Home office often fails due to lack of digitization
Many companies are still forced to transfer a large part of their work to the home office. Even in the foreseeable future, “normal” office life is not to be expected, but in the meantime both employees and employers have come to terms with the new situation.
The advantages and disadvantages of good or bad enterprise software are becoming increasingly apparent. However, many companies are only partially digitized. Others rely on a colorful variety of isolated solutions that are hardly compatible with each other. Such an IT world makes productive work, let alone home office, unnecessarily complicated.
Home Office is more than chats and video calls
Many people think of home office in terms of tools like Microsoft Teams, Slack or Zoom. In fact, these little helpers have become standard solutions in the field of corporate communication over the last two years.
But anyone who has lost track of the numerous chats knows that tools like these are very useful for mapping communication digitally, but hardly help in supporting business processes. This is where chats and video calls reach their limits.
Good software supports all important business processes
Work is better and, above all, more productive with all-in-one software that can be used to control all important business processes. A system like projectfacts is always available online and can be used in the office, home office or even mobile. It allows managers to plan and distribute tasks, and employees to complete these work packages from home.
Good business software supports companies in a variety of processes:
- Plan and control tasks
- Exchange ideas within the team
- Manage and support customers
- Manage and invoice orders
- Manage personnel
Planning and controlling tasks
The home office means that employees work at different locations and sometimes at different times. This means that “work on demand” is no longer possible. Instead, tasks have to be planned and distributed in advance. projectfacts gives you the choice whether you prefer to manage tasks agilely or classically.
Agile work
No matter if Scrum, Kanban or your own solution. With the projectfacts boards you collect tasks and distribute them to your team. Via drag & drop, entries can be moved on the board as desired and thus change from one status to the next. You can also add due date, priority or notes. Tasks can be completed conveniently in the home office and then passed on.
Classic project management
Plan and manage tasks using work packages. You can define budget, time period and agent per work package. The responsible team member is automatically informed and sees an overview of all due work packages on his dashboard. Progress can be easily documented and completed packages can be marked as completed. This way, you and your team can keep track of everything.
Communicate within the team
Intra-team communication is extremely important for business success. It’s not for nothing that tools like Microsoft Teams or Slack are so popular. The projectfacts business software has numerous options with which your employees can exchange information with each other.
Team calendar
With the team calendar, you can quickly get an overview of how your team is scheduled. If a colleague is sick or on vacation, this is also displayed. In this way, a shared calendar saves you a lot of time when making appointments. Invitations can be sent directly from the system. Projects, tickets or a contact can also be linked directly to a calendar entry. This way, you have all the relevant information for an appointment right at your fingertips.
Open points
Want to quickly forward a quick note or task to a colleague? In the analog world, a sticky note is often the tool of choice. Since sticky notes are simply practical, there is a digital alternative. In projectfacts they are called Open Points and can do a lot more than conventional sticky notes. For example, attach a file, a status or a deadline. So you have your notes and to-dos always and everywhere digitally with you.
Internal forum
Forums can be created in projectfacts for many elements, e.g. a project related forum or a forum specific to a customer. You also have the possibility to use the team forum as a news channel and share important info with your employees who are currently out of the office. Surveys are also possible via it.
Team chat
The integrated chat allows your team to talk directly about tasks, projects or customers. Simply forward what you want to talk about – without uploading or downloading, but simply via direct link. Of course, your data remains protected and is processed 100% DSGVO compliant.
File management
Manage and archive your files online in projectfacts. Upload external files such as calculations or signed quotations to projectfacts. They can be linked directly to the element they belong to. Thanks to the cloud, your team can also access them in the home office.
Internal Wiki
The projectfacts Wiki is the knowledge database in your company. In it you store important information and process descriptions for your team. Thanks to intelligent links you will find the right help at the right place in the system. This saves you a lot of time searching around and you always know exactly what you need to know, even in your home office.
Manage and support customers
You manage customers with your CRM database. There you will find all important data about your customers: Contact and billing data, payment types and much more. With an integrated ticket system, you always know which customer is involved in the case of incoming mails and calls.
Contact management
Here you will find all relevant customer data such as telephone number, mail and postal address. In a timeline all processes concerning the customer are listed chronologically: Quotations, projects, invoices and appointments. The entire contact history is available to your sales and support team – in the office, home office or on the road.
Service & Support
Optimize your help desk with the integrated ticket system. Incoming mails are automatically assigned to the appropriate contact and given a unique ticket ID. Organize requests using channels, assign them to employees and use ticket statuses such as “open”, “in progress” and “completed”. Based on the ticket ID, all processes are automatically bundled into one ticket.
New customer acquisition
Store prospects in your CRM and guide them through your digital sales funnel. Keep track of your sales opportunities with numerous evaluation options in sales controlling.
Manage and invoice orders
With suitable software, you can digitally map your entire receipt workflow:
Write
offers
Create
order confirmation
Send
invoices
Write quotes
Create quotes at the push of a button instead of writing them every time. projectfacts offers you the possibility to create quote templates. This way you can make sure that your offers look consistent and professional. Positions can also be preassigned, which saves valuable time. The contact details of your customer are automatically taken over. You can also always find your offers in an overview.
Create order confirmations
Once a quote has been accepted, you can turn it into an order with just one click, which you can send to your customer directly from the system. You also specify in the order how you want to charge the customer for your services, e.g. with a payment plan or individual discounts.
Send invoices
Once you have decided on a billing method, projectfacts automatically creates the invoices for you. You only need to send them to the customer via the system. You can view open invoices at any time. If a customer forgets to pay, payment reminders or reminders are available at the push of a button.
Manage personnel
With the help of the digital employee file, projectfacts supports you in many processes in human resources. In addition, you manage vacation and sickness, travel expense reports and much more easily from home.
Digital employee file
With the digital employee file, you always have all the information about your team at hand. Here you can store contact data, employment contract, working hours, vacation entitlement, hourly rates and much more. This area is specially protected and only accessible to authorized persons. You can also access it securely from your home office.
Working time recording
With working time recording, you document the attendance times of your employees. No matter if office, home office or on the road, your team can check in and out at any time. Project times can also be recorded with projectfacts and billed to the customer.
Vacation & Sickness
In projectfacts your employees can submit vacation requests. These are checked by the responsible colleague and can be released directly in the software. Sickness notifications can also be submitted directly in the software and, if required, the appropriate sick note can be uploaded.
Travel expense report
With projectfacts, travel expense reporting is easy. Your employees photograph receipts directly and upload them into the software. There they can be released individually or in the form of a collective statement.
With projectfacts you work even more productive in the home office
In this blog post we gave a little insight in which processes an enterprise software like projectfacts can support you. If you are interested in trying out projectfacts yourself, you can get your free test account here:
You still have questions or are interested in special features?
Just contact us, our consulting team will be happy to help you.
Header image: © CapsandCapital – pixabay.com (2021)
