Automatic Purchase Orders from Customer Sales Orders

As Business Consultants, we talk to hundreds of business owners each year and although it's not commonly requested, we often identify they could save time and reduce errors by automating tedious business processes.

A typical response is: "I didn't know that could be done!".

We put this down to the "not knowing what you don't know" syndrome. Business Managers and Owners often can't see the forest from the trees and just assume the way they are doing things now is OK and there's probably not much they can do about that.

Usually when our Business Consultants do a walk-through of a business they identify a few key improvements that can be implemented simply; with tangible benefits. These include:

• Higher sales,
• Less errors,
• Reduced costs of operating,
• Happier customers, and
• Happier staff.

To help you understand what's possible, let's explore just one area that can be automated with Axsapt's Back to Back add-on that ticks all of the above benefits. The process of delivering Goods to your Customers involves the following:

• Convert the winning sales quote into a sales order/confirmation (with or without a deposit)
• If there is insufficient stock or raw materials on hand raise one or more purchase order to suppliers considering customers' required delivery date, transport times, outsourcing requirements, etc.
• Where further manufacturing is outsourced, raise additional purchase or job orders to those external suppliers with sufficient instructions.
• Receive the product into stock or arrange for it to be dropped shipped to the customer
• Raise a sales invoice to the customer

Even the process of choosing the most cost effective supplier (based on reliability, time to deliver, minimum order quantities and best purchase price, etc) is tedious and it's easy to make the wrong decision which costs your business money.

For a complimentary discussion about what's possible, please contact Axsapt. Our passion is automating tedious processes bogging down businesses. The benefits to your business are increased accuracy, reduction in processing costs and superior customer service. 

And don't forget your staff will love you as they won't have to do "brain-dead" tedious tasks that makes the day drag on and on.. 

More Information: Axsapt

What KPIs Drive Your Business?

In challenging times it's essential to manage your business operations to thrive. Probably the easiest way to do this is to focus on expanding more profitable aspects of your business whilst containing costs. You can do this by making it easy for your team to focus on your game plan by exposing your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

What KPIs do you use to manage your business? Every business is different, but as an example, the following is Axsapt's Dashboard.



Axsapt's Dashboard displayed on an LCD screen in our office

Displayed on a large LCD screen in our office, the Axsapt Dashboard shows a Leaderboard of revenue generated by all Team Members with Targets required to stay profitable. As we are a service based organisation, our help desk issues and performance are tracked so we can focus on improving the time it takes to help customers solve issues. Also measured are future appointments as they help improve customer satisfaction and revenue.

There are a selection of possible measurements that rate the financial fitness of any business and other non-financial KPIs, whilst not as well known, are even more valuable in predicting future cash flow and profitability.

The knee jerk reaction when times are tough is to slash variable costs (wages, marketing, staff amenities etc) and increase short term profits. Financial-based Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are useful for highlighting the following:

• Cash position (ability to meet wages, rent and other fixed costs)
• Sales
• Gross Margin
• Expenses
• Net Profits
• Unpaid customer invoices exceeding trading terms
• The net value (assets less liabilities) of the business 

Financial KPIs are typically compared to budgets or equivalent periods in the past with the intention of establishing a trend line to highlight potential problems.

Although useful, there is a limit to the overall usefulness of Financial KPIs in managing your business. There are 2 fundamental weaknesses of financial reports:

1. unless you are an accountant, financial metrics are difficult to understand, and 
2. financials provide you with limited guidance in how you can tweak your business to make it better.

Financials are ok at alerting you to potential problems that you can address before it's too late. For example customer outstandings exceeding trading terms pinpoints customers struggling financially. It's important to deal with problems like credit control, but it's even more important to focus on increasing opportunities and improving activities that improve customer satisfaction.

KPIs that track Sales, Outstanding Debtors, Stock on Hand are “lagging” indicators. "Predictive KPIs"* on the other hand are “theories” that predict performance. They work because they focus you and your team on the reason why your business exists in the first place.

What KPIs should you choose to help your business?

It’s difficult to generalise, but the following are fairly common KPIs in helping to catch problems before they can cripple your business:

• Velocity, or how long from the time an order is received to the time you deliver your product or service
• Number of new products taken on each year and on sold to existing and new Customers
• Customer Satisfaction (measured by surveys, product returns, sales activity etc)
• Staff Satisfaction (measured by surveys, staff reviews etc)

Our tip is to focus on no more than 3 KPIs and automate and display them on a big LCD screen in your office for all to see.

More information: Axsapt

*Source: The concept of Predictive Key Predictive Indicators and focusing on opportunities is sourced from the books:  "Implementing Value Pricing" and Mind over Matter, both by Ronald J. Baker