How B2B Customer Self-Service Impacts the Customer and Your Bottom Line
Introduction For small to mid-sized businesses trying to grow and compete with their larger counterparts, having close relationships with customers is key to business success. With growing complexity in business processes and data stored at multiple locations, companies are choosing to implement an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software solution to improve operations and provide faster customer response. As a business continues to grow, an ERP solution will streamline your business processes and provide real-time access to the information needed to make better business decisions resulting in improved insight and customer service, if the data is used the right way. According to a recent Forrester Research report, when reflecting on companies they engage with, more business customers are asking the questions: is this company giving me what I need, on fair or great terms, and making the interaction easy and enjoyable? If a company is making a customer s life easier, the customer will choose to stay with them. Pricing is no longer as strong a driver of loyalty in most industries, as is the overall value customers feel they receive. Forrester research recommends that companies should compete for customers based on the experience provided, and not solely on price. The overall customer experience (CX) is what is key to long-term customer loyalty. Growing Businesses - Supporting A Self-Service Nation In today s highly competitive climate, businesses must offer more channels of communication and ways to engage with them and faster response time than ever before. Busy customers want access to the latest information anytime, anywhere and business employees are challenged to keep up with the end customer information demands. By implementing selfservice options via the Web that integrate with an ERP system, businesses are able to provide better customer service, and improve employee productivity and responsiveness. Employees are no longer spending their day in reaction mode, responding to random customer questions they receive, as customers are empowered to quickly get answers to their own questions, improving the overall customer service experience. Self-service Web-based portals have become increasingly important tools in establishing and maintaining exceptional customer service. Some small to mid-sized businesses are first hesitant to implement this service to their customers. They are concerned it will negatively impact and automate their relationship with customers, losing that personal touch. However, a properly implemented self-service portal can actually bring businesses closer to their customers. As a business grows and develops a large customer base, there comes a need for more and more one-on-one attention. Customer demands are high and businesses often find that relationships are suffering because they can t keep up. By providing customers with 24/7 self-service access to their own account information, they can answer their own daily questions regarding general items such as invoices, order status, and other accounting needs. This leaves time businesses spend talking to their customers for more meaningful conversations about the long-term relationship, reducing the routine and repeat day-to-day administrative inquiries that distract from the bigger picture.
Self-Service Automation Tied to ERP How To Level The Playing Field With Larger Businesses Self-service portals improve cash flow and customer experience, while reducing administrative time spent tracking down answers on demand from customers. They allow businesses to manage their customers in a way that provides fast and easy access to information, reduce their employees and customers time, labor hours, and money spent on the order to cash process. These tools that were once only available to large, complex enterprises with big budgets are now readily available and affordable to growing businesses to compete. Getting paid as quickly as possible is critical for any growing business to ensure a steady stream of cash flow. To remain competitive and maximize profit, small to mid-sized businesses need to be flexible, cost efficient and focus on customer service. Excellent customer service has become the critical differentiator in today s competitive marketplace. You must be able to conveniently deliver the right information to the right place at the right time. In order to grow, many businesses seem to focus solely on new business acquisition as the driver for future growth, even though it can cost 6-7 times more to acquire new customers. The true driver of income growth comes from those customers you already have. The focus should be on helping to build and grow these relationships that businesses have already made a significant investment in. A self-service portal that is deeply integrated with an ERP system makes it possible for customers to access their real-time information and pay their invoices 24/7. Due to the integration between the portal and ERP system, you access real-time information that ensures the most accurate and up-to-date information is always available. This pre-emptive, automated approach of a self-service portal will reduce the number of failed payments and ultimately improve your cash flow. This will reduce the average age of receivables, while accounting and support will no longer have to shoulder the large volume of phone calls and email from end customers. Both the business and customer save time and resources while freeing up customer support.
How Self-Service Integrated With ERP Can Reduce Business Costs TOP LINE REVENUE 2010 - $25,000,000.00 2011 - $33,750,000.00 2012 - $43,875,000.00 AVERAGE OF RECEIVABLES $ PORTAL TRANSACTIONS # OF TRANSACTIONS 2010 - $2,110,000.00 2011 - $3,692,250.00 2012 - $6,142,500.00 CHANGE IN RECEIVABLES 2010-500 2011-598 2012-760 % OF REVENUE (SELF SERVICE) Self-service is also allowing companies to handle growth, while minimizing the need to grow the size of the support and accounting staff. Empowering customers to serve themselves online not only increases customer satisfaction, but reduces support and administrative costs. Accounting staff will save time to focus on other strategic initiatives with fewer interruptions during the day to day operations. The figure to the left illustrates a fast growing business that experienced a 10% decrease in receivables in less than one year by processing more than $2M through a self-service customer portal. 2010-59 days 2011-53 days 2012-45 days 2010 - N/A 2011-10% decrease 2012-15% decrease 2010-8% 2011-11% 2012-14% Within two years, more than 760 transactions were processed by the customers themselves with a 15% decrease in receivables for the company. The data illustrates the magnitude of savings that can be obtained via self-service portal integrated with an ERP system.
Know The Needs of Your Customer Before a business can implement a self-service portal in their organization, they must understand the customers current approach as well as their comfort level with Web-based technology. Companies with a stable work force may offer resistance to changing wellestablished processes, or may be uncomfortable with relinquishing their paper invoices and relying entirely on a Web-based approach. Worries over data security or resistance to changing their procedures are barriers that must be overcome to encourage customer participation. This will ultimately bring significant advantage to both the business and their customers. Active encouragement of customer adoption is key to delivering benefits from these cost saving technologies. A business can encourage customers to become involved with self-service portals by providing reminders at every point-of-contact, including the corporate Web site, customer email campaigns and service telephone calls. Accompanied with clear directions and direct access to the portal, these activities can be effective in raising awareness, encouraging participation, and will ensure that customers see these tools as a benefit and not a burden.
Summary For growth focused small to mid-sized businesses, implementing a self-service portal that is tightly integrated with an ERP system will increase service levels, improve customer satisfaction, and businesses quickly begin recognizing a compelling return on investment. By empowering customers to manage their own data and by speeding up the order to cash and onboarding processes, self-service portals can yield a better, more satisfied customer experience. About (www.zedsuite.com) is an SAP gold channel partner and offers an SAP-certified solution for integration with SAP Business One. delivers on the promise that technology can bring to growing businesses through a suite of Web solutions that build on the flexible foundation of SAP Business One to open up the web as a business channel and provide a dynamic self-service experience for users. Employing a world-class team of business and technology experts, s consultative approach ensures solution alignment with the goals and business processes of each customer through implementation to support.