New Features upgrade for OfficeCentral - OfficeCentral CRM Mobile for Field Sales Team

New Features upgrade for OfficeCentral - OfficeCentral CRM Mobile for Field Sales Team .

We have been tinkering with this mobile module for a couple of months. We know that the sales people need something powerful and mobile to help them do their work better, faster.
We know that only cloud and mobile technology can satisfy the requirements:

• Must be able to be used on the go, no need to go back to office
• Access from anywhere, access anytime
• Prepare and send the quotation or invoice within minutes while on the go 
•  Get the latest product, price and customer data while travelling

We came up with two solutions. One in the cloud and one in the form of mobile Apps.
The CRM in the cloud have been used by our customers for more than two years. They can build quotation, delivery order, invoice and receipt within minutes. They can look at the customer information and history instantly. They can look at the product info, inventory and prices instantly.
This is already fantastic.

The second solution will blow your mind  off. It is the Mobile Apps for CRM. Now you can use your mobile apps to do things that requires a lop top before. With the mobile apps you can do the following on your phone:

• Build quotation, order acceptance delivery order, invoice and receipt
• Send them via email instantly.
• Get data of your customers
• Get historical data of your customers relationship with you
• Get inventory data and price data 
• Update your sales leads

Try o download the apps from the Google Apps Store.
The link is as follows:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=my.com.ventures.officecentralcrm&hl=en

We are always looking at how to improve the product. You use the product and let us know what areas to find tune to suit your operation. We know many of you are in dufferent business and have different process. We will add or adjust the features such that you can get the best from the apps.
Let us know.

Marketing Technology Products - our experience

The last three years have given us a good lesson.
I want to explain the progress in the following picture.

 In 2016 we have moved from Early Adopters to Early Majority. Early adopters are the people that look at your product and the fantastic technology and decide to become your users. They are OK with some bugs and understand the situation. They know that they are early users. They expect good price and high value for money.
We have gone through this phase in 2013 and 2014.
Year 2015 and 2016  is different. We are getting people from the early majority users. They expect good system, almost no bug and very easy to use system. We struggle in this area. We still add new fantastic features month after month. It is good for our early adopters but the early majority cannot tolerate this.
Being a techie we always enjoy creating new things. New features. New layout. New modules. New Dashboards. This can be very scary to our early majority customers. 
Let me go to the next group. This is the late majority.  The late majority have another characteristic. They will only use your product when many people already  used your product. Their decision making is based on "how many people have used your product?". It is not based on how fantastic is your product or how the features will help them more successful. Of course they will expect perfect and powerful product. They expect very competitive pricing. But their decision making is based on " how many other friend have used the product".
We are still at the EARLY MAJORITY stage. We must create good product, with fantastic features. Much less bugs. Easy to use.
The LATE MAJORITY will not come in if the EARLY MAJORITY is not won over.
The strategy for 2017 is to woo the early majority to become our user.

How to do this?
We will group our customers in various niche. Remember that the definition of niche is that the people in the niche talks to each other. They are in the same group, using the same software features. That means no significant difference in the way they use your software.
The following are the niches:

• Retail
• Distributors
• Professional Services - lawyers, engineeers
• Trading
• Manufacturers
• Services - laundry

What we will do is select certain niche and dominate the niche until we become the dominant player in the niche.  We will focus our development and marketing to ensure we dominate the niche.

The bowling pin effect
This is important to include in our marketing strategy.
We have been doing face to face marketing to get our customers on board.
Yes, we receive new customers practically every day.
So if we are getting 10,000 customers, we need to meet face to face with 10,000 customers.
That means tens of thousands of sales meetings.
This is very slow and very expensive.
The BOWLING PIN EFFECT will solve this problem.
When we already dominate the particular niche, they will talk to each other.
The WORD of MOUTH effect will come in.
More and more people will become our customer without having the traditional face to face meeting.
Then we can get the 10,000 users, 100,000 users and eventually 1,000,000 users.

This is what we will do in 2017 in order to be dominant in the targeted niche and getting the late majority to come in.
Then the DOMINO EFFECT will move us from GOOD to GREAT to GREATEST.




  

Wishing you Happy New Year

Year 2016 has been a challenging year for all of us in various businesses. Despite the challenges, Authentic Venture have been growing within Malaysia and overseas. Our star product OfficeCentral have been growing non-stop with thousands of users in Malaysia and Indonesia. Next we will be operating in India.

The acceptance of OfficeCentral by our customers (that's you!) have resulted in many awards in 2016 such as Asia Pacific ICT Award and SME100 Award. OfficeCentral have been featured in so many magazines, newspapers, internet news, radio and TV in 2016.

We believe year 2017 will be a challenging year again and we will work hard to ensure that we will be able to give you all the best product and services to help you to face the great challenge. We will leverage on the power of the cloud and mobile technology to continue building something that is so fantastic for your company. We will make your operation much more efficient, we will make your team much more effective and yet it will cost you very little.
Let us work together with you so that year 2017 will be a good year for you. Please let us know how we can help you more in 2017. We wish you a Happy New Year!

Visit to India - Careful with what you eat or drink. Your stomach may not able to handle it.

Visit to India - Careful with what you eat or drink. Your stomach may not able to handle it.
Yes, I was warned to be careful with what I eat or drink there.
We were looking for halal food and we could not find any halal sign in any restaurant there. However we still survive because the Vegetarian restaurants are every where. After a while we were craving for meat. Cannot tahan makan Vegetable everyday.
At last we found one muslim sounded restaurant. Ask the person in front and he said Yes halal. In ordered my beriani and Zul ordered Masala. It was so hot ( curry hot).
That night Zul was vomiting and having dierrhea. I was also have to go to toilet everyhour. Zul was having headache and continue the next day. The dierrhea continues the next day. We have meeting that day thinking the problem will go away.  It continues and gets worse.
The next midnight night we could not stand it anymore. At midnight we ask the hotel for doctor and were told the clinics were not open, until 10:00am next day. No private hospital. The government hospital is 30 minutes by car. We decided to stay in the hotel. Another night of going to toilet. I was having dehydration.
The next day we search for doctor. Was told somewhere not too far in Rajiv Chowk. Got the tuk tuk and search for clinic that we imagine like in Malaysia. No such thing. One guy told us to go to a shoes shop, at the back, on top of small stairs. One small room. One man, one table. No nurse. no medicine rack. No clinic signboard like in Malaysia.  I looked at Zul, and he looked at me. We got our from that room fast.
No doctor or clinic. Now we search for pharmacy. At last found one in another block. Told him about our dierrhea and vomiting. No problem. he gave us the medicine. Eat the medicine and that night I can sleep well. Diarrhea solved.

My message to you all is be careful with what you eat there. Your stomach may not be able to handle it.
  

My Business Trip to New Delhi - Is India a high potential country to expand your business?

My Business Trip to New Delhi - Is India a high potential country to expand your business?.
I have been to India a few times before, but this is the first time I came to explore about business.
This was what everybody told me about India:
1. It is a large country.
2. Large Population. About 1.26 billions
3. Very strong in IT. Many programmers. Many large ICT companies.
4. It is a BRIC country.
5. Many Malaysian ICT company failed to penetrate India. 
6. Every Indian is very good in English.

This is what I learned:
1. Yes it is a large country. Population is large. Many cities with millions of populations. New Delhi is about 20 millions. Other cities are Mumbay,Chennai, Pune etc are also big.
2. The people in the north speaks Hindi. The people in south speaks Tamil. Those guys in the north do not know how to speak Tamil. The guys in the south do not speak Hindi.
3. To solve the problem, the government make all forms in English.
4.  I tried to speak to a number of graduates, and found that their command of english is poor. Almost like many Malay graduates from local Universities here on their command of english.
5. Yes they have many large ICT companies. But they have very few their own products. They are positioned as system integrators and outsourcing companies.
6. How to penetrate the market?. It will take time and patience.

About our competitors:
1. The no.1 competitor is Tally Software. They have 650 staff.
2. Thy have about 1.0 million paying users.
3. There are about 48 million SMEs in India. Why so much different?
4. Some research shows that probably 10X of the numbers are using pirated version.
5. The software is the PC based system. Sold in CD or download.  It is almost like the UBS in Malaysia. Using old User Interface like 20 years ago.
6. There are a few cloud based system like OfficeCentral coming up. OfficeCentral need to compete with them.
7. The large ICT companies like Wipro, Satym, TCS are not our competitors. They normally implement SAP, Oracle and large custom solution. They do not have similar product like OfficeCentral.

Can we buld up successful business there?
1. Yes.
2. Competitors are like Malaysia, using old PC based tehnology. They focus on accounting, inventory and payroll. No CRM.
3. Face to face marketing is necessary. Relationship is important.
4. We will do extensive workshop and seminar on cloud technology and Accounting, Payroll and Sales Management using OfficeCentral.
5. Focus on training of new staff. Staff should be young and cloud is something part of their life. Easy to train.
6. Which city? Probably New Delhi or Chennai. Chennai is nearer to Malaysia.
 

Many entrepreneurs are still using manual method to manage and track their product distribution. Read this. Solve your daily headache.

Many entrepreneurs are still using manual method to manage and track their product distribution. Read this. Solve your daily headache.
I have met many entrepreneurs that are building their business successfully in product distribution. Some of them are manufacturing their own products and distributing them to their retailers and agents. Some  of them have their own outlets.  Some of them represent certain products to their customers that runs retail business.
Initially it was OK with manual system. Just use the Excel to track delivery, stock and payment. However when the business volume became very high, the headache begins to become severe. Customers complaints shoot up. Stock level is wrong. Delivery is delayed. Stock empty. Let me share with you the process and you will understand why it cause a migraine and sleepless nights to the entrepreneurs:
1. You have more than 1,000 retailers that you supplied your products
2. You have more than 1,000 products SKUs to manage.
3. You have more than 15 salesmen that meet customers every day.
4. Each salesman meets with at least 25 retailers every day.
5. So you have at least 200 customer meetings orders every day. Imagine every customers orders 100 items of various SKUs. You will have 20,000 item orders a day.
6. Warehouse need to receive the orders immediately. Mark the stock that are already booked by customers immediately. So that salesmen do not book items that are already out of stock.
7. Make sure the salesmen do not accept orders for out of stock items. The stock level is changing by the minute.
8. Start packing the items ordered and mark for different customers.
9. Get the delivery man to get the products and deliver to customers.
 10. Salesmen need to check invoices. Look at debtors aging. Those that are in arrears, he will not accept new orders.
11. Salesmen can look at invoices outstanding. Inform the customers on the status and balance.
12. Salesmen can receive payment from customers. Immediately inform Accounting department. He can put the payment to the company bank account at the end of the day. He should update payment status to the people in the office.

Now you can see how difficult it is to manage an distribution business. If you are doing it manually, the business will not become big. It will stagnant. Probably it will die off eventually.

based on this OfficeCentral has created the perfect solution for you:
1. The module is called Distribution Management.
2. It is part of CRM module.
3. You use the price book to manage your product and prices.
4. You use the inventory module to manage your inventory
5. You use the POS to manage your orders.
6. Assign task to your salesmen. What customers to meet, what day. You can schedule it in advance.
7. Your salesman can see the list of customers to visit that day.
8. When he arrived at the customer location, he can use CHECK-IN function in OfficeCentral Mobile Apps to record that he is already at the location. You know that mobile have GPS function.
9. He can log in to the system and see the list of invoices with this customer. Which one is still outstanding.
10. He can receive the payment from the customers. Then he could bank in the cheque or the cash int the bank. Update ti the system is immediate.
11. He can receive orders from the customer. He will use the POS module to do this.
12. The warehouse will immediately know the order details and can start do the packing.
13. The stock balance is updated immediately. Even though the stock is still physically in the warehouse, but it cannot be sold because it is already booked by this customer. For example, you have 1,000 unit stock fo product A. When customer purchase or booked 100 of the product A, the balance that available for selling is 900. This is done automatically by the OffficeCentral.

If you are the BOSS in the office, you can do the following:
1. Assign meeting tasks to your salesmen.
2. Check who they meet, when.
3. Check orders - by customers, by salesmen, by products, by principal.
4. Check what products are selling fast.
5. Check what products are slow moving.
6. Check what principal products are moving or not moving.
7. Check new account added by salesmen.
8. Check your total sales, by salesmen, by principle, by customers
9. Check your aging.
10. Check your cash flow.

Basically OfficeCentral CRM and Distribution module will do a lot of things that gave you huge headache previously. Now you can run your business smoothly. Now you can focus on growing the business. Become big giant.


 

Expanding Venture Business to India

Expanding Venture Business to India.
Many of my friends are surprised that I decided to expand my ICT business to India. India has many large and successful ICT companies. You will be probably be familiar with InfoSys, Wipro, Tata CS etc.  The numbers are incredible. Can you imagine Wipro have 175,000 staff.
back to the original question of why we are expanding to India. India has 1.25 billion population. There are 48 million SMEs in India. India is launching GST in April. All companies must change their accounting, CRM, POS software to those that comply to the new GST rules.
We have a good experience during the GST launch in Malaysia last year. We grew significantly from our aggressive marketing and competitive pricing. Our programmers have been very busy adding fantastic features that are loved by our users.  I believe this is the opportunity for OfficeCentral to get a significant user growth. We target to have 1,000,000 users by 2020. India will give a big boost to our target.

Data pasal CUSTOMER ialah seperti EMAS untuk kita. Macamana OfficeCentral CRM boleh menolong kita?

Data pasal CUSTOMER ialah seperti EMAS untuk kita.
Macamana OfficeCentral CRM boleh menolong kita?

Unuk orang bisnis data customer bagai EMAS.
OfficeCentral CRM boleh menolong kita dalam dua cara:
1.  Data pasal customer ada pada kita dari mula sampai sekarang.
2. Sistem menjadikan kita very efficient
3. Kita mendapat data secara instant.

OfficeCentral CRM ada lima sub-modul:
1. Account Management
2. Automated Sales Process
3. KPI Management
4. Pricebook
5. Inventory Management

Sebenarnya OfficeCentral CRM ada modul extra lain yang powerful:
1. Distribution Management
2. Manufacturing Management

Secara detailnya:  Account Management
a) Leads Manageemnt
Mula-mula kita isikan leads kedalam sistem.
Semua proses marketing mula dari leads.
Mula dengan - Name, email, phone
Kita boleh dapat leads dari banyak sumber:
1. Digital marketing - facebook
2. Digital marketing - Google
3. Seminar, exhibition
4. Website, database
5. Associations, government agencies
6. Recommended dari customer


b) Account Management
Kalau leads ini ada potential nak jadi customer, kita tukar status kepada "ACCOUNT"
Dalam ACCOUNT banyak lagi data kita boleh isi:
1. Info about the company - address, what business, contacts, website, etc
2. Semua interaction kita dengan ACCOUNT akan disimpan dalam database
  - Meeting, Quotation, Orders, Invoice, payment
  - Telephone, e-mails, complaints
3.Potential - apa potential business kita dengan account ini.

Semua usahawan mesti menggunaan CRM tools. Mengapa?
1. Semua data entag potential customers and customers ada disini.
2. Kalau sales person kita resign, kita ada data.
3. Kalau sales person lain kena cover, dia boleh terus lihat data.
Data pasal customer is GOLD untuk syarikat kita. jangan hilangkan.
Sistem CRM akan menolong kita.

Untuk info lebih lanjut, boleh baca di website ini:
http://my.officecentralcloud.com/crm2.html
http://my.officecentralcloud.com/crm3.html
http://my.officecentralcloud.com/crm4.html
http://my.officecentralcloud.com/crm5.html
http://my.officecentralcloud.com/crm6.html
http://my.officecentralcloud.com/crm7.html

How to Build successful sales?

How to Build successful sales?. I am sure you have experience failures in building successful sales. You employ sales executive and sales manager and expect your sales to go up. But nothing happens. You were wondering, what went wrong?
I have gone through this many times. Many failures. But I will share with on what worked.
What we need is to manage the sales team effectively.
1. You must have KPI target for them.
Not only the sales figures, but also the following sub measures:
1. How many leads ( per month)
2. How  many account he should follow up ( peer month)
3. How much potential business ($) that he is following
4. How many sales meeting
5. How many quotation ( # or $)
6. How many invoice ( # or $)
You may find this is too much, but lets try it.
You will see drastic changes later on.

What I dis was build up the CRM Sales Management process in the software that we deveoped.
Inside the software you can manage all the KPI above. You can see the dashboard. The target. The actual.
When you set KPI, you must also be serious about it. if you staff missed the KPI target, then you should take action. Then it will work.


Visit our website to read more about it.

http://my.officecentralcloud.com/crm5.html

Macamana nak generate sales yang bagus untuk kompani saya?

Macamana nak generate sales untuk kompani saya?
Soalan ini adalah soalan yag universal. Setiap usahawan akan mengalami kerisauan ini.
Kebanyakan kita akan ambil sales executive dan expect dia to bring in sales. Of course masa interview dia akan janji berjuta, tapi lepas enam bulan, gaji sendiri pun tak lepas.
Ini cara saya:
1. Tiap salesman mesti kita train.
2. Paham pasal Unique Value Proposition produk kita.
3. Tahu macamana nak buat presentation yang bagus.
4. Tahu macamana nak buat follow up yang efektif.
 
Yang ini juga saya praktikkan:
Salesman kena ada target.
1. Berapa leads baru tiap bulan?
2. Berapa akaun baru tiap buan?
3. Berapa potential sales tiap bulan?
4. Berapa sales meeting tiap bulan?
5. Berapa quotation tiap bulan?
6. Berapa invoice ( jualan) tiap bulan?

Kebanyakan kita ada satu target saya i.e berapa jualan tiap bulan.
Ini tidak mencukupi.

Cuba ikut cara saya dan kita boleh share the impact kepada kawan-kawan usahawan kita kemudian.
Kita share disini.

Selamat mencuba.

What is he difference between PC-based technology and cloud technology?

What is he difference between PC-based technology and cloud technology? This is a frequent question during meetings with entrepreneurs.

This is my answer:

The cloud based technology is the latest technology in managing enterprises. The advantages are much more superior as compared to the older PV-based technology that started more than 20 years ago. The PC based system normally gives you one user access, no internet access, no mobile access and very few modules. You basically cannot operate unless you are in the office, using the PC that is loaded with the software.

The cloud based system is much more powerful and friendly where you can get access from anywhere, you can have many users cooperating together on real time,  you can access from anywhere, anytime. You can also have mobile apps for it. The system can be very powerful due to the power of the cloud.

The cloud adoption is increasing more than 50% in USA and in Malaysia. I believe very soon most entrepreneurs will choose cloud technology based product to run their company. Access information easily from anywhere, and from mobile phone. All applications in one database. All required modules are available to use immediately. Very efficient. Very effective. 

Without this the company will be lefy behind.