There are many basic, everyday jobs that can take up a surprising amount of time and resources in your business. Here are five jobs you can now move online to lighten the load, from communications to customer service.
Faxing
The old fax machines that have sat in a corner of the office taking up oodles of space are a thing of the past. With an online fax system, you can now send a fax to email quickly and easily. Online faxing offers all the same capabilities as a normal fax, with a number of added benefits. You have a designated fax number to receive or send from, and you can create coversheets and even a digital signature. With a virtual fax, you’re not tied down to a phone line, and you can use your mobile device or computer to fax whenever and wherever you like.
Virtual faxes cut down on the high costs of normal fax resources such as paper, cartridges, ink, toner and maintenance. You’re also not paying for long distance faxes, as everything goes through the internet. This is also an enormous time saver, as you’re not forced to wait for the phone lines to be free nor at the mercy of paper jams. It also ensures security and peace of mind, as random faxes can no longer be left lying around on the machine for all to see.
Online file storage
Having to make sure that every single piece of paper or document is correctly filed and archived can be a major hassle, and it can be expensive. Whether to back up everything on portable drives or networks is a difficult choice, and neither one is bomb proof. Online file storage solutions allow you to back up everything to a cloud platform automatically, and in the event of a disaster, you can access and restore data fast.
Management and scheduling
Online project management tools make it quicker and easier to manage particular projects, or keep track of critical deadlines. The more sophisticated tools have an all-in-one capability, whereby everyone can file share, quickly check the status of a project or campaign, and make sure significant milestones are being met.
Paying invoices and accounts
You can also move your accounting and bookkeeping to the cloud. Cloud accounting programs can be customised to your business and can be set up to monitor and track all your ongoing and new expenses, and can make automatic payments on days that suit you. They will also send alerts if you have insufficient funds, and can be used to automatically invoice. Because they ensure that your data is constantly up-to-date, you can get an accurate picture of your finances instantly, at any point in time.
Chat support and live customer assistance
Having live chat and customer assistance on your business website can help streamline your customer service process. Simple queries can often be answered more efficiently online than in a phone call, and customers appreciate being able to ‘talk’ to someone instantly, instead of being kept on hold!
Moving more tasks online streamlines your business
The more everyday jobs you can load over to online systems, the more it can save time and help streamline your everyday business processes. With so many user-friendly online solutions out there, it makes sense to shop around for ones that will work to improve the efficiency of your business.