The most direct route to achieve a productivity boost in accounting is to have your office, field and accounting systems tied at the hip. When systems are truly integrated they reference the same data. Then combine with a mobile friendly platform. Combining integration with mobility streamlines processes and saves time in both the office and in the field. The improved productivity spans from creating an estimate until generating an invoice. Let’s touch on a few of these steps and see if they sound familiar.
Sales has a hot customer and gathers the information needed to create an estimate. They enter the basic customer information, along with the pricing for work requested, in their tried and true excel template. The customer wants to move forward. Now customer service must enter much of the same information in the office system to create a work order and schedule a tech. The tech prints out the work orders for the day and heads out the door. On the job they write on the work order the time and material required to complete the job. When the tech returns then bookkeeping deciphers the notes and enters the information in the accounting system. Finally, you generate an invoice.
The problem with this process is not only are you re-entering data multiple times, but errors naturally occur when multiple people are entering another person’s data in different systems. These errors take time to resolve and a lot of the time it is accounting discovering and fixing them. This is not a productive way to run a railroad – or a services business.
With a mobile friendly platform, you capture the information at the source with a keyboard, not hand written notes. Information accuracy increases. In addition, it is entered once with no deciphering. Not only does this reduce time for data recording and entry, but also the time spent correcting the associated errors. You generate invoices faster, with fewer errors. With integrated systems you deal with one source of information for all work activity. The result is fewer customer disputes, increased cash flow, and less non-value-added activity. This directly translates to an accounting productivity boost. If these capabilities sound appealing, then you should start moving to fully integrated field and accounting systems.