Exceeders, IT Sales, Online Solutions, E-Commerce, Online Vendors, B2B Sales | read
In recent years, companies have seen a sharp rise in online shopping numbers.
It is estimated that in 2018 alone, over 2.4 trillion dollars were spent in online retail worldwide – a figure that has almost doubled since 2014. Online shoppers today make up over 47% of the internet population.
What makes e-commerce so appealing?
It is no wonder that with all of these advantages, even businesses are making their purchases online these days.
As a leading IT software and services enterprise market store in the Gulf, we have taken note of online purchasing trends. Five years ago, it was challenging to make a sale without multiple visits to our customers, guiding them through the sales cycle – making them aware of the product or service, telling them about its benefits, and trying to convince them that it is something they should be buying.
Today, we find that so many customers have already done their research – they know what products and services are out there, and they already have the top two or three vendors or service providers shortlisted. They have done 70% of the groundwork required for a successful B2B sale.
How did this happen so quickly? Quite simply, business owners and buying decision-makers are following the same habits they’ve formed when making a consumer purchase – research, compare, and buy. Sales Account Managers and Relationship Managers are now viewed as ‘brand ambassadors’ – promoting a specific vendor or service – as opposed to actual consultants. The consultants and everything customers need to know is now online.
Because of these shifting purchasing trends, it is estimated that this year, 2019, B2B firms will spend more on e-commerce technology to facilitate online purchasing than online retailers do.
This massive investment in ‘online stores,’ complete with comparisons, reviews, and round the clock access to chatbots and digital account managers will undoubtedly impact on the ground sales personnel, who will probably be engaged only later in the sales cycle, and act more as facilitators for customers than actual account managers.
The Gulf region is no different from the rest of the world. Since 2016 to date, we have seen a dramatic increase in customer research hours. Organizations, governmental and private, now dedicate hundreds of hours annually to research IT solutions for their problems. IT managers now approach us asking about a specific product or service that could potentially resolve their issue – they refuse to be limited to what is being sold locally by the handful of service providers and vendors on the ground.
This was the main inspiration behind Exceeders.com. When we launched Exceeders back in 2016, our primary goal was to ensure customers had options. Investing in IT solutions in a growing region like the Gulf should be about having international prospects and the ability to bring in the best possible product, even if it does not exist locally.
Today, Exceeders is also about making IT solutions easy to access, research, and purchase as we believe that this is the natural future of IT sales. IT decision-makers are also consumers who make their purchases via Amazon, eBay, etc. When you combine that buyer mentality with progressive governments such as the Government of Dubai which has mandated that by 2021, all internal and customer transactions will be digitized to enable a paper-free government for a faster, more convenient, and environmentally friendly experience – where else is there to go but online?
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit
Originally published Aug 1, 2019 12:59:24 PM, updated August 1, 2019
read
The Enterprise Digital Canvas is a comprehensive and structured blueprint of your Digital Enterprise. This article summarises learnings from effective Digital Workspace design for COVID-19 response, using the Digital Canvas model.
See how it works here:
Architecture Is The Foundation Digital Workspace
A successful workspace for recovery and growth requires you to have a 360-view of your operating capabilities. This is only possible by effectively leveraging The Digital Canvas (World’s leading framework for Digital Design).
For more information, visit our Partner Arqitek.
read
COVID-19 has become the most circulated word in 2020. This pandemic has already impacted the way organisations operate and will continue to fundamentally change them in the foreseeable future.
As this continues to impact our lives, remote working is our new reality. So, how do leaders, managers, & employees make this abrupt shift with minimal dips in efficiency?
Since we have been implementing remote working since 2014, we have come up with some guidelines on how you & your employees can effectively transition into remote working.
Any sudden change in the work environment is enough to disrupt operations if the business is not prepared or if it has not anticipated such a change. And this is exactly what is happening with most businesses today. In order to adjust to this new - hopefully temporary - “normal”, leaders should first prepare their employees mentally & should get the appropriate infrastructure to support remote working.
These are some of many things to consider during a transition like this.
We have listed below some pointers that have proven effective over our 6 years of implementing remote working:
Aside from the operational side of things, leaders must ensure that their employees are ready to handle their new lifestyle. COMMUNICATE. Have a group conversation with employees assuring them that there is certainty in the midst of all their uncertainty. Team members should constantly feel like they know what’s going on.
“This is a different time for us. We don’t know how long this will last but we are here to support each other and lift each other up. We will make sure you have what you need to continue your work as “normally” as possible.”
This type of assurance will help ease employees into this lifestyle and give them confidence that it will work. It is also imperative to set recurring meetings just so there is clarity on things and so the “teamwork” vibes are sustained. Frequency of contact should be maintained to keep the connections people had at the office.
It can be quite a shock to the human being to go from one way of life to another in a short period of time. Psychologically, employees need to be ready. That’s why it is advised to encourage employees to develop disciplined rituals so that they can stay on top of their tasks and remain productive:
As for infrastructure requirements, we compiled a list of the most crucial systems you need to thrive today.
read
Cloud computing is an exponentially growing market. According to a study by Forbes, the public cloud computing market, including cloud applications (SaaS), development and data platforms (PaaS), and infrastructure (IaaS) services combined is expected to grow to $299.4 billion.
With new businesses rapidly adopting cloud-based apps, these solutions have become mainstream in the industry as well as personal life. From our daily emails to phone storage, practically everything is stored and managed by cloud computing apps.
However, the uses of cloud computing are not just limited to personal emails or storage. With cloud computing services firms can avoid the upfront cost and complexity of owning and maintaining their own IT infrastructure, and instead simply pay for what they use, when they use it.
In the simplest terms, cloud computing means storing and accessing data and programs over the Internet instead of your computer's hard drive.
According to Microsoft,
“....cloud computing is the delivery of computing services—including servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, and intelligence—over the Internet (“the cloud”) to offer faster innovation, flexible resources, and economies of scale. You typically pay only for cloud services you use, helping you lower your operating costs, run your infrastructure more efficiently, and scale as your business needs change...”
Let's see the top five ways business are using cloud computing in their day to day operations.
The cloud allows users to enjoy network-based access to communication tools like emails and calendars. Most of the messaging and calling apps like Skype and WhatsApp are also based on cloud infrastructure. All your messages and information are stored on the service provider’s hardware rather than on your personal device. This allows you access your information from anywhere via the internet.
VEGA Messenger and iDenedi are our very own communication app that allow remote teams to work and collaborate from anywhere in the world - in a very safe and secure way.
The modern computing power and capacity of the cloud lets businesses to store information about user behaviour. This can be used to develop customised solutions, messages and products based on the preferences of customers.
Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant - all are cloud-based natural-language intelligent bots. These chatbots leverage the computing capabilities of the cloud to provide personalised context-relevant customer experiences.
Read More: How AI is Helping Businesses improve Customer Experience
When organisations choose cloud for data storage the responsibility of their data also lies with the service provider. This saves business the cost of infrastructure and maintenance. The cloud service provider is responsible for securing data and meeting legal and compliance requirements.
The cloud also provides more flexibility in the sense that you can enjoy large storage and on-demand backups.
Recovery is also performed faster in the cloud because the data is stored over a network of physical servers rather than at one on-site data centre. Dropbox, Google Drive and Amazon S3 are popular examples of cloud backup solutions.
Read More: Check Out Our Managed Cyber Security Platform - ASPIDA
Whether a business develops application for web or mobile or even games, cloud computing services prove to be a reliable solution. Using the cloud, you can easily create scalable cross-platform experiences for your users.
Many of these services include many pre-coded tools and libraries — like directory services, search and security. Some will also offer full end to end service from strategy, consultancy, UX/UI, Development, QA and support. This can speed up and simplify the development process.
Learn More About Our Partner Knowarth and how they help enterprises build apps.
Many business management applications like customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) are also based on a cloud service provider. Software as a Service (SAAS) has become a popular method for deploying enterprise-level software.
It ensures hassle-free management, maintenance and security of your organisation’s critical business resources and allows you to access these applications conveniently via a web browser.
Here is a use case of our partner, iSystems
As a busy distributor, iSystem's client, Oxford University Press needed a sophisticated solution to optimise its distribution and customer service operations.
Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations is a cloud-based business application platform that combines components of customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP), along with productivity applications and artificial intelligence tools.
iSystems supported Oxford University Press with a full integration between all the departments improved service by making current data available to all and streamlined order processing, saving OUP time and money.
Learn More About iSystems
Cloud computing services are still at a relatively early stage of adoption, despite their success stories. Many companies are still contemplating which apps to adopt and when.
However, their usage is only likely to go up as enterprises get more comfortable with the idea of their data being somewhere other than an expensive server in the basement.
