How Amazing Databases Are!

Here is just one example of how a well organised system/well designed website can help your company. There are of course a whole host of reasons, and if you ask nicely I might tell you some more....

Picture that you are a builder with a website and you are advertising on Google, in a newspaper and by leafletting.

One Person finds you on Google and asks you to rebuild their front garden wall.
Another person finds you from the newspaper advert and asks you to build a conservatory.
Another person finds you because of leafletting and asks for loft conversion.

Another person who has used you before (but you can't remember them) then asks you to build a whole new house for their children.

From the information you have at the moment, it seems that leafletting or advertising in the newspaper delivers clients which spend more. But... imagine the following....

Imagine you are a builder, with a website and person/job management system.

You advertise in the same way and you have the first 3 customers ask you to do the same 3 jobs.
You record their details and how they found you in you person/job management system.

When it comes time for the 4th person to ask you to build their house, you look them up on your person managment system and find you previously fixed their garden wall. So you create this new job and say that it is also for person 1.

You can then very simply find all the jobs you have done, grouped by each person and ordered by the total spend. You then find that the one with the highest total spend was found on Google, therefore, the best way to advertise is through Google.

This is of course a very simple example, but when you have dozens, or hundereds of customers, they can be hard to keep track of. So, why not keep track of repeat customers through the use of an online database? You will be able to identify the most successful stream of advertising, and focus more of your energies there.

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In Summary:
A well designed system means that it is easy to join linked information from all over the place at many different times and order or group these results however you wish.
This means that you can have a variety of reports that can aid in business decisions. In this case, deciding which advertising medium creates the most business (taking into account repeat business)

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One other quick example would be if you were a sub contracter.
You could keep records of the quotes from all the companies you sub contracted to and all the actual amounts that you paid out.
You could then produce reports such as:

• Who had the lowest actual amounts?
• Who has the smallest difference between quotes and actual amounts?
• Did any of the sub contracted companies actually lose you money?