Free Software To Manage Back Office Functions
The software that helps you manage back-office functions is the application or platform that usually does not interface with customers. The back-office software is different from the front office software. The front office software accounts for customer relationship management (CRM), while the back office software deals with business functions that are not directly related to the sale or marketing activities.
Moreover, it involves finance management, inventory control, project management and supply chain management (SCM). Back-office applications are cloud-based software. Cloud-based back office software provides services to the back office functions like management tasks and inventory control. These platforms give companies solutions like the alternative to business process outsourcing (BPO) (handing over the management to a third-party service provider). This article focuses on free applications for managing back-office functions by describing the ERP back office, basic office system, its software, and important things to improve the back office.
What Is ERP Back Office?
ERP stands for enterprise resource planning, which refers to a key component to streamline the ‘back-office functions. It helps the employee of an organisation to manage the company’s core functions like accounts, finance, billing, human resource management, supply chain operations, and other project management. Thus, the purpose of these platforms is to automate and optimise the process of each of these core business functions to increase operational efficiency and the firm’s profitability as well.
The ERP back-office manages all company’s tasks by sharing data across various departments like sales, services, accounting and manufacturing. These departments are usually important in generating data. Thus, the basic function of the ERP back office is to ensure the streamlining of information between different companies’ functions. Insights into core business function by ERP helps its users in performing their jobs faster and smarter.
The ERP back office is important in making up a strong connection between various departments, helping in billing and making financial transactions reports faster. It accurately collects and sorts customers’ contracts, budgets, accounts payable, expenses, payroll, and other business-sensitive information. After collecting and managing the information, it produces management reports and provides insights into cost, profitability and revenue. Thus, ERP back office is a solution to all core business functional management.
What Is A Basic Office System?
Traditionally, a basic office system means a full-proof plan to manage office work systematically in order to achieve the broader objectives of organisations while maintaining low costs and less energy. What kind of a basic office system organisations should adopt highly depends on the nature of services they are providing and the extent of interlinking between different units required in managing the workflow.
The purpose of the office system is to optimise and automate the business process for achieving long term business goals. Thus, to generate a good basic office system, a firm should keep some office system principles in mind. It must account for removing any interruption to ensure smooth office working. This full-proof plan must also keep eyes on to avoid any irrelevant activity, unnecessary writing, duplication of a record/work, and unnecessary movements of a person. Moreover, avoiding the use of official machinery for personal gains, adopting simple and practical working procedures and achieving goals at minimum cost are all important aspects to be managed by the basic office system of an organisation. Consequently, the prime responsibilities of a basic office system include:
- Improving operational efficacy
- Bringing uniformity to an office environment
- Optimising the use of resources
- Reducing and minimising the office and operating expense
- Achieving the organisational goals and bringing new checks
- Promotion of better coordination and prevention of fraud
- Reducing errors for ensuring the smooth running of an office
Thus, a well-planned office system guarantees organisational success by optimising all core front as well as back-office functions.
What Software Is Used For Back-Office Work?
Cloud-based back office software provides services necessary for managing several back functions through a web-based interface. These applications are accessible, and you can use most of them on mobile phones and laptop devices. Among them, a few important platforms that you can use for managing back-office functions include:
SAP:
It is a global network of customers, employees, and leaders that help people improve their lives. SAP is a market leader in back-office work management software. It makes running the back office functions easy for all small and large size industries/ organisations. Its customers generate approximately 87% of global commerce. Their machine learning, advanced analytics algorithms and Internet of Things (IoT) empower the customer to turn their business into an intelligent enterprise. Thus, SAP, by its end-to-end suite of services and applications, allows the users to automate and optimise the back-office functions effectively.
Epicor:
It is also an enterprise resource planning software that helps industries to manage their back-office functions systematically. Through deep insights and innovative solutions, Epicor is providing services to do better business. It is an effective solution for business management functions, namely, supply chain, distribution, manufacturing, inventory, human resources, account and financing management related activities. Their solutions are usually practical and help their customers in knowing the marketplace better.
Infor:
Like other platforms for managing back-office functions, Infor is also top-rated software. It is a New York vendor based ERP software that helps customers in solving their all business problems globally. It is known for providing dozen of back-office functions. It provides more flexibility for diverse business procedures; thus, it is more popular among the food and beverage, manufacturing and healthcare industry-specific sectors.
How Can I Improve My Back Office?
Improving back-office efficiency is among the biggest dream of almost all size of businesses. To achieve the goal, the following simple steps can help you:
- Starting from research and study is a head start to streamline your back-office efficiency. Before assigning or starting any task/project to an employee, a detailed survey of how he/ she will perform helps the smooth running of office work.
- Even during the smooth running of a project, avoiding non-value-adding activating improves profitability. Hence, it is a good solution to manage the back-office functions.
- Bring innovation to your years-old back-office system. It may hurt the back-office efficiency, so you should keep experimenting with introducing new things.
- Short interval management (SIM) is also a good practice to improve your back office. It aims to periodically monitor the performance of the employees to improve the overall firm’s performance.
- Get benefits from the ever-changing trends in technology. In simple words, a business should invest in software to improve the efficiency of the back-office system.
Consequently, the management of the back-office functions is multitasking. Thus, with free software, you can manage back-office functions without spending too many resources (human, power and money). Also, Epicor, Infor and SAP are among the three most useful platforms that can help you in improving the back office.
