Your business has taken off and you are now focused on profits as well as revenue. You may be feeling your business is not as agile as it used to be when you started up. Maybe you have to put more energy into keeping processes in place. Perhaps your infrastructure does not allow you to be as flexible on price as you used to be. You’re thinking of consolidations and cost savings, but you also need to keep up the quality of service to customers. You have invested in technology because you understand by now that it is an important asset. But you might not know that technology can also help you cope with the new challenges that you are facing. That’s where Microsoft Solutions and our partners come in.
How Microsoft can help
Given below are some solutions to help you not only ramp up your productivity, but also start building customer loyalty. However, if you are unsure about what technology solution would best meet your business requirements you can get expert advice from Microsoft Partners. They are familiar with the challenges you are facing and can help you find the solutions that are best for you.
Put processes in place
Create seamless, powerful connections between people, both inside and outside the organization, for greater productivity. Empower your staff with tools that can make them more efficient and collaborative. Windows 7 is an efficient desktop operating system with features designed to optimise your time. The Microsoft Office 2010 suite of applications offers you tools that can provide timely and relevant insights, when you need them. You can set up processes to pull together financial, sales, customer and other information in a way that lets you quickly spot trends and understand the data. Central reporting tools like dashboards and scorecards help present information from different systems in a simple, at-a-glance view, so everyone has better insight and a consistent view of the business.
Obtain real-time management information and comply with policies
Any supply chain or business process benefits from being made more efficient, but this is especially important if you are supplying services or goods to large corporations that require you to comply with their own policies and processes. A professional Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system can help you with this. ERP offers a single repository for information on all business functions – human resources, manufacturing, inventory, marketing, sales, accounting, and tax. It allows all levels of a business to obtain real-time management information for their area of responsibility. Microsoft Dynamics AX2012 is one such system that can optimise all aspects of your business, even across different locations. It is agile, so it can proactively adapt company policies to meet customer or policy maker requirements. What’s more, your training and adoption costs are low because it uses a common user interface concept with the familiar Microsoft Office “look-and-feel”.
Ensure quality of service to customers
Nurturing and retaining your loyal customers becomes increasingly important as your business matures, since acquiring new market shares became more difficult over the years. Giving your customers the best experience begins with a complete view of your sales pipeline, but does not end there. Putting in place strong after-sales service is key. A customer relationship management (CRM) system will integrate people and technology to maximise external relationships. It offers a range of benefits and features, including sales contact management, activity history, order entry, customer service and support, field service, lead generation and data mining. Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online can track and integrate forecasting, opportunity and financial data, so you are always prepared. It also organises customer information and lets you access it from anywhere. In addition, CRM Online integrates with Outlook and looks the same as other Microsoft Office programs so it’s easy to use for you and your staff.
Consolidate and save costs
As your organisation grows, you can gain significant cost savings by managing power more efficiently through consolidation of old servers and virtualization of new ones. Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server can not only help save power, but also offer comprehensive management tools that are secure and scalable, allowing you to easily add users, servers and applications. Combined with virtualization, they can help you make the most efficient use of available system resources. Virtual machines also allocate disk space as needed, resulting in lower overall storage requirements. Microsoft’s Hyper-V lets you consolidate underutilised servers and decrease the amount of physical cabling, servers and racks you require. This translates to less space needed, less cooling necessary, and fewer kilowatt hours of power used, saving money and reducing the environmental footprint.
