strategies to drive your business forward - automate improve evolve

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Automate. Improve. Evolve. Strategies to Drive Your Business Forward

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Automate. Improve. Evolve.Strategies to Drive Your Business Forward

Remember when everything you did at the office was manual? You spent long hours writing formulas, performing calculations, making revisions, and printing reams and reams of paper. You were determined to find a better way. You tried spreadsheets. You tried stand-alone business applications to automate key financial tasks. By implementing an ERP solution, you were finally able to streamline key processes, maximize productivity, and improve collaboration and decision making. Does it end there?

Of course not. To be a successful business, you have to be willing and able to change. You have to anticipate challenges and find new ways to beat your competition. And, to do that, you need sales and happy customers. Your business peers agree. A recent survey found that 94%1 named increasing sales as their top investment priority.

That begs the question, what are you doing to increase sales? How do you increase revenue, retain more customers, and make your business more efficient now—and into the future? Where can you go for help?

“Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort.”

— Paul J. Meyer, founder of Success Motivation International

1 Source: Sage Customer Survey 2012

Ready, Aim, Where?To drive your business forward, you need to find balance between routine tasks and strategic responsibilities. If you want to enable business growth, you need to set goals and empower your employees to meet them. But how?

To help your sales team achieve success, you need a process. One that tracks account history, ensures consistent contact, and measures progress. One that provides the right information to the right people at the right time. Business software leverages best practices to help you improve sales, margins, and customer service with tools that help you evaluate your pipeline. Best of all, by automating key tasks, you have more time for strategy and more time for selling.

“If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time.”

— Zig Ziglar, salesman, author, and motivational speaker

Get the Right Tools for the Job

You need the right tools available to increase sales. A 2013 Aberdeen report2 found that better processes lead to better solution selling.

Does your organization have a formal sales process? How do you compare?

2 Sales Performance Optimization 2013: Aligning the Right People, Processes, and Tools, Aberdeen Group, February 2013

85% of best-in-class companies had a formal sales process

77% of average companies

64% of laggards

Build Your Muscle Memory With AutomationIf you’ve ever heard athletes talk about building muscle memory, you know that they spend countless hours practicing particular movements or sequences. The perfect golf or batting swing. Boxing combinations and blocks. The goal is to be able to repeat the desired task when needed, even when under extreme pressure.

Business automation is kind of like building muscle memory. It empowers your business to operate efficiently even in difficult conditions. For example, a 2012 Aberdeen report found that 52% of best-in-class companies standardize business processes in order to combat the lack of available skilled resources and increased competition for customers. These automated, repeatable processes ensure consistent service delivery and quality no matter what obstacles you are facing.

“Modern organizations are faced with increasing complexity in the way they operate. It takes a combination of strategies, operational capabilities, and enabling technologies in order to define objectives and strategy, maintain cohesion, and deliver tangible and repeatable business performance.”

— Nick Castellina, Aberdeen Group

Standardizing and Linking Processes Through ERP*

Every business seeks to follow best practices. It is equally important to standardize those processes across the organization to ensure alignment with corporate objectives and make those processes work independent of people.

How does your company encourage process efficiency?

*Source: Aberdeen Group, September 2012

*78% of best-in-class organizations standardized enterprisewide procedures for procurement, cash collection, and financial reconciliation vs. 67% of all others.

*58%

of best-in-class organizations integrated manufacturing operations with customer service, logistics, and delivery organization vs. 40% of all others.

Results from a Deloitte survey, reported by CFO Magazine, found that 70% of businesses experienced productivity improvements in the past 3 years—with about half reporting gains of 5% or more. “Respondents attributed the gains largely to improvements in business processes and technology. Among the technology investments, business process automation tools ranked first in boosting productivity scores, followed by business intelligence tools.”

To help your organization achieve success, review your current diagnostic, forecasting, and management tools. In many cases, you will find manual processes still at work. This represents an opportunity for you to:

1. Document and establish formal processes.

2. Automate manual processes with software solutions.

3. Support your back office with tools that provide sales analysis and exception reporting.

4. Establish early warning systems or measure supplier delivery performance.

5. Focus on strategic decision making.

Get There With a Little Help From Your FriendsImplementing your ERP system is just the first step to streamlining critical business processes. But, it’s not enough. As Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com, said, “What is dangerous is not to evolve.” It is imperative that your business stays agile to achieve long-term success.

One piece of the puzzle that is often overlooked is your business software maintenance and support practices. Access to updates and improved integration opportunities are critical. Modern maintenance practices are far more than a break-fix relationship centered on support—instead, they are evolving into strategic partnerships.

More and more, customers with active support plans are taking advantage of key insights from their software provider. Through interacting with and supporting millions of customers, your software provider develops new solutions based on industry trends and best practices and is a great resource for ways to improve sales and other processes. An active maintenance and support plan is an invaluable instrument that keeps your business in tune now and into the future.

Business Evolution:

Define formal business

processes

Leverage best practices

Automate those

processesBe prepared

Respond to changing business

conditions

Evolve

©2013 Sage Software, Inc. All rights reserved. Sage, the Sage logos, and the Sage product and service names mentioned herein are registered trademarks or trademarks of Sage Software, Inc., or its affiliated entities. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. 13-02775 04/13

Need help evolving your business?

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Learn more about Sage Business Care plans:

Call: 866-530-7243

Visit: na.sage.com/sage-na/support-and-training/customer-support-programs