Internal systems are the cornerstone of any successful business. But sometimes it can be difficult to gauge the real-life effect of a healthy backend. While many businesses focus on how an internal system can impact their employees, the real goal of any retail internal system should be the final effect it has on the experiences of your customers. While this blog will discuss the external impacts of systems, you should aim to see the effect in your everyday life of a good internal system and how it improves your interaction with your favourite brands.
Efficient Service
The first goal of an internal system should always be to improve efficiency. While this may seem apparent internally, the true value is in making customers interact with your company in the most efficient way possible. When your internal system is organised and efficient, it acts as the foundation on which you balance lots of your external systems. Websites are clearly the best example of this. When an internal system runs smoothly, your customers can access all the information they need quickly. Web forms get distributed efficiently internally so that customers receive quick and pertinent replies. Rather than a day or 2 for your service staff to reply to your customers, through robust case assignment it can take a few hours. Rather than taking a week to process an invoice, they can be approved and sent within a matter of hours. All of this makes your customers feel prioritised and pushes them through the sales funnel quickly. Efficient service is a good indication that a company’s internal systems are up to scratch.
Self Service
If your data structure is well organised, the potential of self-service increases. Good internal systems allow retail companies to optimise their customers’ buying process. This is because rather than outdated systems and documents where only your employees know how to process the information, a clean process and data structure is easy to pick up for everybody. This why a good sign of a healthy internal system are easy to use online shopping carts, knowledge centres and case submission pages
More personalisation
One of the trademarks of good internal systems is a 360-degree view of your customer. As such, a good internal system facilitates a high level of personalisation externally for all interactions a customer has with the business. From previous exchanges, a company will be able to provide valuable recommendations to the customer based on their interactions with marketing and sales. When interacting with the company, the employees will have access to your specifications and details and will be able to provide personalised and relevant suggestions or even predict the problems you may have before they happen.
Better Marketing
Another good example of strong internal systems is effective marketing. While badly targeted marketing can be a major put off, good internal systems can avoid this issue with efficiently organised data that goes deeper than your run-of-the-mill targeting. If you ever feel like a company knows how to market to your wants and needs this is always proof that their internal systems are working like they should.
Easy to use portals
Finally, one of the best examples of a good internal system is a good external portal. Portals rely on the data structure of the internal system. So while a bad portal can be due to many reasons, it is impossible to have an effective portal without a strong internal system. Examples of portals can range from Seller management portals, invoice tracking systems and help desks. If they work effectively then you know there is a good internal system driving it.
Conclusion
While there can be many reasons for external systems to work badly, a good internal system will always be the source of an effective company from the outside. While employee efficiency might be a good reason to improve your systems internally, never overlook how these internal systems will affect the image of your company from the outside.
If you want to find out more about how to design and implement both internal and external systems please contact us here.
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