Best Invoicing Software for Small Businesses in 2019

Why Invest In Project Management Software?

When a project is executed, every single team member - from the stakeholders to the client and project managers to solution experts - base their decisions on only one single goal – project success. While the parameters of project success may vary greatly from one engagement to another, the generic measures remain the same – a quality emphatic timely delivery, within budget and with a joyful experience.

So with the highly skilled and qualified resources, diligently groomed product backlog and carefully determined tasks, the project should go off like clockwork, right?

WRONG!

Even with the best minds and healthy work ethics on a project, without the right tools, you will end up wasting valuable time, money and energy on repetitive tasks and manual data collection.

Problem

Meet Owen.



He runs a growing business with mobile employees and resources scattered remotely across multiple projects across the planet. Business is booming but Owen is struggling to manage the growth. His overhead is rising just as fast as the revenue his projects are bringing in. The mobile resources are spending more and more time pushing paper and spending less time getting work done.

Management has files of inaccurate timesheets. Costs are rising for manpower and productivity, while the timing of the projects is severely impacted. Reports are coming in from the on-the-ground resources with information that is sometimes unreliable, unrealistic and sometimes even unreadable. Poor Finance team members are left to track down contractors, consultants, project managers and service providers to validate the correct information. 

Every day Owen and his team are forced to make business decisions based on inaccurate information. They only find out after the fact how much the guesswork is actually costing the company.

They need a better way to manage and measure mobile projects to track costs, budgets, revenues, resources and more.

Solution

Engagement Pro is an application to help you to Plan. Organise. Track. projects - all in one visual, collaborative space - to increase visibility and alignment within team members. It is simple to use and powerful in the office. It gives you the visibility to act in real-time in order to reduce operating costs and increase profit margins for projects.

It accurately tracks resources and productivity as it happens, so you get more reliable information, quicker. It’s that simple. The data is transferred from all users of the system to the servers in real-time helping all the team members accurately track progress and make critical decisions right away. 

The visual dashboard and reports make project management a breeze. The project visibility in the office and on the field is at your fingertips. Immediate answers, right when you need them. 

We’ve only scratched the surface of what this tool is capable of! Hundreds of users have already joined the Engagement Pro network – What are you waiting for?

Sign up for the most efficient project management tool - today! 

Watch this quick tour of the features of Engagement Pro! 

If you are currently struggling with a process workflow that doesn’t necessarily ‘flow’, you are not alone. From our extensive experience with customers from different countries and across various sectors, we realised that there had been a serious hurdle that is holding back companies from achieving highest efficiency in their business operations.  

All organisations, whether they are SMEs or huge conglomerates, have processes in place to achieve their business objectives. These processes require a significant amount of resources, system infrastructure, & personnel. 

What’s happening is that as this world is almost fully transforming into a digital one, carrying out those processes manually becomes more of a setback than anything else.

Team members become burned out from repetitive tasks, requests get stuck with personnel who are unable to respond for different reasons, issues in processes go undetected and cannot be traced to a source, and as a result, the completion of processes is delayed and efficiency is hindered.   

While the above factors pose powerful arguments for adopting an automation solution, there needs to be a certain level of discipline to overcome obstacles that may come in the way. These obstacles can mainly be related to cost or people.  

Cost poses a major question mark when wanting to undergo such a transformation, whether it’s a financial or opportunity cost. While business owners may have oppositions due to the costs of implementing an automation software, they will eventually learn that costs savings are along the way in the long run. 

However, companies that have taken the first step towards finding the right automation solution should understand that cost savings are not the primary reason to automate processes but rather to improve service to end users. With an improved quality of service, the operational costs associated will also improve and thus companies will achieve their ROI.  

We created “The Enterprise Submission Platform” (ESP) keeping in mind the most common customer pain points including:  

• Lagging of operations due to inefficiencies in workflow 
• High cost of doing things manually 
• Lack of task ownership  

• Slow delivery of projects  

ESP is a linear workflow system that was created by the Exceeders team to enable function owners that want to automate their business processes more control over creating and managing these processes in a guaranteed short period of time. 

The best part is that the task of managing and updating any feature in ESP can be done by the business users themselves, so this eliminated the need to involve the IT Department or even the IT Service Provider in maintaining and updating the system. 

Want to learn more about how you can cut costs and boost operational efficiency?

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We live in a time that is characterised by a major technology takeover, a time experiencing the 4th industrial revolution. Companies that want to survive and evolve must keep track of technology breakthroughs, because as we’ve come to know, technology can make or break a company’s success.  

In light of that, it is imperative to always look forward in anticipation and not just wait for a trend to start “trending”. We have created a list of what we speculate to be the major technology trends of 2020 that everyone should keep an eye out for.  

1. HyperAutomation  
2. BlockChain  
3. Artificial Intelligence 
   
   

HyperAutomation 

No matter how much technology advances, it is agreed that no single tool can replace humans. Most organisations out there are already familiar with automation, which involves automating simple tasks that require processes with predefined rules and structured data. The idea of HyperAutomation, on the other hand, involves a combination of tools that together result in the creation of an organisation’s digital twin, which allows for the automation of more complex work.  

According to Gartner, combining robotic process automation, intelligent business management software, and AI enables organisations to visualise how functions, processes, and key performance indicators interact to drive value.

Allowing this digital twin to become an integral part of the HyperAutomation process as it provides real-time continuous intelligence about the organisation will enable more informed decision making. Successful automation involves several key factors: discover, analyse, design, automate, measure, monitor, & reassess.

An example of a tool that is designed based on these factors would be Exceed’s ESP. 

BlockChain  

While Blockchain was first developed back in 1991, it came to life with the introduction of Bitcoin in 2009. The idea of bitcoin mimics printed currency in the transactional sense, but instead of being regulated by a central bank or government, bitcoin is regulated by a network of computers.  Blockchain is the protocol on which bitcoin is built.

In the simplest terms, Investopedia defines Blockchain as “a distributed, decentralised, public ledger”, which translates to digital information (blocks) that are stored in a public database (chain). While blockchain is beneficial in peer to peer transactions and small-scope projects, it remains immature for enterprise deployments due to technical issues.

However, market speculations anticipate it to be fully scalable by 2023. According to research conducted by Gartner, “true blockchain will have the potential to transform industries, and eventually the economy, as complementary technologies such as AI begin to integrate alongside blockchain.”

Artificial Intelligence 

Can Machines Think?  

AI involves designing “human-like” machines that are able to perform tasks requiring intelligence. Machines are built to mimic processes and tasks that involve recognition of images, speech, or patterns & decision making. Those processes include acquiring information and rules, using those rules to reach conclusions, & self-correction. 

Unlike traditional coding, the computer creates instructions for itself using machine learning algorithms rather than having humans write those instructions. To demonstrate the effect of AI, take google translate for an example.

When it first went live, google translate used to have more than a million lines of code (human-created instructions). Currently, google translate has 500 lines of code due to machine learning. However, while it is expected to overtake every industry, one must understand its limitations.  

Knowledge in AI comes from data, and for the machine to be accurate, it must read from accurate data. While businesses have been understanding what AI can and can't achieve for the past few years, it expected that the future points towards a time where machines are appointed not only all of the physical work, as they have done since the industrial revolution, but also the mental work involving planning, strategising, and making decisions.  

Sources:  

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/blockchain.asp  

https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/gartner-top-10-strategic-technology-trends-for-2020/ 

https://www.simplilearn.com/top-technology-trends-and-jobs-article