S3 Blog

Everyone who has a business knows that increased productivity and lower costs bring about a healthier bottom line, but what are the best ways in which to do this? Here are the Top 10 ways in which you can do just that-

1. Utilise your staff correctly – one of the biggest mistakes in business is not knowing what your staff are doing, this does not mean spying on them but making sure that there are not too many people working on a project that doesn’t require them.

2. Use project planning tools – these can make all the difference to your business, by keeping an eye on all your projects and being alerted when deadlines approach you will find that productivity is increased.

3. Have all relevant documentation to hand – by having all documents related to a particular project or customer you or your staff will never waste time, and ultimately money, searching for missed invoices or other paperwork every again.

4. Record all customer contacts – by recording every time you telephone, email or send a letter out to a customer you will not waste money be repeatedly contacting someone who has already heard from you.

5. See all unpaid invoices at the click of a button – being able to do this means that you can see at a glance how much money your customers owe you. Add to this a feature which shows you which are the oldest invoices and you have the perfect tool for chasing up outstanding debts which will make your business more efficient.

6. Choose a fully integrated software solution – doing this will enable you to run all aspects of your business from one easy to use application which will cut down on time spent using slower and less efficient software programmes.

7. Be able to connect to your business from anywhere in the world. By using a web based application to run your business through you are able to access all areas of your business from staff calendars to project planning from anywhere that has an internet connection.

8. See all approaching deadlines and act upon them. If you are aware of deadlines you will be better placed to make sure that they are met, even if this means moving extra staff onto a project if it looks as though it might not get completed in time.

9. Store information in one place that is easy to access. Once again this will cut down on time spent searching for documentation for various tasks which frees up more time to work on the important aspects of your business.

10. Use good customer relationship management. In business nothing is more important than your customers and having good relationships with your customers is crucial to create profits. Use a software solution that allows you to record details of your customers from last contact to ongoing projects so that when you speak to them you and your staff have all the information you might need right there at your fingertips.

Small businesses all need software that will for them as well as with them and the new S3 CRM software meets the needs of small to medium sized businesses perfectly. With a wide range of features designed to make running your business more efficient is it any wonder that S3 CRM is the leader of the pack when it comes to software platforms.

Here are some of the features that makes this software the future for small businesses:-

1. Integrated calendars – this feature gives you the ability to see all of your employees calendars at a glance which makes project planning a breeze. You don’t have to spend time ploughing through holiday requests and sick leave documentation, simply log into the shared calendar and see who is where at any time.

2. Project planning – plan projects and store documents related to the project alongside contact details of the people involved so there is no more missed paperwork. S3 CRM has the facility to create new projects as they are discussed and set deadlines immediately.

3. Alerts – these alerts are essential if your business has several different projects running at the same time. Log in and see which projects deadlines are approaching, then check the project details to make sure that everything is one track to meet the deadline.

4. Quoting and invoicing tools – preparing quotes couldn’t be easier with S3 CRM, you can put separate items on separate lines and the invoicing tool will create the total for you. VAT will even be added as part of the feature, then once you have done you can save the quote to a customers record so all of their information is held in one place. Invoicing is just as easy as once a quote has been accepted an invoice will be created.

5. See your business at a glance – do you know how many invoices are outstanding for your business, or how many quotes you have sent out, who is your best customer, how many projects are approaching deadlines? Often to find out this amount of information time would be wasted going through files and checking data, but not with S3 CRM. On your dashboard you can see exactly what is happening in your business at any time without time being wasted.

6. Greater accessibility – S3 CRM is a web-based application so you can log in to your account anywhere in the world that has an internet connection. What could be better? Now you can leave the office but still keep in touch with the click of a button.

7. Document storage – S3 CRM also features a document storage tool which allows you to file documents online and retrieve them when needed – say goodbye to lost paperwork!

8. Customer records – customer relationship management is one of the keys to a successful business, with S3 CRM you are able to not only store customer records but attach photos of them so you will never forget a face.