Internet provides great opportunity for traditional businesses

The Internet has fundamentally changed the way we do business, and it has created huge opportunities for entirely new business models, from Web portals to e-commerce. Many of these new companies have succeeded, and many have failed, it has set the stage for even more innovation and success throughout all sectors of business. Internet continues to provide an even greater opportunity for more traditional businesses.  

All successful business models are based on process. It is efficient, well-defined business processes that differentiate average companies from exceptional ones, and the Internet now provides the opportunity to truly re-define and optimise these processes. Companies that do not recognise this fact find themselves unable to compete in the new economy.

To fully optimise any business process it is essential that every person involved be an active participant in the process itself. When key players are outside of the process, and play only a passive role, inefficiencies are inevitable. Individual’s roles may be different, with varying levels of authority, visibility, access, and control, but within these parameters each person must actively participate in the process to achieve the greatest results. 

Companies that embrace this active-process model and implement it to the full extent that technology will allow will quickly achieve a significant competitive advantage. Today the foundation of all business processes is software, and the best software solutions will always take full advantage of the available technology to optimise the business processes for which they were designed.

The Active-Customer model incorporates the three core business groups – employees, customers, and partners – directly into each of a company’s CRM processes. The model no longer focuses on the interaction and communication between these groups, but instead emphasises the incorporation of each group into the process itself. Communication between the company, its partners, and its customers simply becomes a natural byproduct of the system, not the basis of the system itself. To fully realise the Active-Customer model, however, it must be integrated directly into the software application’s low-level architecture.  Every aspect of the system from individual field customisation to advanced workflow and process automation must be conceived and designed from the beginning with this model mind. Unless the Active-Customer model is designed into the system from the very beginning, there is little chance of achieving the optimal results.

Below are a few examples of how the Active-Customer model must be integrated into the application’s low-level architecture.

• One of the basic process automation features in high-end systems is automatic notification. Simply stated, the right people need to be notified about the right events at the right time. Under the Active-Customer model, both customers and partners can be easily configured to be notified in the same manner as the support team, keeping them fully informed about all actions taken with respect to their issues.
• While all customers and partners should be active players, each of them does not require the same level of access, visibility, or authority within the system. So software solutions based on the Active-Customer model must allow for multiple customers access types, each with its own definable set of privileges.
• With the Active-Customer model the customers themselves should be able to be assigned ownership of specific tasks within the process. These tasks can be completely defined by the company, but the software architecture must easily allow these tasks to be defined and assigned to the appropriate customer contact. In some cases these customer-owned tasks or events should even be automatically created as a designed part of the business process workflow.

Software developers must have the right conceptual model in mind at the very early stages of software development in order to optimise their solution.  Once a system has been designed and implemented around one approach, such as the traditional CRM model, it is nearly impossible to change that underlying model by simply adding new features, modules, or interfaces.

In today’s competitive economy, companies will succeed or fail to a large degree based on how well they manage their customer relationships. This requires a careful evaluation of all customer-focused business processes, including Marketing, Sales, and Support, and then implementing intelligent high-end software systems to optimise these processes.

The traditional CRM model, on which most of the established software solutions are based, is fundamentally limiting in that a company’s customers and business partners cannot be included as active participants of the processes themselves. They are only viewed as the recipients of information that is generated from the process.

The more powerful approach is the Active-Customer model, pioneered by TechExcel, Inc.  With this model every person involved in a business process is treated as a truly active player, and given the appropriate level of visibility, authority, and control.  

Companies that embrace this new model of Customer Relationship Management will quickly gain a sustainable competitive advantage within their market by fully optimising their CRM business processes. These are the companies that will succeed and grow in the current climate, and those companies that do not adopt such a model, will quickly be left behind.

Choosing TechExcel’s CustomerWise will give many benefits and out – of-the-box you get exciting benefits such as:

• Fast deployment with easy installation and automated upgrades.
• Intuitive user interfaces reduces training time and gets users up to speed faster.
• System customisation to suit individual demands: easily configured workflow rules that can be changed to control the business processes based on your organisation's mission.
• Respond quickly and efficiently to conditions that can disrupt critical services by automating incident and problem management processes.
• Empower users with a comprehensive knowledgebase to dynamically search for solutions and advice.
• Act as single point of contact for user requests, user-submitted incidents and infrastructure-generated incidents.

CustomerWise also integrates seamlessly with other TechExcel suite such as TechExcel ITSM (IT Service Management) and TechExcel ALM (Application Lifecycle Management)

Finally CustomerWise can be extended to include functionality for other TechExcel products such as:

FormWise is a web-based form management solution for CustomerWise. Create fully customised online forms and integrate them directly with your workflow processes. The integration of workflow and form processing enables streamlined data gathering, tracking, and form storage. Forms can even be routed automatically to the appropriate individuals for completion, approval, and processing, improving your team's efficiency.

ProjectPlan provides integrated project planning and resource management for IT managers and service teams. ProjectPlan gives managers complete control over project information, scheduling, and resource management through its real time integration with TechExcel ServiceWise and TechExcel CustomerWise. A clear view of project details derived directly from the underlying service management application provides managers greater insights to be derived from project data. ProjectPlan includes project management features such as: Gantt charts, resource scheduling, project baseline, milestone management, reporting, and process automation. ProjectPlan is the ideal tool to meet the ever-changing complexities of modern project management.

DownloadPlus is an easy-to-use website management application for monitoring file downloads and analysing website download activities. Integrated with TechExcel Service Suite, Download Plus improves sales lead generation, lead qualification, and software delivery. DownloadPlus enables businesses to enhance their web presence by integrating web activities with their customer records to improve sales and customer service.

LinkPlus is an application programming interface (API) enabling automatic real-time data synchronisation between TechExcel Customer Suite software and third party or legacy applications. LinkPlus can be web-services based or as COM module implemented as Active X controls. Integrating data with third party or existing applications allows businesses to maximise current investments while increasing data visibility for internal team members.

CTI Data Connector provides integration between CustomerWise and your existing phone
system infrastructure. CTI integration provides service engineers on-screen telephone interfaces, one-click dialing, and incoming and outgoing call event automation. The CTI agent allows service analysts to view current call-queues and missed calls. Call tracking events within CustomerWise allow managers to report on total call events, even if multiple locations use different phone systems.

Wireless Web provides users access to real-time incident or request information through a secure portal optimised for mobile devices. All users including service engineers, field service technicians, managers, salespeople, and end-users may access and manage incidents from anywhere, at any time, using a handheld mobile device.