Business software:
To give you more of an understanding: software is a list of instructions (code) that manages and controls a computer or any device’s functions, giving it specific commands (tasks) to do.
There are different types of software for businesses. Software is either developed for a business itself, for a specific industry or to manage the general functions within any type business, e.g. Pastel (accounting software).
Software for businesses is developed to improve various aspects of a business’s processes in order to increase profits and decrease business expenses. Business software holds several benefits such as increasing productivity, productivity measurement and keeping track of the business’s performance.
Today you will mostly likely find a program for almost all aspects of business, though if you cannot find it, it can be developed. Remember that businesses are not limited to software that currently exists. We are only limited by our imagination on what can be developed.
When a business has specific requirements, software can be developed from scratch or an existing program could be enhanced to meet these requirements. Depending on the type of software, the development process can take anything from 6 months to two years, but luckily there are a variety of existing business software solutions that could be customised to save time and development costs.
Here are some examples of different business programs.
- Digital dashboards – keeps track of business performance by giving a summary of the business’s data by using set metrics set by the business.
- Business performance management (BPM) – keeps management informed on business performance and flags potential problems.
- Procurement software – helps to automate the sales process for online and/or in store sales.
- Data mining – extraction of consumer information from the business’s database that identifies consumers patterns or trends.
- Document management – organises and manages all company documents including storage on a cloud and keeps back-ups of valuable business information in a secure place (server).
- Employee scheduling software– managing employees schedules and keeping track of employee work hours.
- Customer relationship management (CRM) – helps to manage customer relationships, current and future customers. It organises, automates, and synchronises sales and customer communication, and improves customer service.
- Enterprise content management (ECM) – this program combines the majority of the above mentioned programs into one program. It organises staff, connects staff and managers with an online collaboration tool, enables them to store and share company documents, create work flows, communicate with their team, keep track of progress and store documents with other types of content related to the company.
In our next couple of blogs we will go into more depth on some of the above mentioned business software solutions to give you an idea how they are used and what benefits they can provide for a business.
