For competition’s sake alone, your business will benefit by switching to real-time apps that make use of the web. These apps have many benefits, not least providing customers with instant and accurate quotes while there. And, of course, they can link to accurate invoices to reflect this. Further, you can make your business more sustainable by reducing the amount of paperwork when you use mobile services. There are plenty more, too, so here’s a quick list to consider.
Scheduling New Jobs
First, the best use of a mobile app for your business in terms of customers and employees is to make scheduling new jobs easier. Of course, you can use generic apps such as Google Calendar, but apps like this are not designed for business use in this way. What you need is a field service management app that can deliver accurate scheduling with automation and multiparty access for your employees. These offer real-time updates across the whole system.
Instant and Accurate Quotes
Finances in a modern business are vital for staying afloat. You also need to know where money is coming from and when. For these reasons, quotes are a vital part of the job. Of course, quotes aren’t indicative of the final price, but for you and the customer, they provide a good guideline. Customers today also want everything at the moment, and being able to provide a client with an instant quote from your app system improves their assessment of your business.
Real-Time Apps
Hopefully, a quote turns into a sale or job. And from there, you need to know the parts you will need. A real-time app can help you connect to vendors and suppliers and order only the stock you need. Some apps can also integrate into supplier and logistics systems where you can see what is available from each supplier. This helps reduce wait times for both you and your customers and allows you to inform customers of accurate dates they can expect new items.
Itemized Invoicing for Customers
Transparency is a great thing in business and is becoming more important to customers. You can avoid delayed payments and general arguments when customers know what they are paying for. Real-time apps can generate accurate invoicing for your customers with a list of items they are paying for. For example, you can list parts, services, and time on your invoices. Invoices are also legally enforceable and can help you manage and track your overall sales.
Personal Time Management
Apps for management and other real-time software can help you make the most of your time. This is a great feature because you cannot get it back, and time is valuable to customers also. Of course, job scheduling is a part of this. But apps are excellent for assigning jobs with time efficiency in mind for individual employees. For example, you can use specific apps for slotting projects or tasks into an employee’s workday, which they can access from home or in the field.
Business Project Management
Individual tasks may be part of an overall project. And apps that can be used in the field help you manage a project remotely. The project is easily accessible by anyone with granted access, and everyone can stay on the same page. But these aren’t the only advantages that such apps have to offer. The list is almost endless when it comes to modern tech, such as mobile apps and real-time data. Among the many advantages of project apps, here are some of the most useful:
- Effectively manage budgets in line with a project’s general timeline.
- You ensure everyone involved in a project has the most recent data they need.
- Effective time management for improving the overall productivity of a given project.
- Highlight any risks involved in a specific project and take actions to mitigate them.
- Allow senior-level staff and stakeholders to see the available data and projects.
- Improved customer satisfaction by way of efficient, cheaper, and faster completion.
- The ability to foresee and predict incoming issues and act before a problem.
- Data access restriction based on standard user access control.
- An edge over the competition who may not manage projects effectively.
Project management isn’t anything new. However, the ways in which modern projects are being managed are. Constant connection from field agents to the office allows for greater real-time communication and transparency, which combines better corporate governance and overall business management. From a central location, other members of staff such as admin, management, and even shareholders can access the relevant data they need at the right time.
Accurate Accounting Data
You can hire the best accounts team in the world, but mistakes can happen. Typically, document mistakes occur as they move along a chain and are repeated. With real-time apps, data, such as finances, needs only to be recorded once. Once data has been entered into the system, it is there. Of course, it can be changed, and some apps also have built-in AI features to detect errors in data such as accounting. You can also generate reports for transparency and taxes.
Instant Report Generation
Further to reports, some apps allow you to generate reports for all aspects of your company, not just finances. For example, suppose you are a landlord management agency and have an agent in the field to collect rent. A fast and efficient real-time system can update a report to state that a particular tenant has paid earlier that day. This saves your agent time in the field. But it also saves your tenant the embarrassment of having a field agent call to discuss a personal issue.
Real-Time Apps Reduce Paperwork
It doesn’t do anyone any good to get bogged down with paperwork. Using apps in the field, or indeed, the office severely reduces this since everything is electronic. Using collated and organized data means all employees can work in relative peace and much more efficiently. All data is stored in the same place for everyone, and there is no back and forth, reducing errors. Additionally, you help make your business more sustainable by reducing overall paper waste.
Appropriate Worker Dispatch
Any apps you use should help make your business more efficient and save money in the long term. Dispatching the right person for the job for the first time is essential for this. And having another employee attend only increases costs and adds bumps to your project timescales. And at the end of the day, this costs money, time and lowers customer satisfaction. None of these are good for business. Dispatch apps get the job done the first time and make everyone happy.
Overall Increased Sales
The purpose of any new technology should be to either improve safety or increase sales. Finding the right solution for your specific business can take time. But when you find apps you love and ones that fit your business, they can increase sales significantly. They may not work on finding ways to boost sales. But the common features, such as time management, accurate quotes and invoices, and assigning the right staff, work together for better business efficiency.
Summary
Real-time apps can have a dramatic impact on your business. The features that typically come with such apps make your business far more efficient. This is done by making sure you can schedule new jobs effectively. They also allow you to manage individual tasks and overall projects from one central system. And together with other features such as invoicing, ordering, and quotes, work to make your business much more efficient as an overall effective company.
