An estimated $41 billion is lost every year due to poor customer service. One bad experience can cause otherwise loyal and repeat customers to look elsewhere, ultimately impacting your bottom line. 

That’s why it’s imperative for your business to fully utilize its Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. Instead of using it solely as a transactional database, your CRM can be used to form a genuine relationship with your customers.

If you already have an ERP in place, integrating mobile capabilities should be at the top of your to-do list. IDC expects that spending on mobile platforms and business applications will continue to rise as more firms put aside budget to pay for investments in those areas. Although mobile ERPs have become the norm, a lot can go wrong with new technologies without the right practices and policies in place. When you set up operations and use software to run the business, there are several factors to consider, and more importantly several pitfalls to avoid. Let's look at some of the mobile ERP implementation challenges and how you can overcome them:

Machine learning is in high demand, as customers are progressively looking for ways to gather insights from their data. It is at the peak of the Gartner Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2015. It uses computers to run predictive models that learn from the existing data in order to forecast future outcomes, trends, and behaviors. Overall these forecasts make the apps and devices smarter.

Google Apps and Microsoft Office 365 have been the leading contenders in the cloud-based business productivity applications marketplace. There are similar features and categories, from mobile apps and connectivity to document sharing, instant messaging, calendar, emails, storage, and more.

Productivity is evolving at a rapid pace. As organizations embrace a dramatic new approach to productivity, Microsoft’s fastest growing commercial product ever, Office 365 (O365) has taken center stage. O365 is the next step in the evolution of business tools, delivering cloud-based productivity that complements the Office desktop experience. Gartner has recognized Microsoft as a lead in the 2015 Magic Quadrant for Social Software for O365. O365 has over 50 million active business users per month and is packed with a huge set of enterprise-class capabilities helping organizations enhance productivity and transform their business.  Keep reading to discover the top 5 ways to boost business productivity with O365.

Most clients we work with are increasing their focus on employees and employee productivity. A recent report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows worker/employee productivity is falling. And many leaders are confused about what to do about it. Planning and collaboration has always been critically important for productivity. As employees work on multiple projects across geographies, more and more companies realize the importance of managing these projects and resources through software.

Microsoft recently announced the introduction of Microsoft Dynamics 365, a brand new, enterprise-ready intelligent business app that seamlessly couples Microsoft Dynamics CRM and ERP.

“Across all industries our customers are looking to adapt their customer engagement and business operations processes to the digital era, to secure and expand their businesses,” said  Jujhar Singh, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Dynamics CRM. “This ‘digital transformation’ requires a degree of business process agility – and a unification across the business – not supported by the traditional ‘siloed’ ERP and CRM approach of the past.”

For retail companies, the advent of technology has meant multiple channels by which to reach the customer. An omnichannel approach allows your customer to browse and buy at their convenience, whether at a physical brick-and-mortar store, through social media, on a website, or via phone. E-commerce in particular is a key technology channel which not only allows you to sell directly to the customer, but also to deploy, manage, and customize so as to create an end-to-end experience from a business operations standpoint as well. Choose to build an e-commerce approach with an ERP like Dynamics AX, and then you are able to incorporate inventory, catalog management, reporting, and more – everything that departments across your company need to manage and operate smartly.

Cloud adoption has taken center stage and enterprises are prioritizing how to migrate to the cloud and make use of the years of data they have accumulated. According to Gartner, the use of cloud computing is growing exponentially, and by end of 2016, this growth will increase to become the bulk of new IT spend. An InformationWeek Cloud ROI Survey As reported by Charles Babcock, Information Week’s Cloud ROI Survey from 2014 revealed that 20% of companies don't calculate ROI for their cloud projects. The other 80% say they're highly to somewhat likely to calculate ROI for cloud projects.

In the last two decades, the production and manufacturing industry has rapidly adopted an array of new concepts, ranging from just-in-time manufacturing, total quality management, lean production, and more. As manufacturers across the world use their own systems to manage diverse businesses, the disconnect between these systems mandates the need for a common protocol that enables seamless interaction. EDI (electronic data interchange), an internationally standardized process that has been in existence for decades, finds major applications in the supply chain space even today. EDI integrates incoherent systems, such as EDI integration with ERP, enhancing communication between various entities for timely delivery of goods and services to customers.