Does your business have a lot of overhead? Do you feel like your spending too much money in certain areas of your business? If you said no then you’re either untruthful or you are not fully aware of the ways in which you can minimize your resources to save money and reduce your company’s overhead. The following article explains the positive consequences of implementing a Web-based system to manage and automate certain aspects of your business. First, let me start off by clarifying something. You do not have to be an “online” or e-business to effectively utilize a Web-based system. This is something that can be used by any business. Whether you sell shoes online, landscape yards, paint houses or perform accounting services from the luxury of your own home, you can benefit from a Web-based system.

Ok, now that I got that off my chest, let’s move on to how and why this will benefit you, your employees and ultimately your business. This is a great formula for success.

How?

One way, is to setup an Intranet that can only be accessed from within your company’s internal network. This is usually a solution for a small- or medium-sized business that have 25 or more employees. This will allow each employee to have the rights and privileges to one centralized system and gain access to certain back-end features.

Another way, and the best way in my mind for a small business, is to integrate a system into a back-end section of your existing website. This will allow employees of your company to have a login and gain access to certain back-end features that will allow them to manage accounts, view sales reports, send HTML newsletters, manage the content of your website through a Content Management Component and much more.

This is a perfect solution because it will allow your business to grow in conjunction with your website. Anytime you want to add a product, you can easily add it through the back-end; anytime you want to send an HTML newsletter, the system will already know your most recent customers who purchased a product or service off your website and include them in your next newsletter campaign.

Setting up a Web-based system is important for every business and I’m confident that if it’s setup correctly, you will receive a great return on your investment (ROI).

Why?

More importantly, let’s discuss the reasons why you should implement a Web-based system for your business. The following are the top reasons that motivate me to recommend implementing a Web-based system to every single one of my clients.

1. Centralization – Implementing a Web-based system will provide you and your business with the ability to consolidate all information into one centralized database. By adding all back-end functionality, which is necessary for the daily operations of each employee, you will be collecting and performing tasks for many areas of your business from one central application.
2. Automation – Let’s say you sell products. But more importantly, let’s say your customers have to call you or your business to make their purchases over the phone. First of all, this can become quite burdensome and expensive if you receive a high call-volume. In order to handle all those sales, you most likely have representatives standing by taking orders over the phone. Secondly, how do you track your sales? Are you taking these orders by writing them down on paper and then manually entering the data into an Excel spreadsheet or other software application so you can generate your reports? Now let’s say you had a Web-based system that allowed your customers to login to the back-end of your website and make the purchases automatically. This would allow you to reduce your employee overhead and at the same time allow you to view updated sales data, at any time, through automated sales reports.
3. Growth – If you’re able to centralize your company’s data while automating the back-end operations of your business then your business will drastically improve. Providing this type of opportunity can be highly beneficial and will allow your business to grow tenfold. By centralizing your data, you will provide a system to your users that will naturally increase their productivity. At the same time, if you’re able to automate certain areas of your business then you will logically reduce your company’s overhead.