When we think of software development, sometimes our minds can move towards all things Startup. With the buzz given to new startups and funding, you could be forgiven for thinking software development is heavily skewed to developing and building startups.

Funding routes within the Startup industry is somewhat formulaic. Starting with a concept and after researching the market size and opportunity you will have a variety of options to fund your idea. This usually comes in the form of a friends and family funding round, pitching to angel investors, crowdfunding on platforms such as Seedrs, or, you can self fund your app development.

Standard practice would be for your first investment to fund your prototype in the form of a design sprint – then build your MVP.

After you build your MVP – the name of the game is traction, and then likely taking proof of concept and perhaps early-stage revenue and pitching to Seed Funds and Venture Capital (VC) firms.

That’s how you fund your Software in a Startup.

What about an Enterprises and SME’s?

These businesses that may be less desirable to investment from Venture Capital institutions, and equally, may find VC terms unappealing.

Typically, to fund software development within these Enterprises, you are faced with a small number of choices.

• You can fund software development from your balance sheet
• Or you can finance software development through company loans.

Loans are repayable, and balance sheet funding can be difficult, especially if you have company debt to be paid, or wish to reinvest profits in different elements of your business.

But, there is one underutilised form of funding software development in Enterprises and SME’s often neglect, and this is through R&D tax credits.

How To Fund Enterprise Software Development?

When I caught up with Jonathan Alford-Leach, Senior Business Development Manager at Signature Tax R&D, he managed to shine a light on how Software can qualify for R&D tax relief.

“Software is continually evolving, and new applications for Software are constantly being developed (e.g. robots, augmented reality, IoT and more).

Any company that is developing Software could qualify for R&D tax relief. If a business has a team of software developers to support other companies in their software projects, they too can make an application. This includes the provision of Software as a Service (SaaS), business tools or enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.”

So How Do I Qualify?

To qualify, you need to demonstrate how the Software will advance the overall knowledge or capability against an existing product. The improvement can not be adapted from freely available information. This is good news if your business resolves difficulties and challenges that have not to net been overcome by a competent professional in a field.

So what constitutes an entity that may be able to benefit from R&D tax relief?

“An example could be, the development of a new software capability to improve the speed of the system. It might be the optimisation or re-architecting or combination of different technologies that did not previously integrate. Or improvement in the capability of an existing product or system.”

It can’t merely be tweaking a software platform just for your business. Still, it could include adapting custom-made systems for integration (with web programs, new hardware, new devices or making older technologies work in conjunction with each other).

If you are interested in connecting with Jonathan online feel free to connect on Linkedin here

For further information on software development and outsourced software development book a call with one of the Business Development team at Jyst

Live chat is still a relatively new way of letting your customers to converse with your support team in real-time. It can be used to to ask questions, get guidance or just enhance customer confidence while making a purchase.

With services like Crisp, Drift, Intercom.io, and ConvertFox  it’s easier than ever to add a human touch to your website or platform whilst conveying your brand story and resolving customer issues in realtime and simultaneously.

The American Express 2017 Customer Service Barometer reports that almost 33% of Americans consider taking their business elsewhere after just a single instance of inadequate customer service. You don’t need a degree in Marketing to know that high-quality customer service is critical to the long-term success and growth of your organization.

Catering to every question, concern and comment of your existing and potential customers can be time-consuming and a drain on your resources. Take a look at 5 ways in which you can use live chat to offer a hassle-free customer support for your business:

Provide answers fast and in real time:

According to a recent Forrester research, 44% of frequent online shoppers agreed that having someone immediately respond to their queries through live chat influences their purchasing decision and is one of the most important features a platform could offer. Not only this, almost 55% of customers abandon their cart midway if they don’t find a quick answer to their questions, which proves that while live chat can be a convenient way to provide on-demand support, it also improves conversion rates for your business.

When you communicate with your customers directly from your platform’s product page, you are able to address their concerns faster, as they don’t have to rely on email, phone or FAQs to get help. Drift, a conversational marketing platform, conducted a study involving 433 sales teamsto learn how fast they were responding to inquiries from new customers, and if their response time actually affected the overall lead generation. They reported a 10x decrease in your chances of getting in touch with a lead that has been left without a response for 5 minutes.

In the fast-paced world of today, where thousands of businesses out there are providing the same product or service as you, why would a customer wait 48 hours for your support team to assist them? Acknowledging a potential customer right away gives a better impression, and live chat helps you do just that.

Integrate with your CRM:

Imagine you’re the owner of a fairly popular restaurant, with several repeat customers, like, that woman who always requests for gluten-free food, or the man who orders the same drink every time. In an ideal scenario, you’d recognize them and cater to their requirements accordingly, however,  in this instance, you have no idea what “same as always” or “the usual” means when they place an order. Eventually, the customers stop returning because you fail to build a rapport with them.

Storing your customer’s information helps you serve them better when they get in touch with you. Live chats can be easily integrated with your CRM, where you can efficiently collect and store details of all the customers you talk to. When your support team receives a message on live chat, any customer data like name, IP address, social media accounts, phone, and email, are captured by the CRM.

Next time, when you speak to the same customer, you can make use of tools like Lead DNA by Tubular to pull all the information you have on them from the CRM to provide a more personalized support experience. With a CRM integrated live chat, your team can finally spend less time looking up customer data in the admin dashboard and more time pursuing hot leads.

Create friendly greetings:

Most live chats have an ‘auto trigger’ functionality that greets customers based on pre-defined criteria, such as, time, location, first-time customer, referral customer, etc. For example, when a customer has been on the pricing page for a while, your live chat can automatically pop up with a message saying, ‘Hi, do you have any specific questions regarding our pricing?’ On a similar note, if a customer is browsing the ‘shoes’ category on your eCommerce store, you can push them to make a purchase by saying, ‘Hey, we’re offering 10% OFF on all shoes purchased today. Interested?’

Live chat greetings can be a great way to emphasize the tone of your brand. Do you prefer to keep it professional and to-the-point or would rather take the conversational, quirky approach? Regardless of your choice, remember to come across as approachable, so the customer is comfortable bringing their questions and concerns to your table. Since you already have information about where the customer is from, you can also customize your greeting to their local language. To give it a more ‘human’ touch, add a picture of your support team member or a friendly avatar to the live chat that shows alongside your messages, including the greeting.

Have Templates answers ready:

Templates or ‘canned responses’ shorten the response time for your support team, allowing them to communicate with more customers. Create a ‘canned response’ sheet by compiling answers to the most commonly asked questions, which can then be used during a live chat or even when you’re responding to tickets. You can save URLs, common experiences, lengthy instructions, foreign names, complex addresses, and essentially anything that you find yourself typing repeatedly.

A lot of platforms allow you to save canned responses in the live chat itself to save you the back and forth of referring to a separate document. This can especially come in handy when your support team is busy or is not able to give their full attention to the customer at any given moment.

You can also choose to include a line or two about an ongoing promotional offer, discount or coupon in your canned responses, as well. For maximum impact, make sure your templates are personalized, friendly, conversational and have a ‘human’ touch to them.

Help people when you are asleep:

When you have a customer base spanning different time zones, you might not be able to respond to their queries outside of your business hours. In today’s fast-paced world, where the internet is always ‘on’, you might miss out on potential customers and leads while you sleep. Luckily, with live chat, you can engage with customers 24/7 by automating it to capture vital information like customer’s name, email, and their question while you’re away.

Once you’re online again, you can use this information to get back to the customer and assist them with the issue they are facing with your platform.

According to Econsultancy, 79% of customers said they prefer live chat over other forms of communication to get their questions answered. With live chat, you not only get a better customer experience using, more conversions, and a higher average order value from customers engaging with your business online.

If your interested in building a workflow to capture leads on your website then click in the chat tab in the bottom right hand corner to chat to one of the team.