Track, Measure and Grow your business smarter with Smarter Biz Excel Add-in
Smarter Biz Technologies is a Bangalore based technology startup focused on developing mobile business process automation platforms and solutions. The company’s most widely used application, Smarter Biz, is a next generation mobile CRM that seamlessly works with Microsoft Excel and is designed to help business owners automate their entire sales network. The application gives companies the ability to store their customer information in one secure location and update their entire sales network with a single click – ensuring that all customer appointments can automatically be viewed and distributed to the entire sales team. Effectively an Excel Add-in, Smarter Biz also enables users to streamline and automate their end-to-end sales tracking process by functioning as a personal sales assistant - providing users with real-time status updates for all of their customer communications including: call logs, appointment statuses, new leads, payment progress, GPS locations, etc. Plus, users have the ability to instantly create and share digital business cards, product brochures, and service catalogs directly from their mobile device – guaranteeing that they can effectively connect or follow-up with their customers.
“Perhaps the most common problem for sales managers is how to effectively manage their mobile sales team and get a real-time view of their entire customer network,” says Smarter Biz Co-founder & CTO Vijay Krishna, “Many of India’s small business transactions rely on oral agreements, making it difficult for business owners to track and execute their customer contracts. At Smarter Biz, we are committed to developing tools that will help digitalize the entire sales process and help companies of any kind, regardless of their technology experience, efficiently and effectively conduct their services.”
Developed primarily for small and medium sized businesses (SMB’s), Smarter Biz is committed to helping SMB’s throughout the region, particularly fledgling startups, automate their business network without investing in pricey IT updates. According to Krishna, “India is a frontier for startups and small businesses, but many of these companies lack the capital to make large investments, or any investment, in IT automation. We want to provide a solution that will allow companies of any size to digitalize and automatize their entire network, without sacrificing their operating budget. Hopefully, this will allow businesses to continue their day-to-day operations, but with a better chance of success.”
Although Smarter Biz Technologies began as a small, localized startup, the company has quickly expanded throughout India and currently boasts a user-base of over 1,000 customers. The company hopes to reach the 5,000 user plateau before the summer of 2017 and has focused their sights on competing in new markets, particularly in South America.
A member of the BizSpark Plus program, Smarter Biz built their application using a combination of the Azure stack and a variety of open source solutions. Hosted in the Azure Cloud network, Smarter Biz leverages Machine Learning to improve their predictive analytics and identify customer trends, and Power BI to analyze and monitor business transactions. The application also uses Azure Bot Framework to guarantee that their customers can quickly and easily deploy the solution, regardless of their technological expertise, and Microsoft SQL for backend database operations. Additionally, the entire solution is integrated with Office 365 to make it easier for businesses to migrate their sales information and distribute it to their sales team.
According to Krishna, Smarter Biz has greatly benefitted from their use of Azure technologies and their relationship with Microsoft: “Participating in the BizSpark Plus program has been a big boost for our business. Microsoft tools have helped us to build a CRM that can help any sales manager or business owners The technology and support we have received have helped us to expand regionally and improve the lives of many local business owners. Plus, the money we have saved has enabled us to set our sights on expanding into new markets and helping new businesses improve their services.”
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Microsoft is helping these startups succeed through its BizSpark program. To join or see other startup stories, visit us at our website here. To listen to our startups, check out these podcasts on devradio here.
About BizSpark: Microsoft BizSpark is a global program that helps startups succeed by giving free access to Microsoft Azure cloud services, software and support. BizSpark members receive up to $750 per month of free Microsoft Azure cloud services for 3 years: that’s $150 per month each for up to 5 developers. Azure works with Linux and open-source technologies such as Linux, Ruby, Python, Java and PHP. BizSpark is available to startups that are privately held, less than 5-years-old and earn less than $1M in annual revenue.