Interaction

With the move towards online engagements for the service industry, there has been a recent influx of new applications to cater to this demand and help provide additional means to streamline the sales and on-boarding processes for service businesses.

The online applications allow you to engage with your existing clients and current prospects to iron out the nature, scope and size of an engagement. Once the client is satisfied with the engagement, they can then confirm service and it be accepted and agreed upon online confirming the scope of the engagement and “sealing the deal”.

Although the setup processes for these tools is not a simple as "turn it on and go”, the ability to customise the engagements is essential and thus it can't be the same for everyone.

Here's a couple of the quoting tools available at the moment that are now connected with Xero:

Quoteroller

www.quoteroller.com

Quoteroller is designed to provide beautiful quotes for your clients and prospects with easy to use platform, drag and drop interface making specialising individual quotes and building templates easy.

Notable features:

• In proposal analytics
• Digital Signature within the application
• Customisable themes and design

See all of the Quoteroller in action here

Quotient

www.quotientapp.com

Quotient focuses on using the dashboard as the “heartbeat of your business” for it’s quoting application. Allowing a central place for all activity on the quotes issued by your business.

Notable features:

• One click customer acceptance
• One step quote creation
• Central place to organise and search quotes
• Status of the quote and it’s # of views

And the following, SocketApp, is not currently available as a Xero add on but fingers crossed, we hope it will be soon.

SocketApp

www.socketapp.com

SocketApp provides a similar feature set to the others mentioned above, but, it has a few additional features listed below, which, is why we use it in house at Interactive Accounting:

• The ability to embed quotes on your website (HTML + iframe)
• Direct linkages to our chosen merchant facility, which allows the order to be completed and paid in multiple currencies
• Linkage to mail chimp enabling you to add new prospects to an appropriate list.

The product is only in it's infancy and has been added to the Rackspace's startup program and acquired 100s of clients within a year of launch.

We're working with the team at Deversus Inc to bring this into the Xero Add On Partner network ASAP.

Positive effect (using Socketapp) 

We love metrics (we are bean counters), so we'd thought we'd share the effects of our new methods of automated quoting for our clients and prospects and the leads that we are generating via our new focus towards online enablement. This snapshot was taken from Socketapp on the 28th of January, we expect that there will be a few more proposals out before January 31st, giving us a constant trend upwards even over the Christmas period.

We are committed to our goal of being the place to go for your end to end online accounting needs and connecting your back end business flows to streamlines your business and investment. We even have events that help you suss out the potential opportunities for your business. See #xerocoffee and #startupbeers below to find out more.

Sticking with our theme of "focus"

We are focused on bringing our clients an Interactive Accounting service in name and nature and continually improving how we communicate as this is usually the source of many problems in the provision of accounting services. You will notice that we are actively creating more campaigns, more points of contact and working on ensuring that you have acess to the knowledge and service you need when you need it.

How do you get started with online quoting?

All of the products offer free trials and have different use case scenarios.

I already have quotes in word, why do I need this?

At Interactive Accounting we are all about streamlining your back end processes and connecting your systems so that you can focus on building your business and re-purpose any repetitive administration team members to deliver value for your business (perhaps in customer support or even sales as they have intrinsic knowledge on your business) Don't undervalue these staff members!

Having a copy and paste Word system is not scalable and it’s timely, you should really be focusing on reducing time to engagement and impressing your new customers.

Need a helping hand?

If you need advice surrounding which tools are best suited for your business and how they all connect with one another, we are able to assist you in connecting your systems and streamlining your online client engagement, sales and packaging.

Contact us about providing a professional systems assessment for your business and engage both our accounting, developers and design team to get your sales channel growing today and generate new business whilst you sleep.

So you've heard people talk about it but what exactly is VOIP? Here's a brief summary of what VOIP is, the pros, the cons and what you need to get started.

Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) is basically voice communication over the internet and is now widely used in todays consumer market and business sectors to reduce telephony expense...no more expensive phone bills!

VOIP for home use

Back in the days when the internet was not so popular, which is hard to believe I know, we were all paying extortionately high international call fees to keep in touch with our friends and/or family members. Now, thanks to the rise of internet and VOIP, international communication is no longer an expensive task at all.

What do you need to make a VOIP call at home?

The setup of a home VOIP is fairly straight forward and can be done within minutes. Most VOIP routers bought from the VOIP provider would have been pre-configured which makes everything to be plug-n-play. A typical VOIP configuration for the home user requires the following items which can be easily obtained from any computer store:

1. A VOIP provider (click here for a comparison list of Australian VOIP providers)
2. An internet conection
3. A VOIP enabled router (some standard internet routers have these built in but others don't, you will need to check)
4. A traditional telephone

VOIP for business use

In the business environment, the telephone system is usually be more complicated. Generally speaking, a receptionist will be the first point of contact of all telephone calls. After the call has been answered, the call are is put on hold while the receptionist intercoms the desired colleague. The call is then put through to the corresponding person.

The above scenario would easily be achievable with a PBX (Private Branch Exchange). A PBX is a switch which can be transferred calls back and forth. There is both office based PBX hardware and cloud based PBX systems on the market. While they all can get the work done, the office based PBX hardware usually costs thousands of dollars up front but the cloud based PBX usually un on a monthly subscription basis.

What's good about VOIP?

• Its cheap! Since VOIP is all based on the internet, the cost for using VOIP is comparatively lower than the telephone companies. The difference is even more significant in long-distance communication.
• A conference call can be done anywhere with anyone. It is not limited geographically, or to the number of people participating in the conversation. 
• It enhances efficiency.

What's bad about VOIP?

• VOIP relies on a stable internet so the quality of the internet connection can greatly affect the quality of VOIP. In the case of a blackout or your internet connection drops out then VOIP is not usable at all.
• This also means that it may not be as reliable or clear as traditional telephone.

What we think

Whilst VOIP can bring a lot of convenience and savings in cost, it is always limited to your internet connectivity.  Also, you should never solely depend on VOIP as your only telephone system. Always have a back up plan such as a mobile phone just in case you need it in an emergency.