Spring is nearly upon us and it is time for many of us to do some spring cleaning around the house. However, we probably should also be doing some spring cleaning around our businesses too, espcially if you are an SME owner or manager. It may well be that you’ve probably neglected some aspects of your business over the last few years as the recession bit. IT projects probably haven’t been top of the ‘to do’ list and haven’t been reviewed for a year or two.
The biggest challenge business-oriented e-commerce operations face now is the increasing expectation of their customers when they visit their sites. The functionality and usability of sites has not really kept pace with B2C e-commerce sites and the customers experience is not sufficiently good.
For most ERP systems and business management software targeted at SMEs there are some simple indicators that they are becoming overloaded. Once you’ve started to notice these symptoms, there are immediate actions you can take. However, generally speaking, it is never a good thing to let such an important business system get to this point in the first place because these symptoms indicate a reasonable degree of stress in the system.
For businesses that typically operate in construction, contracting, manufacturing and white collar consultancy, job costing is an important part of their accountancy function. It allows them to track and predict costs for discrete jobs, ensuring their profitable and delivered on time. Additionally, it enables strong project management – from quoting for new business right through in-life management to wrapping up the project.