Product development is a vital component of brand marketing that keeps a company’s product portfolio up to date and helps increase revenue.
Companies conduct thorough research before introducing a new product in the market for maximum impact. Read on for some key tips on generating ideas for a new product!
A unique product idea – that grabs a potential customer’s attention – is something all businesses strive for!
Traditional product development ideas often stemmed from studying competitors in a niche and surveying the market. But product development takes a different approach to contemporary business.
How to Develop a New Product and Make Magic Happen:
Here are some effective ways to come up with insightful ideas for your company’s next big creation!
Survey the Market:
To introduce a product in a dynamic marketplace you must decipher the needs of your customer first. You need to keep pace with the economic or technological changes that may affect the buying decision of your customer base.
Identifying the new trends in the market can help modify your ideas and align them accordingly to gain maximum benefits. Any brand marketing agency in your location can provide you with the resources to explore these trends.
Conduct A SWOT Analysis:
Most companies realize the importance of regular strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analyses to come up with innovative products. They help identify a business’ strengths, minimize weaknesses, expand on available opportunities — and ward off potential threats to a business or new product.
Coming up with ideas through a SWOT analysis emphasizes the need to build new strengths and seek out maximum benefit from opportunities in the market.
Research and Development Initiatives:
Research the market, competitors, similar products that are already available and consumer trends. Progressive companies allocate sufficient funds for research and development initiatives — to remain ahead of their competitors.
If you are a small company, research the R&D campaigns of established companies in the niche — and adopt one that best suits your market. It is often easier to improve on your competitors’ ideas and improvise.
Value Customer Feedback:
Customers and their requirements are the most important component of new product development. Collecting their feedback can be a challenging task, but pays dividends in the short and long term.
Offer live chat or another interactive communication platform on your business website to answer their queries and keep them engaged.
Short surveys about a product or service can offer valuable feedback to help launch a product that best caters to the target market.
Our Advice:
If product ideas are forcefully generated they can do more harm than good for a product lineup. Skim through the tips in the piece and draft your own strategy for a successful product launch.
With some insight and research, you can come up with ideas for a new product and achieve your business goals. The tips discussed in the piece can improve your marketing strategy and help introduce a product that meets the demands of customers.
How to develop a new product tips still aren’t enough to help you generate ideas, you can hire a brand marketing agency in your location to assist you!
Content Rally wrapped around an online publication where you can publish your own intellectuals. It is a publishing platform designed to make great stories by content creators. This is your era, your place to be online. So come forward share your views, thoughts and ideas via Content Rally.
Are you running a business on your own? If yes, chances are you may face many hurdles along the way, especially if things get too busy in your shop. You have to look out for numerous aspects to make sure that your business will grow and every operation will run as smoothly as possible.
Businesses flourish not only because of the customers buying their goods but also because the operations inside are also well-controlled and tracked, thanks to various business software that makes the hardest tasks easier!
As a business owner, you must be wise in making decisions and taking rightful actions to smooth sailing sales. This is why having software for your business matters because it could make complex things simpler. Also, get a chance to save a lot of money too! You may check out the information stated below about reasons why having software matters in running a business.
Reduces Workload
If you have a fast-growing business, it is not a shock to encounter complex and numerous customer demands. Not to mention, trends change from time to time, which adds to the workload you have to face.
To better handle these kinds of situations, business software could make the challenging and most time-consuming jobs finish faster than manually. So, if you're one of those starters who can't afford to hire new employees, having the right kind of software could help your company's progress. Additionally, you could significantly cut costs of your business and allow your employees to focus on other, more important priorities.
Helps Improve the Company's Customer Service
If you want to build a good and long-lasting relationship with your customers, getting business software could help. As technology gets better over time, connecting with a wide audience is also more accessible and faster. Software specializing in phone systems like Weave VOIP phones could help you track your customer's requests and easily respond to them right away. In this way, you could also build a better business image.
Additionally, having great software makes it easier for you to reach out to your customers and respond to numerous requests, even if you have a long list of notifications. You could manage, organize, and be reminded through the software about your urgent schedule with it.
Makes Scheduling Easier and Faster
Time management is vital in running a business. There's no time you could waste, and employees should be productive in their work. In helping you improve in this aspect of your business operations, scheduling business software could help promote better workflow and prevent misunderstandings. Not to mention, it gives a better work-life balance and cuts down on labor costs and the overtime employees.
As your business grows, you will also deal with training new staff, adding time shifts, handling orders, and the good thing is that software will take charge of your scheduling needs. It could also remind you of your important tasks and projects to help you keep track of your progress. If you could execute professional scheduling in your business, you will see positive changes.
Good and Reliable Tracking
In having a better run business, you must have a backup wherein you could keep the important information of your customers using the software. The software will make things easier for you and help in organizing them too.
For instance, if you have a customer that you have not gotten into contact with for a couple of months, your chosen software could help you identify who they are and give you valuable information about the history of the relationship you have with them. Through this, you could establish a better response to them.
Eliminate Space for Mistakes
Everyone is indeed capable of committing mistakes. That is something that we all cannot deny. Committing an error is a natural part of life. Still, with the help of software, it could significantly reduce the usual human errors that are usually the roots of losing customers and business profit.
Technology has grown better over time, and obviously, more people are now dependent on gadgets and various advancements. Thus, it has been very beneficial to business owners who use software to reduce human error since technologies are accurate and well-trusted.
Some of the common mistakes that software could help solve are misunderstandings, forgetfulness, proper standardization, and more. But, you have to remember that you must not be frustrated when something goes wrong. Mistakes are made for people to learn and improve, and fortunately, the software is one of the best ways to reduce its likelihood of occurring.
Takeaway
There are many more ways on how good business software could help create better and faster operations. Having software is proven to help in management, sales, tracking, and many more. If you wish to have business software in handling some of your business needs, this could be the right time. You may check out the reasons, as mentioned earlier, why it's good to have one!
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As an entrepreneur, your customers are the biggest pillar of your business. No matter your industry of domain, area of specialization, or even your business focus, they are the single most valuable asset to your organization and you should treat them as so.
Through their valuable feedback, your business can gain a new sense of direction, develop new concepts, as well as bring in more revenue. With that said, as a business owner, simply appreciating your customers isn’t enough. You need to truly understand them to tailor your products and services to meet them at their point of need. And that’s where Salesforce application development comes in.
It entails creating integrated customer relationship management solutions that interface businesses with their customers. These CRM platforms also give all the departments in a particular organization a unified view of all the customers and how they interact with various aspects of the business.
In this article, we are going to look at what Salesforce is and its uses. While at it, we are also going to delve deeper to see the entire Salesforce application development lifecycle.
What Is Salesforce?
Simply put, it’s a cloud computing SaaS company that provides customer relationship management (CRM) solutions. Thanks to the company’s cloud technology, businesses are able to better connect with their existing clientele, partners, and potential customers.
Over the years, Salesforce software has grown to become the leading marketing and customer behavior tracking solution for both small startups and Fortune 500 companies. As it turns out, customer relationship management is one of the key driving factors for the increasing demand for application development in Salesforce.
Recent research from Vonage offered a compelling view of the effects and consequences of poor customer service. In the US alone, the research revealed that an estimated $62 billion is lost annually as a result of bad customer experience.
To underwrite this figure, a different report from Huffpost has indicated that 91% of customers won’t hesitate to switch brands once they experience bad customer service. These are mind-blowing figures, especially if a business has no solution to counter the consequences of poor customer experience.
However, with Salesforce in place, businesses are able to overcome the problems caused by poor customer service and other business process variables. According to statistics published on Salesforce’s website, companies that are currently using their software have continued to see average increases in multiple areas. For instance, 34% of users have seen an increase in customer satisfaction, with 27% and 32% users seeing an increase in sales revenues and lead conversion respectively.
In 2018, Salesforce emerged as the biggest CRM software commanding a total of 19.8% market share of the CRM software market. During the same period, the company was voted as the #1 CRM provider by the International Data Corporation. It shouldn't come as a surprise that companies are willing to pay the highest Salesforce consultant salary just to get wind of this technology.
The Benefits of Using Salesforce
Given the commendable portfolio of Salesforce, here are areas it can help your business find success. Below I am going to discuss the benefits of using Salesforce.
Helps Collect Customer Intel
In the prevailing competitive business environment, overlooking data collection can be a fatal and unforgiving mistake. As a business, collecting and collating customer intelligence should be an obsession or the very least treated as a full-time affair, because it can lead to loss of revenue. As such, if you are to improve customer satisfaction and continue remaining competitive, hiring qualified Salesforce developers to build a high-quality CRM tool is inevitable.
And with Salesforce, you get an upper hand over your competitors by enjoying tools that help you identify, understand, and solve customer problems.
Flexible And Scalable
As companies and business needs continue to evolve, the tools of trade must also adapt. For instance, if the structures of your business start to grow, the management software should be able to seamlessly accommodate the changes. Cognizant of this fact, Salesforce CRM comes with multiple functions that allow for scalability right from the initial stages to any future interactions.
Helps in Account Planning
Having a unified view of customer information allows your teams to independently make plans for various accounts. It also facilitates a more hands-on customer connection approach as well as allows various reps and departments in your organization to modify their plans for optimized results. Salesforce also comes with a to-do items feature, which helps your entire workforce stay organized throughout the day.
Along with that, Salesforce also works as an organizational tool. Your team can create calendar reminders specifying the future customer follow-ups or important duties reminders to the upper management, which helps prevent anything from falling through the cracks.
If you are in the service-based businesses, Salesforce also gives you insights into the amount of time a particular customer/s has stayed in a particular subscription package. Once this info is established, your team is able to customize marketing materials to match a particular customer niche.
Cloud Connectivity
Many companies are now gravitating towards software as a service (SaaS), which means software that is available online. Luckily, Salesforce doesn’t need to be installed on a computer as it is cloud-based. This means that you can easily access it everywhere, interface it with other digitized services, and enjoy unlimited storage capacity. And since no maintenance is required, you get to save on a Salesforce developer salary that would have otherwise been paid for this purpose.
Facilitates Team Collaboration
Poor team communication and collaboration can lead to reduced productivity. On top of a unified view of customer data, Salesforce’s “Chatter” feature allows your team members to easily and regularly communicate work-related information. Additionally, the feature also lets you highlight and prioritize urgent issues that require special attention by inviting different team members to look at them.
Salesforce Application Development Lifecycle
Software developers spend a lot of time designing, developing, securing, and delivering products that perform better than initially envisioned. As a result, different software development approaches like agile development, waterfall model, and many others have merged.
When it comes to cloud-based solutions, the incorporation and implementation of various software development methodologies make it even more complex. Moreover, the Salesforce Development Lifecycle also means that the software is developed, tested, and deployed in a cloud environment.
Below, we have laid down 6 steps that clearly illustrate the entire Salesforce Development Lifecycle:
Business Requirements Analysis
The first step towards a successful custom Salesforce application is to conduct an internal business needs analysis. It entails the development team eliciting the potential customer needs, elaborating them, validating all the assumptions, and devising efficient methodologies to meet these requirements.
Business requirements analysis is important as it helps avert potential mistakes as well as make the final product both efficient and compatible with the existing system and security standards.
UI/UX Design
Another important aspect of Salesforce application development is optimizing the app for user experience. A report by iMPACT indicates that 52% of customers are less likely to conduct business with a brand offering a poor mobile experience. On the other hand, Forbes conservative estimates indicate that intentional and strategic user experience can yield a conversion rate as high as 400%.
If these numbers are anything to go by, designing a user-friendly and highly responsive Salesforce application development is absolutely paramount. In order to optimize an app for effective and enjoyable use, developers need to map out the user journey and creatively choreograph user/platform interactions to benefit the end-user.
Development Phase
The next step in Salesforce application development entails creating developers creating isolated sandboxes. Generally, these distinct sandboxes hold the main production app copy and other supplementary Salesforce configuration information. They are also independent, implying that changes in a single sandbox don’t affect the main Salesforce production enterprise. Individual developers have to clone their branches.
To retrieve the metadata from the sandboxes to the IDE, the developers need to use Force.com IDE. Once they have the metadata, they continue coding their assigned app features, performing initial unit testing, and then submit the finished code to the Git repository.
If a subsequent developer wants to build on top of this freshly updated branch, they need to clone it to their sandbox and continue developing new features. Once done, they also have to submit their latest development to the repository.
With that said, the possibility of multiple developers working on the same branch cant be overlooked. To avoid conflicts, it is important for everyone in the development team to check for possible branch updates before committing.
Testing
The next step after building a Salesforce application is to ensure that it has an excellent and stable performance. This mainly entails developers carrying out QA activities including unit tests and code reviews. It is also at this stage that functional, performance, and integration testing is conducted within the development process.
Lastly, automation tests and debugging are conducted to augment the app’s speedy delivery.
Integration
During the integration phase, the custom CRM application is interfaced with third-party software like CMS. To facilitate a smooth transition, the development team also conduct hands-on training sessions as well as provides training materials to the client.
Launch
Once the app is launched for internal use, it is transferred to the client and subjected to their User Acceptance Testing environment (UAT). Once satisfied, the finished product is moved to the production environment and deployed to the end-users.
Salesforce Application Development Team Actors
During the app development process, different players are involved and handle different aspects of the app. In the Salesforce app development life cycle, the most common actors include:
Product Manager: Help finalize business requirements.
Release Manager: Help coordinate the app’s release schedule.
Software Developer: Handles the main coding and produces the requisite deliverables.
Quality Analyst: Tests and confirms the functionality of various app features.
Potential money from the Salesforce AppExchange development:
After researching the fact this has been seen that Potential money from the salesforce AppExchange development can depend on several other factors.
How To Build an App for Salesforce AppExchange?
To build your AppExchange app, you must go through the multi-step procedure, which includes compliance, release, ongoing support, and demand app development. Below, I will discuss how to create an App for Salesforce AppExchange.
1st Step: Become the Part of Salesforce Business Partner Community
The first and foremost step in becoming a Salesforce AppExchange trade Partner is to join the Salesforce Partner Community. In this case, you must submit the form using AppExchange. After all, the Salesforce Partner Community is the hub of existing AppExchange Partners.
2nd Step: Examine AppExchange Market
The next step in building the app is to examine the AppExchange market. AppExchange offers many products and solutions for several products and cloud services in Salesforce. In this case, for optimal outcomes, you must use the curated collections of AppExchange.
3rd Step: Make the First Sketches of Your Product
Once you are done researching the existing solutions on AppExchange, you must start defining the unique value proposition of your product. For the outline, you must follow the below-mentioned procedure such as:
Firstly, you must understand your target audience.
Secondly, ensure you have an idea of business targets.
Thirdly, you must follow the types of Salesforce editions you will support.
After that, ensure you have an idea of the package type.
Next, ensure you have the Salesforce Licenses that you want to use.
Lastly, it would help if you ensured the requirements for your AppExchange App security.
4th Step: Define the Type of ISV Partnership and the Type Of Your AppExchange Solution
Once you have joined the Salesforce Partner Community, then, you must analyze the existing products, and you can create a rough roadmap. In this case, ensure you have defined the type of ISV partnership, and consequently, you also have built the AppExchange solution.
There are seven types of ISV partners in AppExchange. It includes OEM, CDP Cloud Partner, Commerce Cloud Partner, All Other Clouds (paid), All Other Clouds (free), and Technology Partner/Tableau.
5th Step: Choose the Programming Type and Tools to Build Your Salesforce App
Recently, Salesforce provided two types of programming languages and two types of tools that you can use. Let’s know what programming tools are used in Salesforce App development. This includes Apex Cloud-based programming language. Next are Lightning components and Visualforce.
6th Step: Build Your Salesforce App
Once you can identify the exact type of solution, it must have the programming language, licensing, and packaging, and of course, you must continue with the building procedure.
Two ways to do this are using internal sources or outsourcing the dedicated team. If you want to build the SalesForce App using an in-house team, it could be one the most viable and remarkable options. If you don’t have enough resources, ensure you can control the entire product cycle of AppExchange.
7th Step: Test Your Salesforce App
If you want to ensure optimal performance, then it must conduct comprehensive end-to-end testing in technological domains. In this case, you must adhere to the development of best business practices, especially for testing.
8th Step: Prepare Your App for the Launch on AppExchange
Once you are done testing and finalizing the app, the next step is to prepare by submitting it to the SalesForce AppExchange. In this procedure, it includes creating the managed packages and providing screenshots.
9th Step: Submit Your App for Security Review and Market This
Ensure you have submitted your final app by undergoing the security review and then have met the necessary security requirements.
Final Thoughts
Salesforce CRM is a critical business tool. It helps streamline data analysis and reporting, provides invaluable customer feedback, and aid in formulating better customer service strategies. As a result, businesses are able to align their resources towards creating timely, customer-oriented solutions.
With that said, Salesforce application development isn’t a linear process. It entails working with different tools and multiple software development methodologies. And with cloud solutions continuing to capture the imaginations of business owners, the world is yet to see the full potential of CRM Salesforce and the cloud ecosystem as a whole.
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Do you rent out event space? Or are you a field manager for a company that is involved in a lot of exhibitions? Either way, a structure-style tent can provide you with a convenience that saves cost and makes your life a lot easier.
You have lots of guests coming into the party, and when you need extra space to accommodate the influx, you shouldn't worry. You can make an addition by using Structure-Style Tents to Expand Event Space. These sturdy temporary structures can be customized, and you can even convert a parking lot or even a rooftop to an event space.
There are many good reasons why you need to consider having a structured-style commercial canopy tent for your event space.
Here are some suggestions below:
Branding visibility
Are you hosting an exhibition or a training workshop? Why not pitch a branded structured style canvas at the entrance. That is not only good PR but also good branding of the organizations. Most canvas manufacturers will have customized branding of your structured style canvas for companies that are keen on branding their merchandise and properties.
Having a branded tent is not only free advertisement, but it also saves on the cost of requiring a banner every time you pitch one in a location. Its wall can have a well-printed brand message.
Versatility (ideal for all events)
A tent is not limited to a specific event only. From weddings to birthdays, reunions, and even barbeques, to name a few, a structured style tent will ideally expand your event space to make it comfortable as it can get.
When planning for an event away from the office, one of the options that you should inquire about is the availability of tented spaces. Outdoors function is fun compared to when enclosed in a building. Also, the fee for gathering in a tented area is always affordable.
Also, companies can have their own structured style canvas to be pitched in the garden or rooftop to hold group birthdays for their staff or event award parties.
Ideal for any themed event
Canvas is a blank canvas that gives you lots of room to play around with your creativity in terms of décor. It is more convenient to decorate a tent than it would be with a brick and mortar structure. With canvas, you have a blank slate, and you can customize the same from the ground up to realize your ideal theme.
Tents have no solid walls or layouts compared to a building, which has its color, lighting, and floor design, among others. With a tent, you can quickly achieve your vision 100% without having to compromise to blend with the existing layouts as with events held indoors.
Easy to manage spaces
Tented spaces are easy to manage and organize. If you are a site manager using a structured style tent to expand the event's venue makes not only the area more significant, but it also makes your work even more relaxed.
There is no floor space to clean. You only need to pick up the trash. If you instead rented out a ten, you can talk with the canvas company to clean the space as they pack the tent. It's that convenient.
There is no wall, and moving furniture around to design a theme according to a client's needs is quite convenient. You can add or reduce event space by reducing the ground surface covered by the tent.
Weatherproof
The tent protects outdoor events guests from all sorts of climatic conditions. If it's cold, you can lower the canvas wall and let the guest have it warm inside the tent while feeling the ambiance of being outdoors. Same to when it rains.
If it’s hot out, you can bring up the walls and let fresh air breeze through the crowd. Also, the tented rooftop is dome-shaped to reduce the heat from the scorching sun.
What about the durability in all climatic conditions? You should know that anodized aluminum is used to make the skirtings and frames of the canvas to ensure they are corrosive resistant and durable. The structured style canvas nowadays is light but quite sturdy against strong wind and is not likely to tip over during an event.
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