MindScape

Not all guidelines are meant to be restrictive. Quality standards, the guidelines for web development, are meant to establish a semblance of uniformity in all web services delivered.

Issued by W3C, Quality Standards stipulate the various parameters any web development service/product must match up to, to be considered up-to-the-mark The Internet today is a beehive of all sorts of web services. Some are good, some are top-of-the-line, and some are a waste of time.

Quality standards aim to eliminate this discrepancy by promoting researched standards so that all web products and services are user-friendly and make good sense to invest in.

The need for standards

Web designers and developers are humans, which means their work reflects their viewpoints to varying extents. These viewpoints can be broadly classified under:

• Scripting of Websites
  

Using XHTML standards

XHTML is an extension of HTML that is cleaner and leaner. It allows websites to be viewed on various devices (mobile phones etc.) which was not easy with HTML.

Using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) standards

Websites have varying degrees of complexity in their underlying codes. With HTML <font> tag, re-writing or changing the content of the website becomes tedious as it involves extensive re-configuration of the existing code.

To overcome this, W3C Quality Standards stipulate the use of CSS standards. It is a potent way of separating the style of a webpage from its content. In doing so, it enables very easy re- configuration of the page’s content.

Using CSS greatly improves the browser compatibility of a website and also improves its readability, while the lesser development time involved cuts development costs.

• Readability of websites

Text used in website content varies widely in terms of font size, color, font style(bold, italic), character/line spacing etc. Thus, the same block of text :

“Einstein had bad grades in school.”

can be written as :

“Einstein had bad grades in school.” or Einstein had bad grades in school.

Reading both the types requires concentrated effort. This hampers easy readability of websites.

Thus, Quality standards decree the use of easier text representation (font, color contrast, spacing etc.) for maximum readability.

• Website Accessibility

The spectrum of Internet users ranges from the top-end users with the latest technologies at their disposal, to the other end of users with the bare minimum required for browsing.

Clearly, websites designed to hog system resources are viewed best only on high-end systems. Such websites deny accessibility to the rest of the users, which in a way harms the website owners themselves as they lose out on the bulk of the potential visitors.

Quality Standards save the day here by stipulating user-friendly web development guidelines that maximize the website’s accessibility. The more the visitors, the better the business opportunities.

• Internationalization of Websites

Most modern browsers use the internationally accepted Unicode (UTF-8, UTF-16 etc.) character set. However, not all documents transmitted over the Internet conform to the standards of this set owing to the uniqueness of language scripts used. This results in a discrepancy among the browser being used and the text to be displayed on-screen.

Quality standards thus recommend the labeling of each document used with the character set in use for easier identification and representation.

Also, other commonly experienced discrepancies like which format to use while writing dates is taken care of by W3C guidelines. Thus, the accepted date format is yyyy-mm-dd. (letters with their usual meanings).

Eg. : 04-05-1984 could either mean 4th May 1984 or April 5^th 1984.

But with the use of quality standards, 1984-05-04 can only mean May 4^th, 1984

Although not exhaustive, this brief overview of the prevailing quality standards in web development is an endeavor to give you a better understanding of the guidelines we, at Vinove, while designing web sites for our clients.

Introduction

A CRM system is more than a software package to manage a firm’s customer database. Its purpose is to help manage a firm capture customers, retain them, nurture them and serve them as best as possible. This aim is realized through operations classified under different heads, known as CRM Modules.

CRM system modules

Operational Module

• Campaign Planning : planning promotional campaigns as per the firm’s core competencies and the profile of the target customer.
• Campaign Execution: through channels like email marketing, online advertisements, phone marketing, print ads, television ads etc.
• Lead generation and classification: any prospective customer who responds to the firm’s campaign is a lead. He is then questioned and the information received (type of product/service wanted, price range, contact details etc) is analyzed and classified as Hot Lead (genuine prospect) or Cold Lead (false information/bogus interest).

Sales : All sales made are documented in the central database along with information like customer contact details, calls, emails, faxes, sales quotations etc.

Service : It deals with all the services a customer is entitled to as part of the firm’s contract. This includes :

• Warranty management
• Knowledge management (How To, tutorials, User manuals)
• Back end/ after sales support
• Installed Base Support (support for tools installed onsite) etc.

Collaborative Module
It handles direct interaction with the customers. Emails, phone calls, websites etc. are used for the purpose.

Analytical Module
It focuses on analyzing the database towards:

• Analysis of customer behavior patterns
• Emerging trends that may be profitably exploited
• Taking key decisions on developing new marketing strategies for better promotional opportunities etc.

All the information collected builds up an exhaustive customer profile with data ranging from bare essentials like contact nos., to analytical segments like patterns in purchase history, preferences, significant deviations from established patters, shift in trends etc.

Example: Call centers have records of previous purchases made by customers. So every time a profiled customers calls up, his information is available to any executive attending the call, no matter which department he is from. This slashes customer processing time and instead of starting from scratch each time, it sends out a favorable impression of the firm.

The shift in CRM systems implementation
Traditional CRM packages have been tricky into integrate into already existing systems, on account of hardware re-configurations, workforce training and establishment of back-ups.

However, On Demand CRM Systems have gained popularity by virtue of the following advantages :

Hosted, not installed : cuts costs due to lesser ownership of infrastructure on the user’s part, which is hosted by an outside firm, and the elimination of complicated installation procedures on-site.

No hassles of troubleshooting ad upgrades : The organization using the service does not have to bother with any glitches that the system might develop. It is taken care of by the service hosts themselves.

Going live is much faster : Hosted services obviate the need to install CRM systems on-site, thus drastically reducing “go-live” time.

Conclusion
CRM systems have greatly simplified customer handling across many industry sectors. That it enables all arms of an organization to access and analyze detailed information means better understanding of individual roles, and the customers too feel important when being catered to professionally.

In short, it’s a win-win for all involved. With the word spreading, CRM, especially On-Demand CRM will become the definitive tool for customer management in a matter of just a few years.