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In small business, cash is king. It’s the key to unlocking innovation, growth, more staff and investment in tools and technologies.
One in two business owners say they worry most about cashflow*. This doesn’t come as a surprise. Without cash, you can’t invest, pay wages or keep the business afloat.
Small businesses make up 97 per cent of businesses in Australia** and their owners are some of the hardest working people around. It’s not uncommon for small-business owners to spend many evenings and weekends brainstorming, tweaking, researching, networking and generally using all their energy to create a successful, sustainable business.
After all this hard work it can be disheartening when they have so much trouble getting paid.
Research shows that 65 per cent of businesses experience payment delays or failure to collect payment***.
This not only restricts growth, it wastes time and impacts productivity. 20 per cent of businesses spend more than 10 hours each week chasing payments – that’s 1.2 business days lost to phone calls and emails chasing money.
There are two simple ways to get on top of your cashflow:
- Make contract completion processes more efficient.
- Create convenient payment processes.
The first step to get paid faster is to speed up your agreement process. By using eSignatures, you can create a more transparent and convenient way to complete contracts. Signing can happen anywhere, anytime – significantly reducing the average contract completion time****. Digital agreements also make it easier to recall the contract in future if needed to confirm or resolve payment discussions.
The second step is to integrate a payments feature with your eSignature solution such as DocuSign Payments, which allows you to collect payment at the time of signing, so you can stop chasing cash.
You may be thinking you don’t want to spend money to collect money, but the return on investment for streamlining contract processes is clear.
A Forrester study of the Total Economic Impact of DocuSign for SMEs showed a 90 per cent improvement in handling time, elimination of transaction costs relating to expenses such as printing and postage, and a 90 per cent improvement in contract errors – totaling a 122 per cent Return on Investment.
DocuSign’s Return on Investment calculator can indicate the savings in time and money you can expect to see in your own business.
Running a small business is a big job, but by looking internally at your systems and processes and taking steps to improve the way you complete contracts and collect payments, you can get back to what you do best and take cashflow off your list of things to worry about.
Brought to you by Tom Hyde, Head of Sales – SMB, DocuSign APAC
