Sustainability has become a buzz word within the current economic culture. While some experts are starting to believe the economy is recovering, it doesn’t always appear that way when balancing month-end statements, and sustaining profitability has never been a higher priority than it is now.
Recently, I was reading an article about the top 10 oil and gas business risks. One of the top 3 risks was cost containment, and while that is something that any business owner is mindful of when it comes to managing their business, it got me thinking of different ways companies can cut costs and streamline processes to not only sustain profitability, but grow it, and how VistaVu Solutions is helping our clients accomplish this.
For the past few years many companies have significantly reduced costs across multiple business units. The focus has now shifted to sustaining those cut costs and looking ahead to the future by increasing cash flow, and keeping operational and production costs in check. One of the best ways to trim down operational costs is to streamline processes, and that starts with reporting.
Over the years we have encountered numerous business owners who have struggled with reporting. The areas they typically struggle with the most include inventory and accounting. It’s challenging for them because they have no way to manage the inventory they have against what they need to order. Some companies have even struggled with selling the same item multiple times because their inventory system just can’t keep up with the pace of their business, leading to rushed orders, increased costs, and reduced profits.
When we move on to accounting the conversation usually leads into it taking up to 30 days to process and send out invoices, which means that it can take up to 90 days to get paid. Further, many high-level executives aren’t able to monitor cash-flow within the company on a daily or weekly basis, sometimes not even a monthly basis, and typically rely on others to pull financial reports for them.
To manage your business effectively you have to be able to monitor costs at a moment’s notice, such as setting up an alert when you deviate from your budget, or creating a dashboard for you and your management team to see what each department is producing vs. spending.
Without being able to monitor your costs, it is virtually impossible to contain them. What many of our clients have realized is that in order to contain costs, sometimes it means putting a system into place that can manage their workflow, monitor their inventory, handle their accounting, and at the same time, produce a number of reports for different aspects of their business. SAP Business One and FieldVu allow you to do just that.
Creating visibility within an organization is key to streamlining processes and containing costs. A single application for managing your entire business that captures critical data in a single view is what our solution can offer. SAP Business One integrated with FieldVu produces up to the minute financial reports, sets up workflows, and makes the company as a whole accountable for what is happening on a daily basis, ultimately allowing you to manage this risk and increase profitability in the long run.
