NGR's Blog

The manufacturing industries are constantly looking for ways to cut costs, increase revenue, efficiency, speed, and so on, and advancements in technology are key to furthering this cause. Today, there are several emerging technologies that are having a significant impact on how companies operate. And one that is being embraced with increasingly open arms is cloud manufacturing software.

Cloud, or software as a service (SaaS), based solutions offer many benefits to end users that are making it attractive to manufacturers. There are of course still the ever-present security concerns and the question of data ownership, as well as the more cut-and-dried issue of network connectivity. And it should be noted that one of the keys to making a cloud-based manufacturing operations solution viable is to ensure that that architecturally there is enough redundancy that production will not be affected if access to the cloud is interrupted.

Nonetheless, the rise in adoption rates shows that many manufacturers are seeing enough advancements in cloud technology and the associated quick ROI for implementing cloud-based software solutions today, along with an anticipation for even larger considerations for tomorrow.

As I started to reflect on this question, my first thought was to look at all the amazing trends that we have witnessed in the Indian Internet landscape in 2011. Here are just a few for context. The total number of Internet users crossed the 120 million mark; ecommerce is now in excess of Rs. 40,000 crores annually; the Indian Facebook population is touching the 40 million mark; there are 50 million mobile data subscribers; new companies and eco-systems are being created around cloud computing, online advertising, mobile applications, web infrastructure, online travel, and much more.

By multiple estimates including reports published by BCG and McKinsey, India will reach somewhere in the vicinity of 250-350 million Internet users by 2015. I took a liberal interpolation of those estimates to arrive at a number of 30 million new users that we will add in the coming year. That’s a staggering number – and larger than the entire population of Australia if you like those kinds of comparisons. However, to truly deconstruct this number and get a sense for what the potential impact this will have for a business looking to leverage this user base, we need to look carefully not just at the users but also at the following ‘inverted iceberg’- where there is more than that meets the eye below the surface.

Lead management has become a basic necessity for marketing purposes. B2B marketing departments, thorough as they are with their motives of accentuated investment returns, encourage the employment of an optimized lead management process. Nurturing your leads on a mass scale will not provide you with the sales figures that you have been aspiring for. Because each prospective lead’s requirements differ you need to customize your lead nurturing plans accordingly to achieve the maximum.

The lead management lifecycle is a known fact — capturing, nurturing, scoring, timing the leads when they are sales ready and evaluating. An effective lead management helps you to identify the needs of your customers and close the sales deals efficiently. There are different sources of communication, such as the email, phone, social media, etc., where you can meet your prospective customers. Strike and build a relationship with them and nurture them by providing them with research materials and statistics so that they can come to a conclusion regarding the products they want to purchase.

Thanks to the rapid growth of technology and an Internet savvy populating, building a dynamic and paperless franchise organization has become extremely easy and cost-effective. Today, a large number of growing franchise organizations are actively implementing technology solutions to create new revenue opportunities, streamline their operations and cut costs associated with paper-based processes. In fact, some of the fastest growing franchise concepts (with growth rates of over 40-50%) out there are more then 90% paperless and attribute a big part of their success to technology.

Current technology solutions can help to enhance all aspects of franchise operations including sales,marketing, operations, support, financials, customer management, training, supplies, etc. Implemented properly, they can provide franchisors and franchisees with the competitive edge necessary to win over new franchisees and customers while reducing costs to improve profitability. Lets take a look at some of the franchise operations that can be enhanced by leveraging technology.

As marketers we are often so focused on new customer acquisition that we sometime forget to pay attention to the customers that we already have. That would be a massive mistake.

It costs 6-7 times more to acquire a new customer than it does to keep an existing one. You are 4 times more likely to close business with an existing customer than you are with a new prospect.

Understanding the needs and pain points of current customers and prospects is an important aspect for planning out B2B marketing campaigns. Traditionally, marketers would look to telephone and print surveys for needed marketing data. Depending on researchers to gather, input, compile and error check surveys results led to higher costs and missed marketing opportunities.

Today, B2B marketers have a new option for gathering this information – online surveys. The web provides exciting, flexible and social options for conducting surveys:  it’s just so much more efficient than traditional means. 

There are very few prominent B2B brands in the general market. A big reason is that many B2B organizations view marketing as a necessity for B2C firms and instead concentrate on personal selling for B2B relationships. In this neat article by Prof John Quelch, he says that Microsoft, Intel, IBM, and GE generate far more B2B revenues than sales to end consumers.

He further discusses why B2B firms should try to build brands.

B2B marketers have to address thousands of small businesses as well as enterprise customers. They cannot do so economically using the traditional direct sales force. Branding gets the word out and established share of mind. All this helps, when a potential prospect has a need that requires to be fulfilled quickly.