Category: Design

The sales cycle often confuses managers and executives alike. It is no wonder that most people depends upon enterprise resource planning solutions to handle all the data and to make contacts with leads, opportunities, customers and clients. Software programs like OpenERP are very important and crucial in managing the health of sales cycles and to optimize your sales cycle, you will need to use software programs like OpenERP. OpenERP is an open source enterprise resource planning software which has often been described as one of the best tools to drive sales and increase productivity. It is a well known fact that increased productivity also leads to increased profitability. How OpenERP Helps You Convert Leads into Sales Opportunities OpenERP is specifically designed to help you to convert your leads into opportunities. Leads are usually handled by the dozens but when a program identifies opportunities, they are usually contacted on a one-to-one basis so that negotiations can take place that result in sales. Opportunities can be connected to email gateways in OpenERP and each time an email is sent and the lead responds, they may be added to the list of opportunities. When it happens that a person is not responding to repeated sales emails, you may remove that person from the list of leads altogether. OpenERP is designed to help you choose whether you want to create a new partner or merge a contact with an existing partner. This allows you to know where a contact belongs. Once you know that a lead is certainly interested in what you are offering, you can mark them as opportunities in OpenERP. OpenERP Helps in Sales Organization If your sales organization is composed of several teams and individuals, you can make sure that OpenERP divides them according to certain criteria. This may include different products, different markets, certain demographics and also particular clients. Sales performance tracking can be done based on such reorganization which OpenERP helps you with. OpenERP and Defining Key Steps of Sales Cycle OpenERP allows you to create sales cycle that is unique to your company or organization. Each company works differently and thus OpenERP conveniently modifies itself based on how you prefer to work. OpenERP helps you to identify different stages and for each stage you can define certain criteria. Only when these criteria are met will OpenERP move to the next stage. For instance, you can define a stage as a territory which segments your opportunities. When interest is generated or when you know they are interested, you may move them up to the stage of ‘Qualified’. From there, you might want to move them up the ladder for ‘Sales Proposition’, where you can identify what the opportunity actually wants and if you can meet the demands of the client or customer. The next stage in OpenERP could be ‘negotiations’, which help you to know for sure if this opportunity will become a customer. Once you know that the opportunity has agreed to your sales proposition during negotiations, you can mark him or her as ‘Customer’. The next option would be to plan your next actions. These actions may be automated and OpenERP can also help you to plan your meetings and calls effectively. It all depends on timing and the right form of communication. OpenERP automates many of these procedures so that you do not need to spend a lot of time over it. Finally, you can get OpenERP to schedule and close dates. This will help you to know what is going on with certain clients and how best it is to move forward to increase revenue. Sales cycle differs from company to company and every organization is not the same. OpenERP helps you to define your goals, your plans and your targets so that sales organization can be automated to the maximum level possible. OpenERP ensures that automation is as non-intrusive and robotic as possible as it involves human actions and decisions as well. This is what sets OpenERP apart from the rest of the software programs. If you would like to know which ERP solution is the best for your company, do contact our professionals. There are no one-fit-for-all software programs that can help every company’s requirements but professional guidance will help you to choose and install the right software for your business.

There are many people who use open source software programs not only because they tend to be free at basic levels without any support, but also because of ethical reasons. With that in mind, OpenERP is one of the most popular enterprise resource planning software that is open source integrated. It was founded in 2005 by Fabienm Pinchaers and is a unique ecosystem that consists of several professionals who strive to make it one of the best ERP systems around. Today, let us take a look at how OpenERP can help you manage your ever increasing address book, and manage your contacts without getting carried away by too many programs that claim to do a lot of things. How OpenERP categorizes Your Contacts The key difference between OpenERP and other CRM and ERP tools is that it differentiates contacts between partners and contacts. A partner is a person or entity with whom you conduct business. It could be an employee, prospect or a customer. In other tools, a partner is usually referred to as an ‘account’. A contact is someone who works for a partner, and the contact is also the person you will need to contact if you need something to do be done from the side of the partner. Integration of Email and Boosting Retrieval of Information Related to Contacts The best feature of OpenERP is that it integrates email into your ERP in a big way. For instance, if you use an email gateway to receive and send emails, you probably will be using Outlook or something like Thunderbird. What you will need to do is that you have to register an email address for each contact so that the gateway catches all the incoming emails to the correct partner. This helps you to know what kind of communication has taken place between you and a partner (account) when you open the database. This is very crucial in understand certain aspects of communication, which may otherwise not be available in usual email threads. It removes a lot of ambiguities, which can affect your company in a negative manner. Categorizing and Classifying Partners When it comes to running a business successfully, you should be able to categorize all the accounts or partners that you have. All partners are usually not equal and some need certain requirements while others may need something else. Depending on what your partner requires, you can categorize them in OpenERP. Your address book will no longer have to be a haphazard collection of names, numbers, email addresses, and residential addresses. Instead, OpenERP allows you to categorize information based on which category a partner belongs to. In order to take a look at available partner categories, you need to go to the sales tab, click on ‘Configuration’, hit on the ‘Address Book’ panel and finally choose the ‘Partner Categories’ that is mentioned there. Of course, you can customize the categories the way you want to. This facility makes OpenERP superior to other ERP systems as it helps companies to manage contacts even when they run into hundreds of thousands. You can divide your partners according to their status. For instance, they could be your customer, prospect, supplier, distributor and so on. Base Contact Module Offers More Flexibility and Customization What makes OpenERP one of the best contact management software programs is that it offers the easiest way to customize the way you want to enter contact details. OpenERP also provides an alternative called ‘base_contact module’. The module allows users to manage contacts with even more flexibility than regular ERP systems. The software understands in a ‘smart’ way, who your partners are, if your partners are also your contacts, and if your contacts can sometimes be partners. All these complex relationships can easily be handled in OpenERP. When it comes to managing the address book, we should remember that it is very important to classify, categorize and input important information. It is equally important to store your data in the cloud so that information can be retrieved when necessary. We believe OpenERP can solve many existing problems related to contact management and that it is one of the best address management tools that an organization can use. If you would like to learn more about contact management and optimizing your address book with your existing ERP or would like to know more about other ERPs suitable for your business, do contact us.

Every company has a list of leads that it thinks will provide them with enough sales to increase profitability. However, several studies have noted that profitability is directly correlated with the kind of ERP you use. If you use an efficient enterprise resource planning system, it automatically helps you to generate more leads simply because your organization becomes more efficient and has enough time to hunt for leads and follow up using the same ERP’s contact management tools. With that in mind, we should consider OpenERP as one of the best tools to manage your leads. In this article, we shall take a look at how OpenERP can help you manage your leads and increase profitability. Who Are Your Leads and Why Are They So Important? If you would like to know what or who leads are, they can be described as contacts who are potential customers in the future. It is assumed that leads have an intrinsic motivation to buy your products or services. Thus, it is important for you to find out who your leads are and how best you can manage them. Also, a lead is someone with whom you still have not developed any relationship. Future sales opportunities can be realized when leads are managed effectively. Unfortunately, most leads are lost or buried in the canals of software programs where they are left forgotten indefinitely, and they never surface to the list of people-to-contact that your marketing and sales team often creates. Storing lead information is one of the most important components of managing leads. It is only when you store information related to your leads in a manner that it can be accessed easily, can your leads become customers. OpenERP allows you to store lead information and also help you to generate leads with the help of existing customers. How to Use OpenERP to Add Leads and Manage Them OpenERP allows you to create leads either manually or automatically. When someone sends an enquiry to your company’s generic email address, that person is assumed to be a lead and entered automatically into the list of leads. On the other hand, if someone lends you a business card at a party or an exhibition, you could manually enter their details into the list of leads. OpenERP can also help you to import CSV files from a given sector or region. These potential customers can then be contacted individually so that they are given special attention. Using OpenERP Email Programs to Contact Leads OpenERP also has email programs that help you to send mass emails to people who need further follow-up. You can also get OpenERP to create forms which can be filled up on your website by prospective leads and when they fill up and you think they are worthy enough for further efforts to be contacted, you list them under leads. Those who are in marketing and presales will often work with leads. Thus, for the success of any marketing campaign, it is important that your team uses important ERP tools, such as OpenERP. Using OpenERP to Convert Status of a Lead OpenERP is specifically designed to create, add and manage leads. It also converts your leads into customers especially if you have online stores or if your call centers process sales as well. All you need to do is click on the ‘Sales’ tab and then hit on ‘Configuration’. Once you do that, you will have to choose ‘Leads & Opportunities’ and click on ‘Stages’. Salesmen can use this button to change the status of a prospective contact to lead or to a customer. You may also create options wherein you can turn some of your leads into priority leads, so that the sales process can be hastened. Organizations and companies need to pay more attention to lead management than anything else. IN fact profitability of a company begins at recognizing the importance of looking for leads and then nurturing them. Once these leads are converted into customers, you can use ERP tools like OpenERP to provide customer service as well. If you need more information about how you could install an ERP system across your systems, do contact us. Our professionals will assist you in choosing the right software program for your business.

If you run an educational institution or a training institute, you will often know that students tend to be as elusive as they are omnipresent. They can be found easily but to get them to enroll in a course is as difficult as moving mountains. Only, you need to know who would be genuinely interested in your school or university and in the programs that you offer. So then, how exactly can we go ahead and make sure that students and apprentices are targeted easily so that profit is increased? One will have to use a customer relationship management tool that is specifically optimized for students and education. This goes a long way. Why Do Educational Institutions Require CRM Tools? Whether you are recruiting students for profit or whether it is to answer queries related to admission or to ensure that grades are allotted to the right student, a CRM tool always comes to rescue. Of all these tools, SugarCRM is one of the best and is widely used in education settings. There are several universities and colleges all over the world that use SugarCRM as the main software to understand students’ needs and to communicate with them, and also get profitable. Let us learn how SugarCRM helps education. Communicating with Prospective Students and the Journey of Recruiting them Universities and colleges deal with an enormous amount of competition. Students are well informed and they know that there are a number of universities waiting for them. This results in a situation where universities and colleges have to actually market enrolment programs as if they were products. Thus, students are often treated as customers more than young scholars. This competitive pressure has resulted in the formation of certain management strategies which includes using customer relationship management tools. These tools help universities and colleges to streamline internal processes and become productive. Secondly, they help universities and colleges to operate efficiently and cut costs. This is one of the reasons why universities and colleges often contact us with respect to CRM tools. The best CRM tool for universities and colleges is SugarCRM, according to a number of users. These organizations have to focus not only on students, but also on parents, alumni, donors and others who may be helpful in increasing the profits of the organization. How SugarCRM Helps in Managing an Educational Institution SugarCRM can be used for applications, filling up forms, maintain database about students who had expressed interest in a particular course, managing their reports, grades and feedback and even to assess their progress when they are in the university. It can be used to understand the market that is most amenable to your campaigns and also to focus on certain demographics. Contacting People Who Matter and Raising Funds Using SugarCRM Parents, who are major decision makers when it comes to education, can also be contacted with the help of SugarCRM. Their queries and concerns can be tackled and they could be encouraged to spend more on extra courses and frills. Once students graduate and leave the institution, they can be contacted each year for alumni association meetings and also to seek help for canvassing or for raising funds. Likewise, external donors can be contacted or communicated with, with the help of SugarCRM. SugarCRM is great software for educational institutions and will continue to boost revenue for such institutions. It needs to be seen how many universities will begin to start using CRM tools instead of old software programs that are outdated now. SugarCRM is being used across educational institutions increasingly. SIM University, Ottantaventi Formazione, ROC Eindhoven, Kalamazoo, The Catholic University of Lyon, GROUPE HEC and others have begun to use SugarCRM extensively. The future seems to be vested in using CRM tools like SugarCRM effectively in order to ensure increased profitability and margins. If you run educational institution and need assistance in choosing the right ERP or CRM, do not hesitate to call us up or contact us. Our professionals will be able to guide you and help you with the right tool for your educational institution. After all, students are some of the most valuable customers who will spend a significant duration of their lives in your institution. Ensuring that they are satisfied and happy is one of the reasons why you must invest in a CRM tool.

It is simply too much to expect that a call centre executive will be able to retrieve a lot of information from different programs in order to get the complete history of a client or customer who is waiting on the other end of the phone to get something resolved. If problems are not solved immediately and if information is not pulled up immediately, the client will get irrigated and may hang up or never do business with you. Thus, it is very crucial to ensure that the right customer relationship management system is used to resolve customers’ problems quickly and effectively. SugarCRM Is Great for Call Centers SugarCRM, which is a popular customer relationship management tool, is a great way to ensure that the call center works smoothly and efficiently. SugarCRM for call centers is the right way to approach the problem, especially when customers will usually not have a lot of patience. SugarCRM ensures that the calls are short, effective and the customer hangs up happily instead of with a frown. Let us try and understand how SugarCRM can help you to achieve the results you want in a world that is quickly being dominated by different kinds of CRM platforms. Call Centre Executives Can Perform Duties with Renewed Vigor SugarCRM is designed to ensure that call center executives do not waste time in retrieving information about the caller. In fact, it is a great platform for government agencies and companies to construct their call center applications and let their executives use a multi-channel desktop program that provides them with all the information that is necessary from a single app. It reduces time, increases efficiency and keeps the customer happy. Let us take a look at the various features of SugarCRM for call centers. Fast Agent Desktop This program helps customer service executives to get a 360 degree view of the customer’s concerns. All the information is available on one screen so that they do not have to toggle from one program to another. It provides with all the identification details and it will be easy for the executive to confirm the identity of the caller. This leads to increased customer satisfaction and quicker call resolution. B y allowing the executive to get all the information right on the desktop screen without wasting any time, SugarCRM increases productivity and reduces call duration. Lengthy calls can be avoided because information is available right on the screen. CTI Integration Computer Telephony integration (CTI) is very crucial in call centers. SugarCRM does this like a piece of cake and it will integrate your existing telephony program into its own so that a lot of confusion is eliminated. Most companies have their own CTI systems installed. SugarCRM usually helps them to integrate CRM into CTI so that call center executives do not have to waste time unnecessarily, when it comes to attending calls and resolving issues. Smarter Commerce Now that a lot of transactions take place online, many customers call up in order to ask about online transactions. SugarCRM helps executives to actually make sales when there is a call without any delay so that a prospective caller who could become a customer again is not wasted. No opportunity is wasted, when it comes to SugarCRM. Ecommerce is growing tremendously and it makes very good business sense to have call centers in place which can also conduct sales. This will help companies to increases sales and revenue, and they will be able to see better margins and profitability. Customer Support There is nothing more important than providing customer support in a call center, SugarCRM is specifically a customer relationship management tool and it helps call centers to provide customer support easily. It turns existing customers into repeat customers and also helps in locating new ones. It comes with several features such as Inbound Email, Knowledge Base, Self-Service Portal and Case Management. SugarCRM is one of the best CRM tools out there, and when it comes to call centers, it is certainly one of the most affordable and effective ones. If you would like to know which software suits your call center the best, please contact us so that we can help you choose and install the right CRM tool across your systems.

It is very important to keep your customers happy if you want to succeed in your business. However, as your business grows, it becomes impossible to keep track of customers on an individual basis. You will need an automation software which identifies certain characteristics of your clients and customers and help you to stay in touch with them. When they have problems with your products or service and call you up, you will be able to quickly retrieve information related to them so that the best possible solution can be given to them. SugarCRM and Customer Service Go Hand in Hand SugarCRM helps you to provide great customer support and automate it to a large extent. SugarCRM is an amazing customer relationship management software that is hugely popular across industries. In this article, let us learn how SugarCRM can help you to keep your customer happy and provide the best customer support ever. It is certainly not difficult to provide great customer service if you are able to install and use SugarCRM. Existing Customers Need to Be Nurtured as New Customers Are Expensive It is a well known fact that getting new customers is more expensive than trying to sell to existing customers. In order to ensure that your existing customers come back to you and buy your products and services, you need to keep them happy and engaged. SugarCRM does just that. Thanks to Sugar customer support, you will be able to handle customer cases effectively and quickly. You will boost customer satisfaction and they will in turn become loyal to your organization. Let us try and understand how SugarCRM helps you to provide great customer service in a number of ways. Case Management SugarCRM allows you to manage cases of customers so that each customer’s service history can be retrieved based on requests and responses. It takes case management metrics to a new level and escalates issues so that customers’ satisfaction is increased. The best part is, it allows you to get a complete picture of the service request history and before they become large problems, you can escalate those issues to higher levels. Finally, you can monitor the effectiveness of case responses. Inbound Email SugarCRM Inbound Email processing is a great way to ensure that customer support requests are handled expertly. It ensures that the right customer support representative replies to the email each time there is an issue. Thanks to shared group inboxes, sales representatives and customer support executives can assign cases depending on the workflow rules. Secondly, SugarCRM by default attaches emails to a customer’s record so that each time they contact you, you will know what is going on. Knowledge Base SugarCRM knowledge base consists of a huge FAQ that will be of use to many customer support organizations. It teaches them how to make sure that customers are happy and how best they can be lured back to buying your products. Questions can be tagged, categorized and classified so that they are retrieved easily. There is noth8ing better than allowing customers to get answers themselves with the help of FAQs. When it comes to offering solutions, customer service executives can have access to a list of FAQs as well. At the end of the day, FAQs can be an effective tool to ensure that customers remain happy. Bug Tracking This helps customer service representatives to manage priority cases well and ensure that problems are cleared swiftly without allowing for any escalation of problems. Untoward incidents can be avoided thus. Self-Service Portal SugarCRM self service portal is a great way to ensure that customers can upload their problems themselves which can later be checked by concerned executives. This way, a lot of interactions can be reduced and automated. SugarCRM is one of the best customer relationship management tools around, Coincidentally, it is also one of the most often used CRM tools while giving customer support. If you wish to learn more about software programs that help in customer service or customer support, do not hesitate to call us up or write to us. Our professionals will be able to help you with the right CRM tool for your business.

When it comes to marketing things are no simpler and it is not just about targeting the right audience at the right time. It goes further and the world itself has become a lot more complex. With a diverse market that is both native and foreign, and with the introduction of online platforms, marketing has completely changed in the way it used to work. It is simply not possible to hold a ledger and a book and then view pie charts on the screen anymore. SugarCRM Helps Automating Marketing Many of the operations need to be automated, and a CRM tool is absolutely necessary to ensure that marketing strategies are successful and also to monitor if they were successful. Thus, by using a CRM tool like SugarCRM, you will be able to include customer relationship management tools in your marketing strategy. In this article, let us take a look at how SugarCRM can help you to automate your marketing processes and how best you could generate demand. In fact, it is really simple to increase leads and to generate revenue with the help of a top notch CRM tool like SugarCRM. Let us take a look at how it does what it does. Bridging Gap between Sales and Marketing SugarCRM is one of the best CRM tools around to help you to close the gap between sales and marketing. It allows you to create campaigns and also to execute and track the results later on. By allowing you to develop great email marketing programs and helping you to capture leads directly into Sugar, you will be able to address many issues that previously plagued your marketing management. Web to lead forms help you to augment your marketing automation as well. Streamlining Marketing Activities and Consolidating Strategies SugarCRM comes with the unique facility to manage and assign leads directly to sales reps who can later on track marketing ROI. You will be able to monitor it without depending on expensive reports that had to be outsourced earlier. At the end of the day, SugarCRM is a great tool to automate many marketing activities and also bring back profits and revenue to the company. It consolidates and establishes your marketing strategy across the organization and enables you to stay in touch with customers so that further marketing campaigns can be directed towards them. It is one of the best CRM tools that can help you to automate marketing. SugarCRM Propels Email Marketing to a New Level When we look at the specifics, SugarCRM helps you to channelize your strategies related to marketing, sales and customer support. Thanks to its email integration, you will be able to integrate Outlook, Gmail, IBM Lotus Notes, Yahoo and other IMAP based email servers. Emails can be archived in Sugar and they can be retrieved when necessary. One may also sync one’s email calendars and track activities or go ahead and schedule them as well. It would be a great way to manage projects and work online or offline. You could choose to work from a desktop or a mobile device. The best feature of SugarCRM is that integrates email so well that common tasks are streamlined and effective communication between customers and staff is streamlined. On top of all this, if you need more, SugarCRM offers an email archiving system that is uniquely useful to companies that are huge and that which receive a lot of email. Email is one of the key aspects of SugarCRM and the makers of this CRM program very well know how important emails are to automate marketing. SugarCRM will leave you with a number of positive impacts. By choosing to use Sugar for marketing automation requirements, you will be able to create and manage marketing campaigns easily. You will also be able to channelize these campaigns across channels. Leads can be directly captured into SugarCRM and return on investment can be measured easily. All this and more makes SugarCRM one of the most revered CRM platforms to automate marketing. If you wish to learn more about CRM platforms, do not hesitate to contact us. Our professionals will be able to guide you which CRM platform is best suited for your business needs.

Pleasing your customers and ensuring they return to purchase more of your products and services is what drives most of us to make extra efforts at managing them. However, it is virtually impossible to manage customer relationships unless some of it is automated. This is where we need an affordable and efficient solution and one of them is SugarCRM. SugarCRM Is Simple, Affordable and a Great CRM Platform Sugar is not only affordable and easy to use, but almost the industry standard when it comes to customer relationship management. It helps your business to communicate with contacts, access sales related information, close deals and ensure that your customers are happy. There are literally thousands of companies that have benefited from SugarCRM and they continue to use it every day to ensure that sales and marketing issues are resolved and customer support is provided. It is an open source and web based solution which can be customized easily and adapted according to your requirements. It is great for small, medium and large companies. It can be used on site or in the cloud, and it also good enough for government organizations. How Can One Use SugarCRM for Sales Force Automation? When it comes to integrating Sugar for sales force automation, SugarCRM has to be the best software program to do so. The CRM lets you to automate many procedures that will lead to increased cash flow. It helps you to drive sales force performance and share sales data with those who are important. Also, it will help you to build repeatable sales processes which can be timed again and again. By allowing you to reduce sales cycles, it can increase your margins. Why SugarCRM Is Great for Automation of Sales Force SugarCRM also helps you to focus on profitable deals instead of those that do not help in the long term. This aspect of differentiation is one of the most useful features of Sugar. Moreover, you will be able to automate sales reporting and forecasting, which is necessary to assure investors and customers themselves. At the end of the day, Sugar helps you to monitor your business performance metrics, which can be used to ameliorate existing CRM conditions. Sales Representatives Learn Early and Become More Productive Sales representatives can go ahead and track and share contacts with those who are useful. They can also list down opportunities using the software and manage and up sell existing accounts. Sales representatives can easily forecast revenue and monitor performance right from a conveniently located dashboard that is filled with various information. By allowing you to manage quotes and contracts, SugarCRM ensures that you do not have to peer through several catalogues and software programs in order to know what exactly is happening in your register. Thankfully, Sugar also works offline and you can collaborate with the help of Microsoft Outlook. You could also use Lotus Notes and other groupware apps, if you so desire. The Most Important Benefits of SugarCRM for Sales Force Management The most important aspects of suing SugarCRM for sales force automation is that it will help you to share sales data to your teams and also to particular individuals. It also helps you to pay attention and focus on deals that are most profitable. New sales representatives can be taught to get into the groove early on. It is a great way to present proposals to clients and customers. Last but not the least, SugarCRM allows you to monitor quota progress and the performance of your business. With this in mind, we can easily surmise that using SugarCRM for automating sales force is a great idea. It helps a company to stay in touch with clients and customers and also to track the most profitable customers and most prospective clients. This will in turn help you to reduce costs and increase profits. By being profitable, your company will ensure productivity and it can work the other way too. If you were wondering which CRM tool is the best for your kind of company, do not hesitate to contact us or give us a call. Our professionals will be gladly able to assist you regarding the kind of CRM platform that will be appropriate for your business.

Device testing is an important aspect of web designing and app development. One needs to know how a website or an application looks on different gadgets. With a number of gadgets being launched with each passing day, it is difficult to ensure that you have all the gadgets possible available in your lab in order to test for inconsistencies and performance. This is when one needs the help of an Open Device Lab. What Is an Open Device Lab? An Open Device Lab is the same as a regular device testing lab but the difference is that anyone can access it. It is sort of like the difference between a private library and a public library. While private libraries are always great, every community of city also needs several public libraries. How much money is collected in order to rent the books or even to enter the library depends on the owner of the library. Likewise, Open Device Labs can charge a nominal or a substantial amount when other developers and web designers wish to use the labs. It is a win-win situation where smaller web designers and developers need not purchase all the gadgets in the world, and the one who runs an Open Device Lab need not worry about alternative sources of income. Things to Consider before Starting an Open Device Lab Now let us take a look at certain important things that you will need before starting an Open Device Lab. The first thing that you need to consider is the location of your Open Device Lab. It doesn’t have to be a large space and a medium sized garage could do too, but only there should be enough security and safety, considering the number of gadgets you will leave behind at the end of each day. It may also be a great idea to enquire with other web developers and app developers when it comes to deciding the location. Once the location is decided upon, you will also need to take care of air conditioning, heating and furniture requirements which are just as important. Collecting Gadgets and Devices The next step is to get all the devices that you need in the lab. This almost certainly includes various screen sizes, different operating systems and if you can afford, different models as well. One of the better ideas is to ask your family and friends if they can donate old cellphones that are in working condition. The next step is to let other web designers and developers to contribute cellphones and tablets that can be used in the lab. Those who contribute their devices can be charged less, if you are planning to monetize your Open Device Lab. However, if you intend to keep it free, you will need to ensure that you have sufficient types of devices for testing purposes. Devices and Software Necessary for an Open Device Lab Devices that you require are feature phones, smartphones with low level support, tablets and high end smartphones. You may also need consoles and smart TVs if you want to be really good at what you are doing. Screen sizes between 240 x 320 and 1280 x 800 pixels are required and you may also need a few screens that support high-DPi. Viljami Salminen, a web designer and mobile web developer from Helsinki, writes that you will need these devices to begin with: To set up the actual lab, you will only need a Wi-Fi connection, few chargers and a couple of tables. Also, a USB hub and few plastic platforms can be great additions. Viljami Salminen also writes that you will need software tools like Adobe Shadow, JS Bin, Web Inspector Remote, xip.io, Showoff.io, Localtunnel and Proxylocal. Last but not the least, it helps to have access to various mobile browsers both native and third-party browsers. Open Device Labs Are Great for PR and Profits Owning an Open Device Lab also works wonders for your PR initiatives. There is nothing better than getting various web designers and developers to talk about your lab, when you become the go-to-source. It is also a great way to ensure occasional media mentions which ultimately will lead to more prospects and revenue.