With fully integrated, sector-specific systems, data from all departments can be combined – bringing service, accounting, inventory, sales, contract management and procurement together for complete visibility 01732 759725 30 OPINION James Stacey, Solution Consultant at ECI Software Solutions explores how businesses can harness data for better informed decisionmaking and excellent customer service Understanding your data with both industries never failing to showcase innovation. However, now more than ever, businesses are feeling the pinch, forcing many to review their existing processes yet again, and identify the necessary efficiency saving measures. In a highly competitive market, the ability to make real-time business decisions will make the difference between profits today and existence tomorrow. Ensuring easier decision-making, as well as offering a comprehensive business management solution designed for the office technology industry, software solutions such as ECI’s e-automate can harness key data, as well as giving business leaders the tools to report on and drill into the specifics that matters most. By drawing on and highlighting the key findings of a business’s data in a wide range of reports, board members are able to gain a far deeper understanding of how an organisation is running than top level evaluations ever could. With fully integrated, sector-specific systems, data from all departments can be combined – bringing service, accounting, inventory, sales, contract management and procurement together for complete visibility. As data from any part of the business can be accessed whenever required, business leaders can be confident in making the right decisions at the right time. Customer service excellence Delivering service efficiently is widely considered to be one of the most important factors of profitability, and for many office technology dealers, running a finely tuned service department can be extremely challenging without the right systems in place. Working alongside computer-based software solutions, native mobile applications give managers and technicians in the field all the necessary information to deliver exceptional service and drive efficiencies throughout their departments. While out on call, technicians can open, receive and manage service calls from the palm of their hand – remotely connecting to shared business data in real-time. While time and effort is saved for those performing call-outs – enabling more customers to be seen in one day – additional capabilities allow for time to be saved elsewhere in the business. For example, with the ability to capture customer signatures and automatically generate invoices from centralised data, on the spot, the need for laborious manual processes is eradicated, saving the accounts team valuable time, and payments can be processed in a more timely and cost-effective manner. Looking ahead Predictive analytics is the use of data, machine learning techniques and statistical algorithms to intelligently forecast future outcomes based on historical data and past occurrences. As technology continues to advance, and the drive for efficiency amplifies, predictive analytics will be called upon to further simplify the jobs at hand, as well as tasks of the future. Currently, predictive analytics is used by a number of SaaS solutions to warn in advance when a component is likely to fail – allowing problems to be identified early, action to be taken sooner and costly mistakes to be avoided. Data is an invaluable tool, one that will allow SMEs to unlock potential and achieve their full capabilities. ONS data suggests that at the start of 2022, SMEs accounted for three-fifths of the UK employment, and around half of the total turnover in the UK private sector – an estimated £2.1trillion. With more SMEs tapping into data analytics, these figures are only set to rise in 2023 and beyond. www.ecisolutions.com Pre-pandemic, the majority of small and medium-sized businesses were happy to leave data and analytics to their large, multinational counterparts. However, with SMEs accounting for 99 per cent of businesses operating in the UK, this meant a large proportion of over five million businesses were unsure on how to go about harnessing said data – let alone making sense of it. For most, the big data opportunity seemed an unattainable goal. Fast forward to the start of 2023, and data now has a place in any strong business strategy. Conducted to understand more around how data is used among UK businesses, the most recent ONS UK Business Data Survey found that an estimated 81 per cent of enterprises now handle digitised data in some form, personal or non-personal, and almost all businesses with ten or more employees do so. Providing highly accurate insights around device usage, consumer habits, price elasticity, as well as information on how products and services are performing, data offers business leaders a true picture of an organisation. As the UK is set to face the longest and deepest recession in the G7, further worsening the current volatile trading environment, it’s essential for all businesses, especially SMEs who may have smaller cash reserves to fall back on, to take the necessary steps towards well-informed business decisions, powered by data intelligence. Embracing innovation For many years technology has continued to transform the office supplies and managed print services (MPS) sectors, James Stacey
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