Not for the easily offended. If you are easily offended – click here.
From ‘theoatmeal.com’
everything you didn’t want to know about e-commerce
Archives for category: xm oxygen
Excellent Pod Cast about Cloud Computing.
Infographic by – Conversion Optimization Company Invesp
We set out to make a big impression, and its safe to say we were extremely successful. Many thanks to Jim McLean, Paul Stacey, Donna, Rollo and the NZTE team including Sara Morris, Brooke Gibbes, Simon Smith and Julie Gower for helping us get there!
New research into New Zealanders’ internet habits has confirmed our obsession with online social networks and our growing trust of what we read on the web.
Twenty-eight per cent bought goods as a result of reviews they read on the web and 34 per cent said they changed their mind about a product after reading a review online. 
“Clearly the role of the salesman is evolving into one of facilitation rather than influence,” he said. “[For example, shoppers] are reading about a new camera in a blog and going and buying it without using any other source of information. In Japan we’re hearing stories about retailers taking this to the extreme, to the point where they only stock products that score highly in online news or reviews.”
NZ Herald – http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10599190
So I was on the couch, sore after a long day of awkward angles wiring a mates boat trailer up. Summer is almost here after all. My wife asked why my mate hadn’t gotten an electrician to do the job. He had, but after three hours they couldn’t get it sorted. We managed to… after about five hours.
My wife said “You’re always solving other people problems aren’t you?” and it struck me she (as always) was right but in more ways than she realised.
What XM does as a company is solve one big problem, a problem that effects all product based businesses – too much administration overhead tacked on to every sale. Be it ordering, fulfillment, stock control or customer services.
The less common solution we use is called ‘Integrated Commerce’.
In both B2C and B2B models, CRM and eCommerce systems lack the kind of cross-function visibility and information sharing that can drive greater business knowledge and performance. An alternative approach is required to bridge the gap between the two technologies. Integrated Commerce has emerged as the way for organisations to fully realise the benefits of both technologies.
Simply put; we are now at a technological stage where we can get all your systems to talk to one another in real-time without ‘human’ intervention and for fraction of the cost of five years ago. In fact the smaller you are the easier it can be.
We did this for Malcove Distributors and now they can process twice the volume of orders with 2/3 the man power. We did this for Nestlé and they saved an estimated $110,000 on printing costs last year alone.
Now we are doing this on a smaller scale with Target Furniture, Fashion Biz and a few more NZ companies who have agreed to be our guinea pigs. Possible thanks to some programming and networking breakthroughs from our development team.
We are now ‘pulling’ data directly from our clients accounting systems onto ‘out of the box’ ecommerce web pages. When their customers go to the website and order, they see their correct contract pricing and shipping cost for them. When they ‘place’ the order it drops straight into the accounting system, no manual order entry required. From there the customer is automatically invoiced and the order is sent to the warehouse for pick pack and dispatch. Once dispatched, the customer automatically receives an email notification including tracking number and link to the carrier’s website. They can also log in to see their current credit limit, pull out any previous invoices (web ordered or not) and check on who else in their company has ordered goods and where they are in the supply chain.
So let’s compare – with our systems there is no more manual updating your website with products, prices or information. No armies of customer services people keying orders, checking credit reports and running off previous invoices. In fact our clients have shown 70% less phone calls and 98% less ordering mistakes when using Integrated Commerce.
Conceptually this is not new, but the technology we have developed means now that this is not longer the exclusive tool of Forbes 500.
How does no money down and $500 a month sound? Wouldn’t you agree – that’s a big problem solved?
