It seems that the good news stories are finally getting out, after Cable & Wireless announced that it had made more than £1m cost savings since introducing IT to support staff learning within the business. An incredible sum of money to save for any business, and a great advert for the industry that we’re working in.
We hear the good stories all the time, our clients simply wouldn’t work with us if we weren’t saving them money. But our research has shown that the vast majority of companies are still not embracing the digital age when it comes to automating day-to-day tasks. Take training companies, a quarter (25%) admitted to not even having the most basic of booking forms for their courses - so every seat is filled over the phone? Or perhaps a carrier piegon drops by with a ‘reserve my place’ slip tied to his foot...
Potentially one of the issues that training companies have is that context is never put around the savings, so I thought I could use this blog to throw some light onto the midfield maestro of the digital age - email marketing. Email marketing software has literally transformed the way that businesses can keep in touch and record communication with their clients and potential clients. How? Well, instead of having to write out emails one-by-one on Outlook Express, you can automate so that one email (which can be personalised to say Hello Dave) goes to each one of your email addresses. Then, instead of having to collate responses, the software automatically categorises who opened the email and what they clicked on. Imagine the manpower saved already.
Even more fun with email marketing software is the timing piece, so you can set an email to auto-respond to new enquires with a note about the next course and details on how to book - forget sitting by the phone waiting for the sales call - everything is automated.
But this is just one feature of the software available today, and when you consider the amount of processing that a massive firm like Cable & Wireless must have to plough through, you can see how something like email marketing can put a dent in that £1.5m saved.
But that was just one story that emerged in the press because it was a well-known company involved, the truth is, these stories are emerging everyday from training companies both big and small who are turning their focus to streamlining their operation and benefiting from the savings.