Did you know that you can increase staff productivity and reduce operating costs by leveraging custom software development?
But, how? In this article, we’ll look at ways you can use software integration, business process automation and custom-built applications to achieve these outcomes.
1 | Integrate systems, applications and databases
You likely use multiple systems and more than one database. Using multiple systems can affect productivity. Searching for information across all your databases is often a nightmare because you need to pull data from multiple places. Instead of manually using all these different systems and databases, you should consider integrating them together. This will get all your systems talking to each other so you can quickly bring together important information. For example, most businesses use a CRM and an accounting package. Rather than using both systems to find all the information you need, integrate them into one system so you can pull all the client information and payment details into one central place. Use cases:
- • Integrate CRM with accounting software
- • Integrate online ERP with local database
- • Integrate marketing automation software and CRM
2 | Automate business processes
Custom software development can reduce the time your staff spend doing mundane and repetitive work. By automating these tasks, you can free up their time so they can focus on high-priority work. For example, instead of manually processing invoices each and every time, you can create software that automates the entire process. By optimizing business processes like this one, you can significantly save time, money and resources. Use cases:
- • Automate invoice processing – import invoices into database
- • Automate inventory management with workflow design
- • Send automatic emails based on customer behaviour on your website
3 | Develop a custom application specifically for your needs
Every business is unique. You likely have specific ways of operating that are tailored to your industry. Oftentimes, these unorthodox ways of operating are time consuming and inefficient. Rather than settling for inefficiency, custom applications can automate and streamline your processes. Instead of paying an employee a full-time wage to fumble their way through your old workflows, you can leverage technology to do the mundane work for you. Use cases:
- • Speed up time-consuming reporting
- • Simplify complicated workflows
- • Automate duplicate data entry