If you’ve managed to launch and run a successful business, you’ve no doubt expanded your customer base as well as your product and service lines. Eventually, you’ll need to expand to include additional locations, and you may grow to be a large organization. Digital tools are among the greatest advantages modern entrepreneurs have over business leaders from the past, but as your company and your needs grow, you’ll find that your software solutions need to evolve as well.
Enterprise companies are large-scale operations that typically have multiple locations, sometimes worldwide, and thousands of customers and employees. That means a great deal of data to keep track of and an extreme need for automation. Whether you’re running a retail chain, tech company, or any other type of enterprise organization, here are some of the most valuable tools to improve your business processes.
Enterprise Search
Running a large organization means running a complex website with thousands, if not millions, of web pages and keeping track of a massive amount of data. You need a way to look through all your data and return relevant results for search queries in a manageable amount of time. This is exactly what a reliable search and analytics engine is for.
Through a process known as data ingestion, enterprise search solutions can simultaneously index data from multiple data sources so that it’s ready to be used immediately. You can rapidly search through your own product data and customer data to gain valuable sales and performance insights. You can also easily analyze large volumes of customer feedback, or instantly search through industry-relevant news. Analytics tools are crucial aspects of business intelligence, and you can use your enterprise search engine to improve the customer experience by letting them search your site with the ultimate convenience.
Many vendors offer hybrid cloud environments for their enterprise data solutions, and deployment through the cloud means you’ll automatically receive any security updates, ensuring your data integrity.
Customer Relationship Management
Your business has no greater asset than your customer base, and an efficient CRM platform is integral to any digital transformation. These platforms help you simplify processes in your customer service and sales departments, so that your business can focus more on building relationships with customers.
One way this works is by improving both the customer and agent experience in your contact centers. Customers are likely already frustrated when calling in, and the last thing they need is a long wait or inadequate service. With artificial intelligence driven routing options, customers are quickly sent to the right agent for their concerns. Modern systems also support digital communications, so customers can contact agents via their preferred method, and a convenient user interface lets agents easily track all conversations. All collected customer information can then be used by the sales team to make personalized offers.
Master Data Management
“Master data” can have a different meaning, depending on your perspective, but it’s essentially an umbrella term for all the important data your business keeps track of including transactional data, product information, business rules, employee data, and plenty more. This data is divided into three basic types including operational data, analytical data, and governance data. Typically these data types exist in data silos, or are kept separate from each other, and would require three different data solutions to manage. With master data management solutions, however, you can share all your data with a single source of truth.
Master data management works so long as upper management supports efforts to share data and keep processes consistent across the organization. MDM benefits include providing you with a better understanding of your customers and their buying habits, improved operational efficiency thanks to consistent data reporting, better forecasting and inventory management, and more. There are multiple approaches to MDM styles, so you can choose the one that fits best for your organization.