S3 Blog

Today the vast majority of businesses use the internet to drive more customers towards them and to implement certain marketing initiatives. This can be done in a variety of ways from PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising on websites and search engines, email campaigns, websites from which customers can place orders and more. Since having an online presence can make a great deal of difference to the success of a business it is no wonder that online growth is a massive concern. So how do you finance your business for growth online?

There are various ways in which this can be done such as:-

1. Put together a business plan which is focused on online growth for your business. This needs to be concise and clearly define which methods your business will be using to enable it to successfully grow. Then make sure that you present this plan to the right people so that you secure as much financial backing as possible for your business.

2. Take out a business loan – if your business is doing well there is no reason why you should not apply for a business loan. Once again make it clear what you will be using the loan for so that your lender sees your loan as a viable option.

3. Pull in any outstanding debts – this may seem like a strange approach but you would be surprised about the amount of outstanding third party debt that many businesses have. Spend some time finding out how much is owed to you and make inroads into getting it back. You might find that you have enough money to finance your businesses online growth sitting in unpaid invoices to finance your growth online.

4. Consider shares – would people be interested in buying shares in your business? If so why not float some shares and see if you can raise the finance this way, you must be able to convince people that becoming a shareholder in your business would benefit them so make sure you put forward a good case to invest.

5. Equity – do you have equity in your business that you could use? If so use it to finance online growth and see what a difference it could make.

6. Partnerships – could you go into partnership with another business that could help you with your financing? Many business find that this option is the perfect way to gain both an online presence and a solid partnership.

Using such methods can help your business to finance its online growth which could in turn create the kind of profits that previously were out of reach. Online sales and marketing are a huge section of the market and if you are not branching out into these areas you are selling your business short and missing out on an increase in revenue in the process. So look into the various methods of financing your business for online growth and you might find that it is easier than you anticipated.

For any business to succeed and be able to compete alongside other businesses that offer similar products and services it is a good idea to generate strategic partnerships with others. Strategic partnerships are a formal alliance that is normally between two commercial businesses with a contract involved. Such partnerships however are not legal partnerships as neither party wants to internally develop the other and vice versa.

Instead these partnerships are formed when each side has an asset or more that will assist the other, a good example of this is the relationship between a manufacturer and a developer. Typically the manufacturer would be a larger company and they would provide the product, capital needed for growth, marketing and distribution and the developer will provide the technical knowledge and expertise to enhance the product.

Another example of a strategic partnership is that between a supplier / manufacturer and the distributer. By creating a close relationship between the two separate and very different businesses enables them both to share the marketing, development, branding and so on of a service or product.
It is essential that strategic partnerships are formed as there are few business that are large enough and wealthy enough to be able to complete the entire cycle for a product or service alone. There are of course many who think that they can and this overestimation of capabilities is one of the reasons that a lot of businesses fail – they do not have strategic partnerships.

So how does a business go about generating strategic partnerships? One way is to look at your competitors and see if they can do something that your business can’t, then see what your business can bring to the table and get in touch with them. Speaking to competitors in this way can sometimes help to build a strategic partnership which can be mutually beneficial to both sides.

Are you involved in a business to business industry? If so you might already have relationships with other businesses, so why not see if a strategic partnership between yourselves and them might be in the interests of both sides? That way both businesses could drive customers to each other and reap the benefits. Say you sell gardening supplies and you form a strategic partnership with a business that sells electronic gardening equipment, a simple link to each other’s sites can provide huge traffic to each other that would not necessarily have been there otherwise.

To generate successful strategic partnerships it is also worth noting that all transactions between the two businesses need to be open and honest – as without these fundamentals trust will quickly be lost and this can be difficult to repair, if not impossible. So when generating these partnerships make sure that everything is out in the open as this is the only way in which partnerships like these will work. So follow these hints and start to make positives steps to creating and generating strategic partnerships that will benefit your business and raise your revenue quickly.

Reason No. 10

“S3 CRM is very reasonably priced – Why pay through the nose for CRM solutions that were created for someone else’s business, with S3 CRM you can customise your dashboard to show what you need to know in your business and change it when necessary.”

S3 CRM costs less than 21p per day and for that 21p you get everything included.

Can you afford not to be using S3 CRM?

Regards

Dean

Reason No. 8

“Fully integrated employee calendars – These can then be accessed by anyone to see who is in work, on holiday, off sick or on a business trip in order to provide a better service by utilising employees that are in work on any given day.”

Every had the issue where Sue in Accounts or John in the back-room has been ill or on holiday and they held an important piece of information that the customer wants right now?  With online calendaring and associated tools you wont ever have to be in this position again.

Regards

Dean

Reason No. 7

“Project planning tools – If your business undertakes several projects at once and has various employees working on them deadlines can sometimes be missed. By using the project planning tools on S3 CRM you can see at a glance how many projects are open, which are approaching their deadlines and who is working on them. You can also set alerts to warn you or the employees working on projects that a deadline is looming so one is never missed again. This will put an end to missed deadlines and frustrated customers as you turn them into customers who rely on you as they know deadlines are met.”

Dont get de-focused when you have multiple projects / customers all expecting service in the same time period. Use best practise project management tools which link directly into your calendar and send out email / SMS alerts when you require the information.

Getting a customers is harder than keeping a customer - so focus on delivering that project on time every time and maintain that customer forever!

Regards

Dean

Reason No. 9

“S3 CRM allows you to see your business at a glance – Simply log into your dashboard and see everything that is going on in your business on one screen from the number of outstanding invoices to projects that are drawing to a close. Say goodbye to opening endless screens just to find out what the total of paid invoices are that week.”

1 login, 1 dashboard screen, all of your information how you want to see it.

Couldn’t be simpler and couldn’t be more useful.

Regards

Dean

Everyone in business knows that there are ups and downs that have to be faced each year, some are financial or economic challenges and others are from other sources such as a growth in competition or changes in the market. One thing is for sure when your business is facing an economic storm you need to make sure that your CRM solution is up to the challenge that lies ahead.

S3 CRM is a new and revolutionary web based software application that can easily be integrated into any small to medium sized business and will enable business owners to make their processes and service more efficient and therefore will not only save but make money too. For any business to function correctly it’s employees need to use various software applications to record contacts, create invoices and quotes, keep track of projects, store documents and files, keep contact information for employees and customers alike and much, much more. As you would imagine purchasing, updating, running and implementing different types of software not only takes time, but it also costs money, and money during an economic storm is usually in short supply.

Using S3 CRM will help you to weather the economic storm in the following ways:-

S3 CRM is cheap to purchase – S3 CRM only costs £4.99 / $10.00 per month to set up and run, this figure is per business not per employee so as you can see there are huge savings to be made as many similar customer relationship management applications actually charge on a per user basis, something which can be very costly if you have a more than a handful of employees.

S3 CRM cuts down on the need for many different types of software applications – with S3 CRM you and your employees can do everything from creating invoices and quotes to planning and setting deadlines for projects as well as storing documents and even checking calendars – so say goodbye to having to buy different software applications just to run your business, with S3 CRM you can do it all.

S3 CRM is easy to use – if you need your employees to be working on generating more custom the last thing you need is to have them learning how to use a new application. S3 CRM offers total usability to everyone – simply log in and start working! It really is that simple, if by any chance you do find that you are unsure of how to use a certain feature click on one of the ‘Help at Hand’ sections found on each page and you will be given hints and tips on how to get the best out of S3 CRM.

S3 CRM can help you to identify customers who have outstanding invoices sooner – no more searching through files to see who has paid and when, with S3 CRM you can see all outstanding invoices at a glance and act upon them. This results in more invoices being cleared faster which adds to the businesses profits!

Everyone who has a business knows that increased productivity and lower costs bring about a healthier bottom line, but what are the best ways in which to do this? Here are the Top 10 ways in which you can do just that-

1. Utilise your staff correctly – one of the biggest mistakes in business is not knowing what your staff are doing, this does not mean spying on them but making sure that there are not too many people working on a project that doesn’t require them.

2. Use project planning tools – these can make all the difference to your business, by keeping an eye on all your projects and being alerted when deadlines approach you will find that productivity is increased.

3. Have all relevant documentation to hand – by having all documents related to a particular project or customer you or your staff will never waste time, and ultimately money, searching for missed invoices or other paperwork every again.

4. Record all customer contacts – by recording every time you telephone, email or send a letter out to a customer you will not waste money be repeatedly contacting someone who has already heard from you.

5. See all unpaid invoices at the click of a button – being able to do this means that you can see at a glance how much money your customers owe you. Add to this a feature which shows you which are the oldest invoices and you have the perfect tool for chasing up outstanding debts which will make your business more efficient.

6. Choose a fully integrated software solution – doing this will enable you to run all aspects of your business from one easy to use application which will cut down on time spent using slower and less efficient software programmes.

7. Be able to connect to your business from anywhere in the world. By using a web based application to run your business through you are able to access all areas of your business from staff calendars to project planning from anywhere that has an internet connection.

8. See all approaching deadlines and act upon them. If you are aware of deadlines you will be better placed to make sure that they are met, even if this means moving extra staff onto a project if it looks as though it might not get completed in time.

9. Store information in one place that is easy to access. Once again this will cut down on time spent searching for documentation for various tasks which frees up more time to work on the important aspects of your business.

10. Use good customer relationship management. In business nothing is more important than your customers and having good relationships with your customers is crucial to create profits. Use a software solution that allows you to record details of your customers from last contact to ongoing projects so that when you speak to them you and your staff have all the information you might need right there at your fingertips.