Are there paper-based tasks in your business that look like they are full of double-handling? Do you look at them and think there must be a better way? Research has shown that businesses can spend up to 80% of their time just collecting, monitoring, analysing and reporting on data.  That’s a lot of time on repetitive tasks you’re paying for. 

The secret to making real efficiencies is called Streamlined Workflow.  A workflow is a sequence of tasks. The path of those tasks is predictable and repetitive.  For example, filling out a timesheet.  If this is happening using paper forms, in addition to double-handling, these are some of the frustrations you might be experiencing:

• Errors
• Staff frustration (the person filling in and the data entry person)
• Slow
• Data not on hand real-time 

We recently transformed a daily job sheet from 15 pages to a streamlined app delivering time savings to front line staff and data entry admin.  But also the following business benefits:

• Improved staff engagement – because it’s frustrating for the people filling out highly repetitive forms 
• Lower errors 
• Real-time data
• More accurate and timely payroll calculations
• Automated recall of business-critical OH&S information
• Real-time access to work/jobs and updates sent back to database
• Automated job completion notification advice to clients
• Data for business-critical reporting relating to a specific job, asset or employee

Move from paper to digital and increase your productivity and profitability.   It’s Time for Change.  Custom software can optimise your business performance. 

Contact Neorise at:  www.neorise.com.au   

Neorise Consultants:  

Glenn Briggs                                      Carl Smith 

0423 913 379                                     0412 984 019  

glenn.briggs@neorise.com.au       carl.smith@neorise.com.au 

As a business owner or someone who manages the development and growth of a business, have you ever found yourself in one or more of these situations? 

1. You feel like your business can improve, but you have no idea how to or where to start.
2. You’re monitoring and tracking your business data but you’re not 100% sure what to do with the information or even, how to make sense of it. 
3. Your business is not keeping up with competitors. 
4. You are overwhelmed with so much data from multiple sources and you don’t know how to see them in one place. 

Research has shown that businesses can spend up to 80% of their time just collecting, monitoring, analysis and reporting on data.

The heart breaking aspect of this (and trust us, we’ve been there, done that), is that this big chunk of valuable time spent on data collection and analysis might not yield the information we need for business improvements. 

So, how can we fix this problem? 

Say hello to business dashboards 

Business Dashboards are platforms that offer a visual representation of your business organisation’s real time performance. 

We call them “dashboards” because they work similarly to car dashboards. Think of your business as the engine under the hood and your business dashboard as a car dashboard that shows you all the important information about your engine’s performance.

Here at Neorise, we believe that every business can benefit from having a powerful and easy to use business dashboards. 

Why? 

Well, because a dashboard simplifies all the information that you collect – such as sales figures, resourcing hours, trends and more – into one place and in manageable “chunks” so that you can see what your business is doing right and where you can improve! 

There are many benefits of a powerful dashboard, but in our experience, the thing that businesses love most is the ability to make informed decisions that can really impact business performance. 

Types of dashboards 

There are three categories of dashboards:

• Operational Dashboard – the most used dashboard type, this gives you real time data on what’s happening daily in your business, without too much drilldowns. An example is a project management dashboard that gives you a bird’s eye view of projects, tasks, to-do lists, events coming up.

• Analytical Dashboard – this one is for the analysts in you, who love looking at trends and pinpoint patterns to inform future decision making. An example is a marketing dashboard which tracks your communications channels for the last year or so might show which is the better platform to use, when you should communicate and what type of content engages better.

•  Strategic Dashboard – if you have key performance indicators (KPIs) and want to track how you are meeting them, this one is important for your business. This is typically the dashboard you share with everyone in the business so that everyone is aware of how the business is doing. For example a sales dashboard can help motivate your team to be more competitive. 

The right dashboard for your business

There are many dashboard software available in the market, with some (Tableau, Zoho, Segment) offering a free trial before you commit. 

The table below from Technology Advice provides options to look at based on pricing, and accessibility. 

But before you lock yourself into one of these, in our experience, it is best to first think through and have answers for these initial questions: 

1. What aspect of your business do you want to improve or what questions do you have about your business performance?
   
2. What data is required to give you the information you need?

3. Do you have someone who will be in charge of implementing, reviewing and interpreting your dashboard?

4. What is your budget to develop your dashboard? 

If you need assistance with choosing a business dashboard, one of our analysts would be more than happy to have a chat and help you through the process of choosing the right one.

Get in touch

Finally, the benefits of dashboards 

We can write on and on about the benefits of having a business dashboard. But we thought, why not show you in real life, from a local business perspective. 

We worked with Wembley Autocare to create a custom workshop management software system with a dashboard of information such which services brings in the most value and how satisfied customers are. 

The result: higher profit margins, more time to work on the business and higher productivity.

Read about Wembley Autocare’s business dashboard solution. 

Does your business use mobile apps as part of your marketing, engagement and product/service delivery?

With over 50% of internet traffic accessed via mobile globally (this figure is expected to continually increase), having your business accessible via mobile for your customers and audience is something to consider. 

The good news for businesses with mobile apps is that technology continues to support innovation in this field. 

Artificial Intelligence – AI – is a giant trend in the business world. Many features of AI can be integrated into mobile apps and improve user experience. 

Advantages of AI in mobile apps for businesses

AI is already being used by businesses around the world to help manage their daily activities and engagement with customers. Let’s have a look at some of them.

Speech / voice recognition: adding speech / voice recognition in your mobile apps can assist with giving customers an easier and faster way to get the information and service they need. The best example of this is of course Siri and Google Assistant. How often have you been driving and need Siri to get you to call the office or home to let them know you’re on the way without breaking any traffic rules?

Image recognition: image recognition allows users to detect and classify entities within images. If your business is in events, and you are holding a professional event that requires on the day registration, image recognition could be an easy and fast way to register people on the day. You can also use this technology for image identification.

Personalisation: AI can gather valuable information (with the right privacy information disclosed of course) about your clients’ or customers’ tastes or preferences so that your app can recommend things for, say, faster check out of purchases. AI will also be able to assist with predicting information that your customers want as part of the service you provide. For example, if you’re delivering regular items, AI in your app can send notifications when the items might be low and when to order to avoid not having any. 

Chatbots: so you can hate them or love them, but chatbots are around and as AI gets more sophisticated, we think they will stay put. Read more about our thoughts on chatbots. From a customer experience perspective, a well deployed chatbot can give you more time to focus on other aspects of your business while “someone” else answers commonly asked customer queries. 

Productivity: This benefit of AI in mobile apps is probably more for your own business. AI can help you do things faster. For example, Google’s Smart Reply on G Suite auto generate replies for faster email returns. Or Shopify offers Kit – an AI that helps you with scheduling the right posts, in the most desirable times for your social ads. 

Interested in integrating AI in your mobile apps or in your business systems to improve customer experience and productivity? 

We at Neorise would love to be able to help with that. We’re always keen on new technology and a challenge always excites us.

Get in touch today.