ERP Advisers

Would you like to improve your bottom line?

LET US HELP

Home | Why It’s Time to Embrace Remote Selling

As industries change gears to succeed in their rapidly changing business-environments, one thing has become clear. Remote selling is here for the long-term, and to succeed is to adapt.

Remote selling means exactly what it sounds like – buyers and sellers make a deal without meeting in person. For some sales teams, this often means attracting and initiating contact with prospective customers remotely before closing a deal, while for others this means remote relationship nurturing and staying on top of their customer’s needs to ensure those needs are met remotely in a timely manner.

The success of remote selling relies heavily on technology – like inside sales, remote selling usually involves making contact via phone or internet rather than sitting in a board room or a golf cart.

While remote selling can have its challenges, it also brings great benefits. These include:

Reduced costs

Think about your business’ overhead expenses, from office space to equipment, salespeople’s travel expenses and more. When your sales team is working remotely, these costs are drastically reduced.

Increased efficiency

Remote selling means less time spent traveling, which allows more time for qualifying leads, making new connections and refining your sales strategies and processes.

Farther reach

When your team is selling remotely, all they need is a mobile device or computer and a reliable internet connection and they can connect with new partners and customers all over the world.

Happier team

When your sales team is empowered to choose their work environment and no they longer have to deal with the stress and pressures on their personal lives of work-traveling, they are happier. Happier employees are more engaged and motivated. A study out of Stanford University reported that remote workers are 13% more productive.

The year 2020 has taught the business community important lessons about agility, innovation, and flexibility, and the success potential of remote selling is one of the clearest examples of these lessons.

For other business and technology articles, be sure to follow our BLOG at ERP Advisers website.

Home | Pricing Strategies Based on Data

Using relevant, accurate information to inform your business’ pricing strategy is key to its success. Proper data analytics as the foundation of your strategy allows a company to see how pricing fits into the bigger picture and helps you determine which factors influence your pricing and when it’s time to make a change.

There are three common pricing strategies:

Cost plus pricing

This simple pricing strategy sets prices as a percentage above costs. A company adds up all the costs associated with providing that product or service, adds the profit margin that they’re looking for, and they have a pricing strategy. Not much data analysis goes into this strategy.

This strategy is challenging to manage as a company grows, because costs rarely remain static. If the cost of one supply that’s necessary for business to continue increases, the profit margin decreases. Adding a solution that includes data analytics would help with this as it would alert the business owner as soon as profit margins drop below a pre-set level.

Competitor based pricing

This involves setting a pricing strategy based on the pricing of competing products/services. This strategy can use data analytics for modelling to help determine the volume of product/services they need to produce in order to receive the preferred rate.

The problem with this strategy is that is ignores the unique needs and benefits of your company. Creating your own strategy independent of your competitors’ helps you focus on improving your offering and adding value for your customers.

Value based pricing

This strategy involves looking at customers rather than competitors and setting prices based on how much they are willing to pay. It involves a deep understanding of your customers’ wants and needs and offering top value and a low price. Gaining this understanding is largely based on data analytics.

This strategy helps companies increase their prices as they innovate their products, because they already know what their customers are willing to pay for added features/improvements, but it also takes a lot of time and research to gain intimate knowledge of your customer-base.

Using data to decide

Data analytics helps companies increase their profits by setting ideal pricing strategies that help them bring in more business and provide unique value. Using analytics to set a pricing strategy helps empowers leaders to use data to learn and analyze every factor that impacts a company’s profits, whether those factors are internal or external.

ERP Advisers can help your company leverage data analytics to set a pricing strategy and increase profits. Click here to set up a call.

Home | What makes an excellent leader? About the trillion dollar coach – the late Bill Campbell

For decades, Bill Campbell, a former football coach turned C-suit executive counseled the biggest leaders like Jonathan Rosenberg, Eric Schmidt, Sheryl Sandberg and Steve Jobs in Silicon Valley.
Campbell was interested in raising leaders who produce better results and builds an ethical culture in the workplace.
Years after his death, three of his mentees Jonathan Rosenberg, Eric Schmidt, and Alan Eagle wrote the Trillion Dollar Coach: the Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley’s Bill Campbell, to pass his message across to future generations.

Here are 7 leadership lessons from the book :
• Coach only the coachable: Campbell understood that it was irrelevant and a waste of time and energy to coach someone who isn’t interested and that is why he admonishes good leaders to coach people who have bigger dreams and work towards realizing those dreams. According to him, good leaders grow with time and look for candidates who are willing to work, honest and continuously open to learning new things.
• Listen actively to your employees: Campbell believes that the primary key to being an effective leader is being an active listener. Every leader must be present when talking to people at work, and not just replying their emails or speaking to them through the window. In addition, effective leaders must adopt the Socratic approach of asking important questions after carefully listening to what his employees have to say.
• Never tell people what to do: Campbell believes that good leaders are not supposed to tell their staffs what to do. Instead, they listen carefully, ask questions and develop stories that relate to the topic while allowing employees to draw conclusions from such stories. He believes that once people can understand where you are coming from, they connect the dots and figure out what to do.
• Adopt performance oriented goals: Campbell agrees that teams which adopt performance oriented techniques like targeting, incentives, and monitoring perform better than those that don’t.
• Do not demand respect: Campbell believes that respect should be accrued and not demanded. Effective leaders accrue respect by projecting humble behaviors. He also agrees that employees dislike working with a dictator who does not care about their welfare, work culture, and future outcome.
• Honesty is key: Campbell believes that every good leader must be honest. According to him, good leaders allow employees to air out their opinion even when it is conflicting and heating the environment. He also agrees that complex problems at the workplace must be dealt with honestly and openly before it degenerates.
• Care about your employees: Campbell believes that every good leader must establish a deep level of connection with his or her employees. There is nothing wrong with showing up for them, caring about them, getting to know their families and showing them true love.
Finally, it is vital for people in leadership positions to imbibe all the qualities listed above if they want to create a great work environment where employees are allowed to air their opinion and put in the best in producing the right result.

For business and technology tips continue to follow ERP Advisers on linkedin and our website blog.

Home | Improving Business Processes

At present, various companies are in search of new ways of making their businesses more efficient due to the recent advancement in technology all over the globe.
One of the primary ways that have been adopted by most businesses is conducting regular business process improvements. Business processes are a series of steps deployed by a group of stakeholders to achieve a common goal; these steps can be manual or automated.

Steps to improving business processes
For a business process to achieve an objective, it requires a series of action. Some of the steps to improving business processes include:
Mapping out the process: The first step to improving business processes is to determine the process you would like to improve, document each step using a flow chart and explore the steps in detail. Note that some processes may involve sub-steps you are unaware of.
Analyze the Process: After determining the processes, it is vital to use your flow chart in determining what the bottlenecks are in the process. Some of the critical questions to consider when doing this include:
• Which of these steps creates a problem in the organization?
• Are team members frustrated by any of these steps?
• Which of these steps causes a delay in the organization?
Also, remember to speak to people who are affected by the processes and listen to their suggestions on how to make an improvement.
Redesign the process: After identifying the problems, it is vital to redesign the processes in order to eliminate the problem. One way of doing this is to work with people involved in the process, get their ideas, and ensure that everyone understands what the process is meant to do. Then narrow down your list of possible solutions by considering how the ideas made by your team members will affect the process in real life.
Get the required Resources: The next step is to secure the right resources needed in implementing the new process. Start by listing out all you need to do this; this may include seeking for advice from colleagues, senior managers, IT and HR department, ensure that your properly communicate with everyone involved in the processes and that they understand how this new process benefits the organization as a whole.
Implement the redesigned process: While implementing the redesigned process, it is vital to note that improving business processes may also involve changing some existing systems, protocols, and teams members. For instance, you may have to hire new staff, retrain your colleagues or even purchase new software; therefore it is vital to plan and manage this carefully, also allocate time to deal with challenges that may arise while implementing the processes.
Evaluate the process: After rolling out the new process, ensure that you evaluate it and monitor how things are going in the weeks or months that follow. Doing this will enable you to know if the redesigned processes are meeting up with the required expectation.

Finally, remember that making changes in a business is not always easy; some employees may resist the redesigned processes, and other challenges may occur. However, small changes made regularly will ensure that the process remains efficient and relevant to the organization.
If you’d like to improve the current processes in your organization, seeking a professional help is a way to go. ERP Advisers has many years of experience in helping improve processes and technology with small to large businesses. We would love to work with you. Give us a call to get started!

Home | Simple Rules to Making a Successful Business Introduction

In today’s world, introductions have become more important both in our personal and professional lives. But many of us think that introductions are not everyone’s cup of tea. However, this notion is completely false, and you must take the leadership role to make your brand and business prosperous.

In business, there is nothing more powerful than a compelling introduction. This is a thing that you need to take care of with utmost professionalism. Here are some effective measures you can take to make any business introduction more effective:

Double opt-in works the best:

Single opt-in introductions can come as a surprise to both or either of the persons, and it is lazy as well. Double opt-in is the best and non-lazy way of introducing two people to each other. You give other people a choice and a solid reason to meet the other person. And they both can benefit from each other’s experience.

Consider the rank:

A business introduction is a social act, and you have to consider the ranks, professionalism, and power of both the parties. For a higher ranked professional, you have to write in more of a requesting tone. For a person having low rank, it becomes more of a duty to attend the conversation.

Make it simple and real:

Do not make the situation complex by adding too much data. Write to the point and only talk about business. When it comes to deciding the time for the meeting, give them 5 to 6-time slots in a week or month to choose from. Again prefer the time suggested by the higher ranked person, respect the rank and you’ll surely find success. Don’t make them do the work. Don’t ask them to suggest times, don’t ask them to pick a time off of your online calendar tool.

Show gratitude:

Thank your colleague for the introduction.  If a conversation develops into something more, be sure to re-thank the colleague who introduced you to keep them in the loop and aware.

Business introductions are the single most powerful way to make new connections and have them turn into real opportunities.  Treat them with care and respect they deserve.

Home | Be A Master To Your Own Destiny

A permanent solution to constant struggles:

Do you ever find yourself getting along with misery? You know you are doomed, but you don’t care. You don’t know what you are saying, why you are saying, and to whom you are speaking.

You also realize that people aren’t really excited to be around you anymore and you try your best to overlook…but you can’t. Well, the problem is within you and we are here to take care of that. Commit yourself to the words below, and see the difference!

You need to recharge, just like your phone:

Everyone needs a soft corner inside their head where they can stretch their roomy happiness to infinity levels. It’s different for everyone; introverts prefer to lock themselves up in their rooms and submerge themselves into novels and music or they can probably opt for a long walk whereas extroverts want to indulge themselves into public discussions, and being around people. Know what floats your boat and recharge your precious self!

• Your heart is important, and so is your brain:
• ‘When life gives you lemons, make a lemonade‘. It is not just a quote; it can be a reality as well. All you have to do is know your brain well.
• The lower part of the brain, ‘ reactive brain ‘ is mostly responsible for involuntary actions so you can’t really do anything about it.
• The upper part of our brain, ‘ thinking brain ‘ is where we can change our game of life. It is in our control, and with practice, we can actually rewire our brain to make better decisions.

Communication is an art, be an artist:

When facing a large audience, try your best to REFRAIN from the following points:

• Carelessness: Acting care free won’t really help you. Keep your tone professional!
• Complication: If you know how to simplify, you can really be the boss.
• Confusion: You choose to illustrate your thoughts when you are still not beyond the thinking process? Not a smart move, dude.
• Inconsistency: Have consistency. Your level of tone should be the same as everyone.
• Callousness: Being selfish won’t really get you anywhere. Respect the time people are investing in you.
• Overconfidence: We know you are a know it all but here is a tip: keep it to yourself!

Keep your priorities straight:

There are things you would gladly compromise your sleep for and things not worth your alarm ring. The beauty here lies in the correct identification towards what is rightly vital for you which in return would shape your approaches towards your goals of life. A tip here is being rational while sorting!

Sit back, but only to stand later:

Leading comes later, thinking comes first. Before taking a stand, take a step behind and work on the following points:

• Know your purpose.
• Question and listen.
• Do not hesitate to experiment.
• Reflect and initiate.
• Think out of the box.
• Have a slow meaningful pace.
• Be authentic.

An overview:

To conclude, you can unleash the perfect version of yourself if you take your heart and brain wherever you go.

By practicing to be self-disciplined and organized, strong relationships are soon on their way for you. Keep your passion of life burning, and learn to play with the fumes!

Our Business Focus:

- With The Following Services -