Automating Your Business

One of the biggest challenges facing small businesses today, especially as they start growing larger, is how to integrate and automate key business management systems and software - customer relationship management (CRM), financials, e-mail, calendaring, contacts, etc. The basic idea for all small business owners is for everything to work together efficiently and not end up creating extra work or new problems.

This article discusses two of the latest softwares available on the market today which can help you automate your business and breathe easier!

The first software is BizAutomation. This is an all-in-one solution with CRM (Customer Relationship Management)and big business-style Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) at its core. It has modules covering virtually every business management function, including financials, projects, inventory, price books, e-commerce, documents and business portals. The product also includes pre-built integration with QuickBooks and other small business accounting systems. It installs on the same server as Microsoft Exchange and uses Outlook Web Access (OWA) or regular Outlook for its user interface.

The second service is that provided by Nsite, a Pleasanton, California-based company offers an online service that it says "automates manual processes that require judgment, decision making and approval and are being done today through e-mail, spreadsheets and paper forms." The company's Predictive Routing Engine simplifies the automation process and requires no modeling or coding on the customer's part. The first time you initiate a process - say for invoice approval - you create a route path that lists all the people the electronic document must go to. You pick the names from a drop down list of your registered employees or vendors.

Creating the route path is a one-time event. From that point on, the system automatically knows where to route the document. The Predictive Routing Engine lets you make changes on the fly. You can add or delete people from the routing, and you can even make real-time changes to a form that's already been routed. Since the service is based on the ASP model, you can use the service anywhere as long as you have access to a Web browser.

By using such helpful tools, entrepreneurs as well as small businesses can benefit greatly by automating their processes and saving a lot of time in the manner.