By Ran Berger, Flat Rock CEO

So, you started your project, you chose your supplier, set up an internal project team and you are all ready to go. We all know that it is not that simple to deliver and to complete projects on time, quality and budget. So what can we really do beyond the technical and methodical activities of the project delivery lifecycle? How can we make this happen? How can we work in collaboration with our chosen supplier (I prefer the term partner)?

I have been the client for many years and in the last 5 years I am part of the suppliers. During the years, I have seen many project managers and been part of many project teams and would like to share my thoughts of how to make this happen. They are all results of real experiences.

Partnership

Long gone the days of “us” and “them”…it is all about working together in a partnership. It is the client’s interest that the supplier is successful in their delivery to protect their investment and internal reputation and it is the supplier’s interest to ensure a successful delivery to retain the client and grow together.

It is my view that as soon as the barriers and walls are down and everyone sees the project as a partnership, the likelihood of a successful delivery and more importantly, the ability to successfully deal with difficult situations will only increase.

So, how can we develop that partnership? The main ingredients are below. And no, there’s no magic wand to make it happen…

Culture

We all operate in a global environment. This means that in many projects we have exposure to multiple cultures, languages and locations. The first thing to do is to simply accept that fact and accommodate it.

You need to learn and read about the cultures, their way of communicating, their time zones, areas of sensitivity, current economy climate, their language and what makes them motivated.

And let’s not forget the organisational culture. It is important to understand that companies operate in different cultures and rhythm and it is very important to learn it and find a way to synchronise. You are not required to change your operating culture or adopt someone else’s in order to be successful but it is key to learn how to operate together.

How to learn that? This can be seen in the organizational chart, communication style, dress code, atmosphere in the work environment and staff turnover.

Communication

Everyone knows that communication is a key factor for project success. I would like to suggest a few simple things in relation to communication.

Agree on the communication plan from the outset. Ensure that frequency of updates is relevant and has a predefined minimum. This will help avoid anticipation for random updates.

Keep it simple. Communicate on the key and important things. Don’t waste time on the non-relevant topics.

Encourage feedback. Constructive feedback always helps to improve.

Relationships

Build them, nurture them, spend the time to develop them. Good relationships on all levels (operational, C level) are key for trust and partnership. If you’ve managed to get this part right, then you will be able to work together and overcome any operational issues.

Expectations

Manage them. Make sure that all parts are aware of the expectations at all stages of the projects. It is crucial that the project team is fully oriented and driven towards what’s expected from them.

Winning!

Having a winning mentality in the project team is just great. So celebrate success, ensure constant wins and even small ones. It is always great to see the bright side and enjoy the success. Many small wins will add up to a winner project.

There is much more than the above and I would be happy to share more. We always welcome new clients, new challenges and feedback.

Watch the exclusive interview with Flat Rock co-founder and CEO Ran Berger on the software industry, outsourcing, web development and more.

By Polina Ilieva, Solution Sales Specialist at Flat Rock

During the past few years, mobile phones have experienced a great transformation – from being a device for telephone conversations and texting to a powerful business tool. Today we use different apps to arrange meetings, add them to a calendar, share business documents, manage projects, access the company’s CRM, pay bills and many more. Statistics say that by 2014 mobile Internet usage will take over the desktop Internet usage. The whole market is getting mobile. If your business is not using mobile marketing tools, then you are already behind your competitors. Mobile applications, just like other marketing tools, are the fundamentals of mobile business communication and that is why business should learn how to use them in the most efficient way.

How popular are mobile applications really?

It is not a question of whether to develop a mobile application, but when exactly to do it. It follows the same logic of whether to have a website or not. 85% of business owners have a smartphone and 73% of them use apps on a daily basis. This means that using mobile applications can lead to successful grounds not only for B2C, but also for B2B communication.

Today, 64% of mobile phone time is spent on applications. As we can see from the diagram below, for the last 5 years the number of downloaded applications has increased three times.

What will mobile applications do for your business?

→ Facilitate better customer relationships

Apps are a great way to communicate directly with your clients, but every business should focus on what type of application will be useful for them – whether that is social networking, informative, broadcasting, entertaining or any other app.

→ Reach local customers and provide them with special offers, promotions and discounts

When people from your community know your brand, it is more likely to engage with you and find your mobile application in the Store. You can use that opportunity to send them push messages with your latest promotions and discounts.

→ Offer better customer support

With the use of a mobile app you will reach your customers instantly and more efficiently. You would also offer them the option of reaching you 24/7 by only sending a message from their mobile phone.

→ Collect feedback from your customers

Once your users download and try the app, they can rate it and also comment it in the Store. This feedback will allow you to see the weaknesses of your products or services and to try to find a way to fix them.

The benefit of using mobile applications is that it provides the opportunity for the business to be in a constant contact with their current and potential clients. It increases the visibility, reinforces the brand, increases the exposure across the different mobile devices and builds loyalty. If you still think that there are more answers to be revealed on the topic, you can always contact us and we will help you take the right decision for your business.

by Teodor, Solution Sales Specialist at Flat Rock

What is CRM?

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is business solution software, which helps businesses increase the number of their clients. The CRM allows the client to manage and organize the information and the whole process in the different sales phases, until the deal is closed. Nowadays, CRM has a significant and vital role in every business environment.

Why businesses need CRM

CRM collects together all information from all storage data in your business environment. It allows the employees to make better and more effective decisions. CRM focuses on the entire employee structure in the company environment. Before CRM existed, every company with a lot of different departments analyzed the customer information separately and often the results didn’t bring maximum profits for the organization. It takes a lot of time and resources to research the whole information. But CRM collects everything and centralizes the whole information in a particular organization. Everything becomes easy and indeed yields better results.

Some people don’t know what exactly a standard CRM is. They don’t know what the benefits of using such a system are. Most of the people think that the CRM is useful only for the high management level but this is not quite so, because CRM allows operation from every structure in one small, medium or large-sized organization. The working environment and decision management is much easier, because of the many CRM features. These days the implementation of CRM such as Eshbel’s Priority CRM or even “Sugar CRM” has to become a habit for most of the business organizations worldwide. This is one of the most important management strategies if you want to optimize the company service or manufacture.

The CRM system has many different features and functions, based on a particular business requirement. We would like to share the most common of them, which a separate CRM system will be able to do for the business strategy and management.

Some of the most important features, included in a standard CRM are:

→ Data Centralization

→ Optimized customer service

→ Easy access to the company information

→ Better marketing strategy

→ Reporting

1. CRM allows centralization of the whole company data

The access to the company information will be easy and every participant will have access to it.

2. While using a CRM, the employees will have the opportunity to make better and scalable decisions

All participants in the organization can receive reports, check immediately all sales activities and other important information, which is vital for the company business operations. If you have access to this information, the chances for success are much higher and the management will be able to undertake better management strategies.

3. Better customer service

CRM allows storage of a detailed information, order history, mails, issues and feedback. This service gives an opportunity for a faster and more reliable management. Your employees can focus on other important issues in the organization, because they already have saved time using the CRM.

4. Have access to information any time

If the company uses a particular CRM to manage its operations, it means that the employees, management and all participants will have access to the information at any time. This creates trust and makes the company processes and operations transparent for every customer, who is using the company services and products.

5. Better marketing opportunity

The use of a CRM allows your company to have a clear information and expectation for every single client. The company pipeline can be optimized and the business development team can focus on those prospective clients who seem to be potential for further sales.

6. Easy and trustworthy report and customer service

The Customer Relationship Management has another very existing tool, i.e. very good reporting features. The company can check the customer expectations: what they look for, what they actually buy and what they are really not interested in from your products and services. This is a real time monitoring, which can help you update your products and give you yet another option to increase your sales and profits.

7. More and more profit for your business

With a CRM, your company can only win and increase the profits. CRM has a lot of advantages and we have described only the most common of them. If you implement a CRM system into your business organization, your departments will be managed more efficiently and for sure this will help all operations in your business environment.

What does my CRM need to contain in order to suit better my business model?

Choosing an appropriate CRM, which will fit into your business environment, is a top priority question. You will make a substantial investment and need to choose the most reliable system. This choice is critical for your business.

If you really want CRM, you need to choose it based on the following features and advantages:

→ The CRM allows you to collect the most reliable leads;

→ The CRM will make the sales process more effective and in addition the customer management will be much more stronger and responsible;

→ Create an individual business relationships with existing and potential company clients and improve the customer satisfactions and requirements;

→ The CRM offers a better customer service and meanwhile the company can create customer loyalty and customer profit;

In conclusion, we want to remind you that the choice of a reliable CRM, which will fit your business, is a very hard test. That is why most of the business owners work closely with CRM specialists. These consultants can optimize all specific business requirements and will find the best option according to your organization. If someone wants to implement CRM, they need to have deep knowledge of the specific software system. If you have the right consultant and integrate the best CRM, this will bring a lot of benefits for your business and will improve your sales strategy. In order the company to be competitive with the other players on the market, CRM integration is absolutely necessary.

Flat Rock offers a range of different software business solutions, suitable for every business regardless of its size. Contact us for more information.

By Polina Ilieva, Solution Sales Specialist at Flat Rock

The website serves as a bridge between companies and their customers. Once a business decides to go ahead and build their own website, they should be aware of the audience and its expectations in order to create a suitable design and content. Having a modern and user-friendly web design, will help companies keep their users longer on the site, which may eventually lead to generating more leads and increasing their conversion rate. An easy to use website will also help customers get as much information as needed and keep their interest in the products/services provided by the supplier.

In order to meet your users’ expectations, we would like to offer you a few tips to consider when developing your corporate website.

Design

Online shops are like real ones – the more you like them, the longer you stay in. It is the same with websites. If the atmosphere that it creates is pleasant, it makes you stay longer and increase the chances of buying something. Colours are the details that the eye catches first. Using red or orange in a combination with a muted colour forces you to act. It is suitable for buttons such as “Subscribe”, “Register”, “Join us”, etc. Blue and green are relaxing colours and they convey a feeling of security, safety and independence, which make them a great fit for corporate or medical websites. Even though it is essential to choose the right colours, it is a necessity to be able to combine them well and keep them consistent on all the pages. The same applies for the chosen font.

In order to create the atmosphere that will keep your users longer, you may also need to consider whether having advertisement on the website will not annoy your audience.

Speed

While choosing the right design is important, it will be a waste of time if your website is slow and pushes your visitors away. If there are speed problems, the users will click elsewhere or they may wait for the first page to load, but will definitely think about opening a second one. You will be lucky if your customer waits 10 seconds for the first page to open. That is why responsiveness can be a vital competitive advantage for online success.

To decrease the loading time, you can use CSS as much as possible. Tables usually take longer time to appear. If your most important details (contact details, list of products/services, company’s background, etc.) are text based/CSS, rather than images, that will improve the loading time.

Organization of information

The content is the thing that will make people come and visit your website. That is why keeping it modern is important. Updating your content by uploading blog articles, promotions, new services, etc. means that your company still operates on the market and is open for online communication. Websites by definition are worldwide, which means that your users may come from different countries. Therefore using a simple and clear language will help them browse easily. Never assume that the people visiting your website trust your brand. Treat them in such a way so that you earn their respect.

When organizing the information, it is important to remember that nearly 80% of the initial focus is at the top left corner of the page. You will also need to decide whether to use a left or right menu. Right-handed users feel the sidebars on the right much more “natural”. However, with the years, they have also become used to searching for a menu on the left side. Left menus are suitable for e-commerce websites as people would search for product categories there and may decide to buy other products as well. But no matter what navigation you choose, it should be consistent for all your pages.

If you are interested in creating or refreshing your website or need more information as to how to make it more attractive, do not hesitate to contact us. Meanwhile take a look at our portfolio and see how we have implemented the tips above in various projects.

We are very happy that the webinar stirred your interest and we still welcome your questions regarding the creation and use of a mobile friendly website for both a simple CMS website and for online shops.

Below is the agenda of the webinar and you are welcome to listen to it for free!

WATCH AND LISTEN TO THE WEBINAR! IT’S FREE!

Do not miss our EXCLUSIVE PROMOTION as well at the end of the webinar!

Check our website for more surprises soon or contact us if you have any questions!

Read more about the different project management models and learn which one is the most suitable for your business strategy and IT related projects.

In addition, we have prepared two interviews as well. One is with Air Transport Publications, who were kind enough to tell us more about their project and online presence.

The other interview is once again taken with the kind assistance by a lovely php developer, Vesela, who joyfully shared some interesting stories about herself and some slightly horrific hobbies.

PROMOTION: Mobile version of a website or online shop by APRIL 30TH!

FREE WEBINAR: Register NOW for our webinar on April 11th!

Read on and enjoy the sunshine!

You can find the online version of Knowledge Rocks new issue here.

Download the free fantastic pdf version.

By Polina Ilieva, Solution Sales Specialist at Flat Rock

Webinar, which is short for Web-based seminar, is a presentation, lecture or a workshop that is conducted online. It allows a real-time communication between one or more participants. The information exchanged during the webinar is in the form of text-based messages, video, voice chat and slide show presentations.

Today webinars provide the opportunity for people all around the world to learn and communicate and the only requirement is to have Internet connection. They are valuable tools often used for education, training and business.

But how do they really work?

You learn about an upcoming webinar and you register for it. At the appointed day and time, you click on the sent link and you enter a virtual room where the webinar is held. Some webinars may include just a presentation with a voice behind, while others use a live video stream. A typical seminar lasts for an hour and it involves a conversation with the participants at the end where a ‘Questions and Answers’ section takes place.

What does a successful webinar include or a checklist of what you need?

There are a few important steps that you will need to follow in order to host a successful webinar:

1)      Where to host?

If you are a small business and you would like to organize a free webinar, the best option is to use a third party software or an already created platform for this purpose. It should include screen sharing or file sharing, audio and video options, Questions and Answers or a Chat window. The registration for it should be made as simple as possible in order to make sure that your attendees will not give up because of that. Usually just a click on the link to the webinar, a name and an email address are enough.

2)      A marketing plan

During this step, you will need to consider ways of promoting the event – write an article in your blog, organize an email campaign, inform all your current clients and partners, spread the information throughout the social networks, etc. It is also important to consider how much time in advance you would like to start promoting. If you start too early, you will have enough time to popularize the event, but you risk people to forget about it at some point. While if you start promoting 1-2 weeks in advance you will have enough time to organize all the promoting activities and to add them to the participants’ calendars.

3)      A nice presentation

You have two options of presenting – to either share your desktop or to upload a slide show. You can focus on a consistent and nice-looking design, pictures corresponding to the content, videos or polls that will make the presentation look better and at the same time keep your audience involved.

4)      A follow up plan

The webinar marketing does not finish with the end of your webinar. Depending on your business goals you can after that follow up the attendees and send them the slides, the recording of the event or just information about your business, which is related to what you spoke about during the webinar.

Benefits of hosting a webinar

A good webinar will create loyal customers, will keep them involved in what you do and will popularize your company’s name in and outside of the community. Webinars can be free or paid, but the most common business strategy is to make them free of charge in order to attract a greater audience. In this way, they can be used as a marketing tool for generating new leads, boosting brand awareness and for SEO purposes. Such events will generate immediate feedback from the attendees and this will help businesses adapt easily to customers’ expectations.

Once you organize a webinar, you will receive the participants’ emails and you will have the option to create your own mailing list, which later on you can follow up and use for marketing services.

We should never forget that webinars are one-to-many approach, which makes it highly marketing effective and provides the ability to reach a worldwide audience through only one presentation.

Flat Rock Technology has the pleasure to invite you to our first webinar on 11^th April, where we will discuss the benefits of developing a mobile-friendly website for your business. You are welcome to register here.

If you’re looking to sell your products online, you need an e-commerce store. You can easily make profit with your own e-commerce solutions. These days this kind of business is maybe the most attractive for the retailers. Only by the end of 2013, the number of e-commerce deals will increase with 25%. In general, to dive into the e-commerce business is absolutely necessary for every retail or wholesale business.

Most of the clients, however, are wondering which of the e-commerce platform is the best choose for their particular business.

In this article, we would like to introduce and compare two open source e-commerce platforms: Magento and OpenCart and present their advantages and disadvantages so we can help you make your choice more easily and better aligned with your expectations.

Both platforms are driven by PHP and are open source platforms. They offer an unlimited number of products and categories. Both platforms support multiple languages. But the similarities between them end here.

What are Magento’s advantages over OpenCart’s?

Magento allows creating the interface according to any needs and tastes of the web store owners. It is really a customer related platform, because offers more possibilities for clients, allows products’ comparison, wishlists and smart customer accounts. The convenient site navigation makes the product search easy. Customers can also benefit from such features as order history, tagged items, recently reviewed products, etc. The Magento shopping cart is a good solution for large online stores, where OpenCart unfortunately fails. With Magento you can support multiple stores. This is a scalable and reliable solution for all clients and retailers.

What are OpenCart’s advantages over Magento’s?

Now we should mention the advantages of OpenCart over Magento. Most developers will find out that OpenCart is much lighter than Magento. It is very easy to download and install the platform. It is a friendlier to use shopping cart in comparison to Magento, which requires skills that are more technical. OpenCart is lightweight, easy to download and install, unlike Magento, which is quite demanding in terms of hosting environment. OpenCart is easy to administer. The control panel is clear and convenient so no special technical skills are required. Magento in these terms is more complicated, and is quite confusing at the beginning of exploitation. OpenCart provides free support and software updates. Magento users often have complications searching the answers, though the developed Magento community can be useful in this case. OpenCart is a perfect solution for  for startups as it enables to open the store shortly after software installation. Magento is a complicated platform and requires more time for preparation and evaluation period before it starts functioning properly.

In conclusion, we can say that Magento is suitable for large stores. However, it requires bigger effort to get familiar with. OpenCart, on the other hand, is quite suitable for smaller enterprises.

Here is quick comparison table for both e-commerce platforms:

Source: http://www.richardcarterconsultancy.com/2012/06/magento-vs-opencart/

Flat Rock offers a range of different e-commerce solutions, suitable for every business regardless of its size. Contact us for more information and check our solutions at http://www.flatrocktech.com/e-commerce.

About the author:

Teodor Kozhuharov is a Solution Specialist at Flat Rock Technology and focuses on web solutions such as content management systems, e-commerce platforms, online marketing and business software (ERP, CRM and Business Intelligence)