Managing an interior design firm can sometimes feel like a three-ring circus. Everyday brings a new set of challenges and it’s your job to make sure everything runs smoothly. From client meetings to purchase orders, you may find yourself wearing multiple hats in order to keep everything running efficiently.
Managing your business and working towards growth can be challenging. But with the right software, things can be made simple. Continue reading to see how working with interior design business management software can streamline your every day tasks, helping you manage your firm with ease.
Complete Financial Management
Managing your own design firm means keeping up with business finances. This task takes time. Drafting invoices, completing proposals, tracking employee time… these tasks can all begin to take up more of your day than you anticipated.
With business management software that also includes financial management abilities, all of your financial documents and files are under one roof for easy access. Complete automation helps streamline accounting and bookkeeping, eliminating the risk of errors, saving you time, and effectively serving your clients.
Create purchase orders with a personalized touch, maintain your supplier information, build custom reports on tracked time, and split expenses across various projects as you need—with the right software, managing your design firm’s finances becomes a breeze.
Collaborative Abilities
Working together is one of the best ways to ensure your design firm runs smoothly. It helps everyone work towards the same goal with a clear vision of what can be expected. In fact, studies suggest that teamwork actually improves productivity and employee satisfaction. If this is the case, your business management software should allow for easy collaboration and teamwork.
The right software will offer collaborative features, such as unlimited simultaneous users and the ability to customize access permissions. This means your employees can edit documents or draft proposals in real-time, allowing others to review their work and collaborate with ease. With customizable access permissions, you have complete control over what documents and features your employees have access to, meaning sensitive information can remain under your eyes only.
Anywhere Access
You’re on the go—most interior designers are. You still need to be able to manage your design firm from wherever you happen to be. Working with a cloud-based software means you have the ability to access your information at anytime, from any location. From you smartphone at a client meeting, to your tablet in the back of a cab, you can access you firm’s documents and continue to work no matter the location.
While it might not seem like an important feature, on-the-go access increases productivity and organization. Your files are all housed in the same place, leaving nothing in the way when it comes to you managing your business. Additionally, this feature will also benefit your employees, as they’ll also be able to continue with work regardless of whether they are at the office or not.
Disaster Recovery
Cloud services offer dozens of benefits beyond that of anywhere access. Another major benefit is the ability to back-up and recover work should a disaster occur. According to Aberdeen Group, small businesses are twice as likely as larger companies to have implemented cloud-based backup and recovery solutions.
How does this help you manage your design firm? Dealing with a computer crash or system failure means your business could potentially lose all of its client information, as well as your vital documentation. This situation can be deadly for small businesses. Working with cloud-based business management software can help you work with piece of mind, knowing all of your documents and files are backed up and duplicated on the cloud.
