A revenue leak is similar to a water leak from a damaged pipe — you might not notice a few drips here and there, but when these drips start to add up, the costs can be severe.
With the right approach, however, you can bring this under control and avoid a revenue leak on your next project.
Using general-purpose tools such as spreadsheets to handle scheduling is simply not good enough anymore. There is just too much that can go wrong. The schedule can quickly become confusing and fraught with errors, while the lack of integration makes it difficult to achieve swift and accurate billing.
Instead, you need a dedicated scheduling solution — something designed specifically for the purpose. Solutions like Alloc8 are designed with scheduling in mind, eliminating many of the points of friction that can cause revenue leaks during the project. What's more, integration with billing tools means payments for services are more streamlined and reliable.
Keep Track of All Costs
At first, your project costs may seem straightforward. You may deploy three team members, for example, operating on an hourly rate. This team provides labour on your client's site for four hours using a specified amount of materials, all of which are costed. Your staff may also provide solutions directly to your clients, which can also be priced up and processed accordingly.
But a revenue leak begins to occur when other costs are missed. For example, how will your team travel to your client's site? What other materials did your teams use during the project? Did your client's requirements change during the project? How much planning and strategising was required before the implementation began?
These are just a few instances in which a revenue leak can arise unexpectedly. Carefully analysing all potential sources of cost and expense can help to protect revenue, and automated tools and features can prevent the human error that may result in costs being overlooked.
Timesheet mistakes lead to a direct revenue leak in almost all cases. Either your clients are not billed for services rendered, or they are billed too much and your long-term relationship is damaged.
You need a solution that will prevent these timesheet errors. Alloc8 is designed with this in mind, connecting to remote worker devices to allow timesheet recording in real-time. This data can then be used to automatically create invoices so that nothing is missed.
Recognise Collaboration During Sales and Marketing
Your sales and marketing teams are generally tasked with generating leads and nurturing prospects through the sales funnel, and this is relatively easy to keep track of. However, there may be other team members working on bringing in new customers — for instance, your sales team might request that a member of your technical staff provide a consultation or a demo, which could be critical in landing your next big customers.
This is not a problem, and in fact, this sort of collaboration should be encouraged — you just need to remain aware of the cost. After all, client-facing projects have not yet begun, so you will not be able to bill your clients at this point. Failing to keep track of collaboration in the lead generation and nurturing process can result in these costs growing out of control, which can in turn lead to a significant revenue leak.
To keep on top of these customer onboarding and lead nurturing costs, you need sophisticated software. Software such as Alloc8 can help you achieve the most streamlined route to effective collaboration, putting the right team members on the right jobs and keeping costs low as you grow your client roster.
Find Out More About Preventing a Revenue Leak with Alloc8
To truly understand how Alloc8 can prevent a revenue leak, you need to try it for yourself. Get in touch today and schedule a demo of the solution.