Are your systems too complex for your staff?

Is your software doing the job that you expected when you bought it? When a small business buys new software, they are usually looking for something that they don't have. They need new tools, improved productivity, reduced cost.

Most software products are built over many years with features and functions added to meet the needs of their customers. Each customer has unique needs. Some features are used by most businesses, but many find little use for most of the features. The larger companies are most likely to use more features. If you look at something as basic as Microsoft Office, how much of it does the average user know and understand. Most people never get beyond Word and Excel. Even then, how much do you Word. In my case, I used Word for over 10 years before I ever needed the Table of Contents function.

What does this mean to a small business? It means that you have a very complex software product. There is too much of it to learn and you don't need most of it anyway! The real question is "Do you know the features and functions that can help you?". If you don't, you are wasting money! You wasted money because you bought more than you needed. You are wasting money because there are functions that could help you be more productive.

This problem is not helped by the fact that software suppliers train you on the basic functions (because most people need them), but they seldom understand the real needs of your business. So they don't train you on functions that may be of the most value, because they don't know.

What does this mean to your business? The complexity can affect you in several ways:

• Your people are unproductive because they are doing things in an unproductive way (there are simpler ways of accomplishing the same thing).
• They don't take actions that could be of value because it takes too much time.
• They don't take actions that would help because they don't even know that it is possible.

How do you solve this problem? The best way is to look at your business processes before you buy software. If you look at your business process, you find what is working and what is not working as well as it could. You can streamline the business process. If automation can help, you can investigate software that can help you solve that business problem. You evaluate the software based on what it will do for your business and how easy it is to implement (not just what your software supplier tells you). When you buy, you won't buy what you don't need and your implementation will go much faster, thereby reaping benefits more quickly.

What if you've already installed? Can you still gain the benefits? You can gain major improvements by reviewing your business processes and how well they are working. Then look for ways to exploit what you already have. You won't save on what you've already invested, but you can still gain major improvements in productivity and quality of service.