Business management: Excel and Word are a thing of the past, use dedicated, high-performance tools!
As we all (unfortunately) know, Excel and Word are omnipresent in the management of French and global companies! Nearly 70% of organisations use these 2 programs for their administrative, commercial and HR management. These business management tools date back to the 80s, and although they are flexible and still very much in use in companies, they have serious limitations.
In this article, we'll look at why using dedicated tools can make your business more productive and successful.
Why Word and Excel are no longer suitable:
The 2 phrases you're bound to have heard or said: "For my needs, it fits" or "I'm too small". For many companies, Word and Excel are 2 essential tools.
And for good reason:
- Great flexibility, enabling them to be adapted to a wide range of business sectors.
- Simplicity and speed for specific tasks (producing an estimate, a simple forecast table with calculation rules).
- Automation of certain time-consuming tasks.
But why stop using Excel and Word to manage your business? Given the above points, it's a legitimate question! It will depend on your organisation and the way you operate on a day-to-day basis, but the limits will become clearer as your business grows.
The limits of these tools
Word, Excel: where's the added value?
Let's talk about anticipation, that's the 1st limitation! You have your Excel files with your customers, your figures, your forecasts, your beautiful tables... But what do you do with them? What do they give you in terms of management and strategy, apart from information at a given point in time? The added value is nil! After many hours of sorting, processing and merging cells, the files don't allow you to make long-term decisions. They are information data.
Let's take a concrete example: a sales rep is going to draw up his monthly balance sheet. He needs to list the companies he is in contact with in 1 Excel file, and even what he has invoiced via another file and his invoice in Word, and make the link. Enter everything into 1 Excel file, create calculation rules, draw up the tables and hope that you haven't made any mistakes when entering the data...
You can see that most of the time is spent on data entry and processing. Then they have to do all the analysis. You or your sales staff spend more time on these tasks than on your business: find new sources of income!
To err is human!
We make more mistakes than we care to admit. It's not possible to eradicate them, but you can reduce them drastically by avoiding Excel and Word when managing your business.
Calculation and cell errors are common! They can quickly make you lose money, or even lead to bankruptcy due to poor management and forecasting. When you draw up forecasting tables, an error can happen very quickly. It can distort your forecasts and cause you to take the wrong decisions.
We talk about it less, but fraud and misconduct by certain people can also alter your documents. This has already happened in companies. Ill-intentioned employees have deliberately modified files or, worse still, deleted them. Without traceability, it's impossible to know who's behind all this. And above all, there is no way of backing up data other than the last time you backed up your file.
Centralising and sharing information: an essential development lever for your business
Managing your business from Excel and Word documents is extremely risky, time-consuming and time-consuming! What's more, how can you keep track of your customer relationships?
Where is the information on your customer portfolio today? One of the most common management mistakes is for everyone to keep their customers' information, and for everyone to be responsible for their own data. This kind of organisation often comes naturally, particularly when everyone is responsible for a particular sector (geographical or business).
But what happens when an employee is on holiday? When they move to another position, within the company or elsewhere? When everyone keeps their own data, it is not shared, and is organised and scheduled differently.
As a result, any change in the way the company is organised comes up against an extremely significant obstacle, as everyone has their "own" way of working and organising themselves. If there is a need for a one-off or long-term replacement, it is in the "replaced" employee's interest to be there to pass on the files.
What's more, working on a joint project without making any mistakes is no mean feat: emails are passed back and forth, but if you miss one, you're out of sync with the client.
And that's just talking about the sales department, but what about the rest: does the customer have an ongoing case with the after-sales service? Does he owe us money, or does he have a pending credit note?
And in the event of malicious intent, a whole section of the company's history could disappear. Invoices will remain, but the foundation on which the customer relationship was built will simply be lost.
Not to mention the eventual sale of the company, when the structuring of customer information will play a significant role in its valuation...
Migrating to a simple French tool?
Let's be honest. At the start of our entrepreneurial adventure, we also went through the "Word, Excel" phase.
As we saw above, these are 2 tools that can help you with specific points. But not for the day-to-day running of your business. The programmed obsolescence of this method will soon be felt.
Using a French CRM + ERP online tool will enable you to support your company's growth in a reliable, secure and scalable way. You certainly have your habits, but the time and energy you waste using Excel and Word to manage your business is detrimental.
That's why we developed Axonaut! Combine the power of CRM + ERP with modern, scalable technology. Every entrepreneur needs to be able to access all their company data at any time.
The benefits of SaaS CRM + ERP
First of all, let's get the basics right:
- The aim of a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is to centralise and manage the relationship between your business and your prospects/customers more effectively. This generally takes the form of a suite of tools for exchanging, capturing, processing and analysing customer data. The aim is to get to know your customers better, so that you can offer them the right products and services.
- An ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) or Integrated Management Software Package is defined more by the Back Office. In other words, tools that enable you to monitor the management of your business: invoicing, stock, human resources and project management.
Quick and easy to install and set up
One of the first fears of companies wishing to acquire online software is data migration, installation, training, etc. Unlike physical tools, you don't need consultants or servers.
In just 1 click, you can test a solution for free. That means you need fewer human resources. This means you can plan ahead more easily. What's more, most of them offer training, webinars and telephone support.
SaaS model: Freedom & Security
Physical software does not allow you to :
- enjoy your software and data anywhere, anytime,
- obtain updates and upgrades.
In the digital age, mobility is essential. So accessing your data has to be quick and easy. With online CRM + ERP software, you can find all the information you need about your prospects/customers: e-mail, telephone numbers, contacts, etc. Before a meeting, you can view the latest discussions with your customer on your smartphone/tablet, for example.
An online tool will also give you instant access to all the latest news about your customer. No more untimely, never-ending updates. What's more, the security of your data is guaranteed by multiple back-ups.
Centralising and sharing information
Using a SaaS tool will give your entire team access to the information they need. This will improve the quality of internal communication and exchanges.
What's more, redundant double entry will be a thing of the past. All the sources of daily errors between departments and people arising from incorrect and old information will be greatly reduced.
Sharing information will be much easier. Each employee will have a user space (you can even choose the rights to which they will have access) and will have complete and up-to-date information. You'll also get 'Traceability' functionality. At any time, you can see who has done what (created, modified or deleted information).
Conclusion
We encounter all these limitations in using Excel and Word on a daily basis with our customers. Their feedback helps us to understand the needs of entrepreneurs, so that we can offer a simple, comprehensive tool.
We therefore advise companies to migrate to online CRM + ERP solutions. The tools available on the market will enable you to save time on the day-to-day management of your business.
The aim is to enable you to concentrate on what's really important: your business, your turnover!
Article translated from French