July 2, 2014 at 17:18E-mail Values for SMEs
For several decades, e-mail has remained the main tool of business communications. The killer application has not yet been invented to motivate businesses to abandon the usual implementation of communications or switch to full-fledged communication in instant messengers, corporate social networks, and video conferences. Another factor of mail stability - it holds its position in unified communications solutions - remains the ID for all systems of this class, and indeed the ID for any more or less demanded solution, although I recently discovered a startup that can change the paradigms of user registration in applications and sites - loginbycall.comand perhaps we will see a revolution in the mechanics of authorization. What is the value of email solutions? Why does it take so long to play a key role in business communications? What functionality makes Email useful for business and why?
As we communicate in an understandable diagram,
I have identified three values of Business.Mail, which lie in the plane of "implementation-benefit."
The implementation of communication, but with one “but” - today the emphasis is on the mobility of employees. For example, I can not imagine my life without business communication by mail from a smartphone or tablet. For businesses, the use of mobile email solutions is an advantage in terms of cost and effectiveness. This advantage is realized through the use of mobile devices with pre-installed zero-cost email clients that simply integrate with company email systems. The second noticeable component of the changes in the direction of employee mobility is the start of SaaS solutions by companies.
If we talk about alternative attempts by developers to implement external communications, for example, by providing task manager interfaces (access to your personal account) or other services to company customers, this strategy does not work yet - the business has to pay extra for additional “client” licenses, and how consequence, we see a rise in price of decisions.
Using the capabilities of the Global Address Book. When organic growth occurs in a company, the Global Address Book becomes the first tool in which it does not depersonalize the company, but helps to consolidate information about colleagues, partners and customers in one place. Key features of the Global address book of most corporate email applications:
- Easy access to the addresses of all employees - Global
- Personal address list - Personal
- Public list of third-party contacts, for example, customers or partners - Shared
In essence, Business Mail gives small companies the opportunity to take the first step in data structuring, when before implementing CRM, a corporate portal or social. the network is still far away. Communicating by mail, an employee always has at hand contacts synchronized with a smartphone and company work contacts.
The first steps in organizing collaboration through Calendars . The value of this functionality is expressed in the fact that starting to use a fairly simple automation tool, the head of the company gets the opportunity to structure the work of employees through event planning - meetings, meetings, tasks. Most email solutions have a Calendar with the following functionality:
- General calendars
- Schedule meetings and events with colleagues
- Personal calendars
- Alerts
- Export calendars to iCal (send events outside your network, for example, send a calendar or an event by mail to a partner).
The functionalities speak for themselves and form teamwork skills in a small business company, and structure them in medium-sized companies. The ability to use all formulated values in work is implemented in our Quickme service through: functionality, SLA and partnership with leading cloud providers .
What do developers think about the implementation of communications in their business solutions - do I need to combine everything around email? - I asked this question to the expert of the CEO of the Dental-Cloud service, Yaroslav Osetrov.
- Yaroslav, do you create a SaaS service for the automation of dental clinics and do you plan to add specialist-client communication functionality to the service and what will it be?
- If we talk about the healthcare industry, using electronic communications the doctor can constantly keep in touch with the patient, quickly answer questions, monitor the progress of patient treatment, and possibly conduct a patient online, instead of visiting the clinic.
E-mail is an attractive way of communication for both doctors and patients, and the demand for such a service will undoubtedly increase every year. However, do not forget that many details and non-verbal signals are lost when communicating by mail and, as a result, confusion may arise between the doctor and the patient.
An important problem is the confidentiality of patient data. If messages are not encrypted, then patients should be aware that messages could potentially be read by someone else. Only certain questions should be considered by e-mail, for example, such as making an appointment, writing out recipes, that is, those that do not require enough time to answer. It is also worth noting that all patient emails are an important part of medical records.
Today, the market has enough mail solutions and everyone remembers last year's launch of Mail for Business from Mail.ru. - This suggests that the segment of mail solutions will remain the basic one for organizing external communications for employees of companies of all industries for a long time. Will the mail systems develop further? Yes, because 2000 people are working on the creation of Google Mail. At the same time, mail is transformed into UC and interesting bundles, but its essence will not change much from this.
Alexey Kalachnikov / Quickme / Series of articles about SaaS
Author's blog http://www.bootstrap24.ru/
Materials of the series "How to create and make money on SaaS"
As we communicate in an understandable diagram,
I have identified three values of Business.Mail, which lie in the plane of "implementation-benefit."
Value # 1
The implementation of communication, but with one “but” - today the emphasis is on the mobility of employees. For example, I can not imagine my life without business communication by mail from a smartphone or tablet. For businesses, the use of mobile email solutions is an advantage in terms of cost and effectiveness. This advantage is realized through the use of mobile devices with pre-installed zero-cost email clients that simply integrate with company email systems. The second noticeable component of the changes in the direction of employee mobility is the start of SaaS solutions by companies.
If we talk about alternative attempts by developers to implement external communications, for example, by providing task manager interfaces (access to your personal account) or other services to company customers, this strategy does not work yet - the business has to pay extra for additional “client” licenses, and how consequence, we see a rise in price of decisions.
Value # 2
Using the capabilities of the Global Address Book. When organic growth occurs in a company, the Global Address Book becomes the first tool in which it does not depersonalize the company, but helps to consolidate information about colleagues, partners and customers in one place. Key features of the Global address book of most corporate email applications:
- Easy access to the addresses of all employees - Global
- Personal address list - Personal
- Public list of third-party contacts, for example, customers or partners - Shared
In essence, Business Mail gives small companies the opportunity to take the first step in data structuring, when before implementing CRM, a corporate portal or social. the network is still far away. Communicating by mail, an employee always has at hand contacts synchronized with a smartphone and company work contacts.
Value # 3
The first steps in organizing collaboration through Calendars . The value of this functionality is expressed in the fact that starting to use a fairly simple automation tool, the head of the company gets the opportunity to structure the work of employees through event planning - meetings, meetings, tasks. Most email solutions have a Calendar with the following functionality:
- General calendars
- Schedule meetings and events with colleagues
- Personal calendars
- Alerts
- Export calendars to iCal (send events outside your network, for example, send a calendar or an event by mail to a partner).
The functionalities speak for themselves and form teamwork skills in a small business company, and structure them in medium-sized companies. The ability to use all formulated values in work is implemented in our Quickme service through: functionality, SLA and partnership with leading cloud providers .
Expert opinion
What do developers think about the implementation of communications in their business solutions - do I need to combine everything around email? - I asked this question to the expert of the CEO of the Dental-Cloud service, Yaroslav Osetrov.
- Yaroslav, do you create a SaaS service for the automation of dental clinics and do you plan to add specialist-client communication functionality to the service and what will it be?
- If we talk about the healthcare industry, using electronic communications the doctor can constantly keep in touch with the patient, quickly answer questions, monitor the progress of patient treatment, and possibly conduct a patient online, instead of visiting the clinic.
E-mail is an attractive way of communication for both doctors and patients, and the demand for such a service will undoubtedly increase every year. However, do not forget that many details and non-verbal signals are lost when communicating by mail and, as a result, confusion may arise between the doctor and the patient.
An important problem is the confidentiality of patient data. If messages are not encrypted, then patients should be aware that messages could potentially be read by someone else. Only certain questions should be considered by e-mail, for example, such as making an appointment, writing out recipes, that is, those that do not require enough time to answer. It is also worth noting that all patient emails are an important part of medical records.
What will happen next
Today, the market has enough mail solutions and everyone remembers last year's launch of Mail for Business from Mail.ru. - This suggests that the segment of mail solutions will remain the basic one for organizing external communications for employees of companies of all industries for a long time. Will the mail systems develop further? Yes, because 2000 people are working on the creation of Google Mail. At the same time, mail is transformed into UC and interesting bundles, but its essence will not change much from this.
Alexey Kalachnikov / Quickme / Series of articles about SaaS
Author's blog http://www.bootstrap24.ru/
Materials of the series "How to create and make money on SaaS"
- Part I / remove all unnecessary, hit the target, experiment
- Part 2 / invaluable experience of Russian ISV
- Part 3 / sales through an affiliate channel that may not be needed
- Part 4 / Quickme startup - communications and collaboration of small teams
- Part 5 / ubiquitous SaaS integration as a cute threat to the rest of the software business or how 1 + 1 turns into 3
- Part 6 / Quickme story for partners or 7 reasons to do business together
- Part 7 prefinal / why SaaS is not for sale?
- Part 8 - FINISH / SaaS - the realities of the Russian market
- Accidentally Forgotten Part 9 / SaaS Legal Mist
- Part 10 / Business Model Metrics
- Part 11 / Cloud Services Reviews / UX and Usability Testing