How A Customer Portal Can Help Your Sage Software Implementation Grow Your Business

How A Customer Portal Can Help Your Sage Software Implementation Grow Your Business

If you don’t have a self-service, or customer portal, for your site, you are missing out on many growth opportunities. Technology has finally caught up to the many needs and demands of customers. Use it to your advantage.

Whether you are already a Sage user or considering the change, Sage software and customer portals go hand in hand. Together they can open new paths of communication with your customers and gather more data than previously imagined possible.

Choose A Customer Self-Service Option for Your Customers

Would you be surprised to learn that about 88% of internet users expect a company to have a self-service portal? Customer portals are changing from being a luxury to a general necessity.  On top of that, they have demands with their customer portals. From the same study, 44% of US participants said there was not enough information available through portals, while 13% said there was too much.

The issue to address here is that you have to choose which self-service portal options are best for your customers. Many companies are choosing something highly customizable to balance access to the user’s data with company resource material.

You can even offer a customer portal if you’re not an online retailer. Brick-and-mortar based companies are utilizing online databases, customer portals and Sage to boost communication and confidence with their customers.

Connected Customers Portals “Speak” Sage

When you look at portals, the primary concern isn’t design. It’s connectivity. You need a customer portal that will speak with Sage constantly. Many tools such as E-Link will connect a portal with Sage’s information.

For your customers, that means that they can see their order history. They could also see your current inventory when placing an order online. For your staff, it means that they can see all of the customer’s activity such as the last few times they requested help online or called in for support.

Are you completely new to Sage? Learn how to avoid 7 fatal mistakes when implementing Sage software.

Allows Customers to Pay Online

If you’re new to eCommerce, you might be surprised at how difficult it can be to set up a secure payment system on your website. With Sage software, you have many easily compatible tools available.

Many companies use Sage software with the E-Link Customer Portal and then utilize Sage Magento for eCommerce. These three aspects function together seamlessly to allow your customers to make secure payments online that you and your customer can easily track after the order.

Eliminate Unwanted Human Contact

Recent research showed that 86% of customers would pay more for a quality customer experience. The expectation of customer experience has changed in recent years. People don’t want salespeople jumping out at them and asking if they’ve found everything.

Customers want efficiency and readily available resources. So, while your customers don’t want a customer service person around all the time, they do want someone or a wealth of information, available.

Eliminate the unwanted human contact by letting your customer lead you through their ideal customer experience. Make it easy to contact a service rep, but make it easier to find the solution to their problem without help.

Increase Internal Efficiency

Sage software on its own can substantially help you internal working. When you pair Sage software implementation with a customer portal, you’re trimming down a lot of unnecessary work.

You can use Sage to map data, identify decision impacting information, and more. Sage does this on its own, but there is a point where all of your user’s data must go into Sage.

If you haven’t implemented Sage software with your customer portal, you’re still wasting time and resources when it comes to communicating with your customers and gathering data.

Get More from Sage’s Accounting System

One of the best tools from Sage 100, Sage 300 and even their larger scale solutions, is the accounting system. In-Synch, a tool within Sage, helps pair information between the Sage database and your customer.

For the accounting system that means no more exporting extensive reports or sifting through mountains of data. The numbers you want including inventory, accounts receivable, order tracking, and even issues like refunds are readily available.

With Sage’s customizable nature, you can cater your customer portal to fit the needs of your customer, as well as your accounting department.

Integrated Portals and ERP Systems Bring Big Benefits

Enterprise Resource Planning systems have changed how businesses operate, making them leaner, and enabling them to focus on more human elements. When working with an ERP though, it’s critical that you get everything out of the system.

When you integrate a customer portal with any ERP, including Sage, you should see significant advancements in all of these areas.

• Customers and support staff should be able to see all of that user’s order history and their customer information.

• Pair your customers with the staff member they need quickly. Additionally, use Sage to implement an online knowledge base where your customers can learn more or find answers without human contact if they want to.

• B2B companies see immediate boosts when customers can place their orders on repeat.

• B2C companies see a boost in repeat sales as they have more direct contact with their customers.

• Direct access to customers through a company portal allows you to ease the process of up-selling, or cross-selling, boosting marketing ROIs.

Learn More About Your Customers

You can quickly learn more about your customers with the use of a customer portal. Where you might have struggled years ago to determine what your customer’s wanted to see next, now you can ask.

Customer portals initially started as a way to enable online ordering and tracking. Now, they are the basis for online communities and communication. Although Sage will capture a wealth of information for you, you can learn more about your customers from a few other insight opportunities as well.

Offer direct feedback through surveys that sit right inside the customer’s portal. If you have problems with email open-rates, cut out the middle man. Asking for input and gaining indirect feedback are two of the perks of using a customer portal.

Then there is the benefit of having an informed market segment on hand. Identify where your best customers live and how their lifestyle might play into them choosing your company over a competitor.

Segmentation is the best way to attract your ideal customers. With Sage software implementation you can breakdown the available information to customer’s needs. For example, if a segment of your customers always wait for sales, make sure they receive notice ahead of time, before a sale launches.

Long Term Growth in Many Forms

From cutting costs like excess customer service staff to improving your marketing ROIs with direct contact, your business can see substantial growth. A customer portal provides a level of communication with your customers that can’t be beaten.

Use a customer portal with Sage software implementation to get everything out of both tools. Take advantage of Sage’s advanced data management and functionality as an ERP. While also garnering in on a customer portal’s benefits of streamlining.

Ready to start your Sage software implementation today? Contact CertiPro, a Sage partner offering eCommerce and business solutions, including a Magento integration and E-Link.

Do you want to understand a bit more about Web Portals and eCommerce before you jump into integrating Sage software with a customer portal of your own? Learn more about web portals and eCommerce here!