Business automation software must be a powerful and flexible enough solution to help handle specific tasks and automate business processes, yet also user-friendly and scalable. The key advantage of automation is to help businesses save time, increase revenues, improve decision making and better analyze and report. Automation software should be something that makes it possible to integrate with CRM and sales, manage business information in a centralized database, solve decision complexity and create reports of any depth and density.
Business Data Management
The very first thing you must consider when selecting a desktop business automation application is whether there is a powerful foundation for managing all business data. As a great example that would fit many small businesses, there should be a central database to store, use and update business information. Then business automation would be much easier to achieve.
Data centralization enables you to avoid losses of your business information and maximize efficiency of operations between personnel. CentriQS makes this scenario possible. You create business information and keep it centralized in a single database deployed on your server. This database simplifies business data management by allowing you and other users to view and share business records about everything your company deals with, including customers, tasks workflows, projects, various documents, templates, and whatever else. Process automation and tracking is made easier with a powerful system of subscriptions, which sends automatic notifications to assigned users immediately when something is modified in the database.
CRM and Sales Management Integration
Much of the power and advantage of business automation software lies in its ability to help you earn more out of the prospects and customers your business already has. In order to do that, it is essential to achieve a close integration with your CRM and sales management.
This time integration means using a single all-in-one system to manage CRM processes and sales along with other business activities, so with this system you have no need to deploy several or more business solutions in your company. It is vital to understand that some standalone business automation solutions claim to integrate with the top CRM systems, such as SalesForce.com, MS Dynamics and Oracle. But this way of CRM and sales management integration requires a greater amount of time and effort, than a complete all-in-one system which is non-biased in terms of third-party CRM integrations. Moreover, there are solutions (ex.: ClickDimensions.com, Marketo.com) that integrate out of the box with particular CRM systems only, giving you no way to target at other CRM platforms of your choice.
This consideration is going to be highly important to the success of your business automation software campaign. In case your business is already targeted at just one CRM (perhaps you've already tried that one and found it suitable), then you are likely to use a system that squarely integrates with that CRM solution. But if you're still open to searching and want to find an alternative way of integration, than you can try CentriQS, an all-in-one enterprise management solution. With CentriQS, you keep your sales and CRM processes closely integrated with other business activities running in your organization.
Management Complexity Solved by Business Automation Software
Even small business management can vary a great deal in terms of big complexity. In general, more efficient management comes at the expense of increased complexity of decision making, so it's important to be honest about what you really need to solve by business automation software. What and how much resources are you willing and able to invest to make your management framework work more efficiently?
For a small business that always looks for cost-effectiveness, it's much better to use a simpler yet powerful platform to its full potential, rather than implement a more sophisticated option as a glorified business automation tool. This scheme is going to work fine for your small company. You can try CentriQS to solve management complexity and address automation needs. The software lets make better and faster decisions based on timely information available in its database.
Business Reporting and Analytics
Reporting and analytics capabilities are essential to getting the most out of business automation software applications. Although these capabilities are a key feature of most platforms, there are variations in how data is displayed and how easy it is to set up and customize.
Perhaps, an ideal way to make sure that a given automation system reports fine and brings data-rich business analytics is to go through free trials and demos. As a rule, you are allowed to spend about 30 days to try out a demo version, ask questions to the support team and consider customization opportunities. For example, you can evaluate a free, full-featured demo version of CentriQS, test it in your business environment within 30 days and solve implementation and customization issues with the support service.
CentriQS offers a powerful business reporting and analytics platform which lets you create both high level and granular reports and analyze your business against various default and custom KPIs. This solution can help you get a better idea of how your business automation is being done and what issues remain unsolved.
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