Innovative Technosoft - Delivering excellence . . .

Is your office CRM?

dibakar_gupta — Sat, 21 May 2011 14:19:46 GMT

Business surveys show that more than half of CRM solutions actually fail because of poor implementation. Our experts recommend ten steps that project managers can take to ensure the successful adoption of new CRM solutions.
1. Get Clear on Who Owns CRM Solutions

Some marketing professionals perceive sales automation as a function of the IT department. In other organizations, CRM might be viewed as an individual's "pet project." Instead, everyone in an organization should have some emotional buy-in for CRM to succeed.

2. Communicate How CRM Solutions Help Meet Business Goals

Customer relationship management encounters resistance in organizations where CRM solutions appear to contradict goals. For instance, if employees don't feel empowered by information, CRM can become a waste of time. Tying each element of a CRM implementation to a policy or to a vision statement can improve its chance for success.

3. Put Customer Relationship Management into Strategic Context
In organizations where CRM solutions fail, project managers often focus on the potential savings of sales automation features. Instead, successful project managers emphasize the areas of long-term opportunity opened up by CRM.

4. Offer Thorough Training on CRM Solutions
Scheduling a handful of mandatory training sessions is a great strategy for a failed implementation, according to veteran project managers. Understanding that different team members may have different learning styles can lead to a more comprehensive training program that continues beyond the launch phase.

5. Carve Sales Automation Tasks into Manageable Chunks
CRM solutions fail to gain traction in organizations when one team member or job role becomes tasked with "keeping things running." Instead, project managers can work out assignments for specific departments that keep the system from developing a bottleneck.

6. Track ROI on CRM Solutions
Project managers often justify a CRM solution by pointing at the potential cost benefits. Moving beyond the internal savings and into tracking the new business generated from sales automation and other modules is essential to keeping a CRM project moving forward.

7. Prepare for Culture Shock after Online CRM Implementation
Online CRM tools break down barriers in organizations, even when stakeholders prefer to keep some information to themselves. Openly addressing coming changes and their implications early in the launch cycle can help prevent team members from rolling back into old habits.

8. Roll Out CRM Solutions Gradually
In organizations where CRM solutions failed to take root, stakeholders often reported feeling overwhelmed. Launching CRM in smaller chunks maintains a sense of forward momentum while team members become acclimated to new systems.

9. Ask for Input on Customization and Future Releases
When stakeholders feel "shut out" of the release process, CRM implementations fail. Soliciting and tracking feature requests can help team members understand how CRM solutions evolve over time, based on user feedback and budget guidelines.

10. Celebrate Milestones Regularly
Taking time to celebrate wins is just as important as addressing opportunities, according to many experienced CRM project managers. Giving team members time to reflect on the positive impact of a CRM solution can shift focus away from gripes and criticisms of an incomplete system.

Clear Communication Leads to CRM Success
Experts agree that following these ten steps often leads to significantly higher success rates for CRM rollouts. Keeping everyone in the loop about the rationale for and the progress of the project is essential to an effective launch.

A better way to understand SEO-Innovative Technosoft

dibakar_gupta — Sat, 21 May 2011 14:04:53 GMT

SEO, or search engine optimization, is one of the most misunderstood and misused buzzwords in the web marketing world today. Almost every new client of ours looking to develop or redesign a website always says, "and we also need SEO for our website too," as if it's something you purchase, buy and install on your website. What we are going to share in this article is the same thing I explain to every client who mentions the three letters S-E-O.

SEO, search engine optimization, or what's better known as attempting to get your site ranked on the first page on Google and other major search engines for particular keywords related to your business or service is often a frustrating, fruitless and sometimes very costly endeavor.

So you say to yourself, but there are companies out there claiming to do just this. True - there are lots of them. But be sure to read any fine print they may provide you. It will always say somewhere something to the effect that no matter what they do, they really can't guarantee anything, at least not for any length of time. Unless the company's name is Google, they cannot guarantee how your site will be ranked by Google.

So what's a business to do? The answer is simple. And it's what we do when we develop every site that we've ever developed for our clients: Create a site that's programmed according to current web development community standards, full of content that clearly communicates your business, product or service.

Yes, really - that's it. It's not a big secret. In fact Google pretty much spells out what they would like you to do to have your site rank well in their rankings. It's available to anyone who wants to read it. It's called Google's Guidelines for Webmasters. Go ahead, get SEO service to rank your website and give a positive search for your clients.

Follow these guidelines, and you'll have a better chance of getting ranked higher than the next guy. These guidelines are what we follow to a tee when we develop everyone of our client sites. Do we guarantee top rankings? No. But our client sites end up ranking pretty well pretty quickly, most of the time. It all depends on the content of your site, how it relates to keywords that are typed into Google search, and how much competition there is out there for that type of search term. The rest is all up to Google (or any other search engine).

There are a lot of details as to how a site should be properly designed, programmed and executed so that Google can crawl and index the pages you want it to. These are all details we've already worked into our standard web development process.

Another area we focus on upon completion of a client website is search marketing. Although we do our best to get your site to rank well in Google's organic search listings, there is no guarantee you will get there or how long it may take you to get there. Sometimes sites may not make it to the top page rankings for over a year, or never.

The only way to guarantee your site shows up when someone searches for a particular keyword or phrase is through search marketing, i.e. Google Adwords. Registering for Adwords is like turning on a faucet. Once it's setup and live, which can happen in a matter of 15 minutes, your site will begin to get targeted traffic in the form of visitors who typed in keywords or phrases you determined are good matches for the products or services you sell. There are many features, options and strategies for using Google Adwords. We help all of our web develoment clients learn the ins and outs of search marketing and show them how to manage their campaigns to produce the greatest quality traffic for the least amount of money invested.

Defining .NET Components with Namespaces

dibakar_gupta — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 06:54:53 GMT

A .NET software component is a compiled set of classes that provide a programmable interface that is used by consumer applications for a service. As a component is no more than a logical grouping of classes, what then is the best way to define the boundaries of a component within the .NET framework? How should the classes inter-operate? Patrick Smacchia, the lead developer of NDepend, discusses the issues and comes up with a solution.

[b]Contents

Defining components inside .NET assemblies
Using namespaces to define components
Size of components
Structuring larger components
Structuring code with Mediator, Feature and Base components
Acyclic graph of dependencies between components
'Levelizing' existing code is often cheaper than expected
Evolutionary Design and Acyclic componentization
Guidelines

This article will attempt to explain the advantages of using namespaces to define the boundaries of components in a .NET assembly, to suggest the best ways of using namespaces as components, and to describe how to continuously enforce the relevant rules of namespace dependency.

Our aim is to assist a .NET development shop to rationalize the development of a large code base so as to let the developers become productive, and to reduce the cost of maintenance.

The advice we will give in this article comes from experience gained in years of real-world consulting and development in various development corporations. It has proved to be effective several times, in different circumstances.

In this article Partitioning code base through .NET assemblies and Visual Studio Projects we focused on assemblies, and the reasons why it is more convenient to have fewer and larger assemblies. We suggested how to organize the VS solutions and VS projects. We mentioned that a component is a finer-grained logical concept than a physical assembly. This implies that a large assembly is not a monolithic piece of code, but is likely to contain several components.

Defining components inside .NET assemblies

The .NET platform has no intrinsic means of defining a component inside an assembly. So what is a component? There are whole books that are dedicated to explaining what a component is but, to keep things simple and practical, we’ll list some definitions. A component can be:

An aggregate of classes and associated types: A class is mostly too lightweight to define a component. Therefore a component will almost always include several classes or interfaces and their associated types (enumerations, structures, exceptions, attributes, delegates…). All these types are grouped by a common well-understood semantic concept that gives its name to the component.
A unit of development and test: The notion of a component is well-suited to the way that code is developed. When adding a new feature to the product, a developer generally dedicates time to develop a new set of cohesive classes and their associated tests. This represents a component, or more likely a group of related components. Because of this, the organization of components often mirrors the set of features; but a component can also host some infrastructure classes, such as domain classes or helpers and utility classes.
A unit of learning for developers: It is a daunting task to have to reverse-engineer a large code base. It helps to use components to partition the code into reasonably-sized chunks that can be learned more easily than if they were entangled within a monolithic style code base.
A unit of architecture: One of the most challenging tasks for any real-world code-base development is to master the entropy that necessarily arises in such a complex system. We can do this by imposing an architecture on a code base through a well-defined set of components. This is an adaptation of the ‘Divide and Conquer’ principle introduced in 1628 in the Discourse of Method of René Descartes, inventor of modern science. Relying on well-defined units to divide and conquer represents the way that scientists and engineers have worked over the ages to elucidate complex systems.

A unit of layering: In order to rationalize a complex system, It is not enough just to have well-defined components: They must be properly layered. In other words, the graph of dependencies between components must be a Direct Acyclic Graph (DAG). If the graph of dependencies between components contains a cycle, components involved in the cycle cannot be developed and tested independently. Because of this, the cycle of components represents a super-component, with higher entropy than the sum of the entropies of its contained components.
For this article, we’ll use the concept of a component as being a well-defined aggregate of types, with a reasonable size, and with an acyclic graph of dependencies between components.

Using namespaces to define components

A component is well-defined if its boundaries are explicit. Only two .NET language constructs can be used to explicitly define component boundaries and contain a set of children types: Parent class and namespace.

The advantage of a parent class over a namespace is that nested classes can be declared with a visibility level. This makes it possible to have class encapsulation in the component. On the other hand, the advantage of namespace over parent class is that the namespace is a language artifact and not a CLR artifact. Namespaces are absent from assembly metadata. The namespace name is just a prefix added to contained classes. This means that a namespace is more lightweight than a parent class. Also, when using a parent class, there is a risk of confusion between a parent class and an application class. On the other hand there is no risk of confusing a namespace with a class.

We therefore prefer to use namespaces to define explicit component boundaries. Namespaces are also often used to organize public API presentation. This usage of namespace fits nicely with the concept of components as we’ve shown: Component organization often mirrors the set of features, but a component can also host some infrastructure classes.

Size of components

We measure the size of a component by counting the lines of code. A logical Line of Code (Loc) represents a Sequence Point. A sequence point is the code excerpt highlighted in dark red in the VS code editor window, when creating a breakpoint. Most of .NET tools for developers, including VS and NDepend, measure Lines of Code through sequence points.

The size of a component must be reasonable, between 500 and 2000 LoC. Indeed, we suggested already that a component is a unit of learning and a unit of architecture. A component must never be too large to be reviewed and understood. An architecture that is made of such components becomes coarse, and leads to a monolithic code style and uncontrolled entropy.

The size of 500 to 2.000 LoC is just inferred guideline based on real-world observations. 500 to 2.000 LoC usually represents from one to two dozen classes. In the case of an abstract component, made of interfaces and enumerations, the number of LoC can be zero. You’ll agree that LoC is not the appropriate metric for abstract component size.

Structuring larger components

If a larger component is required, then the component classes should be divided within sub-namespaces. Because namespaces can be represented through a hierarchy, we can use this as a convenient way to partition super-components into smaller components.

For example, the Dependency Structure Matrix (DSM) of NDepend is a complex feature that weighs around 5.000 LoC: Because of this, the DSM implementation resides in a namespace that contains seven sub-namespaces. The sub-namespaces correspond to sub-features of the DSM such as Header handling and Cells Computation.

The parent component plays the role of a mediator. Most of the sub-namespaces don’t know about other sub-namespaces. This is done to reduce any chance of coupling. The mediator is responsible for making sub-components communicate.

Structuring code with Mediator, Feature and Base components

A program code base is likely to be composed of large components, each one of which will probably contain sub-components that are only needed for their own private implementations. This idea is illustrated by the DSM below that shows the architecture of the NDepend UI code (> 50K LoC). There are many large components in the list those who namespace name ends up with .* to signify that they contains sub-components.

The two vertical lines on KernelImpl.*and MainPanel.* namespaces (columns 1 and 3) indicate that these two components act as mediators between lower level components. Hence the other columns are pretty empty, meaning that components that represent features (Matrix, Graph, CQL …) are independent from each other.

The three rows 22, 23 and 24, are almost full. They represent base components that support all higher level components. Obviously this high-level architecture and the finer-grained architecture of the Matrix components are pretty similar. The same pattern is applied at two different scales. In both cases there are:

Feature Components: Independent components that contain features implementation.

Mediator Components: A few high-level components that act as mediator between feature components. The mediator contains the plumbing needed to make features communicate between each others.

Base Components[/b]: A few low-level components that implement the domain of the application. Base components classes are shared amongst feature components.

Main benefits of classifying components between feature, mediator and base are that:

The clarity of the overall architecture is not blurred by the implementation details.
The developer can zoom in on the program structure to understand it.
The structure favors a low incidence of coupling between implementations details. (this is the Low-Coupling)
The implementation of a particular feature is thoroughly nested in a well-identified root namespace (the is the High-Cohesion Pattern)

Acyclic graph of dependencies between components

By looking back to the DSM representing the NDepend.UI structure, we can see that the upper triangle above the matrix’s diagonal is empty. Each component can be used by components above it, and can use components below it. Hence the structure is perfectly layered. It is important to remember that:

The graph of dependencies between components is acyclic if, and only if, its DSM representation has its upper triangle empty.

Since components are layered, each component can have a level index. Hence, we say that when an architecture has no dependency cycles, it is levelized. We have already tried to explain that a levelized architecture is essential because:

'If the graph of dependencies between components contains a cycle, components involved in the cycle cannot be developed and tested independently. Because of this, the cycle of components represents a super-component, with higher entropy than the sum of the entropies of its contained components.'
Every developer has the instinct to lean toward an acyclic structure. This natural tendency explains the popularity of Visual Studio (VS) solutions with dozens of small VS projects. VS detects, and prevents, dependency cycles between VS projects;therefore developers see in the VS project the ideal device with which to implement the idea of levelized component. Unfortunately, doing so is far from ideal and we explain in the article Partitioning code base through .NET assemblies and Visual Studio Projects all the real-world problems of this approach.

The tool NDepend offers a simple way of checking for dependency cycles between namespaces of an assembly. The following rule, written with Code Query Language (CQL), is all what one needs to be advised of a broken architecture.

If an assembly is matched, just right-click the assembly in the list of match and click :View internal dependency cycles on matrix :

The matrix will make the dependency cycle obvious with a red-square. Here, for the requirements of this article, we contrived it so that the two namepaces GraphPanel and KernelInterface are mutually dependent. This provokes five components to be entangled in a dependency cycle, hence the red square on the DSM that encompasses these five namespaces:

'Levelizing' existing code is often cheaper than expected

Having a levelized structure between namespaces is enough to keep the architecture clean and maintainable. We’ve often noticed in code that the code structure naturally tends towards being levelized. This is because of the developers instinct for the notion of layers, that we already mentioned.

In the DSM above, we see the namespace Base at the lower level in the architecture. For most developer, it would seem unnatural and awkward to create a dependency from Base to any other component. Base's concepts are not supposed to use anything, they are here to be used from other components.

Often, the code structure is naturally close to levelized but not thoroughly levelized. Tooling is needed to prevent these few wrong dependencies (like from Base to something else) that appears with time. Usually there are not so many of these dependencies to fix. Because of this, the rule more than the exception is that often 'Levelizing' an existing code base is a cheap process that can be achieved in a few days of work.

Evolutionary Design and Acyclic componentization

If the code structure is kept levelized, low-level components never get a chance to bubble-up in the architecture not because someone decided so, but because above components won’t let it bubble-up. Like in traditional building architecture, the structure itself put the pressure on low level components. As long as the acyclic components constraint is continuously respected, the code base remains highly learnable and maintainable.

In traditional building architecture, the gravity strength put the pressure on low level artifacts. This makes them more stable: 'stable' in the sense they are hard to move.

In software architecture, abiding by the acyclic component idea put the pressure on low level components. This makes them more stable, in the sense that it is painful to refactor them. Empirically abstractions are less often subject to refactoring than implementations. it is, for this reason, a good idea that low-level components contain mostly abstractions (interfaces and enumerations) to avoid painful refactoring.

The beauty of levelized architecture is that it discards the need for most design decisions. This lack of up-front design is known as evolutionary design. Let’s quote Martin Fowler on evolutionary design:

With evolutionary design, you expect the design to evolve slowly over the course of the programming exercise. There’s no design at the beginning. You begin by coding a small amount of functionality, adding more functionality, and letting the design shift and shape.
With levelized evolutionary design, good design is implicitly and continuously maintained. There are no questions about what to do to implement a new requirement. When planning new code to implement a requirement that is unpredicted, one just has to consider its fan-in and fan-out (who will use this new code and who this new code will use). From this information and from the need to preserve levelization, one can infer the level and the right location where this new code will fit well. Sometime the need to introduce abstractions through a pattern like injection of code or inversion of dependency will arise, but only to preserve levelization, not because it seems cool to do so or the new fashion pattern book advises it. And releases after releases, iterations after iterations, the design will evolve seamlessly toward something continuously flawless and unpredictable. Like in traditional building architecture, the structure won’t collapse.

Guidelines

Use the concept of namespace to define boundaries of components.
A namespace typically contains from one to two dozens of types, and has a reasonable size that fits in the 500 to 2.000 LoC range.
Take the time to levelize your code-base components, it is certainly a cheaper task than expected, so the Return On Investment will be high.
Continuously check that the components’ dependency graph inside an assembly is acyclic.
If a component is too large (> 2.000 LoC), then use sub-namespaces to divide it into a smaller set of related components.
At any scale, classify components between high-level mediators, middle-level independent features, low-level base/domains.
Having a 'levelized' set of components removes the need for most design decisions.

The Future Of Ecommerce Sales Is Promising…But Is Yours?

dibakar_gupta — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 06:31:27 GMT

There is no question that over time, ecommerce sales have continued to rise as more and more people turn to the internet for their shopping. It's much easier to take a quick commute to your computer, surf the net for a short while, and purchase what you are looking for than it is to go out to a store for the same thing. Because of this, the future of ecommerce sales is looking bright.

The online market is growing at a level far above that of the retail market, which is making anyone with the need to make money turn to the internet. The problem is you aren't the only one in the world with the idea to start an online business. With millions of people turning to the internet to try and strike gold with ecommerce sales, the competition has become ever so high online.

Anyone can start up an online business with the plan of making a large income.

However, because the competition is so steep, people don't realize the effort that is required to make it in the internet business. If you have aspirations of becoming another statistic of someone successfully starting up a business online, you have to be willing to put in the effort to reach out to the public.

Without a doubt, the statistics are in favor of those going into ecommerce sales.

In the fourth quarter of 2011, US retail ecommerce sales totaled will be $26.5 billion. That was an increase of 27.5% just from the third quarter of 2010. So as you can see, more and more people are shopping online creating the possibility for success in an online business.

With the high competition online, it is essential that you have two things to make it in ecommerce sales; a well thought out plan and a quality marketing campaign.

If you create a website without planning out who your target market is, how you will advertise, and how you can keep in contact with customers, you are setting yourself up for failure.

The more in-depth your plan is to begin with, the better your chances will be of succeeding.

There is nobody saying you have to stick with your plan throughout your business's existence, but it will help you develop into a money-making site. The marketing campaign is the same way. If nobody knows about your business, how do you expect to make money? The more thought out your marketing campaign is, the better chance you have of generating a higher traffic volume.

Despite the high competition in the internet industry, the future of ecommerce sales is bright.

As more and more people turn to the internet for their shopping, the availability and need for more online businesses will continue to increase throughout time.

Marketing Your Business On The Internet

dibakar_gupta — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 06:21:22 GMT

How can a business that is already successful in reaching their local market extend their marketing reach online? The good news is that the traditional offline marketing that has always worked so well will still work at least as effectively to promote your online presence. The other side of the coin is that to promote your business online, the old traditions need some updating to keep up with online marketing best practices.
Any business should already have a marketing plan and objectives from their offline initiatives, so let's jump straight into the technology aspects of online marketing. I generally look at the following things first, because they can be done at very low or no initial cost, and also because subsequent specialist marketing won't be as successful without these things in place. Of course there is a huge amount more to online marketing, the extent of which could easily be justified as a full-time university course. This is the pre-school notes, to help get your site to a starting point on a low budget if you can't quite afford to be calling in the big guns to market your site for you professionally just yet.

1. Site optimization

This is always the place to start, because the effectiveness of everything which follows is often dependent on this being done up front. When I say this, I include great content and intuitive navigation as the basis for everything. Only once your site has been optimized for intelligent visitors should you tweak it for search engines, but never at the expense of the former.

Search engines look at things like keyword density and how specifically a page matches a specific search term. Of course this is extremely over simplistic, but nevertheless a worthwhile starting point. By identifying 10-20 key terms you would like search engines to pick up on, and creating specialised pages with relevant information which utilises those terms in the right way, you will start getting much better results once your site has been indexed.

You will find that it is best to use specialised keyword phrases, for example "precision-engineered bolts" is likely to get better placement than a generic term like "engineering parts". You should also work to create a single page for every key phrase you want picked up on, and include the key phrase in the title, meta tags and use all the words in the body of the page at a high density relative to other words. You should also preferably include the key phrase in the page title, as well as the URL of the page, for example, "http://www.mysite.com/precision_engineered_bolts/". Each page should use a different title, specifically based on the key phrase utilised in that page's content.

Your site should really be developed using XHTML and CSS these days, table-based design has numerous technical problems associated with it, and it results in a lower keyword density than the current standards.

Ideally you should use a content management system which incorporates and facilitates all of the above quickly and effortlessly, such as that provided standard with RealmSurfer sites. This will allow you to manage your own content optimization, with a bit of trial-and-error.

2. Linking and indexing

The next step is to get search engines to start to notice and index your site. Google, for example, won't even look at your site until it has been linked to by at least one other indexed site. Paid inclusion (paying the search engines to index your site on a priority schedule) can be appropriate at this phase if you need to urgently accelerate this process, however it is not always necessary.

Especially useful at this stage can be participating in forums serving your primary target market. This has the dual benefit of creating awareness of your business within communities you would like to reach, and at the same time can help create incoming links to your site, something that search engines pay particular attention to. Ensure that your site details are included as a link in the footer of your posts.
Never use a forum to spam members or submit unsolicited advertising posts -- that just has the opposite effect of destroying your business' credibility. Some forums have a separate advertising section in which it may be appropriate to professionally post information about your services and products. Always make sure that your presence represents a valuable contribution to the community. Stay on topic and be professional, helpful and constructive.

Search engines take many factors into consideration when ranking a site. New sites, for example, don't initially fare well, however you will find they will allocate some credibility weighting to you the longer your site is up and running. The biggest factor though, external to the site itself, is the number of inbound (preferably non-reciprocal) links from other sites, and the context and wording of the referring link, as well as the ranking of the referring page, and referring site. The popularity of those sites plays a big role, as well as how high up in the site's own hierarchy the link is. By way of example, a link from www.news.com.au counts for much more than a link from a very deeply embedded page like www.somesitesomewhere.com/subdirectory/theattic/someoldforgottenpage .

3. Implement online marketing partnerships with high-profile online businesses

This is where you can really benefit if implemented successfully. When I was previously running the e-commerce business unit for a large company, rather than pay high-traffic websites to advertise on their sites, which can be very much untargeted, we offered them a percentage of sales. In other words, we provided them with the banners to promote the service, and implemented simple tracking of where our visitors were coming from, and then paid a percentage of the total revenue to the referrer. This resulted in very low marketing costs to us, and the referring sites started placing more and more emphasis on their side to ensure that we got top placement whenever they were low on paid inventory.

Another effective medium-term strategy is to provide content of value to sites which serve your target market. They benefit from your topical content, you benefit from the exposure and links.

4. Dabble in paid keyword advertising

Only at this point should you actually be starting to pay for online advertising. These forms of advertising, however, allow you to specifically target certain people, which means you get a much better return on investment than simply advertising to everyone. This can take some trial and error to find what works best, but the amount you pay should be less than the amount of business you generate, and should normally include full measurement and reports on a reasonably regular basis, preferably online.

For this purpose, I often suggest starting with Google. They are by far the most popular search engine globally, they have a very good reputation, provide reporting online, and are probably the most likely to produce results initially. Yahoo and MSN also have excellent paid link systems, and they keep getting better all the time. The latest offerings from all three are now also starting to allow targeting to specific demographics, a trend that is likely to become the preferred way to target online audiences once the capabilities for this type of targeting matures.

5. Involve an internet marketing specialist

At this point, you should be starting to see some results, and be in a good position to ask some intelligent questions. Preferably deal only with a business that has a good reputation (ask for client contact details so you can find out how effective they are), and has preferably has been around for at least a few years. They should also provide very detailed reports (ask for examples of these up front), and be able to explain in detail how they go about promoting your site, on which sites they do so, the number of views and clickthroughs per site per day, and how effective each promotion was relative to the next. They should also meet with you at least once a month to review successes and failures and involve you in the decision-making process of where next to promote your business. At least monthly, you should be in a position to evaluate your cost per sale for various promotions, and to change your focus accordingly.

Especially be wary of businesses who claim unrealistically quick results, or base their business mainly only on search engine submission, or use deceptive practices to try and "trick" search engines into ranking you higher. These usually at best produce no value, and can in some cases lead to your site being removed or ranked very low by search engines.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

dibakar_gupta — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 06:02:31 GMT

Search engine optimization (or SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. If a site is ranked higher in the "page rank", the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO can target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines. SEO is also the second most popular activity after email.

SEO service company can deliver customised SEO services to diverse industry clients. We, Innovative Technosoft will analyse your business model and accordingly establish search engine marketing to help in client acquisition channel. This will strengthen your business immensely. There are numerous search engine marketing services that we provide:

•Search Engine Optimisation
•PPC Advertising
•Lead Generation
•SEO Consultancy
•Web Analytics
•Link Building
•SEO Friendly Web Design
•SEO Copywriting
•Branding

Innovative Technosoft search engine optimisation services have helped various kinds of business organizations achieve long term search marketing goals. We have placed many of our client’s website on the top of search engine result pages already. SEO is a technique which helps you to build a global customer base. Search engine friendly website is not only more user friendly but also helps reach the target audience easily.

Search engine optimisers can offer SEO as a stand-alone service or as a part of a broader marketing campaign. The term "search engine friendly" is also used to describe web site designs, menus, content management systems and shopping carts that are easy to optimize. Over a period of time, SEO service in India has grown considerably. Numerous SEO companies have come up in the recent years. We are well known in the field. SEO is becoming immensely popular as it not only promotes website but also helps in getting leaps and bounds of traffic. Our search engine solution will drive your business to greater heights.

Multimedia Presentation Design

dibakar_gupta — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 09:09:00 GMT

Innovative Technosoft is leading to groundbreaking multimedia presentation design innovations. New software for presentations is hitting the shelves on a regular basis and today's design methods will be old hat within a year.

Graphic Design

How can you stay on top of current multimedia presentation trends? Professional designers are knowledgeable of cutting edge technology and can help you develop a powerful presentation.

One of the key elements to a compelling presentation is the use of graphics. You may not be familiar with graphic design and this is one area where a professional can really help you bring your presentation to life.

Multimedia presentations are utilized for many different events. Companies use presentations for branding and to let employees and consumers know about services and products. They are used to educate and can be used in a variety of projects.

3D Modelling

An exciting entry in the presentation design field is three dimensional modelling. 3D modelling is powerful and packs a punch when presenting information. This type of design software is utilized in many industries including the auto industry, the home building industry, and design firms.

Three dimensional modelling allows your audience to see all aspects of your graphic. This gives life to your images. 3D graphics and animations can make a presentation simpler to understand and display relationships with greater clarity. If you are struggling to represent a concept verbally a three dimensional graphic or animation may be just what you need to get your point across.

CD Multimedia

It is no longer acceptable to pass out a tri-fold brochure and expect big results. Branding can be carried over from your presentations to advertising with a CD option. You do not want to copy your presentation onto a CD to pass out, but you can adapt your presentation for distribution.

Corporate branding and marketing has infused all aspects of business. You can adapt your multimedia presentation into a catalogue, a manual, a business proposal, a web page, a webinar, and so much more. Just like your multimedia presentation design, your CD options can include Flash animations, videos, high quality graphics, and other exciting tools.

Multimedia presentation design is your ticket to enhance your business. The possibilities are endless. A virtual tour through a multimedia presentation can be presented at a corporate wide meeting and adapted as a webcast for consumers and a CD for potential investors. Innovative Technosoft can help you make your design efforts a success with multimedia tools.

CMS vs Static Website

dibakar_gupta — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 07:02:08 GMT

One of the most important decisions to make before having a website built for you is whether to choose a static website or a content management system, known as a CMS. There are advantages to both but choosing one over the other is a matter of determining what your needs are.

What is a Static Website?

Static or fixed websites are usually brochure type sites where the content does not need to change often or at all and where the number of pages is typically low. Updates can be made but will usually have to be done by a web developer or by someone with a rudimentary knowledge of how to use html and ftp.

Disadvantages of having a static site

•potential difficulty in updating. Even a slight mistype within the code could disrupt the layout or operation of the web page
•increased cost paid to a web developer for changes.
•search engine optimization - or SEO - will not favor websites with static content over a similar site that has its content regularly updated.
Advantages of having a static site
•Lower development cost. Static sites are usually built in a fraction of the time that a CMS will take.
•Simple web hosting needs. Static sites do not generally need a database to store their contents in and can be hosted with your local cable company which often gives around 5MB of space to users.
•Possible to build your own with WYSIWYG tools. There are many low-cost software packages designed to allow you to make your own website visually, without much knowledge of HTML. However, if your website is for your business, it would be in your best interest to have it look as professional as possible.

What is a Content Management System?

A CMS is a dynamic website which is designed to be scalable in at least its content, and most often its features. The user is empowered to update content at their leisure and usually without any concern for breaking the website layout as this is usually under tight control of the CMS itself. Frequent updates can be made to web pages, blogs, photo galleries and more. Google’s Blogger is a basic content management system which has no cost to setup and while it is useful for a personal site, it has limited value as a business site. A more advanced system is WordPress which is maturing quickly from initially being a blogging tool to a more fully featured CMS. Drupal is an example of a complete CMS, designed to be fully scalable, adaptive and feature rich.

Disadvantages of a CMS:

•Greater cost of development. As it takes much more time to develop a database-driven CMS and as it usually requires specific knowledge of a particular CMS, it will require a greater investment. However, like is also likely to result in a greater return on investment (ROI).
•Learning Curve. To understand how to work with a CMS, you will need to learn how it is structured so you can control menus, naming, categories, etc.
•Slower bandwidth customers may have a slightly longer wait. Content Management Systems often include more media such as images and dynamic content. This is typically not a concern for most modern countries with high speed access but it should be stated nonetheless.
Advantages of a CMS
•extensive or full control over the content of your site without the need for knowledge of HTML, CSS or other web languages. Changes can be made at your leisure.
•Depending on what type of CMS you choose, there can be a wide array of content types to work with beyond just text, such as photos, audio, video.
•SEO Friendly. Websites which update content on a regular basis gain more of a spotlight from search engines and will often rank higher in search engine results (SER) pages which is an important competitive factor for business websites.

Hopefully this sheds some light on the differences of these two types of websites. Innovative Technosoft has created many websites of both types, however there has been a growing demand for custom content management systems from our clients and creating custom Drupal themed CMS's has been our focus. Our advice in deciding which type of site is best for you is to look towards the future and decide what means will afford you the best value for your money while remaining competitive.

We invite you to contact us to discuss your website needs further and answer your questions.

Graphic Design - Don't Ruin That First Impression!

Innovative — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 14:46:05 GMT

Whether it's a company business card, a letterhead, a poster, an ad in the paper, a web site, or any host of business presentation materials, you always need superb graphic design to stand out in this highly competitive world. As the old saying goes, "You never get a second chance to make a first impression."

Great first impressions are also made by outstanding graphic design.

Some people take years in university or college to study graphic design. The good thing is that if you are not one of them there is still hope!

Large corporations contact companies or highly capable individuals who are able to look after their corporate identity, but the rest of us need to either hire the local printing shop or do the design work by ourselves.

Nowadays, being able to create a good company image is not the stumbling block it was years ago. Most computer programs, such as word processors, desktop publishers etc., have 'wizards' that will help you create an identity for your business by using existing templates. All you have to do is plug-in your own information. These programs can create business cards, logos, brochures, newsletters, posters, and a host of other related presentation materials for you.

There are even software programs that are able to create a very professional company logo, whether your business is very conservative or very outlandish. Some of these can be for less than $20.

Web sites are also a big part of a company’s identity, more so if you are actually developing or own a company online. Through searching the Internet, you can buy templates for your web site that will almost be a perfect fit for your business, whether you are selling online or offline.

Even the presentation of your information, the actual words that tell about your product or service, or anything related, needs to be considered as a graphic design element. Consider some of the posters that promote milk for example. The advertising companies that promote the drinking of milk could write a multitude of words explaining the chemical make-up of milk and why you should drink it.

Instead, they add a large photo image of an active person drinking it outdoors, with a cow in the background, and put in one word in the corner of the poster, "Milk". Everyone understands the meaning immediately from the photo, which is then reinforced by the word, or a few words.

When doing your own graphic design, the best principle for you to follow is that 'less is more'. Allow yourself for lots of space. People find it hard to focus on things which are cluttered. Think of a desk for example. You do not really notice the desk when it's cluttered with papers and junk. Remove the clutter and everyone will notice the desk. Likewise, try to keep things clean and simple.

If you do have to present a lot of words, try adding visual interest by adding pull-quotes, which are boxes set in the text which quote some of the highlights of the actual text. The box will add interest.

People will usually notice the biggest, boldest item first, and then go left to right if no clear indication is given. In a newspaper article, it is usually the photo first, then the headline, then bolded captions, then the actual article.

There is no shame in looking at a design that works for someone else, and emulating it, but not copying it.

By bearing in mind what your 'desk', or focus, is, and by using all the tools at your disposal, many of which are free, you will be able to produce graphic designs which are both eye catching and profitable.

Corruption: A Menace In India

Innovative — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 07:23:42 GMT

Everyone censures corruption at a societal stage but that does not mean that anyone has escaped from the flu of corruption. It is not an infection in one country. People worldwide are involved in the act of corruption. India is no exception to it. Corruption in India has even crossed the alarming stage. From the officials of the highest rank to a peon everyone is corrupt.

It is a term known to all of us precisely meaning an illegal, immoral or unauthorized act done in due course of employment. But literally it means "Inducement (as of a public official) by improper means (as bribery) to violate duty (as by committing a felony)".

Corruption is a termite in every system. Once it enters the system, it goes on increasing. Today it is rampant and has gradually become routine. Worldwide, bribery alone is estimated to involve over 1 trillion US dollars annually.

This shows how big a problem is corruption. It is indeed the biggest challenge in front of any government because the system itself is handicapped as its own employees are slaves of another. In the author's view view corruption is the root cause of all other problems that a country faces. Let us look at it with reference to India. Many big problems such as poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, pollution, external threats, underdevelopment etc. are posed in front of the Indian government. But having a glimpse at all these problems faced by India, one might notice that corruption plays an important role in making these problems even bigger. India is still facing poverty due to corruption. The government and its employees all are corrupt so the schemes floated by the government for the betterment of poor are not properly implemented and just because corruption comes into play the grant advanced to the poor does not reach them and they remain the same and so does the problem of poverty. The same principle applies to the problem of external threats. India’s neighbouring countries are also a threat to the country and its sovereignty. Because of the officials or even citizens being corrupt either for their personal gain or enmity towards their home country the neighbors prove to be even more dangerous. Such officials may leak important information to the neighbours which gives them an upper hand. The same was hinted post 26/11 attack in India. According to the sources the attack couldn’t have been possible without the help of the insiders.

Corruption is not just limited to administration. It is very much prevalent even in legislation and judiciary so much so that it is probably the biggest challenge and needs to be eradicated from its grass root. For the same purpose the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 has been enacted.

This Act incorporated the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1947, the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1952, and sec. 161 to 165-A of the Indian Penal Code. The Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, thereby widened the coverage, strengthened the provisions and made them more effective.

This Act in particular defines the act of bribery, prescribes its punishment and also deals with the intricacies of law such as appointment of special judges, their powers, summarily triable cases etc.

The Act describes, defines, discriminates different forms and stages of corruption and prescribes punishment for the same. Under Section 7 of the Act, any public servant expecting or accepting any gratification other than his legal remuneration from any person to favour or disfavour or service or disservice any other person shall be punishable with imprisonment not less than 6 months but may extend to 5 years and also with fine.

Section 8 deals with the cases of public servants accepting gratification by illegal means to influence public servant. The same provision prescribes punishment up to 5 years imprisonment and fine. The maximum punishment prescribed under the Act is up to seven years imprisonment and fine under Section 14 that deals with those habitual of getting involved in the act of corruption in one or the other way. Under this provision any public servant committing an act of:-
1. Accepting gratification by illegal means to influence public servant as dealt with under Section 8 or
2. Taking gratification for exercise of personal influence as dealt under Section 9 or
3. Act of abetment of an offence under sections 7 or 11 as prescribed under Section 12 is punishable with the punishment prescribed.

The Act has been very well enacted to see to it that the conviction rate should not be very less due to legal intricacies coming in the way of justice. Though a good enough legal process is set up to flee fake cases. For instance Section 19(1) requires previous sanction of the employing authority for a case under this Act. But clause (3) of the same provision states that any order passed by a special judge may not be reversed or set aside due to any error or omission of such sanction. The anti- corruption law is made more stringent by the insertion of section 24. This section states that any statement given by the bribe giver should not subject him to any prosecution. The existence of this section ensures the bribe giver that any statement made by him regarding giving bribe to any public servant is not going to lead him in any legal trouble. This provision is therefore inserted to see to it that absence of such statements by bribe givers which are conclusive evidences does not lead to acquittal in such cases.

But still the conviction rate in corruption cases is very less. Therefore in my view the Swedish concept of Ombudsman be incorporated in Indian system. The same was recommended by M.C. Setalvad, Former Attorney General of India way back in 1962. So, an Administrative Reforms Commission under the Chairmanship of Morarji Desai was set up to investigate and recommend enshrining the concept of Ombudsman in India. The commission placed definite suggestion before the govt. in its interim report in October. 1966. The commission recommended 2 categories of Ombudsman for India: a Lokpal to investigate actions of ministers and secretaries and one or more Lokayuktas to investigate the actions of officials below the rank of secretaries. The recommendation of the commission was accepted by the Govt. and a Bill providing for Ombudsman was introduced in Loksabha in May 1968. The Bill was known as "The Lokpal and Lokyuktas, 1968”. More than four decades have passed but still the Indian Parliament has not passed a Central Legislation regarding this. This shows lack of political will to eradicate corruption from its roots from Indian system. But some Indian states namely Orissa, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh are some amongst many to pass the Lokpal bill as a state legislation. But due to absence of a Central Legislation the State Legislations could not make this law more stringent. For the same reason a Lokpal is not vested with many powers and hence unable to act effectively.

Conclusion:-
Corruption is a big reason to worry for the Indian government. The Act is technically drafted in a beautiful way, but it has not effectively come to the aid of the government to curb corruption. So the punishment prescribed in the Act shall be much stricter to deter the intending violators.

As you walk the extra mile…

Innovative — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 14:58:51 GMT

As you walk the extra mile, please ensure that you are not blocking somebody else in their journey.

Sometimes people get so excited about over-achieving that they will step on the toes of other people who are just trying to get through their day.

Today, there was a Budget truck in front of our gate. Yes, it’s a rental truck and FedEx was using that truck to deliver packages. You see – they have the "Next day, guaranteed!” promise and they have to meet it. Since this is holiday season and a lot of packets to deliver, they might have rented a truck. That’s definitely walking the extra mile to keep their promises.

The problem. They never told their drivers to block the gate. The truck was blocking the gate and the driver had gone missing. After a few minutes, he surfaced from the back of the truck with a set of packages. I told him that he was blocking the gate and he just said, "Sir, it will only be a few minutes. I have to deliver these packets first…” and proceeded as if it was not a big deal to block the gate.

I was waiting there twiddling my thumbs smiling at the whole situation. After a few minutes, the driver came back and drove away.

Ten minutes delay because of the "traffic jam” and if the driver continues the behavior, I am sure he would have caused a lot of such "traffic jams” throughout the day.

It seems funny but when the same thing happens in your career, it is no longer funny. Somebody in your office is ambitious and wants to get ahead in their career and in the process they will try to walk over everyone else in the office. The Boss can see that this person is walking the extra mile and if the Boss is not sensitive enough he or she might NOT see that a few other people are suffering because of the actions of the ambitious person.

I am sure you are not the ambitious person who is insensitive to the needs of others around you. Hopefully you are not on the receiving end. Either one of them will be bad.

Happy holiday season to all of you and wish you all a very happy new year. This is the last post for the year and I will be back again 2011!

The Calling of Management: The 10 Beliefs of Great Managers

Innovative — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 14:51:24 GMT

It is extremely worthwhile to see this light of renewal go on in managers eyes when they realize that the hard work of management can evolve into the gift of a calling in your life.

When you are a manager, your work is vitally important: it matters.

Take your work from good to great.

What is your intention? Did you choose to be a manager, or did you just find your way to being one? Whatever the history of your journey, do you love being a manager? If not, why do you persist in being one?

You can’t be a great manager if you do not intentionally choose to be one, and then make a passionate commitment to management consciously and with full intention. To "get started” with Managing with Aloha, you must be able to honestly say being a manager is your deliberate choice, and that your passion lies in the joys which come from being a great manager: "Good” is not good enough, for as a manager you directly affect the quality of people’s lives. That is not a responsibility to be taken lightly.

You must take stock of where your own convictions are when it comes to certain beliefs:

What do the truly great managers of our world believe in?

Managers must believe that people are innately good. Without this core belief and faith in people, great management is not possible.
Managers believe they do not work on their people, they work with them; they enable and empower them.
Managers believe that "empowerment” comes from within, and has more
to do with self-motivation and innate talent than with the acceptance
of authority. They get their cues from the person, not from the task or
process.
Managers believe that all people have strengths which can be made
stronger, and that their weaknesses can be compensated for to become
unimportant.
When it comes to training, the great managers do not believe they train people, they believe they train skills and offer additional knowledge.
Managers believe they coach and mentor people, and they love doing so — not "like,” love.
Managers believe that the people they manage are more than capable
of creating a better future. They hold great faith and trust in the
four-fold human capacities of physical ability, intellect, emotion, and
spirit.
Managers believe in the power of positive, affirmative thinking,
and they have a low tolerance for negativity. They are confident and
eternal optimists.
Managers believe it is their job to remove barriers and obstacles
so people can attain the level of greatness they are destined for. They
believe that "can’t” is a temporary state of affairs, and that
everything is only impossible until the first person does it.
Managers believe that their legacy will be in the other people they have helped to achieve worthwhile and meaningful goals. They believe that success is measured in people who thrive and prosper.

These are the reasons why managers matter, and why management is vitally important. These are the challenges you must be eager to tackle.

10 Features Of A Great CMS Solution

Innovative — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 11:46:31 GMT

CMS or Content Management Systems is an very efficient tool to maintain and manage websites and the content thereof. But how well a CMS caters to your requirements depends a great deal on your choice of the same. While choosing a CMS solution for your website, there are some key features you should look out for. However, before you start selecting a CMS solution for your website, you should have a clear idea about your requirements and basic functionality features that you want it to have. Here are some key features you need to look for.

Basic Functionality

The content management system should be able to perform basic function like creating, deleting, editing and organizing web pages. There are certain simple CMS solutions that allow creation of content but organize the same as per default settings. Make sure you check about this feature if want to have total control over the contents of your web pages. Though you may feel that you don't need the organizing features right now, you cannot be sure that you wouldn't need them in future.

WYSIWYG Editors

The WYSIWYG editors let you add, edit and change the website contents without any knowledge of HTML whatsoever. Moreover, the editors enable you to mark up headings, lists, links and other elements on a web page without providing any specifications about their appearance. Also, the editor should be allowed to handle external assets such as images and downloadable files.

Management

The CMS should enable content providers to manage images and files efficiently. In fact, it should make it mandatory for content providers to add ALT attributes to images. In addition, it should also provide basic editing tools like cropping resizing, rotating etc. apart from all this, another important consideration should be the ability of the CMS to upload and attach PDFs, Word documents and other files and how they are displayed to the website users.

Customization

The CMS should be flexible enough to accommodate your needs and requirements. Rather than following technology as a default setting, it should seek to allow separation of design and content. It should allow flexibility for the data to be retrieved and presented.

User Interaction

The CMS should enable the gathering of user feedback or allow a third party plug-in to do the same. If you have a community or forum on your website, then your CMS should enable provisions for chat, comments, ratings and other user interaction tools. The CMS should enable you to post forms and collect responses. The essential purpose of a CMS is to allow tasks like customization of fields without any technical expertise. Apart from this, the CMS should also provide tools to facilitate communication with the customers.

Different Roles

There may be scenarios when you have multiple content providers for managing the website contents. Thus the CMS should be able to control who can edit what part of the website contents. For example the HR department of the company would need to edit content on the 'Careers' page of the website while the development team would keep track of the 'Portfolio' page. Thus the CMS should support permissions that allow specifications about what users can edit what pages and what sections of the website.

How to Know When you Need a ConsultantThe reasons for hiring a consultant are as infinite and unique as the number of businesses out there,

Innovative — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 09:41:51 GMT

The reasons for hiring a consultant are as infinite and unique as the number of businesses out there, and today, you can find a consultant that specializes in just about anything. From breastfeeding in the workplace to nuclear physics, there's a consultant out there that can meet your demands.

Just as every face of business is unique, so are the reasons for hiring a consultant. The bottom line is that you have a problem that requires a solution beyond your expertise or ability and you know it's time to call in a consultant when:

1. Your business is faced with a crisis.
Whether it's a customer service disaster, a kink in the manufacturing process, internal staff relations problems, an unexplained loss of revenue, a need to get the job done fast, or any emergency unique to your business, you can find a specialized consultant that is an expert in crisis management. Not only can they patch up the bleed, but they can also get your company back on its feet stronger than before.

Are you faced with a situation requiring a swift response that has the potential to damage your business? You need a consultant.

2. Your business requires specialized expertise to stay current and/or grow
Consultants are experts in current industry trends and target markets on top of possessing specific skill sets that are outside of many business in-house assets. It is their job to bring your company the expertise you need: legal, technical, human resources, marketing, or whatever you require.

Does your project require targeted expertise not available in-house? You need a consultant.

3. You Need Objectivity
Your staff may know your business inside and out, but, like you, they are too immersed in the company to come up with objective out-of-the-box solutions or strategies. No matter how amazing your in-house team is, sometimes an outside expert and refreshing perspective is called for.

Need an objective viewpoint for out-of-the-box solutions or a global perspective? It's time to retain a consultant.

4. Profits
When you're not happy with your bottom line, taking on the added expense of a consultant may seem counter-productive. But it's not. Consultants are experts in their field; they bring their skills to your table for one reason - to improve your business, ultimately helping to increase profits.

Need to stop a revenue loss bleed or ready to take bold steps to skyrocket your profits? A consultant is the solution you're looking for.

If any of the above situations describes your business needs, it's time to bring in a consultant.

Whatever the problem, there is a consultant out there with the perfect solution for your business. They come in, work with you to identify the problem, study it, make recommendations on the best solution at the least cost, and implement a plan of action. Once that is done, they get out, leaving your business in a much stronger and more effective position than when they arrived.

Good Customer Service Is No Longer Enough

Innovative — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 06:48:21 GMT

Your business would not exist without customers. And if you have customers, you have to have customer service. Everybody talks about the importance of good customer service, but few seem to follow through on it.

1: Why is customer service so important to a successful business?

Customers have more options than ever before-and feel less loyalty. They want products and services fast, cheap, quick-from whoever will provide them. That means that the competitive advantage is now in your ability to KEEP customers and build repeat business. And the email mindset makes it even easier for customers to spread out their dissatisfaction. Make Customer Jones angry and chances are you've got a nasty rumor going around to ten of his colleagues that you're a lousy firm to do business with.

2: What's your definition of good customer service?

Good customer service is no longer enough. It has to be superior, WOW, unexpected service. In a nutshell, it means doing what you say you will, when you say you will, how you say you will, at the price you promised-plus a little extra tossed in to say "I appreciate your business."

3: How do you quantify it and measure it?

There are as many ways as there are businesses. You can use several criteria as your scorecard-decrease in written customer complaints, decrease in oral complaints, more referrals generated from your current customers, increase in the repeat business of your current customers, faster response time/turnaround time on orders, increased productivity and less rework on customer projects. There are many, many options. Part of our customer service consulting and training is to lead clients to determine how they personally want to evaluate. Evaluation costs time and money, but it's well worth it to see how you score.

4: Is good customer service different on the Internet?

The primary difference is that you have difficulty in building rapport with customers because there are fewer occasions of real-time interaction. A second difference is that customers seem to be more fickle and hostile because they can chose to remain anonymous. They're in; they're out; they move on without a second thought. First impressions about how user-friendly your site is, for example, get translated to how user-friendly your products and services are in general.

5: If good customer service is so important to a business' success, why do so few businesses have it?

Customer service is dependent on three things: customer-friendly policies set by the organization's executives, training offered to the staff, and the attitude of the staff about their own organization as generated by the way their company treats them. Let me elaborate on what happens if any of these are out of whack. If executives don't actually know/see how their policies get executed on the frontline, they're often shocked to discover the actual results of how the policies get carried out/enforced. If people aren't trained on specifics (not just smile and use people's names), they don't know how to build customer loyalty even when they want to. For example, you may tell a frontline staffer to acknowledge customers when they walk in the door. But they have to know HOW to acknowledge them. Is it appropriate to say, "Next" to the next person, thereby making them feel like a number rather than person that's being "processed." And finally, let me elaborate on how customer service becomes the result of poor employee treatment. In a nutshell: employees can be spiteful. If they get pushed around and treated unfairly, they "get even" by doing things to drive your customers away (act sullen, air your dirty linen, forget to call back or follow up).

6: I often feel the retail industry has the worst customer service. Is this supported by fact?

I don't know about any research that says retail customer service is worse than that, say, offered in a stockbrokerage firm. But the reason a retail environment pops into mind so often when mentioning poor customer service is that their customer base is so broad and poor service is so easy to spot. For example, you don't realize that the stockbrokerage firm didn't send you the correct paperwork on your new account until two weeks later-and they may or may not admit fault. Behind-the-scenes foul-ups are difficult to trace to discover who did or didn't do/communicate what was needed. But with retail, all the foul-ups are readily and immediately apparent when you walk in the door: The sales associate is on the phone to her mother. No one called/asked my name. No one asked the right questions to discover my needs. No one smiled. The clerk didn't know the merchandise. Nobody could make a decision when I asked for an exception to policy. All those issues glare at the customer immediately.

8: What are some examples, which you have encountered, of really good customer service? Of really bad? What could the bad ones have done differently?

We recently had a great example of above-and-beyond-the-call-of-duty service. One of our trainers was staying in a hotel in Denver. When she went to her rental car the first morning of our workshop, she discovered a dead-battery. The hotel desk clerk heard her make a desperate call to the rental car agency and heard them tell her it would be two hours before they could come out. They offered no other option for her to get to the seminar. The hotel desk clerk overheard the conversation and volunteered to lend our trainer her personal car for the day, saying it would simply be parked in the lot all day and she had no use for it. My bad example-the same situation. The rental car agency. In effect, they've said, "You've got a problem. Here's our policy. Like it or rent elsewhere next time. Instead, they should have had in place a system for faster response time. In lieu of that, they should have had approval and foresight to offer other options such as suggesting the guest take a taxi to work and offering to reimburse the fare.

9: If I, as a manager, have just taken over an operation with a reputation for less than ideal customer service, what can I do about it? What should I do first?

Fix it and then brag. Not the other way around. The mistake most new managers make is to take over the job and announce to their public/customers their intentions to improve customer service. But they don't yet have new systems and policies and training in place, so nothing really changes for the customer. Customers' high hopes are dashed. Then they become even more hostile and disappointed in the service. So, the first step is to fix the problem, train the staff to deliver better service, and THEN announce the change to your customers as you set about proving it to them.

10: If I have had responsibility for that operation for some time, and this interview shows me I need to improve, is the plan any different than in your previous answer?

Same. Just put your money, time, and commitment where your mouth is. That's often the difficulty. Everybody believes in good customer service--in theory. The real difference develops when people actually commit to carry out their intentions.

Here is your opportunity to really make a difference in the customer service your company provides. Make sure your people actually commit to carrying out their intentions