Tapping Technology for Growth
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How can you best put technology to work for your business? Used correctly, it should provide greater efficiencies, increased productivity, and lower overall costs. This presentation explores core areas—including mobility, collaboration, sales and marketing, and emerging technologies—where you can leverage current applications for business growth.
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Tapping Technology for Growth
- 1. @comcastbusiness TAPPING TECHNOLOGY FOR GROWTH
- 2. ModeratorPanelists GIVING YOUR TEAM WHAT IT NEEDS FOR SPEED Eric Knopf C-founder, Webconnex, (@ericknopf) Jon Feld Chief Content Officer, OnCore Media (@jonfeld) Ramon Ray Publisher, Smart Hustle (@ramonray) @comcastbusiness
- 3. • Maximizing Mobility • Keys to Collaboration and Tools • Bolstering the Customer Experience • Proactive Protection • What’s Next? TODAY’S AGENDA @comcastbusiness
- 4. Greater efficiencies Higher quality Save time/money, push productivity It’s about improving outcomes. The Goals of Utilizing Technology @comcastbusiness
- 5. Making mobility a priority: Mobile apps Are mobiles apps critical? It depends on the business Tremendous potential benefits @comcastbusiness
- 6. Making mobility a priority: Mobile web design It’s about customer comfort/expectation Impacts your credibility Penalties for not doing it @comcastbusiness Mobile web browsing has surpassed desktop browsing
- 7. A spate of mobile payment apps/platforms Works in every type of business It’s about convenience and speed Making mobility a priority: Taking mobile payments @comcastbusiness It’s becoming the “norm”. Square, Apply Pay, Payably/CardConnect, Microsoft Wallet, RoamPay, Intuit GoPay, Google Wallet/Android Pay
- 8. Questions and discussion Does it make sense to invest in hybrid devices? Making mobility a priority: Hybrid devices Perfect for certain verticals Growing in use Ease of use/benefits @comcastbusiness
- 9. Keeping everyone on the same page: Keys to collaboration Bring people together Feature access to digital assets Offer concurrent document/file use @comcastbusiness Collaboration apps/platforms should:
- 10. Questions and discussionKeeping everyone on the same page: Collaboration tools Tools provide unified communication Slack, MS Sharepoint, Basecamp, Glip, etc. Seeing an increase in stream-based tools
- 11. Questions and discussionKeeping everyone on the same page: Chatbots/Livechat and automation Not yet sophisticated, but growing Answers low-hanging questions Makes your life and customers’ easier Artificial intelligence is helping improve interaction
- 12. Questions and discussionKeeping tabs on the customer experience: Segmentation Lead, opens, response tracking Maximize your reach @comcastbusiness What Should CRM Systems Provide?
- 13. Questions and discussionKeeping tabs on the customer experience: Systems/Platform Examples: @comcastbusiness Current Apps and Benefits HighRise Hubspot Microsoft Dynamics Infusionsoft Insightly Salesflare SalesforceIQ Soho
- 14. Questions and discussionKeeping tabs on the customer experience: Integration with CRM platforms Maximize your message/impact A wide range of available tools Taking work off your plate @comcastbusiness Marketing Automation
- 15. Questions and discussionCybersecurity: What (and why) you cover Customer/internal data protection You need to live with some paranoia Simple, but critical, best practices Critical Security Needs: @comcastbusiness
- 16. Questions and discussionWhat’s next? Emerging technology Hardware reduction AI Virtual reality @comcastbusiness
- 17. Find ideas, solutions, and perspectives from experts and real business owners at the Comcast Business Community, WANT MORE INFORMATION? cbcommunity.comcast.com
Notas del editor
- Webinar Broadcast Begins
- JON greets the audience and… Let me introduce our panelists: Eric Knopf, co-founder of Webconnex, maker of software for event registration, ticketing, and online giving. Prior to Webconnex, Eric founded several other companies including Vision Launchers, a development agency that brings ideas and startups to market. Ramon Ray, publisher of Smart Hustle magazine, is a four-time entrepreneur, best-selling author, global speaker, and producer. His third book is the Amazon.com best seller Facebook Guide to Small Business Marketing. Thanks everyone for joining us today. Now, let’s talk about today’s agenda
- Jon: According to SMB Group’s 2015 SMB Routes to Market Study, 29 percent of all small businesses view technology as helping them to improve outcomes significantly. How should technology impact and benefit your business? What are the expectations you have of technology as a lever for productivity and even growth? Eric: The goal of technology is to bring greater efficiencies, higher quality and lower overall costs to your business. I am not buying a particular technology, I am buying a better way of doing something. Rarely is technology a fun/exploratory purchase – it usually has a purpose to improve your life, the work you do and the benefit to your customers. Ramon: It’s very simple. I think technology should save time and push productivity. Those are two sides of the same coin. And it’s most important in terms of the customer experience, because, without customers you’re dead. It’s most important to leverage technology to make that customer experience easier. The faster you’re able to respond to customers the more profits you can make.
- Jon: Let’s talk mobility. In 2016, more than six billion people worldwide used at least one mobile device, a number that is expected to increase to nearly seven billion by 2020, so it appears to be a must-have. Let’s start with Mobile apps. How important are mobile apps becoming to small business (Note: In a Small Business Trends article, “Mobile App Strategies Boost Revenues for Small Business Owners,” Scott Shane, professor of entrepreneurial studies at Case Western Reserve University, wrote, “In an increasingly mobile world, having a well-developed and well-tested mobile app turns out to be a highly effective marketing strategy that gets results.” (e.g., Microsoft PowerApps allow non-technical users to create apps easily)? Ramon: [CITES HE RESEARCH DONE W/SMB OWNERS VIA TWITTER] Certainly, very large Fortune 500, Fortune 1,000 companies need apps. If you have 1,000 employees, 500 employees, 200 employees, you have a business case. And it depends on the business. Does every accounting firm need an app? Of course not. However, if you can think of a reason your customer needs one, that’s your business case. Eric: Mobile apps are bringing huge efficiencies to how small businesses operate as well tremendous benefits to their customers. On the operational side, businesses are able to do more of their work outside the office and on the go. We were at a company-wide dinner in Costa Rica when a customer had an urgent need and all our staff was out of the office and it was far beyond closing hours. Fortunately we were able to provide an app-based solution remotely and save the day without having anyone scramble to a computer. For customers, mobile apps can provide a faster and more optimized way of using your service as well as take advantage of mobile exclusive features such as push notifications, offline usage and local storage.
- Jon: Mobile web browsing has now surpassed desktop browsing. More users around the world are accessing the internet from mobile devices than from desktop computers for the first time, according to internet monitoring firm StatCounter. The combined traffic from mobile and tablet devices tipped the balance at 51.2 percent, vs. 48.7 percent for desktop access, marking the first time this has happened since StatCounter began tracking stats for internet usage. What about developing mobile-friendly websites (note: Bing now rewards more mobile-friendly websites with an increase in ranking)? How will technologies like Google’s AI learning, which focuses on a shift toward the user experience, spur changes in web design? Eric: In our software (we process $500M in payments annually), over 50% of the payments are coming from smartphones. Customers are more comfortable making purchases from their phone and your website’s compatibility with modern smartphones can dramatically impact how customers respond to you. If you don’t have a mobile friendly site, customers can actually distrust the legitimacy of your site because they are so accustomed to it now. It’s really an expectation on the web now. Ramon: Mobile-friendly websites are a definite need. If you don’t do that, you’re penalized for speed, security, and other issues, so that’s where you should spend your mobile money first. Regardless of your size, you need a dynamic, responsive site.
- Jon: Are mobile payments now the norm (Square, Apply Pay, Payably/CardConnect, Microsoft Wallet, RoamPay, Intuit GoPay, Google Wallet/Android Pay, etc.)? Ramon: There are several forms of mobile payment, from iPad based on a retail site to web-based, so it’s slowly becoming the norm. Eric: Mobile payments have yet to take off in the US like it has overseas. A lot of that is the adoption with retailers using out dated POS systems. As that becomes more widely available on a retailer level, we’ll see it become used more. In my opinion, the places they are used the most is when convenience and speed are important in what you are doing. Ex: coffee shops and fast food places have great mobile payment adoption because people are in a greater hurry.
- Jon: Does it make sense to invest in hybrid devices (e.g., iPad Pro, Panasonic Toughbook, Dell XPS 12, Acer Iconia, Microsoft Surface)? Eric: I see the value for particular industries where the crossover provides benefit. Not every industry needs the hybrid devices. But for those in industries such as photography, interior design, drafting, architecture and creative work, an iPad pro or Surface is amazing. But if you are an accounting firm, a hybrid device probably provides minimal value. So bottom line is that your line of work elevates their significance. Ramon: I’m really happy for Microsoft. I don’t own stock in them or anything but you see more and more professionals having a Surface. So I think yes. It makes sense just for the room they provide. you don’t need a tower anymore on your desktop. You just dock your notebook and that becomes desktop station. I also love have the ability to use a touchscreen and move things around. It’s just easier.
- Jon: What matters most in any collaboration application? What basic capabilities should it offer? Ramon: It just needs to bring people together. It loops back to what are you trying to do, so here’s what I mean. If you’re a distributed team and you’re scattered all over the place you, at the very least, need chat and video communication in your collaboration. However, you might be exchanging a lot of documents in your team work as well so in that case, you need a repository to store a variety of digital assets. For financial services or medical firms, you’ll also need to ensure that compliance is taken into account. You also need to think about issues that relate to scale as you grow (do you need to store documents or not)? I think the other thing is presence. Most collaboration platforms will have that already but presence is important. Is the person available or not? Eric: It should offer conversation – whether it is chat, messaging, notes or what have you. Collaboration is about communication. Having concurrent editing and usage is huge (think Google Docs where multiple people can edit). Offline is a nice advantage when internet is spotty or slow.
- Jon: Are you seeing an increase in collaboration tools that do more (e.g., stream-based tools like Slack, HipChat and Glip that provide real-time views and access to information across servers, devices, apps, and location)? Eric: I see Slack and corporate chat apps exploding because more and more companies have distributed work forces and these provide unified communication across diverse locations. These tools are also becoming the hub across many other apps (Github, Twitter management, Basecamp, uptime reports) where all these tools integrate and report into. Slack isn’t just a place where I talk to the team, I monitor code commits, new signups, customer support chats and even server health through slack. Ramon: If I had to mention any names clearly everybody knows Slack, of course, but then there’s Microsoft Sharepoint. That one is amazing.
- Jon: How about the increasing use of Chatbots, computer programs that use artificial intelligence to facilitate conversation with humans, especially as they relate to internal communications and customer service (e.g., Microsoft’s Bot Framework lets companies build and connect bots to interact with users not only on Facebook Messenger but also on websites, text/SMS, Skype, Office 365 mail, Teams and other services)? On a related note, is Livechat becoming the standard for online customer service? Eric: The AI chat is an emerging area. In my opinion, its s still a little rough and where it mimicks a real person (or tries), it feels off for many people. However, when its used during off hours to help people answer questions and is transparent that it is a automated smart app, it can be helpful. The technology is not quite there yet but it is making great strides. It also seems like messaging apps like Intercom have made a huge surge in the recent years. And is becoming a preferred way over making a phone call for a lot of our customers. Ramon: I think it is and I think in terms of the end user experience ideally you shouldn’t have to know that you’re chatting with anyone. I’m on a page right now that has a popup. I don’t know if I’m going to speaking to Darin the human or Darin the chat bot, but I do think that especially for larger companies that have a lot of inbound questions, inbound people chat bots are going to make their life easier. Why? Because they can take care of the low-hanging questions. People who ask things like where are you located. Something that’s very transactional, less of the price of the green sock. A chat bot can take care of that.
- Jon: CRM needs differ for small businesses. In your view, what should a CRM system do for SMBs (e.g., ease of use, track and organize contact and potential sales; provide a complete overview of the sales pipeline; email notifications and templates; document tracking and in-app calling, scalability, etc.)? What are the key components/uses a small business should look for in choosing a CRM program/platform? Ramon: The one big key from me is segmentation. Today’s CRM programs let you be very granular and segment the customer to their most unique need. That’s one. Which also relates to personalization, which is as important. Every customer or prospect wants to be treated like they’re unique, so CRM is key in that aspect. Eric: Every business is different, but I see it as a way not to drop the ball with leads and customers. A CRM is critical for any business that has a sales process to acquire a customer. It should mark its position in the pipeline, link all your past communication, provide tracking for opens and responses and allow you to make notes and reminders. The core function a CRM should do is maximize your ability to reach and communicate with exponentially more people than you would without it.
- Jon: What about current systems? What do you like and/or use (e.g., Zoho, Infusionsoft, Microsoft Dynamics, HubSpot, Salesforce IQ, Insightly) and why? Eric: We like HighRise (for its simplicity) and Salesflare (for simplicity). If you’re a small business, the challenge becomes that you may need to hire a consultant to configure some of these apps for your business. Hiring consultants is always loathed and should be avoided. Ramon: I think you named them all. I worked at Infusionsoft, so I love that one, but they are all very dynamic and I think it really boils down to how you use them. I don’t know if there’s a best one out there, but you do need to train yourself and your people on making the most of what you choose. They all have a great number of features (think of the benefits of something like text-based customer service, which could easily be missed), so it pays to know exactly what you can do with each.
- Jon: What about marketing automation as a tool (note: Automation software links seamlessly with CRM platforms, bringing marketing and sales together, providing each with a 360-degree view of the customer or prospect. CRM platforms, such as Microsoft Dynamics 365, do much of the heavy lifting that previously would have been handled using manual processes.)? Ramon: Think about it in terms of maximizing the impact of your message and serving the funnel. If automation helps me email 10,000 people, 1,000 respond to my message, 500 make a phone call, and 10 of them buy. That’s the power of automation to segment and distill and sift through people that are not ready to buy so that you can better focus on those that are ready to buy. My point is automation is essential to segment and sift people as rapidly as you can until they’re ready to buy or whatever action you want. Eric: We use Zapier to bring automation to a whole host of products and services we use. We use tools like Intercom, Slack, SumoMe, Campaign Monitor, HelpScout, Twitter, Github, Codeship and more. Zapier allows us to interconnect all these in powerfully automated ways.
- Jon: What, in your opinion, is critical to protect—customer data, your own and employees’ information, etc.? Eric: Definitely your customer data and to be crystal clear on what purposes (if any) their data will be used. It’s not necessarily about a breach, but a distasteful or unethical sharing of your data that is just as important. For us, each of our core functions our company rely on different vendors who each have their own protective measure. Those vendors all offer their own redundancy and backup process. So our core business operations are distributed across many providers, which allows us to have extra layers of protection knowing that if something were to occur in one place, its isolated to that one function. Ramon: We think of customer data. We think of your own employees’ information but there are other aspects of security that really matter and that people don’t always think of. One, just the general awareness of your surroundings. Living with a little bit of paranoia and caution I think that’s one. I think being smarter about simple security best practices like having a secure password, uppercase, lowercase, and characters. I think those are two of the best things individuals can do. For corporations, what can they invest in to even automate security, forcing people to change their passwords. There’s software now that you can detect networks that are unsecured. You can automatically stop that.
- Jon: What trends are you seeing emerge in tech that can benefit small business (e.g., shared backup, automatic translation, enterprise content management, telecommuting, cloud Backup as a Service [BaaS], big/small data, IoT, virtual/augmented reality) and why? Eric: Marketing Automation, AI, Customer Chat / Messaging, Cloud Computer, Analytics, A/B testing. An entire reduction in previous large hardware configurations with administrators is now entirely possible in the cloud with a full service team behind the providers. Ramon: Everything is moving so fast so it’s hard to separate emerging from what’s really out there now. I think it’s a matter of cost. Virtual reality is more for gaming right now, but it’s growing. I don’t think the average small business is going to need it right this second but in the coming years, especially in retail and fashion and in real estate, virtual reality is already booming. IOT eventually will be embedded into so many things that we do, especially in manufacturing, but it’s going to play a much larger role going forward.
- Bob: Calls out the Comcast Community, thanks attendees and closes