VTiger Blog – News, Common Errors & Helpful Tips
An Introduction To VTiger Gantt Charts
December 6, 2016
Article
Competition in the current business era is so intense that you cannot achieve greatness by only working hard, you have to Work Smart! Perform business related tasks in a smarter way in comparison to firms that are competing with you. For example, mason does one of the most difficult jobs on the planet, but does he get the wages in accordance with the hard work he is putting in? The answer is a big NO! Although the amount of money he is earning also depends on the factors like education, opportunities etc., but, as far as we are concerned with the hard work, only mason is not very fortunate, even putting so much hard work he hardly manages to make living out of it. “Working hard and working smart sometimes can be two different things” – Byron Dorgan Same is the case with business practices, only working hard cannot yield
VTiger And Office 365 Connector With Some Important Tips
December 6, 2016
Article
We live in the era of technology, from the process of communication to the common household chores, everything is benefiting from advancements in technology. Now we can control most of the household appliances using our mobile phones. Like we can adjust the angles of our bed using mobile devices, we can control the room temperature, we can automate our washing machines using remote controls that use special applications. The aim of this rant is that technology is doing wonders in every field of life and business is one aspect of life which benefited from technological developments most. If we compare current business environment with a decade old corporate situations, it is not hard to notice how technology has changed our ways of doing business. The computerization of regular business tasks involves extensive use of one specific application and that application is a part of every business firm, no matter it
The Impact Of ERP For Accounts Management
December 5, 2016
Article
Business world is rapidly changing. Most emerging organizations are moving towards EPR (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems in order to unite their cross functional business units. ERP system improves the quality of managerial accounting process, and training. ERP Software ERP software usually consists of multiple modules of enterprise software that are purchased according to what best meets the specific and technical capabilities of the organization. Each ERP module is designed for one area of business processes and it is used to manage back-office activities and tasks. The main purpose of using an Enterprise Resource Planning system is to centralize all the information that is shared by all the departments to improve the data flow across the organization. ERP Function for Accounts ERP system is more friendly for Accounts and provide effective tools to maintain database and improve their work flow as well. ERP helps accountants to manage their financial matter such
Integrating Paypal Into Your VTiger CRM
December 2, 2016
Article
Business firms which embrace the power of online selling and offer their products to the customers using the internet, enjoy a competitive advantage over those firms which are selling the same products using traditional means. Some companies build their point of differential on the basis of online selling and yield high returns. There are a number of different methods that are used for paying online bills. When these whole phenomena of making online payments started, the first most widely used method was the paying through credit cards. Although credit cards are still in use, but there are some threats associated with it which are still present. For example, in the case of credit cards, cyber theft is a very common risk faced by credit card users, a countless number of cases are seen where hackers used details of someone else’s credit cards to make online purchases. Method Offered by VTiger
Scrum Standup Meetings
December 2, 2016
Article
Scrum standup meeting, also known as daily standup meeting, in this meeting software development team gather to provide project status updates and details. They discuss about what is current status, what has to be done, what needs to be done and what are the issues in the completion of task. Theoretically, these scrum standup meetings are supposed to improve team communication and deliver a best product. Scrum standup meeting having a short time period about 15 to 30 minutes. Because the basic purpose is to communicate with project team and keep in touch with the team to make work more effective and efficient. The basic need is that to understand team work and scrum qualities. Mostly scrum meetings get off to the topic and it takes an hour. So now it is time to move on the actual scrum meeting process. Scrum standup meetings are followed by a proper procedure.
Tax Calculation In VTiger
November 30, 2016
Article
When a firm is carrying out its business operations in a country, it is the legal obligation of a company to pay the taxes according to that country’s constitution and law. There are several direct and indirect stakeholders that are affected by the operation of a company. List of direct stakeholders consists of customers, suppliers, distributors etc. And the list of indirect stakeholders comprises of the environment, general public, government etc. The government is an indirect stakeholder but is affected by the business firms and in return of facilities provided by the government companies have to pay something in financial terms to the government and that is where the concept of taxations comes. Using tax collected from firms and individuals government fund program for a better lifestyle of their citizens. “I like to pay taxes. With them, I buy civilization.”
An Introduction To VTiger Kanban View
November 29, 2016
Article
What is the purpose of a business? Why do we market products? What benefits does customer service yield? Why firms spend large amounts on improving their distribution channels? The answer to all these questions is that the firms invest resources, in all other business related operations only to increase their sales. So, we can say all the operations a firm is performing revolves around sales. Because it is the area where the firm makes the profits for its shareholders. “To me, job titles don’t matter. Everyone is in sales. It’s the only way we stay in business” -Harvey Mackay The sales department is the backbone of profit making and plays
Premium Extension Pack php.ini Requirements
November 29, 2016
Article
Premium Extension pack requires your vtiger webserver to be configured properly in order to successfully install and use our extensions. Updating your webserver php.ini configuration is fairly simple, it only takes few minutes and most of the hosting providers provide ability to update those on your cpanel or if you have a dedicated server – you likely will know where php.ini resides and how to update it. Unix Server If you are running a dedicated unix server, you are more than likely already familiar with apache/httpd server and know where php.ini resides. In any case, you can use the command to locate php.ini: php -i | grep ‘php.ini’ or php –ini The response will be something like this: Configuration File (php.ini) Path => /etc/php5/cli Loaded Configuration File => /etc/php5/cli/php.ini That tells you – that your “Loaded Configuration File” is in “/etc/php5/cli/php.ini”. Once you have located the php.ini – you
6 Tips to Improve Sales Negotiation Process
November 29, 2016
Article
“In business as a life, you don’t get what you deserve. You get what you negotiate” – (Chester L.) Negotiations play a vital role in the expansion of your business. No matter what is the size of a business, they have to get involve in process of negotiations at some part of their business dealings. Look from an organization’s point of view; bargaining and negotiating with suppliers, dealers, customers, and carrier services etc. is a common task. Skilled negotiating human resource can prove to be more than a mere asset for the corporation. Some firms lose huge opportunities only because they lack good negotiating skills. In this article,
Setup VTiger Customer Portal On Your Website
November 28, 2016
Article
No one can deny the power of good customer service, business firms are yielding high profits only because of their exceptional customer service while offering the same product quality as their competitors. A good customer service can impact your customer perception about the product and has the power to enhance the image of your offering to your valued clients. It is an aspect of business where a little input can do wonders and you can easily surpass the expectations of your clients on a positive note. “Customer service is an opportunity to exceed your customer’s expectations” – John Jantsch, president at duct tape marketing While designing customer service programs, make sure to incorporate enthusiastic and motivated human resource in this department, because HR matters more than financial resources. Invest in your customer service and witness the wonders happening. Vtiger 7 Customer Portal Champ of Customer Service in Virtual World
Pricing Strategies And Factors To Be Considered While Setting The Price
November 28, 2016
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Marketing mix defines your business and the most basic components of a market mix comprise of Price, Product, Place, and promotion. This shows how important price is for a company. Setting the price is not an easy task at all. It involves different analysis and deep insights regarding the target market. Some of the most commonly used pricing strategies are: Premium Price When a firm knows that the product they are offering is of superior quality and can easily outperform its substitutes, they set a price higher than their competitors. They charge higher prices as compared to their competitors, as they know they are providing a better product. This is called premium pricing. Market Penetration When a firm wants to attain more market share, the strategy they use is Market Penetration. In this strategy, the price they offer is very low and none of their competitors can offer the same
How to Enable PHP-CURL
November 28, 2016
Article
In order to complete step 2 of the VTiger Premium Extension Pack – your server must have php-curl enabled. In 90% of the cases – php-curl will already be installed and enabled, however in case where it is not, you will see it as missing requirement in the “Verify Requirements” section. To install/enable php-curl, you will need to do it form the SSH/terminal. The link below has very clear instructions on how to do so. https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/curl-is-not-installed-in-your-php-installation If you are using Windows server – it’s best that you google ‘how to enable php-curl on windows‘ – there are many resources out there. We can help! If you are having any issues getting php-curl installed – we are here to help. As part of the membership cost, we support php-curl installation and can do that for you without any extra charges. If you would like us to do so – please shoot
VTiger Forecast: An Introduction
November 25, 2016
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The business environment is becoming more and more intense day by day. So, to stay ahead of your competitors business firms have to anticipate things like sales, raw material, labor force etc. Companies which fail to forecast correctly not only face serious pressure from competitors, but sometimes also encounter disappointment from their suppliers and distributors. To broaden your view, some of the most important benefits of forecasting are given below: Financial Estimation Forecasting helps in determining your financial needs, it helps to estimate how much finance you need to put in your business to achieve the desired amount of revenues. But, the point that should be taken into account while forecasting is to make it realistic; superficial estimation of future purchase and sales yield is not good. Cut down Expenses A good prediction about future business operations can save a firm from a lot of expenses. Like the company will
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) And Its Four Stages
November 25, 2016
Article
When we look at traditional business practices, it was not hard to notice that the sole purpose was to increase the benefits for the owner of the business. CSR stands for Corporate Social responsibility; it is a trend which emerged in the recent past. According to CSR, it is a firm’s obligation to provide more than just a product or service to society. There are basically two schools of thoughts regarding CSR details of which gave two different theories about CSR: Stockholder Theory: According to the stockholder theory, all the efforts of a firm should be invested in order to maximize the wealth of its owner and sole purpose of a business is to increase profits. Stakeholder Theory: Stakeholder theory, in contrast to stakeholder theory, puts emphasis on other aspects also. Like the general public, environment and employees etc. The ideology behind this theory is that public, environment etc. give
Features Of VTiger Email Templates
November 24, 2016
Article
In recent marketing tends, emails emerged as one of the most strong marketing tools. From a simple business dealing in one commodity, to a multinational corporate giant that offers a diverse range of products, everyone is benefiting from emails. The reason behind vast usage of email as a marketing tool is its benefits; some of the prominent advantages include its cost effectiveness; you can reach a wide range of audience using it; distances do not matter while using emails etc. There are also some drawbacks of using email, like most of the people do not even bother to open the email and delete it. To tackle this problem marketing personnel should design an attractive subject for emails. One strategy in this regard is to design customized emails specifically for the recipient. If you get an email in which you are addressed with your name rather than just a typical respected
Specs Of VTiger’s Customer Portal
November 23, 2016
Article
If we look at the past customer service trends, the normal behavior of firms regarding customer service was to develop a separate department whose duty is to cater customer’s queries and complaints. But, with the developing business culture, we can witness a major shift in customer service practices. It is considered to be an attitude rather than a job formality. Customer Service is not a Department; It is an Attitude On the customer side buying behavior is also very complex nowadays. They consider a number of different aspects before making a purchase and customer service is one of them. Take a look at the telecom industry; Samsung and HTC two mobile manufacturing giants provide almost same features on their cell phones. But, while deciding which phone to buy, customers give good enough weight to their customer services. Same is the case if we compare Thai airways and Emirates, a big
VTiger 7 Currency Manager
November 22, 2016
Article
The most important development of the 21st century is globalization. This phenomenon made the world a global village and the constraints of its development did not remain restricted to social contact only, it also revolutionized the way people do business with each other. People started to embrace the power of the internet and started to incorporate it in their business dealings. They not only used it to communicate with other parties across the globe, but they also started to sell their products in more than one country, directly to the customer, without involving any third party. The term E-business is formulated on this basis it means conducting buying and selling of products using the internet. While expanding their business in other countries, people faced many serious problems and one of them is currency conversion. Imagine what could be more frustrating than losing a client only because he is willing to
4 Ways To Enhance Your Advertisement Strategy
November 21, 2016
Article
If people do not know about your product, how can you anticipate that they will buy from you? The answer to this question is an advertisement, it plays an integral role in business. The advertisement is crucial for both existing and new firms. For new firms, it creates awareness among the public, and for the existing businesses it is used to communicate how doing business with you is a better proposition as compared to your competitors. The current business era is very competitive and designing advertisement which just tell what is your product is not sufficient enough. Advertisements are becoming way more innovative as compared to the past, so creating an effective advertisement is one of the biggest challenge currently business firms are facing. Today I will tell you about some of the most basic yet effective factors incorporating which can enhance our advertisement campaigns quite significantly. Embrace the Power
VTiger’s Duplicate Check And Merge Tool
November 19, 2016
Article
Working in a traditional work environment, many of the tasks are reperformed every now and then. For example, you run a medical firm and two of your sales reps visit the same doctor at varying times, marketing for the same product and even the offer they are putting in front of that doctor is the same. Will you support such activities or discourage them? Obviously, you will go against it. Because in doing so much of your resources are wasted without any significant gain. Instead, if your sales reps had visited two different doctors then it would be more beneficial for the firm. In routine life, we don’t even keep two copies of the same song in our iPod because we assess it as wastage of storage. Keeping identical records is also a problem and can cause a number of glitches. Data Duplication in CRM CRM performs a huge range
VTiger & Xero Integration: A Strong Foundation For A Company’s Accounts
November 18, 2016
Article
Financials and accounts are the backbone of a business, its importance can be determined from the fact that every business needs accounts reporting and check n balance. Well-kept financials can help a business firm in a number of ways. For example, managing the cash flows of the firm, from where they are earning and the points where they are spending. Forecast about how any units you will sell in the future is determined by evaluating the revenue and sales of past years. The story does not end here; accounts can also be used to manage internal affairs of a firm. For example, using an accounting software to estimate how much tax your firm will pay this year, or what percentage of the total amount will be paid as direct and indirect tax Calibrating wages, or the distribution of bonuses can also be done using such softwares. Accounting and CRM To
VTiger 7’s Workflow: An Introduction
November 16, 2016
Article
The competition among the business firms is very intense, because of this very reason, firms do not let go of any opportunity that can benefit their business no matter how small that change is. The gap between market leaders and tier 1 business corporation is not so vast, they are alike in regard to human resource, marketing budget, partnerships etc. The things which differentiate market leaders from the rest of the firms are tiny tweaks that they brought into their operations and because of those small improvements they enjoy competitive edge. One of such tweak is automating the process and creating workflow is one of the finest examples related to this ideology. Why spend your human resource on a task which your computer can perform? Why don’t you use that human resource in doing something more constructive for the business? I think all of us know the answer to these
How To Boost Your Sales Using Marketing Triggers
November 16, 2016
Article
There are some marketing triggers which can sell your products more and make people purchase your products and services. Customers are more excited to buy products because of their emotions trigger. It should be cleared in your mind that people buy what they want not what they need. Needs are determined by reasoning and wants by emotions. Everyone has the similar mental triggers and needs that force to take action. Customers’ decision consists of various conscious and unconscious emotions. Deep understanding of human psychology and behavior is a key to the success of your business. If marketers recognize these emotional triggers, they can create more effective marketing campaigns, messages and tag line for maximizing their sales. Psychological and emotional triggers are given below to increase your sales. These are: Belonging Belongingness is a strong human desire to attach with someone or thing, like, a group, a gang, a clan, a
VTiger 7’s Mailroom: A Leap Forward
November 15, 2016
Article
There are a few things which are an essential part of your firm, no matter on what scale you are carrying out your business related operations, one of them is electronic mails. The benefits of emails are very convincing like it is a low-cost method of communication, it is used to keep a permanent record, it is used to target a wide range of people and locations does not matter when you are using emails. Moreover, it is an important tool which is used in formal communication. From announcing your new product arrivals to sending a notice to your client to renew his subscription regarding your services, all is done through e-mails. VTiger 7 Providing Solutions to your Email Related Problems VTiger 7 CRM understands the extent to which the emails are important for your business. Therefore, it offers a huge range of cool and highly effective features regarding the
Role of Team Optimization in Business
November 15, 2016
Article
Optimization is a process to find out suitable alternates which are cost effective and achieve the highest reachable performance under the specified constraints by maximizing desired features and minimizing the undesired ones. Many optimization plans observe their first success as small talented teams doing it well. It is the best approach to start the journey of optimization. In the long run, whether teams are small or large, they come to the point where they lack resources to run the complicated campaigns and experiments of the growing organization. Every team is different and can be faced different kind of gaps but often the problem is related to technical blockage. If your team is facing this kind of problems,it’s time to think about the future of your business plans and the structure of your team. To keep arising, your plans must be accurate in skills set. The best teams of optimization have
Application Of DocuSign’s Integration With VTiger
November 14, 2016
Article
Emerging business trends involve a lot of travel, in fact, there are jobs which specifically require working from the remote areas. So much hassle can cause a lot of problems which can lead to different kinds of further hurdles. Those problems range from poor customer service to forgetting some important paper on your desk while you are at a remote place. For example, a sales rep made a visit to a potential client at another city and recorded all of his credentials, but when he reached his office and started to brief his superiors about the new client, he noticed that his client missed one signature out of six on the contract that was made between the firm and the customer. Well, should he go back to his client and get the signature? Or he should ask his customer to e-sign the softcopy of the papers? Obviously later is the