April 2021

As technology has risen in prominence in the workplace, so has the rise of cybersecurity in order to protect digital workflows and sensitive digital documents. Businesses of all shapes and sizes have been impacted by cybercrime, hackers, and a myriad of other nefarious actors who may attempt to harm companies by anything from ransomware attacks to corporate espionage. As such, it is important for businesses to both implement technology and also to be aware of the downsides – which are mainly in the form of cybersecurity risks.

Because cybersecurity attacks can harm companies in many ways, it has become an increasingly important issue that businesses need to be aware of. One area where this can have disastrous results is during the deal-making process. As such, companies need to ensure that their deals that are completed digitally are secure from any outside influence. To do so, they need to implement a security solution that can both help them keep the deal-making process safe and organize and expedite the entire process. One great software solution that can help with this a virtual deal room. Using a virtual deal room, companies can make sure that their deals go through as intended. With that in mind, here’s what you need to know about using a deal room to manage your business deals.

How a Deal Room Can Help Your Company

There are numerous types of deals that companies can be made, including strategic partnerships, fundraising, M&A’s, and more. Knowing how a virtual deal room can help with all these different types of deals is extremely important. For one, a deal room can help a company to improve their security and ensure that all of your documentation is only accessible by the parties that need to see it. By setting up user-based permissions, SSL encryption, dynamic document watermarks, data backups, and more, a virtual deal room can help make sure that all business deals run smoothly, particularly those types of deals that are complex or multi-faceted. Keeping this all organized and within a select group of people who need to be working on deals, such as executives, their support staff, and the legal team, can help companies run their deals more securely and smoothly than can be done outside of a deal room or even in an in-person setting.

How a Deal Room Help You Protect From Cybersecurity Attacks and Streamline Deals

When you implement a deal room into your company’s deal-making workflow, the goal is to benefit your company. As such, it is important to understand how vital the cybersecurity benefits of a deal room are. Things like customized NDAs, direct comments on documents, and viewer-access control can allow you to see exactly when each document that is stored in deal room is accessed, and be able to set the terms for doing so within the customizable NDAs. Beyond these security features, a deal room can also help you streamline the deal-making process. Using a customized dashboard, you can have total insight into the interest from the other party by tracking their engagement with the various documents within the deal room. This is particularly important when potential investors are involved in deals such as M&A’s and fundraising, or even potential IPOs if the business is of the appropriate size.

In Summary

While cybersecurity is a major issue for all companies, and will only continue to be so as the years go on, it is important to make sure that your company’s deal-making process is secure and streamlined. By doing so, you’ll be able to lessen the possibility of hackers sabotaging the deal and also of disgruntled employees streamlining information for their own purposes. While no technology can totally stop the possibility of cyberattacks or cybercrime, a virtual deal room is one of the premier solutions that can help you lessen your exposure to risk and allow your deals to be completed as fast as possible.

Running a SaaS company, especially given the increased market share of SaaS in the software space, is quite difficult. Marketing a SaaS solution, however, is almost equally as challenging. Fortunately, there are things that differentiate SaaS from marketing other types of online businesses. For example, if you run an ecommerce shop, you need to consider how you are going to promote particular products and sell to consumers who may be wary of stepping outside of traditional ecommerce retailers such as Amazon, eBay, and Walmart. However, the SaaS space has more opportunity for market penetration, as even the big players, such as Hubspot and Salesforce, are focused on particular demographics and do not broadly meet the needs of all businesses.

To differentiate yourself, you are going to want to create content. But not just any content. ‘Content is king’ is such a well-worn adage that it has functionally becoming meaningless.  Instead, SaaS companies need to create content with a particular focus in mind. And that focus is SEO. While SaaS companies don’t have to promote specific products in the way an ecommerce store would, they do need to frame their SaaS offering as something other than a product.  When launching a SaaS offering, SaaS companies need to keep in mind that very few people are specifically looking for software to solve their problems. As such, you are not only fighting a battle for viewers, but you are also fighting a battle to give people a reason to look at your SaaS offering as something other than just a software solution – something that actually helps people to solve their problems.

So, you can’t just make content. You also have to get eyeballs on it. And some of these eyeballs, ideally are going to become user so your SaaS solution. To do this, SEO is the most effective strategy, as there is a much higher intention behind search than there is on social media or other discovery platforms. Plus, search leads potential users directly to your website, which is very important when it comes to actually generating leads and conversions. Using a SaaS SEO strategy, you can better position your SaaS offerings to be a solution to people’s problems and not just a software. You can then target this content to keywords, which can make sure that your content marketing efforts are actually geared toward problem-solving and not just self-promotion.

When using keywords, a SaaS company should specifically be looking at both informational queries and longtail keywords. Longtail keywords generally help businesses rank for niche queries, and for SaaS, the solution to a problem is often niche. This will help you a lot as you can create content that targets these longtail keywords that will bring in very high-intention traffic. This, in turn, will help you convert more eyeballs into users as these people see that your SaaS solution actually can provide value to them and help them solve their niche problems.

After you do this, you are going to want to build links to your keyword-targeted content in order to help it rank. For SaaS companies, link building efforts should be focused on websites that cover various business and technology topics that are related to their SaaS offering. Doing so will help to build relevance with Google and ultimately help their SaaS company rank particular pages on their website toward target keywords.

by Alex Schnee

If you have been thinking about how you can make a big splash with your e-commerce store, then you might be considering whether or not you want to invest in a custom theme for your site. While there are some benefits of using a template, there are also a number of reasons to consider the extra time and money that comes with a custom design.

Here are some things to keep in mind if you are curious about whether or not a custom theme is right for your e-commerce store.

It helps you stand out

There are so many different e-commerce sites out there, and if you are selling a common product or service, it can be difficult to stand out from the competition. This is where a custom theme can go a long way toward helping you establish your e-commerce store within the space. You might have difficult differentiating yourself in a crowded marketing, and investing in a custom theme can go a long way toward helping you gain recognition.

You have more features

If you choose to go with a template for your e-commerce store, you might not have access to certain features that are essential to help your business run properly. One thing you can do to determine whether or not those features are necessary is to use a tool like headless commerce to test out whether or not you need them. If you are planning on running additional marketing channels through your site, it can be much more difficult if you are just deciding to use a basic template.

It looks more legitimate

There are so many e-commerce stores now that customers might be a lot more hesitant about handing over their credit card information if they believe that they are giving away their information to a scam site. When you have a custom design, then customers can tell that you have put some time and effort into creating a site where they can feel comfortable putting in their credit card information and sharing their details. If your site looks like another copy of another e-commerce store, they’re going to be less likely to believe that you are a legitimate business.

You have more freedom with branding

Branding is an important aspect of any company, and this can be especially true when the only way customers are interacting with you is online. A custom theme allows you to play with your brand colors, typography, and more while a template can limit what you can do. When you want to establish yourself within your industry, you might want to be able to have the freedom to brand your site as needed.

In summary

While there is certainly a reason for choosing a template for your e-commerce store, having a custom site can give you freedom to build your business the way you want to. If you are planning on standing out from the crowd and establishing yourself as an authority, a custom design might be the way to go for your e-commerce store.

SAP services have become one of the best tools used by companies and this is why these are so greatly in demand. SAP is a software application that is used to help companies organize their information and stay organized. SAP services include applications for finance, supply chain management, supply chain analysis, human resources management, and business process modeling among others. SAP services come at a very affordable price and they also have a lot of features that can really help a company.

Some of the benefits to using a SAP service include being able to store and manage information much more efficiently. SAP has many tools and features for handling large amounts of data and keeping it organized as well. SAP has a number of people who handle this work including administrators, managers, and other support personnel. They are experts and they know what they are doing, which means that they provide a very valuable service to a company.

The benefits to using a SAP service are plenty and they include many things. When a company uses this type of service it can save them a lot of money in the long run because they do not need to buy a lot of software. They can just use the service to help them keep their information organized in the most efficient way possible. Plus, these people are trained to be very knowledgeable about the various tools and programs that are available. They know how to make any program work properly and how to make it easy for people to access information as well. This all adds up because it saves money and time for a company and it is very beneficial to use a service like this.

Once you have decided that you are going to go ahead and get started building your e-commerce store, one of the first things you are going to want to think about is how you want to brand yourself as a company. This comes down to deciding how you want your store to come across to your customers, what standards and mission your store has, and more.

Branding can be essential for any type of business, but it can be especially necessary for an online business. Here’s what you should know before you go ahead and start creating your website.

It conveys experience

Much of how you choose to brand your site will determine how your customers interact with your store. If you choose to be youthful and edgy, you are going to want to create a very different website design and way of marketing your site on social media. Likewise, if you find yourself going a more serious route, you want to make sure that your branding is consistent and your customers know what to expect from you.

It makes it easier to build a site

Once you know your mission statement, your colors, the type of font you want, and more, it’s much easier to put together a website that you feel proud of. If you have a team, you might want to run through these decisions together, and you can test them out by using a method like headless commerce in order to see whether or not customers like it. It’s important to take time in making these decisions so that you get the results you want when customers arrive on your website.

It defines your marketing strategy

Most likely, your marketing strategy is going to be based around your branding and mission statement. Once you know your brand well, you can start to create assets with a clear and defined voice, which allows you to get people who might be interested in your products to check out your website and what you have to offer. Before you can really begin marketing your products, you’re going to need to know your branding well and be able to communicate it with your customers well. After you have done that, you can then move forward to thinking about how you are going to appear on social media and more.

It provides guidelines

It can be easy to be swept up in certain trends and be inspired by other stores’ strategies and designs. However, your brand should have its own unique identity, and that means knowing clearly what type of wording you should use, whether or not you use certain types of files, and more. Anytime you wonder whether or not you should try something new, you can always ask if it makes sense with your branding.

In summary

It can be difficult to succeed as an e-commerce store without some sort of branding. It can take some time, but developing a brand can make all the difference when it comes to your site and bringing in customers who will purchase your products.