The future is now. Software as a Service and Cloud Services of the future are here at your disposal. For years, we always thought there would be a time when a business engaged customers in different ways. That speculation is now a reality. Tools and solutions to help voice your business are more powerful than ever, and can leverage your firm against large corporations.
Looking ahead to 2017, these concepts are something CEOs need to care about:
Customer attention is worth more than any currency:
Shifting your focus to digital is a great step forward to building a customer relationship online. However, internet clutter is drowning the voice of your business and replacing it with a competition. A competition where you’re trying to be the best at everything to compensate.
Digital noise is making us pay for consumer attention, and anyone can pay for attention. What matters, is how you’re spending your customer’s attention into a winning engagement. Shifting your focus to your customer’s attention is an investment that will pay off. Just know your online travelers will ask themselves these core questions:
- Will your business save me time?
- Will your business save me money?
- Will your business make me a better decision-maker?
- Will your business improve my personal status?
The internet has personified your business, making it likeable or unlikeable. The choice is yours, you can drive to change how others feel about your product much like how we want people to perceive us on social media.
‘Applications are eating us alive’:.
The average person looks at their phone over 200 times per day. This equates to traffic and data leaving trails to where you can find them. The overwhelming amount of platforms allowing you to create applications for your own business are everywhere. If your goals are to do more than just increase site traffic, developing your own application will let you win over your customer’s hearts.
There’s no denying that your business’s productivity suite is one of its most valuable software solutions. Cloud services like Google Apps for Work and Microsoft Office 365 continue to be huge game-changers in the business environment, and it’s been found that their increasing popularity is thanks to the convenience of providing mobile access to important data and applications. The success of “software as a service,” or SaaS, is a significant trend that you need to leverage to your advantage.
In essence, businesses that use SaaS are paying a flat rate for a productivity suite or similar service. This software can then be accessed through the cloud via an Internet connection, making it both flexible enough to add new users, and accessible enough to be used anywhere on most any device. According to BetterCloud, 91 percent of Google Apps users claim that SaaS helps them more than traditional desktop applications, while 68 percent of Office 365 users say the same about Office. The success of Software as a Service offerings can be attributed to paying less for more over time. Rather than buying software outright, businesses are finding it more economically feasible to pay a smaller monthly rate for services rendered. This presents several benefits in comparison to purchasing applications in full, like having more manageable payments over time, and always using up-to-date versions of business apps. Additionally, it’s much easier to add new users to a cloud-based productivity suite than it is to purchase new licenses for all of the software required for their position.
