Since 1999, Advantage has been working with many small and medium-sized businesses across multiple sectors to transform the way they work and over the course of that time, we’ve heard some shocking stories that we wanted to share with you.
In this blog article, we will demonstrate how Advantage’s cloud-based solutions can help you to transform your technological problems into positives for your business.
Ineffective reporting
The finances in your business aren’t balancing, a sales invoice is being built in Excel, poor invoice payment tracking and much, much more!
Our team of consultants work regularly with businesses where their finance teams use complicated processes in Excel to build their monthly accounts.
The thing is you don’t need to do it this way! This is where Business Central (an ERP designed specifically for small businesses) can come in and help your team to save valuable time and resources.
Find out how to do effective reporting in Business Central
Manual processes
It happens all too often when we see businesses doing manual stock takes by checking every single piece of inventory individually! Having a heavy reliance on manual processes can lead to some significant problems such as negative inventories/missing stock caused simply by an employee not updating the inventory spreadsheet correctly.
This is a scenario that provides a fantastic opportunity for Microsoft Power Apps to be used to automate these manual tasks and with it helping to improve the overall accuracy of data, improve the overall efficiency as well as enabling tasks to be completed on any device and from any location.
Find out more about Microsoft Power Apps today
Endless paper trails
Believe it or not, we still have instances where senior finance managers/directors are still approving BACS payment runs on paper. Given how easy it is to have links to online banking and the ability to create automated workflows within Business Central or Power Automate, there is no way that this should still be happening. That is before you even come to the environmental issues around wasting paper!
Discover more about how Business Central can transform your business processes
Issues with Microsoft Teams
Given that the hybrid way of working is very much the staple diet of the modern working environment, it will come as no surprise that we are likely to be using Microsoft Teams on a daily basis. In the vast majority of cases, we see both our customers and prospects only using the simplest of Teams features. If you didn’t already know, Microsoft Teams has so much more to give when it comes to collaborative working. To provide you with an example of this, Teams can be seamlessly integrated with other Microsoft applications such as Business Central enabling finance teams to speed up their daily tasks and work seamlessly together. Book a Teams training session with our team if you need it or if you are already using Business Central, discuss more about Teams integration in Business Central with one of our Business Central experts.
Managing your customers in Excel spreadsheets
You may find this strange but believe it or not it's more common than you think for businesses to manage both their customers as well as some marketing campaigns in Excel when they are just starting out as a business. However, this can prove problematic as your business grows when these spreadsheets so successful in your infancy years become unmanageable. Making the move to a CRM system doesn’t have to be complicated, this is why at Advantage we’ve put together a Quick Start CRM package which is designed specifically for small businesses and could be exactly what your business needs.
Security problems
Over the years, it is fair to say that we’ve seen a whole host of security problems during that time. In particular, small businesses are always more vulnerable to cyber-attacks but being able to limit the risks and protecting your systems has never been simpler. You may even be pleased to learn that you might be paying for the latest Microsoft solution for this but haven’t using it! Give our team of Cyber Security experts a call today to discuss how we can help you improve your Cyber Security.
Find out more about our Cyber Security solutions
Next Steps?
The above examples are just a few of the many that we’ve seen over the years, however IT doesn’t have to be difficult for your business. Granted, we understand how difficult it can be to both work through and gain a firm understanding of the benefits of the all solutions in the market, in particular for those small and medium-sized businesses that don’t have the luxury of an in-house IT team. This is where Advantage can help your business by making the best Microsoft Cloud technology work for small and medium-sized businesses! To get started on your journey, call us today to discuss your specific needs with one of our team and how we can help you simplify your systems through Microsoft.
