Ecommerce fulfilment made easy with ekmPowershop.com and SixWorks

1 in every 5 online shop owners can look forward to hassle free order fulfilment this week, through ekmPowershop.com's latest cloud partner, SixWorks.

Six provides a complete order fulfilment service at the push of a button, allowing for truly hands-off selling. This latest integration with ekmPowershop.com not only takes care of the warehousing and delivery of products; but also provides customisable, branded paperwork, customer emails and much more.

Automated order transfer, return of delivery/tracking info and up-to-the second stock level sharing are all easily achieved through SixWork’s comprehensive fulfilment solution, combined with ekmPowershop.com’s market leading ecommerce software.

How do online shop owners take a much deserved break when their business is open 24/7, 365 days of the year? In a word: fulfilment. And that’s exactly what Six does with a process that’s invisible to the end user.

John Bradbury from ekmPowershop.com says: “The ‘final mile’ is often overlooked by many businesses when they start selling online. As the operation scales, fulfilment of the order efficiently and on time can be one of the biggest challenges they face.

If consumers experience any problems in receiving their goods ordered over the internet, then you can be sure to garner a bad reputation quickly in a market that’s full of competition. Six’s integration with ekmPowershop.com means clients can re-route all of their stock to Six’s warehouse facilities, and forget about the hassle of despatches and holding their own stock - for good.”

ekmPowershop.com’s back office integrations now include multi channel stock control, order fulfilment, pick and pack solutions and an accountancy software integration due for announcement in a matter of weeks.

“We’re pushing the back office aspect of ekmPowershop.com in terms of 3rd party integrations, and for us this latest integration ticks a very large box, as  Six offer such a comprehensive fulfilment solution.

Get your first month of pick and pack fees with SixWorks for free!

* Discount applies to all picking and packing fees as well as any management costs. Excludes storage, goods in, postage and packaging materials (if used). To qualify for this offer, companies must agree to use our services before the end of February 2012, and must claim their free month before or during June 2012.

FACTFILE:
Founded in 2002 by then 22 year old Antony Chesworth, the main products ekmPowershop.com and ekmResponse.com have grown to become the UK’s largest ecommerce and email marketing software software platforms, powering 1 in every 5 online shops in the UK.

Clients include Lotus Cars, O2, Michelin Tyres, Future Publishing, Madame Tussauds, The NHS, ITV, The BBC and thousands of SMEs.

ekmPowershop.com and ekmResponse.com have become the dominant forces in ‘off the shelf’ ecommerce and email marketing throughout the UK and beyond, helping over 17,000 businesses sell their products over the internet since its inception.

Other Ekm Systems products and services include website CMS (ekmSiteBuilder.com), Web Design (ekmWebDesign.com), web hosting (ekmHosting.com), Geo IP Redirection (ekmCompass.com), Web Statistics (ekmPinpoint.com), Postcode Lookup (Postcodeferret.com) and digital delivery (ekmDigitalVault.com).

==About SixWorks:==

Six is a leading UK-based fulfilment company, offering stock management, pick, pack & despatch services. Based in Cambridgeshire on the M11 corridor, Six ship domestically and internationally through a variety of couriers.

Six is entirely invisible to the end customer, providing customisable, branded paperwork and customer emails. Six’s fulfilment software platform is bespoke, developed in-house as a fully cloud-based application. This, combined internal processes, help Six to achieve a 99.98% accuracy rate on order processing (that's fewer than 1 mistake in every 5,000 orders).

Six guarantee to despatch 100% of orders placed before the 3pm daily cut-off the same day. Six’s secure web application lets clients check on goods-in, stock levels and order status in real-time, any time, from any device with an internet connection.

Other key benefits include:

• Six keep a complete and searchable history of everything we do, and use it to generate insightful management reporting

• Six serve clients from all round the world and in all markets, from health food to home brewing, trainers to thermal underwear.

• Most clients need never handle their stock, their suppliers send directly to our warehouse - we simply send out samples to them as required

• Ability to receive and process returns

• Our storage rates only consider the actual space used, no rounding up to full pallets or minimum storage commitments

• Clients have a named account manager always available by phone and email

For more information on SixWorks please contact James Hyde on enquiries@sixworks.co.uk or call 01223 967 610.

Customise Facebook for your visitors

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Like It Pages have developed an application which allows businesses to fully customise their Facebook pages.

Like It Pages is an online tool through which you can create and edit different tabs within your Facebook fan page in a similar way to a website. This application allows companies to add their services, products, case studies or offers in minutes and edit all the content as you please.

More than 90% of the small businesses who have a Facebook business page make 1 fundamental mistake - they direct their fans straight to their wall.

By doing so they fail to convert a big percentage of their visitors into fans and they also fail to tell their fans exactly what they do and therefore lose out on sales and enquiries.
By driving visitors to a dedicated landing page, giving them a clear reason or incentive to join their fan page,they can double their fan conversions.

Furthermore, by offering exclusive content to fans only and promoting services or products clearly on the page in addition to the wall, they will significantly increase enquiries or sales.

I know that coded professional page costs can run into hundreds if not thousands of pounds, well at LikeIt they have designed a portal which will allow engagement with customers and show the company in the best possible way at a fraction of that cost. With a starting rate of only £11.99 per month they can have a professional Facebook page which is every bit as good if not better than the competition (and in this current economic climate this is paramount).

It takes under 5 minutes to install a landing page but it will have a massive impact on the Facebook fan conversion rate.

LikeIt provides the perfect platform to not only promote products/services online through your Facebook page to new clients and it will also ensure returning “friends” will find your latest products/services and promotions.

Every major company and brand is now directing people to their Facebook page as they now realise that Facebook has provided the perfect way to interact with their customer base. LikeIt can offer the platform to do this easily and professionally.

Like It Pages is available FREE for a 14 DAY TRIAL. This allows businesses to see how easy the program is to use and how great Facebook pages can become.

LikeIt! is a product of Art Division, a team of highly professional and experienced programmers and marketers based in London. Starting life as a web design company 10 years ago they have honed this skill down to a fine art and can boast over 50,000 web pages, designed, developed and published for a long list of satisfied customers.

However, as a forward thinking business they recognise a website needs more than to just look good, and this is where the rest of their services, such as online marketing and SEO, have excelled further especially during the past 3 years.

For further information please contact Brian Huff at Like It Pages on 0845 0177525
or visit our  www.likeitpages.com
or Facebook page www.facebook.com/likeitpages

Splunk Launches Splunk® Enterprise™ 4.3

Latest Version Delivers the Power of Operational Intelligence on the Go

Splunk Inc., a leading provider of software for real-time operational intelligence, today announced the general availability of Splunk® Enterprise™ 4.3, the company’s flagship software for collecting, indexing and harnessing machine data.

“All kinds of companies are using Splunk to harness the value in their machine data. With their needs in mind, we’ve made Splunk 4.3 more powerful and usable for any situation and on any device,” said Erik Swan, Splunk CTO and co-founder.

Splunk 4.3 builds upon the innovation of previous product releases, adding compelling benefits for both IT and business users:

• Mobile: New non-Flash user interface delivers the power of Splunk anywhere
• More powerful: Up to 10x more concurrent users and 10x faster search, on the same deployment
• Easier to use: Dashboards now editable by business users and executives.

The Splunk 4.3 beta program has resulted in positive feedback from its customers:

“Almost everything I do using Splunk’s user interface takes half the time in 4.3. The new features mean that I am able to do so much more, and in a more intuitive way,” said Eddie Satterly, senior director of architecture & engineering at Expedia, one of the world’s largest online travel agencies. “At Expedia, we have over 2,700 users of Splunk, and being able to provide dashboards on iPads means we can get more data to more people when they want it.”

“At Ceryx, messaging and collaboration is our business, and we go to Splunk to monitor service levels and look for abuse. Having Splunk dashboards available on iPads means we now gain real-time visibility across our infrastructure from wherever we are,” said Derek Mock, director of software development at Ceryx, a Toronto-based managed IT services company specialising in private cloud-based messaging and collaboration solutions for enterprise clients.

“The data preview feature speeds up the administration of Splunk and saves time so I can deliver services faster to customers and clients,” said Thomas Paulsen, systems administrator at global multichannel retailer Otto Group GmbH.

New features in Splunk 4.3 include:

• A more powerful user interface:
o Availability on non-Flash-enabled mobile devices
o Being easier for business users: Users no longer have to edit XML to edit dashboards
o Ability to access real-time and historical analysis in a single step
o Accessing vital granular trend data at-a-glance via sparklines

• Speed and scale
o Up to 10X faster “needle in a haystack” search
o Up to 10X more concurrent users on same deployment

• Easier manageability
o Ability to preview new data sources before indexing
o Expanded controls for operational monitoring
o Easier alignment to complex enterprise security policies.

“Splunk is at the forefront of helping organisations harness their big data,” said Rachel Chalmers, research director of infrastructure management at The 451 Group. “Splunk 4.3 is an exciting, logical and evolutionary step that embraces mobility and increased ease of use. Splunk 4.3 is especially important for business users, with dashboards that provide insights - integrating real-time and historical data for analysis, and which are easy for business users to personalise on the fly.”

Splunk 4.3 is available immediately as a free download. For more on the Splunk 4.3 release:

• Download a free copy
• Watch the Splunk 4.3 video
• Read about what’s new in Splunk 4.3

FACTFILE:
Splunk® Inc. provides the engine for machine data™. Splunk software collects, indexes and harnesses the massive machine data continuously generated by the websites, applications, servers, networks and mobile devices that power business.

Splunk software enables organisations to monitor, search, analyse, visualise and act on massive streams of real-time and historical machine data. More than 3,300 enterprises, universities, government agencies and service providers in more than 75 countries use Splunk Enterprise to gain operational intelligence that deepens business understanding, improves service and uptime, reduces cost and mitigates cybersecurity risk. To learn more please visit www.splunk.com/company.

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BT Business advises SMEs to prepare for London 2012 economic boost or risk missing out

BT Business has revealed that a lack of preparation could see some of the UK's small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) miss out on an economic boost from the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Nearly a third (30 per cent) haven't yet taken basic measures according to new research by BT.

The new survey conducted by BT of 600 UK SMEs finds overall attitudes are positive despite tough economic conditions.

Fifteen per cent of SMEs said they are already involved in London 2012 and of those, 58 per cent are supplying products and services to the organisers. Even if they don't expect to be directly affected themselves, more than two in five (41 per cent) said they have customers in London who will be affected by the Games - and that this in turn will affect their organisation.

Around one in five expects to profit from the Games. 33 per cent in the private sector anticipate a sales hike and SMEs in the public sector expect service quality to improve. More than one in five (22 per cent) expect new international business opportunities both during and after London 2012.

64 per cent of SMEs expect some negative effects, with supply chain disruption, higher hotel costs, staff attendance and a knock to productivity high among concerns. More than one third of SMEs expect resourcing difficulties when staff want time off or are not able to get to work. Positively, more than three quarters (76 per cent) of the largest SMEs already have flexible working policies in place and one in ten will be asking logistics staff not to take leave during London 2012.

Asked about the impact on supply chains, 64 per cent expect some disruption but 40 per cent of these (25 per cent of the total) are not doing anything, seemingly leaving their business continuity to chance.

These issues could threaten hopes of a business boost in light of previous BT research on the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games, which found that roughly half (49 per cent) of local companies felt they could have done better from the event or missed out on opportunities.

Colin Hansen, the former British Columbia Minister responsible for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games, said: "British SMEs should be optimistic because the Olympics had a huge economic benefit in Vancouver and across Canada as a whole. But the scale of the event was much bigger than anybody expected and many companies just weren't geared up for how big the opportunity would be."

Graham Sutherland, managing director, BT Business said: "Despite the tough economic times, our customers tell us that they're positive about the opportunity to grow and develop their businesses during the Games. With less than seven months to go, we encourage them to prepare now to make the most of the potential profits on offer, by putting systems and processes in place that allow them to deliver an exemplary service to their customers."

For more information see http://business.bt.com/london-2012.

Email Marketing Benchmark Report 2012

Despite the economic turmoil, latest benchmark figures show that email marketing is still a valuable marketing tool and is providing great results for UK businesses.

The 2012 UK Email Marketing Benchmark Report from Sign-Up.to shows an increase in average email open rates from 18.21% to 18.35% in the last 12 months across all sectors.

The report breaks down results across 23 industries and provides a great way for marketers to compare their performance against their peers. The business to business sales category leads the pack this year with an impressive average unique open rate of 26.14%, followed closely by restaurants with 23.67%. The music industry also performed well, with an average open rate of 21.46%.

Outside of the private sector, government and charity email communications proved very successful too, notching up 31.17% and 23.25% open rates respectively.

Sign-Up.to’s CEO and email marketing expert Matt McNeill said: “It’s great to see that UK businesses, particularly SME’s, are continuing to get great results from email. With marketing budgets under pressure email marketing is an ideal way to build lasting relationships with people without breaking the bank.”

The full 2012 edition of Sign-Up.to’s UK Email Marketing Benchmark Report is now available for free at http://www.sign-up.to/email-benchmark-2012/

The report is the only UK focussed email marketing benchmark for small to medium sized businesses and is based on over 900 million emails sent using the Sign-Up.to platform last year. All emails are permission-based, sent to subscribers who explicitly opted in to hear from the sender.

Sign-Up.to is a 9 years old, UK based provider of interactive marketing tools which enable businesses of all sizes to manage their social, mobile and email marketing. Clients include thousands of small businesses as well as major brands including Prezzo Restaurants, The Economist and Tourism Thailand. www.sign-up.to

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