While many businesses are still struggling to open because of the COVID-19 pandemic, others are now at the stage where they are starting to look at new ways to save money, improve their digital marketing efforts, and get the company back on its feet.
Many find that a straightforward way to get a head start is to consolidate the various software that powers their business. By choosing one software suite that performs all the tasks of separate services, you can lower costs and make it easier to manage.
Cloud Services and SaaS Platforms Can Overlap
Today’s modern businesses utilize Software as a Service (SaaS) or cloud service platforms to help market and operate effectively. For example, many businesses deployed new systems to automate their digital marketing and customer interactions during the pandemic. While these systems are valuable, some overlap in features that increase costs to the business and decrease the likelihood of being used most efficiently to realize the ROI.
For example, a venue can implement GoZone WiFi’s Marketing4WiFi platform to provide a captive portal on their guest WiFi network. This captive portal element is a potent addition to the business since it automatically builds a list of customers who visit the venue. The business then takes that list and imports it into a secondary marketing system. However, since the Marketing4WiFi platform already has automated marketing and CRM features, the added cost of the secondary e-marketing system and the time involved to manage both systems are wasteful.
Consolidating Platforms and Services
Many businesses tend to accumulate multiple SaaS contracts over time. Consolidating those services can often lead to better workload management and lower costs for the business.
From our previous example, GoZone WiFi has customers that use its system to collect guest data, e-mail addresses, mobile numbers, and more. One might take that data, export it, and link it to a third-party system that sends out emails.
Businesses partaking in such practices are making three distinct mistakes:
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- First, increasing the complexity of managing their third-party systems.
- Paying more for numerous subscriptions, they don’t need.
- Increasing the likelihood of information mishaps.
These problems are easily solved by consolidating cloud platforms and services.
Every business that utilizes a cloud platform or SaaS contract should evaluate all the offerings those companies provide and then compare them against the needs of the business. Performing an audit will often reveal that the platforms can provide more for the business than originally planned. This will allow the company to avoid overlapping services to save money, making it easier for workers to manage the subscriptions and learn to integrate the platforms to gain the most effect.
As COVID lock-downs happened, brick-and-mortar businesses quickly realized that building and maintaining a list of their customers was critical. Post-COVID, businesses have changed how they communicate with their customers and the way customers interact with businesses.
Contact a GoZone partner or us today to find out how our platforms can help your business.
