefully and ensure that you have fool proof plan to secure funds for your business from various resources. The enterprise functioning might go haywire, just because the planning, failed.

Disaster 4: Lack of Entrepreneurial Skills

If you think a startup just needs strategies, fund, and manpower, you are wrong. You need entrepreneurial skills to organize and manage the business. Not every runner wins the race, the same way, not every tech startup gets desired success. Business heads having both technical and marketing skills can take their startups to the next level easily, but those lacking either of the skills, find it difficult to run the business as they need to rely on their employees crucial decisions.

Entrepreneurs lacking entrepreneurial skills can degrade the business performance. Thus getting the complete knowledge about the business and the market trends would help the fresh entrepreneurs to take the company to a long journey.

Take action before such disasters affect your startup company. With just few preventive measures, you can secure your endeavor to move towards success. You can never guarantee success, but you can try up to an extent, which would protect your startup company from getting horrifying results.

Friday 10 July 2015

Hidden Secrets Behind Every Successful Email Template Design

It’s high time in the marketing field to sustain in the furious competition. Email newsletters, may not be the newest method to target the audience, but it is definitely a crucial aspects that affects your brand identity. Email newsletters are used to promote your products and get buyers, visit your website. It can also be taken as the first impression of your business on your customers. So it has to be eye-catchy and convincing at the first glance, it is not, your email marketing campaign will become the biggest nightmare.

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Are you thinking that only the design matters? No, even the content should have the quality to explain the objective of the newsletter. The decision, whether to close or whether to read the email newsletter is decided in the first five seconds. Can your email newsletter pass the 5 second test? If yes, congratulations and if now, get ready to make your email newsletters worth reading. Creative subject lines and attractive template design makes your emails noticeable.

This article will help your emails to stand out in the receiver’s inbox, which will ultimately increase the conversion rate.

Let’s get started with goal setting and rest aspects will follow it!

Set your Goals

First of all, if you have included email marketing as the part of your marketing campaign, set a goal. Decide, with what aim your company is willing to implement email marketing campaign. Is it for spreading awareness about the achievements, product promotion or whatsoever? Once the objectives are set and the target market is decided, now is the time to start the brainstorming.

Define and frame your idea creatively. It should be striking. Take help from team of sales and marketing professional to understand the latest email design trends. It should reflect your business personality, vision and approach. Collect the essential information like the innovative idea, attractive email design and quality content to build a newsletter that would simply make your readers fall in love with.

Wake your Audience Up

Time to give your audience something out of the box, but just the catchy subject lines is not enough. Nowadays personalized professional emails are trending. Who would not like to be addressed by their names in the business emails? For instance, “Hi Jack” sounds more convincing than just a simple “Hi or Hello” in the email content. With this practice, lead generation can be made easy. This method will help you build a strong and reliable relationship with your customers making your email marketing campaign successful.

Visuals Impact More

Try something different from the traditional email newsletter design format. Following the same pattern like every company does while creating template design is not compulsory. Cross the benchmark by staying away from the linear layout. Try new colors, designs etc. and leave a visual impact on your readers. Make them smile; make them feel valuable, by offering out of the box email newsletter. Do not forget to add relevant and relative content to the email design you built. Seeding the right approach will make the campaign effective.

Golden Rules for Email Template Design

1.Keep the files clean and tidy

We create two different groups in Photoshop files i.e. text and image. This way, developers get a clear idea when different elements are used together. If a PNG is used, it can be inserted into a different file while the text is inserted into the text file.

2.Keep the Design Consistent

To make the email newsletters look consistent, after you finish designing the newsletter, always create a new layer below the text to impose new elements, so that design does not look as if the text and images are overlapped.

3.Give Space to Text

Add the content in a clear manner; don’t let the important line break. Give space to the text to expand on either of the sides.

4.Add GIFs

Adding GIF to your email template design will make it attractive. It will allow your readers to leverage a delightful experience while reading the newsletter.

5.Keep the Design Horizontal

If you are using multiple columns of text, then keep the design horizontal. I make the debugging simple and easy.

Make your emails design template unique and creative to increase the chances of it getting recognized.

Thursday 9 July 2015

Customer Behavior - What does it Actually Teach?

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Customers' online behavior matters to the overall business of any enterprise. There are several factors impacting the overall business performance and customer behavior is one of the most vital one. Be it an online or an offline business, buying decision depends on customer behavior. To study purchase decision, modern businesses conduct several surveys, which helps them design unbeatable marketing strategies in harmony with customer behavior. It is observed that customers avoid thinking much while buying products of lesser value. Market analysts research the market to find the factual data that would help building strategies to take business to the next level.

Let us learn about the customer behavior that can give a clear view about how a customer makes buying decision?

Need Based Purchases

What makes customers decide to buy products or services? Until they are in need of such product they aren't going to buy it. This could be the obvious answer. Actually, this is not true for every customer. It is applicable to special type of buyer that does not buy without a cause. This could be the first step of the decision making process.

Extensive Online Research Based Purchases

Once the situation is created, product to be bought is already decided. Now the question is which is a good brand to rely upon? The answer to this question is, are your customers buying the product for the first time or are they simply changing the product for better functioning. If they are buying the product for the first time, they need to research the entire market. But if they are changing the product, they might be aware some brands when buying the previous product. Both the cases require thorough research.

Internet is the huge market to find and buy the products of their choice. The biggest advantage of using internet to shop is, they get variety in almost every factor like brands, product types, price, quality etc. Who would go to the brick and mortar store and buy the products when the product can reach your customers in just few clicks? Even the current scenario of eCommerce development industry states that technology is the future.

Evaluation of Purchase Alternatives

This can be the next step of the decision making process. Once the customers decide the product and its features, finding its alternative is the next task. Which brand should be selected that fulfills their requirement list? The selection of the brand also depends on the buyer's persona. Some myths and beliefs attached with some brands may change the buying decision.

Customers can check the products by going to the store rather than harboring negative approach towards any brand. Such beliefs might be true, but not 100%. So making up the buying decision by just considering the customers reviews might not always be the right decision. Researching the market and zeroing in to the most suitable products is the best bet.

Purchase Decision

This final step includes post evaluation process i.e. purchasing. The product which is decided by the intense market research cannot be a worthless. You may suggest the products that would suit your customers' requirements. But it is the customer who has to think about which product to buy. Product suggestion is just the part of the job of a sales person, he might not be aware about your customer's selection of choice.

Buyer can even change their decision or can even cancel the purchase if they find another better product to replace the existing choice. Even factors like long queue at the counter, complex payment system or impolite behavior of the employees might change the buyers' decision. A negative buying experience can also change the buying decision. To handle such buyer's' behavior, buying process needs to be simplified. An intense research on buying decision and shifting customer needs can help enterprise to plan their forthcoming marketing strategies.

Post Purchase Decision

The post purchase behavior includes the dissatisfaction with the products purchased. If it happens customers will not recommend the products or the brand to their friends or relatives, else they will recommend it to the people they know.

Manufacturers want to satisfy their buyers by making the product in accordance with the buyer's choice and requirements. But still, if you fail, you need to work harder and conduct more intense online customer survey. Only the customized products and quality service will assure the post buying behavior to impact the business positively.

Conclusion

The process of making buying decision includes all the steps explained above. You can actually learn about how buyers make decisions about what, how and when to buy the products. This study is driven by the buyer's' psychology.

To build the most powerful and effective marketing strategies to drive your customers to make purchases, studying their buying psychology is crucial. Buyers' online behavior is just the part of it!

Tuesday 7 July 2015

Find out Why Magento Solr Extension is Super Hit among Clients

Isn’t it great that your customers’ valuable time will be saved in searching the products they are looking for? With advanced search option, you can actually avoid annoying your customers. Allow them to search the products by setting several filters like colors, size, price etc. This is what our clients did to make their customers happy by offering great shopping experience.

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Let’s have an insight into what our happy clients have to say on this:

1.Company:- Essential Aids

Excellent service

“The staff at Biztechcon were excellent. They were responsive to my queries and maintained dialogue despite some teething problems and customization work required on the extension. In the end it worked well, so we’re very happy.”

Our client, Essential Aids felt our staff is helpful, and we actually are!

2.Company:- Bike Mania

Excellent Search

“We’ve been working with BizTech Consultancy for a while now and every project has been smooth and quick. They are professional, friendly and easy to work with.

This is a product that works and is fast and trouble free. This developer listened to what we had to say and implemented it quickly.

Our customers are now able to find products 10x better than the built in search. I definitely recommend this search extension and the developer. We’ve since used them for other projects.”

Our client, Bike Mania recommends Magento Advance Search with Solr extension! It has helped their storefront to offer better customer experience.

3.Company:- Home Furnishings UK

Solr- Well Worth It

“I had been having problems for several months with my Magento sites slowing and freezing and tried several options and I must admit, several developers. Magento as we know is a huge resource user and with its built in re-indexer, it can be painful using this platform to say the least.

However the Solr extension solved my problems literally overnight and have had no issues with my clients from that day onwards. Not the cheapest extension on the market but you only get what you pay for.

The site owners are happy and the customers can view and browse the site without problems.

The support was first class so all in all, credit where credits due.”

Our client, Home Furnishing UK is able to provide their customers, speedy search option discarding traditional method to display the products in their Magento website. Now their customers are quite happy and satisfied.

With all the above mentioned feedbacks, our team of professional developers is geared up for enhancements. Reliability is our priority and customer satisfaction is our forte!

Monday 6 July 2015

Magento ERP Integration – Boon for A Los Angeles School Management

ERP system stands for Enterprise Resource Planning, although its full name does not explain this system fully. It is in fact a fusion of various business functions in one complete system to organize processes and information across the whole organization. It offers some level of synchronized automation and reporting. It helps all the department of a business to expedite the process more accurately.

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Why ERP

It offers some degree of synchronized automation and reporting. It helps all the department of a business to expedite the process more accurately. Common features include a dashboard or portal to allow employees to easily understand the business’ performance on core metrics.

The primary benefit of this solution is having a shared database that supports various functions used by different business units. It helps different staff members of various departments like accounting, HR, sales, to rely on the same information for their specific needs.

With an ERP solution, employees would have access to accurate business intelligence that helps them make better decisions faster. In addition, it also helps in eliminating redundant processes, thus dramatically reducing the cost of conducting business.

How ERP Helped In School Management

We, at Biztech, have completed one such project for one of our client, running a school El Camino Real Charter High School in Los Angeles, California. Education is one of the major industries growing exponentially. With the growing need of technology based tools for automation, enterprise resource planning solution is the best fit, given its business needs. All the school functions can be automated offering faster school processing. Here are some major modules that we integrated with the school system to run the school efficiently!

1.School Management System (ERP)

We created an ERP portal through which the entire management of school i.e. teacher, student, inventory, HR, vendors, projects, textbooks and any other aspects were organized and managed. This portal had a customized dashboard through which all the above activities can be easily and efficiently managed by the authorities who can offer access to various department and entities as per the need. This system also provided multiple necessary and vital reports including MIS based on critical business metrics.

2.Online Teachers Store Management

We developed a teacher’s portal using which teachers could access and order various office supplies and other important records. Using this module the teachers can track the availability of various articles required in school, and also can update their stationery needs, their expenses, payroll, salary, periods, office supplies and host of others. This system had a user interface through which teachers can update their needs and also place order for the required articles online. Be it stationary, furniture, technology or office supplies. They can have access to all the required products online.

3.Online Student Store Management

Similarly we also developed a portal for students. Using which, students can also manage their requirements whether it is academics, career or sports. This portal can also be used by the parents of the students, on their behalf. Through this interface student can get their textbooks, sports accessories, exam details or can know about the events that are scheduled to be organized. It’s entirely dedicated to students to fulfill their academic needs online.

4.Magento and OpenERP Integration

To get the most out of these technologies and systems we integrated magento and OpenERP that helped the school to access the sale and purchase data from their ERP dashboard without shifting to specific stores or teacher and students. Be it sale of study material or other articles or purchase of school equipments/furniture, all can be accessed from a single terminal. All vendors, students, teachers and other relevant data can be available within one centralized interface that helped school to organize their several regular activities smoothly and effortlessly.

So, does it really worth? Of course! Being ERP solution provider, we have created a full-fledged project having all the above modules to run our client’s school successfully. For offering such a school management solution to an education system of such repute, we deployed two giant platforms!

1.Odoo Solution
2.Magento Solution

Both the platforms helped us deliver the desired results!

If you are running a school and finding it tough to manage the day-to-day functioning, it’s time now to shift to customized ERP solution. It will not only help you simplify your everyday task but it will also prove to be a rich repository of business intelligence that can help you redefine and delineate your future business strategies.

Saturday 4 July 2015

iOS 8.4 – The Music Update is Set to Rock!

The biggest technology giant Apple has just rolled out its iOS version update i.e. iOS 8.4. It was 30 June, 8 am when the Apple fans, waiting for the biggest music update were served with this new version. Apple has revamped its free music app with this new version. Even the exclusive Beats 1 radio station has started streaming across the globe, as expected!

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Well, the launch time was little different than the usual as Apple launches its updates at 10am generally. This time the update has seeded at 8 am, which is bit surprising!

Here we have mentioned a schedule, which was planned by Apple to launch its newer version update.

iOS 8.4 Launch Time (24 hours format) in United States of America

  • West Coast – 8.00

iOS 8.4 Launch Time (24 hour format) in other Countries

  • London – 16.00
  • Moscow – 18.00
  • New Delhi – 20:30
  • Shanghai – 23.00
  • Tokyo – 00.00
  • Melbourne – 1.00
  • Auckland – 3.00

As there are many countries, it is not possible to display the whole schedule in this article. But that doesn’t mean only the countries mentioned here have gotten the version update.

The newer feature of Beats 1 radio station has started streaming at 9am.

Apple fans can enjoy the new music service for free for the first three months, and then the subscription will cost $9.99 (£6) per month.

All the current users of iTunes Match music service can directly use this feature. This new streaming service will allow using all the features of iTunes Match.

It is announced by the sources that the new iOS app incorporates music library supporting around 100,000 songs, which is four times the current songs limit. But the bad news is: this update will be offered with the release of iOS 9, which is yet to hit the market. For now, the songs limit would be the same as usual i.e. 25,000.

Get ready to groove on the fresh and delightful music feeling through iOS 8.4 version update!