Most businesses reviewing their information systems and processes for improvement total up the costs of making changes. What will new software cost? What will it cost to train employees? You can quantify those answers, because you can get quotes that put those costs on paper. What’s harder to quantify is the cost of not changing. Just keep doing what you’ve always done is safe, right? General Motors thought so as they lost market-share. Each of the “what does it cost to?” questions should bring up the opposite “what is it costing NOT to?” question. What is the old system costing in lost productivity? What is it costing in employee morale and stress-induced errors? What is the long-range cost of not having up-to-date tools?

Companies are using new software features to SAVE MONEY, provide BETTER CUSTOMER SERVICE and WORK MORE EFFICIENTLY. Some questions to ask include:

Does your software allow automatic e-mailing of invoices and statements to customers, PO’s to vendors, reports to managers and accountants without multiple steps and fax machines? How much time is spent faxing documents or stuffing envelopes and mailing? Is important information, like leads and prospects, copies of documents, and memos stored in multiple systems or workstations where it is hard to locate? Is your software compatible with Windows7 which comes on all new computers? Can you export management reports to excel and other packages to do analysis without keying-in the data? Does your system track Electronic transfers that make timely bill-paying simple? Efficiently handle and track credit-card payments and credit-card purchases? How much time/money is lost manually doing things that are addressed by more current software?

Friendly Systems represents several kinds of software, and can help explain their features. We can also modify software to do things you need. Let us know if we can help outline your savings by using more efficient software tools.