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How to Avoid a Storm in Your Cloud Installation

CLICKEXPRES S

Finding the right match for growth and success is a daunting task that takes time and patience. To give you a head start, we have analyzed and categorized the needs of the service industry and come up with three main cloud types...

Clouds come in all different shapes and sizes and so do service businesses

Sales & Service Integrated Cloud Solutions

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Just follow the tips for each type of cloud to avoid a future storm.

Whether you are a large enterprise, a small or medium business, or a sales & service industry, service in the cloud offers benefits that will help your business grow.

Enterprise Cloud Solutions Small & Medium Business

Cloud Solutions

Service in the CloudWhich type of cloud is right for you?

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To ensure optimal performance, your vendor must be equipped to monitor activity 24/7, find a baseline for performance, and use Dynamic Load Balancing to adjust the number of servers. You should get optimal response every time, every day, and every second of your cloud use.

If your organization is servicing twice as many customers in the afternoon, for example, your resources are running at maximum capacity. During these peak sessions, you are not receiving the optimal performance level. Automatically adding and subtracting servers according to your needs—known as “scalable service” or “Dynamic Load Balancing”—should happen without hesitation and without you having to lift a finger.

Avoid a Storm by...

Getting Reliable Scalable Service The ideal cloud implementation provides scalability that automatically responds to your needs.

ClickSoftware provides your business with optimal performance at any time >>

Many cloud services are based on your peak times or your maximum load. So you end up paying for a full load, even when you are not working at full capacity. Search for a cloud solution that lets you pay a flat fee per resource for your service so the price always stays the same.

This price should include everything you need from your cloud solution, both hardware and software, and should not fluctuate according to use. Budgeting your cost of service and planning for growth is easy when you have a flat fee for your cloud services.

Avoid a Storm by...

Paying Only for What You UseWhen looking for a cloud service, make sure you pay only for what you use.

Pay-as-you-go strategy from ClickSoftware allows adjustments at any phase >>

This is where cloud implementation can really show its strength. When you implement a cloud solution with a stateless server, there is only one database for hundreds of servers. Every time something happens in one server, it commits the information to that one database.

Since nothing is held in memory on any given server, every transaction gets the most updated information. As you compare expansion options, consider the advantages of stateless servers when it comes to upgrades. With seamless sharing among all servers, you only need to upgrade your solution in the central database—all servers will automatically receive the latest versions.

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Sharing Seamlessly Across Workforces

As your company grows, it becomes harder and harder to share information between workforces.

Get free technical upgrades in a stateless server cloud environment with ClickSoftware >>

Small and medium businesses are constantly challenged to innovate in order to succeed. The cloud is the ideal place to look for innovative Software as a Service (SaaS) implementations.

Small & Medium Businesses on the Cloud

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But if you don’t plan properly, a storm can brew with high costs and lost productivity. Follow the tips below to get your business up and running efficiently.

SaaS is like the fast-food offering for software—simply log in and away you go. No IT hassles, no IT headaches.

IT

Getting a Cloud-to-Cloud and Cloud-to-On-Premise Solution

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You never know what kind of back-end systems your business will require in the future, and your Service-in-the-Cloud must integrate with your choices. Check out all the options, including Cloud-to-Cloud implementations as well as Cloud-to-On-Premise options. For instance, if you implement a CRM system for your customer information, your service solution should work together with this system.

By choosing a SaaS solution with multiple integration APIs, your service solution on the cloud will have full integration to your on-site CRM when you need it. If your CRM system is already in the cloud—such as salesforce.com—you can choose a cloud solution for a worry-free full-service implementation.

Ledcor rolls out service in 12 days with ClickSoftware cloud solution >>

When choosing a SaaS solution, make sure that the integration possibilities are endless.

For companies that want to expand their Sales & Service capabilities, a fully unified service solution on the cloud is the best choice. The right solution should be easy, simple and smart to use.

Sales & Service Integration on the Cloud

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Challenges will include greater consolidation of the systems that support the business, magnified by the need to go to different vendors to support best of breed solutions for sales, customer support, mobility, and service delivery.

It should give the entire organization—from sales to call centers to field employees —a new edge to their service business.

Selecting a Fully Unified SolutionAvoid a Storm by...

These apps are usually simple to use, but if they are not fully unified with your existing sales platform, then you are in for a big surprise. A fully integrated system will save all this trouble and put you in the efficient mode right from the start. Make sure that the User Interface is fully integrated, or joined, with the platform you are using now. Check the workflows, and make sure the terminology matches what you are using today.

Simple actions should use the same language, and should follow the same style. By choosing a system that is fully unified with your existing sales platform, you can instantly use the functionality as intended—without sacrificing performance and productivity—as the team will adapt it easily and completely.

Today’s sales & service platforms are moving towards an application model, or apps, which can quickly improve performance and make business more efficient.

ClickSoftware has a fully integrated workforce management solution for salesforce.com >>

Getting Mobility That NetworksAvoid a Storm by...

Look for a mobility solution that connects your field workers, call center agents, and sales managers—and provides the option to add smart mobile apps to expand performance. Networking functionality can come in the form of real-time messaging from a call center agent telling a field engineer about the next customer. A field engineer can notify a sales rep about an upsell opportunity, and a sales manager can contact a team member or retrieve a report while between meetings.

Add more mobile apps to create even more networking functionality, such as finding co-workers in the area, locating spare parts, and requesting time off or sick leave. The possibilities of networking and collaboration will continue to grow as enterprise mobile apps are fast becoming the easy and affordable way to expand the mobile environment.

Networking and collaboration are essential for today’s service industry, and mobility acts as the conductor of these two elements.

Get enterprise mobile apps for networking from the ClickAppStore >>

Available via the cloud or on-premise, our solutions provide organizations with end-to-end visibility and control over the entire service process, while providing them with tools to drive their business forward by optimizing forecasting, planning, scheduling, mobile workforce management, and customer communication.

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ClickSoftware solutions boost productivity and increase customer satisfaction, while decreasing overall service costs. That’s why ClickSoftware is the number one choice to deliver superb business performance to organizations of all sizes, in all service sectors.

About ClickSoftwareClickSoftware is a global leader of automated workforce management and optimization solutions for the service enterprise.

CLICKEXPRES S

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Publication NoticeThe information contained herein does not constitute a warranty of any kind. ClickSoftware Technologies Ltd. reserves the right to revise this publication and make changes without notification. ClickSoftware Technologies Ltd. assumes no liability for losses incurred as a result of information contained herein.

Copyright © 2013 ClickSoftware Technologies Ltd. All rights reserved.No part of this publication may be copied without the express written permission of: ClickSoftware Technologies Ltd.