When you dim the lights and leave the office at night, what scary things are lurking in the shadows, silently sucking the life out of your business? Mummies? Witches? Vampires? No, the monsters are far scarier: Manual processes and lack of business automation. For a managed service provider, telecom reseller, or integrator, these monsters could be sucking over $400,000 dollars out of your bottom line per year!
Here are 13 of the most frightening ways this happens:
13 ways manual processes hurt your business
Overstock write-offs
The technology your customers use is changing faster than a vampire’s fangs go after fresh blood! Overstocking goods and parts needed to service technology can cost you big time and take up valuable space for things you can actually sell.
Inventory shrinkage
The amount of inventory you think you have vs. the inventory you actually have shouldn’t be a dark mystery hiding in the shadows. Stuff magically disappears from inventory caches all the time and the better you track it the less this will cost you.
Unbilled inventory
It’s spooky just how much unbilled inventory can cost you. If you provide a service for your customer and fail to bill for materials due to manual invoice generation, or fail to account for parts inventory in your quoting process, you’re living in a nightmare and you don’t even know it.
Underutilized technicians
Manually tracking technician utilization is for mummies. Effective technician utilization can make the difference between profitable projects and ones that put your losses six feet under. If you’re not capturing all your techs’ time—a significant cost to your company—your profitability takes a hit.
Unhappy employees
It's more important than ever to do all you can to hold on to your most valuable assets: your people! Manual and repetitive tasks make your people feel like zombies. Automating repetitive and mundane tasks will free up more time for them to feel human and fulfilled (and happy!).
Lost sales opportunities
Your sales funnel should look more like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and less like a terrifying haunted maze. Automating and tracking sales funnel stages is the best way to ensure you’re not relegating potential new customers to oblivion because they get lost in manual sales tracking hell.
Dissatisfied customers
The lifeblood of your business is your customers! You need to keep the vampires (your competitors) away from them at all costs. The best way to do this: Keep your customers happy by being super responsive! The faster you can respond to a customer request the better, and a solid CRM will automatically link all critical customer functions so you can get them what they need fast.
Project delays and overruns
Although MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue) is the holy grail these days, project revenue still accounts for an important chunk of your company’s value. Delays and overruns can kill project profits faster than a stake through the heart, and as terrifying as this reality is, it doesn’t have to be this way. Any business automation platform worth its salt will easily move through project stages and alert you to hold-ups before they become your worst nightmare.
Unprofitable contracts
Unless you’re the walking dead you are likely trying to build your MRR to be your dominant revenue source. MRR is one thing, but PROFITABLE MRR is the light to banish all darkness hiding in your contracts. Automating and tracking contract profitability shouldn’t be a horror show, and a great ERP/BPA toolset can bring you more dollar signs.
Unbilled services
Automated billing can make the difference between glorious cashflow and terrifying nightmares from accounts receivable. Scary to be sure, but when you invoice manually and miss some, you may have to go back to your customer and ask for arrears. It’s a bad look and your customers can’t stand it.
Invisible customer data
The invisible man makes for spooky stories around the campfire, but invisible customer data should never be a thing! Here’s a frightening scenario: Your customer calls you in a panic because they want you to pull up some service ticket items from three years ago. Where are they??? Who was the technician assigned to the fixes?? Where on earth is the contact info for the customer’s IT lead who might have additional information? A good business automation platform is the answer to all those questions and more.
Multiple license fees
As your business grows and evolves, utilizing more of the features your ERP/BPA provider offers shouldn’t feel like death by a thousand cuts. Paying separately for CRM, ticking, invoicing and project management features is macabre, and the costs really add up over time. You should work with a partner that offers one comprehensive solution complete with these awesome features. Anything less should make you want to scream.
Low business-value multipliers
At Rev.io we believe you should always be building your business as if you want to sell it, even if you aren't ready! Maximizing your company’s value is always a good thing to do, and automation can be a big factor in increasing your multipliers. People looking to acquire companies are looking for businesses that practically run themselves. The sooner you automate your business functions, the less scary your future will be.
If you don’t mind burning through hundreds of thousands of dollars thanks to the 13 scary things above, well, that’s the scariest thing yet! If you want to avoid these 13 scary stories and get more money back, there is good news. Rev.io PSA is ready to banish these evil things out of your business for good! Reach out to one of our Rev.io experts today to get started so you can run a better business and sleep better at night.