Excel inventory management and word sales paperwork and invoices are doing more damage to your business than you realise.
If you are starting out or operating a 1-2 person operation it may seem fine to track your inventory in excel and quote / invoice your customers modifying templates in word. However this will significantly hinder your growth and ability to control it.
If you aspire to grow the business it really is time for an integrated management platform that looks after the CRM, operations, inventory, sales and purchasing. Giving greater control, reduced admin time providing you the ability to focus on the things you love.
5 Problems of Excel and Word for your business
1. Slow Customer response time
As the customer is your livelihood providing great customer service and quick responses is imperative to the success and growth of your business. From providing clear and concise quotations promptly to tracking shipments, your ability to meet their demands is the deciding factor for future orders.
Word may offer the chance to free type any quote or order you like, this may seem flexible but it offers no traceability such as stock control. You also have no idea of available stock when quoting lead times or margin control based on bill of materials.
2. Wasting time on admin
Multiple surveys have shown that SME’s without integrated management software are forced to waste time on admin, keeping them from growing the business and developing products.
Word and Excel require far greater human input to ensure they are kept up to date and accurate, this not only wastes time but relies heavily on attention to detail in preventing errors and often will not highlight an error until its too late – leading to an unhappy customer.
3. Scalability issues
You have a good product and established demand that it is growing, now is the time to react quickly and fulfil. Outdated procedures are inflexible to scale and tie you down like an anchor. As the demands grow and failure to fulfil occurs the demand will fall as quicker than it grew.
4. Lack of live reporting
In the fast paced environment of an SME, stock is being purchased, received, sold and shipped and your Excel spreadsheet hasn’t been updated in time.
Quickly you fall out of sync with what you actually have in stores and what’s required for outstanding orders.
Even if you update inventory every day it will never be as accurate or instant as a purpose built online inventory system.
5. Poor visibility
With your whole business hidden in documents stored on varies machines or servers it proves near impossible for good overall vision of how the business is performing.
Finding orders, checking stock levels producing reports. These actions should be easily accessible but the disjointed nature of word and excel simply won’t allow.
So what’s the alternative?
A system that collects data through standard operation and allows the creation of actionable reports.
Online, live tracking of your inventory which offers quick and powerful search of items.
Reduce time spent re-keying invoices and bills into your accounts system.
Improve your workflow vision and process to prevent any bottlenecks.
Why not try Omono, the online suite of integrated modules that help streamline your business boosting sales and reducing costs.