Talks Tech #23: WordPress, The Future of Business Management

Women Who Code Talks Tech 23     |     Spotify - iTunes - Google - YouTube - Text

Yasha Sterling, Business Coach, Founder & CEO of Yasha Sterling Management Agency, shares, “WordPress, The Future of Business Management.” She helps business owners create profitable done-for-you technology solutions. Yasha is a coach, consultant, and speaker. She is the two-time bestselling author of the Complete Web Business Blueprint and the Complete Web Business Blueprint Workshop. She is also the proud owner of four businesses.

WordPress was never really something I grabbed onto initially. I started 20 years ago using all types of CMS. WordPress is something that I grasped in the last couple of years. I've embraced it, and now I love it. One system that's all you need, and the possibilities are unlimited. WordPress is the top CMS that people use. Mainly because it's free and it has ease of use. Fortune 500 companies and some bigger companies use WordPress daily. If you are working and you have to go out and do a task every time you have to do that task, your productivity comes into question because you're doing so much toggling. Every time you have to open a task, wait for it to load, sometimes, it may not load correctly, or it may load, and you may have to call IT and that type of thing. It becomes cumbersome. You lose your train of thought because you are toggling too much. You get burned out daily.

WordPress has, at the very least right now, 54,000 plugins available. A plugin is where you plug it in, and it works little things with the computer. It says plug and play because that's what you do. You're supposed to be able to stick it in, and it works. WordPress has what you call plugins, and it has 54,000 of numerous things that you could want to plug into your website on the back end, and it works. Those are free. They have thousands of them that you pay for. They're easy to implement once you learn WordPress. WordPress tells you where to go if you know how to install it. They give you the login information, log in, enter the username and password, and boom. The whole process takes roughly 10 minutes. You want to do something that will handle those systems that you need daily.

If they're already on the back end of your website and all you have to do is log into your website, you can manage the website. At the same time, you can manage those productivity tools that you need without having to flip through multiple screens and lose out on productivity. That's how you need to navigate multiple apps to get your work done. What I've come up with is a system called Pivoted. It's one CMS, so that's WordPress and no additional tool. You don't need anything else. This is your one complete business solution. There's no need to manage the website and your business operations separately. You build a website for your front end, then implement everything you need to do daily, regardless of your role in the company. You put all of that on the back end. This is what's called Enterprise Resource Planning.

This philosophy is based on what I've written in my book from the Complete Web Business Blueprint, called 10D3. It's a 10-step process that says you don’t have to have a technical background to build a website. There are so many tools out there that you can use that make it so easy that it alleviates all that productivity, anxiety, and procrastination. I came up with this theory, it's called the D3. It means that technology is round, and it's always going to change. When you look at technology, it tends to go round and round, and you tend to always wind up in the same place. The process that I've come up with is called Dimensional Digital Diffusion. It is 10 phases that you should follow when you're building out your process, your business side, and your workshops site side. Once those phases are completed, you should be able to help your company grow. You have a simple tool, and it's easy to follow daily. It can constantly grow. That's the benefit of working with one tool that does many things.

Step one is to Discover. When you discover, that means you do your research. You do your analysis. You discover if the WordPress and business combo is ideal for you. Then Define; once you come up with a solution, you define it. You come up with a process between how you build it, then you Design it. You go out and say how do I want my system to look? Then you Develop. Then you Deploy it, and you build it. That means you push it out to the world, you push it out to your employees. They see your website, the front-end crowd sees your website, and the back-end crowd is your staff. Then Debrief, you write down, go through, and make sure you find everything. You do some testing and make sure everything's okay. You constantly check it. Step seven, everything that you've done to this point, you want to be writing it Down, to have some documentation in place.

Step eight is how do we get some money? If we have this tool, how do we bring in the money? You can do that in the tool itself. Digital marketing, email marketing, SEO, Search Engine Optimization, email marketing, your website, managing that, and your social media can be done right on your WordPress site. Step 10, make a pact with your team. No buying extra tools or extra things that you know will defer productivity. You want something in place that you can use and use going forward and enhance daily. Make that commitment to your team and yourself. That's the 10-3 model.

Enterprise Resource Planning is bringing all the parts of your business together. It helps businesses perform their day-to-day operations. It includes everything, human resources, CRM, sales, manufacturing, how you build out your products, development, project management, accounting, and so much more. Enterprise means that you bring everything under one particular roof, and it's managed that way. There's a nice flow between each one. To implement, you're going to install WordPress. So the way WordPress works, if you are a more advanced developer, you can build it on the back end of your site. You have access to a database, you set your database up, and you set up your environment. I usually put it in some folder because I like to be a developer. I wouldn't say I like WordPress taking over my entire site. It usually sits in a folder, managing another part of my website. Once you get your WordPress installed, you want to install a plugin.

I use WPERP. It's your complete word business manager. Initially, when it comes out of the box, installing this plugin will manage your HR, your CRM, and your accounting. Those are the main things about running a business, managing the people that work for you, building that relationship with the outside people, and then managing your money. You can control everything in HR. You can search about your employees by department. You can make announcements.

Another thing that you can do with this particular tool is CRM. There's always that weird relationship between developers and marketers. CRM is more marketing. CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. That's how you'd manage the relationship between you and your customer. If you have been talking to a customer, trying to get them on board to buy your product, the CRM will manage if you talk to them on a certain date. Maybe you need to send them an email. It's managing that day-to-day relationship with those customers, both the ones you're trying to get and the ones you already have. CRM is robust. You don't have to have a separate robust system, you can manage it right in WordPress. Then there is the accounting, managing your money, what's going out and what's coming in. You can manage that all right in your WordPress tool. You can go in, track and send invoices out. If you want to see the money you're paying out to your employees, the money you're paying out to other businesses, and your bills for your business, everything can be monitored and managed right in the tool.

There's everything else right in this tool. Payment Gateway is if you need to pay if people need to pay you, if you're sending out invoices, there is the payment gateway. Recruitment: If you're looking for jobs or hiring, if you want to send out a job post, you can send it right from the tool. Attendance tracking, you can do that right in the tool. Maybe you have an HR portal that you want employees to be able to access. Maybe if they're going in and need to see what benefits they have or a paycheck from a particular month, if you have certain training that you're doing for your employees, you can do this right in the tool and WooCommerce. WooCommerce kind of hand-in-hand with WordPress. That's how you send out things you want people to purchase. If you're running an E-commerce business, you also put WooCommerce in. Generally, it comes packaged with WordPress. You manage the money from your accounting with the sales all within one tool.

If you have forms, maybe employees need to fill out forms, maybe you need to send out emails type forms that you want to send out to your customers, all that can be managed while in the tool. Payroll is your asset manager. If you have certain documents, there's a portal where they keep important documents safe so everybody can access them. Policies, and procedures, those things can be managed right in the tool. That's called an Asset Manager because that's what you'll do. You'll put those files up on this particular server, and any time someone needs to access you, say, "Oh, it's out on your Asset Manager.”  They don't have to go to some random SharePoint file you have. You have that right in the tool.

HubSpot is massive, where you can do all your marketing right in one place. HubSpot is integrated into WordPress. MailChimp is also a plugin. Technical support is also in the tool. You don't have to get a separate system to provide technical support. Salesforce is massive for CRM. There's a Salesforce plugin. Zendesk, that's another tech support. That's a huge tech support tool that is right in WordPress. SMS notification, if you want to send out a mass text, if you have permission to send out texts to particular customers and employees, you have a tool right in here that you don't have to jump out. It's right in WordPress. Another one is Document Manager. A beautiful thing happens when you see your whole business before you. You don't have to have multiple windows open. You don't have to have all these different environments that are going to play on your productivity.