How far are you down the road to being technologically effective?
It’s a fact that many businesses do “what they’ve always done” – without realising that, although their systems might work perfectly well for them, there are better, smoother, more time-efficient ways of completing their business functions.
As technology constantly advances and encompasses all areas of running a business, we make it a priority to ensure our clients are set up in the most efficient way – not only for their accounting processes but across the board.
Darren Hahn is our strategic team’s secret weapon. While the whole Nordens team – both strategic and accounts – make it their business to identify gaps in clients’ systems then recommend improvements, Darren is the guy who actually determines what systems would be useful then speaks to the software or web developer to have it built.
In addition, he creates bespoke dashboards, such as “what if” scenarios that show clients different outcomes depending on their actions. Pretty cool, huh?
One of our clients who’s delighted with their firm’s improvements is a business that supplies commercial piping. They had a serious issue to contend with: the directors were in charge of every decision, and this meant they were constantly stretched for time. Within their team, various people were producing similar information to their colleagues in other areas due to poor communications, meaning that operations were running inefficiently and there were delays all over the place.
Quotes were manually prepared, there was no client database or data on quotes and job progress – rendering this potentially very successful business unscalable, unsaleable and susceptible to further problems due to the lack of up-to-date and accurate information.
The business was running in a reactive way rather than operating at a proactive level.
When they called us in to help we reviewed all the company’s internal processes and looked at the directors’ approach. It was quite evident that there was no planning or time management going on.
Darren came to the rescue, creating a custom automated calculator to work out the costs for materials, labour and so on, enabling the client to generate prices immediately. The information could then be transferred without fuss into quotes and invoices, saving the client time – and leaving them with less data to input. Olga, also in our strategic team, worked out that the improvements have saved the client around 40 days a year! This is based on at least 20 quotes being produced every month. Using our custom quote calculator, this client now saves time on preparing, checking and amending each quote by approximately 1.5 hours per quote. This adds up to 300 hours a year – or 43 days a year!!!
We use similar processes here at Nordens to make sure each team works smartly, stays in control and maintains clarity. That’s why we have fewer mistakes than some of our competitors, plus the improved communications that our clients love. Our response times are better too, so if you ask us to help update your internal systems and save you some precious days each year, we’ll get back to you toot sweet.
