Domain name goes Hindi...

There is good news for SMEs! The dot-Bharat domain name in Hindi is set to be launched in India by May next year, with the aim of bridging the digital divide in the country. This will enable organizations and individuals to register their website addresses in Hindi and later in more Indian local languages like Bengali, Punjabi, Urdu, Tamil, Telugu and Gujarati. This is a great opportunity for SMEs to draw a large proportion of Indians who use content on Internet but aren’t familiar with English.

Now days even if content are in local language still user need to type the URL in English. This is a large step towards developing a multi-lingual computing environment in India i.e. already proved to be a great use in countries like Japan and South Korea.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which governs domain names internationally, has allowed India to register domain names in above mentioned Indian languages.

What's in it for SMEs?

Internet is a low cost medium for SMEs to reach out to new potential markets and engage their existing customer base. The advent of e-commerce has opened up a whole new set of opportunities for SMEs. Still there are few hurdles on the way. According to 2001 Census, about 11% of the India’s population understands English, while 40% are well-versed in some form of Hindi. Also there are close to 100 million Internet users in India, in which74% are literate, according to Census 2011. Clearly there is a huge opportunity for SMEs to engage customers in a language which they are more familiar with.

Although there are other aspects too to achieve complete multi-lingual computing environment in India, like operating system, language keyboards, script sets and browser in local language. Once in place, Internet in local language will available in India over the next 10-15 years. 

 

How it will affect your business?

The domain name helps users find their way around the Internet. Every computer on the Internet has a unique address, just like a telephone number, which is a rather complicated string of numbers. It is called “IP address” (IP stands for “Internet Protocol”). IP Addresses are hard to remember. Here the domain name comes for rescue and helps user to easily remember a familiar set of alphabet (i.e. “domain name”) to be used instead of the IP address. If this domain name is available in language like Hindi which is commonly understands by a large chunk of population then it will be much easier to target them. Now SMEs can innovate and offers specific product and services which are well customized as per the requirement of regional customers, and this will help them to move from common to niche approach.

Top 3 Apps for High Performing Sales Teams

The digital age and mobile technology have revolutionized business operations. Businesses today are leveraging technology to create the much needed competitive edge, which helps them stay ahead of competition and also innovate in the marketplace.

With the introduction of mobile devices powered by android and other emerging platforms, which support interesting business and productivity apps, businesses are empowering their sales teams with such technology while making them more productive and responsive.

Top 4 apps for a high performing sales team!
GoToMeeting - GTM is a mobile app which enables web conferencing in various modes as online meetings, presentations coupled with reports. To use the tool for free, you can visit the following URL: http://www.gotomeeting.com/fec/

Swipe the credit card, never miss an instant payment!
One of the major issues that sales teams face, especially that of the Small and Medium merchants, is the instant availability of card swiping machines. As money goes plastic, more and more customers are converting to using plastic money. Sales people need to be always ready to get the payments collected on the spot.

Here comes Square. The moment you sign up for square, they send you an attachment which you can add onto your phone, which will enable you to swipe credit cards and hence obviously be able to read them, just like it normally happens in the merchant establishments where you shop.

Payments from all major credit cards are accepted by the Square app. Its a free app and is available for iPhone, iPad and on Android devices.

Manage your salesforce data in real time on mobile!
Many SMEs are leveraging the cloud based services to save cost and be operationally more efficient. Salesforce is one such CRM on the cloud and to access the data in real time, you can simply get the Salesforce app by Salesforce.com.

The app is available for almost all mobile devices like, iPhone, Blackberry, iPad etc.

Team IndiaMART Knowledge Services is committed to enable SMEs with tools, tips and techniques to help them reach up the value chain and hence achieve the next level of growth. For more information on how you can create new opportunities for your business, drop in a comment to this post and we will get in touch with you!

5 Business Apps You Must Have

Mobility has changed the game for businesses. Especially the small and medium businesses, are far more connected today. With mobile devices such as the iPAD, iPhone and other such touch screen devices, people are sharing information and engaging with information in a more personal manner and in a far lesser time. Information is available at your fingertips and there is faster collaboration happening within teams at businesses. There is a powerful change happening in how businesses operate and how they are saving resources, cost in terms of time and energy. Businesses have become more smarter as they are embracing technology, making it faster and easier to operate and hence be more productive.

There are many business apps which are available on platforms like the apple ios, blackberry, android etc. we are listing down the 6 interesting business apps which we feel every SME must leverage to the best extent.

• Square

Using this app you can process credit card payments anywhere using the credit card accessory which you get along with your touch screen device (iPhone, iPad) etc. All kinds of credit cards are accepted by Square. This app is a great source for those in businesses with COD and also event organizers who many a times face the query from people who turn up at events and wish to pay by their credit cards.

• Linkedin

One of world's largest professional social networking tools, the Linkedin app for iPad and iphone and Blackberry are fantastic tools to quickly connect with your target audience. One of the quickest uses which you can make of this app is, when you meet someone at a conference/ event, you can quickly search them on Linkedin, get through their profiles and obviously chart out a better and more firm conversation with them, which obviously gets you more relevant and closer to the individual.

• Evernote

As the name suggests, Evernote helps you take down notes in the form of text, pictures, voice, data and store them quickly. The note taking app helps you ensure that you never forget anything and your task list is powerfully created and managed. You can make virtual memo's on-demand using Evernote.

• Gist

Business networking is the name of the game today and Gist is on top of the game. Gist helps you organize and update all your contacts in a single location. It obviously is not the easiest task for a business pro to have multiple contacts spread over multiple networks. Gist helps you manage all the information like Email, Phone, Address, at a single location. Gist automatically updates the same by fetching information from various social networks and other online sources which helps you with updated information about your contacts all the time.

• MightyMeeting

Making sales presentations and presentations otherwise is an obvious for any business. This is one part of the business which exists for almost every business and obviously over years of experience its essential to ensure that you have access to your presentations at all times, everywhere. MightyMeeting helps you do just that. You can now upload your presentations on the cloud and then access them anywhere, anytime, from any place with an internet connection. This makes it easier for you to pitch your clients with smarter tablets.

Team IndiaMART Knowledge Services is committed to enable SMEs with tools, tips and techniques to help them reach up the value chain and hence achieve the next level of growth. For more information on how you can create new opportunities for your business, drop in a comment to this post and we will get in touch with you!