A business automation software, such as a professional services automation (PSA) platform, is designed to help you streamline all of your operations in order to give you more time to focus on providing your customers the best service, generating revenue, developing a winning strategy and growing your business.
Plus, all of the automation, tracking and analysis features and tools in a PSA software or enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution help your team minimize and/or eliminate most of the double-entry, repetitive processes and otherwise time-consuming tasks they deal with on a day-to-day basis.
In other words, a business automation platform makes you look good to both your customers and your employees. But how does it do that? Let’s investigate six ways a PSA software helps you automate your business and avoid looking like a fool:
Workflow Alerts
Everyone in every department gets busy with the everyday tasks assigned to them. Sometimes we all need a friendly reminder that something new is ready to be worked.
Workflow alerts keep the communication channels flowing throughout your organization and make sure nothing falls through the cracks.
Business automation software allows you to set up automatic messages for almost every role and every activity. Here are just some examples:
- Inventory: Stock levels have dropped below a set minimum.
- Service: New service order (SO) received.
- Asset Management: Customer has hit meter clicks threshold or their system has gone down.
- Sales: New opportunity ready to be worked.
- Marketing: Email campaign has been launched.
- Accounting: New invoice has been posted or a payment type has been declined.
Imagine how much time you can save monitoring every part of your business by simply using workflow alerts.
Service Dispatching with Mobile
Not everyone in your business works in the office all day. That’s why a business automation platform’s companion mobile app allows service techs to receive an alert when a dispatcher has assigned an incoming SO.
The service tech can see any and all signed SOs, bring up the account information and also use the GPS feature to plan their route and get to the next client.
No missing details and no missed appointments. Just happy techs and delighted customers.
Account Journal
A CRM is just a small part of a PSA software or ERP, but it sure makes you look smart. Especially the account journal.
Can’t remember what you and a customer last spoke about? Want to see the status of a service ticket? Not sure what all of the details were on that proposal you sent? No problem.
Get up to speed in a short glance with the account journal. Every single touch point — from incoming phone calls, inbound or outbound emails, SOs, sent invoices and more — with every customer, prospect or partner is captured, time/date stamped and logged.
Professional, Custom Documents
Another way a business automation solution makes you look good is with customized documents. So not only will the software automatically create documents (and send, depending on the type) for you, but it does it with style.
With a user-friendly feature set, a PSA software allows you to create branded quotes, proposals, contracts and service level agreements (SLAs) through easy-to-use document automation.
All of this results in timely and professional documents for your customers.
Real-Time Price Book
Business automation platforms are full of ways to quickly get the most up-to-date, accurate information in order for you to make informed decisions. A real-time price book is a great example.
With an integration to a top-of-the-line pricebook, you can browse through thousands of inventory items in any category and see real-time product information plus high-resolution images that you can pull into your printed quotes.
The images help your sales team produce quicker quotes and help your customers know exactly what they’re getting. Plus, a good PSA software will allow you to enter suggested install hours when adding items from an online catalog. These two features combined make all of your proposals more accurate and consistent and make you look like a genius.
Revenue Stream
And, finally, take the guesswork out of our revenue stream with contract profitability, sales forecasting and automatic payment processing with an all-in-one business automation software.
With contract profitability, a PSA software empowers you to track and analyze all of your customers and figure out how much you spent on servicing each account and how much you made. This allows you to prioritize your top customers and keep them happy, and it ensures your sales team creates proposals that are still profitable for you when they are negotiating those big deals and contract renewals.
When it comes to new sales, the forecasting tools within a PSA software will help you track estimated revenue in your sales team’s pipeline.
And whether it’s from current or new customers, keep your cash flowing with automatic payment processing. The best PSAs can execute one-time or recurring PCI-compliant ACH or credit card payments.
It’s your money! Make it easy for customers to give it to you.
No More Fooling Around
Stop using a variety of software solutions to track and manage your day-to-day business operations — or worse, a collection of paperwork, filing cabinets and spreadsheets. A business automation software can help you run your technology services business with more efficiency from a single, user-friendly platform.
Download this PSA Checklist for Technology Service Providers and start looking for the right business automation software for your company.
