Business owners who acquire equipment for their business: machinery, computers, and some out-of-the-box software, usually prefer to deduct the cost in a single tax year, rather than a little at a time over a number of years. This deduction is known by its section in the tax code, a Section 179 deduction.

Under Section 179, businesses that spend less than $800,000 a year on qualified equipment may write-off up to $250,000 in 2009. The rules are designed for small companies, so the $250,000 deduction phases out when a business purchases more than $800,000 in one year. (Companies cannot write off more than their taxable income).

A business can save up to $26,000 on a $75,000 software or equipment purchase if it’s done before December 31, 2009 and it meets certain eligibility requirements. So not only would you save money through a tax credit, you would also reap business cost savings from new software that will improve your business performance! That’s an end-of-year savings worth considering.

For more information about Section 179, you should talk to your CPA or accounting advisor.

Sage CRM is not just about tracking leads and closing sales. To be sure, that’s a big part of its value. But CRM is more than just a pipeline and order management tool. There are a host of other functions that make it an outstanding catalyst for growth:

Ø     customer relation management

Ø     email marketing campaigns

Ø     technical knowledge-base for employees

Ø     and lot more.

One feature that’s particularly effective at helping a company is the Web Self-Service module from Sage CRM, the developer of the SageCRM product line. This module acts as an online portal in SageCRM where a company allows its customers to request work, view order status, make payments, check on project developments and much more.

A customer of Mindover Software, Andrews Anchors, an oilfield services’ company based in West Texas, recently learned the benefit of having the SageCRM online portal. After a successful implementation of SageCRM, Andrews Anchors was selected by a large oilfield production company to inspect the quality of the anchors at over 800 oil rigs, which is an OSHA required inspection. Andrews found out that it won the new account over a competitor in part because of the CRM online portal it developed with the help of Mindover Software.

What does this brief story illustrate? One thing that comes to mind is that a company that invests in the right technology will have a measurable advantage over the competition. It’s not enough to invest in technology alone, however. Technology must help a company do something better than, or at least as well as, the competition. In the case of Andrews Anchors, the Web Self-Service module from Sage CRM gave their customer what they wanted: ease of doing business, speed and real-time reporting.

Another take-away from this story is how you can actually use technology to grow a business while at the same time reducing transaction costs. That’s not an easy task to accomplish, to be sure. Web Self Service for SageCRM may be one of the few technologies that can make it happen. Imagine providing your customers a way to submit new order requests, make payments online and view order status, all without picking up the phone or sending an email. It would certainly make their lives easier, wouldn’t it? Equally as important, though, it would save you time normally spent searching for answers and then following up by phone or in an email. Time and productivity killers for office staff and / or customer service representatives!

One tenet of business is that customers always like convenience. The more convenience you provide, the more customers want to use you. Some customers will make friendly referrals to friends or contacts who frequently complain about poor customer service elsewhere. The net result? More sales!

So you see, it is possible to grow your business while lowering costs at the same time. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to achieve great results when using the online portal available in SageCRM. You can be a rocket scientist, and have customers that buy rocket parts but make doing business with you so painful they abandon you for the competition. The key is to make it as easy as possible to buy from your company so they keep coming back for more. Making smart investments will accomplish that goal, and one of the smartest CRM investments I’ve seen in a long time is the Web Self Service module for SageCRM.

We all expect an eCommerce solution to have certain basics – a webstore, payment processing, integration with the ERP system and automated order taker. But it is also a representation of the business on the web. A showcase for the world to see. A valuable marketing tool.

North49 Webtelligence now incorporates functionality to assist the business in marketing and sales efforts. Not only does it have full Google Analytics (old and new) integration to monitor activity on the site, it also allows the business to set up campaigns and promotions to monitor marketing results.

Let’s assume you would like to monitor the effectiveness of a certain radio ad campaign vs a similar campaign in a local news print. We have all heard or seen the ads with some special offer – “just enter promo code 123″ and you will receive a free widget/free shipping/amazing discount. The radio ad mentions promo code “123″ and the print ad asks you to enter code “ABC”.

Webtelligence web store treats this as a campaign with two promotions. It will track and record the promotion codes entered and feed this back to your ERP system with each order placed (in optional fields). A simple report in the Order Entry module will now tell you not only the volume of orders generated by each ad but also the total value and average value per order. In other words – marketing value per dollar spent. That’s the Holy Grail of marketing analytics!

For a link to Webtelligence, please click the link below:
www.north49.com/webtelligence

If you would like to see how Webtelligence could work for your company, please call Mindover Software at 512-990-3994.