For any business hoping to grow, administration is the big-time killer, be that in operations day-to-day, or in finance.

Business owners and managers were once borne along on a wave of enthusiasm and inspiration, making ideas into reality and getting the business off the ground. However, at some stage in the life of the business, the self-same driving force behind the company suddenly finds themselves dealing with involved paper chases around simple tasks, plus a lot of repetitious copying, pasting, and clicking, which although essential to the company, don’t appear to be a good way to spend time.

So, while the original tools that were used to get the business up and running still work, activities like raising an invoice, re-keying information from one system to another, running payroll, sending invoices and ordering new inventory involve long and tiresome tasks.

Rather than jump into the world of the big players (with their corresponding big budgets) like Sage, SAP, NetSuite or some other colossal ERP system (enterprise resource planning), there’s now a viable alternative. Wiise was created by KPMG, built on Microsoft and supported by Commonwealth Bank – credentials which give it the backing, but none of the legacy technologies that trouble its competitors like Intuit or Quickbooks.

Cloud-based Wiise offers a cutting-edge way of running your business’s finances, operations, people and payroll in a (relatively) old-fashioned way! Rather than having to learn a new interface, a set of icons and tools and shift the way you think about your processes, Wiise has a familiar interface and operates inside the apps you already use, so you spend less time focusing on change management compared to other traditional accounting systems.

From inside your Microsoft Outlook, you’ll be able to see what’s happening everywhere in the business in a dashboard alongside your emails: customer information, overdue invoices, inventory, distribution, job costings, service & client management, stock, and bank reconciliation – to touch on just a few.

For instance, the Wiise software will tell you which invoices you’ve sent that haven’t yet been paid and what your predicted cash flow is – all from within Outlook. You can then simply (with a couple of clicks) send a branded email to your customer with a copy of the invoice, complete with a ‘Pay Online Now’ call-to-action. Plus, if a customer or vendor emails to place a new order, you can easily bring up customer details from the same panel, and automatically raise the purchase order – without leaving Outlook.

Your customer can then pay online just by clicking the link. Wiise uses CommBank’s Simplify to handle transactions for you, so you don’t have to sign up for a new merchant account or change banks.

The features of Wiise read like a list of cures for the time-drains from which so many organizations suffer:

• Raise purchase orders from inside Outlook (no logging into multiple systems).
• Store PDFs against electronic purchase orders to remove paper-handling.
• Money movements simply auto-reconcile in the background.
• All electronic systems mean you’ll never lose an important invoice, receipt, or PO.
• Every detail of every transaction is backed up in the cloud.

Source: Wiise

The key to Wiise’s effectiveness is that it’s not a solution that requires you to “tear down and build from the ground up.” Your existing processes and systems, your Excel sheets and the way that you work every day are all preserved. The secret is that Wiise’s solution makes everything business owners already do faster, more streamlined, and more reliable.

Wiise brings all of those finance and admin processes together and makes them work together more effectively. In addition to the advantages touched on above, there are also “wins” in terms of compliance with tax, payroll and data protection legislation. The additional burdens placed on businesses, like the Australian government’s Single Touch Payroll-compliance requirements, are satisfied so much more easily. Having the required information available at the touch of a button is a godsend.

The reason why administration is such a business-killer is that it’s a time drain. With Wiise working for you, your horizons suddenly expand. You suddenly have time to plan and consider future steps – and here Wiise data and analytics can help. The software draws out key statistics like cash flow predictions, as a single example, that show whether your invoices are likely to be paid on time. (And if not, how a planned campaign’s results might pan out.) With all the business data at its disposal, Wiise helps you make decisions more intelligently, and its predictive routines help suggest possible outcomes based on the hard, empirical data of existing information.

The always-on, cloud-based platform means that wherever you are, and wherever you do business, the facts and figures you need are at your disposal. As for the tools – you probably already have what you need. Just add a little Wiise!

To learn more about this clever business software that’s available now, download an info pack or get in touch with a Wiise representative to discuss just how Wiise can help your business. To learn more about Wiise, visit their website at wiise.com/au.