Simple and Effective Revenue Growth and Cost Saving Solutions for Small Businesses

Published on this site: July 5th, 2006 - See more articles from this month

In order to stay competitive and profitable companies must work on maximizing the values of the products and services they provide. This means increasing productivity in key areas of business. Productivity is measured by several factors. The two most important factors among many others are revenue growth and cost saving. Companies can improve both of these attributes using new type of business process automation technology in the spheres of sales and procurement. To understand how these solutions work
we need to get a better perception of corporate business processes.

Business Process

A business process is a series of specific, measured tasks performed by people and systems and designed to achieve a predetermined outcome.

The processes have these important characteristics:

1. The processes have internal and external users.
   
2. They take place across or between organization's departments or different organizations.
   
3. They are based on how work is done in the organization.

The followings are examples of business processes:

1. Mortgage application processing
   
2. Credit verification
   
3. Product development
   
4. Travel planning
   
5. Opening a new account
   
6. Answering to a Request for Quote
   
7. Shipping a product

Companies are trying to improve their business processes using computer technology ever since it has emerged. Initial emphasize was given to enterprise resource planning. Main areas where automation was adopted were production, accounting, procurement and logistics. The next step was sales and marketing automation. Next came customer relationship management and supplier relationship management. Last couple of years we are seeing implementation of Business Process Management across the board. Companies are adopting BPM in the areas where it could make real differences. Some of these processes involve several departments of the company and some are result of real-time interaction of the company with its suppliers, customers and other business partners.

Business Process Management

BPM automates and streamlines the business processes which are crucial for the organization in order to improve productivity. From hiring a person to processing a purchase order, BPM helps restructuring, controlling and handling workflows involving people and systems to complete a process more efficiently.

eProcurement and eSales

Two vital business processes for any business are procurement and sales. Although these processes are integral parts of supply chain management, by optimizing and automating these two companies can achieve significant productivity growth even if the whole supply chain is not streamlined as yet. The solutions eProcurement and eSales will help you meet these objectives.

The advantages of these solutions include:

Direct Benefits

1. Cost Savings
   
2. Increased Profits
   
3. Improved productivity
   
4. Lowering overhead costs
   
5. Streamlining of supply chain processes

Indirect Benefits

1. Ability to allocate freed resources to core business processes
   
2. Improved service levels
   
3. Access to a large number of suppliers in a relatively short period of time
   
4. Improvement in customer satisfaction management
   
5. Stay competitive

If you are a small company and do not have required resources to develop or buy these solutions but eager to try out, you can use one of the several B2B marketplaces which have standard solutions integrated into their systems.

Rusbiz.com (http://www.rusbiz.com) is one of them. In order to take advantage of Rusbiz supply chain management system, you have to become a member and take the following steps:

1. Register your company with Rusbiz.com
   
2. Add products that you sell to Rusbiz eCatalog
   
3. Invite several of your buyers and sellers to Rusbiz if they are not registered with Rusbiz.
   
4. Once you have a circle of your own buyers and sellers on Rusbiz you can start using Rusbiz's highly sophisticated yet simple supply chain management system.
   
5. Go to Rusbiz FAQ and read thoroughly the comprehensive materials on the use of supply chain or deal management methods.

The functionalities that you will be able to use immediately are as follows:

Request for Quote

From the catalog of your Web Store, Rusbiz eCatalog or from eMarketplace - if you have added a product there - buyers can fill up a standard form of RFQ and send it to you.

Quote

Once you receive a RFQ, you can check, edit the form and send a quotation to the buyer.

Negotiation

The buyer either can accept your proposal or make a Purchase Order from the Quotation you sent to him or make a counter proposal. You in turn, either may accept the offer or send back another offer.

Purchase Order

From your final offer, if all terms and conditions suit him, the buyer can create a Purchase order and send to you.

Invoices

Once you received a Purchase Order based on it you can create an invoice and send it back. There are also payment status and shipping status tracking features integrated into the system.

The Invoicing solution alone will bring benefits like:

1. Both suppliers and buyers can view the invoice and rest of the processes, i.e. RFQ, Quote, PO and payment status online.
   
   
2. Since the invoices have to match the PO automatically the matching problems that hold most of the payment get eliminated
   
   
3. Invoices do not have to wait to get inserted in account payable list
   
   
4. Since no manual data entry at account payable is required there won't be any documental error

Companies can really revolutionize the way they handle their business by just implementing these simple but effective solutions.

However, the level of success will depend on the following factors:

1. The implementation should touch management and the departments.
   
2. There should be strong leadership and top-down support.
   
3. Both buyers and suppliers must get involved.
   
4. Employees should receive training in hands-on learning environment.

Most importantly, you have to start immediately without waiting for a better time or a better solution.



Nowshade Kabir is the CEO of http://www.rusbiz.com, a leading B2B portal with facilities like Marketplace, Aggregated Electronic Catalog and Sales and Procurement Management, where buyers and sellers come together to communicate, collaborate and conduct business. More information on eProcurement and Sales are available on http://www.rusbiz.com/deal_manage.html.