The " Better together: HubSpot and BigCommerce for Sicilian companies" event, organized by power2Cloud in partnership with the ARCA Consortium, was held in Palermo on April 12.
The appointment was created to share what are some drivers of growth, approach together with incubated startups and Sicilian SMEs digital transformation,B2B and B2C online sales and inbound marketing strategies.
For the day's agenda, power2Cloud engaged Ilario Savi, Partner Manager Italian Market HubSpot, a well-known inbound digital marketing suite, and Giuseppe Giorlando, Channel Lead Italy BigCommerce, eCommerce platform for B2B and B2C.
In such a fast-paced and competitive market, the web is becoming increasingly democratic, offering opportunities and tools to optimize collaboration, personalize the user experience and measure performance with ease.
Do you want to scale and are considering a new eCommerce platform?
Innovation and new business models are within everyone's reach, for startups as well as multinationals in every industry; you don't need to be IT, have particularly structured teams or huge budgets.
"Without a CRM today a business is not a business."
Opening the agenda was Massimiliano Oliveri, president of the ARCA Consortium. "Without a CRM today an enterprise is no longer an enterprise. Beyond what would almost sound like an introductory commercial, I think this actually reflects the reality of the facts!"
By centralizing and automating data collection, with the help of a CRM, we can predict customer behavior, transform business processes, and convert anonymous users into loyal customers. User knowledge plays as important a role in marketing as it does in sales and customer service.
Building personal relationships, increasing loyalty and internal organization to accommodate every need and correcting critical issues along the way are steps in the growth of any successful business.
"You don't have to be a digital business to use digital," he says.
"Digital is the asset that can facilitate growth and innovation within any business. You don't have to be a digital-producing company to use digital.
Even an artisan, a merchant, an entrepreneur must use digital technologies, which are useful and fundamental tools to grow, to make efficient, to rectify their work," Monica said during her speech.
After the introduction by President Massimiliano Olivieri, Monica Guizzardi, communication and event manager of the ARCA Consortium, a partnership between the University of Palermo and the University Consortia of Agrigento, Trapani and Caltanissetta, spoke.
"Our main mission is business creation. Innovation is the key to a company's survival and growth in a market that is constantly changing and evolving," he then concluded. "To do this, finding the right partner to migrate to a digital platform is key."
The ARCA Consortium as the business incubator deals with technology transfer and new product development for SMEs and business networks; but also with the management of territorial innovation programs related to the promotion of entrepreneurial culture and in transnational cooperation."
Customized analysis and resource optimization: the importance of a partner in growth
While digital-related issues are a natural habitat in which to develop ideas and grow, technological solutions alone are not enough.
"It is important to keep a startup mindset," Ignazio Morici, power2Cloud Marketing Director, took the floor, "that is, to keep putting yourself in the game and in discussion. The challenge of power2Cloud is precisely this: to help its customers in the migration to digital while continuing to adapt solutions to market needs."
The process associated with digital transformation is of course not without obstacles: compliance and security, budget constraints, the constant evolution of the market in which one operates, lack of IT and specialized skills, changing corporate culture and communication between teams, such as the lack of a strategy to manage the migration, software complexity, and training in using the new platform.
"Dialogue between the partner and the business is critical. We need to listen to the needs of each business and employees, because from the discussion all those critical points can emerge that we can solve through digital solutions."
Beyond the first phase of listening and analysis, a partner can and should improve investment planning and resource utilization; optimize the work of all teams; and point to the strategic use of data, tangible assets, processes, and knowledge.
"The democratization of eCommerce: flexibility and personalization."
"Imagine the eCommerce ecosystem as a city: you can rent a house or build one according to your wishes. In the first case it's ready to use, but with limitations, in the second case it's a custom project, it takes longer, it costs a lot, maybe you don't want it after three years though.
As an Open SaaS platform, BigCommerce provides the freedom and flexibility of an Open Source software with the security, reliability of a SaaS platform." The metaphor chosen by Giuseppe Giorlando Channel Lead Italy BigCommerce is really fitting.
Startups, SMEs and enterprise companies can access a tool that is extremely customizable, easy to implement and with affordable costs (no additional transaction fees). This is why we talk about democratizing eCommerce.
With BigCommerce, it is possible to scale in both B2B and B2C markets, thanks to the functionality of numerous tools, more than 700 technology partners, and more than 400 API calls per second, useful for easily connecting with software such as HubSpot and Atlassian, for example.
"You no longer need to worry about maintenance, security, data center and updates. We keep your site secure and at peak performance through Google's cloud platform. So you can focus your resources on revenue-generating activities, personalizing the front-end experience and meeting the ever-increasing demands of online shoppers," he then concluded.
"eCommerce inbound marketing: what are your goals in 2022?"
Choosing the right eCommerce platform to sell your products and services online is not enough.
Did you know that 67% of eCommerce shopping carts are abandoned every day? A significant figure for business if it is followed by the right answers: who are they, what did they want to buy, how much did they spend or what products did they buy most often?
Ilario Savi, Partner Manager Italian Market HubSpot, shared the values of the inbound philosophy of CRM and its suite. We need to move away from the traditional funnel and turn prospects first into costumers and then into promoters through a recursive model as the driver of growth for any business.
"With HubSpot we capture data from all users at any time: by filling out a form, visiting the landing page or getting the right call-to-action.
With the data collected, we can understand who wants to interact with the company and use CRM to build a strategy based on marketing automation systems, such as sending an email based on the behavior of each individual user."
From anonymous user to promoter if you have the right data
With a cloud solution like HubSpot, you can know the buyer journey in every detail. This allows you to intelligently qualify a prospect, more easily leading agents to the closing of a deal or sale.
The path to hooking an anonymous prospect and turning him or her into a promoter is done through content management, messaging, automation, and efficient reporting that allows managers to monitor internal and non-internal performance.
Most companies for each activity buy a different software. HubSpot provides a single platform with public APIs, a rich Marketplace, with more than 1,000 applications that can be integrated with the platform natively.
"Having tools like HubSpot or BigCommerce helps automate business processes with a big impact on revenue. It has become critical to invest in digital processes.
What goals do you have for your 2022?"
"With HubSpot and power2Cloud training, our teams work in unison."
Adding to Ilario Savi's contribution was Fabio Ballor. It was the CEO and Co-founder of WebinarPro who told how business processes have changed with the adoption of HubSpot for Startups.
"With the pandemic, the WebinarPro market grew exponentially. Different tools were being used in the company, both in the operational and business areas, to manage the increasing number of customers.
This approach was not allowing us to scale and chase our expectations. So we rethought WebinarPro under a different lens, bringing in more people, new roles, pipelines and processes.
It was time to start structuring, to enable the various teams to move in unison, and with HubSpot we found what we were looking for."
Through the Startup Plan, WebinarPro embarked on a migration path to HubSpot. With power2Cloud, the transition was effectively and quickly designed with strategies and processes in mind.
WebinarPro will complete the migration to HubSpot in the coming months. All teams will be able to use a common platform to manage their activities and improve their performance with the many tools provided by the platform.
"Expertise, cloud solutions and financial tools to support every business."
In this journey of digitization and growth, a partner like power2Cloud provides not only tailored strategies, expertise and cloud solutions such as BigCommerce and HubSpot, but also access to financial tools to support them.
"The cloud has made innovation democratic. Today anyone can access software that allows them to digitize their processes with a minimal monthly expense." Concluding the event was Giordano Iovine CEO power2Cloud.
The businesses affected by special facilities and support span many areas: CRM, eCommerce platform, creation and configuration of an App, security, training, B2B and B2C online sales, in Italy as well as abroad.
Those wishing to create a new platform, improve an existing one or enter a new space now have no more excuses.