Our Move to Office 365

At the beginning of the year we took the decision to move our email and document storage solutions to Microsoft Office 365.

Office 365 is a cloud based service that bundles a number of what have until a few years ago been separate server installed products (in fact you can still purchase and install the products locally if needed). These products are Microsoft Exchange (email), Microsoft SharePoint (documents & collaboration) and newcomer on the block Microsoft Lync (formerly Communications Server). The highest priced feature levels also include a license to install Microsoft Office Professional Plus, which the user can install on up to 5 machines (e.g. at the office and at home).

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Using Social CRM for Marketing

I've just been reading an article on some recent research regarding how marketeers use Social CRM and was very interested to read the results.

Social CRM is a 'buzz' word in the world of marketing and is a topic that is featured in many an article or discussion online, but how is it used? The results of the research showed that most businesses (41.2%) that took part do not have any formal Social CRM program in place, but 25.1% have an informal Social CRM program in place.

But what is Social CRM? To me it is using digital media such as social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter etc) the web and other digital media to engage with and promote my business to others.

The research has shown that 60.9% of the participants use Social CRM for prospecting and lead generation, whereas 58.6% use it to build a community.  Personally, looking at the results, my use of social CRM leads one way or another in most of the roles shown, but am I doing it right? To be honest I find it difficult to show a ROI on Social CRM overall, so I am hoping to be able to rectify that in the future.

Please visit the DestinationCRM website to see the full research results.

Ever Onwards with our Technology

Over the past few years we've steadily worked on our CRM and CMS software and have added new features and capabilities to it. However, while we were busy doing that the technologies that the software is built on was itself undergoing changes, some of which we made use of while others we chose to ignore. Fortunately those changes/enhancements usually maintain backwards compatibility with code that's already been written and so it rarely if ever breaks existing code. 

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