Tools and software for digital operations

Small businesses can spend many hours each week on paperwork and other operational tasks. These tasks can take time away from more productive areas of running and growing a business.

Going digital could reduce administration and make your business more efficiency and profitable. It can increase security of your customer information. It may also improve business continuity following significant operational change.

The move to a digital economy has also meant that some tasks have to be completed digitally. All employers need to use report tax and superannuation information to the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) electronically using Single Touch Payroll.

Increased access to technology means that businesses don’t need the same level of expenditure and expertise to set up and run. Many digital tasks can be completed using easily accessible online software and tools.

With an accounting system you can easily store and access all your financial details. This can reduce the amount of paperwork you need to complete, saving you time and effort.

Benefits may include:

• real-time visibility over your full financial position
• less paperwork for your business
• efficiencies in your processes to save time
• flexible cost structures such as pay-as-you-go or tiered pricing.

A customer relationship management system allows you to record interactions between you and your prospective and existing customers. With it you can build and maintain stronger customer relationships.

CRMs allow you to:

• stay more connected to your customers by managing all your interactions through 1 platform
• have a single view of your customer
• share access across accounts, giving all employees the ability to record and see client interactions
• learn from your client interactions to improve your sales and client retainment strategies
• uncover customer behaviour patterns and insights from different demographics and segments
• have flexible cost structures such as pay-as-you-go or tiered pricing for cloud based systems.

A learning management system allows you to create training courses, store course information, deliver courses and track participants’ progress.

You can also use the system for your own employees, if you need to give specific training or on-boarding. You can also use it if your business has an opportunity to sell training material as a revenue stream.

Learning management systems can:

• keep all your learner content in 1 location
• provide unlimited access to learning materials
• track learner progress and performance
• reduce learning and development time with direct and flexible access for participants
• update and expand courses (essential for maintaining compliance requirements).

A practice management system assists health professionals operate healthcare practices. You can create and manage patient appointments, schedule tasks and organise patient records. You can also do many other day-to-day administration tasks.

You may be able to:

• save time on repetitive administration tasks
• use the captured data to make more informed decisions and maximise patient outcomes
• reduce the number of no-shows by using appointment reminders.

An inventory management system allows you to track, monitor and locate all your inventory in the same place. It will help ensure you're always in control of your inventory. Which will then help you better process returns, manage shipping and other logistics.

The system may also integrate with other online systems. This can help you ensure online orders, payments and product tracking works across your organisation.

Benefits may allow you to:

• manage all inventory more efficiently
• do advanced reporting and forecasting
• reduce the amount of stock write-offs
• reduce storage costs
• have flexible cost structures such as pay-as-you-go or tiered pricing.

A job management system can help you run all your projects from a single platform. It provides visibility across an entire project include quoting, invoicing and task management.

It will also enable you to stay connected to staff who are out of the office all day. You can see individual jobs statuses from anywhere.

Job management systems may help you to:

• run projects that have many touchpoints more efficiently
• reduce paperwork
• store files across your project
• see historical job data which allows you to refer to previous jobs
• integrate with your other systems to streamline invoicing.

Time management software helps you to better track time worked on a project or for a client. It also allows you to view time spent across your entire business. This can then give you more visibility over how you and your staff work across the day.

The software may also provide you with better reporting on how you and your staff are spending their time and which projects and clients are most profitable

This software may allow you to:

• track time spent on each project or client
• get better reporting on how staff spend their time
• work out which projects and clients are most profitable
• set reminders for people to record their time.

Rostering software enables you to manage your employee information from the same application. This may include rostering, recording time and completing payroll. You may also be able to produce payment summaries for your employees.

You may find this useful if you find it time-consuming to do rostering using a manual process. By not having to look back at records to find out who worked when and for how long, you could free up many hours.

Rostering software may help you:

• save time on payroll
• have more visibility over the hours that your employees are working
• improve communication between employers and employees
• have accurate timesheet reporting
• integrate with your accounting systems for a more seamless process.