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8 Tools and Strategies to Automate Your E-commerce Business & Grow Faster

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Archives, Global Logistics, Global Trade Daily, Software

8 Tools and Strategies to Automate Your E-commerce Business & Grow Faster

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The automation of e-commerce businesses has become much easier and more efficient in recent years. More and more online retailers are choosing to automate their activities and workflows and for a good reason. Automation can positively affect multiple areas of your business, including marketing, sales, customer service, order fulfillment, inventory management, accounting, and much more. Let’s see how this works in more detail.

Why Automation is Key for Ecommerce

There are many substantial benefits that different automation software can bring to your online shop. Here are some of the most important effects of a well-executed automation strategy:

-Speeding up all kinds of processes and streamlining workflows in the company.

-Saving time: your marketing, sales, IT, customer service, and operations department will be rescued from performing a number of tiresome, repetitive tasks on a daily basis, which will give them time to focus on strategic and creative aspects of their work.

-By saving time, it cuts your expenses, so it saves you money, too.

-Increasing conversions by improving customer experience and optimizing the sales process.

-Minimizing the potential for all sorts of human errors.

-Collecting, storing, and interpreting loads of customer data and putting them into action. These data can be vital for gaining a slight but crucial edge over your competitors.

All in all, automation can improve the way your company works on many levels. In this article, we’ll deal with some specific areas of your business you should look to automate. We’ll explain how to make the best use of automation tools in these areas and take a brief look at some of the concrete tools you can utilize for this purpose.   

Email Marketing Automation

To this day, email marketing remains the most cost-effective digital marketing strategy. Different automatic emails can generate a lot of revenue if they’re being sent to the right people at the right time.

For instance, the cost of automatic welcome emails is next to nothing, yet these can significantly affect your bottom line. On average, welcome emails bring five times more sales than regular bulk emails.

Of course, welcome emails aren’t really enough. You’ll have to be more specific and carefully set triggers that will prompt the software to send different follow-up emails. Take cart abandonment, for example – as much as 70% of all online carts end up abandoned for various reasons. And it turns out that a brief reminder about the abandoned cart can be that little nudge in the right direction that a shopper needed. If you automatically send them emails as soon as they give up on purchasing a product, these will generate 36 times more sales than ordinary bulk mails – especially if you offer discounts or other incentives.

In general, emails can open up a whole world of upselling and cross-selling opportunities with consumers that have already shown interest in some products. Sending follow-up messages with related products can boost your sales substantially. Here it’s important to send the right offers to the right people, which basically comes down to accurate customer data and smart segmentation. You need to set the parameters and triggers right, and the automation software will do the rest.

A great tool to consider for this purpose is Klaviyo. It offers fast integrations with a huge number of e-commerce platforms, which will save you tons of time, as everything can be controlled from a single dashboard. Klaviyo also provides great segmentation and personalization features, including dynamic data blocks that will ensure that different sections of an email are shown to different carefully targeted groups. More than 30 thousand users who choose Klaviyo may be a good indication that it’s a very useful tool to automate your email marketing efforts.  

Inventory Management Automation

Not having the right amount of control over your inventory can hurt your business in many ways. In an era where UX and CX are only getting more important, making a customer wait for an additional week or two because you don’t have the product in stock is anything short of a disaster. To put it in numbers, 24% of all shoppers reported having canceled their order because of slow delivery, while 38% of them said they’d never buy from a retailer again after a negative delivery experience.

Updating info about your inventory manually may be possible for some very small businesses. But in e-commerce, every business can become an overnight success, and every business needs to be scalable. Manual updates are not a scalable solution.

That’s why some sort of inventory management automation software is becoming a must for most companies. The right automation tools will ensure you continuously have a detailed real-time overview of your stock. This approach is much more efficient than periodical updating, as selling online is an unpredictable endeavor, and you don’t want to leave anything to chance. The software can monitor your inventory and automatically order products you need more of, unpublish out-of-stock products and even pause advertising for these products until you replenish your supply.

A great inventory management tool you can use is InFlow. It can help you organize your products with the help of lists, categories, photos, and serial numbers. It helps you stay on top of your costs, it helps you track your stock, and it can also take a lot of the stress out of reordering items. You can easily monitor everything from a handy dashboard. 

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the tool’s features. Best of all, InFlow integrates with plenty of the most popular e-commerce platforms (Shopify and Amazon included), as well as Zapier and QuickBooks, so you’ll have no trouble making the absolute most of it. 

Workflow Automation 

A lot of the work we do is done haphazardly and without that element of forethought that can make it productive, effective, and efficient. As humans, we’re certainly not always capable of giving 100% (and neither should we be). But sometimes, all it takes is a tool to help us make the most of the time and resources we have at our disposal.

With a clever workflow automation tool, you can build a smart workplace that will enable your team to communicate better and stay on top of all of their tasks. A smart workplace will ensure team members can tell at a glance who is doing what at any given time, what the priorities are, and when there is time to relax a bit. 

It will also offer plenty of flexibility: you can still choose to tackle tasks in any order, but you do have a reliable and up-to-date set of data to base your decisions on.

A good example of such a tool is Asana. While there are certainly more trending workflow management tools out there, Asana has been around for quite some time and it has perfected its solution. Asana allows you to design your own processes and create boards that help you stay on top of tasks. You can manage projects and teams with it, and there is a calendar you can use integrated with the tool. Plus, it works for any team: marketing, sales, IT, and so on.

Smart Calendar Tool

Smart calendars can be used for much more than just reminding us of birthdays and dentist appointments. A truly advanced calendar app can help you organize your team, arrange meetings, increase your productivity, and eliminate noise in communication.

This kind of scheduling tool is useful for any business, not just online-based ones. When designed well, they can save you a lot of time and instantly provide you with info relevant for your meeting or appointment. These can include a social media profile of a person you’re meeting or the weather forecast for the day and place you’ve set.

It’s best to show the benefits of such a tool as an example. Take Woven, for instance. Apart from standard functionalities you would expect from any calendar app, it offers conveniences such as smart templates for different meeting types, group polls, and availability sharing that speeds up the process of arranging a meeting immensely. Instead of losing time on endless group chats, everyone involved can simply mark their free and busy hours with just a few taps. This sort of tool can relieve you of a lot of frustration and time-wasting.

Live Chat Tool 

The introduction of modern technology into the field of customer service has resulted in consumers asking more from brands in this respect. Instant responses and constant availability are big priorities for shoppers. As much as 90% of consumers have labeled an immediate response to their customer support issue as “important” or “very important.”  

Users also expect you to be available via all possible channels. If they have a question about a product on your website that they’d like to buy, they may not be in the mood to search for your brand on social media in order to DM you. Additional few clicks or taps can make all the difference in the world here. That’s why you should think about a live chat automation feature on your website.

Now, very few chatbots today can engage in a truly complex conversation and solve complicated issues, as they still have trouble with properly processing natural language. Still, they can be very useful for answering basic questions and routing the right customer service rep into the conversation once things get too tricky for them. This tactic reduces costs, employs a “worker” that will be available around the clock, increases the average order value, and can boost your conversions by up to 20%.

Drift is the world’s leading conversational marketing platform with some very useful advanced live chat features. For instance, you have multiple inboxes at your disposal to manage different types of conversations, and you can save replies to common questions.  A great thing about Drift is that you can see who’s browsing your website even before they choose to engage in a conversation and you can easily import all leads from Drift into your marketing automation platform. Finally, detailed chat analytics will help you learn whether you’re doing things right and make improvements accordingly.

Repricing Automation Software

If you’re selling on Amazon, then you understand the importance of continually updating your prices. Readjusting your prices based on the prices your rivals offer makes you more competitive and gives you a better chance of obtaining a Buy Box, which can substantially increase your sales.

In short, only the top sellers can win a share of the BuyBox, and the Amazon algorithm decides who the top sellers are based on several factors. Among other things, top sellers are supposed to provide reliable and fast shipping, quick responses to customers, stable inventory levels, and low order defect rate. Finally, one of the most important factors is the price.

That’s why you need to be up-to-date with price trends among your competitors and update your prices on a regular basis. It can get very difficult, if not impossible, to constantly check on your competitors’ prices and manually modify yours whenever needed. If you fail to adapt to prices offered by other sellers, you can get pushed out of the BuyBox almost instantly.

Here, repricing automation software can solve your problems. Aura can be a great tool of choice in this case. It will follow other designated retailers, register any changes in price, and react based on the values that you set previously. For instance, you can aim to be the FBA seller with the lowest price or simply target the current BuyBox price. Aura offers many different strategies and strategy templates and lets you easily define your competitors. It updates your prices just a minute or two after a relevant change happens and thus helps you maximize your time in the BuyBox.

Order Fulfillment Automation 

Simply put, order fulfillment is the process that starts when the customer clicks the “order” button and finishes when the ordered product is at their door. It incorporates many different activities, like order processing, sending the confirmation email, printing labels, packing, shipping, and even managing returns. To fulfill the order successfully, businesses also have to handle some issues prior to the actual order, such as receiving inventory shipments or storing and managing the inventory.

Obviously, this whole process has a lot of moving parts, many parties are involved, and managing everything manually can be a nightmare. Automating these procedures can save a lot of time and money, and serve as a safeguard against human error.

It’s vital that all these processes are integrated and that they can all be controlled by a single tool. If you use one app to process the order, a second one to find a carrier, a third one to print labels, and a fourth one to handle returns, it can still get very confusing. That’s why you will want a good tool that enables you to monitor your inventory and optimize your stock.

Automating Personal Life

Finally, let’s try to conclude this article on a different note. Automation tools can help your business a whole lot, but it’s important to remember that they’re not almighty and that, at the end of the day, you’re the one controlling them. That’s why you should try a bit of automation in your daily life and introduce stable, healthy habits.

Different software can indeed help substantially boost your productivity, but it all starts with you. 

Productivity comes from the stability of your body and mind, and your big-picture business decisions can’t be automated. The technology is there to help and you’re there to lead. It’s important to remember that and not overestimate the power of automation. Especially in the times when we need to think about our mental and physical health more than ever.

Archives, Global Trade Daily, International Trade

The World Moving Forward

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At the beginning of 2020, the world was upended with changes to its economics and social life by the arrival of COVID-19 – a virus that spread to countries like wild-fire that most were unprepared for. Fear and confusion led the way. Just like the early 2000s during the early stages of e-commerce, many of us stood still and watched certain industries use e-commerce to generate business and eat away at the expense of more traditional companies.

COVID-19 drastically changed the directions of normal activities. Social meetings, shopping habits, and business settings have now been reduced to online platforms. People are now forced to understand the role that internet technology will play in daily life.  Larger numbers of people working and shopping from home than ever before. There is so much difference in activities such as buying hot food or buying canned food from an online store. As a result, two key industries are expected to be extremely important aspects in supporting future daily life for many years to come: express last-mile delivery and logistics supply chain.

Express last-mile delivery has really been an important industry that we all have come to rely greatly upon lately. They deliver our hot-food order and all of our anticipated goods, sometimes even arriving at our front doors in less than an hour while the logistics business is taking a back doors approach in supplying a necessity to increase the productivity of many industries. Many independent logistics companies also help move a country’s raw materials, semi-finished goods, and finished goods into the domestic and international markets. This industry plays a key role in increasing the competitive power of corporations and revitalizing improvements in a country’s economics scales. However, competition in the logistics industry is extremely high. For it to survive and provide better services, companies should seek to consolidate and migrate their data into a cloud computing platform service.

With the adaptations into a cloud logistics platform, the traditional logistics roles can begin to expand, minimizing office and operating expenses, and reducing business risks. Imagine the number of logistics companies who have committed blocks of space to transporters but end up being unable to fulfill 12-24 hours before departure or a shipper who is looking to move shipments on a weekend due to a critical shortage in one of their key customers.

There are high penalty prices to be absorbed by all parties when shipment capacity is unable to be fulfilled due to a lack of communication and coordination among the companies. These unnecessary risks and wastes of business opportunities can be minimized if the information was cleverly integrated-communicated-distributed to its partners in a cloud logistics platform.

New trade and logistics solutions running through a cloud platform have begun with 4 billion smartphone global users. The notion for a business to have only one dedicated trade or logistics partner serving them for many years will need to be re-adjusted in order to provide transparency and better monitoring systems. People and business communities are now demanding convenience in purchasing items from their comfortable homes rather than calling to place an order. We are surrounded by technological inventions all around, created for the benefit of people, to improve our life by increasing productivity and efficiency. With 5G not too far away at a connection 100 times speedier than 4G, our social and business lives will be impacted even furthermore.

Almost all businesses will eventually need to operate on a cloud technology platform to make operations and decision making much more efficient. When trade and logistics are blended into a cloud technology platform, magical moments will definitely happen, with industries moving together with the same interest, we are seeing new ways of getting the job done.

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Archives, Global Logistics, Global Trade Daily, Software

5 Mistakes Businesses Make When Selecting Business Tools

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There are so many things that go into setting your business for success. One of them is ensuring you have the best business tools that offer longevity, consistency, resilience, scalability, and comprehensive real-time visibility throughout your operations. But with a plethora of different types of tools out there, finding the right ones for your business can be a challenge. Here are 5 common mistakes you should avoid to help you invest in the right tools and use them effectively.

1. Expecting Technology to Solve Process-related Issues

One of the biggest mistakes that companies make is expecting technology to resolve problems with their processes and procedures. Although technology can enhance your speed, efficiency, and profitability, it tends to augment the already available operational effectiveness. If your company is well organized and has error-free processes, technology can automate repetitive processes, save you time, and help you grow profits. If your company is disorganized and with messed up processes, technology will only intensify that incompetence.

Tip: When incorporating new tools to your business, look for those that help you optimize your existing processes or recommends better processes. If you don’t have error-free procedures and processes in place, start by developing them and ensuring your company is working on paper.

2. Not Considering Multiple Opinions

Another common mistake that many businesses make in the process of buying business tools is having an unclear idea of what’s required instead of precise requirements. It’s extremely easy to examine and invest in the best solution when you’ve a clear idea of what you expect from the system. Companies miss requirements
when they leave the selection process to only technical personnel or a small team of leaders. Depending on one individual or department’s viewpoints is extremely narrow, particularly if several departments will be using the new system every day.

Tip: Involve various stakeholders in the process of selecting your business tools even if it’s those for opening a zip file. Remember while working employees will need tools that enable them to open and compress large files. Assemble a team of staff that can champion the needs of their respective departments. Once you gather viewpoints from a variety of future users, you can now design a requirements document to guide you in the entire selection process. Apart from issues you’re aspiring to solve, a good requirements document should also include important features that new tool(s) should have.

3. Relying on Recommendations Only

While recommendations from friends can be really helpful when you’re looking for the best software solutions for your business, they can also be risky if not accompanied by thorough research. Your friends may be running a business related to yours, but they may be following different processes or using different features in the tool. When purchasing solely on recommendation, you run the risks of expecting a tool to perform functions that are beyond its capability.

Tip: The right tools should meet the unique needs and requirements of your business. So even as you seek recommendations from your peers, consider following them up with in-depth research.

4. Buying Without Trying

Most business tools come with some sort of free trial or free plan. So before making a purchase, run the tool in one or two locations and see how it’s working. This applies to even tools for opening a zip file. Remember trial mode is designed to help you assess performance (speed and dependability) and see how the application works.

Tip: During the trial mode, ask yourself, “Does this tool function and feel like a perfect fit for my business?” Your answer to this question will help you decide whether you’ll buy the application or you’ll go on with your search.

5. Failure to Invest in Future-proofed Solutions

Investing in tools to fix immediate problems is another mistake many businesses make. This shortsighted approach has left many businesses having to deal with expensive and lengthy upgrades, hectic re-implementations, and continued reliance on tools that
actually frustrates their expansion plans.

Pro Tip: Before investing in any software solution, think about the ways your business needs and requirements are likely to change in the future. Then, choose a solution that’s continuously expanding on current functionalities and incorporating new capabilities.

Final Thoughts

Businesses must ask the right questions, know the common pitfalls to avoid, and perform enough due diligence before investing in any business tools. They should invest in solutions that allow them not only to fix immediate problems but also their future challenges.

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Archives, Global Trade Daily, Software, Special Reports

Don’t Get Caught Off Guard by Expired Contracts

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Contracts are key to mitigate risk, secure discounts, and acquire services. Your procurement teams work hard to negotiate contracts that enforce the most beneficial terms for your company, and your AP team takes careful measures to ensure each invoice is paid on time. However, one section of the contract that’s often overlooked by finance teams is the expiration date. Surely your supplier will let you know when it’s time to renegotiate, and someone’s tracking it somewhere, right?

The truth is, in many organizations, the expiration date of a contract is often completely unknown. An expired contract can have serious ramifications to your business functions and could cost you a lot if you’re unaware of its pending arrival. Below are a few scenarios that can happen if you’re caught off guard by expired contracts.

Where are our contractors?

If you fall out of contract with your contractors, the first thing you might notice is that they simply don’t show up. This may not be a huge issue on temporary projects such as landscaping, but if you’re relying on them for long-term IT support, this could be a big issue: A few weeks of contract renegotiations can slow down your business significantly. Staying ahead of contract expirations allows you to renegotiate terms before they expire, to ensure there aren’t any gaps or delays in your projects.

Hmm, this seems more expensive than usual

If your supplier contracts expire, they’re no longer obligated to honor the price you negotiated. They can suddenly begin to charge their market rate, which is likely substantially higher than the contracted rate. This would be an unwelcome surprise for any finance team, especially if it’s after you’ve already purchased the goods (and perhaps even used them as components within your product). After a contract is expired, you lose all your leverage to find an alternate supplier, and the cost of your goods can rise exponentially. Avoid this supply chain nightmare by knowing in advance if you need to renegotiate your prices.

I can’t afford my new subscription price, but can I afford not to have it?

Contracts often include a clause that limits cost increases upon renewal, typically around 3-5% or covers the cost of inflation. However, if the contract expires, this clause will no longer be honored. Let’s say your business is using an ERP or CRM software on a six-year contract. During that timeframe, the software company raised its annual fee from $400K to $3.5M. Unfortunately for your company, you didn’t renegotiate the contract before expiration, and you now have zero leverage to negotiate a better price. Even worse, the cost of switching may be equally high, so it doesn’t make sense to look for alternative software. Your company has no choice but to pony up the money in order to keep your business functioning on all cylinders.

The above scenarios would be tricky for any business to avoid. With so many contracts with so many different suppliers, it can seem impossible to be aware of each upcoming expiration date. However, AppZen’s Contract Audit notifies you of all of your upcoming expirations (and coupled with AP Audit, you can also be confident that your contract terms are reflected on each invoice too). Thanks to AppZen, you’ll be notified with enough time required to make a decision on alternative suppliers, saving you costly mistakes, and keeping your business and supply chain running at 100% efficiency.

______________________________________________________________________

David Wishinsky is a Senior Product Marketing Manager at AppZen.

iot technology
Archives, Global Shippers 101, Global Trade Daily

How Shippers Can Leverage IoT Technology Solutions in Their Supply Chains

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At one time, managing supply chain logistics was among the most difficult challenges that existed for a shipping company. Previously, the shippers with the best operational management programs sat at the head of the pack by default. Today, with increased automation and near-instantaneous data availability, controlling logistics has never been easier, and just about everyone is at least competent at handling their supply chains. This is a very positive thing for consumers; however, it also means that for companies to be able to innovate, grow and maintain a competitive edge, just being “good” at supply chains isn’t enough–these days, to achieve long-term success, you have to be great.

Here are five steps shippers can take to leverage IoT technology solutions in their supply chains:

1. Map out your existing process

Knowing what you are starting with is one of the most important steps in the entire process. Map out your existing process with fine, granular detail. If you have access to a Six Sigma expert, bring them in. When you have your current process defined, then, and only then, are you prepared to further enhance and improve your supply chain with IoT solutions.

2. Build a dedicated team to implement new IoT solutions

Ensure you have a chairperson, as well as enough allocated resources with “skin in the game,” to spearhead the implementation process. Nothing will throw sand in the gears faster than a team that has minimal direction and does not have any incentive to push things forward quickly and efficiently. Identify these people, have regular meetings with them and work together on S.M.A.R.T. type goals.

3. Know your competition

Study your peers and competitors to see what they are or are not doing. It’s highly probable that their struggles are also your struggles. However, don’t just follow your biggest competitor blindly, but rather study what they’re doing and develop a competitive edge based on their weaknesses. Map out their processes, see where they have implemented IoT technology, ask the ‘why’ and then take the best parts to incorporate into your own unique strategy.

4. Ask an expert

Consultants are experts for a reason. They’ve done this before and know what works and does not work. Developing an IoT solution is no easy task, so picking your consultant is an important step. Speak to multiple experts to gain multiple, educated opinions on how to proceed. Use the task force you created earlier and choose the best path for your organization that will have the greatest ROI.

5. Study your results and constantly evolve

Once you have mapped out your existing process, built your team, studied your competition, enlisted the help of experts, calculated your ROI and implemented your IoT technology solutions – don’t stop! IoT technology is ever-changing and learning, constantly collecting and analyzing granular data for your use. The more time and data that is dedicated to this process, the sharper your process will become. This access to information will open doors to opportunities for efficiency and possibly new markets in your supply chain.

What all of this translates to is a potential market that is broader than ever before. However, as new tech continues to narrow traditional gaps in efficiency, it also means that companies are now battling one another on that basis – when competing in an environment where customers can compare shipping speed and choose accordingly, getting package there faster is of paramount importance.

Companies need to find ways of protecting current market share while expanding into other areas. In this regard, IoT technology becomes especially valuable. IoT allows businesses to be more adaptable and make decisions on-the-fly, in addition to minimizing costly errors. Data collection also gives unprecedented perspective on customer needs as well as behaviors, allowing companies to innovate based on sound evidence – all of which creates opportunity for increased revenues.

The bottom line: technology is the way forward for just about every aspect of supply chain development. As always, innovation is an ongoing process and in the pursuit of greatness there’s simply no solution for investment and creativity. With all the tools that IoT provides, and these actionable steps, the possibilities truly are endless.

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Archives, Global Trade Daily, Software

5 Tips for Launching New App Features

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Plan the release. 

While you’re still in the planning phase for a new feature, it’s a good idea to also think about how you will release it. This is something often done within the design process.

Things you should incorporate into this include: 

-Who will see this feature first? (Are there internal or external beta groups?)

-What is success for this feature?

-Who will see the feature once it’s in a steady state? (Is this for VIP customers or everyone?)

-Is there important timing tied to this release, such as an event or special time of the calendar year?

Tools that will help you with this include product delivery and tracking tools. 

Build awareness.

Awareness around a release is important for both internal and external groups. Within your organization, do teams have the support they need to be successful? Think about what your sales, marketing, customer success, or any other team will need in terms of understanding the feature being released, and how to answer any questions they might face. Externally, awareness should be tied back to how you will measure success. 

Tools that will help you accomplish this include go-to-market plans, centralized information repositories, and any other tools that will help your teams (and customers!) stay connected, informed, and collaborative. 

Measure your release.

After the release has happened, how will you know if it was successful? Because you already thought about success metrics in the planning stage, you should be ready to measure whether or not it was successful. 

Tools that will help with this include those that surface sales and ops metrics. Also, it’s important to consider these together—look at performance and monitoring metrics, support requests by volume, and qualitative feedback from customers and prospects.

Celebrate and recognize.

Take time to celebrate your wins. Shipping software is like a muscle, the more frequently you do it, the easier it is to execute. If you ship less frequently, the process begins to atrophy and the action becomes more difficult. Celebration (even for small wins) provides motivation to continue practicing the act of shipping, and results in more stable services and products.

Reflect and iterate. 

Software is never done, and neither is a process for software delivery. After the release has occurred and you’ve paused to enjoy the moment, now it’s time to reflect back on what went well and what didn’t. Reflect on both process and product.

Tie process back to culture—consider the tools that you use for process, what enabled you to do more and what was a hindrance? Use this feedback and apply what you learned from measuring success in the planning phase for the next release. Learn how you can adjust and improve upon what you shipped.

 

Adam Zimman, VP of Product and Platform, LaunchDarkly

Adam has over 20 years of experience working in a variety of roles from software engineering through to technical sales. He has worked in both enterprise and consumer companies such as VMware, EMC and GitHub. Adam is driven by a passion for inclusive leadership and solving problems with technology. One additional objective is to be a part of a diverse and equitable company. Not simply an organization that accepts diversity, but one that actively pursues a more diverse and inclusive team as an imperative for building better products and services. Adam is also an Advisor for a number of startups and nonprofits. His perspective on life has been shaped by a background in physics and visual art, an ongoing adventure as a husband and father and a childhood career as a fire juggler.

Archives, Commentary, Global Trade Daily

Secrets to Talent Retention & Recruitment

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The big question in the minds of business managers –  in warehousing, manufacturing, transportation, and beyond is not only how to retain a solid workforce, but how to attract a variety of skillsets and ages within the worker population. It’s not a surprise to imagine that old-school approaches are becoming a thing of the past. As Gen Z workers continue to increase representation in the workforce, employers are faced with the reality of adopting more innovation, technology, and mindsets to successfully cater to both older and newer generations of workers. If the current strategy is limiting recruiting capabilities, companies are setting themselves up for failure and limiting their full potential in operations and employee expertise.

What some companies might not realize is the amount of visibility provided with modern technology and the capabilities enabled through automation. As the workforce changes, so does the method of recruiting and the level of technology needed for successful staffing. Completed.com is a great example of how automation and technology take recruiting one step further through real-time, reliable feedback on employees seeking work in any industry.

“We saw a need to create a platform where one can review anyone in business. One of the reasons employers haven’t had a successful platform like this before, is because it’s inherently at risk of being used improperly. The technologies we’re starting to talk about are one potential and significant source of solution for that,” said CEO Michael Zammuto.

“Completed.com at its core includes machine learning-driven technology which looks at and develops an internal credibility score for every reviewer and every review. This is one of the more important things that companies – like Yelp, have been working on, but it’s a difficult challenge. It starts with things like technology where the talent is validated, making it more credible. In addition to that, there’s a lot of pattern matching and sediment analysis that’s done to develop an internal credibility score. This is important because constructive, professionally-focused reviews.”

So, how much is technology really changing the pace for employee recruitment? According to Zammuto, quite a bit. He adds that the human element is still very much needed, just for a different role. It’s not about eliminating the human element in recruiting, but reallocating it.

“Everybody in every industry has the same issue: finding and attracting the right talent. We got to see it from the other side – the client’s issue about how they were represented online,” he adds. “We realized that hiring people has become complicated because of technology, but the important part of this topic is that one can automate 99 percent of something that’s content-driven and has a subjective element to it, but you do need people to review things that algorithms determine problems with.”

This insight confirms that technology is becoming more involved within the logistics world, creating even more of a dynamic between connectivity, visibility, and efficiency. The secret here is: employer and company information are just as valuable to recruiting the right kind of talent as is the available employee information. Just as company’s want to learn about the candidates sent their way, employees are looking for an environment that offers more than just a paycheck.

If a strong candidate is subjected to a miserable climate, outdated practices, and lack of recognition, they’re more likely to visit with competitors that meet their expectations. In the modern workforce, competing companies are willing to offer tempting salaries with promising career incentives to win over another great employee. Recognition is just as much of a factor as the dollar amount on the paycheck.

“Part of this process is ensuring great employees receive recognition they seek while others are held accountable. This gives you a chance to hold people accountable and celebrate the employees and managers that do great work, and you can take it at face value,” Zammuto adds.

Taking it even further, regular internal reviews are highly encouraged to successfully maintain talent retention. Not only do these regular checks reiterate accountability for management and the employees, skills development is evaluated and encouraged, ultimately eliminating the mundane aspect of a job.

Workers are encouraged with feedback and become motivated to polish their skillset while voicing concerns and addressing redundancies. This is a critical element that goes beyond recruiting and retention as it impacts all aspects of company operations. At the end of the day, your employees are the backbone of the company.

“Most of the traditional methods have either disappeared or been weakened in some way. The remaining method that’s useful is direct referrals to jobs. This is the only remaining valid strategy for getting good candidates to your company but it’s very slow and doesn’t always scale very well. Companies are having trouble finding people because of the mechanisms for doing so have weakened a lot. With people being more mobile than before, but the information about that mobility shielding the good from the bad performers, how is anyone supposed to hire the right candidates?” Zammuto concludes.

Technology is the common denominator in solving this problem. As companies learn about automation integration for maximizing workflows, this same method should absolutely be considered for selecting the best and preferred types of employees. This approach challenges the old-fashioned methods and takes a granular look at the talent pool, saving time, money, resources, and energy invested. The bigger picture shows that recruiting methods are changing and directly impacting retention.

Any company can fill a position, but retaining that position is where the challenge is. What benefit is it to hire a candidate if they don’t contribute and end up leaving? There is no benefit. A company that fills three roles but only retains one isn’t fulfilling its bottom line. Something is missing and technology is the answer to solving this issue. Preserve company resources and time by investing in technology that can identify the best candidates that are looking for long-term careers. The investment upfront will pay off in the long haul.

Archives, Global Trade Daily, Software

4 Limitations of the Three-Way Match You Need to Consider

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The three-way match, which cross-references invoices, purchase orders, and receiving documents before issuing payments, has been considered the industry-standard procedure in accounts payable departments for years—until now. As businesses become more sophisticated, there are far more data points to confirm the validity of an invoice. Does it include all early payment discounts? Are the payment terms (net 30, net 60) enforced? Unfortunately, many accounts payable departments don’t have the time or resources to manually check these items, and are unknowingly being overcharged for services that they didn’t receive, or products that aren’t for the negotiated rates or terms.

Below are four reasons the three-match is no longer enough to prevent overpayment or fraud.

1. The three-way match can’t check multiple data points

Again, the three-way match only verifies price and unit numbers across invoices, purchase orders, and receiving documents, but it doesn’t check critical information like volume discounts, payment terms, delivery times, transport conditions, chain of custody, service-level agreements, and more. These data can affect your bottom line: longer payment terms help you improve cash flow and maximize profits.

2. The three-way match doesn’t confirm that services were actually performed

Because of its limited sources of data, the three-way match doesn’t integrate with business systems to verify key fob swipes, messages sent, or software licenses. This data is important for creating a profile of contractor and service provider activity levels so you can make sure you’re actually receiving the work you’re paying for.

3. The three-way match still leaves you open to fraud

And outright fraud is a big problem. Aware of the sheer volume of invoices many business receive, clever criminals can thwart the three-way match by creating fictitious companies, enacting phishing scams, billing for products that were never delivered, overcharging for products, or inflating shipping charges. The three-way match won’t catch fake merchants, billing errors, or violations of payment terms.

4. The three-way match doesn’t check employee expense reports

Even if the three-way match works fine for your purchasing department, it won’t catch employee expense reports, which are processed through their own system, completely separate from AP. The average enterprise deals with thousands of expense reports each quarter, often overwhelming human auditors who may miss high-risk expenses and common misconduct like duplicate charges and mileage padding. The three-way match offers no visibility into questionable employee spending.

Address the shortcomings of the three-way match with artificial intelligence  

The good news is that there is a solution for the limitations of the three-way match: Star Match, which uses artificial intelligence to cross-check the accuracy of documents and transactions—including expenses, invoices, —against AP systems, contract management, and expense reporting software; internal business systems data; and external signals from online sources.

To help ensure that you’re receiving the products and services you paid for, Star Match cross-references business data from email, messaging, badge access, sensor data, and system logs, as well as external online data to verify work activity, software license usage, shipping documents, and more. We match these data points to your contracts, invoices and any other documents to verify everything is correct. Because AppZen integrates with your expense automation system, Star Match matches across expense reports as well—the only solution to do so—helping you spot errors, waste, and fraud.

With AppZen and our AI platform powered by Star Match, you can enforce contract terms every time you receive an invoice, helping you better manage contracts and control spending.

Josephine McCann is a Senior Marketing Associate at AppZen, the world’s leading solution for automated expense report audits that leverages artificial intelligence to audit 100% of expense reports, invoices and contacts in seconds.

Archives, Global Trade Daily, Software

MapsPeople & Maven Wave Partner for Workplace Navigation Platform

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In an effort to reduce wasted time for employees seeking available space around the workplace, Google Cloud Partner companies Maven Wave and MapsPeople initiated a strategic partnership to further develop and perfect efficient workplace navigation.

“Office employees waste valuable time hunting for available office space to work, collaborate, or simply take a phone call,” comments Stevie Grossman, Regional Sales Manager U.S. Northeast at MapsPeople. “By combining Maven Wave’s custom mobile solutions with our indoor wayfinding platform, we provide customers with a clear overview of their office space, available rooms and desks, and turn-by-turn navigation in the palm of their hand.”

Maven Wave’s mobile applications combined with MapsPeople’s wayfinding solution will create a custom, strategic solution capable of integrating with almost any type of third-party platform. This partnership will add more value and development efforts for MapsPeople’s “MapsIndoors” solution. Both companies bring an added amount of expertise and knowledge within the Google Cloud and Google Maps platforms.

“Improving the end-user experience is the key and should always be top-of-mind,” adds David Hackett, Central Region Sales Lead at Maven Wave. “What’s exciting about our partnership with MapsPeople is that it allows us to customize a visual solution that eliminates inefficiencies and simplifies clients’ ability to identify, locate and navigate within a building, complex, or campus. Not only are the use cases countless, but equally importantly as a partner of MapsPeople, we are excited to work with a like-minded company that puts user experience and innovation first.”


Archives, Global Trade Daily, News

Maven Wave Earns Google Cloud North America Services Partner of the Year

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Google Cloud Premier Partner, Maven Wave, now boasts its second consecutive title as Google’s North American Partner of the Year following recognition during this year’s Partner Summit at Google Cloud Next ‘19. The consulting and technology firm’s outstanding ability to deliver digital solutions to customers served as the focal point of the recognition. Maven Wave is known for developing these solutions through the utilization of Google Cloud innovations.

“It is an incredible honor to receive this award for the second year in a row. This achievement recognizes the extraordinary efforts from our teams who, together with our visionary customers and valued Google Cloud partners, have been able to realize remarkable success in enterprise digital transformation,” said Jason Lee, Partner and Founder at Maven Wave.

Maven Wave has served as a Google Cloud Premier Partner for nine years with specializations in areas such as Application Development, Cloud Migration, Data Analytics, Enterprise Collaboration, Infrastructure, Location-Based Services, Machine Learning, and Marketing Analytics.

“Google Cloud provides industry-leading, cloud-native products that allow us to accelerate the development of innovative enterprise solutions, from modernizing infrastructure to creating intelligence from data and enabling work transformation. We remain absolutely committed to our Google Cloud partnership and look forward to continued success for our customers in 2019 and beyond.”