Big Returns from Small Software Packages

By Peter Marks • February 3, 2021

Every organization has big software projects on the horizon, but for a moment, I want you to think small.

While the large-scale firmwide projects like remote access and upgrading a financial system are immensely important and top of mind, they are generally taken for granted and may offer little direct day-to-day benefit to end users (ok, remote access doesn’t fall into “little benefit” category, but you get the idea). There are, on the other hand, software products and services that address a specific business process or task that can often be easily implemented and will deliver immediate daily benefits to many users. They can make remote work easier, support the self-service daily operations many of us face, and often result in efficiencies that yield immediate benefits to both the user and the organization.

The Big Benefits of Small Projects

We might look at these technologies as “incremental” steps toward better efficiency that also have an important impact on the firm’s operations. Many deliver a measurable return on investment (ROI), something that is often much harder to calculate for many long-term capital projects. The benefits of automating administrative tasks can really add up – in a positive way. 

Here are a few examples of how smaller technology projects deliver big benefits:

I wanted to highlight what we’ve been able to do with PS/Ship’s shipping management software since that’s an area I’ve specialized in for nearly 20 years, but I can easily rattle off benefits from the other solutions mentioned above.

• Automating Carrier Invoice Processing – We’ve automated this entire process so there’s no more manually downloading and printing invoices or dealing with stacks of carrier bills – instead, they get fed directly into PS/Ship for review and validation, and then uploaded into your financial systems; image receipts are automatically attached to client bills; and electronic review of bills gets distributed to local offices helping to speed up processing. Imagine how much time is saved and how many trees will be spared the paper mill!
• Self-service Shipping Labels from Anywhere – Home workers are able to self-serve generate a carrier label from their desktop without having to go through a convoluted process like this: 1) contact someone in the office/mailroom with shipping details 2) that person e-mails a PDF of a shipping label back to the worker 3) the worker downloads and prints the label – this crazy workflow is eliminated.
• Package Re-Routing for the Mailroom – Supporting the flexibility of remote workers by giving your mailroom control over the incoming package delivery process will become more important and complex as employees will be mixed-located – in the office one day, working from home the next. With PS/Receiver, the mailroom is able to automatically reroute packages mid-delivery to ensure a package gets delivered to where the intended recipient actually is.

These are a few of the features from the PS/Ship product suite that save time for workers and empower them to get the job done rather than wait on others to fulfill tasks. It helps your entire company become more efficient and focus on more important jobs – just think of how much time this frees up for your mailroom and finance teams.

I encourage you to spend some time thinking about smaller software projects that won’t break your budget or stress your IT organization – but will deliver big results. Not only will they streamline routine tasks for employees by taking the friction out of laborious, tedious and manual tasks, but they will also help your organizations realize notable savings and operational gains.