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.

Owning a small business is a high pressure role which can and will take over your life, so it is crucial that you have the right tools to help you manage not only your employees but the day to running of your business. Too many business owners feel that as head of a company they must know all about what is going on within that business – and with good cause. However, the problems start if you are spending a disproportionate amount of your time getting information about new customers, chasing employees over holidays, finding missed and unpaid invoices not to mention keeping on top of the various projects that you have in the pipeline. In short if this is happening to you, you are in danger of taking your eye off the ball and losing valuable revenue – and you need to turn this around and regain control of your business.

Many owners of a small business try different ways of recording information and often turn to business solutions such as Salesforce and Sugar CRM. These whilst good applications are a little too complicated, meaning that they are usually not used to their full potential, leaving business owners in the same position as they were before. If you are looking for a business solution that is easy to use, is fully integrated with calendars has quote and invoicing tools and can be accessed from anywhere in the world you need to check out S3 CRM. S3 CRM is a revolutionary web based application that will take the hassles and stress out of running a small to medium sized business. Here are a few of the features that S3 CRM offers you –

1. Increased productivity – use the project feature to track projects from creation to completion and see who is responsible for it. No more missed deadlines due to deadline alerts.

2. Centralise your business – run your business from S3 CRM and be in total control where ever you are in the world with an internet connection.

3. Improve contact relationships – with S3 CRM’s address book you can store details of last customer contact through email, telephone or letter and attach a picture of customers so you never forget a face again.

4. Share the workload – as all calendars are fully integrated you can see at a glance which projects your workforce is working on and move resources if there is an approaching deadline that needs more work.

5. Increase cash flow – using S3 CRM’s quoting and invoicing tools you can create invoices and attach them to customer records. Invoices are created automatically and saved for ease of retrieval. Invoices that remain unpaid after a set deadline will appear on your unpaid invoices list for the appropriate action.

6. Never lose an important document again – thanks to S3 CRM’s document storage facility you can save documents either to their own file or attach them to a customer, meeting or project record so that the information you need is a just a click away.

Theses are just a few of the features you can expect from S3 CRM’s business solution. You can also use it to plan any email marketing campaigns that you have based on your current stats and customer buying trends as they can be accessed with ease. See at a glance who are your biggest paying customers and target the right email marketing group – say goodbye to wasted marketing fees targeting the wrong groups. For a business tool that is also a virtual assistant who will never let you down make the right choice – sign up for our free trial of S3 CRM today.