Integrated business solutions: Become a strategic business owner

Owning a business comes with many benefits. You get to decide the direction your business goes, steering in one direction to realise your vision, or another if you decide to change course. To have this level of control over your business, however, you need to think and manage your business like the strategic business owner you’re destined to be.

As Keith Cunningham said in his book, ‘The Road Less Stupid: Advice from the Chairman of the Board,’ “Operators react and sweat. Owners think and plan.” In Cunningham’s book, he shares that the key to becoming a more strategic business owner is Thinking Time. Just like business greats, Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger, having the time and space to think strategically about your business is what will set you apart from your competition, taking you from business operator to strategic business owner.

While it’s one thing to acknowledge that you need the time to think strategically about your business, you also need integrated business solutions to make this thinking time productive. In this article, we outline the importance of integrated business solutions and how Spenda’s platform enables you to make better commercial decisions.

It’s not what you do, it’s how you do it

In recent years, with the introduction of platforms such as Uber and Airbnb, we’ve seen and experienced first hand that a large portion of business success hinges not on what you do, but how you do it.

As a business owner, you know what needs to be done every day, week, month and year to keep things moving. The major key is knowing how to do these things more efficiently. You may have moved your bookkeeping and accounting to the cloud, and you may have digitised how people order goods and services or book an appointment with your business. While steps like these are important, these elements of digitisation aren’t nearly as powerful to your business as they could be with a platform to bring these systems together.

How is information fragmented across your business?

The most important place to start when it comes to taking a more strategic approach to analysing the data across your business is looking at the different systems you have in place. For example, you likely have:

• A point of sale (POS) system
• Tools and processes for customers to book or buy with you
• A payment system, often providing limited payment options for your customers
• Tools and processes for procurement and inventory management
• Warehousing systems

Addressing the burden of data issues

Many business owners know the burden of keeping systems up to date independently as different people across the business have responsibility for different points of data. Not only does this result in inefficiencies in the process itself, but it also means there’s no central point to interrogate your data, meaning mistakes are identified at a much later date, if at all. What you may have originally thought of as systems to improve your business becomes an ever-increasing burden. Often, business owners get to this point and revert to legacy systems or continue with a siloed approach.

According to Experian’s 2020 Global Data Management Research Report, 76 per cent of organisations surveyed said they didn’t have a strategy to address poor data issues, despite 98 per cent of these organisations classifying data as “extremely important” or “important” in helping the business realise its objectives.

It might seem like a tedious issue to fix, but the time invested now on integrating the right data platforms in your business will reap great benefits in the years to come as you’re better equipped to make accurate, data-driven business decisions.

How to address fragmented business systems and processes

Spenda provides a platform that seamlessly integrates data across your business to make your day-to-day run smoothly while leaving you with the time and tools to be more strategic.

Our suite of products currently includes eight solutions which help businesses to effectively manage their POS systems, inventory and warehousing, sales teams and mobile teams, while automatically updating your financials. It’s business digitisation done better, helping you get more out of your current systems while addressing the often fragmented nature of business technology. Our solutions include:

• SpendaPOS: Our cloud-based Point of Sale system allows businesses to quickly process a transaction while offering them complete access to an impressive data set.
• SpendaCollect: Enabling any business to collect debt from any customer. A fully integrated payment solution with some of the lowest blended rates in Australia for in-store and online transactions.
• SpendaStock: An integrated Inventory Management solution that empowers businesses to view, track and control their products across multiple warehouses in real-time.
• SpendaService: A customisable Field Service Management tool that allows businesses to control their entire internal operations from one location.
• SpendaBuy: A procurement tool that automates the purchasing process and allows businesses to send purchase orders directly to their suppliers.
• SpendaMarket: Complete business-to-business management software. Control sales and orders 24/7 with a simple, personalised user-experience and fast financial integration.
• Spenda-eCom: Provides businesses with a highly functional online sales portal for customers to purchase goods and services.

The road ahead: better data for better decisions

There’s no doubt that the past year has highlighted how important it is for businesses to have the systems in place that give you robust data to make better decisions. Even more important, however, is having one single source of truth for this data, and ensuring the systems across your business are properly integrated to drive better decision making and a more strategic approach to managing all facets of your business.

Get in touch with us to see how Spenda works and how our suite of digital solutions can transform your business