Newbie questions - be nice to me :o)

[UncleSteve]

Not sure if I have posted this in the correct place, sorry if I messed up.

I'm not sure what I'm looking for, but wish to free up some time by seeing if anyone knows of easier ways or software to use with my business.

Let me run through a few process's of how my business runs.

This bit is a separate issue from the accounts side of the business. We receive enquiries via email (currently use Outlook Express) which are generally text only generated via forms on the website. We removed our email address from the site to make people use the forms, as they quite often left out vital information. These enquiries are acted upon and replies sent out via email. At our end each enquiry is hand written out on to enquiry forms to aid tracking in the office. But an easer method of tracking would be nice as we do have lots of enquiries, so occasionally some items get overlooked

Now to the money side of my business.
I run an online store where most orders are received via email from paypal (at present - but wish to change later). These orders are manually typed (generally copy and pasted using signature texts to sort of pre-generate the email) in to another email for our supplier to supply the goods and send them direct to our customer (we hardly ever send out orders via fax). Occasionally we receive orders via the phone. We do send out a very limited amount of orders direct to the customer from our stock held at the office.

Most of the orders generated from our website are for items set up on 'add to cart' buttons, so the order matches our stock list (Excel spread sheet) verbatim. But some are for items which the customer manually types in their requirements and costs, then send that off to paypal. Each stock item has our own unique product code, which is cross-referenced via a single spreadsheet to a supplier, description, OEM product code, supplier code, sale price, purchase price, shipping cost etc. So the above consists of emails in, cross-referenced to spread sheet, back to email.

The customer is also sent an email confirming receipt of their order and likely delivery date.

The supplier sends out the goods to our customer, then sends us an invoice for each delivery, followed up with a monthly statement. These details are manually typed in to another spread sheet together with the cash receipts. A lot of time seems to be spent on this bit of the process to generate reports for payments to suppliers, bank balances etc. At present there is no real connection between the stock sheet and the general accounts sheets. so no day to day checking of suppliers charges against their pre-agreed charges.

Does anyone have any ideas or recommendations to streamline our various process’s and perhaps hopefully integrate them all together.

Thanks for reading this far and any help you can give

Steve

PS I'm based in the UK and only deal with UK customers

[asr_guy]

Hi Steve - One area to improve first might be the enquiry process. I suggest you start recording the questions/answers so that you can see which questions are asked most often. Then implement a self-service FAQ system so that most of the common questions can be answered by the customers themselves. This will free up time for your staff to then focus on streamlining the backend.

I'm sure some others can comment on the supplier processes. Since you are not the manufacturer but rather an agent or reseller, I am sure there are some integrated systems for this. Hopefully Info Sourcing jumps in here - I know he would be able to help.

Regards,
Peter

[InfoSourcing]

Hi,

As I read your problem description your concern is just like any other small business customer who is growing online.

I would recommend you look out for a e-commerce software which is tied into backend application for managing inventory controls and integrated with online payments like paypal and other payments.

As you start to grow make sure the e-commerce you choose also has capability to expand horizontal and vertically, in the sense it should have features that you can add on such as CRM, so you can automate sending emails, seting up tasks etc automatically which will free up your time ...

As you still grow then you would want have a enterprise version or all-in-one software which covers from accounting, ecommerce, sales, purchasing, crm and other functionality your business requires ...

You being a UK customer and wanting to deal with UK customers only I would suggest to take a look at http://www.actinic.com/ if you are open to idea of remote control then I would suggest www.aspdotnetstorefront.com ecommerce software why? coz this guys have capability to expand into accounting functionality and more online features..

If you are interested in all-in-one software and would like to invest now then visit my website where I have listed few more software vendors http://www.info-sourcing.com/ERP_Enterprise.htm

Finally, create a roadmap for your growth in online business, choose the right vendor who is ready to grow with you, if you ask me vendor locaton doesn't matter with globally economy your vendor can be located anywhere and still provide valuable services over the web...

Happy New Year 2006 to all small business owners and to small business computing forum team members ...

[UncleSteve]

Thank guys for your replies, some helpful info.

One suggestion above was to have Q&A’s on the website. I have already gone down that route, and where possible added info to pages in relation to questions, so hopefully that will reduce some of the questions.

Some of the figures on some of the software has got me concerned, but at least the figures were for bigger outfits. Speaking to a friend who suggested looking at the Sage products and they appear to have all sorts of add-ons to cope with emails and so on. Not ever having anything to do with Sage before, has anyone else any experience or comments?

[MWells]

Steve,

I read your post about your current business process and yuor concern about software prices. I also took a look at some of the software suggestions and pricing. Once of the products, Actinic, is priced around $1,200.00 USD.

The more significant costs will probably be in custom software development to integrate various software packages and customize them to work with your current business process (and your vendors processes). This can easily run into many thousands of dollars.

However, you have some very labor intensive, manual processes. This is not only time consuming and error prone, it is very expensive as well.

If automation saves you from hiring an additional clerical staff member, it will save you tens of thousands of dollars per year in labor.

Just another way of looking at pricing and costs.

-Mark Wells

[MWells]

One more thing about automation, don't be too concerned about packages that handle emails. In fact, try to remove as much of the email handling from your process as possible.

For example, instead of getting email enquiries from your website, you might select a package that places these enquiries in a database. The package might then provide a way for users to log in and view the enquiries online. This would prevent items from being overlooked. Soem packages might have escalation features that alert managers when an item hasn't been responded to or becomes too old. With an ecommerce package, they might be orders at this point rather than just enquiries.

The email to PayPal will be uneccessary if the ecommerce package has already done the billing for you. Emails and communications with vendors can be integrated into such a system as well.

Rathe than email and/or faxing, look for features such as WebServices, EDI, and other types fo computer to computer communications features. Look for PayPal merchant integration features. Before purchasing such a package, see if your vendors offer an ordering gateway (automated ordering and payment system).

-Mark Wells