Here is a well-known accounting principle: the increase in profit is achieved by multiplying revenues minus expenses. Any successful company seeks to increase this ratio by improving its efficiency, particularly in the performance of management tasks.
Fortunately, there is now an abundant supply of applications on the web that allow managers to be more efficient in many ways in the management of their business. If you are still not convinced by the advantages of the features offered by these platforms, I invite you to analyze the list of your daily tasks and see how repetitive and unrewarding some of them are. Whether you start with accounting, marketing or production, every aspect of running a business has its share of redundant tasks. Although they are immutable to the proper functioning of the company, they can easily be executed automatically and in the short term, this represents time savings. Increasing your work efficiency is essentially what management software offers you.
The automation of accounting tasks to support our business decisions.
If you’re like me, you’ll find that accounting is not the most exciting aspect of your business. It is sometimes difficult to find our way around our numbers or to know what conclusions to draw from our observations. However, if you use accounting software, it is much less time consuming!
Indeed, there are only advantages to choosing an online accounting management software. Whether it’s Quickbooks, Xero or Freshbooks, to name the most popular, they allow us to keep an eye on the financial health of our business. With the help of comparative graphs and performance ratios, it is much easier to make short-term business decisions. For example, each month you have a recurring disbursement to keep the business running (salaries, rent, etc.). By knowing the amount of current expenses you can then establish your minimum break-even point. Having all of your accounting data instantly and at your fingertips is a great example of how using online software opens up a world of possibilities.
Reduce expenses by automating business operations.
The administration of one’s company is probably the least profitable of all the activities it requires. Creating an invoice, making a bank reconciliation, updating a customer database are all tasks that are necessary to run a business but that require time and when you manage a small business with only a few people, this time is precious. Adopting digital tools will certainly help you reduce the energy you have to spend on it. So, I propose to give you an overview of some tasks that can be automated to help you reduce your expenses.
For the project planning and production dimensions, where you want to reduce the time spent on project opening, operations and delivery:
- A sample project opens in your project manager when a contract is accepted;
- Persons who must be notified of the project are notified;
- The budget associated with the project is used to cap the production expenses of the project;
- Each task is assigned to the responsible person and the deadlines appear in everyone’s production schedule;
- Production time is associated with specific tasks;
- The production data is transferred to the accounting software;
- And several other automations;
For accounting and finance dimensions, where you want to have real time data without having to intervene manually:
- Production expenses and employee hourly rates are considered in the profitability calculation;
- Payables and receivables are automatically reconciled in the correct position;
- Invoices are automatically generated for my company’s activities;
- The payment link is inserted in the invoice sending;
- Payment reminders are automatically sent to customers who are overdue;
- And several other automations;
The implementation of these automated tasks will reduce the intervention time, the frequency of errors or oversights, which will certainly result in efficiency gains. You can easily take these steps yourself or hire one of our digital transformation consultants to optimize the management of your business.
Grow revenue through more personalized marketing communications
Do you know what brand equity is? This term translates into the set of consumer attitudes and behaviors associated with a brand. In other words, it is the perceived value of our products and services by consumers. Increasing brand equity means responding more adequately to customer expectations and more precisely to their needs. As every advertising campaign starts with a promise, you have to be able to deliver on it. To achieve this, good communication and customer retention practices are the norm. There are countless online tools that allow us to increase our return on investment in terms of marketing effort. Here are some examples of automations that will take your business to the next level.
For the sales and marketing dimensions, where we want to have an accurate picture of our customers and their behavior towards our proposal:
- The different conversion tactics are accounted for and analyzed;
- My website visitors are segmented along different behavioral dimensions;
- The capture of information from a contact is transposed into a database (CRM);
- A new prospect receives personalized marketing emails;
- A customer who abandons the purchase process is re-launched with a personalized offer;
- A personalized service proposal is created with the prospect’s information;
- And many other automations;
For the customer relations dimension, where we want to offer an impeccable service to build trust and maintain it over time:
- All the interactions of a customer with the company feed his information sheet;
- A phone call from a customer opens the information sheet on the screen;
- The information of a client is synchronized in all the software
- The customer is labeled according to his purchasing preferences;
- A notification email is sent following any interaction with the company;
- And many other possibilities;
Globally, the automation of the marketing aspect of the company aims first of all to better know its customers and then to respond more adequately to them. They don’t have to be part of your database to enjoy the benefits of automation, but a good knowledge of your target will maximize the impact of your sales efforts.
Most of the operations mentioned above are performed within the software that supports them. However, you may be using multiple software programs to meet different needs within your organization. In such a case, the exchange of information between them is elementary in order not to create redundant data entry tasks. Fortunately, the synchronization of information between cloud-based software is done quite well and often in a native way. However, when an application is not offered, a software connector such as Zapier or Make must be used. These are intended to allow the exchange of data between online software. All you have to do is choose which information you want to exchange between the databases and then activate the automation. This is a more complex method, but still accessible to those new to automation. However, if you wish to delegate this work, contact our team of experts at UPentreprise. It will be our pleasure to accompany you on this level.
The digital transformation of your company requires the digital management of its data
In short, the most important thing to remember about digital transformation in business is that it allows information to travel easily between its different “departments”, reducing the risk of error and redundancy. The management of a company can only benefit from this. Information transfer now means more malleable and fluid data transfer. Data management must therefore be the standard bearer of the digitization of his company. It must allow better business decisions to be made thanks to the knowledge it generates. Whether from an accounting or marketing perspective, digital data is the oil of the 21st century, a phrase that has been heard often but sums up why SMBs need to go digital quickly.
