YOUR BUSINESS IS DYNAMIC. SHOULDN'T YOUR ERP & CRM SYSTEM BE TOO? IS THE ULTIMATE LEGACY SOFTWARE READY TO DRIVE THE NEXT WAVE OF CLOUD ADOPTION?

Enterprise resource planning software is the ultimate legacy application. On the downside, ERP has earned a reputation for costly, time-consuming deployments and maintenance, outdated user interfaces, and general inflexibility. On the plus side, ERP is software that very often runs the business, from manufacturing to financials to sales, and it's often highly customized to serve specific company needs. The category, at least until recently, has also been synonymous with on-premises implementations, in part because of concerns that the cloud couldn't deliver the reliability, speed, and data control companies wanted from such a crucial system.

While other business application categories such as CRM and email have shifted heavily toward cloud deployments, ERP has been seen as the last to move. It's not that cloud-based ERP hasn't existed; it just hasn't enjoyed the same interest and adoption as early drivers like CRM.

That appears poised to change. Users and IT want faster deployments and less maintenance. Meanwhile, cloud use -- especially in the form of software as a service (SaaS) -- has gone from new and trendy to mundane.

Research firm Gartner predicted last year that at least 30% of service-oriented businesses will move the majority of their ERP applications to the cloud by 2018. Gartner expects that over the next decade and beyond, the ERP norm will switch from on-premises to cloud. It said that heavily customized, on-premises ERP deployments will be commonly thought of as "legacy ERP" beginning in 2016.

The good news for CIOs and their teams considering moving some or all ERP functions online: Vendors have been prepping for this shift, and there's already plenty of choice. The conventional ERP heavyweights -- Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP -- are also in on the trend. You may have noticed how much all three, each in their own way, talked up cloud across the board in 2014.

Add in cloud-from-the-start companies plus a variety of other options, and it's apparent that ERP cloud advocates will have a range of choices. Moreover, expect 2015 to bring much added functionality related to mobile and remote access (which was one of the key complaints in the survey mentioned above), social business, big data and analytics integration, and more.

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CRM strategy to create a winning customer experience: A telco can gain real time feedback and deliver tailored offers to customers by empowering customers through self-help apps

Customer service is re-emerging as the core business strategy to create a winning customer experience. Great service needs to be consistent across all mobile devices, as well as social and digital media channels. It also needs to be personalized and consistent with marketing efforts by helping in retention and growth through enhanced customer experience and engagement. It also explains the current market scenarios and challenges that need to be addressed in order to place a successful strategy for customer relationship management (CRM) in place.

 Self Service applications allow customers to manage their mobile account transactions real time from their individual phones. Customers can even raise their own trouble ticket or request and provide MNOs with real time customer feedback. A study estimates that 80 percent of calls to call centers are related to simple queries.  By empowering customers through such self-help apps benefits the customers and helps the operator to reduce customer care cost. It also holds the potential for an augmented customer engagement, provided it is a personalized and secure interaction. By developing a rich interaction suite through the mobile self-service app, a telco can gain real time feedback and deliver tailored offers to customers. Talking about the customers, with a well integrated self service app they can resolve their issues within one session without having to wait for a 24 hour process time line.

Africa, Asia and Latin America emerged as the untapped markets for such apps. In such growing economies, MNOs can deepen relationship with customers by providing them a tool like self-service apps. In a fiercely competitive market, low engagement level contributes to high customer churn.

 Self-service apps provide MNOs a branded presence on the customer’s device, and a channel to have a continuous personalized dialog with customers. A positive customer experience via a self-service app generates repeat usage, loyalty and advocacy.

In terms of creating new application, the problem especially arises in mobile first economies where mobile device models are attached to pre- and postpaid contracts on 2G and 3G networks which make it difficult for developing and embedding self service apps on handsets. On the other hand, emerging economies which have poor literacy rates present a challenge in adoption of adoption of such apps. Here, it is important to create a simple intuitive user interface (UI) with one touch options and minimum number of menus and click through pages. MNOs will have to find ways to overcome such issues in order to create opportunities for advanced and rich interactions.

For more details, visit us @ www.urssystems.com

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