There is so much leverage your company can wield by investing in the right software that it can literally mean the difference between success and failure. By putting the correct software in place, your company can be right on track to share information between employees and departments. It establishes a root system from which procedures and standards can grow, and it allows owners and managers to easily report on any aspect of the business' health.
By tracking and sharing your company's data, your day-to-day operations will be more efficient. By using software tools, you can establish step-by-step procedures that are easily trained and monitored. Without software it is nearly impossible for management to compile reports to see what your company is doing in real time. Let's take a look in depth at each of these three areas and at some specific software improvements you can deploy in your organization.
Tracking and Sharing Data:
It is an important evolutionary step for companies that are adding employees to be able to share data. Having a centralized database that allows each employee to update and view a customer or vendor record gains efficiency at the most basic administrative level. Once you have your company contacts centralized, the next step is to start building other components of your business. A centralized sales opportunity tracking system. A centralized order taking and invoicing system. A centralized order fulfillment system. A centralized inventory and/or manufacturing system. A centralized customer service system or work order ticketing system.
All these centralized system should interconnect so that the same custom contact record entered in the first system is the same record that is carried through the sales, order, fulfillment and invoicing systems. Compare this vision with one that would consist of paper trails, orders lost on desks, customers calling for status updates and managers struggling to make heads or tails of what is going on. Imagine any key employee taking a day off or being out sick, where does that leave a manual process when trying to establish an order's status?
Documenting Procedures and Standards:
Now that you have your data in a single place where it can be shared out, you can start documenting workflows, procedures and quality standards. Software provides you a way to document how to do something. You can take screen captures or refer to software manuals or training videos to help new employees learn their jobs. The work flows and processes are better understood by workers because the software provides a common reference point and tracking mechanism for specific tasks required to achieve a desired result, and the software will provide constant feedback to the user to guide them through the steps of the work flow. Manual and paper processes without the reference point software provides are far harder to document and training becomes a matter of memorization and trial and error with very little feedback to the employee except at the end result of the task.
Reporting:
With as critical as tracking and sharing data as well as documenting procedures and standards are to increasing a company's efficiency, producing reports provides a huge ROI for a company. How would a surgeon know the status of a patient in the operating room without a patient heart monitor?
Just as important to a business is to have software tools that monitor and report on the company's work flow, progress and state of health. Good software tools should provide employees, managers and owners with “dashboards” or windows into the business operation that utilize easy to understand charts, graphs, and statistics that can tell them how many leads are being worked, what stages the leads are in and the dollar values they represent, the likelihood of their closing, how many orders are being processed, how many hours are being worked, how many widgets are being produced, and how the company is actually doing compared to how it should be or was projected to be doing. Try putting that together in real time with paper and manual processes!
Getting the right software in place can certainly increase the efficiency of your operation. It will increase the accuracy of current employees as well as increase their capacity to do more work. It reduces training time costs and increases the quality and consistency of the services you provide. The larger your company gets, the more leverage the software provides and it is the only type of “employee” that never sleeps, gets sick, goes on vacation or will leave you for a different opportunity. The better software system that is in place, the more efficient a company becomes. If you are more efficient, more organized and better informed about your business than your competition is about theirs, that becomes a definite competitive advantage.
Keith Larochelle is a co-founder and CFO for Productive Computing, Inc.
By tracking and sharing your company's data, your day-to-day operations will be more efficient. By using software tools, you can establish step-by-step procedures that are easily trained and monitored. Without software it is nearly impossible for management to compile reports to see what your company is doing in real time. Let's take a look in depth at each of these three areas and at some specific software improvements you can deploy in your organization.
Tracking and Sharing Data:
It is an important evolutionary step for companies that are adding employees to be able to share data. Having a centralized database that allows each employee to update and view a customer or vendor record gains efficiency at the most basic administrative level. Once you have your company contacts centralized, the next step is to start building other components of your business. A centralized sales opportunity tracking system. A centralized order taking and invoicing system. A centralized order fulfillment system. A centralized inventory and/or manufacturing system. A centralized customer service system or work order ticketing system.
All these centralized system should interconnect so that the same custom contact record entered in the first system is the same record that is carried through the sales, order, fulfillment and invoicing systems. Compare this vision with one that would consist of paper trails, orders lost on desks, customers calling for status updates and managers struggling to make heads or tails of what is going on. Imagine any key employee taking a day off or being out sick, where does that leave a manual process when trying to establish an order's status?
Documenting Procedures and Standards:
Now that you have your data in a single place where it can be shared out, you can start documenting workflows, procedures and quality standards. Software provides you a way to document how to do something. You can take screen captures or refer to software manuals or training videos to help new employees learn their jobs. The work flows and processes are better understood by workers because the software provides a common reference point and tracking mechanism for specific tasks required to achieve a desired result, and the software will provide constant feedback to the user to guide them through the steps of the work flow. Manual and paper processes without the reference point software provides are far harder to document and training becomes a matter of memorization and trial and error with very little feedback to the employee except at the end result of the task.
Reporting:
With as critical as tracking and sharing data as well as documenting procedures and standards are to increasing a company's efficiency, producing reports provides a huge ROI for a company. How would a surgeon know the status of a patient in the operating room without a patient heart monitor?
Just as important to a business is to have software tools that monitor and report on the company's work flow, progress and state of health. Good software tools should provide employees, managers and owners with “dashboards” or windows into the business operation that utilize easy to understand charts, graphs, and statistics that can tell them how many leads are being worked, what stages the leads are in and the dollar values they represent, the likelihood of their closing, how many orders are being processed, how many hours are being worked, how many widgets are being produced, and how the company is actually doing compared to how it should be or was projected to be doing. Try putting that together in real time with paper and manual processes!
Getting the right software in place can certainly increase the efficiency of your operation. It will increase the accuracy of current employees as well as increase their capacity to do more work. It reduces training time costs and increases the quality and consistency of the services you provide. The larger your company gets, the more leverage the software provides and it is the only type of “employee” that never sleeps, gets sick, goes on vacation or will leave you for a different opportunity. The better software system that is in place, the more efficient a company becomes. If you are more efficient, more organized and better informed about your business than your competition is about theirs, that becomes a definite competitive advantage.
Keith Larochelle is a co-founder and CFO for Productive Computing, Inc.
There is so much leverage your company can wield by investing in the right software that it can literally mean the difference between success and failure. By putting the correct software in place, your company can be right on track to share information between employees and departments. It establishes a root system from which procedures and standards can grow, and it allows owners and managers to easily report on any aspect of the business' health.
By tracking and sharing your company's data, your day-to-day operations will be more efficient. By using software tools, you can establish step-by-step procedures that are easily trained and monitored. Without software it is nearly impossible for management to compile reports to see what your company is doing in real time. Let's take a look in depth at each of these three areas and at some specific software improvements you can deploy in your organization.
Tracking and Sharing Data:
It is an important evolutionary step for companies that are adding employees to be able to share data. Having a centralized database that allows each employee to update and view a customer or vendor record gains efficiency at the most basic administrative level. Once you have your company contacts centralized, the next step is to start building other components of your business. A centralized sales opportunity tracking system. A centralized order taking and invoicing system. A centralized order fulfillment system. A centralized inventory and/or manufacturing system. A centralized customer service system or work order ticketing system.
All these centralized system should interconnect so that the same custom contact record entered in the first system is the same record that is carried through the sales, order, fulfillment and invoicing systems. Compare this vision with one that would consist of paper trails, orders lost on desks, customers calling for status updates and managers struggling to make heads or tails of what is going on. Imagine any key employee taking a day off or being out sick, where does that leave a manual process when trying to establish an order's status?
Documenting Procedures and Standards:
Now that you have your data in a single place where it can be shared out, you can start documenting workflows, procedures and quality standards. Software provides you a way to document how to do something. You can take screen captures or refer to software manuals or training videos to help new employees learn their jobs. The work flows and processes are better understood by workers because the software provides a common reference point and tracking mechanism for specific tasks required to achieve a desired result, and the software will provide constant feedback to the user to guide them through the steps of the work flow. Manual and paper processes without the reference point software provides are far harder to document and training becomes a matter of memorization and trial and error with very little feedback to the employee except at the end result of the task.
Reporting:
With as critical as tracking and sharing data as well as documenting procedures and standards are to increasing a company's efficiency, producing reports provides a huge ROI for a company. How would a surgeon know the status of a patient in the operating room without a patient heart monitor?
Just as important to a business is to have software tools that monitor and report on the company's work flow, progress and state of health. Good software tools should provide employees, managers and owners with “dashboards” or windows into the business operation that utilize easy to understand charts, graphs, and statistics that can tell them how many leads are being worked, what stages the leads are in and the dollar values they represent, the likelihood of their closing, how many orders are being processed, how many hours are being worked, how many widgets are being produced, and how the company is actually doing compared to how it should be or was projected to be doing. Try putting that together in real time with paper and manual processes!
Getting the right software in place can certainly increase the efficiency of your operation. It will increase the accuracy of current employees as well as increase their capacity to do more work. It reduces training time costs and increases the quality and consistency of the services you provide. The larger your company gets, the more leverage the software provides and it is the only type of “employee” that never sleeps, gets sick, goes on vacation or will leave you for a different opportunity. The better software system that is in place, the more efficient a company becomes. If you are more efficient, more organized and better informed about your business than your competition is about theirs, that becomes a definite competitive advantage.
Keith Larochelle is a co-founder and CFO for Productive Computing, Inc.
By tracking and sharing your company's data, your day-to-day operations will be more efficient. By using software tools, you can establish step-by-step procedures that are easily trained and monitored. Without software it is nearly impossible for management to compile reports to see what your company is doing in real time. Let's take a look in depth at each of these three areas and at some specific software improvements you can deploy in your organization.
Tracking and Sharing Data:
It is an important evolutionary step for companies that are adding employees to be able to share data. Having a centralized database that allows each employee to update and view a customer or vendor record gains efficiency at the most basic administrative level. Once you have your company contacts centralized, the next step is to start building other components of your business. A centralized sales opportunity tracking system. A centralized order taking and invoicing system. A centralized order fulfillment system. A centralized inventory and/or manufacturing system. A centralized customer service system or work order ticketing system.
All these centralized system should interconnect so that the same custom contact record entered in the first system is the same record that is carried through the sales, order, fulfillment and invoicing systems. Compare this vision with one that would consist of paper trails, orders lost on desks, customers calling for status updates and managers struggling to make heads or tails of what is going on. Imagine any key employee taking a day off or being out sick, where does that leave a manual process when trying to establish an order's status?
Documenting Procedures and Standards:
Now that you have your data in a single place where it can be shared out, you can start documenting workflows, procedures and quality standards. Software provides you a way to document how to do something. You can take screen captures or refer to software manuals or training videos to help new employees learn their jobs. The work flows and processes are better understood by workers because the software provides a common reference point and tracking mechanism for specific tasks required to achieve a desired result, and the software will provide constant feedback to the user to guide them through the steps of the work flow. Manual and paper processes without the reference point software provides are far harder to document and training becomes a matter of memorization and trial and error with very little feedback to the employee except at the end result of the task.
Reporting:
With as critical as tracking and sharing data as well as documenting procedures and standards are to increasing a company's efficiency, producing reports provides a huge ROI for a company. How would a surgeon know the status of a patient in the operating room without a patient heart monitor?
Just as important to a business is to have software tools that monitor and report on the company's work flow, progress and state of health. Good software tools should provide employees, managers and owners with “dashboards” or windows into the business operation that utilize easy to understand charts, graphs, and statistics that can tell them how many leads are being worked, what stages the leads are in and the dollar values they represent, the likelihood of their closing, how many orders are being processed, how many hours are being worked, how many widgets are being produced, and how the company is actually doing compared to how it should be or was projected to be doing. Try putting that together in real time with paper and manual processes!
Getting the right software in place can certainly increase the efficiency of your operation. It will increase the accuracy of current employees as well as increase their capacity to do more work. It reduces training time costs and increases the quality and consistency of the services you provide. The larger your company gets, the more leverage the software provides and it is the only type of “employee” that never sleeps, gets sick, goes on vacation or will leave you for a different opportunity. The better software system that is in place, the more efficient a company becomes. If you are more efficient, more organized and better informed about your business than your competition is about theirs, that becomes a definite competitive advantage.
Keith Larochelle is a co-founder and CFO for Productive Computing, Inc.