Like most small businesses, we have Microsoft Office software installed on all of the workstations in our office. A wide variety of information that is vital to the day to day functioning of our business is stored as Word documents and Excel spreadsheets. Much of this data is used for contact management, marketing, customer service management, transaction processing, and other important administrative functions.
In the course of business, we often see our new customers failing to utilize the full functionality of software already installed, particularly with Microsoft Office. For instance, we have seen new customers take 6 to 8 hours of labor to mail targeted materials to 300 customers. The materials and postage costs are unavoidable but the labor costs associated with compiling mailing lists and the time involved in sorting data based on customer type or zip code, not to mention personalizing each letter and addressing the envelopes, can be significantly reduced by utilizing the software that your business probably already owns.
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