Discover how no-code technology can help you boost your consulting business. Learn about the benefits of using apps as a consultant.
Damian Roller
Guides
Making it big in the finance industry is not an easy feat. If you’re an independent consultant or are running a small consulting firm, you’re probably often on the lookout for new tools to boost your consulting business. Automatic app creation could be one of the tools you have been looking for. Here is why.
In a market overpopulated with large companies with big portfolios and teams, as well as with numerous small and medium ones, it can be tough to find your competitive edge. This becomes especially challenging when it comes to digitalization, which has become pervasive and is simply a must to stay afloat in the industry. For many businesses, finding the right way to innovate and embrace the growing demand for digital transformation has marked their path to success.
Despite the numerous challenges, digital innovations such as automatic app creation can give you the necessary advantages to compete with the big players. No-code platforms like Open as App hold the potential to revolutionize how businesses from all industries will operate. This holds even truer for the finance and consulting field.
With the help of automatic app creation, you can easily create apps from your existing business data. You can do this at a fraction of the cost of building apps through the regular software development process. By building and employing custom-made apps, your finance business can make a big move in streamlining internal processes, improving productivity, and ameliorating client relationships.
The capabilities of automatic app creation bring unseen speed and flexibility to the digital transformation of finance companies. This is especially relevant for small and medium-sized businesses who face financial and HR restrictions when embarking on the journey of digital innovation.
In the sections below, you can get to know how you can benefit from no-code app creation and get started with the most popular custom-made apps to boost your consulting business.
While running a financial or consulting business is an exciting and potentially lucrative endeavour — from financial consultation and tax advice to accounting consultants — it comes with its challenges. Innovation has become the credo of forward-looking specialists and companies in the field, and staying on top of the digital transformation process has come to be the way to build a competitive advantage in the industry.
For small and medium companies in the field, one of the biggest hurdles to taking advantage of these processes is the lack of internal skills and the limitation of the team size. When you don’t have a tech expert in-house and can’t afford to hire new staff, you’re bound to scramble for resources and stay behind in terms of digitalization. This is even more challenging for independent consultants. They often need to either handle everything on their own or make hefty investments in digital tools that would allow them to remain competitive.
Naturally, the skill and internal talent limitations are linked to the lack of financial resources that most solo consultants and smaller companies face. Making bold steps in terms of digital innovation simply requires an investment that many cannot afford.
That’s where competing with large financial companies becomes difficult. Due to their size and financial advances, they have access to expensive digital solutions and internal talent who can use them. While not always quick to act, larger businesses nevertheless may often turn out to be better equipped to go forward with innovation.
For independent consultants and small companies who manage to go ahead with digital transformation, protecting the specific business know-how becomes the next serious challenge. They need to use tools that safeguard it, while at the same time are easy-to-use by both businesses and their clients.
There are many great tools that finance and consulting businesses can benefit from. Some of the typical solutions that are popular in the field help out with sales and marketing activities.
For example, one of them is Pipedrive, a renowned CRM solution that visualizes sales data and uses automation to provide reporting and forecasting. Another popular platform is HubSpot, which also offers CRM. TeamMate+ Audit is also commonly used for audit management. There are several smaller tools as well.
While the standard solutions offer powerful features that can be of great use for finance and consulting businesses, they often have their limitations. Custom-made tools can complement them and provide professionals with the digital extensions they need to truly make their work stand out and offer a long-lasting customer experience.
Automatic app creation is becoming key in the digital transformation of businesses in the finance and consulting industry. Through an easy and affordable process, companies can make the best of their business data with ease.
With Open as App, you can seamlessly set up a large portfolio of useful apps for your business. On one hand, they can help the organization and management of your company by complementing the standard tools on the market. On the other hand, they can create added value for your business with new consulting tools that streamline the internal processes and improve customer relations.
In terms of adding to the existing solutions on the market, with Open as App, you can create calculation, list, and dashboard apps based on the valuable data that you already have in Excel or Google Sheets. At the same time, you can create consulting tools in the form of apps from your existing consulting data contained in Excel and Google Sheets documents or other databases. These apps are easy to use, effective, and faultlessly protect your business know-how.
One of the greatest benefits of creating no-code apps is that with little effort and investment, you can dramatically increase the productivity of your internal processes. The tools that you create are fully tailored to how your business operates and can thus deliver a direct efficiency boost for your consulting business in areas such as task management, lead capturing and management, and customer data handling, among others.
Building custom apps can also be of immense help in working with complex business data. Instead of storing it in endless spreadsheets, you can make it more accessible and easy to use by transforming it into an app with diverse functionalities. Additionally, your sensitive formulas and financial data are better protected.
The new digital tools that you can create with automatic app creation help in boosting customer relations as well. They allow you to improve face-to-face consulting with readily usable data. You can also provide them for use to your customers, which showcase your competence and make people’s experience with using your services smoother and easier.
Creating apps via a no-code platform is a great way to introduce digitalization in your business without heavy investments. You can save a range of different costs for software development, as well as for input from technical specialists. The optimization of your internal processes, additionally, leads to extra savings that impact your company’s bottom line.
Last but not least, as in any business field, finance and consulting specialists need a high level of data protection for both their internal information and the data of their customers. Building up apps through a no-code platform provides companies with a safe way to protect their business know-how. They can also help in meeting regulatory requirements in terms of user privacy and security.
So, what kind of apps exactly can you create with Open as App if you are set to boost your consulting business?
You can build diverse apps for improving the way that you handle your internal operations.
Creating a time tracking app is one of the most popular possibilities. Unlike the numerous time tracking solutions on the market, your custom app can be set in a way that would best work for you. You can tweak its options and visual appearance according to your preferences. For example, you can define different categories of work activities, so that you can see how exactly you are spending your time. The app can easily visualize the data for use by your HR and accounting teams.
Another common custom tool that you can set up is a lead capture app. It will help you handle your lead management process. For example, when you are at an industry event or a meeting with a prospect, you can use it to easily enter the data of potential leads. You can even scan their business card. As it is customizable, you can define what kinds of data fields you’d like to have.
With automatic app creation, you can also create handy quote apps for your sales process. They allow you to figure out quotes for your customers in no time. They can be done on your mobile device while you’re on the go. The app can synchronize with your CRM, so all your data stays connected.
Open as App can help you with customer data management as well. You can create a customer data app to collect clients’ information on the go. You can define the fields that you need, such as details about customers, finance plans, and protocols, among others.
Last but not least, you can set up dashboard and reporting apps. You can seamlessly turn your spreadsheet business data into a reporting app. With it, you can keep all relevant stakeholders informed about the progress of your business. You also get a clear overview of your company’s performance at a glance.
Using automatic app creation, you can build many useful and innovative customer-facing tools as well. Your newly created and custom-made work tools can carry the distinct branding of your company, so they are easily recognizable for your customers.
For example, you can set up an app for the calculation of financial data or taxes for individual customers. This can be useful for tax advisors and financial consultants, among other specialists. You can input the relevant formulas in a spreadsheet, and then convert it into a user-friendly app. Then you can offer it to your customers for easy calculations related to your services. You can check out an example of a finance calculator.
Another possible customer-facing tool that you can create is a loan calculator app, which can come in handy for finance consulting. If you’re working with a client who wants to purchase a property with a loan, you can easily provide them with the right calculations via the app. Your services thus become faster and more efficient, and the customer can make a well-informed decision based on the data from the app. This would allow you to close deals faster, as well as ensure higher customer satisfaction.
You can also build a no-code app for benchmarking services such as insurance. As an example, Begomat is a consulting tool for insurance agents which benchmarks various insurances. It is created in Open as App based on Excel, thus protecting the creator’s know-how behind an app – rather than just presenting a whole spreadsheet to the end-users.
Other useful options for customer-facing tools include an investment tracking app and an interest rates app. When you have investment consultations with your clients, for example, you can directly provide them with data about their investments and progress. Respectively, with the interest rates app, you can provide your customers with the latest information about the rates on the market in case they need to make a loan selection, for example.
Whether you’re a freelance consultant or are managing a small or medium consulting firm, automatic app creation holds great potential for your business development. With its help, you can set up essential work tools for yourself and your team – with minimum financial and time investment. Thus, you can take bold steps towards digital transformation with ease.
Ready to get started with Open as App? You can create your first finance consulting app with our app creation wizard.