One of the positives that has come from the upheaval across the world of business over the last few years is that many companies (across all sectors) have looked more closely at their business systems and realised that there are ways to make improvements quickly. The widescale move to the cloud is a prime example. This was happening anyway, but the pace of change accelerated significantly when the work from home directive came into play and firms of all shapes and sizes needed their staff to have secure access to business systems and data from home. As well as facilitating remote working, moving to the cloud also opens up a host of new opportunities to work more efficiently and enables far greater flexibility and integration between functions and software which, again, brings further benefits.
The need for change also meant that business leaders and Finance professionals became aware that the software available to support their operations has moved on considerably in the last few years. This is equally true for the recruitment sector and specialist software solutions are now accessible in the cloud which make running the customer operations and finance functions in your business so much easier.
Gain insight from your business information
A core benefit of updating the finance and operational software your firm runs on is that you also create the opportunity to get to grips with your business information once and for all. Recruitment firms often have separate finance and customer systems and work in silos. The problem with this is that it’s impossible to get a clear view point across all of your business data. Clearly, no business decision should be completely uninformed – but if it’s difficult (or impossible) to get the full picture quickly and easily, it’s no surprise that actions are taken without all of the relevant information available. For example, a sales consultant may not be aware if a regular client making a new booking is already behind on payments for previous placements. Similarly, the Finance team may might not be aware if sales are targeting new prospects that are already in financial difficulty.
Clearly evidence-based decision-making is better for your business – and that applies not only to the day-to-day decisions your people are making all of the time, but also to the senior management team looking at the bigger picture for the business and planning ahead. Without a joined-up view across all of your business data - or the ability to drill down and report on the data - it can be hard to gain any real or meaningful insight.
Give your business a competitive advantage
1. Connected operational and financial data
There are two proven ways in which your recruitment firm can set itself apart from the competition using business information. The first is by having a single, joined-up view across all of your customer and market data, as well the Finance data in your business. This makes it much easier to spot new opportunities; it’s also easier to provide a more responsive customer and candidate experience. With more intuitive tools to access that data, the sales consultants’ role becomes less admin heavy too, which will give them more time to focus on fee-earning work instead of getting bogged down in time-consuming manual processes. That’s all clearly good for business, and will help your firm to stand out against the competition, build your company brand, and boost market share.
2. Credit and risk data at a glance
The second way for your recruitment firm to get ahead is to tap into credit and risk data. This can make a real difference to cashflow and help your firm to reduce or avoid bad debt altogether. Using third party data means you’ll have a much clearer picture of the financial position of your customers and potential new customers. Understanding how financially stable their business is, whether they have a tendency to pay late, whether there is any previous history of bad debt – this is all vital information which can be used strategically in your business when considering who to target and what terms to set.
Enable your business data to work for you not against you
Disparate and out-of-date systems quickly become more of a hinderance to your business than a help. Data inaccuracy can cause real problems for your staff. Errors easily occur when different functional areas have to re-key data into their systems simply to do their work. Having multiple systems in play and transferring data into standalone spreadsheets means that the processes involved in the daily functions you need to run a recruitment firm become admin heavy and unwieldy. And don’t forget there’s always that underlying concern that the version of data you are seeing may not be 100% accurate.
So what’s the solution? In fact the answer is simple and easy to achieve. One integrated system for your business, one version of the truth for all the business information on it, plus access to credit and risk data.
Having worked with countless recruitment firms over the years, that’s exactly what we’ve created at The Access Group. The combination of Access Recruitment CRM, Access Financials and the Access Business Health Dashboard, powered by Experian is available via a single cloud-based platform.
With this winning combination, your whole team – sales consultants, finance, senior management, admin – can get access to the business information and tools they need to work effectively, whether remotely or in the office. And with a dashboard view, security protocols, intuitive functionality, and one version of the truth – everyone can focus on their role and the business moves forwards.