One way to significantly reduce costs for SME businesses is to automate internal processes. This includes automated workflow, alerts and the like. Examples of these include:

* Automating tedious processes, such as weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly recurring sales and purchase invoices and general ledger accounting entries. Or automating complex payroll processing with penalties for overtime, early shift starts, meal breaks, and various allowances.

* Implementing Workflow which controls the process of completing data entry screens and documents. Workflow ensures that tasks get done in the right order and within a set time.

* Management can improve their productivity by adopting Exception Reporting or better still by being Alerted when things go wrong, such as running out of stock, a blow out of your debtors or even if an important order is not processed within their expectations.

An ideal candidate for this sort of automation is any organisation at risk of losing significant money if tasks are not completed correctly or within time or where there are complex and often tedious manual processes.