10 advantages of an integrated solution to manage your business

When it comes to choosing the most appropriate software to manage a business, the question often arises: should you use one integrated management solution? Or several tools specifically designed for dedicated processes? In the world of consulting and services, the subject is also crucial. Monitoring activity quickly becomes complex once the 10 employee mark is reached. Monitoring customer needs, resource planning projects, time tracking and project profitability. Management of skills and evaluations, project billing, etc.

Should you manage all these key processes with separate software packages, or with an integrated management solution? In reality, an integrated solution, as long as it's adapted to your business, offers many advantages.

Here are 10 of them:  

1. Time-saving!

By centralizing activity management in a single solution, you generate significant time savings for all employees. The reduction in the number of software programs allows for immediate access to information. Instead of logging into multiple solutions, in multiple browser tabs to work, the employees can access to all the data and processes in the same solution and save a lot of time in their work.

Furthermore, in a centralized solution, data is used in different places and updated in real time. There is no need to refresh pages, transfer information, or import files. All employees see their productivity increase: even the juniors who only connect to one solution to see the schedule, follow their tasks and time spent on projects, manage their expenses and vacations.

Managers can also manage their projects and teams from within the same solution. Finally, administrators have access to all the data they need to automate invoicing and accounting closing.

2. Improved employee experience 

More than ever, as the war for talent intensifies year after year, we need to work on providing a simple and pleasant employee experience. In the service and consulting businesses, there is often more administrative processing than in other activities. Everyone is asked to keep track of time spent on projects, travel expenses are sometimes higher, schedules change regularly, and employees need to be given visibility.

If employees have to connect to 4 or 5 different software applications to perform these tasks and gain visibility, they won't be satisfied. But if they can do it easily, from a pleasant mobile app perfectly designed for their needs, the experience will be much better!

Stafiz is a complete tool, an ERP for service companies created specifically to manage your business. Its integrated solution allows you to manage your projects with better performance and visibility.

Book a demo and test Stafiz

3. Data reliability is significantly more important in an integrated solution

A business management solution plays a key role in the financial management of a company. The data is used to calculate the turnover per period, the profitability of projects, the invoices to be issued and to prepare the accounting closing. In many cases, the data is automatically sent to an accounting solution for final processing. It is therefore imperative that the data is reliable and exhaustive so the accounting entries can be as well.

Only an integrated solution that centralizes payroll costs, subcontracting purchases, expenses and invoicing can enable status calculations and display reliable data. As the link between the various processes is created from the outset, the data is properly exploited, and there is no risk of data loss, unlike what can happen when information is transferred from one software package to another.

4. Project profitability is more accurate

Calculating the profitability of a project is not as simple as it seems. Sales must be correctly calculated. Its amount over the period depends on the sales recognition methodology used. Only a dedicated tool incorporating a project accounting approach can perform this calculation. Moreover, project costs are not limited to salary costs for time spent on the project. A precise calculation of project profitability must also include costs, particularly those that cannot be re-invoiced. This calculation must also take into account subcontracting and any product purchases.

Comprehensive reporting must be able to separate actual project sales from rebilling sales (expenses, purchasing, subcontracting). When subcontracting, expense and purchasing management are integrated into a single business management solution, all these calculations are carried out precisely and in real time. This provides a complete and accurate view of performance, and prevents management control from wasting time on these calculations.

5. ERP for service companies increases task automation tenfold

API integrations can help transmit information and even automate certain tasks, but no connector has the same power as a native integration. Imagine the following possibilities offered by integrated management software;

• Automatic creation of a project based on a winning opportunity
• Analyze rebillable expenses and automate the preparation of expense invoices
• Automatic preparation of invoices based on time spent
• Updating of financial forecasts on the basis of projected schedules
• Calculation of accrued invoices and deferred income
• Updating of employee capacities according to their absences

These actions are carried out in real time, with no possible errors in an integrated solution. They go further in automating tasks than a workflow created via Zapier, for example, can provide.

6. More complete customer data for better analysis

When it comes to analyzing the performance of individual customers, CRMs are not the best way to provide a complete picture. Good reporting by customer requires analysis of the following data:

• Monthly sales
• Monthly billing
• Monthly margin
• History of opportunities and status
• Project history and profitability
• Bills issued and unpaid

This data provides a complete view of performance, and enables information to be better exploited for commercial purposes or negotiations. Only an integrated business management solution can draw on the various modules to centralize comprehensive, more relevant reporting.

7. Projects are better anticipated, leading to faster start-up.

Before a project gets underway, there are many stages in the pre-sales phase: responding to calls for tender, positioning profiles and pre-resource planning, contractualization. If your ERP/CRM software allows you to manage this information, you'll find it easier to anticipate. You'll know when to pre-book certain resources, which skills are in greater demand, and which contracts have or have not been signed.

With this information, managers can better anticipate the next steps and ensure that everything is in place to get the project off the ground as soon as possible. This organization promotes customer satisfaction and, of course, cash flow.

8. A central solution creates a common language and improved team collaboration around performance.

In most companies, sales people work with their CRM. The finance department is the only one to have access to the accounting and invoicing solution, while the HR teams have access to information via their HRIS. With this type of organization, barriers are created, it is difficult for information to flow between departments and collaboration is non-existent. Performance objectives remain focused department by department. There is no holistic vision or collaboration to move forward together towards the company's goals.

However, when a company uses an integrated management solution , centralization brings the advantage of enabling each department to find the important information. Of course, sales staff can continue to manage sales activity in the CRM, and HR can keep track of employee information in the HRIS software. With the right connectors, data that is interesting to share is sent to the central management tool, and all employees can benefit from a more global view.

• Opportunities are updated from the CRM. But the calculation of forecast margins and pre-resource planning is done in the business management solution.
• New employees are created in the HRIS software, but feed into the central business management solution, and can then be staffed on projects.
• The invoices issued in the integrated management solution will be sent automatically to the accounting tool

In this way, an integrated management solution takes nothing away from the performance of each department. It helps to provide a more complete view, and enables teams to collaborate with a common view of business performance.

9. The reduction in the number of software programs used or their scope allows for significant financial gains

In an era where software has become so important to businesses, software solution stacks can become so large that the associated costs become astronomical. There are obvious financial gains to be made by centralizing solutions. While it is impossible to keep a single solution to perform all your processes, it is possible to centralize the following functionalities on the business management part: opportunities and budget management, recruitment management, capacity and load management, absence management, project time tracking, expense management, billing management, and reporting.

In addition, a marketing automation tool can be added, as well as payroll and accounting tools. With this kind of organization, the number of licenses decreases drastically and the overall cost for the company as well. Even if the license of the management tool is higher, it will never be as high as the sum of the licenses of all the tools it replaces. And yet nothing is lost in terms of performance, quite the contrary.

10. Avoid connector maintenance and contractual complexity

The choice to use multiple tools to manage the business requires the development of many connectors to simplify the daily routine. If the solution can be used to carry out the desired tasks, it is necessary to expect recurring problems of maintenance of the API connectors. Indeed, as soon as a change occurs on one side or the other of the connector, the action is no longer performed.

You need to constantly track interruptions and have a designated person with the technical background to update the code behind the API connection and get it working again.

This can be expensive in some cases and makes the updating process tedious and inflexible. This is a situation that does not exist in an integrated solution. Connections are native, and there can be no connection problems (apart from a bug that would be fixed very quickly). The maintenance is scalable and the improvements of the solution do not disturb the links between the different processes and the automation.