Elizabeth

Any retail needs to have a pull of regular customers.

One of the ways entrepreneurs and business owners need to improve their skills and knowledge in running a business to succeed is through learning from notable sources. What could be a more convenient way than having access to online educational resources? Here are some of our recommendations: Udemy, Inc. is an American education resource for professional adults and learners. The platform has more than 130,000 courses and enrolls more than 35 million students and 57,000 instructors teaching courses in over 65 languages. The edX is a primary source of free courses from leading universities, including Harvard, Stanford, MIT, University of Pennsylvania, and others Alison is an online education platform that mostly concentrates on workplace-based skills. More:

Entrepreneurs and business owners need to improve their skills and knowledge to succeed—one of the ways of strengthening offered by online educational resources. During the last decade, a MOOC becomes a popular way of learning. A massive open online course (MOOC) is an online course aimed at unlimited participation and free access via the web. Educational websites offer online courses with video lectures as well as quizzes to check the learning process. Many courses have additional interactive learning instruments, such as forums or social media discussions, to support community synergies among students, professors, teaching assistants, and immediate feedback to quick quizzes and assignments. Most of the educational platforms provide their introductory courses for free. However, for additional payment, they usually offer the possibility to get certificates after the successful completion of studies. Udemy Udemy, Inc. is an American education resource for professional adults and learners. It was founded in May 2010 by Eren Bali, Gagan Biyani, and Oktay Caglar. The platform has more than 130,000 courses and enrolls more than 35 million students and 57,000 instructors teaching courses in over 65 languages. Students take courses mainly as a means of improving job-related skills. Some courses generate credit for technical certification. Coursera There are several thousand courses on various topics on Coursera. Business sections contain categories: leadership and management, finance, marketing, entrepreneurship, business essentials, business strategy, and more. Courses are taught by high-level professionals from top universities and companies. Hundreds of free courses provide access to video lectures, homework exercises, and community discussion forums. Paid courses provide additional quizzes and projects as well as a shareable certificate upon completion. edX The edX is a primary source of free courses from leading universities, including Harvard, Stanford, MIT, University of Pennsylvania, and others. Founded in 2012 by Harvard and MIT, edX is home to more than 20 million learners, the majority of top-ranked universities in the world, and industry-leading companies. edX is both a nonprofit and open source. edX delivers courses for curious minds on topics ranging from data and computer science to leadership and communications. Alison Alison is an online education platform that mostly concentrates on workplace-based skills. It was founded in Galway, Ireland, by Irish social entrepreneur Mike Feerick. It has 14 million registered learners, 2 million graduates, and 1,500 courses available for free access. Skillshare Skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of classes for creative and curious people, on topics including illustration, design, photography, video, freelancing, and more. There are also significant business sections with issues on entrepreneurship, freelance, leadership, marketing, productivity, and more. OpenLearn OpenLearn is a free learning platform, produced by The Open University. Since its launch in 2006, OpenLearn, the site attracts almost 75 million visitors. The website has Money and Business sections with courses on accounting & finance, business strategy, economics, entrepreneurship, human resources, leadership & management, marketing, etc.. TalentLMS TalentLMS cloud learning platform allows you to create online courses and share them with remote teams. There are many sample courses on various common business topics that you can use for your learning.

To run a successful business, you have to be professional; you need to examine other similar businesses' experience, get to know the viewpoints of experts, and know global trends of your industry. One of the ways to improve your understanding is to read the blogs dedicated to your business. We have collected useful blogs about food serving businesses, such as restaurants, cafes, and bars. This list may be helpful for owners and managers, Loyverse POS users who have similar companies. Reddit Restaurant https://www.reddit.com/r/restaurant/ Reddit is an entertainment, news online service, and online media, where registered users can add their content, such as text posts or direct links, and discuss them. Posts on Reddit are organized by interest groups called "subreddits." The restaurant subreddit has many interesting topics raised by restaurant owners. The benefits of a community-like blog such as subreddit are writing a question or writing about your experience in running a business. Grub Street https://www.grubstreet.com/ Grub Street is an aggregator of news, reviews, and experiences of the foodservice industry from different parts of the world. The service is run from New York, USA, and has many stories focused on nationwide chains and restaurants. Food Marketing Institute (FMI) https://www.fmi.org/blog Food Marketing Institute from the USA runs “The Food Industry Blog.” The blog provides materials about the food retail industry with topics about food safety, government relations, consumer affairs, and food research. Oracle Food and Beverage Blog https://blogs.oracle.com/foodandbeverage/ A blog from a giant technology corporation provides news, recommendations, insights, analytics, experts opinions for restaurants. Modern Restaurant Management https://modernrestaurantmanagement.com/ Modern Restaurant Management (MRM) magazine is a very vital resource for restaurant industry specialists. Focused on all aspects of restaurant management things —the business of eating— MRM posts daily news, incorporates profiles, trends, and expert advice. Catersource https://www.catersource.com/ Catersource is a news resource and online network, developed by UK-based event organizer Informa Connect. Catersource connects caterers to current and reputable products, information, and services relevant to their business. Social Hospitality Dining Articles https://socialhospitality.com/category/dining/ A Social Hospitality company from the USA runs a blog about digital marketing. They are experts in digital strategy, content creation, social media. Owners and managers of the foodservice industry can learn how to reach more customers in this blog's Dining Articles. The Back Burner https://blog.etundra.com/ The Back Burner blog is run by eTundra, a restaurant supply company from Colorado, USA. The blog concentrates on cooking products and equipment and has instructional videos (like changing a restaurant’s water filter), marketing tips, and giveaways. Synergy Restaurant Consultants https://www.synergyconsultants.com/resources/blog/ A USA company, Synergy Restaurant Consultants, maintains a well-researched blog that posts about restaurant management topics like labor and improving profits, newsworthy items like wage increases, and trends and predictions. QSRweb https://www.qsrweb.com/ QSRweb is run by Networld Media Group from the USA and oriented for quick service restaurants/fast food and publishing industry news, articles, and research. WebstaurantStore blog https://www.webstaurantstore.com/blog/ WebstaurantStore blog has up-to-date tips, industry news, new product information for foodservice professionals. The WebstaurantStore is the USA company that provides equipment for restaurants.

CRM - these three letters contain useful power that can help you develop your business. Customers are the most significant component of running any type of business. That`s why it's essential to pay attention to customer relationship management. Nowadays, there is a lot of CRM software ready to help you optimize marketing, increase sales and improve customer service. Therefore, it's a solution to a data organization problem. Which CRM software should I choose? It's difficult to find the exact software you need. All CRM software have their distinctive features but there is a list of important characteristics to pay attention to. Contact management. It is the most essential feature that the CRM platform should provide. It allows you to organize your customer lists and information about them. Extended functionality. The more useful features a platform provides, the more convenient and easier it is to conduct business. For example, often, CRM platforms provide their users with built-in marketing features and various alerts for your customers, such as email or SMS. Some platforms can analyze and forecast sales, as well as track the level of competition. Support service. Each self-respecting platform can provide its customers with quality support, which is an important aspect of service. Free setup. It should include integration with your sites and do not require a setup fee. Reports and Dashboards. Due to it, you can see sales results and their condition, overview tasks you need to focus on. Zoho CRM Zoho CRM has a lot of different features and categories. It works with over 150,000 businesses in 180 countries. According to the Zoho website, It lets you create and organize modules, add custom fields and sections, create new layouts, and clone them. There is an opportunity to customize your home page. Zoho offers 3 CRM packages. And the free version allows you to automate sales, use the basic functions of marketing and customer support. There is also a special Zoho Creator system that enables you to create your applications inside Zoho itself. This platform’s advantage is the integration with SMS aggregators using the webhook method, which does not require writing code during integration. There is a free trial period of 15 days to understand whether it is worth buying the full version. Zoho CRM gives you four categories of pricing. HubSpot HubSpot shows full information about your sales in real-time. You will get some free CRM tools: contact management, contact website activity, companies, deals, tasks, activities etc. It gives you an opportunity to have unlimited users so that every CRM user will be free. It's ready to store all of your data. HubSpot CRM is a simple and understandable platform where it is possible to customize functions for yourself. It's multitasking, so it becomes an entire system that not just a CRM but also solves issues regarding CMS, marketing, sales, and service. Based on customer feedback, such a program is suitable for B2B companies, online services, IT companies, and FinTech companies. By the way, there are more than 78 000 HubSpot users in more than 120 countries. Salesforce Salesforce CRM provides sales forecasting and real-time reporting. It has a free trial and mobile access. The system is integrated with various telephony solutions. All electronic sales processes are implemented quickly and without any difficulties. Using Salesforce, there is no need to rebuild working methods to tailor the CRM system to any business. Of the advantages of such a platform, there is a simple interface, convenient user settings, integration with social networks and integration with third-party applications. Nowadays, this program works with over 150,000 companies. Freshsales Freshsales is a CRM system with a simple and intuitive interface. It also provides automatic filling in lead information, integration with your mailbox, and an interactive sales scheme that visually displays the current situation with transactions. It is a usefull reporting tool. Freshsales Drag-drop navigation tool allows users to move deals across the sales pipeline to any stage. It also has a wide range of integrations for marketing, productivity, and communication. Capsule CRM Capsule CRM has an easy-to-use interface that enables users to track funnels, chains of relationships, and sales. All that is needed, and nothing more. Therefore, the system is available on desktops and mobile devices. The user interface is divided into five groups: the taskbar, people and organizations, sales funnels, calendars and tasks, and, finally, cases. There is a disadvantage in functionality in terms of campaigns and reporting. Microsoft Dynamics Microsoft Dynamics provides customization, mobile app, productivity control, and process constructor options. There is a SharePoint technology, which gives you access to all documents in OneDrive, Cloud, or local servers. The interface of such a platform is available in 86 languages. Microsoft Dynamics CRM analyzes all your data and shows it in the form of graphs. Therefore, they have integration through API to connect your Dynamics 365 data to any other program with an API. This system integrates with social networks, such as Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter, so you have an opportunity to know more about your customers. Base CRM Base CRM from Zendesk provides electronic document management, sales forecasting, making deals, and sales funnel. You can use it as a web application in any browser or install apps on Android and IOS smartphones to access your account anywhere. Base CRM has a contact card, where managers can see detailed information about customers, attached documents, listen to dialogs, read sent, and received email messages. Streak Streak is a CRM software for Gmail users. It doesn't give you a free trial period, but It has a sales funnel and provides reports. This program is good for small teams so that they can work together out of their Gmail inbox. Streak helps you to organize sending schedule and mass emails. Sugar CRM Sugar CRM functionality includes sales-force automation, marketing campaigns, customer support, collaboration, Mobile CRM, Social CRM, and reporting. It's available in 26 different languages and has more than 2 million users in 120 countries. VTiger CRM VTiger CRM is another open-source CRM system, based on Apache, MySQL, PHP. It has comprihansive functionality: sales funnels, email newsletters, answering machine, invoicing and receiving payments, customer management, analytics, planning, andIntegration with Outlook and MS Office. VTiger is a good solution for B2B companies with long sales cycles. By the way, it provides a free trial period. To sum up, customers are one of the central parts of any type of company, that's why while choosing CRM software, it's better to pay attention to important features for your own business. Every CRM program has its advantages and disadvantages, so you should clearly know which benefits your company needs to take from CRM software. Based on such characteristics, it will be easier to choose perfect fit CRM. If you have experience with other good CRM, please write about them in comments.