Back office management is the backbone of all businesses and keeps them sailing on smooth waters. The back office ensures on-time bill payments, documents employee productivity, verifies inventory levels are in good standing and more. Investing in back office software – an ERP solution that maintains these and other responsibilities in less time – keeps your whole company operating at total capacity.

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Before diving into our seven back office benefits, let’s discuss how it differs from front office software and the industries it serves.

Comparing back and front office software is like comparing burgers and hot dogs; they’re both satisfactory and have a common goal, but they each carry unique capabilities.

What is Back Office Software?

Back office management, put simply, enables people to manage their routine business activities such as revenue, payroll, administration and more. It sustains employees and other company assets, so you remain committed to helping and satisfying customers with purchases, services, orders and more.

What is Front Office?

Conversely, front office software directly manages customer affairs, i.e., making orders, receiving purchases, offering rewards and loyalty programs, marketing and more. One example of front office software is point-of-sale (POS).

Industries Served

Back office software for back office management tasks serves various industries, but it’s most popular in project management, collaboration and professional services automation (PSA), accounting and human resources.

Project Management, Collaboration and PSA

Managing projects, team collaboration and PSA is a handful if you don’t have the right tools. The ideal backoffice software ensures you’re managing all of your projects, implementing sound collaboration and PSA tools online. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, many people have resorted to working remotely online. Forbes reports that 74% of professionals anticipate remote work will become the new norm. Remote collaboration also makes it easier for companies to keep in touch with employees, partners and stakeholders overseas or in any geographic region for that matter.

Accounting

Keeping your revenue and financial operations in good standing is just as important as customer satisfaction. A back office solution can execute or merge with accounting ERP software to perform the following tasks:

• Project Accounting
• Fixed Assets
• General Ledger
• Accounts Payable
• Accounts Receivable
• Payroll
• Billing
• Budgeting
• And more!

Human Resources

Manage your HR department with ease by running your payroll more efficiently, managing employee information in one centralized location, facilitating workforce planning, meeting tax and employment standards and more. An HR team with proper ERP functionality ensures the company operates competently and employees are reasonably happy, which boosts productivity and keeps your client base strong.

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Key Benefits

Back office software provides numerous perks to your company. Thanks to SelectHub’s market analyst team, we’ve compiled a roster of the top seven benefits.

1. Improve Efficiency

Keeping firm productivity is every company’s dream. The more productivity you have, the more products you output for your customers and the more revenue you receive. A back office solution automates inventory management, book balancing, payroll distribution and more. Different departments receive information or modifications in real time and confusion is avoided.

2. Generate Paperwork

You can seamlessly draft and print out various documents and other paperwork such as receipts, invoices, packing slips, shipping labels and more. If you specialize in shipping products to customers like Amazon, finding suitable shipping labels and accurately inputting information is necessary. If you need to send invoices to clients, you can quickly generate them (and may even customize them with your brand logo and colors) and distribute them swiftly. This type of solution can meet these and more of your document needs.

3. Enhance Accuracy

There’s nothing worse than entering data and finding errors in your numbers, especially when it comes to accounting or keeping track of your stock. Some solutions offer autocorrect or the capability to review your data and quickly rectify mistakes. If you’re taking inventory, you could also invest in a barcode scanner that’ll easily count all of your items accurately by just scanning barcodes.

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4. Receive Real-Time Data

When you input information for various departments such as HR, accounting, marketing and sales, you only have to enter it once, and it’ll appear across the board. Your department leaders will receive real-time information and always stay in the loop. If, for example, your budget grows three times in revenue, you can change that information rapidly, and everyone will receive these up-to-date revisions quickly.

5. Analyze Information for Wiser Decisions

The old saying goes: If you don’t learn from history, you’re doomed to repeat it. If you don’t archive and analyze daily, weekly, monthly and yearly performance, revenue and other valuable data, you’re likely to keep making the same mistakes. These mistakes will hinder your company from growing or making the right decisions when new opportunities arise. Back office management can assist you in chronicling and archiving data so you can evaluate and make the appropriate business decisions seamlessly. You can also watch vital KPIs and make wiser business decisions.

A preview of back office software.

6. High-Quality Collaborations

Keeping clear communication for employees, internal and external stakeholders, managers, partners, clients and other company participants is critical to smooth operations. If you need to hold team meetings for updates, ice-breaker activities, training and more, it’s crucial to have robust communication tools. This solution offers valuable ways to merge with team-centric tools such as Slack and Trello and helps you record practical information so everyone can quickly and seamlessly relay important information, questions, queries, feedback and more.

7. Better Customer Satisfaction

Maintaining customer satisfaction should be the main priority of any business, including yours. If you keep clients happy, they’ll keep coming back to your business and request your specific products or services. They’ll also tell their friends and colleagues about your company, which can grow your customer base tenfold. The best way to keep clients happy is to measure quality and oversee customer information with a customer relationship management (CRM) program or integration. Some of CRM’s top features include:

• Sales Analytics
• Lead Management
• Opportunity Management
• Sales Forecasting
• Contact Management
• Campaign Management
• And more!

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Final Curtain

The back office is the foundation of your company: without it, your business can easily collapse. Investing in back office software provides your company with a strong and regulated foundation for back office management. The important thing is to find an ERP that best aligns with your business’s needs. Looking for more software? Check out our in-depth comparison guide.

How has back office software streamlined your back office practices? Are there any benefits that we left out? Let us know in the comments!