As a small business we are faced with growth challenges that require us to be astute and optimise our resources. One key department is our Accounting, which needs to focus more on financial intelligence, rather than just compliance.

We can try and hire highly trained experts, or we can outsource! There are many benefits to outsourcing, and although this article features a Zoho Books logo, the points mentioned below are equally relevant to Sage 50, Xero, QuickBooks, Tally, Peachtree, MS Dynamics or any other platform.

TIME & COST SAVINGS

Hiring, training and supervising bookkeeping or accounting staff is a massive overhead, both in terms of time spent and salaries. Even partial Outsourcing can help you save valuable time and minimise recurring costs, thereby growing your business profitability.

FLEXIBILITY

With employee salaries you are committing to fixed costs and all the associated overheads, whereas outsourcing becomes a variable cost, which you can throttle up or down and scale, as required.

EXPERTISE

Small businesses can't attract, let alone afford, expensive, highly trained resources. Outsourcing can empower your existing back office staff by giving them the help they need to move into more productive positions.

MANAGEMENT INTELLIGENCE REPORTING

A powerful advantage of outsourced accounting is that you will get access to timely and accurate information, and most importantly, management intelligence reports that will drive action to improve profits.

LEVELS OF OUTSOURCING

So, what are your options, should you decide to help your existing staff?

Level 1. As a start, ensure that you are using a feature-rich, web-based tool like Zoho Books, Xero or Quickbooks online, which can grow with your business. This usually comes with some basic training to help with the initial set up, and ensure you opt for on-going support.

Level 2. Subscribe to a part-time or full-time BookKeeper, which will also help move any existing staff to more productive roles. Outsourcing this routine task, ensures you don't need to supervise or worry about it becoming a single point of failure.

Level 3. Leverage a full service Accounting service that will help with actionable insights, fraud detection, risk mitigation and strategic decision making to drive profitability. This will be based on real data analytics and answer questions on marketing initiatives, pricing, cost per acquisition and operational processes.

Outsourcing is a fully managed service offered by Mercer Lal, so get in touch and we will help reduce your costs, increase your sales, optimise your efficiencies and improve your bottom line!

Does your CRM help you comply with GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)?

GDPR requires your business processes to go beyond just ensuring data protection. It requires that you are transparent and secure in processing personal data.

Here are the three main areas where Zoho CRM will help by simply switching on Compliance Settings; which is a provision to help you decide how you want to handle, manage, and process personal data of your customers to comply with GDPR for your organization.

Data Collection

Keep track of the sources for your customer data, and validate your customer's interest in your service before you start processing their information.

With multiple sources for customer data (webforms, imports, manual creation, APIs, or third-party integrations), keep track of it all under the customer's record details. In the case of webforms, additional details like form name and IP address will be captured.

Enable features like Double opt-in mechanism for webforms so customers who submit their information will have to confirm their submission before their data is pushed into Zoho CRM. Double opt-in helps you get quality leads, and lets you dedicate time and resources on people who want to hear from you.

Data Processing

Ensure lawful and secure processing of your customer's personal data. Stay accountable by documenting the processing activities done on a customer's data.

Identify, categorize, and mark customers based on one of the six lawful bases for data processing: Legitimate Interest, Consent, Performance of a Contract, Legal Obligations, Vital Interest, or Public Interests.

Based on the type of customer and the personal information being processed, you must ask for their consent. Easily obtain consent through a customizable form, which you can email to your customers.

Mark fields that contain personal information and decide if the information is sensitive or not. Based on the preferences under the Compliance Settings, you can restrict information in these fields from being processed during exports, APIs, and connected services.

Zoho CRM uses one of the strongest and most robust ciphers - AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) - to encrypt your sensitive data. In addition to protecting data during transit, Zoho CRM secures data stored in servers using AES-256 encryption standard to ensure anonymity of customer information, in case of a leak or a breach.

Monitor your team's activities with audit logs, so you can track who did what and when. For example, all actions done by your users with respect to record deletion and modifications will be audited.

Data Subject Rights

Customers can exercise various rights they are entitled to under GDPR at any time. Keep track of these requests and address them in a timely manner.

Access (Right to Access)

Let your customers access their data through the Customer Portal. Or let them know they can access it by sending them an email, which you can create by inserting the required merge fields in a template.

Rectify (Right to Rectify)

Export customer information with ease, send to them for rectification, and update it in CRM. If customers have access to the Customer Portal, they can view their information there and update it themselves, when necessary.

Export (Right to Data Portability)

Export customer information as a CSV file, which is directly attached to an email, and then sent to the customer. This export ensures that no information is stored on external devices.

Stop Process (Right to Restrict Processing)

When this right is exercised, the customer's record gets locked automatically to prevent any further processing of the information.

Erase (Right to be Forgotten)

You can easily delete a customer's information from Zoho CRM when a "Right to be Forgotten" is requested. Once deleted, the record will be moved to a blocklist to warn users when the same record is being pushed into the system again.

• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Solutions
• Project Management Services
• Systems Integration
• Bespoke Software Development

• Ticket Management, offering Multi-channel communications with a multi-branded self-service portal and multi-department help desk to reflect your organisation structure. Add to that contextual email and integration with telephony, social media and live chat to take your support to another level
• Automation, that replaces routine tasks and ensures every ticket is assigned, with notification rules and adherence to SLAs.
• Agent Productivity is enhanced multi-fold, using an award winning system that provides a contextual response editor, improves team collaboration and enables management of tickets from mobile devices
• Security is a very high priority and user roles, profiles, data sharing rules and field level access controls all work together, towards protecting customer data whilst giving your team flexibility...oh, did I mention that it helps you comply with GDPR!
• Customisation of Layouts, multiple templates, re-branding and domain mapping all make the Desk distinctive, including self service portals for your customers
• Insights provide high-impact analysis through feature-rich reports, live dashboards and a mobile app for managers on the move
• Extend your help desk by integrating with native and third-party applications. Use Custom Code, SDKs and APIs to get the party singing and dancing

• Generate Leads from various sources, including smart web forms, social integration and marketing campaigns
• Enrich Leads using Zia, the Artificial Intelligence built into Zoho and available across the entire platform
• Distribute Leads automatically to Sales Reps based on pre-defined Workflow Rules
• Nurture Leads through multi-channel communications
• Identify quality leads and convert them to Deals with a single click
• Use built-in analytics to measure the Leads, Conversion Rates on Sources and Sales Reps, as well as Cost per Acquisition (CPA)

• Leads can be converted to Contacts once there is a business opportunity and they become potential customers
• Omni-channel engagement that brings the customer closer and unifies your team across Sales, Support and Marketing
• Customer-facing teams communicate internally in real time on a single database that ensures consistent customer experience
• Empower your teams by leveraging insights and intelligence across all customer touchpoints
• Improve your business processes from prospecting to payments using automated, efficient workflows
• Be productive on the go with access to a full range of mobile applications

• An Account is a Company or a Department that can have multiple Contacts linked to it
• Cater to different needs of the same Organisation by setting up parent-child relationships
• View all transactions in one place from sales orders to invoices and payment details within the account
• Segment accounts based on recency, frequency, and monetary value
• Closely manage accounts under your control
• Discover deeper insights about the accounts that you manage with built-in analytics

• Create a Deal for a confirmed business opportunity
• Identify and focus on Deals that are likely to close, using Zia and it's AI capabilities
• Increase up-selling and cross-selling
• View Deals by Stage and progress through Sales funnel easily
• Create Quotes based a Product Catalogue 
• Build fully customisable sales processes for your organization