Companies big and small could all benefit from the occasional clean-up and reorganization. No matter the scale, the platform a company does its digital business on should also be able to handle multiple people working on it at once, making changes and collaborating in real-time.
Enter business management software solutions: attractive options for businesses to streamline their processes, reduce operating costs, provide additional flexibility, and improve employee productivity.
Global Market Research Insights predicts that the business management software industry will be valued at $23.04 billion by 2024. It is truly a key to better internal and external business dealings. While different sectors are more drawn to these software solutions than others, whether a company is in the human resources space or sales and marketing, a platform for business management is needed.
What Is Business Management Software?
Business management software is a system of applications and tools that helps companies maximize customer satisfaction, support internal teams, and automate otherwise manual processes. Depending on a business’s needs, a robust custom business management software solution can be a one-stop shop for all facets of a business.
Business management software improves productivity in employees by allowing them to work independently and autonomously. Through automation, these platforms also allow for more accurate data, which can change the trajectory of a business regarding actionable insights such as risk or revenue.
When it comes to options for business management software, there are quite a few to choose from. More interactive and collaborative companies can offer custom business management software solutions tailored to their unique needs. Some companies simply offer tiered licenses or subscriptions to their product. While this can be a budget-friendly option, it can be difficult to phase out legacy systems as time goes on and the needs of a business change.
What To Look For In Business Management Software Solutions
Despite many choices in business management software solutions, it is important to focus on the fact that these implementations should be solutions, not work drivers. Of course, a company’s needs will be unique to that business, and solutions will vary greatly depending on size, industry, budget, and established best practices. With that in mind, this list can be applied to any company in the market for new or improved business management software.
A Centralized Hub For Knowledge Sharing
It’s being shown more and more that a vast amount of time is being wasted for employees due to inefficiencies in business data management. A strong business management software should create a centralized hub for employee knowledge. It should also facilitate collaboration through real-time updates, chat systems, and video conferencing where applicable. If the changing work landscape has shown organizations anything, it’s that working together is how things get done. Business management software systems should foster partnership and empower employees to be stakeholders in their own position.
Additionally, knowledge sharing might include training programs or training software that is built into business management systems. This could involve both onboarding resources and extended learning opportunities. A huge benefit of having widely accessible documentation in a company is the ability for employees to access it anywhere. This could apply to both teams that work from home and other teams, whether domestic or international.
End-To-End Solutions
True business management software needs to streamline and manage most operations as an end-to-end solution. While individual applications exist to do many of these tasks, having them spread out in different clouds, servers, and drives creates clutter, duplication, and roadblocks. Some items that a business might need to account for are project management, calendars, accounting dashboards, document storage and sharing, sales data, and resource libraries.
While a business is getting off the ground, it’s possible that all of these are their own applications. But as a business scales, all of these aspects should be on one platform. By bringing several, disparate applications together under one single suite, administrators can effectively and efficiently manage their business in a more holistic manner.
Integrated Cloud Solutions & Heightened Security Measures
Business management software providers should be trusted to stay current, secure, and adaptive. While work as the world knew it became disrupted, and many people were sent to work from home, companies that survived without losing vast amounts of their workforce were the ones that adapted.
While more people opt to work from home or at least in a hybrid capacity, employees need to be able to take work home with them. That means integrating cloud solutions and heightened security measures. With the rise of cybercrime and theft came the rise of VPNs, two-factor authentication, and end-to-end encryption. Good business management software needs to be able to support these security measures to keep companies and their clients safe.
Highly Intuitive & User Friendly
No matter how advanced or technologically high-end a product is, it’s useless if its intended audience can’t use it. Business management systems need to be intuitive and accessible so that teams can find what they need, when they need it. Programs should be sleek and dynamic, with enough organization to reduce clutter.
It’s important to ensure that programs can cater to each team using them. As such, the needs of a marketing team might look different than a back-end development team. It will be key to work with a software vendor to see just how customized business management software can become within a set budget.
Select Features Of Business Management Software
Business management software should be catered to each company’s needs, but there are tons of features out there to choose from and integrate. This is a non-exhaustive list; not all entries apply to all businesses. This rather truncated list can simply serve as inspiration, but partnering with a software development team will allow for individual needs to be discussed.
Word Processing & File Storage
One aspect of business management software is the integration of word processing, dynamic spreadsheets, and presentation tools. Word processing can be the basis of contracts, standard operating procedures, or instructional resources. No matter what a business creates with these tools, they also must be stored. Often, companies can store files both locally and on the cloud.
Having these reference materials on hand and widely available to an organization can aid in overall efficiency. Instead of one person being the touchpoint for training, data gathering, and auditing, all stakeholders of a particular project can provide input. In these instances, it is important to maintain internal organizational standards, so these depositories do not become cluttered.
Project Management
Project managers can ideally oversee tasks and delegate new ones in real-time. Task management also requires setting metrics for completion. With a strong project management aspect to a business management system, tasks can be set as granular or broadly as needed to meet the needs of individual employees.
As businesses scale, having an adaptive management system becomes more important to the health of company workflows. Project management aspects should be able to scale alongside a growing business’s needs so as not to be stuck in restrictive processes. This includes high visibility on employee progress tracking, allowing managers to implement awards or performance improvement plans if needed.
Financial Tracking
Closely tracking the organization’s financials can allow for long-term planning as well as immediate pivots. It can also interface with client-facing systems to create quotes or invoices. Financial dashboards can also include things like payroll, employee bonuses, budgets, and planning. This is also a good tool to use for quarterly hindsight that your company can use to plan business ventures going forward.
E-Commerce Integration
Along with financial tracking, business management systems can integrate with e-commerce systems where appropriate. This allows companies to keep track of the ordering process end-to-end. While this process might be referred to more under the transportation management system (TMS) umbrella, these two can work in tandem. A TMS can help organize warehouses, vendor and manufacturer communications, fleet management, shipping, returns, and carrier decisions.
On the customer-facing end, a storefront can integrate with a business management system to provide transactions, performance metrics, order details, and automatic confirmation emails. In that vein, while cybersecurity is important for any business, it is especially important when handling customer data. Security breaches and international data compliance are two hot-button topics in the professional world, so getting ahead of slip-ups and legal issues should be at the forefront of any proprietor’s mind.
View Business Management Solutions Guide
Learn More About All-In-One Business Management Software
The goal of any business is customer satisfaction, whether a company is in a B2B or B2C space. By optimizing processes and using modern technologies, a business can scale, maximize profit, and maintain a happy employee base. To find the best business management system, one should look for the ability for internal teams to collaborate on built-out and far-reaching systems. Technology partners should be trustworthy and believe in friendly user interfaces.
Business management software is meant to streamline and simplify daily tasks for the good of employees and the company as a whole, and anything else is counterproductive. Luckily, Orases believes in collaboration, and wants to become your company’s trusted software partner.
Together, we can build a system that is catered to the needs of your team, with white glove, personalized service. Reach out to the experienced business management software developers at Orases today by calling 301.756.5527 or by requesting a consultation online.
