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The Hidden Costs of Greater Efficiency

The drive for greater efficiency and cost savings is relentless as companies continue to face the competitive pressure of ever more crowded markets.

Business software is rightly credited with offering those benefits. But new efficiencies often come with a hidden price-tag. Why? Because many software applications require users to undergo lengthy training, sometimes last several days and then take time to become fully operational.

In other cases, a new software system or application may require users – and indeed whole teams or departments – to adopt a completely new approach to a particular working practice. The cost of training and loss of productivity while users come up to speed are often not accounted for in investment business cases. So the efficiency benefits and cost savings take longer to realise than was first thought.

So what’s the alternative?

Often, massive process efficiencies can be gained very quickly – literally overnight – by using software applications that are specifically designed to integrate with and enhance an existing functional, line-of-business or departmental system.

The best integral applications act as extensions, and don’t need you to learn a whole new process. They simply allow you to perform the same functional processes in a more efficient way, and ideally without having to even start up the application separately. They are truly seamless.

A great example of this is Zetadocs for NAV. Because Zetadocs for NAV is specially designed to integrate seamlessly and integrally with Microsoft Dynamics NAV, users don’t need any specialist training. Nor do they need to learn an uncomfortable new process, or start using new terminology.

Also, as it is specifically designed to help accounting staff with the key administrative accounting processes, it enables all the functions you would expect from within NAV, including the generation, delivery, archiving and retrieval of:

  • Invoices
  • Reminders and statements
  • Purchase orders
  • Sales orders
As an example, take invoicing – possibly the most fundamental and important of all the accounting processes, as it is the primary driver of cash flow.

If your accounting staff use the classic or role-tailored client in Microsoft Dynamics NAV, all the physical processes associated with invoicing – printing, folding, packaging and sending – can now be completed from within the client, without leaving the desk.

An invoice can be created and delivered from within NAV using the contact address details, including the customer’s preferred invoice delivery choice, such as email. In this case, Zetadocs simply attaches a PDF of the invoice to an email and sends it using Outlook (check out this short Zetadocs for NAV video).

What’s more, the invoice looks exactly like a ‘standard’ paper invoice, as Zetadocs provides fully customisable templates that can include the logo, company details, terms and conditions and payment methods such as bank transfer details.

The result? A highly effective cash collection method, a hugely cheaper, faster and more efficient alternative to standard paper-based invoicing, and all with minimal learning and training overhead.