Measuring Your Social Media Efforts

So the experimentation with social media has begun; well it’s begun for us and more broadly a lot of businesses are beginning to test the waters, that is, if they are not already fully submerged!

Social Media Marketing is a key strategy to employ when trying to enhance the your websites landing page SEO. At Intelligent Information Systems the experimentation has begun in correspondence with the overall of our website in an effort to improve our overall web presence and to conjointly improve the SEO of our site.

Social Media is a way to get high quality back links to your website.

The key tools for measurement which shouldn’t be overlooked are:

Google Analytics

Google analytics will not help you understand the viral nature of various social media completely. But when using the combination of Google analytics and conversion tracker, you can learn an awful lot about where traffic is coming from and map it to your social media campaign to see what is working; at least directionally.
You should look at sources of traffic and see if it is broadening to include the elements of your social media campaign. You can also look at key variables like:

•Time spent
•Bounce rate
•Page views

Looking at and considering these variables will all help you make inference-based decisions on the quality of the traffic you are driving to your website.

Emerging Social Media Measurement Tools

Many new tools are emerging for measuring social media effectiveness. Most are limited in scope to one channel or type of social media experience.
One promising new tool, that will measure the viral effects of social media, is the popular ShareThis platform. ShareThis reaches over 400 million people a month though the social media share buttons you can add to your content that they provide as part of their service. This service is simple to implement on your site. If you don’t already have sharing functionality, you should consider implementing ShareThis or something like it.

ShareThis is about to add the ability to analyse social media by business category, which will be very useful for niche businesses. The company recently shared some interesting stats regarding social media with TechCrunch. According to the company, Facebook accounts for 45 percent of all shared content across its network. E-mail followed with 34 percent and Twitter with 12 percent.

The key here is thinking about social media as a coordinated piece of your overall marketing mix and measuring it as such. While measurement tools are not perfect, you can get enough data today to make solid decisions to help you optimise your social media campaigns.

Original Article: All Business.com

SAP has deployed 1,000 iPads to their employees!

SAP CIO Oliver Bussmann tweeted yesterday that the enterprise software vendor has already rolled out iPads to 1,000 employees.

And this isn’t just a superficial show of support for SAP’s new-found embrace of mobility: according to Bussmann, every iPad comes with e-mail, Virtual Private Network (VPN) access to server-based applications through Citrix software and Business Intelligence tools via BusinessObjects.

iPad-wielding SAP employees are also piloting the Mobile Sales for SAP CRM app built by Sybase for our then-partner, now-parent company.

According to Bussmann, the 1,000 iPads are spread among SAP’s 48,000 employees worldwide, not concentrated in either its home country of Germany or within its US operations.

And the 1,000 employee figure - a statistic which already comprises more than 2% of SAP’s workforce despite the iPad only being available for 4 months - is set to grow, promised Bussmann, who tweeted “More to come..”

We’ve seen reports of companies starting to deploy the iPad, such as Mercedes-Benz, Wells-Fargo, Bausch & Lomb, Kaiser Permanente, and others. And there is Apple’s statistic that half of the Fortune 100 are testing it.

But SAP’s rollout has got to be the single largest in the world. I doubt that Apple (34,000 employees) has anywhere near the same number of employees using an iPad today.

The usefulness of iPads and other tablets will only grow. Sybase is working with SAP to deliver a mobile SDK for SAP and other enterprise apps, as well as directly helping SAP mobilize its vaunted lineup of enterprise software.

Original Source: ZD Net, Eric Lai

Keep eye contact with your customers!

“A word is a word, but a word expressed upon the sincerity of the eyes will allow the words spoken to reach the minds of those they are spoken to.”

Jan Castagnaro

How can you provide that sincerity that the eyes bring even when you don’t see your customers face to face?
You need to make your customers feel good about the service you are providing them, keep them informed, respond to their needs and requests and endeavour to better meet them surpassing any expectations they may have.

Figuratively “Eye contact” can and needs to be maintained even if you are communicating with your customers via a phone line or computer screen.

Consider the following:

Response Time

At IIS we endeavour to answer all phone calls, never letting the phone ring out and rather than leaving customers on hold we make note of their call and reassure them that we call them back if the query can’t be answered or the support can’t be provided at the particular time.

Follow Up

If you make a promise to respond make sure you do! And if you can’t respond straight away keep them updated and let them know you haven’t forgotten about them. We do our best at IIS to make sure our customers or anyone who calls with a query or an interest is kept informed at all times.

“When I call IIS I feel that I am not just another number, another customer. I deal with people whom I have got to know and who have an in depth knowledge of SAP B1. They are interested in our business and work with us to ensure that SAP B1 works well for us as an enterprise management system meeting our specific requirements.”

Richard Gaughan, General Manager

Medea International

Intelligent Email Free to IIS Customers this September!

Want email functionality within SAP Business One?

Intelligent Email is what you need and Intelligent Email Release One is now available to existing IIS customers for free!*

The key features of Intelligent Email include:

Simplifies the sending out of PDF emails for all Marketing Documents
With the click of a button send out Statements

Intelligent Email will support you and your business in driving down the cost of sending out statements, allowing you to quickly send out copy statements and invoices, as well as facilitating batch advance delivery notification and various other documents to improve customer service.

Check out our Intelligent Email Release One demo video on our youtube channel, Intelligent B1.

Intelligent Email Release 2 will be arriving in Q4 which supports the batch sending of marketing documents and statements via email and preset times. We shall keep you updated!

For further information contact sales@iisystems.net or to request a brochure email michelle.hunt@iisystems.net

*Terms and Conditions -Offer available to existing IIS customers on SAP Business One 8.8 if you if you sign up in September. Order an upgrade now and get Intelligent Email free of charge.

ERP for small businesses, “get more work done with fewer people”

"Companies are cutting back on people and need to get more work done with fewer people, so they are looking to technology like ERP, that can help them do that," said Scavo, president of Computer Economics Inc. in Irvine, Calif., which studies how businesses use information technology. "You can never replace good business judgment, but you can use technology to make the business more effective. That would help any size business."

With advent of ERP systems designed specifically to meet the needs of the SME market systems are now well within the reach of small to medium sized businesses.

Employees that have come from larger corporations that are now involved in smaller businesses are driving the purchase of ERP systems in the sector as they have firsthand experience of the benefits they can bestow.

Increasingly complex issues that emanate from a rise in global commerce and operations such as multi-currency issues, import/exports, foreign language and supply chain management and compliance with local tax regulations are also a key driving factor for smaller companies considering the implementation of an ERP system.

ERP helps any size business centralise information, which saves time in finding and accessing that data to generate reports, and make certain tasks routine. Though put off in the past the change in the precedence of implementing an ERP solution appears to be now.

Small businesses constitute a major segment of overall business productivity. Adopting ERP is the best step that SME’s can take in order to increase their productivity and ROI.

SAP Business One is a solution designed specifically to meet the needs of small to midsize businesses. To find out more visit: www.beabetterbusiness.net

General dos and don'ts for using social media

Do put a communications strategy in place. What are you trying to achieve, what do you want to say, where, how and to whom. This will make it much easier to keep control

Do develop a style. Tone of voice will need to be different for each audience and situation, but make sure that your brand personality comes through in everything you do. If relevant, incorporate your brand values and where appropriate, use first person language to humanise the conversation.

Do strike the right balance between conversation and sales. Nobody wants to receive an overt sales pitch via social media, but be honest about why you are talking to consumers. Ignoring the fact that you have something to offer will make you seem disingenuous and untrustworthy.

Do set limits for what you will and won't tolerate in any channel. Just because you want to seem approachable and conversational doesn't mean you have to put up with abusive comments from consumers.

Don't be afraid to vary your strategy per channel. Don't just assume all social media channels work in the same way. Different networks have different user profiles, so the tone and content used for one will not necessarily work for another.

However, do be consistent. Make sure you use the same URL naming convention across all channels, to avoid confusion. Make it easy for people to find you. Also brand the different platforms with your company logo and colour theme to fit where applicable. You want the essence of the brand to be immediately conceived on visiting on the page.

Don't forget to update your content. There is nothing worse than starting a Twitter feed which is active and updated for the first three weeks but then goes silent, or a Facebook page which still has reference to an event which occurred three months ago on a landing page tab. Social media needs to be a constant consistent investment and can be a full-time job, so make sure you have the resources to keep your channels manned and your information up to date.

Read the full article at: http://www.businesszone.co.uk/topic/marketing-pr/social-media-etiquette-dos-and-dont/29932

SAP recognises need for “measurable IT return”

"We believe that customers' continued success depends on obtaining measurable return from IT investments," SAP spokesman Andy Kendzie said in an e-mail.

SAP recently rolled out a number of Value Engineering tools and services, some of which are available at no cost, for benchmarking system performance and developing business cases for new projects.

While the total cost of ERP ownership is important to monitor and optimise, focusing solely on TCO is no longer sufficient. Organisations must not consider ROI of ERP projects in order to justify continued investment and maximum benefits.
With the downturn in the economy, an imprudent reaction may and has in some cases been to stop any discretionary spending on ERP projects just when their cost-saving, operation improving potential is needed more than ever.

According to research carried out by the Aberdeen Group, many companies now feel compelled to make an investment in ERP as a necessary infrastructure to support their business. However, best practices for maximising the benefits from such a solution involve the measurement of the reduction in costs, improvement in schedule performance and customer satisfaction, and the ability to redeploy employees to add more value to the organisation.

The most regularly cited reason for not measuring ROI of ERP projects is that it is too difficult to measure. The most successful ERP implementations have clear objectives which should be easily quantified and measured so that full gains can be realised.
24% of SMEs point to a lack of tools to measure ROI, however, most if not all of the tools are available within the application for which the ROI is being measured.

The pressure to remain competitive in the dynamic, global economy forces organisations to consider the results-based approach where the question 'Will we see a return on investment (ROI)?' is central.