Systems which will help improve how your business operates

In today’s business landscape, it’s never been more competitive. Each day, new businesses are entering the market, offering new services, making the space a lot harder to succeed in. This is good for customers, as more competition means a better offering. But for companies, it means you have to keep developing your services and investing in yourself to better yourself and stay on top. 

Part of staying on top and making improvements involves looking into the systems you currently use and making changes to improve them. Every day, new technology is being developed, and this tech could be extremely useful for you and do something better and quicker than you already do. Find the best software for your business, such as ScanMarket and use it to help elevate your company.

To help give you some inspiration, we have put together a quick guide on different systems which you could use, which can really help with how your business operates. 

Project management system

So many companies do not use a project management system, even though it can help them hugely. Using one can help you in various areas of your business, from progress tracking projects to delegating tasks to different staff members. They are very affordable and can easily be set up. The best thing to do is to try one and give it a go for a month, this way you can understand it and discover the benefits yourself - most offer a free month's trial. 

Customer relationship management 

Customer relationship management system is short for CRM (which you may have heard of). It’s a software you should be using to help keep all your leads in one place, as well as your sales. By using one, you can store your customers' details, such as phone number, email, as well as any past communications you have had with the customer. It’s particularly useful if you run a sales company and need to know when your renewals are coming up. 

Accounting and invoicing system

Using a finance package, such as Xero, QuickBooks or Sage, can speed up your accounting process. You’ll be able to send out invoices, track your expenses, run profit and loss reports, as well as pay your staff members. You will also be able to use your finance package to help you with your end-of-year accounts - this can save you a lot of time! Talking about time, if you are currently doing your bookkeeping manually, this is very time-consuming, and mistakes can easily be made. Moving over to an accounting system is quick and easy and will allow you to concentrate your time on other areas of the business. 

If you are unsure of what accounting software to use, the best thing to do is to reach out to your accountant and ask for their recommendation. A lot of accountants will have a system they prefer you to use as this will speed up their process, which will benefit you, as you won’t need to pay them as much when using them.

Communication system

How you communicate with your staff members is vital to the success of your business. Using software like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom allows you to instantly message internal and external staff members and get quicker responses than if you were to email. You’ll find instant messaging speeds up decision-making as well as reduces clutter within your emails. Plus, a lot of the companies have apps that you can download, meaning people will receive messages on the go and respond on the go, which doesn’t happen as much if it’s email. 

Analytics and reporting system

You can’t grow if you don’t know how you are performing analytically. Numbers can help tell a story about your performance and whether you are growing or not. For example, you can use software like Google Analytics to track how your website is doing. Social media channels like Instagram have their own backend reporting system, which you can use to see how social campaigns are going. When you send out an email campaign, you can use a company like MailChimp, which also allows you to download reports on the success of your emails. 

Whenever you have a business meeting, everyone should be printing reports or putting reports together with figures as a way to show the success they are having. Not everything can be put into numbers, but a lot of things can. 

File storage and document sharing 

File storage and document sharing benefit pretty much any business, whether you’re a small business or a large corporate company. You can use tools such as Google Drive, Dropbox or iCloud storage to save your documents and share them with your employees. By saving in the cloud, they can make updates, and you can make updates, and the changes are instant - this is a lot quicker than having to send the file back and forth. And it’s another backup which you will have access to, in case something ever goes wrong (which we hope it doesn’t)

As well as working internally with your staff, you can use it externally as well. A lot of photographers will upload their photos to a file storage and then send their client a link to this for them to access the images. 

We hope we have given you some useful pointers on systems you can use to improve your business operations. There are so many to choose from, so make sure you do your research on the ones that will benefit you the most (sites like TrustPilot can be useful as these give real life reviews from customers using the system) Some you may already be using, whilst others you may not have thought of, even though they can make a big difference, using communication systems like Slack. 

What systems do you currently use to help your business, and why do you use them? Is there a system which we haven’t mentioned that you think we should include within our guide? Which of the suggestions above do you think benefits you the most? Let us know in the comment box below. We look forward to hearing from you.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-in-white-dress-shirt-sitting-on-black-rolling-chair-while-facing-black-computer-set-and-smiling-840996/ 

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