Scott Albro, the author of the article, Replicating the F500 Back Office: 10 Things Every Small Business Should Buy (F500 Handbook), is the founder and CEO of Focus and has been a contributor to the growth of several successful Silicon Valley start ups. Focus.com is a resource for business professionals who need high quality research and access to a community of experts.

We appreciate the inclusion in such great company. Mr Albro writes, “Even advanced call center automation is now available to businesses of all sizes with services like FonGenie.”

Please read the entire article/analysis here:

Introduction
Small businesses everywhere are now replicating the capabilities of F500 enterprises with remarkable ease. This is especially true with respect to horizontal business functions that reside in the back office. These are functions that are dedicated to running the business itself, like human resources, finance, and procurement. Thanks in large part to the internet, the build out of these functions has become a straightforward proposition. This Brief looks at the basics of how a small business can leverage back office capabilities that have historically been the domain of the large enterprise. It’s part of series of Briefs that examine how even the smallest of businesses can build a F500 enterprise from scratch.

Analysis
Here are 10 tools that any size business can use to build out a Fortune 500 back office:

1. Payroll Processing – Often thought of as a tactical function that simply allows a business to pay employees, HR can take on strategic importance when you think about how important it is to hire and retain world class talent in the early days of a business. Get payroll wrong and you will have unhappy employees, guaranteed. You can and should outsource payroll processing to someone who knows the ins and outs of a fairly arcane topic. There are a variety of options here from market leading incumbents like ADP to upstarts like PayCycle (now part of Intuit).
2. Telephony – Voice communication is critical to the success of any size business. Now, full featured phone systems are available to the small business community via hosted options from vendors like Vocalocity and 8×8. Even advanced call center automation is now available to businesses of all sizes with services like FonGenie.
3. IT Infrastructure – There are a range of information technology investments you should make. You will, of course, need a suite of personal productivity tools and applications which are now widely available from the likes of Microsoft and relative newcomer Google Apps. Less obvious investments that you should consider include a back-up system for your mission critical data. Options here vary: for Windows users, there’s Mozy Pro; Apple has the straightforward, intuitive Time Machine; or you can get a little more advanced with something built on Amazon S3. The list of IT investments goes on… from security, to internet connectivity, to storage and virtualization.
4. Accounting Software – While not every business requires a full feature financial management solution, you should adopt an accounting package that handles basic functions such as general ledger, accounts payable, and accounts receivable. And it’s best to invest in a package that will provide more advanced capabilities such later, as your business grows. QuickBooks is the clear market leader in this space, but other vendors like NetSuite may be more appropriate if your business is growing rapidly.
5. Capital – While the current economic climate certainly makes it harder for small businesses to access capital, it’s certainly possible for businesses to more capital efficient than ever. Moreover, there are new models emerging such as peer to peer lending from websites like Prosper that provide businesses with easier access to capital.
6. Benefits – Employees now value and expect benefits to be a common part of their compensation packages. You should consider medical, dental, and 401(K) options as standard benefits that your employees will expect (note though that you should not be expected to match 401(K) contributions by employees). Companies like Trinet can manage the entire benefits process for you.
7. Marketing – It used to be that building and running a world class marketing organization required lots of money and people. Now, there are plenty of lightweight, de-risked marketing solutions available to small businesses that help with both branding and demand generation. Google is the most obvious of these, but plenty of other efficient options exist, including from companies like Facebook.
8. Website – Almost every business has a website now. While many are still stuck in the realm of brochure-ware, there are a variety of tools available for building out enterprise-class functionality such as Shopify, for building out e commerce functionality, and Bazaarvoice, for building out community features.
9. Conferencing – Online conferencing solutions now provide small businesses with the geographic reach that used to be the exclusive domain of Fortune 500 travel budgets. Citrix, WebEx, and Adobe all provide low cost, enterprise class options for conducting online meetings with prospects, partners, and remote employees.
10. Industry Specific Software – Depending upon what type of business you run, you will want to make an investment in software that automates the most complex aspect of your operations. For example, if you are a “supply-dependent” business and want to spend less more efficiently, enterprise class procurement solutions are now available to small businesses from vendors like Coupa. If your business requires personal interaction with prospects and customers, you will want to invest in CRM software from the likes of Salesforce.com or Microsoft Dynamics.

Conclusion
There are certainly many other things that a small business can invest in to replicate a Fortune 500 back office. Please feel free to add to this list in the comments.

Please read this article at its source, along with other interesting business related information at, Focus.com.

FonGenie was one of 10 featured tools (Essential Home Office Tools) in Inc. Magazine’s online Start-Up section. “Here’s a look at 10 gadgets that every home-based entrepreneur should keep within reach.” Though we see ourselves as more than a “Phone Answering System” have a look at what they are saying.

FonGenie Phone Answering System

“Think of FonGenie as a more sophisticated version of Google Voice. Working as an automated service that lets you manage your company’s phone-answering system online, FonGenie enables users to customize phone menu options, and analyze phone traffic. Plus, you can choose between two text-to-speech voices to create messages that provide general business information, answer frequently asked questions, and advertise promotions. After a 60-day free trial, the service costs $30 for 300 minutes, or $150 per month for an unlimited plan.”

Read this Inc Magazine article online, and please leave your comments.

The article opened, “New Offering Features User-Friendly Services Designed to Help Business Owners Close Sales Quicker, Build Business, Boost Revenue and Gain Operations Efficiencies.” Although these assertions can only be realized when FonGenie is integrated and optimized into the business properly the ease and value of FonGenie can be seen as soon as the account is enabled.

Our primary business focus is to assist small businesses to improve their sales, but the implementation of FonGenie is felt even deeper for the business. “To be successful, many small businesses need to be extremely efficient and avoid activities that divert time and resources away from their core focus of customer service and improved selling of their products or services,” said FonGenie founder and CEO, James Im. “FonGenie’s mission is to eliminate many of the time-consuming communications-related hassles experienced by many small businesses today and help the owner boost productivity and profits.”

FonGenie doesn’t just make you money but it helps you to maximize interaction with your telephone as well as for those who call you.

If you are a user of the FonGenie service and need assistance to optimize your account the FonGenie support team is eager to assist you. Contact them by calling 650-200-4400, or call their toll-free number at 888-350-0002. They are also available through the account support tab after you log into your account. We are really interested in your success with our service.

Read the entire article below or follow the link to the original.

FonGenie™ Launches to Help Small Businesses Boost Sales and Profits

New Offering Features User-Friendly Services Designed to Help Business Owners Close Sales Quicker, Build Business, Boost Revenue and Gain Operations Efficiencies

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — According to the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), the failure rate of newly formed business – in their first year – exceeds 50%. It is no surprise then, that small businesses continually evaluate every aspect of their operation to look for new ways to improve productivity, prosper, and become profitable. FonGenie puts a sharp focus on developing a creative, user-friendly service that will help small businesses and retailers increase revenue, reduce costs and grow the business while boosting profits.

FonGenie provides sales support and customer/sales analytics in a single comprehensive web-based platform. No customer hardware is required. It provides superior customer experience over the entire sales cycle — without replacing the all-important human interaction so crucial in satisfying even the most demanding customers. With FonGenie all incoming calls are managed with a professional customizable greeting and an easy-to-configure menu of options that handles the businesses’ most frequently asked questions quickly and easily. These efficiencies allow the business owner to focus on more critical business tasks.

Most important, FonGenie enables the business to further enhance the customer experience through a simple, state-of-the-art text-to-speech engine. Business owners can now effectively target callers with daily specials and incentives that are proven to work and generate added sales. FonGenie’s easy-to-monitor advanced reporting and analytic capabilities track all of the relevant information, including who called, what menu items they listened to prior to making a reservation or ordering, or how many callers needed to learn the business address or hours of operation. Early customers have seen FonGenie increase their sales by more than 15 percent on average, and profits by an even higher rate.

“To be successful, many small businesses need to be extremely efficient and avoid activities that divert time and resources away from their core focus of customer service and improved selling of their products or services,” said FonGenie founder and CEO, James Im. “FonGenie’s mission is to eliminate many of the time-consuming communications-related hassles experienced by many small businesses today and help the owner boost productivity and profits.”

FonGenie offers many features and benefits, such as:

Affordably priced for small and retail businesses. It is a web-based solution, with no special equipment purchases to be made or hardware to install. Businesses can be up and running in minutes!

Provides fully customizable greetings, menu prompts, after-hour messages to callers, voicemail, Twitter integration for on-the-fly updates, and analytics and reporting that tracks the interactive interests of all incoming calls.

Designed to give users a high level of menu flexibility, that provide a custom fit for each business’s customer profiles and needs.

Proven to end distracting and unnecessary inbound sales calls that disturb business flow.

Designed to both fine-tune messages that answer routine inquiries and promote special offerings that boost incremental sales.

Built on a highly intuitive text-to-speech translator that is designed to make updates fast and easy. The message will be understood and can be updated via the intuitive web-based GUI, text messaging (SMS), and even a Twitter account!

The greeting information can easily be updated, giving fresh content to calling customers as often as the business owner chooses. Real-time reporting and analytics show the users how effective their campaigns are so they can be modified for maximum effect.

 

“FonGenie is designed for business owners who want more than just an answering system and respect their customers’ time and informational needs,” Im added. “FonGenie effectively gives their customers the ability to be transferred directly to any number the user chooses for reservations, sales, etc., even cell phones making the FonGenie service highly versatile for a variety of businesses. It also gives calling customers the option to get answers to frequently asked questions, quickly and easily without interfering with normal business routines.”

FonGenie is currently offering trial licenses as part of a formal product launch program. At general release, FonGenie’s service will be offered on a monthly subscription basis.

To learn more about starting a free trial of FonGenie and how it will turbo-charge your sales, please visit www.FonGenie.com

About FonGenie
Currently in limited trial phase, FonGenie improves on traditional communications technology to provide a radically enhanced telecommunication service that alters the way retail and small business owners communicate with their customers. FonGenie is headquartered in Mountain View, California and is led by a veteran team of passionate and experienced entrepreneurs with more than 27 patents to their credit (9 approved and 18 pending).

To learn more about FonGenie please visit us at www.FonGenie.com, or contact us at 650-200-4400.

This is one of many reasons FonGenie is the answer for small retail and service businesses in the United States right now. The more notable is that FonGenie is designed to be an automated sales tool, even though many small businesses find a value in FonGenie as an automated receptionist. You will find that FonGenie is unique. To see what FonGenie can do for you visit FonGenie.com.

Free Automated Phone Answering Service For Small Business

Most small business switched to VoIP, mostly hosted VoIP Services to save money. Today, you might find another great way to cut cost with free phone answering services and save money/resources on call center.

If you are running a retail or services business, you might be getting 30% calls each day asking about your store/office location address, directions to your store or your current promotions? Would you expense your costly call center employees on such calls? Probably not a good idea. How about your setup a phone answering service which handles this type of calls with preconfigured messages.

Most phone answering system obviously comes at a cost however, there is one Free Automated Phone answering service called FonGenie. FonGenie lets you setup a phone answering service for your business for FREE (It will be free for limited time).

You have to understand that FonGenie is in early beta and obviously not 100% perfect. But hey its free and it workable for your small business. You can register and then secure a new phone number for incoming calls and enter the phone number for your store/office location. You can offer your office/store hours and closing days. This should setup a work flow to trigger a voicemail instead of actually ringing a call center number.

Most importantly you can improve sales by putting prompts for promotions, discounts which could improve your sales number significantly. On top of that, you can track data through FonGenie interface to know how many people called and what they did through the prompts. This should give you some ROI on investments and overall cost effectiveness of using FonGenie.

FonGenie is currently free but soon will be paid service. Monthly plans will cost about $30 for a certain number of incoming calls. Unlimited plans will cost about $150-250 each month depending on the size of the business.

If you own a small business, will you use FonGenie? Do let us know your thoughts on this automated phone answering service.

Jaclyn writes this article based on a different perspective from the article about FonGenie that appeared in Small Business Technology (Turning Customer Calls into a Revenue Engine and Productivity Booster, August 19, 2009). Though Jaclyn’s article doesn’t really get very deep into how FonGenie improves small business sales it does say, “you could better direct your callers and in the end, not only to keep their business but possibly sell them an upgrade or a whole other product to make their life easier,” which gives the gist of FonGenie as a sales tool.

Create Sales from Customer Calls

Some business owners, as well as their employees, see customer calls as a hassle, a potential for disaster. However, Small Biz Technology had an interesting point of view on customer calls. It was stated that there is a way for you to turn these calls into more sales for your company.

FonGenie provides an “interactive response” system for incoming callers. What’s neat about it is that it’s all web based and you can program the system by typing. No need to record the voice prompts. FonGenie reads what you type, so you don’t have to record it with your voice.

By avoiding customer calls this creates a potential for loss of sales within your company. Just imagine if you had an automated system such as FonGenie, you could better direct your callers and in the end, not only to keep their business but possibly sell them an upgrade or a whole other product to make their life easier. And this can be done just by having this automated system to better service them and direct them in the first place.

FonGenie also keeps track of what prompts are the most popular by your customers, this means that you can plan ahead and put those more popular prompts first in line. You can also add prompts such as your monthly specials and sales towards the front of the list. This feature in the long run could prove to be very effective in ensuring your customers future business as well as new business by word of mouth from your happy clients.