Everyone Should Know About Advantages And Disadvantages Of Open Source Crm System

A CRM or customer relationship management system facilitates developing and upholding meaningful relationships with the customer. Every company whether big or small can benefit from a well developed CRM system. But quite often the prohibitive cost of enterprise grade CRM systems (e.g. Salesforce.com) takes them beyond the reach of majority of the organizations as only a handful of companies with deep pockets can afford such advanced, feature rich systems.

But the scenario started changing with the launch of SugarCRM, the first major open source CRM system. SugarCRM democratized the CRM market. Even in its earliest versions Sugar was a decent system with useful features and freely available code. What this meant was you can have your own CRM system with as many users as you want and you can customize the system to suit whatever your organizational requirement was. The software was free, you just had to invest in the server infrastructure. But it was a one time investment and totally worth it considering the business benefits. Eventually Sugar ceased to be an open source software, but what it started was quickly followed by other CRM developers and now after more than a decade we have almost a dozen good open source CRMs to choose from.

But is free software the only reason why you should go for open source CRM software. And what’s the flipside? What compromises you will have to make with open source CRM. Here is a brief overview of the advantages and disadvantages of open source CRM software, so when you do decide to go for one, you take an informed decision.

Advantages of Open Source CRM

Free of Cost

The foremost reason why everyone considers opting for open source CRM is because, generally speaking, its free. Off course not all open software are free, but most CRM systems are. The source code is free which can be modified according to the requirements. New versions are offered time to time that too at no extra cost. The developer might charge some additional money for expert support but you can always save some money by modifying the codes yourself and saving on the license charges. It has been estimated that open source software saves around $60 billion a year for all businesses combined.

Customization

Anything that is customizable according to one’s requirements is a good thing. Especially a CRM software, because CRM deals with managing customers and customer management differs vastly from industry to industry. So it is very difficult to build a one-size-fits-all CRM software, unless you stuff it with all the features all industries will ever need. The power to customize makes open source CRM among the most sought-after software. The source code can be altered to whatever the user needs it to be. They need not have to deal with (and pay for) loads of irrelevant features which they will never use. And if can’t customize yourself you can always hire CRM customization services.

No ‘stuck-up’

Usually when you opt for paid CRMs, not only do you have to pay an initial cost, but need to commit to the license for at least a number of months. Open source CRM does not need that kind of commitment. You can use it till whenever it is suitable to you and drop it if it’s not working any longer.

Easy Management

Open source CRM is easy to manage and can be installed at multiple locations according to your requirements. You don’t need to keep a count or monitor it for license issues. You can keep as many instances of the software as you want without any monetary repercussions.

Continuous Improvements

Another great reason to go for open source CRM is the developer community behind it. Everyone has access to the source code so it is possible for anyone to fix bugs, if any, and add new features using collective experience. As a result the software keeps getting better and better as time passes by.

Resources

You do not need to exploit as much resources for the implementation of the system as is required in the traditional software(s). Your staff can explore the existing codes to understand the product better and can suggest various improvements which might suit your organization best.

So, these were some of the advantages of open source CRM which attracts you to consider it. But that’s not all. Every coin has two sides. Before deciding on anything, you need to be equipped with both its pros and cons. Now talking about disadvantages, let’s see why opting for an open source CRM needs consideration:

Disadvantages of Open Source CRM

Maintenance

Installing open source CRM can be easy, but CRM support and maintenance is not. The proper up keeping of open source CRM requires a lot of technical expertise. Little thought is provided to develop the user interface so they aren’t that user-friendly. You will need consultants and expertise to choose and customize the right CRM for you. The bugs can be resolved but generally take a lot of time for the same.

No central support system

There is no one place where you can go with the issues you are facing regarding your open source CRM. All of your solutions or support is going to be from various forums (community of users) which aren’t always accurate and can take a lot of time to respond to your queries. The other way is to get expert support which again adds to your expenses.

Limited Functionality

Open source CRM can almost cater to all the basic needs of your business, but it might not suit your business if you are looking for full fledged CRM solution. The functionality of open source CRM is limited to an extent and comes with its own shortcomings. However with additional investment you can either hire CRM developers to add new features or get readymade plugins for your unique requirements.

Not entirely free

Though it may seem to be, open source CRM is not entirely free. There are many hidden costs which keep on showing up. The source code is available to all but to alter the code according to your own requirements, you will have to incur developer costs and continuous upkeep costs. To run the CRM system you will need to invest in server and firewall infrastructure which may cost a huge amount of money.

Conclusion

Even with its limitations open source CRM is still preferred by many businesses to enhance their relationship with customers. Most certainly, open source software is one of the major trends in the software industry and it’s not for nothing. In spite of all arguments, to opt for it or not is entirely a decision based on the requirements of a business or entity. Therefore, if you are looking forward to decide on open source CRM for your organization, you must study all its advantages and disadvantages carefully to see if the advantages are more profitable to you or the limitations are bound to bring in more loses.

Why Have A Mobile Apps Reducing Time Spent On Mobile Web?

Smartphones are handy, easy to use and carry along, and can now perform most of the major functions which earlier only personal computers and laptops could offer. That’s the every reason people are spending more time using their cell phones. What do they do all the time glued to their phones? It has been found that now people are spending more and more time using mobile apps rather than the web, when using their mobile phones. Is it any wonder that mobile app development is one of the hottest professions around?

App Surfing Replacing Web Surfing

Studies have found that mobile consumers spend around 85% of their mobile time on mobile apps. Techcrunch.com states that out of this time, 84% is spent on just five apps downloaded from the app store. These top five apps vary from person to person depending on their interests whether it is gaming, social media, instant messaging, or e-commerce. Facebook, Gmail, Amazon, Twitter, Whats app, Apple, are a few among the applications which are used most by people all over.

With an estimate of 66% of the digital time being spent on mobile devices, and a major part of it being spent on mobile apps, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that “the app has become the dominant form of media in our time”, as stated by arc.applause.com. And it’s not forecasted to stop anytime soon. The percentage of app users is growing significantly year by year.

Why Mobile Apps Are Becoming Dominant

Ease of Use

Ease of use is one of the key reasons why apps have become so popular. With smaller screens, it’s much easier to use these apps specially designed for mobile use rather than to surf the web even with responsive websites dominating today’s web. Mobile applications has everything sorted out within the mobile screen with important icons placed smartly while surfing the web need zooming in efforts, not to forget the opening and closing of so many pages to do a small task.

Ease of Task Continuity

Other than that, there’s something more important that drives users to mobile applications. When they are using these apps, everything is sorted out in their devices. They can look at it and continue anytime; while saving of web pages is an obscure task. For example, if a customer is going through an ecommerce app and they like something they don’t want to buy immediately, they can just save it for later. As they are always logged in there, next time they open the app, they can easily reach the saved product and order it according to convenience. The same task on a web browser takes many efforts. You need to open the web page of the particular e-commerce, log in, and save, and again follow the same to look into your saved items.

Convenience and Connectivity

The increasing usage of apps is not only reducing the time spent on mobile web but on desktops as well. As people like to do everything on the go, they rarely leave something to be done on desktops except their official work.

The availability of internet is another issue that’s promoting the increased usage of mobile applications. While people have working internet all the time on their mobile phones, they consider it cumbersome to connect their PCs to a network. Also, the applications load much faster than web pages. From a teenagers to retired old men, everyone possesses a smartphone these days. But the same can’t be said for desktops or laptops. These are limited to only those who need it for professional/educational purposes.

To Conclude

From all the above reasons and statistics it can be concluded rightly that digital usage is gradually moving towards the use of mobile apps. It seems to be the need of the hour for businesses based online to buckle up and plunge into the app market to make sure their businesses do not suffer given the escalating trend of mobile applications.

7 Facts Everyone Should Know About Why Web Designers Are And Will Always Be In Demand

Web designing as a profession, has got a significant boost in the recent years, thanks to the explosion in the number of websites that are getting launched everyday, globally. But like all demands, will the demand for web designers will also subside. Maybe, someday. But not anytime soon. And even if the demand subsides and web designing isn’t a cool profession anymore, there will always be demand for quality and experienced web designers and web designing companies. Because new websites (or something similar) will always be build for new businesses.

Let’s have a quick look at the top 7 reasons why web designers are currently in demand and will always be so in the future.

1. Ever Expanding Industry

Looking at the statistics of the past few years, it can be easily concluded that mostly every industry has an online interface in the present era. Industries are as active online as they were in brick and mortar a few years back. When everyone one is moving towards a web interface, it is inevitable that the websites need to be designed by experts for unavoidable reasons. Hence the requirement for web designers can be forecasted to be growing day by day.

2. Web Knowledge Development

Web designers are designing web graphics and are actively developing strategies for web based advertisements and sales expansion for organizations. Since web designers have a close association and understanding of working of the web based systems, they are always in demand, providing expert consultation towards developing and providing solutions to web based business models. For example, the free online education platforms like Khan Academy who is now in partnership with Tata for developing an online learning interface based on NCERT for Indian students or Coursera collaborating with various Universities of international fame to launch their online courses.

3. Innovation and Technology

New web page making softwares like Page Cloud, wix and the likes where creating a web page is as easy as editing a picture on Photoshop. For long web designing has been a domain of experts who have in-depth knowledge of computer languages, a situation very similar to primitive computers where knowledge of command language to operate them was necessary. However, a GUI helped people without technical knowledge of computer languages become good computer users where backend programmes were written so that computer could understand commands in English language inputs.

Same thing is happening with web designing. Programmes are being written to make the user interface simpler for web designers without knowledge of computer languages, keeping in mind that huge influx of demand in this area with ever expanding web service users. It would also lead to better individual control over their web properties.

4. Esthetic Web Pages for attracting Customers

Better looking web pages attract more customers. If the web content is relevant along with creative web graphics design, it generates customer loyalty. Today glamorous web pages are in fashion and are needed to generate competitive advantage over hoards of similar websites over the internet. It helps websites to stand out from the clutter of hundreds of similar pages. So web esthetics today is a big selling point for better performing web designers.

5. Huge Increase in Web Based Entrepreneurial Ventures

Increase of entrepreneurs from non-IT background who are developing more and more of web based organizations or product selling models. For example, Amazon, which was initially a virtual organization without any brick and mortar outlets. The whole business model is based on neatly designed websites and apps by web designers and the maximum business conversion capability of these organizations depends on the glitch free running of these web pages and web applications along with the rate of web user penetration for the organization. Now we have virtual organizations and other hybrid models that heavily depend on their web base services and applications like ebay, shaadi.com, alibaba.com, flipkart .com, the aviation industry, continuing to a very long and exhaustive list. And it is not going to stop anytime soon. So, there will always be demand for web-designers.

6. Government Interest

Government is interested in generating web based information systems for hassle free transactions, payment of various bills, fairer disbursements of government aids to people who actually are entitled to such claim like those who belong to the BPL category claiming cooking gas subsidies, eliminate middlemen as in IRCTC, Passport, DL etc. having a central data source as in ADHAR will ensure fairer government disbursements. Making web based applications like Income tax payment portal, online cooking gas booking portal, online banking portal, telephone bill payment portal etc. All such endeavors would require more and more web developers for building and maintaining such web pages and applications for smooth functioning of various government departments and private service providing companies. Online data excavation would also be a time and labor saving process that in many cases would lead to prompt action of the legal and justice system of the country. Therefore, to manage all this at a large scale, the demand for web-designers will consistently be on rise.

7. Research & Development

More research and development investments in multidisciplinary aspect of web designing is needed to prevent unscrupulous people from developing fishing websites, hackers and other frauds since today we all bank online. Web developers are the people who are constantly working in this area and have the qualities to become champions for smooth functioning of day to day working of companies and government agencies through constant firewalling and online protection through updating of virus definitions and protection of online data. Web developers and designers, thus, seem to be moving towards a bright job future with the big bang of online data.

6 Tips To Grow Your Email Marketing To Boost Ecommerce Sales

The success rate of an ecommerce business depends largely on the marketing techniques being practiced by the company. Of all the popular marketing techniques, email marketing has often been found to be the second most effective marketing channel for e-commerce businesses. But this piece of information is not enough for the implementation of an effective email marketing strategy. It’s been more than two decades that we have the option of e-mailing but today we can personalize it to a significant scale. And it totally depends on how well we are utilizing this leverage and convert the humble email into a powerful marketing weapon.

Let’s have a brief look at the most effective ways in which you can use email marketing to boost ecommerce sales.

1. Customer Relationship Management

Though customer relationship is a much broader term, what we really need to study for efficient email marketing is the customer lifecycle or the different stages in which the customer is in relationship with the seller. Sending out generic emails to all customers barely does the trick. So, you have to personalize the mails according to their life cycle.

A. Abandoned Carts

Potential customers need an extra bit of attention from your end. There are probabilities that a significant part of these customers will abandon the carts after selecting the products of their choice. At this point, you are to study the pattern of abandonment and take steps accordingly. Within half an hour of the abandonment of a cart, a mail should reach them assuring that you are providing quality customer service. The e-mail should be prompting enough to urge them to revert back with their grievances. Even if there is no check out, you would know the shortcomings that led the customer to back out and take measures to fix it at the earliest. You should try at least 2-3 e-mails at appropriate time intervals to convert the abandoned carts into customers.

B. New Customers

An ecommerce business should immediately follow up with a new customer. A welcome mail is mandatory. You should also provide the links of social media portals where they can stay connected with you and get updates about new products and offers. One thing which is really important and should be included in the mail is the story of your business. That definitely helps in establishing a branding with the customer. Further, you can offer discounts for their next purchase and keep them updated about the products they might be interested in.

C. Existing Customers

There should an efficient e-mail campaign for the existing and returning customers. You can send promotion mails which also ask for a feedback and reflects how important their feedback is for you. For your regular customers, there should be a VIP campaign. Meaning, they should get a special treatment now and then. These can be the customers who purchased the most in the last month or have purchased three (or more) times. Let them know that they are one of your best customers and treat them with a discount or free shipping now and then.

D. Previous Customers

These are the customers who didn’t show any purchasing signs since a long time. You can try sending out a polite mail stating that they are missed or work on strategy e-mails to call them back. Study their purchase history and persuade them to check out the latest products which you have for them. You can also provide some incentives to call them back.

2. Reminders

You should always refer to your customer’s purchase list while customizing emails for them. For the products which need replenishments, you can send out reminders to your customers to stock their essentials. It can be beauty products like soap, shampoo, etc, or food essentials like oil, spices, and other home vitals. If someone has a purchase cycle of a month for such products, the e-commerce business should study the pattern and send a marketing e-mail when you can predict the supply might be coming to an end. The mail should be inviting and promoting similar products to the purchase history of the consumer.

3. Product Reviews

Provide incentives to your customers to reply to the feedback mails. Make sure to directly link it to the review section of the product bought by them. A product with reviews definitely gets more preference than the other with no reviews. So you can make your marketing emails a way to lure the customers to leave a review for the product they have purchased.

4. Customize Transactional Emails

The chances of opening a transactional e-mail are around 21% while it stands to only 3% for bulk promotional mails. Optimally utilize the information by promoting your products in the transactional mails. Whenever a customer opens a transactional email, there should be a catchy link that directs him to similar products on the website. You can also try showcasing some handpicked items in the mail, which might be alluring to the prospective customer.

5. E-mail Campaigns on Birthdays and Anniversaries

When a customer signs up as a member, maintain a database of the information about the important dates in their life. It can be their birthday, their spouse’s’ birthday, or their wedding anniversary. Make sure to provide some incentives to your customers on these particular dates. Send an e-mail a few days before along with the expiry date of the offer. You can be selective about the incentives; it can be a ‘free shipping’ thing or a certain percentage off on any particular products (that’s relevant to the specific buyer.)

6. Say no to ‘no-reply’ mails

Many of the e-commerce firms follow a pattern of automated mails where the customer cannot get back to the seller. That’s a strict no. You should always be open to customer enquiries and feedbacks. Keep this platform open and let your customer get in touch with you hassle free by sending the marketing emails from a personalized e-mail id where they can reply back.

The above are some of the basic things you can do to use your e-mail marketing to boost sales. Off course these will be effective only once you have taken care of all the ecommerce storefront development requirements and optimized your store for conversion. There are innumerable innovative ways in which you can call back your existing customers or allure some new ones. You just need to study the patterns and work a bit more when it comes to e-mails.