Category: Web Development

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.

Everyone loves WordPress because of its stability, features, customizability, and ease of use. Of course, when you need WordPress to outperform itself, there is always a plug-in that can be used to overcome its shortcomings. But, what can one possibly do when your website grows exponentially and sees thousands of visitors each second during occasional spikes? Surely, WordPress is not designed to perform under extreme duress. It certainly works, but cannot perform well when it comes to huge traffic figures. You must always bear in mind that eventually your website will grow and you will need to consider what might happen when there is that occasional 1000+ traffic per second a few times a week, or few times a day or even an hour. Why WordPress May Not be Suitable for Every Website Out There Back in the days when we started to use WordPress over Joomla or Drupal, it seemed easier to use and was certainly less clunky with an easy learning curve. However, many of us grew like Frankensteins and didn’t expect our own success to reach such levels. While our success has mostly been attributed to our dedication and expertise, it is also because more people actually need our services than we earlier thought. It is almost like a store owner rents a small space in an upscale district only to realize the footfalls are so much there is no space to store goods in the store anymore. Then, he decides to rent a larger space elsewhere in town, sacrificing many advantages of having an address in an upscale district. WordPress certainly is the most convenient and easiest of all CMS software. We could write pages about its use and its advantages over other CMSes. However, we need to admit that it sometimes cannot handle traffic-heavy ecommerce websites and online publications. This is when we need to get programmers to write our own codes, and design our own websites or at least customize our WordPress websites to handle traffic spikes. The ideal scenario is to retain the WordPress site as a blog and move the main site to a custom coded website with the help of professional web designers and programmers. Programmers and developers not only understand the strengths of WordPress, but also know its few weaknesses. This is one of the reasons why it is important to hire a programmer as we get more successful in our business. Medium to Large Companies Need a Second Opinion about WordPress If you are a small company, WordPress is a great tool. However, when you are a medium sized company and are seeing traffic growths that often interfere with your bandwidth and website performance, you certainly need to think beyond WordPress, as it just cannot handle that kind of traffic. It was meant to be a blogging platform but it excelled at not only at blogging, but also at regular websites. Asking WordPress to perform well in a site that receives staggering traffic figures is a mistake that is yours, and not WordPress’. WordPress Still Rules On the flipside, WordPress continues to run some of the largest publications in the world. They receive huge traffic too. In spite of all the complaints against WordPress that it can’t handle traffic, it seems to be doing just fine for online publications. The key here is what sort of information a website holds. If the website performs complex operations that include purchases, identity verification etc, you might want a programmer to write codes. However, if it is a large publication with tons of comments, there may be a few things that an accomplished programmer can achieve right within WordPress. WordPress is certainly one of the best content management systems around and it will continue to be. What Must Website Owners Do Finally? The bottom-line is to get an expert programmer’s opinion as to what is right for your website. If the programmer thinks there is enough scope for your website even after 5-6 years of growth, you may actually want to stay with WordPress than go through a lot of complications. However, if the website is far too complex (can only be decided by an accomplished web developer or programmer), then it is a good idea to get your code written.

WordPress is one of those irreplaceable tools that we have just taken for granted, expecting it to be there when we need it. Of course, it will continue to serve us faithfully and loyally but do we really understand all the benefits that WordPress provides us, for no cost at all? One of the most underutilized features of WordPress is that of user roles. User roles help you to decide how much authority, freedom and capabilities you can assign to a particular user. If you trust the user a lot, a lot of freedom can be given and if you think the user needs permission for just a few things, only such freedoms and capabilities can be given. With this in mind, it helps to understand the various user roles that WordPress has given to administrators. WordPress Roles and Capabilities By default, there are 5 possible user roles that you can assign to a person. They include the roles of an administrator, editor, author, contributor and subscriber. Most web administrators are often left confused and wondering which role suits their employees the best. For this, you will need to spend a little while trying to understand the various features of each role that WordPress lets you assign to users. WordPress Administrator An ‘Administrator’ has the maximum amount of freedom and can change the way your website appears, take decisions related to other users and even add or delete previously published posts. In short, an admin has all the freedom that is possible with regard to your website. You should be assigning an admin’s role only to yourself or a trusted partner, unless circumstances demand otherwise. Admins can also view statistics which help them to plan how the website must be managed in future but such information may be seen as critical and an editor need not to what the statistics are, especially if your website has information that is deemed sensitive and confidential. WordPress Editor An ‘Editor’ on the other hand can edit, delete, add or make changes to his or her own posts, and also to that of other’s posts. An editor can schedule posts and decide when the posts should go online. If there are many writers on the website, an editor can ensure that there are no mistakes or errors and make corrections in other people’s posts as well. Obviously, you would want an editorial level person to be given the freedoms and capabilities normally associated with the role of an Editor on WordPress. WordPress Author An ‘Author’ has the freedom to add or delete posts before publishing and also deciding when to publish a post. He may edit his own posts and be able to make changes even after a post is published. He or she will not be able to edit or delete other people’s posts nor will they be able to gain access to web statistics or plug-in information. WordPress Contributor A ‘Contributor’ can only add posts or submit them and will not be able to access any sensitive information. This is great for a writer who has just joined your team. A ‘Subscriber’ on the other hand is just that. He or she will only be able to leave comments and share published posts. A subscriber will not be able to add or edit or access administration the way others will be able to do so. This is a great way to increase interaction with your readers, when you ask them to subscribe. Managing User Roles and Capabilities on WordPress Smashing Magazine had published a really informative article about how each user’s capabilities can be altered or manipulated. It may be a good idea to read that, if you are looking for additional information. What we need to remember is that these user roles can be changed according to our requirements. By fixing codes and editing certain tags, you will be able to personalize and customize user roles the way you want to. If you are not able to do this on your own, hiring a goof WordPress professional is a great idea. And good WordPress professionals will not only save your time but also your money in the long run.