Cool Beans SF

Technology and CRM’s Gift to Businesses and Clients

February 15th, 2010

Technology has pushed our generation into an almost boundless world. What used to be impossible before has now become possible because of the power of technology. Simple things such as making coffee to home renovations and most especially business communication have become much easier to accomplish with more efficient results. In business, time and location used to be very difficult to overcome. However, nowadays, because of technology, the problems concerning time and location have been easily overcome. And, also, because of technology, age-long problems between customers and businesses have also been given solutions. Thanks to Customer Relations management techniques and strategies.

The approach of CRM utilizes every facet of the organization; and each of those groups go hand-in-hand in order to achieve what the enterprise is meant to do in the first place: please customers, which, in turn, cultivates brand loyalty, leading to a gradual increase in profit.

The core departments for the building corporate-consumer relationships are the Internals and Marketing Department as they direct the mechanisms and paint the image of the company, respectively. The former, for instance, guides the whole enterprise by creating policies and safety nets in accordance to the company’s philosophy. The latter on the other hand,
identifies their target market and will find ways to cater to their needs. These lay the background for the other departments, who see to it that the complex machinery that is the corporation gets what it wants with the greatest efficiency (Human Resources) and with a clean and respectable image to boot (Public Relations).

But given all this massive information about consumer wants, performance ratings, cost-efficiency ratio and tons more, how does a company streamline all this to make the information as convenient for the Brand Manager as it is for the Marketing Analyst? CRM software: technology gives enterprises, big or small, a chance to gobble up all the statistics and facts that hound them and present it in a clear and simplified manner. An example of technology’s contribution to companies in terms of customer service is by providing retail software that could support CRM strategies that businesses use.

Products such as the web based Infusionsoft and outlook based ProphetCRM offer entrepreneurs and managers alike different features and conveniences atop of the standard contact and referral tracking management options. So to speak, there are specific CRMs that cater to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and also to the heavyweights of the corporate world.

Information is the key: not only do they have to recognize their primary and secondary target markets, they have to “be them”: they have to engross themselves into their customer’s culture, empathizing with their feelings about products and correcting themselves whenever they hear complaints about the company’s shortcomings and faults. What better way to
be figuratively a part of them by the means of observance of sales tracking, surveys, employee relations, service reconstructing and the like? That’s the beauty of CRM and technology, hand in hand.

Waxahachie Law Firm, Seattle Home Inspection, Reverse Craigslist Software

February 9th, 2010

Waxahachie law firm The Hale Law Firm, P.C. serves businesses and individuals based out of our offices in Waxahachie, Texas, DesSoto Law Firm The Hale Law Firm work with and represent clients throughout Dallas and Ellis County, including: Waxahachie, Red Oak, Midlothian, Ovilla, Glenn Heights, Ferris, Ennis, DeSoto, Cedar Hill, Duncanville, Lancaster, Dallas, Grand Prairie, Mansfield.
Why a Seattle home inspection can help you
Our inspection empower you to be in charge of your property transaction by assisting you - identify possible issues, establish the condition of the property, consider possible upgrades and repairs, place a value on your investment decision, and have confidence and piece of mind while engaged in negotiations.
Things to expect from your Seattle home inspector The home inspection process provides an invaluable learning experience during which all of your questions can be answered on the spot. We wholeheartedly suggest you to accompany us throughout the Seattle home inspection..
Reverse Craigstlist software just imagine it. It can give you the power to actually produce thousands of qualified leads in a matter of minutes by parsing through info from postings on craigslist. This very simple reverse craigslist software can offer an opportunity to literally take you company to the highest level. You can pick which market you are interested in as well as specific geo areas, push a button, wait, and watch the leads come in. After this you then have the ability to send an e-mail to these leads or save, export, manage them, and more. There are many different types of reverse craigs list software and data mining software now. Discover this version for the best and most reasonably priced and easy to use reverse craigs list software on the market period. If you need leads, find qualified leads, and very tergeted leads, you will want to check out the best reverse craigs list software to be had.

Hale Law Firm, Apartment Investing, Reverse Craigslist Software

October 13th, 2009

We serves businesses and individuals from our home offices in Waxahachie, Texas, Ferris Law Firm The Hale Law Firm enjoy working with clients throughout Dallas and Ellis County, including but not limited to: Waxahachie, Red Oak, Midlothian, Ovilla, Ennis, Ferris, DeSoto, Glenn Heights, Duncanville, Lancaster, Cedar Hill, Mansfield, Grand Prairie, Dallas.
Apartment investing at this point in time is a opportunity for business that can help develop a very effective passive stream of money beyond your dreams. You can discover this by a man who’s worked his way to ultimate success starting from literally nothing, who is has no prevous experience and is not different apart from us. This is very literally a typical rags to riches story where someone having very little if any resources and exxperience has achieved so much, and in a very quick amount of time. Apartment investing is the method which he used. With the free CD he has produced, you will learn exactly what did Carlose do prior to when he closed the first apartment investing deal to set himself up for much bigger deals in the future - something no other apartment investing gurus will tell you. In the apartment investing material you will also be privy to how the current recession is about to open the flood gates and produce a tidal wave of opportunity for educated and motivated apartment investors and the closely guarded secrets to obtaining financing for apartment investing in the market conditions today. You will much more concerning apartment investing and what most gurus are terrified to reveal. Start out apartment investing immediately and secure your future, with secrets most so called gurus will not tell you. One of the biggest secrets that the big boys won’t let you in on is apartment investing is is not too big a task for you even if you are starting your venture from nothing. Start building the passive income you want from apartment investing.
Reverse Craigstlist software is an incredible software development. It allows you the power to literally attract possibly up to hundreds of thousands of leads in a matter of minutes by parsing through information from ads on craigslist. This very simple to use reverse craigslist software can allow an opportunity to quite literally move you business to the next higer level. You can select what niche you are interested in and which specific geo areas, then push a button, sit back, and watch the leads roll in. After this you then are able to send an e-mail to these leads or save, export, manage them, and more. There are different versions and brands of reverse craigs list software and data mining software nowadays. Consider this version for one of the most reasonably priced and easy to use reverse craigslist software on the market period. If you need leads, find qualified leads, and very tergeted leads, you will want to check out the best reverse craigs list software to be had.


Fort Worth Home Inspector, Work Out Clothes, Reverse Craigslist Software

September 27th, 2009

The Fort Worth home inspectors representing TexInspec are dedicated to providing you with total peace of mind by assisting you in understanding the condition of your property.
TexInspec Fort Worth home inspectors offers Fort Worth home inspectors servicing not only Fort Worth and Dallas but also to over 100 surrounding communities in the greater DFW area. TexInspec Dalls home inspection services understand the stress that is involved in Buying, Selling, and Moving.
MMA gear, mixed martial arts wear, mma gear online, mma sparring gear, mma gears and mma work out clothes are just a sampling of the specializations of HouseOfPain Iron Wear. http://www.houseofpain.com has top of the line as well as the best mma equiptment, mma clothing, and all of the gear and apparel that you will require in the gym, on the street, or in the ring. The HouseOfPain website not only features the best in clothing, workout apparel, and gear, you can browse our lifting and fighting news parts, our in the gym section, links, events, and other information including news in the weightlifting and mma scene. We feature articles of gyms accross the United States, a mixed martial arts news blog, weightlifting and strongman news blog, workout information, insiders training information, a body fat calculator, powerlifting federations, weightlifting videos, kg conversion chart, not to mention a page on what is allowable by federation. Go to HouseOfPain for all of your mixed martial arts and weight lifting news, gear, and clothing requirements.
Reverse Craigstlist software is an incredible software development. The power to quite literally attract thousands and thousands of targeted leads in just a matter of minutes by parsing through info from postings on craigslist. This very simple to use reverse craigslist software can allow an opportunity to quite literally move you operations to the limit. You can pick which marketplace you are aiming at as well as specific geographic areas, then push a button, wait, and watch the leads come in. Then you can make direct contact to this list or save, export, manage them, and more. There are many differnt kinds and brands of reverse craigs list software and data mining software today. Visit this site for one of the most reasonably priced and easy to use reverse craigs list software on the market today. If you are looking to generate leads, find qualified leads, and very tergeted leads, you will want to check out the best reverse craigslist software today.


Creating Universal Systems

April 8th, 2008

“There is only one problem with common sense; it’s not very common.”
- Bryce’s Law

GENERAL DISCUSSION

In this day and age of “globalization” more and more
Information Systems are crossing geographical boundaries. Because of this, serious consideration should be given to making systems universally applicable to any country. Some might
consider this an impossible task, but it is actually easier than you
might think. It just requires a little common sense and some planning.

The biggest problem in making universal systems is that programmers tend to bury too many of the details of a system down in the program source code, which is not a good place to tinker around in. Instead, certain elements of the system should be placed in separate files thereby making it convenient to translate. Consideration should be given to creating separate files for:

PRINT MAPS - An output, such as a report or printout, can be decomposed into various sections (records). When a program is executed, one of the parameters should be the desired language (e.g., English, Spanish, German, French, Japanese, etc.). Based on this parameter, pertinent print maps are called from a “Print Map File” to assemble the requested output.

SCREEN PANELS - This is similar to the “Print Map File” whereby the sections or a screen can be decomposed into its various panels (again using records). As a program is executed, pertinent panels are called from a “Panel File” to build the screen.

MESSAGES - Messages are too often buried in source code. Instead, they should be placed in a separate file for printing or display in a screen.

HELP TEXT - Help text should also be maintained separately for easy retrieval.

Separating Maps, Panels, Messages, and Help text from program source code, makes it easy to translate to foreign languages. Further, it encourages developers to share and re-use resources, thereby contributing to integrated systems.

A serious consideration in the Far-East is the Double Byte Character Set or DBCS which is used to accommodate Japanese and Chinese Character alphabets with voluminous characters. To construct one such character, two bytes must be stored in a single byte (hence the name “DBCS”). Fortunately, the technology has evolved and DBCS is implemented in most operating systems today. However, developers should be cognizant of this requirement, particularly as they are designing Inputs, Outputs, and Files. Check with your hardware or operating system vendors for specifics. Better yet, check it out on the Internet.

INPUT/OUTPUT DESIGN

During design of the Inputs and Outputs, consideration should be given to the expression of certain types of data elements; for example:

  • DATES - How dates are to be expressed may vary from country to country; for example: Nov 13, 2004 - 13 Nov, 2004 - 2004-11-13. How a date is presented to an end-user is different than how it is physically stored.

  • TIME - This is similar to dates; some people like to see AM/PM, others like military time, e.g., 14:30 (2:30pm)

    NOTE: Regardless of how Dates and Times are to be physically presented to the user, standards should exist to express how dates are to be physically stored, such as “YYYYMMDDHHMMSS” (Year/Month/Day/Hour/Minute/Second). Failure to do so caused the horrendous Year 2000 (Y2K) problem a few years ago.

  • TIME ZONE - Representing local time.

  • CURRENCY - What form of monetary values should be expressed; Dollars, Yen, Marks, Pounds, Euro Dollars?

  • MEASUREMENTS - Accommodate different units of measures for weights (pounds vs. grams), distances (miles vs. meters), and temperatures (fahrenheit vs. centigrade).

  • TEXT - The Western world prefers viewing text horizontally from left-to-right, but as we go into the Eastern countries, they like to see text vertically, sometimes right-to-left.

Many operating systems today provide the means to capture such settings. However, it might be necessary to establish a separate “Personal Settings File” for a particular Information System.

Attention should also be given to DEFAULT settings, particularly at time of input. Further, where applicable, consider auto “UPSHIFTING” or “downshifting” text as needed. For example, most Internet addresses (such as a URL or e-mail address)
should be downshifted.

The techniques mentioned above are simple and effective to implement. It is important that a translation strategy be considered as part of the system design. During design, your mantra should be “Know your audience; make it usable; think Global.”

Tim Bryce is the Managing Director of M. Bryce & Associates (MBA)
of Palm Harbor, Florida, a management consulting firm specializing in Information Resource Management (IRM). Mr. Bryce has over 30 years of experience in the field. He is available for training and consulting on an international basis. His corporate web page is at: http://www.phmainstreet.com/mba/

He can be contacted at: timb001@phmainstreet.com

Copyright © 2006 MBA. All rights reserved.

Microsoft CRM Conversation Gateway: VoIP - Implementation & Customization

April 2nd, 2008

Microsoft CRM is winning market share step-by-step from such the traditional CRM providers as Siebel, Saleslogix. In this article we’ll show Microsoft Business Solutions CRM potential in the VoIP direction.
Nowadays VOIP-based technologies and Instant Messaging Systems are getting wider and wider spread. Each work desk or each personal computer has one or another instrument of information exchange, belonging to the VOIP or instant messaging systems. Currently the mostly presented information exchange systems are:

• Skype (http://www.skype.com). Revolution system of sound compression - the tolerance to the bandwidth of the channel enabled VoIP amusement features to the general internet world-wide user with microphone and headset, Windows/Linux/Mac OS X operating systems, internet access and free registration with Skype. Plus Skype application has instant messenger between skype users. New features and services SkypeOut and SkypeIn allow you not only to call to the regular phones from your computers with very low rates, but also accept the calls on your skype phone number in the SkypeIn system.

• MSN Messenger (http://messenger.msn.com). Quite successful attempt of the Microsoft open the door to the instant messengers market. MSN Messenger gained market with the speed of light, due to the tight integration with Microsoft Windows. Every new version adds new functionalities - MSN Spaces integration, audio and video transfer etc.

• Yahoo! Messenger (http://messenger.yahoo.com). IM system of the Yahoo! portal, has standard set of features for communication, including audio and video stream transfer.

• AOL Instant Messenger (http://www.aim.com). This is one of the veterans of the IM system market. Considering the popularity of AOL as internet provider - AOL instant messenger holds substantial market share.

• ICQ - (http://www.icq.com). Yes - we do not have to give you additional comments, we are targeting this article to IT professionals who were working in the Clinton era of American internet miracle and booming. Let us just add that with the release of version 5 ICQ introduced new features of the audio and video conversation.

• VoIP & IM systems are popular not only in the home office environment, but are gaining popularity in the corporate market. One of the proves is the release of Microsoft Live Communication Server, which allows messages streams coordination and control. Natural idea - should we enable VoIP and IM conversation with automatic protocol? It is always good to have paper copy of the MSN conference, related to the project, product, in the form of MS CRM Activity. Or, from CRM interface to call your potential customer via Skype. Or accept the incoming call via SkypeIn and record the call to the CRM database to be accurate with the following negotiations. The usage is really unlimited and is currently restricted only by human conservative nature

Now, let’s consider the schema of MS CRM extensions to enable such a system:

• The main component is Albaspectrum Media Core for MS CRM - the module, providing media streams saving in the special database, interaction with the specializing connectors to IM/VoIP systems. Its function is also Activity creation in the Microsoft CRM system.

• The second important component is modification to these forms: Contact, Account etc. Modification is adding phones, addresses, Skype, MSN, AOL, Yahoo identifiers. Also we have to add SkypeOut phone calls service. In the future we plan PBX/PSTN support via MS Office Communicator 2005

• Planned addition - Answering Machine module, controlling incoming calls and messages from clients and saves them in Media Database. If manager is out of his desk, system will save the message and will create Activity in personal queue - you will not miss no one customer call! Plus all the calls from non-registered clients/prospects might be associated with one or another Account, Contact, Lead, etc.

Let’s consider the process of the phone call/receiving or message recording:

• CRM User opens client form and reads telephone or skype ID to place the call. If she/he would like to talk to skype user - Skype application must be installed of the local machine and she/he needs to be skype online user. If she/he calls to another Skype user, then we don’t have additional requirements. In the case when call is placed on PSTN number, CRM user needs to have SkypeOut active account. In both cases - when user picks up the phone or is absent - CRM activity will be created with the relevant status. If the call was accepted, automatic call recording will be switched on, activity will be created with the indication on the phone duration. For MSN, Yahoo!, ICQ audio conversations - all the mentioned above is relevant, except PSTN support (currently skype only).

• The above described process is similar for instant messenger conversations, recorded by MSN Messenger, ICQ, Yahoo! Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger.

• CRM User could appeal to Full-Text Search upon the saving to Media Database of text talks directly from the MS CRM interface.

• For the users, who are accessing CRM over the internet we envision IM system support (as http://webmessenger.msn.com) in the MS CRM forms.

Good luck with integration! If you want us to do the job - give us a call 1-630-961-5918 or 1-866-528-0577! help@albaspectrum.com

Andrew is Lead Software Developer in Alba Spectrum Technologies - USA nationwide Great Plains, Microsoft CRM customization company, serving clients in Chicago, Houston, Atlanta, Phoenix, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Miami, Denver, UK, Australia, Canada, Europe and having locations in multiple states and internationally ( http://www.albaspectrum.com )