5 Benefits of Online Artwork Submittal Approvals

As designers and project managers, we are always seeking to streamline opportunities to enhance the design process. Approving artwork and designs online offers tremendous advantages through Mothernode’s Artwork Approval Process. These are some of the benefits of this process, saving valuable time and money. Discover how online approval accelerates the process, 10 x faster than traditional processes.

1. Saves Time
One of the primary benefits of approving artwork and designs online is that it saves time. In the past, if you wanted to approve a design, you would have to print it out, sign it, and then fax or mail it back to the designer. With online approval tools, you can simply log in, view the design, and approve it with a few clicks. This can save you a great deal of time, especially if you have a large number of designs that need to be approved.

2. Reduces Costs
Another benefit of approving artwork and designs online is that it reduces costs. Printing, faxing, and mailing designs can be expensive, especially if you are approving multiple designs. By approving designs online, you can eliminate these costs completely. Additionally, some online approval tools allow you to make comments and suggestions on designs directly, which can save money by eliminating the need for revision rounds.

3. Improves Communication
Approving artwork and designs online can also improve communication between you and your team. With traditional methods of approval, it can be difficult to provide clear feedback on designs. However, with online tools, you can easily leave comments and suggestions that can help to improve the final product. Additionally, online tools typically provide a history of all approvals and revisions, which can be helpful in tracking progress and ensuring that everyone is on the same page.

4. Increases Efficiency
Another benefit of approving artwork and designs online is that it increases efficiency. Online approval tools typically allow multiple people to view and approve a design simultaneously, which can speed up the approval process overall. Additionally, some tools allow designers to upload new versions of a design automatically when changes are made, which eliminates the need for manual uploads

Conclusion paragraph: By standardizing your artwork submittal process, you can ensure that each job is handled in the same manner, with the same level of quality. This will help to build customer trust and improve the overall customer experience. Additionally, automating your artwork submittal process with Mothernode CRM can help to save you time and money. With all of these benefits in mind, it’s easy to see why standardized artwork submission is a best practice for any business. Are you ready to get started?

As a consumer aren’t you always impressed when the vendor you are buying from has made your purchasing process convenient, by offering online merchant services? Whether it’s ordering from your favorite pizza shop, booking a weekend getaway or shopping for the holidays, buying made easy gets you want you want quickly and is easy money for the vendor, creating a win-win for everyone. In fact in this day and age you would expect nothing less than e-commerce from vendors, and might probably think less of any vendor who didn’t offer the convenience of online transactions.

But not all business is transactional, meaning you can’t always order, pay and get your product delivered. Sometimes you need to request a quote, because your order has too many custom or unique elements. We often experience this when ordering products that require complementing services as well, like custom setup or installation for products such as kitchen cabinetry, flooring services, painting and so on. In these cases, each require estimates based on variables in your home that are unique to you.

These instances are consultative sales as opposed to transactional sales and require boots on the ground to provide accurate, custom pricing. One of the disadvantages of this kind of sale is it takes a time commitment for the vendor to provide pricing and estimates to the customer and more often than not, the customer is shopping multiple vendors to get the best pricing and services possible.

As the consumer, there are observations you’ll make in the buying process when selecting a vendor. Price and product quality and options are certainly at the forefront. What about the company’s image? The look of the truck outside the house or the salesman’s appearance and professionalism. They also play an important factor. I think we’ve all been discourage enough times by poor representation that it cost a vendor losing the opportunity to earn our business.

As the vendor, when competing for business, you need to do anything and everything you can to differentiate yourself from the competition. Time kills all deals, so as the vendor you’ll need to consider what you can do to shorten your sales cycle, especially in a bidding situation.

We already agree and appreciate the convenience of order automation, however, we’ve also determined that electronic ordering isn’t a solution for every business and industry, because not all transactions can occur online. But what about electronic quoting? Wouldn’t that be a valuable asset that could differentiate you (the vendor) from the competition and even shorten your sales cycle in come cases?

Providing accurate pricing options, quickly to your customers (even on the spot) in an electronic format could just be the advantage you need to win the sale. Here’s a few considerations.

• Automating your quoting process is the first significant differentiator in your sales process .
• Because the quote is a PDF document, prospects can share the document with other decision makers by simply forwarding it in an email.
• The customer has everything they need in a clean PDF format in order for them to review.
• Customers have the convenience of approving the document online.
• Throughout the sales process you can review how many times the customer has viewed the document or be alerted if they have even viewed it at all. This can help you gauge their interest and you can follow-up accordingly.
• Signed documents are automatically archived with the original quote and the customer profile.
• Your complete selling process is electronic and everything, including your customer’s approval is incorporated into your workflow.
• Your business is participating in an environmental conscience process.

Examples

These short tutorials provide you with an overview of 2 types of electronic quotes you can prepare for your customer in Mothernode CRM and ERP.

Download

The download option lets you send the quote electronically with a link to download. Once the document is downloaded, the viewing activity is recorded in the quote. The feature is also available for other types of transactions in various Mothernode editions, including Purchase Orders, Sales Orders, Change Orders, Work Orders and Invoices.

Approval

The approval process allows your customers automatically approve the quote and proposal in addition to downloading it. Customers will receive a copy of their signed transactions and Mothernode users will also be alerted to when the quote was approved and a digital copy will be archived with the quote.

Want to learn more about how Mothernode CRM and ERP can benefit your business? Schedule a demonstration for your business today.

http://www.mothernode.com/mothernode-demo/

Delivering quotes to your prospects in a timely and professional format can be an important influencer in your sales process, even more than you may think. It can demonstrate your company’s ability to quickly deliver results, even before the sale is made, which can have significant impact when it comes to winning business over the competition. Offering premium services to prospects and customers alike is a key differentiator, especially when you combine those services with competitive pricing.

But your customers aren’t the only ones who benefit from quote automation. Automating the quoting process also means streamlining and simplifying your own workflow. The ability to generate and deliver quotes faster means you can manage more business opportunities, with less effort. Essentially, Mothernode Quotes help you increase your close ratio and win more business in less time.

Here are a few Mothernode Quote features that can help you produce and deliver powerful, profitable quotes in record time.

1. Products and Services

Products and Services is a ‘light’ inventory feature available in all Mothernode products that allows to quickly add items to new quotes. This will save you time when adding common line items to your quotes by automatically populating item names, descriptions, price, markup, and even lets you determine if it is taxable or not. You can also configure select products and services to be added in to all types of transactions, like Purchase Orders, Sales Orders as well as Quotes. Other modules will depend on your Mothernode Edition.

2. Advanced Inventory

If you want more features for your goods and services and pricing needs, Mothernode’s Advanced Inventory Module gives users the ability to add multiple items with ease. You can add related and upsell products, set multiple pricing levels for each product, keep track of stock levels, create sales bundles and more. Using Mothernode Inventory is a great way to save time when adding items you sell to quotes and other transactions.

3. Line Item Notes

Add notes to each of your line items with the option to communicate special information internally or to your customer. When reselling goods and services from vendors, you can also notate your original pricing source for your internal records.

4. Margin Watch

Mothernode helps users stay on task when it comes to pricing by giving them the tools they need to make sure markups and margins are carefully guarded, so your business can maintain the profitability you expect. This option feature let’s Sales Managers and Business Owners alike determine their baseline margin options.

5. Sub Items

Mothernode users have the ability to combine one or more line items together and roll them up into a single item and cost. This is ideal for complex pricing needs or in situations where you don’t want to reveal costs associated with particular products or services.

6. Electronic Delivery

Mothernode gives users the ability to submit quotes to their customers and prospects electronically via email and downloadable link. Mothernode automatically let’s you know via notifications each time the recipient receives and downloads their quote. This fantastic feature helps users gage their recipients’ interest and confirms their proposal was successfully transmitted and received. Electronic delivery is also available to communicate other transactions, such as Purchase Orders, Invoices and Work Orders, in applicable Mothernode Editions.

7. Electronic Signing

Simplify your approval process by giving your customers and prospects the ability to electronically sign their quotes. Mothernode gives you the option to send your prospects an electronic version of the quote they can approve on their desktop, tablet and mobile device. They even have the option to sign with their finger. All signed proposals are archived with the original quote for quick and easy reference, and all parties are notified when documents are approved.

8. Collaboration

Users can interact with their colleagues when creating quotes. Social media style collaboration lets users request pricing assistance and communicate important decisions to people on your team. Notifications communicate necessary actions and updates to everyone involved.

9. Discounting Options

Global discounts are neatly communicated to your customer at the bottom of every quote. Users can also offer discounts for each line item, when needing to provide more aggressive pricing.

10. Tax Exempt Quotes

Users who often deal with Tax Exempt situations can easily include Tax Exempt IDs into quotes, which will automatically remove any applicable tax charges from quote totals.

11. Resorting

Add line items quickly and resort them for proper presentation when they’re completed. This time-saving feature lets you complete your work quicker and worry about format at the very end.

12. Multi-Currency

Whether you have offices around the globe or have a client base around the world, Mothernode lets you assign currency settings to your customers and vendors, so payment information is clear on all your Quotes, Invoices, Sales Orders and Purchase Orders.