On a serious note, most businesses will be encountering one or more of the above right now and do not realise that there are solutions that can be tailored to suit your business, even if you think you are too specialised in what you offer or even if every order to leave your business is bespoke. There isn’t a businesses that wouldn’t benefit from implementing software to improve their business processes but the real key is in implementing the right solution. OK, I might be stating the obvious but think about it for a moment. There are plenty of solutions on the market and most are either very fixed in their offering, too confusing, complicated or are just too expensive, think outside the box and get back to basics. Make a list of all the headaches, roadblocks and process flow issues that your business faces, then consider the benefits that could be achieved if you could automate those business processes and you will begin to see how your business could be so much more efficient if you could only fix these problems.
Now, I am not saying that software can fix all your issues and you can just go and sit on a beach and relax because your business is running like a well-oiled machine, but, massive improvements can be made if you plan and execute software correctly and it does not have to cost the earth. The ROI for a well implemented solution could be as little as a few months as the improvements can both reduce overheads and increase productivity which would be a win, win, situation for your business.
So where do you start you may ask? Well a good place is to list all the areas of your business and even draw a process flow (or flows) so that you can visualise your business processes. Next think about where software is currently involved and add this into the equation, so for example, you may start with sales.
Sales create quotes and then turn them into orders, from there the orders are moved into a production or job order and then materials picked for the job and then the job is assign to a person or people to be completed. Once the job is finished it is sent to QA and then onto despatch and once despatched an invoice is raised. So breaking this process down, what software do you use and at what stage and does it talk to other software packages that you use. Performing this task will actually show you where your business process gaps are with regard to software and this can be an eye opener for business owners as it helps you to see how so many processes are manual and time consuming.
I know the above is just an example but just imagine if you already had a software solution that provided you with real time reports on all business activities, you could, at the push of a button create reports on your sales pipeline, orders won (and by who), production orders, scheduling, job and labour costings, employee and job clocking, job timings and due dates, track all or individual jobs for an update, invoicing and cash flow to mention just a few. All this in one system that fully integrates into your accounting package offering the complete solution.
Maybe you don’t need to look for the Leprechaun anymore!
Sound too good to be true, have a chat with us or contact us to find out why hundreds of satisfied customers trust Opto to run their businesses throughout Australia.
