Archive for the ‘software technology’ Category

Smart Technology: Predictable, Planned, Proactive

Saturday, January 9th, 2010

As news of a weakened economy continues to saturate the media and bombard business owners with negative messages, one company has found a creative way of adapting its services to fit within the current economic conditions and help businesses succeed.

Miles Technologies, a provider of business technology solutions, has created Monthly Budget Plans that allow customers to budget their technology-related expenses without having to commit to a long term contractual agreement.

According to Chris Miles, Chief Executive Officer of Miles Technologies, the company’s Monthly Budget Plans integrate separate services into one managed services package.  In a single plan a customer can select business services that include IT Help Desk & Support, Business Software Support, Website Updates, and Online Marketing and Public Relations, as well as strategic consulting for all services.

Miles says that the Monthly Budget Plans were developed as a way to help customers continue productive business operations within the unsteady economic conditions by making managed services more cost effective.

“The Monthly Budget Plans were specifically designed with flexibility in mind,” explains Miles.  “Most managed services providers require that customers sign a contract committing them to a certain monthly fee with a two to three year contract term.  They lock in the customer which lowers the need to provide exceptional service in order to retain the customer. We’re different in that we do not require any specified length to the contract and they can cancel at any time. This way, the customer is using our services because we add value and not because of a contract term. We also allow for month-to-month flexibility in the plans in terms of both the level of services provided and the costs for those services.”

To further ensure the practicality of its monthly budget plans, Miles Technologies offers a one hour guaranteed response time for all budget plan customers 24 hours a day and seven days a week.  In addition, customers may roll over any unused monthly budget time from month to month.

“We customize each budget plan in order to empower our customers with the best technology available for their businesses,” says Miles.  “These plans are meant to provide a complete realm of services, from supporting a custom software application to identifying and resolving network issues before they result in downtime.”

According to Miles, the costs of outsourced IT services are easily justified when compared with the costs of a full time IT staff or the costs of unnecessary system downtime.  He emphasizes that the predictability of the newly developed Monthly Budget Plans make the services especially realistic in the current economy.

Miles reports that the Monthly Budget Plans have been met with significant enthusiasm from customers.  “Our main goal is to exhaust all possible options for helping our customers thrive in these conditions,” Miles says.  “We are looking out for their businesses and trying to help them understand technology’s full potential so that they can make the best business decisions possible.  In short, if our customers succeed, then we have succeeded.”

USPS Software and What Your Business Needs to Know About It,

Thursday, December 17th, 2009

What you need to know about USPS Software.

There was a time when mail was sorted manually and the pigeon was the courier. Now it sounds like a part of a fairy tale. Nowadays advancement in technology has brought about a sea change in the entire system. The USPS is an acronym for United States Postal Service.

USPS is a government owned agency situated in the United States and is responsible for delivery of mail. USPS is one of the oldest government organizations in the USA and holds a kind of monopoly on many aspects of delivering mail. Through the USPS, citizens can send mail and parcels to almost any part of the world at reasonable prices.

The Intelligent Mail Barcode, popularly known as IMB is a new system introduced by USPS. It is a next generation of barcode technology that can be used for sorting and tracking letters and flats. It combines the capabilities of the Planet Code barcode and the POSTNET barcode into one unique form of barcode.

Many software companies design USPS software or USPS shipping software. They create and provide software solutions for direct mail, marketing, document design and data quality. Let us discuss some of its products they offer.

MaxPresort is one of the most comprehensive and powerful product for United States Postal Service bulk mailings. It is ideally suited for business which have direct marketing campaigns, or else who serve others who mail. This software helps in taking advantage of the huge postage discounts that are offered by the USPS. They can presort mail of different types like letters, NFMs, flats and parcels. This sorting is done in USPS classes -Periodicals, First-Class Mail, Package Services and Standard Mail. Apart from presorting mail, the software also has an optimization routine so that you can further maximize your discounts.

MaxPresort also supports the Intelligent Mail Barcodes. It can be used with the Basic as well as the Full Service Options and includes Intelligent Mail Container Label and the Intelligent Mail Tray Label.

Another product is the IMB Manager. This technology allows users to create an Intelligent Mail barcode for files that are generated by any type of presort or Mail.dat product. It also allows users to manage their exclusive Intelligent Mail Serial Numbers either within a single Mailer ID or else across multiple mails for the same Mailer ID. This is how it works. First, it creates all three kinds of Intelligent Mail Serial Numbers. Then it creates a database which can track the 45-day expiration dates for these Serial Numbers. The interface is intuitive and easy to use.

MaxOG is another product that uses functionality from MaxPrint, a great document creation and printing software. It can produce a wide array of documents and labels with the help of pictures, text, ovals, tables, boxes, lines and fill patterns in various font, color or orientation. By using MaxOG you will be able to create letters as well as name-and-address labels using Intelligent Mail Tray, Intelligent Mail barcodes, Container Labels and also Inkjet files.

Thus you can effectively use these products for direct mail and marketing or document designing.

CRM Software: Technology And Strategy Plus

Saturday, December 5th, 2009

Don’t take an entire day managing bulk accounts. Instead, go out or take the web route to sell and pursue promising leads that spell revenues. Meet customers’ needs with effective strategies and cash in on the customers’ buying cycles ahead of competition – with a little help from power-packed CRM software.

The Technology

If you’re managing a Customer Relationship Service, or CRS, you know that the job is not simply entering customers’ information – names, phone numbers, and email addresses. The data you are collecting and storing have to be managed to give meaningful information when you go for an advertising blitz or cooking up more ways to serve up better products and customer service.

Surely you’ve heard the latest buzz in the business grapevine – CRM software. So better take a moment and find out what’s going on. Big and small businesses are using software solutions to handle CRM information to feed company planning for better inter-office teamwork, better customer relationship, and sales. Organizations want to be a step ahead of competition to survive, cut costs, and keep customers.

Forget about the one-way communication lines and the old data banking system that could not track the buying pattern of clients. Remember the unsynchronized activities of the in-house customer service, sales, and marketing? All these are outdated with the CRM software. The existing CRS will see better coordination between these different units in the company.

If you are deciding to take customer relationship a notch higher, start evaluating what you need for your software solutions. Do you want a chat feature to talk to clients/customers? Do you want an index of commercial establishments? Are you handling massive accounts in the hundreds of thousands? Do you constantly need accurate data for analysis? The CRM software can take on these issues.

The Options

Since there is a range of CRM software options, you will have to consider several of these. You won’t need software that’s effective for a guitar or hat shop. If you are in manufacturing, you need features to synchronize with your existing platform. Perhaps you would like to have an information data network that can help track the previous, present, and future information about client buying habits.

Bigger companies see the advantage of buying the software while smaller or medium-sized organizations go for the hosted solution, which is affordable and appropriate for their present circumstance. Once the company grows, companies can always upgrade and get the software. However, if you do not want a third company access to your records, you have the alternative to opt for the purchase of software solutions for your customer relationship management.

With the click of a mouse, you can review a client’s entire account information and right away, you can provide and suggest products, discounts, and company programs that will complement his needs. Much time is saved from looking up one file and another just to consolidate the information. Time is essential when you want to get ahead of competition and make a sale and to recruit new customers.

CRM has gone through tremendous changes. The database concept has leapfrogged to keeping customer loyalty. In this new generation CRM, companies are tracking movements and keeping up with the marketing trends. With the suitable CRM software, you can reap the rewards with an enhanced customer relationship management.