One of the new IT Packages that I have launched very recently, will be to provide Budgeting and Strategic Support to my clients as they really need this to manage a proper IT equipment replacement schedule. So my intention is to provide them with an annual budget as part of a three year development plan.
I am wondering whether there is sufficient interest amongst other Manager users for @lubos to create some kind of client facing report where instead of sending a quote with 20 Epson EB-X49 Projectors etc…Rather the report would create a managerial overview covering the highlights.
20 projectors - unit cost and total
30 computers - unit cost and total
Installation costs …
Reason for replacing equipment ABC - what goals are we achieving?
Total
So instead of having a dozen quotes covering projectors, computers, Cyber Security with all the details such as the model of the projector etc - it would make more sense to prepare a “document” style budget report just covering what products (eg Projector, not Projector Eb-X49) so as to have all the information on one page. The boardroom don’t care about what projector etc. They just want an “overview” of the upcoming costs over the next year, two or three and why this equipment needs to be replaced.
So there would need to be text boxes where paragraph information can be inserted.
Why am I suggesting putting this into Manager? Well, it makes sense for me to create quotes for the clients, which takes me a couple of minutes assuming the products are inventory and the amounts are up to date. Seeing as the inventory information and non-inventory information is already in Manager, why not extrapolate that information into a boardroom report instead of having to copy and paste into word or excel documents?
It could also link up with one of my longstanding goals which is to create a forecast of my expected income and expenditure for the year coming up using the client’s annual budgets as the basis. Obviously a lot of Manager users won’t benefit from this particular aspect because your business model does not work on an annual contracts basis. But I can that if I can present my clients with an annual budget, I can use that to effectively forecast my income and expenses. So I kill two birds with one stone.
But getting back to the original question. Businesses are expected to have annual budgets, Strategic Goals and Risk Assessments. This is standard for virtually any business that want’s to compete in the real world now. If you as a Manager use provide annual services to your clients for a specific area like managing their printers, should you not be offering a budgeting support package as well?
So should Manager be able to provide client facing boardroom level Budgets where an overview of the expected annual costs of say IT and computers (which is what I provide) is provided for the end client. Quotes have too much detail and frequently there is need to split quotes to break it down for easy comparison.
Is this something other Manager users would find useful for their clients?
