February 2020 - QL Tech

Let’s kick off with a cliche: The future of business lies with the on-demand app!!

We call this a cliche due to the prerequisite of the on-demand app for a business to grow in today’s online market. According to the Harvard business review, there are about 16.3 million consumers spending an average of 36 billion dollars online. How can an entrepreneur not take advantage of such a humongous market?

As of today, around 80% of businesses have on-demand apps developed for the sole purpose of fulfilling their target consumer’s requirements. Their aim is to get the users to install their apps so that they can reach their audience more effectively and quickly.

With the growing number of call phones (4.68 billion cell phone users: Statista), the number of on-demand is only going to increase. If you don’t have an app. For your business yet then you’re missing out on Big time.

More about On-Demand apps and their benefits

You can think of On-Demand apps as a linking layer between consumers and different businesses. These applications are readily used by the consumers to get their hand on multiple products or services which they wish to procure.

The scope of products and services can range from delivering groceries to booking a rabbi for bah mitzvah. This can pretty much cover everything that a user might require. Which is why businesses are clamouring to launch their application in the market.

Here are some of the other benefits:

Highly Secure and Scalable

It is nearly impossible to determine whether any particular mobile app is secure or not. Any entrepreneur will want to keep its business’s data safe and secure while ensuring customer’s confidentiality. While choosing your customised mobile solutions, you can make sure that your app data will remain safe.

Unlimited business opportunities

To make the best use of your app. you must have a database which shows tabular information about your users right from their addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, interests, preferences or whatever that empowers your interactions. This amount of varied data can let you do many things:

a) Optimise your business practices through data analysis.

b) Enticing the audience towards any upcoming sales or offers.

c) Build ‘business-customer’ relationship to personalised communication.

d) Boost your conversion rates.

Affordability

Going for a cheaper solution now will only have you end up spending more in the long-term. Rather opt-in for a ready-to-use solution which will give results in the form of increased ROI for your business.

There might be an initial cost for the on-demand app development solution but it will greatly help you provide more value to your customers and stay flexible.

These are just a few of the benefits of On-Demand app. Now let’s discuss some of the key functionalities your Application must-have.

1. For the Customer app feature

Push notification

Notifications are a crucial aspect of any On-Demand App. They inform the users to about the arrival of their product or service or even the special offers available.

Real-time tracking

This feature lets the app users track down the location & status of their order or service in real-time. Hence, this ensures fast and efficient service.

Payment system

Payment is one of the most important elements of any On-Demand Service. By making sure that your payment system is fast, secure and reliable. Multiple payment options are highly recommended for user convenience.

Favourites

This functionality helps the customers to save their favourite service provider or product for quick reference. It helps them to find them out quickly and saves their time searching those all over again.

Reviews and ratings

It shows the customers that your brand cares. Taking note of user experience serves as feedback for the service providers.

Help and support

By integrating the Help & Support feature assists customers in case of common queries. It boosts customer service by resolving their problems and takes the load off your customer service reps.

2. Service provider app feature

Order alert

With this functionality, the service provider receives a notification whenever a user avails for its service or product.

Accepting & rejecting requests

The service providers must have the final authority on whether to accept or reject a request within a given period.

Track earnings

Helps them to get full accountability and plan their logistics in a more efficient way.

Work on your schedules

This functionality gives the service provider the flexibility of schedule their work hours whenever they want. They can select customise their work schedule and start working on that period.

3. Admin app

Dashboard

Your business’s On-Demand app will not be complete without a readily accessible and customisable Admin Dashboard that can easily navigate to all the sections that are managing both service providers and users efficiently.

The matching algorithm

It is the aligning logic that helps in matching a suitable service provider with their respective new customer request.

You can either opt for automatic matching where the alignment is algorithm-based or a manual matching in which case the administrator matches both the parties manually.

Manage users

With Admin portal you can manage all customer’s activities such as payments, discounts, cancellation charges and resolving any customer escalated query.

Managing service provider

With this feature, the admin can handle all service provider’s affairs from incentives, earnings to penalties.

Pricing and commissions

You can manage the pricing based on demand. Secondly, you can also set up the commission charges that will ensure smooth transactions and profit-sharing.

Analytics & reports

Analytics provides key metrics such as no. of services availed, cancelled and repeated. This functionality also shows which sector of the business is doing well and the one that is struggling.

Analytic form the backbone of your business as it acquires critical insights that help you avoid all the bottlenecks and to optimise your services.

Now that you have determined your must-have features for your app.

Let’s talk about some of the major steps involved in app development.

1) Determining the target audience

The target audience would be the people who are most likely to bring their business to your brand. They could be college students, family guys, other business owners, travellers, single etc.

Whoever they are, they must be in substantial numbers, willing and have common issues so that your marketing focus is in place.

2) Identify their common pain areas

Any business is started with the aim to supply the product or service that the people need. The more efficiently the business delivers to the requirement of the audience, the more successful it is.

Nowadays consumers need things to be delivered to them as quickly as possible. Which is where your On-demand app comes into the picture. During your app development, you need to focus on how user-friendly your application is and how easily it responds to the user’s pain area.

3) Test and launch

Test the app solution for consistency. Begin with the developers, Then the in-house testing team. Encourage your developers & testers to be creative and use the app in closed beta and eventually release it in public beta test.

Repeat this scenario whenever a new feature is introduced or opt for an app revamp to make sure minimal bugs in the final product and higher customer satisfaction.

4) Finally, Publish

Once your On- Demand app is ready to go live, publish on the respective app stores. In case one of the apps get rejected, start working on the feedback received, resolve the issue, and re-publish.

Wrapping it Up…

We hope you like our take on the On-demand app development. In case you have any questions or need support in developing an application for your business in Perth, Australia or any country please feel free to contact us and our associates would be happy to help you out.

Should a sales process be dynamic or well-defined?

There are two trains of thoughts regarding this, while some sales professionals strongly believe that every sale requires a different approach. The other side advocates in favour of an elaborate sales process.

From our experience in sales & marketing for numerous partners and of course ourselves as well. We’ve come to the conclusion that every business must have both of these aspects in order to maintain a competitive edge in the market.

While being readily adaptable to change, your sales teams need to follow a sales process to align themselves with the larger organisational goals. Businesses with a robust sales process experience a 28% higher revenue growth than their counterparts, as it ensures their leads don’t fall out of the funnel or go cold before any action is taken on them.

If your business doesn’t have a sales process or you wish to strengthen the one you have in your company.

Then please have a look at the below-mentioned sales process practices.

1) Leak-Proof your Sales funnel

Yes, your business is getting leads, conversions and sales, and you might be thinking that everything is hunky-dory, but sadly that might not be enough. What you need to ask your self is whether you’re getting the maximum output from your sales process?

If the answer is no and you see that although you’re receiving enough leads and conversions, the number of successful sales is not up to the mark. This means there are leaks in your funnels and your leads are falling out of it. In this case, you need to get on top of things and start working on ensuring that your sales pipeline is leak-proof and streamlined.

To do that you need to determine the stage in your sales process through which your leads are falling out of and then start fixing the cracks.

For instance, if you have high conversions but the final sales are low that means there might be a challenge with lead prospecting which requires a revisit to the buyer’s persona. So that the right prospects are targeted by the sales team.

In the case of high customer churn, there might be an issue with customer support, leading to customer dissatisfaction. You need to double-down on customer support ASAP.

2) Unclog your sales bottlenecks

Having a sales bottleneck is annoying mainly due to the fact that it can be easily identified and hence easy to avoid. When your sales pipeline has a bottleneck, your leads do not move past a certain stage. The sales process gets clogged and leads lay dormant with no movement.

Once you identify the stage with the bottleneck, you can determine the best way to unclog the pipeline.

Your business might have a lot of leads entering the sales funnel, but become redundant if they don’t get qualified. Not all leads that you reach out to would be willing to purchase your product or services right away. The best way is to set up a lead nurturing campaigns that nurture these leads over time so. That when they’re ready, they will bring their business to you.

In some cases, your sales reps may also forget to touch-base with a warm lead, making them go cold. This is unacceptable because that lead might have been your ideal customer. Reduce the load from your sales teams by automating your email communication with a CRM tool. This will ensure that all your emails are always delivered at the right time.

3. Keep updating your sales process

As your business expands it is bound to be dealing with different industries and territories. With this transformation, your sales process will have to adapt accordingly. The Growth requirement for a small business is very different from an enterprise company. And your sales process plays a crucial role in that.

One of the biggest change would by the variance of the sales cycle which depend on the industry you are selling to. To deal with this can, you might have to radically change your sales process starting with creating new buyer’s persons as per the new industries.

You need to constantly analyse the results of the selling efforts in the new territories. Some of the key element to analyse would be the conversion rates from cold email prospecting. Cold emails might od the tricks in some regions, however, in some cases, you might have to tweak your approach. An alternative, to reach out to your prospects is by applying Account-Based Selling (ABS) methodology.

Account-Based Selling is a highly personalized technique for targeting high-value companies. In this sales process, the sales team will reach out to multiple decision-makers within an enterprise.

Although the number of emails sent out using the ABS method will be less. But this lack of quantity is compensated with quality. Each & Every touchpoint that your sales reps perform will be highly personalized, with the aim of establishing a relationship with the prospects.

4. Measure the KPIs of the new sales process

Once you’ve reconfigured your sales process. You need to make sure that all the changes are implemented throughout the team and everyone understands the process flow.

Keep an eye on the key metrics to determine what changes are working best and what did not. Set quantifiable goals that will help achieve your sales targets.

Determination of a broken sales process and optimisation is quite tedious. You have a lot on your plate, with all the metrics that need to be tracked and deals to be closed. To take care of all these tasks your business must have an effective CRM in place.

Yes, the initial setup might seem complex but the long term benefits are immense!! In case you need more information on Freshsales CRMs or you need help in getting the most out of your CRM please feel free to contact us and we’ll get back to you in no time.

Cheers!!

Month: February 2020

Guide of 2020: How to Develop an on-demand app easily