Discover the benefits of small business erp software
Commercial organisations need effective process, the focus of leadership and structure that can stretch to enable the business to grow safely as a massive 55% of businesses don’t make it to their fifth birthday. The commentators offer banal opinions as to why this happens. I continuosly observe three key reasons why this tragedy happens so often and to so many individuals with different backgrounds, qualifications and skill.
The first reason is insufficient market comprehension.
Refusal to look at the water ahead. For example Individuals have the idea, create the product and then expect the market to come and buy. In information age there is no excuse for lack of research prior to spending any time and cash on designing a product until you have firm confirmed there is a market.
The number two reason is lack of understanding of the basics of business.
A significant proportion of people starting a company know their trade, how to offer a service or build a product, but not how to run a business. Having the ability to understand and follow the balances in the P&L or the balance sheet is a vital. The basic knowledge of accounting is rarely imparted coherently by the business publications, online resources and those with the knowledge such as CPAs and bookkeepers. This whole area is further complicated by technology vendors and their affiliates pushing small business accounting software at fledgling businesses.
Small business accounting software isnt a complete answer.
A new dawn for small business technology
You may have heard of SAP software. It’s a software application used by the majority of medium sized and big businesses all over the world. The purpose of the software application is to join the entire organisation together and allow hundreds and often thousands of employees to record, share and view information concerning the physical and financial processes of the firm. Significant organisations are managed by savvy individuals who understand the strategic benefits of this type of software, such as how it can give them an understanding of why difficulties are happening inside their organisation or where there might be opportunity for refinements.
This category of system is often known as ERP. It is very sophisticated, very expensive and can take months and often years to deploy. An installation of ERP software can cost ten’s of millions of dollars but this doesn’t stop substantial companies procuring these systems.
Until this year software similar to this was not feasible or financially viable for tiny firms. As a result tiny firms have not been aware of the immense benefits that ERP systems can deliver. Tiny organisations have been wrongly convinced by predatory vendors like Sage Software and Intuit that small business accounting software is the solution. These applications most often have no capacity to allow their owners to join together the entire organisation or perform fundamental tasks such as customer relationship management.
The success of Web based CRM software from vendors like Salesforce.com is a damning testimony of the small business accounting software vendors misleading or misunderstanding the small business community.
It is for this reason that small business ERP firms similar to Salesorder.com have started to make great strides in the market. They provide software as a service containing all of the major features a small organisation needs at very low cost. What is even more interesting is these systems are a cinch to use and can be delpoyed quickly.
Remote Working Part 2 – Tips on self management
The top reason workers fail to adapt to working remotely is they don’t recognise the need for excellent organisation and rigid self management.
I have been working remotely for more than six years since I first unearthed Quickbooks online an ‘on demand’ small business accounting software service and was struck by the fact that if you can do accounting on the net then why shouldn’t it be possible to perform other important types of work away from the conventional office?
Whilst working remotely has a lot of positives there are numerous things that workers don’t realise which convert into problems that result in lower productivity and reduced morale. The major reason for reductions in work output from remote employees is distraction and it is a verified and well publicised fact that it can take a employee up to 0.33 hours to return to their original output level after experiencing a distraction.
Studies also show that people who are consistently subjected to disruptions are more likely to suffer from decreased memory power and are prone to developing mental health trouble in later life. We exist in an over communicated world and it is critical that you recognise the problems this causes before you decide to work remotely. When operating remotely you must do everything feasible to reduce the probability of being distracted.
Here’s how I do it:
1, Get a routine, communicate it to absolutely everyone and stick to it!
How to sell your expertise online
I make a least one video per day like the one above to help the people who use this low cost replacement for small business accounting software (for example Quickbooks) to master new skills and improve their business (the video above took about an hour to make). Here is a really quick way of selling what you know online to potentially thousands of people worldwide and start supplementing your income. I would recommend you take the time to design and create your own product (digital content) as the margin you earn will be higher and you have the added benefit of learning from your customers what you could do to refine your product and maybe sell more.
When I first saw how simple it was to create a video and upload it to YouTube or turn it into a podcast it made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck and I concluded I should share this essential skill with everyone. The downloads and views on these platforms for my small business accounting software videos is beyond belief and it just keeps getting better.
The best instructional videos I have seen have always been produced using a technique called storyboarding this helps you decide and refine how you to best share your knowledge with your audience. Don’t even think about using pen and paper to create a storyboard, you can save yourself a lot of repetitive work and let your creative powers loose by using slide creation programs like Microsoft powerpoint or Apple Keynote. As you will see in a moment you can create your storyboard and produce your video without having to spend any money what so ever on even the lowest cost (apart from free of course) and best tools that money (if you had it) can buy to get your video out there making money.
I have tried loads of other tools and experienced a lot of pain doing this and by far the best tool I have used and still use today is TechSmith Camtasia Studio as it will produce videos in YouTube, Podcast, Windows Media Player and Quicktime formats and it has a great library of tutorials which you should watch first (whatever you do, do not download the 30 day trail yet). Get your storyboard sorted and ready and make sure you fully understand how you are going to use the Camtasia software (watch the tutorials…yes all of them!!) before you download the trial as you only have use of the software for thirty days.
In the next article I will publish on this blog (with the owners permission) I will walk you through how I create a storyboard using the small business accounting software video as the patient or the living example of how to create videos that compel people to act.