In my life as a professional software engineer, I encounter many business owners whose business processes efficiency can greatly be improved upon.
Software development, using quality business software, computer training and advice can drastically improve the efficiency of your business when done right, because:
1. After knowing which existing business software on the market might be suited for your company you can save a lot of time and money for not having to develop your own customized software, which is much more expensive most of the time.
2. Repetitive tasks (like e.g. sending a fax or dialling a phone-number) can be automated, saving huge amounts of time.
3. Investing in the right additional hardware equipment (like scanners, barcode labels, radio-frequency identification tags, label printers, etc.) can streamline your business processes. For example: it's much easier to keep your inventory up to date and to find products easier in both your inventory and your business software.
4. By training you can learn how to do things differently and more efficiently. I often find people using Microsoft Software, like for example Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel, but they only use the most basic functions. When I explain the more advanced functionality most often they quickly realize the benefits of it. I also talk to a lot of people who bought Microsoft Office, which also includes Microsoft Access, but they don't know what it is, the benefits of it or how it works. Once I explain, they want to know more.
5. It's much easier to quickly get an overview of the financial health of your company, where all the expenses went and which products or services bring the highest revenue.
6. Often people are so busy running their business that they don't take some time to think about their existing business processes. Once the decision is made to invest in software development or buying existing business software, people usually think deeper about their business process, which often leads to new insights and improvements. For example, people often suddenly realise which business processes can be automated or improved upon. My experience is that this often leads to a huge increase in revenue in the future.
7. Most commonly, all transactions are stored in a central database, so it's easy to retrieve old data which is great for tracking and tracing purposes. Also, financial data can easily be transferred to your accounting or bookkeeping software. This alone saves a huge amount of time. Furthermore, the database can be linked to the internet, allowing people from all over the world doing direct business with your company for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. For example, product ordering can be automated via the internet. Besides saving a lot of time doing phone calls, sending faxes and e-mails, the moment a customer submit his order in his browser, the ordering data is automatically stored in your database, saving a lot of data-entry time.
8. It's very easy to make all kind of reports, whatever the need. Besides reports on paper it's also easy to generate portable document format documents or Microsoft Excel sheets, which can easily be distributed via e-mail.
9. More work can be done with fewer employees, saving lots of money. In some cases it's also easier to get a detailed overview of the productivity of your employees.
10. It's much easier to set goals for your company and verify in the future whether these goals were accomplished.
Implementing new software in a company must never be underestimated, for it generally takes a lot of communication between all stakeholders (like business management, production, sales, research and development, public relations, marketing, network and software engineers, etc.) and it takes quite some preparation, fine-tuning and end-user training.
It always takes time for people getting used to doing things differently or getting used to a different user-interface. Once these initial challenges are overcome, the benefits far outweigh the efforts.
