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April 23, 2024
7 Key Features You Need To Lookout For In Any Quote Management Software
The Necessity of the Quotation Management Software
Whether you are an MPS (Managed Print Services) provider, a print broker or print manager, or any printing business, from signage & promotional companies to other printing industries, you need to manage your print orders & processes, the expenses and provide quotations/invoices for your clients.
Now, the above-said crucial factors that a print business has to go through daily are affected by many other factors, including the print order size, the equipment required, the print project’s time duration, and other resources required from the workforce to raw materials for the print jobs.
Managing an entire print business while ensuring 100% client satisfaction becomes challenging if the workflow is not dealt with properly.
Not following where we are taking you with this? It is pretty simple! We are bringing you to the problem (inefficient quote management) and the solution – A Quote Management Software.
The Quote Management software can be used as a standalone product or as part of the print-management information system module. How can print quote management software help you streamline the printing processes?
Before we jump into how a Print Quote Software Streamlines Your Print Processes, You must understand:
- What is Quote Management Software is, and why do you need it?
- And then read how to maximize the profits you can gain from Quote Management Software.
We will cover all of this while discussing the 7 (seven) most vital features to look forward to in your print estimating software in your print business.
What is a Quote Management Software?
A quote management software or a print quote software helps in creating, sharing, tracking the quote estimates. Simple, right? But, what most people don’t know is that it does more than just that!
Here is Why You Need a Print Estimating Software:
To address why we need print estimating software, we can look at the most basic and most taken for granted aspects in running a business; manual data entries, repeated data entries, data duplication, human prone errors and the overall loss a company incurs in the long run.
If a quote management software lets you address the above factors and brings in automation, then there need not be any more reasons why one would need a quote management software! However, you get many more reasons and advantages from getting print quote software in your print business, including:
- Efficient use of resources
- No unhappy clients with inaccurate quotes or missed delivery dates
- Proper inventory management
- Faster deal closures
- An overall increase in cost savings, sales and ROI
- Integrated and centralized print process management
- No more wastages due to human prone errors
- More time to think about growing your business further
- 360-degree visibility into your print business
- Fairer quotes for the clients while ensuring you don’t lose your profit margin.
To ensure you gain all the above advantages, it is highly significant that you look for the most vital features before going for quote management software. And we discuss the same in the following section.
The 7 Key Features to Look for in a Quotation Management Software
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Getting a SaaS Print Quote Software
Imagine spending exorbitantly over a software purchase and depending on the support team to go through the installation and ensure regular maintenance to prevent downtimes!
The hassle you will have to go through concerning maintenance, its costs and the loss due to downtime beats the one advantage of affordable software.
Instead, when you opt for a SaaS-based print quote software, even if it is relatively expensive for the first set up, in the long run, it is affordable, exceeds expectations with its functionality, no maintenance costs on your end as it is taken care of by the SaaS solution provider and no more losses due to untimely and unfortunate downtimes.
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Accurate Quote Generation
When you manually collect all the essential data or use on-premises software to develop the quotes, the quotes generated take a long time, is prone to human errors in the former case, and the latter may not have the updated market price for the products used and hence produce inaccurate quotes that are either overestimated or underestimated.
On both occasions, your print business gets the blunt end and suffers a loss due to losing customers for the above-said reasons. But, when you have a cloud-based quote management system that allows you to set the base costs for all print materials, that ensures you never suffer through an underestimated quote and incur loss or never lose a customer because of overestimated quotes.
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Integrated Workflow Management
Choosing a standalone print quote software will bring you accurate quotes. However, you still have to check the inventory manually before sending out a quote to your clients to ensure you have all the print materials necessary for the job. Not doing so may cause untimely delivery, a hit to your profit margin and more.
Now imagine if your quote management software is linked to your other business management applications or comes as part of a business management software. The time and effort to do things manually will go down 100%. And that is what you need to look for in print estimating software.
- Check if it has a way to integrate with other business applications.
- And Check if it has readily usable, existing APIs
- Or ensure the solution provider agrees to develop an API is paramount.
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Improved Sales and Deal Closures
A print quote software should enable quick processing of the client requests, record the same automatically, and prioritize required tasks. Get yourself a quote management software that does everything for your sales rep and aids them in closing the deals faster and improving your sales further.
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Customized Reports and Dashboards
Let us bring you a scenario to understand how essential reports are in quote management software. You get a print order, and you need to check the order’s status; well, if you go in the usual manner, you will be spending and wasting time on calls and meetings.
But, if you have every stage of the print job displayed on a dashboard and have easily analyzable and viewable reports with insightful data to make immediate decisions affecting your print jobs, then the kind of performance efficiency boost your business gets immensely high. Hence, we strongly recommend you to look for this feature.
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Elimination of Redundancy
Well, we already know an integrated print quote software eliminates repeated data entry. However, we would like to highlight that it should also automate the print quote generation process and provide readily available quote templates that you can share with your clients in almost no time.
The advantages of readily quoting templates that can be intuitively & automatically customized and shared via email to your customer guarantee that you hold the clients’ interest and reduce repeated and recurring tasks, all at the same time. This redundancy elimination plays a massive role in scaling up your business growth.
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SaaS Support
Yes, a SaaS-based quote management software provides automatic updates to the print quote software without you needing to do much. It will also provide the application’s maintenance when you can rest assured. However, the SaaS solution provider should provide 24/7 friendly customer support to guarantee you face no inconveniences.
If you are looking for a quote management software that meets all the about criteria, then we have one that fits the requirements perfectly and offers more. Check out PrintPLANRs quote management software. We also offer customizations on top of the ready solution that we provide.