Xamun

Online Business Management and Collaboration Platform for Consultants

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Xamun Enabling Consultants to Work Anytime, Anywhere

We can often hear “work-life” balance in motivational posters around the office or it might be mentioned on one of the lifestyle pep talks HR offers but does it remain less in practice, or worse, stay in theory?

Weekends are most looked forward to but from experience it’s not the free time per se we desire. What we look for is essentially the freedom from the constraints of work. Before anything else, yes, we love our work but there are times when we just want hit ourselves on the head for missing a family gathering or skipping out on our children’s first school play. This is where the concept of telecommuting comes.

At this day and age, I’d like to think we are enlightened workers, knowing how to utilize the tools made available for us to our own advantage. Technology and the internet have allowed us to have an alternative work-site where our work comes to us and not the other way around. We are not bounded by physical restraints of the location.

Telecommuting is described as a work arrangement which employees enjoy flexibility in work location and hours. The most common term for telecommute is “work from home” but since it’s operating virtually, we can now absolutely work from anywhere in the world be it home, a coffee shop, or even your vacation house in Rio.

Telecommute has plenty of mention-worthy benefits such as increased job satisfaction, reduced stress from commute time and finances, work interruption, and reduced job related costs. However, one benefit that we like to associate with telecommute is having the quintessence of freedom—freedom to choose when to work, where to work, and who to work with.

The statistics are right on chart as well. According to a CIO Insight report conducted in 2010, U.S. businesses can save an estimated amount of $400 billion due to virtual work policies; $124 billion can be saved from reduced office costs; $31 billion saved through reduced employee turnover annually; and employees will save two weeks of free time by not commuting to an office.

With the technology we have today, transforming a company, even starting your own virtual company is possible. Click here to learn how.

Get heard on Xamun with Get Satisfaction!

Get Satisfaction is known as a customer community software platform that caters to customer-centric discussions and information exchange. In its conception, it showed results of customers wanting to help each other out by answering questions, posting queries and offering suggestions.

As a business solution, Xamun found GetSat to be an intuitive and friendly environment that in turn reflects our philosophy as a company. Such philosophies that mirror ours are: receptiveness to opinions and ideas, transparency in discussions, and providing simplified answers to complex questions. If you’re following our twitter feed, you’ll see that we’ve housed a more elaborate FAQ section on GetSat where you can post follow up questions and discuss best practices on approaching certain roadblocks. The community is up and being maintained by our earnest Support Team and we will continually build other sections such as videos, tutorials, etc.

You don’t have to sign up for Get Satisfaction although it is greatly recommended especially if you like to proactively participate in the community. You can easily log in with your Twitter, Facebook, Google Account, Windows Live, and OpenID and you can already start posting!

We like to hear what you want to see on Xamun’s Get Satisfaction community. We hope to see you there!

Xamun Release Notes - Freelance Edition

Freelance Features List

Xamun Freelance edition is now available! Check out the features in this release that are tailor-fit for today’s freelance consultants.

 

My Profile

This section is all about you. Setup your personal profile; update your educational information, skills, and employment history.


Dashboard

Your Personal Dashboard includes the modules Client, Engagement Calendar, Project, and Timesheet Management. It’s your one-stop dash that connects to your business essentials.

Client module allows you to add detailed client information for a more efficient customer relationship management. As a freelance user, you can also request for client connection through existing Xamun corporate users and delete or disconnect if deemed necessary. Manage your engagement calendar, contacts and documents through the Client module and sort them individually per client reference. You can also view the following integrated modules such as Prospects/Leads, Contracts, Invoices, Projects, and Reviews.

Engagement Calendar allows you to manage your existing projects and at the same time detail out your project descriptions and involvements. You can customize your calendar into the following categories: Daily, weekly, Bi-weekly, monthly, Quarterly, Semi-annually, and Annually.

Project module allows you to oversee all the aspects of your business activities. View current project listings and track their progress by accessing them through the quick search feature. Explore other opportunities by viewing project resource requests and assignments. You can also view the following integrated modules such as Task Management, Task Board Management, Milestone and Release Management, Impediments Management, Leaves Management, Timesheet Management, and Contacts Management.

Timesheet Management is your fully integrated timesheet tracker for your freelance business. Segregate task views as Billable or Non-billable, update timesheet, access your online and offline tasks and efficiently update them anywhere in the world.

Talkback

Talkback serves as your Xamun messenger. Communicate and collaborate seamlessly with your clients and colleagues.

Sales Contract

This feature allows you to view all sales contracts in a grid view.

 

Invoice

Get paid on time! This feature enables you to create invoices and customize important details such as discounts, terms, and balance computations. You can save invoice drafts for later references. Choose to preview it in soft copy, have them printed or send through e-mail to clients. The invoice grid view will also give you an overview of your billings and invoices.


Notifications

For this release, Notifications will alert you on pending client requests, projects, engagements and unpaid invoices.

Xamun Release Notes - Corporate Edition

Xamun Features List

Xamun Corporate edition is now available! Read more about how Xamun incorporates the art of collaboration in the consulting business.

 

My Day

My Day is a feature of Xamun that lets you create, monitor and manage your daily business activities, tasks, and schedule. Manage your daily weekly tasks and have it readily assigned or approved. Monitor your business end by viewing your billable and non-billable tasks via the individual team member feature.

Contacts Management

This feature will help you in the basic set up of your contact management. Create and easily sort through your contact profiles. Integrate your LinkedIn account and synch your public contacts in Xamun. Same goes for synching and importation of contacts from MS Outlook and Constant Contact. Better manage your contacts by customizing groups according to your preference.

Support Management

Support Management is your ticketing application within Xamun. Create, manage, and assign tickets to the parties involved and attach files to support ticket requests. You can also archive ticket history for later reference.

Personal Dashboard

Set up your personal account information and settings in Xamun’s personal dashboard. Share messages, links, files, and tag comments with like or dislike on threads among team members and networks.

Your personal dashboard connects you to all the aspects of your business including leaves and training. Monitor the team’s organizational chart; receive training schedule notifications; track personal and team evaluations; and monitor their leaves and training.

Tenant Management

With Tenant Management, you can now set up and update your company information. Detail out your company departments, position, employment status, and initial employee information listing.

License Management

In this section, you can see your license acquisition and billing information update. Monitor and manage your available licenses and allocate, assign or reassign them accordingly.

Client Management Setup

In Client Management Setup, you can lay down your preferred sales processes and methods and your sales business rules and workflow. Define target quotas and incentives per individual or team.

Client

The Client module is your customer relationship management application in Xamun. For this release, you can now use lead management, opportunity management, account management, sales management, sales contract management, and sales invoice management.


Resource

The Resource module will enable you to access your Human Resource data. In this release you can access the following sections:

  • Employee Master File Management
  • Time off Management
  • Recruitment Management
  • Resource Skills Training Management
  • Employee Performance Evaluation and Management
  • Resource Package Adjustments and Movement

Resource Management Setup

This section will help you in establishing resource organizational information and structure; managing resource business rules and workflow; and defining your resource settings and standards.

Projects

Projects module is your project management application that helps you in performing your tasks in the most efficient way possible. Included in this release are the following functions:

  • Project dashboard monitoring
  • Project progress management
  • Project resource request or assignment
  • Task management (individual, team view)
  • Task board management
  • Milestone, release management
  • Impediments management
  • Leaves management
  • Timesheet management
  • Contacts management

Project  Management Setup

This section allows you to establish project type, methodology, task estimation, cycle, duration, work hours, main contacts, and initial velocity.

Strategy Management

The Strategy management section is integrated to four applications. Finance will allow you to view and monitor the Profit and Loss graph. For this release, you can now integrate the finance module to your existing Xero account.

Access the client module through Strategy and monitor your opportunity and accounts pipeline. You can also view your Projects and Resource modules. For this release you can monitor your project progress, resource recruitment view and resource position headcount.

Resource Allocation

Resource allocation allows you to monitor and manage resource requirements, match projects to resources according to availability and skills, monitor and manage resource utilization by position, view resource performance evaluation and initiate resource recruitment.

Use of CRM in Improving Customer Experience

CRM or Customer Relationship Management is a solution geared towards effective management and relationship building and strengthening with clients, customers and sales prospects. It is a tool that organizes, automates, and synchronizes business processes. Experts have recommended that using CRM software is a tool to improve customer experience.

Here are some key highlights on how CRM improves CX:

  • Systematic process of passing leads and service requests – Through this CRM attribute, no lead gets lost, everything gets in the system and if the lead becomes unqualified, it will still be kept as reference. This way, no bridges are being burnt.
  • CRM keeps track of your appointments, follow-up calls, and discussion logs – Being updated results to work efficiency and minimal cost which will benefit both you and your client.
  • CRM captures customer and prospect interaction (from customer issues to important notes, alerts, scheduling of tasks etc.). Being on the same page with your client improves customer experience.
  • CRM helps you in personalizing the customer experience – Incorporating your CRM software with the entire company will help you in studying customer behavior. Keeping track of your client information, not just on the surface will help you in attending to what they need and want.
  • Some CRM software such as Xamun offer Resource Allocation and Billing which provides the required resource billing info to make dynamic and effective proposals.
  • Xamun also has a partial/installation payment terms which makes the payment terms and processes flexible in accordance to the need of the client.
  • CRM also provides better profiling and customer targeting.

The features stated above are just few of the offerings Xamun CRM has in store for you. To learn more about CRM and its features, check out Xamun.

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