Taking control using business software

What is the main thing that prof.ITplus provides to the businesses that use it? Control. That’s right, control.

Of course, as a business owner or manager, you have control now; you say what happens, when and how at a strategic level. But what about control of critical aspects of your business, such as pricing, discounts and profit margins, which you may not have day-to-day involvement with? How are these controlled?

How well synchronised are the activities of those in charge of purchasing and those in charge of selling? If it’s taking weeks for purchasing price increases to filter down to the sales teams, that’s weeks and weeks that you could be under-selling products and not hitting required profit margins. Who’s responsible for controlling your profit margins and ensuring all arms of the business are working within that margin? How does that person find out if profit margins are being met?

Your stock levels, how are they controlled? How does your warehouse manager know what to order, and when? If it’s a ‘best guess’ situation, or involves wandering around the warehouse once a week with a clipboard, there is almost certainly a better way to do things – based on fact, historical data and seasonal trends. If your warehouse has stock sitting on shelves that’s not moved for seasons and you often find yourself placing urgent orders to replenish stock of your fastest-moving items, you need to take control. You’ll have better cash flow, provide better customer service and will more efficiently use your valuable (and expensive!) warehouse space if you do.

Need another example of where control is essential? What happens if your key staff go on holiday, or even leave the company? If it’s only the sales manager that knows about acceptable discounts for key accounts, what happens when they’re away? Either your sales team can’t provide quotes to your customers until the manager returns or the wrong discount is applied (resulting in customers being over-charged and going elsewhere or being under-charged and causing you a loss). Or there’s another possibility, you have over-worked managers who can’t take a complete break from the business due to answering emails / taking phone calls because there’s no control without them.

At OGL Computer, we specialise in helping companies with these type of issues. Very often these problems arise from being ‘too’ successful; the company has grown but processes and systems haven’t grown and matured at the same rate.

prof.ITplus provides the power to take control so informed decisions can be made. The system allows parameters / controls to be set across the business so all processes are synchronised and departments are co-ordinated. All users can see the same information about customers, products, stock, prices, delivery dates and discounts. You gain control from a dashboard of information that gives you complete visibility across the business and the power to drive your business forward.