Are you seeking business process improvements? Are you just not sure how to improve your business process workflow? Are you a small business owner struggling with all these new technologies and just not sure which one works for you?
If you are looking for success through the use of the internet and the current voice technologies, then as a business owner you owe it to yourself to make yourself profitable with the many readily available, emerging technology tools. Years ago, these tools were only available to large business and in some case were shrunk or made t fit for medium business, but seldom for small business and definitely not for a single person business.
If you work your way through the marketing and industry hype and really focus on the basics, there are four key capabilities or technologies that drive your day to day business operation. They are the internet, office, voice and CRM technologies. If you can get a lock on these four capabilities then you must exploit them for maximum profitability to service your customer better. The goal is that IOVC technologies must not be anti-productive to the way your business works today. IOVC technologies should be complimentary and enhance the business processes you manage daily.
Examining IOVC technologies in a little more depth, we can start to understand the real impact upon your business and personal life.
The Internet - The internet is bigger then a website, it is a community just as large if not larger then your neighborhood or city you live in. Because you can not touch and feel the internet, most small business owners become bewildered because of the sheer size of the internet. We should not fear it because at one time the world seem flat until that thought process was changed. Now with the internet, there are many marketers who believe they can conquer the internet. They now use terms like VRE for virtual real estate and they understand the simple definition of the internet; it’s a group of people walking down a digital avenue looking for your products ad service. The group that wants your product is the group you need to capture to buy your services. With this definition you can not afford to ignore it anymore.
Office Operations - When it comes to your office operations, your business is driven by your current systems and applications. Regardless of the business size, large business or a small business, your office operations are usually driven by standalone software driven applications. These applications have communications technology that coordinate well with their own vendor and support technologies but rarely, do they communicate across vendor, product lines. This means you the business owner have many office tools assaulting your senses for attention each and every day. This mania for attention spills down into your people who become forced to work in silos, become addicted to working overtime based on the way your standalone applications and computer systems have been installed and evolved over time.
Telephone Services - With voice service, many people are beginning to at least hear a lot about VOIP (Voice over IP), or internet phone service. Some call it Internet Telephony. This is a testament to how fast it is growing. Just a few years ago VOIP was still a very unreliable unknown. It is now a term that has invaded many businesses and households. While it is a better replacement for traditional phone service, most folks are still not fully aware of all the unique qualities that separate it from traditional phone service. We will go into this more in part two but for now, understand it is much more then a service that lets people talk. Voice is a voice to data transformation technology, and this data is very powerful when it follows you around. A small business cannot afford to ignore the benefits of this expense reducing and business enhancing service.
Customer Relationship Management - Finally, most business owners understand that the key to creating an excellent customer relationship is the management of the interface between the customer and their point of contact within the organization. Too often processes which suit the business are not customer-friendly, however much they suit the internal needs of the office operations of years gone by. Your customers want service; your team wants to service your customer in the best way possible. You as the business owner grew the business interacting with your customers, so you know continued business success requires a very flexible and profit producing customer relationship strategy. This is the point where sales and service take place. Your customer relations ship strategy and service alone drives the current business and all future interactions with in your company. This has to become a very organized and a very timely service.
To gain the benefit of these technologies, a business owner needs an integrated solution that takes these capabilities and makes sure they meet your needs. With an integrated IOVC technology solution, your business processes are synchronized from initial point of customer contact all the way through your day to day operations right up to product delivery.
The overall result is your days become easier, your team becomes more productive, your customer becomes happier and your business becomes more profitable.
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Gregory Burrus is a former Director of a Fortune 500 Telecommunications company and currently consults for many telecom and operational support system vendors. When not contracting Gregory Burrus provides small business solutions as an internet, office technology consultant and business coach. Greg helps people succeed in the use of integrated communications technology.
Greg Burrus is Founder of http://www.techoss.com/ and the associated coaching service http://www.successismandatory.com/. To obtain a special report on the very compelling benefits of how Emerging IOVC Communications Technologies can help your business within your industry, sign up for our newsletter.
