The news as of the second cup of coffee this morning, and the music is The Grateful Dead's live album Europe '72. Surprisingly good work music, along with Traffic's Welcome To The Canteen or The Allman Brothers' Eat A Peach, high-quality jam music that's never obnoxious:
The release "brings social media style tagging to allow small businesses to search their sales leads, contacts, diary and e-mails in one hosted system," according to company officials.
Many small businesses have been slow to embrace traditional Customer Relationship Management (CRM) due to complexity and cost, according to the Tactilians, who say Tactile's dashboard "gives a visual overview of the current sales pipeline and recent customer contact," showing the deals most likely to be won: "Information previously available only to individual team members is now shared across the whole department or company."
Having worked with local businesses in a range of industries, Senokian officials say they "built the new version of Tactile CRM to meet the issues faced by sales and admin staff in their day to day life... a system that can be used to replace homegrown spreadsheets and paper-based processes that small businesses must evolve from."
With a free trial for organisations to test the system and several payment plans (start from as little as £6 per month), Senokian have already signed up clients across the UK, US, and Australia.
Tactile CRM was chosen as one of the top 20 UK Web 2.0 companies by Digital Mission 2008 sponsored by UK Trade & Investment department, and one of the top UK start-ups by TechCrunch UK in 2008.
Senokian was founded in 2002 by Managing Director Jake Stride and is privately funded.
Intrabench, which sells CRM and accounting software, has implemented and made available the UK VAT change in its software, company officials say:
"The result of the recent UK VAT changes is that many companies are now struggling to cope with software upgrades and accounting changes, which will come into effect the first of December." Intrabench officials see the SaaS model as having an advantage, as a change can be made to a central system which goes out to all users of the software.
Companies that are not using a SaaS model may have to upgrade their software themselves to comply with the change, "and pay high costs for consultancy as well as deal with any problems that arise when the change takes place," company officials added.
The cost to business for this 2.5 percent VAT software change is immense, as many software implementations have been hard coded to 17.5 percent, which makes changing the software a time-consuming, expensive operation.
As this software update has already been implemented within Intrabench, customers need only select the new VAT rate and all new invoices, quotes and accounts will take into effect the VAT change for repeat billing and payments, according to the Intrabenchers: "VAT returns will calculate the figures correctly taking into account the amounts before and after the 1st of December."
Socius, a Sage North America business partner, has announced today that its client, Experient of Twinsburg, Ohio, has won a Sage Customer Award for Lifetime Achievement.
Experient won the Lifetime Achievement Award by "demonstrating the long-term benefits derived from the use of Sage SalesLogix," according to the Socians. For 10 years, Experient has used a customized version of Sage SalesLogix.
The size of the company has tripled over the same 10 years. The ability to extend and expand the data across all areas of the business, as well as integrate new business units, required an integrated product using Sage SalesLogix and Experient's ERP product, was considered when awarding the honor, Socius officials say.
"Experient is one of our most successful clients, and their Lifetime Achievement Award from Sage is truly an outstanding achievement," said Jeffrey R. Geisler, Socius' CEO and Senior Managing Director.
In trying to solve its own marketing communications issues, company officials say, Fort Myers, Florida-based Genesis Global Technologies developed an online sales tool, Sales Advantage, to communicate and engage with clients and prospects.
Sales Advantage incorporates CRM and sales force automation, but introduces new concepts such as outbound interactive (two-way) e-mail marketing and intelligent automated follow up.
"We didn't like what was available, so we threw everything out the window and asked ourselves, 'If we could have the perfect sales assistant, marketing communication system and tracking tool, what would we want it to look like?'," explained Mona Hilton, president of Genesis.
According to a recent study conducted by Smart Transaction Systems, a vendor of gift card systems for small businesses, "less than one-tenth of a percent of small businesses charge inactive or dormancy fees on their gift cards, and 97 percent of gift cards issued by small businesses are good for a period of 5 years or more."
However that figures into your marketing plans, there you are.
The Smart Transaction Systems 2008 Small Business Gift Card Study covered just over 4,500 merchant locations nationwide with a total of 1.1 million gift cards issued. The average merchant in the study is a small business with 3.3 stores or restaurants.
By industry, the merchants in the study were 37 percent restaurant/hospitality, 34 percent retail, 8 percent Salon/Spa or fitness industry with the remaining 21 percent in "other industries."
In the wake of failures of several large retailers, the Smart study concludes, "consumers are more concerned than ever about purchasing a gift card from a merchant that may go out of business. However, only one of the 4,500 small merchants in the study has gone out of business."
"Of all the small merchants in this study, only two charge dormancy fees on gift cards that have not been used for an extended period of time, and one of those two will immediately refund the fees upon request," said Ray Clopton, President of Smart Transaction Systems. "We see a strong focus on customer satisfaction among small business owners."
The numbers, Clopton went on to say, show that purchasing a gift card from a small, independently owned restaurant or retail store tends to be a more consumer-friendly experience, from both a financial and customer service perspective, than consumers might expect from a large chain, mall or credit card company.
Smart Transaction Systems has consistently found that gift cards are most popular as a last minute purchase. The 23rd and 24th of December are the busiest days of the year for gift card sales.
The study also found that the average person purchasing a gift card from a small business places close to fifty dollars ($48.99) on the card. The average small business in the study has sold 1,531 cards. This ranges from "Mom-and-Pop" businesses with very few cards in circulation to a 6-location Salon & Spa with over 65,000 cards issued.
"If you have consumer-friendly gift card policies, such as no expiration dates and no inactivity fees, that's an important advantage that your customers should know about," said Stephanie Kroner, Director of Merchant Relations at Smart Transaction Systems. "According to our study, 91 percent of small merchants do not have an expiration date on their cards."
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