Unit 5: M-Commerce

Enterprise Enablement

Enterprise Enablement is a Capacity on Demand Advanced Function technology that enables the system for massive online transaction processing (OLTP).

Enterprise Enablement practice has the methods, experience, and range of offerings to assist you in accelerating the adoption and value of your Information Management and Business Analytics investments.

With in-depth knowledge on development and running of a digital eStore, ecommerce Enterprise Enablement will enable you to transform your brick-and-mortar store into a digital reality. With experience in running a multi-cart, multi-currency and multi-stock eStore, our capability will enable you to deploy and manage an enterprise-level eStore for your brand.

This eCommerce Enterprise Enablement sourcecomes integration-ready with global payment gateways, enterprise order management and delivery APIs with freight forwarders and global shippers.

Cloud-based e-commerce enablement services revenue is forecast to nearly triple by 2014 to reach $9 billion. This provides a deeper analysis of the forecast trends and drivers for technology providers seeking to enter this market.

Email and Messaging

Email:

Smartphone use has created the ultimate direct and one-to-one communications opportunity between people, companies, and their customers. Direct connections have been around for a long time, as businesses could send warranty return post cards to a mailing list and later offer up “call and order today” instructions to a television audience. What is unique about the smartphone is that messaging and content can be sent and received everywhere and anytime, and those communications can occur through a growing number of channels, applications, and uniquely mobile technologies

Tactics for Growing E-mail Lists

Through subscription.

Subscriptions are done in three ways: Subscribe to newsletters, purchase and register during the registration and download.

E-mail forward-to-a friend.

"Word of mouth" is one of the most powerful viral marketing techniques. If members recognize that your content is useful and informative, certainly, it will forward, and this fact increases the number of readers and may even increase the number of registered users.

Social sharing buttons.

Social network has very important role in your business as it can be passed to your subscribers’ followers, their followers’ followers and so on to expand E-mailing lists.

Co-registration.

"Co-registration is a widely - used approach to increase the size of your e-mail lists. Co-registration works this way: After completing a subscription form or upon leaving a website, visitors are invited to subscribe to one or more e-zines.

Offline event/tradeshows.

You can introduce your business through offline event such as tradeshow in order to absorb potential customer.

Tactics for Improving E-mail Marketing Deliverability

Internet services judge your messages based on how your customers respond to your messages send. When ISPs want to recognize your reputation, they usually consider factors that include: The number of complaints that your organization has received through the ISPs, the number of E-mails bounce or unbeliever, content of messages.

Testing E-mail

Subject line.

Subject line is one of the most important parts of an E-mail. Factors that can give consideration include: 1. Add personalization in the subject line 2. Call to action 3. The subject line 4. Words used in the subject line.

E-mail design.

It is suggested that have a main template of your E-mail and create probably the same template with less differences. However, you can test the main factors that influence on your unsubscribe rate, click through rate or aim of the E-mail.

E-mail content.

There are some factors that you can test in your E-mail content. A/B testing is the best way in this area.

A)Headline.

The first thing that can be observed after opening the mail and should be consistent with the subject line is headline

B)Position of content

Test your E-mail by moving content in different part of E-mail body

Messaging

We have highlighted this trend earlierin our earlier post where “Messaging Apps AreBecoming Ecosystems” with growinguser baseare expanding capabilities facilitating digital transactions andcommerce. WeChat, for example, isalready allowing verified sellers to create shops within their platform in China, and, Kakao, Line and other similar players are already heading in the same direction.

All social media platforms aretrying to grab the opportunity by converting from a social communicationplatform into asocial commerce platform. To build on this trend, even broader public social networks such as Twitter, Pinterest , however, a publicly facing social platform can be powerful but inherently noisy and looks weaker on buying UX scale.

Social messaging apps instantly arehelpingbridgethe gap between customerpreferences and building trust leveraging the social communication system. Below are some of the key elements driving social commerce.

  • Reviews: Which is very powerful for anybuying behavior – leads to authentication and if its comes from know trustworthy person that increases the authenticity of the product.
  • Recommendations: Automated algorithm base recommendation system is useful for generic purpose but not the best solution for matching personal test or preferences. Rather, Sharing, Liking, recommending to friends inside or outside the platform which is more relevant in personal level contextual purpose.
  • B2C Communication: Connect sellers and buyers on P2P communication basis increase loyalty and easy grievancehandling.

Field Force Automation

Field force automation (FFA) refers to the use of technology to capture field sales or service information in real time. This involves use of technology, typically handheld PDAs, wireless devices, tablet PCs or mobile phones to capture data. The captured data is transferred immediately to back end systems (ERP, CRM or accounting systems) through wireless connectivity (Wi-Fi, 3G, satellite or GPRS). This instant capture of information reduces time delays, avoids manual double entry data errors and enhances field force productivity. From an operations perspective, availability of field information in near real time allows to plan delivery schedules, reduce inventory and monitor and control the field workers.

The biggest challenge in field force automation is in developing a simple, but usable, user interface for the hand held device / mobile, and connectivity at the location of information capture. Connectivity can be overcome by having a system which can retain the information captured in the device cache and later synchronize with back-end systems (thick client).

"Field service is increasingly viewed as an integral part of a unified customer strategy, improved over time as part of a careful project. This can also be thought of as service life cycle management or service resource planning. It is as integral as sales, marketing and customer support to product-centric businesses. Another factor bringing field service into focus for many North American and European enterprises is the aging of the workforce, and the challenges with passing along process and customer knowledge to new employees, while also reducing the head count or keeping it flat. This makes the efficiencies gained by FSM suites and mobile automation key mitigating tactics.

Field Force Automation solutions provide field workers and back office administrators with the right set of tools to service your clients in a more flexible, real-time and customer-oriented manner. Field Force Automation is all about enhancing your service levels for your customers. Driven by innovative technology, it enables you to deliver that differentiating level of excellence.

Reasons:

Reason 1: Improve the field force productivity

Reason 2: Improve customer service and satisfaction level

Reason 3: Invoice faster

Reason 4: Reduce operational risks

Reason 5: Differentiate from competition

Basic advantages:

  • Quick return on investment and sales increase
  • Real-time access to warehouse inventory, settlements with customers, etc.
  • Shortening the time needed for customer service
  • Optimization of time and costs of traveling to Customer
  • Control of working time
  • Reporting mechanisms, Geo-Marketing
  • Mobile office
  • Complete integration with the corporate IT system

Application

  • supports the handling of business transactions
  • gathering orders
  • sale (sales documents)
  • handling returns
  • handling financial settlements with customers, collection
  • access to information about the inventory
  • processing bar codes and/or RFID
  • photographic documentation of events and products
  • aiding marketing processes (surveys, special offers)
  • solutions from the area of CRM
  • record of sales representatives’ working time
  • automatic reporting and creation of statistics
  • optionally, optimization of routes and navigation integrated with the system

Field Force Automation for insurance

The client

The client is one of the largest providers of supplemental insurance, operating a large and diverse field force in the US. The company wanted to mobile-enable an existing Web-based field force management application over a diverse range of devices with low total cost of ownership (TCO) and faster time to market.

Business need

The company has a large field force of over 7,500 agents spread across the US. The field force team members were given a “trip sheet” every morning, which contained information of customers they were required to contact and service. The trip sheets remained “static” as it was impossible to enable dynamic changes in case the customer was unavailable or any other high priority visit had to be scheduled. This led to challenges in terms of agent productivity and client satisfaction. The client was keen to mobile-enable services such as agent search, account and policyholder details and reminder lookupfor field force operations.

Challenges

Two key challenges in implementing the mobile solution were:

  • The agents carried a diverse set of devices, hence the mobile solution had to be made available on multiple platforms simultaneously.
  • Since many advisors are “loosely coupled” with the organization, it was important that the solution required low maintenance n terms of upfront investments on the part of users, apart from enabling future upgrades.

Our solution

The Infosys mConnect platform helped mobile-enable the field force management application in record time, and ensured that its look and feel was similar to a Web application to boost adoption.Infosys adopted the mConnect platform and hence the solution was made available on all smartphone devices such as iPhone, Blackberry, and Android, which support GPS capability. As part of the solution, a new feature was added to provide driving directions to an account or policyholder location using GPS technology. Associates were also able to request the three nearest accounts to a specified location, and secure driving directions to one of the accounts.

Benefits

  • Improved agent productivity, leading to direct increase in organization's revenue
  • Low total cost of ownership (TCO) for operations and future upgrades
  • Mobile solution similar in look and feel to a Web solution, leading to short learning time for users, and hence, higher adoption
  • Fast time to market – implementation completed from requirements till delivery in three months

Automation to your field service process, start with these four key areas:

  • Workflow: Pre-programmed or customized workflows can give technicians step-by-step instructions and diagnostic tools for certain types of jobs (such as troubleshooting an outage). This video from SAP (featuring smartglass technology) is a good example of a self-guided repair process.
  • Data entry:Instead of scribbling notes on a clipboard and re-keying customer account data back at the office, technicians can complete job information forms on a field service mobile app that automatically syncs data across all systems. That means less careless mistakes and a clean audit trail for billing/invoicing
  • Routing/scheduling: Many FSM solutions offer “dynamic scheduling” tools which auto-assign jobs to specific technicians based on job priority, technician availability, skillset, and proximity. Technicians can use the same software to plan the optimal route between jobs, factoring in job order, traffic, and road conditions.
  • Preventative maintenance:The right automation can help your team transition from being a reactionary workforce to a more surgical, preventative one. To start out, you can set up preventative maintenance schedules for customer equipment based on item specifications, warranty, part lifecycles, etc. More advanced preventative tactics might involve remote monitoring — i.e., using embedded telematics sensors to track early warning signs like pressure, voltage, flow, and heat.

Field Force Automation for Healthcare

  1. Labor Savings: Using automation to replace manually intensive tasks that are better done by machine can be a big time saver. It doesn’t have to eliminate employees, but rather elevate them into higher-functioning roles that make use of the clinical expertise they have been trained for.
  2. Improved Quality and Consistency:Automation tools are not subject to human error or fatigue, so they can help provide a consistent basis of care activities. A Texas hospital study found that greater automation in the areas of medical records, order entry, and decision support appeared to result in a reduction in deaths, complications and cost.
  3. Reduced Waste: Use of paper and spreadsheets and other workarounds needed for an overfull workload can lead to a lot of waste. For example, rather than playing phone tag with a discharged patient in the free minutes between hospital nursing duties, automation can help get nurses and patients connected more efficiently.

4. Increased Predictability of Outcomes: When patients follow a standardized care path supported by automation, it is more likely they will stay on track towards predicted outcomes. Additionally, automation can help detect when a patient has deviated from the recommended care plan so the care team can intervene.

5. Higher Throughput: A nurse supported by automation tools can handle a larger population of patients at one time. Instead of scaling up and down your headcount as patient volumes grow and shrink, an automated platform can scale flexibly to address groups of all sizes.

6. Data-Driven Insights: Technology used to automate processes can also deliver a wealth of data in a continuous feedback loop that can be used for performance improvement and optimization. With every cycle, automation systems can collect data on how the process is working and use that information to improve the program. This way it improves on itself over time, becoming even more efficient, more accurate and more helpful to the team’s workload.

Field Sales Support

A multi-channel strategy can incorporate field sales representatives; who need to be supported by telephone and e-commerce channels.

When customers are managed by field sales teams it can be challenging to ensure communications between field sales teams and telephone account managers are coordinated so the customer doesn't suffer. Utilizing the services of an outsourced contact centre to act as central control is important so the field sales team have a point of contact to discuss their accounts.

By dealing with national field sales forces every day PCMS are equipped to provide a dedicated telephone line and email address to ensure contact can be made with the telephone team as quickly as possible. Our structure recognizes the value of relationships built up over regular contact with the same advisor. Our telesales team can process orders for the reps and resolve complex customer service situations. In addition, they can provide mass notification exercises e.g. Christmas delivery information and provide cover for vacations, sickness and Bank Holidays.

The PCMS Field Sales Support solution provides:

  • A prioritised contact point for field sales which reduces the amount of time wasted
  • Enhanced customer satisfaction due to proactive contact and speedy resolution of problems
  • Cost efficiency through using the lowest cost channel
  • Increased morale in field sales through providing support

PCMS understand that success can come from developing smaller accounts to become larger accounts worthy of field sales contact, and in being there when the reps need someone to solve a problem for them. If you recognize the importance of a solid support structure, then call PCMS to find out how our contact centre can help support your field sales team.

ASSET TRACKING AND MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS

Collecting and maintaining accurate records of your fixed assets can be a time consuming and expensive task. The right integrated solution will put your company's valuable equipment firmly under your control. The goal of any robust system is to maximize your asset control efficiency and minimize your equipment loss.

Using the combination of mobile computers and asset management software, you will be able to speed up your audit tasks and conduct your asset tracking in real-time. This will enable you to become more efficient in your production planning and reduce downtime. The management software will also enable you to schedule necessary maintenance or services for your equipment at appropriate times. With a complete solution that includes barcode/RFID printing technology, mobile computers and software you can manage your assets accurately and efficiently.