As minimum wages go up, and employees demand more and more extras, CEOs and managers are faced with some tough decisions. Fortunately, automation can provide the perfect solution as it allows companies to not only save money but time. It lets companies keep essential employees and a healthy bottom line. Here are some of the top ways it does that.
Scheduled Reports
It takes a significant amount of precious time to run tailored reports and key performance measurements, which could easily be automatically delivered to your printer, email or elsewhere. For example, you may like to quickly know the details of your invoices, credit notes, debtor days, bank balance and cash receipts. These tasks can easily be automated, scheduled and emailed to the relevant department or yourself.
Suggested Orders
Poorly managed stock could be negatively impacting your profit margins. Automation can help here too. Employing replenishment rules and order point calculations will allow you to more effectively utilize the lead times of your suppliers and create optimal stock holding. This is usually based on analysis of historical data and can save your business money by increasing cash flow while improving customer service.
Control Desk
Monitoring your KPIs can be very time consuming, but it is possible to configure your on screen control desk and automate to display your top KPIs when you open your system. This can be updated in real time. Control desk typically works with your system properties to report on factors such as average order value and compare them month on month and year to date. It is even possible to create short cut tabs or custom menus to make access even easier. This could allow you to more effectively monitor unbilled deliveries or display real time exchange rates.
Back-to-Back Re-orders
When your customers order out of stock products or special items, it can be very easy for these orders to be forgotten when the products do arrive. Fortunately, automating your back-to-back re-ordering system creates a documented link of which products are needed for which customers. This automation also removes the need for double entry transactions and can save your warehouse team large numbers of man-hours.
Alerts
Automated alerts can allow you to take advantages of increased sales potential. You can set alerts for when a sales order has yet to be picked or despatched or if the sales team has not followed up on a quote. You can also be notified when a sales order over a set value has been entered into the system or if an item is being sold below margin. This will save management and accounts department’s vital hours and ensure that profits are not compromised.
Margin Protection
When your sales team are totally focused on making the sale, they often fail to consider your margins. Fortunately, automating your margin protection will allow you to ensure that maximum discounts, minimum margins for each product and larger discount password protection are established on your system. You will be able to speed up your entire sales process with automated customer pricing based on promotions, special offers, price bands and price lists. This will save your sales team vital time and allow them to move on to the next sale, increasing your turnover and profits.
Many people think automation only eliminates jobs, but it can actually help you more effectively use your employees’ time and improve productivity. Regardless of your industry, there are many systems that can be easily automated. By choosing the right automation systems, you can streamline them and allow your team to concentrate on core business activities. This will allow you to meet your financial obligations to your existing team without compromising your bottom line.
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