Last month, I was approached by a business owner who has been in business for many years (> 5 years) and is still using a typewriter to write their invoice. the accounts have not been updated the last 6 years.
I asked him what made him seek us out.
His answer is scary. "I don't know how many of my customers have gone to my competitors because of lack of follow up by my team. They cannot get the information easily from my method of recording. They need information like when was the last sale made, and whom to follow up to remind them about renewing their maintenance plan, but they got to go through many files to get that information. its a waste of their time, and then they give up on me."
His staff uses a typewriter to write out the quotation, delivery order and invoice onto a pre-printed forms (doing same things 3 times over). He then enters the invoice details into an exercise-book, and updates the book when customers pay. I'm sure he may have missed some payments this way with some crafty customers.
Since we installed the MYOB business software, his staff is using the system to print the quotation onto the same pre-printed form. When the customer confirms the order, the staff calls-back the quotation, make changes as necessary, and click 'convert' button to convert the quotation to a delivery order and prints it out. This way, the staff is only dong the same things ONCE only. Best of all, the system also tracks the receivables, and also the amounts outstandings. No additional work involved here. It was normal for them to take a few days to prepare one customer's statement. Now they just select the customer, click and print it out.
His staff now has the time to follow up on the 'lost cases'. He has deployed his teenage son to update the sales data for the last 5 years (yes, that's how long he has been doing business the manual way)
The thing to note is, by them doing the normal routine- issue sales invoice, enter supplier bills, update customer payments, and issue payment vouchers, their accounts get updated without them knowing it. To the staff, what they are doing in MYOB is nothing different from what they are doing manually - just a change of medium - from a typewriter/pen to a computer. Yes, I have to teach them "right click, left click on the mouse" but they soon got over the initial teething problem.
Now the staff are getting ambitious. They have picked up basic bookkeeping knowledge from the trainer, and are now aiming to complete the just-concluded year 2006 accounts within 2 months. I don't see why not.
1 comment:
MYOB is very convenient. It amazes me how it transformed the business from the from a typewriter/pen to a computer. Thanks MYOB and for sharing this post.
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