smallbusiness.co.uk: Helping your business think big

SmallBusiness.co.uk investigates more intelligent approaches to growing your turnover through the use of technology.

In 2007, Will Tyler, CEO of specialist display company Octink discovered a system that allowed him to see who was looking at his website and how they were looking at it, and provided a platform on which to carry on a conversation with them.

The ‘web intelligence’ software builds profiles of customers’ journeys as they engage with a website over time. This enables the user to understand the customers’ interests and focus resources accordingly to drive sales.

‘We took on the tool in November just after the financial crisis hit. We were looking for something innovative and new that would give us a sales edge because the world and his wife were out there desperately trying to sell,’ says Tyler.

In February 2009, the company secured £40,000 worth of orders through the software, and in its first year it contributed to 25 per cent of Octink’s sales, equating to £200,000 of new business.

Sometimes, winning business is about offering more to existing customers so that they stay with you. Courier service Parcel2Go increased email marketing revenue by 20 per cent from April to September this year following the introduction of delivery confirmation emails to customers featuring real-time shipping information.

Head of retention marketing Chris Brooker-Carey says that the emails also contain “offer of the week” notifications, customer surveys to fill out, and tips and advice on booking, packaging and sending parcels. The ‘triggered email marketing’ technology used by the company has yielded better results with less time and manpower, leading to an increase in revenue per month of around £35,000 since the system was implemented in March. ‘The email campaign not only continues to drive increased business, it also allows us to achieve higher inbox delivery rates and improved customer satisfaction,’ says Brooker-Carey.

Improving customer experience was also behind the decision of taxi company Addison Lee to introduce a tracking system to allocate jobs to drivers. This has driven a 29 per cent rise in business capacity compared with the days when the process was performed manually.

IT director Peter Ingram says, ‘In the old days, controllers spoke to the driver a lot and the process was very manual, but our new technology makes it cleverer, faster and more intuitive.’

The tracking system uses an algorithm based on variables such as time of day, traffic flow and the experience of the driver, ending with the mobile number of the driver being sent to the customer.

The technology is not cheap – the company spends around £2 million a year on servers, software and hardware – but the results have made the investment well worth it, with the system allowing 3,000 more jobs to be carried out per day, with an average customer spend of £30 per job.

Ingram concludes, ‘This investment is key to our vision to take over the industry and do it bigger and better than everyone else.’

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