Fintech, ESP, Invoicing Software | read
Achieving a successful business is not an overnight phenomenon. A lot rests upon the precision and attention to detail that is invested into the day-to-day business operations. Harnessing modern technology is a great means of achieving success in your business and staying ahead of the competition. Since business operations are dynamic and change ever so often, it would help to have software and apps that enable you to adapt to the changes and keep things under control.
Invoicing software is one such app that can make your business processes systematic, simple, and timely. Finding an efficient way to generate your invoices, along with keeping track of your financial information is extremely essential for a dynamic business. Most importantly, this is all done while improving your cash flow.
Probably the greatest advantage of invoicing software is automation. It lets you set-up recurring payments for your clients. You can establish a subscription-based business model with your long term clients.
The automated invoicing system sends follow-ups and payment reminders for upcoming and past-due invoices. Automating such time consuming tasks saves your team a ton of time and effort. It eliminates the frustration of chasing down clients for these payments.
Automating invoices means you don’t have to hire an additional staff to do these administrative tasks for you. Some invoicing software also have the capability of syncing and importing/exporting data from other software and apps. Therefore, you don’t need to manually entering information pertaining to invoices.
Your online invoicing software can automate several processes for your business. Leave it to your invoicing tool to do that for you automatically.
Image Source: Viktor Talashuk via Unsplash
Invoicing software not only save you money, time, and labor, but also paperwork. Tons of it! All the data can be saved digitally made accessible to you from any place anytime. So, that means no more documentation and carrying large paper folders around wherever you go.
All data would be organised and stored in one single place, which means you won’t have to go scouting around for paperwork all over your office.
Your client data is also neatly organised in one place which makes it easier to search for specific client. Whenever required you can easily retrieve the desired information in a few clicks!
Using online invoicing software benefits not just your business, but also the environment. Did you know that digital invoicing is four times more environmentally friendly than paper billing? Digitising your data would imply less use of paper, which in turn would result in lesser number of trees being cut. You are not only saving trees but also water and energy.
Any process with multiple steps is prone to human errors. Errors delay the payment process. They can also damage the relationship that you have with a client. Not to mention the relationship with the tax authorities or your bank. Invoicing errors and the following disputes can end-up costing you thousands of dollars.
With automated invoicing software processing incorrect billing amounts or sending a bill to the wrong client just cannot happen. An invoicing software calculates the total amount for you to prevent errors. It adds the taxes and ensures that the right client is billed.
An ideal invoicing software makes it simple for you to create and sort records of past and current invoices. These can be accessed easily, so changing them or rectifying discrepancies can be done with just a click.
One of the secrets of business success is healthy client relationships. To create that, you need to know all relevant information about them so that you can exceed their expectations. Managing customer data play a crucial in doing that. A good invoicing software allows you to store all that data in one place and also archive it securely.
Apart from storing customer data, you can save specific customer preferences, if any, or give them some special discounts or offers. With an invoicing software you also can include customised messages in your invoices.
These small touches and personalised interactions with your clients not only strengthen the business relationship but also encourages them to pay the invoice on-time. It can also convert them into repeat customers and foster word-of-referrals.
Image Source: rupixen on Unsplash
As mentioned earlier, it takes a matter of seconds to send invoices using an invoicing software and they’re even faster if you send recurring billing. Invoices that are sent faster are also compensated faster.
As your clients will receive your invoice digitally visa email, they can review, pay and confirm within a matter of days or hours even. Fast payments help businesses improve cash flow.
With a smart invoicing software, “lost in the mail” episodes will be gone forever.
Furthermore, you can custom-make templates and proposals as per your requirements and those of your clients. You will not need to start from scratch every time you onboard a new client.
With all these advantages to look forward to, you must be keen to invest in a smart invoicing software. It offers you accurate billings cycles, preferred currency of payment method, a professional appearance, and a positive brand reinforcement. After all, scaling your business may sound like a challenging journey, but one of the first places to start is with your invoicing software.
Now that you are curious about what an invoicing software can do for you, see how we can help you automate your invoice submission process in 5 minutes.
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Originally published Aug 12, 2019 3:38:30 PM, updated March 23, 2020
Topics: Fintech ESP Invoicing Software
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Business continuity has become every organization’s top priority with the recent escalation of the Covid-19 situation. Everyone is consumed with the possibility that they might not be able to sustain operations after orders to work from home have been officially circulated. Survival is on everyone’s agenda, and to survive, you need to diminish any contingencies that may affect operations.
Employees are every business’s most important asset. If your employees are not able to perform jobs or submit requests that require a chain of approvals, you might be heading down a dark road of less productivity, slow operations, no achievement, and incurring losses.
Among the many challenges we have seen organizations struggle with after implementing “remote working”, the biggest challenge yet has been the disruption of operations due to the absence of people to approve requests submitted by employees and to “keep processes flowing”. What happens when your approvers are physically inaccessible?
We believe we have what you need to not only survive, but to also maintain a normal pace of operations and eliminate factors that will disrupt them.
While we at Exceed did not necessarily anticipate Covid-19, we did however, anticipate a shift in operating models. We have been implementing a remote working model since 2014 when we detected patterns in where the business world was heading. To support our vision, we created numerous solutions that will sustain our remote working model, one of which is the Enterprise Submission Platform a.k.a ESP for Employee Service Catalogue & Digital Approvals.
ESP is a process automation system that empowers business users to create and manage their processes, without having to rely on IT staff to get the job done. As it is easy to use with little to no training, this reduces the time needed to go live and the cost required to maintain and manage the system. This model will make the process of approving employee requests while working remotely much easier to control, track, and manage.
How exactly will it solve remote working challenges?
Step 1:
We will help you map your old traditional approval processes on the system
Step 2:
We will train your business users on how to use the system and create processes, remotely
Step 3:
We will support you in creating new processes that meet the demands of remote working
Our focus with ESP is to provide you with a business process automation solution that can automate all your processes that are currently handled manually and that require approvals, to help alleviate any remote working costs that your business will take on.
While we maintain our promise listed above, we understand that customers may have some underlying questions regarding the solution and so we’ve compiled what we anticipate would be the most common ones:
For more information on ESP, feel free to contact us here.
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Cloud computing is an exponentially growing market. According to a study by Forbes, the public cloud computing market, including cloud applications (SaaS), development and data platforms (PaaS), and infrastructure (IaaS) services combined is expected to grow to $299.4 billion.
With new businesses rapidly adopting cloud-based apps, these solutions have become mainstream in the industry as well as personal life. From our daily emails to phone storage, practically everything is stored and managed by cloud computing apps.
However, the uses of cloud computing are not just limited to personal emails or storage. With cloud computing services firms can avoid the upfront cost and complexity of owning and maintaining their own IT infrastructure, and instead simply pay for what they use, when they use it.
In the simplest terms, cloud computing means storing and accessing data and programs over the Internet instead of your computer's hard drive.
According to Microsoft,
“....cloud computing is the delivery of computing services—including servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, and intelligence—over the Internet (“the cloud”) to offer faster innovation, flexible resources, and economies of scale. You typically pay only for cloud services you use, helping you lower your operating costs, run your infrastructure more efficiently, and scale as your business needs change...”
Let's see the top five ways business are using cloud computing in their day to day operations.
The cloud allows users to enjoy network-based access to communication tools like emails and calendars. Most of the messaging and calling apps like Skype and WhatsApp are also based on cloud infrastructure. All your messages and information are stored on the service provider’s hardware rather than on your personal device. This allows you access your information from anywhere via the internet.
VEGA Messenger and iDenedi are our very own communication app that allow remote teams to work and collaborate from anywhere in the world - in a very safe and secure way.
The modern computing power and capacity of the cloud lets businesses to store information about user behaviour. This can be used to develop customised solutions, messages and products based on the preferences of customers.
Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant - all are cloud-based natural-language intelligent bots. These chatbots leverage the computing capabilities of the cloud to provide personalised context-relevant customer experiences.
Read More: How AI is Helping Businesses improve Customer Experience
When organisations choose cloud for data storage the responsibility of their data also lies with the service provider. This saves business the cost of infrastructure and maintenance. The cloud service provider is responsible for securing data and meeting legal and compliance requirements.
The cloud also provides more flexibility in the sense that you can enjoy large storage and on-demand backups.
Recovery is also performed faster in the cloud because the data is stored over a network of physical servers rather than at one on-site data centre. Dropbox, Google Drive and Amazon S3 are popular examples of cloud backup solutions.
Read More: Check Out Our Managed Cyber Security Platform - ASPIDA
Whether a business develops application for web or mobile or even games, cloud computing services prove to be a reliable solution. Using the cloud, you can easily create scalable cross-platform experiences for your users.
Many of these services include many pre-coded tools and libraries — like directory services, search and security. Some will also offer full end to end service from strategy, consultancy, UX/UI, Development, QA and support. This can speed up and simplify the development process.
Learn More About Our Partner Knowarth and how they help enterprises build apps.
Many business management applications like customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) are also based on a cloud service provider. Software as a Service (SAAS) has become a popular method for deploying enterprise-level software.
It ensures hassle-free management, maintenance and security of your organisation’s critical business resources and allows you to access these applications conveniently via a web browser.
Here is a use case of our partner, iSystems
As a busy distributor, iSystem's client, Oxford University Press needed a sophisticated solution to optimise its distribution and customer service operations.
Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations is a cloud-based business application platform that combines components of customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP), along with productivity applications and artificial intelligence tools.
iSystems supported Oxford University Press with a full integration between all the departments improved service by making current data available to all and streamlined order processing, saving OUP time and money.
Learn More About iSystems
Cloud computing services are still at a relatively early stage of adoption, despite their success stories. Many companies are still contemplating which apps to adopt and when.
However, their usage is only likely to go up as enterprises get more comfortable with the idea of their data being somewhere other than an expensive server in the basement.
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If you are currently struggling with a process workflow that doesn’t necessarily ‘flow’, you are not alone. From our extensive experience with customers from different countries and across various sectors, we realised that there had been a serious hurdle that is holding back companies from achieving highest efficiency in their business operations.
All organisations, whether they are SMEs or huge conglomerates, have processes in place to achieve their business objectives. These processes require a significant amount of resources, system infrastructure, & personnel.
What’s happening is that as this world is almost fully transforming into a digital one, carrying out those processes manually becomes more of a setback than anything else.
Team members become burned out from repetitive tasks, requests get stuck with personnel who are unable to respond for different reasons, issues in processes go undetected and cannot be traced to a source, and as a result, the completion of processes is delayed and efficiency is hindered.
While the above factors pose powerful arguments for adopting an automation solution, there needs to be a certain level of discipline to overcome obstacles that may come in the way. These obstacles can mainly be related to cost or people.
Cost poses a major question mark when wanting to undergo such a transformation, whether it’s a financial or opportunity cost. While business owners may have oppositions due to the costs of implementing an automation software, they will eventually learn that costs savings are along the way in the long run.
However, companies that have taken the first step towards finding the right automation solution should understand that cost savings are not the primary reason to automate processes but rather to improve service to end users. With an improved quality of service, the operational costs associated will also improve and thus companies will achieve their ROI.
We created “The Enterprise Submission Platform” (ESP) keeping in mind the most common customer pain points including:
ESP is a linear workflow system that was created by the Exceeders team to enable function owners that want to automate their business processes more control over creating and managing these processes in a guaranteed short period of time.
The best part is that the task of managing and updating any feature in ESP can be done by the business users themselves, so this eliminated the need to involve the IT Department or even the IT Service Provider in maintaining and updating the system.
Problem |
Solution |
Automation is costly |
ESP has a simple & competitive pricing model |
Automation is time-consuming |
ESP enables creation of processes in minutes & can be up & running in just one day |
Automation requires tedious work with service provider |
After your team is trained on ESP, you will be fully proficient to use it on your own |
Automation systems are rigid/don’t offer much flexibility |
ESP is very highly customisable and can be built to fit your environment |
Automation systems cannot be integrated with other systems |
ESP can be integrated with other software programs & offers APIs |
Resistance from Employees |
We will provide awareness sessions & trainings to prove the value of ESP & how it will make your work easier |
Want to learn more about how you can cut costs and boost operational efficiency?
In an earlier article we discussed how a great invoicing tool can take away your accounting headaches and make your life easier! It is great to see that you took our advice and decided to learn more about invoicing software for small businesses.
During a meeting with one of our customers, where the account payable and procurement team were both present an issue arose. The account payable team was blaming the procurement team for delay in processing the supplier invoices they had received. A majority of the invoices they had received, they had done so by hand.
The capabilities and potential of Artificial Intelligence are huge. They are the most evident in the banking and finance field. The real benefit is in financial institutions’ ability to understand where and how it makes sense to apply these tools first, and where they can derive the greatest value in the fastest way.