Simple and Effective Revenue Growth and Cost Saving Solutions for Small Businesses
By Nowshade Kabir ©Rusbiz.com
In order to stay competitive and profitable companies must work on maximizing
the values of the products and services they provide. This means increasing
productivity in key areas of business. Productivity is measured by several
factors. The two most important factors among many others are revenue growth and
cost saving. Companies can improve both of these attributes using new type of
business process automation technology in the spheres of sales and procurement.
To understand how these solutions work we need to get a better perception of
corporate business processes.
Business Process
A business process is a series of specific, measured tasks performed by people
and systems and designed to achieve a predetermined outcome. The processes have
these important characteristics:
- The processes have internal and external users.
- They take place across or between organization’s departments or different
organizations.
- They are based on how work is done in the organization.
The followings are examples of business processes:
- Mortgage application processing
- Credit verification
- Product development
- Travel planning
- Opening a new account
- Answering to a Request for Quote
- Shipping a product
Companies are trying to improve their business processes using computer
technology ever since it has emerged. Initial emphasize was given to enterprise
resource planning. Main areas where automation was adopted were production,
accounting, procurement and logistics. The next step was sales and marketing
automation. Next came customer relationship management and supplier relationship
management. Last couple of years we are seeing implementation of Business
Process Management across the board. Companies are adopting BPM in the areas
where it could make real differences. Some of these processes involve several
departments of the company and some are result of real-time interaction of the
company with its suppliers, customers and other business partners.
Business Process Management
BPM automates and streamlines the business processes which are crucial for the
organization in order to improve productivity. From hiring a person to
processing a purchase order, BPM helps restructuring, controlling and handling
workflows involving people and systems to complete a process more efficiently.
eProcurement and eSales
Two vital business processes for any business are procurement and sales.
Although these processes are integral parts of supply chain management, by
optimizing and automating these two companies can achieve significant
productivity growth even if the whole supply chain is not streamlined as yet.
The solutions eProcurement and eSales will help you meet these objectives. The
advantages of these solutions include:
Direct Benefits
- Cost Savings
- Increased Profits
- Improved productivity
- Lowering overhead costs
- Streamlining of supply chain processes
Indirect Benefits
- Ability to allocate freed resources to core business processes
- Improved service levels
- Access to a large number of suppliers in a relatively short period of time
- Improvement in customer satisfaction management
- Stay competitive
If you are a small company and do not have required resources to
develop or buy these solutions but eager to try out, you can use one of
the several B2B marketplaces which have standard solutions integrated into
their systems.
Rusbiz.com (http://www.rusbiz.com)
is one of them. In order to take advantage of Rusbiz supply chain
management system, you have to become a member and take the following
steps:
- Register your company with Rusbiz.com
- Add products that you sell to Rusbiz eCatalog
- Invite several of your buyers and sellers to Rusbiz if they are not
registered with Rusbiz.
- Once you have a circle of your own buyers and sellers on Rusbiz you
can start using Rusbiz’s highly sophisticated yet simple supply chain
management system.
- Go to Rusbiz FAQ and read thoroughly the comprehensive materials on
the use of supply chain or deal management methods.
The functionalities that you will be able to use immediately are as
follows:
Request for Quote
From the catalog of your Web Store, Rusbiz eCatalog or from eMarketplace —
if you have added a product there – buyers can fill up a standard form of
RFQ and send it to you.
Quote
Once you receive a RFQ, you can check, edit the form and send a quotation
to the buyer.
Negotiation
The buyer either can accept your proposal or make a Purchase Order from
the Quotation you sent to him or make a counter proposal. You in turn,
either may accept the offer or send back another offer.
Purchase Order
From your final offer, if all terms and conditions suit him, the buyer can
create a Purchase order and send to you.
Invoices
Once you received a Purchase Order based on it you can create an invoice
and send it back. There are also payment status and shipping status
tracking features integrated into the system.
The Invoicing solution alone will bring benefits like:
- Both suppliers and buyers can view the invoice and rest of the
processes, i.e. RFQ, Quote, PO and payment status online.
- Since the invoices have to match the PO automatically the matching
problems that hold most of the payment get eliminated
- Invoices do not have to wait to get inserted in account payable list
- Since no manual data entry at account payable is required there won’t
be any documental error
Companies can really revolutionize the way they handle their business by
just implementing these simple but effective solutions. However, the level
of success will depend on the following factors:
- The implementation should touch management and the departments.
- There should be strong leadership and top-down support.
- Both buyers and suppliers must get involved.
- Employees should receive training in hands-on learning environment.
Most importantly, you have to start immediately without waiting for a
better time or a better solution.
