CLIENT
Blue Rock Systems Ltd, Southampton
TASK
To produce an article to be posted on the Blue Rock Systems website, and to use as editorial in trade press
COVERAGE
As providers of business software for the merchant industry we sometimes get caught up in the technology and features and miss the bigger picture.
So, let’s take it back to basics for a minute.
You want to make and improve profits — mainly to better the quality of life for your staff, your family and yourself.
But you don’t want to work yourself into the ground to get there.
So how can you achieve your goals?
By evolving.
Make Life Easier
Over the last 30+ years, the industry that we supply has made many fundamental changes — yes in the pursuit of customer service and profit, but also to make life “easier”.
Physical price books were replaced with software, orders stopped being written down on paper, and the slog of re-keying data was massively reduced.
Invoices and statements were emailed instead of posted, and not printed to keep in physical files.
All of this was in the late 1980s — today we take it for granted that any system should do this.
Appetite for Automation
Jump forward three decades and the appetite for making life easy hasn’t diminished — if anything, it’s increased.
This, combined with the belief in technology by innovative merchants, means that they are continually evolving their systems to replace the mundane tasks with automation.
If the system can do it or be made to do it (and it’s effectively free or low cost) then “get it done and make our lives easier”.
Merchants Embracing Evolution
OK, let’s be clear — few business leaders and managers rarely have their feet up on the table watching the pounds roll in.
But they no longer want to have to chase every debt, they’d rather the system do most of that for them.
They don’t want to wade through reports and analysis to tell them whether things are going well or not — the system should give them the headline news on their dashboards or smartphones.
The thought of rekeying anything into the system is abhorrent — even the documents sent to them by their suppliers are imported.
And their customers? Well, they can download their own copy invoices, proof of deliveries, etc from an online portal.
By removing or automating the repetitive tasks, they have time to think, be creative, improve customer service, tackle challenges (such as fuel prices, carbon footprint regulations and spiralling material costs) safe in the knowledge that the “machine” ticks away in the corner (or more commonly in the cloud) looking after the rest of the business.