Software reduces business productivity

People buy software to improve their business performance, but software initially decreases business productivity. Can a business afford this reduced productivity? During peak periods, maybe you can't.

Whether you currently use software to help you run your business or not, your initial step in introducing new software will be unfamiliar. You will start with a learning curve, learning how to do what you used to do easily. This will slow you down. At very least, you will have to make conscious decisions about day to day tasks. This will slow you down.

Adding to this productivity problem will be the complexity of the software. Most businesses use a very small part of a software product, probably less than 10%. With all of these features and functions, you will have to find your way through all of the features that you don't want, to find the one that does the job that you want. You often will try a feature that does the job, but another feature will let you do it more easily.

Adding to that complexity is the training. With all of these features and functions, it is impossible for a software supplier to train you on all of the features, so they restrict this training to the most common ones, or the ones that they think you will probably use. However, since they haven't worked with you to understand you business, they don't know what you need or how you will use it. Since most businesses don't have the time nor the money to provide extensive training, most organizations opt for the one shot deal, what I call "firehose training". The supplier provides their training program in a one or two day course. Since the training is out of context, little of it is remembered.

The net result is lower productivity, often for months, until people learn to become more comfortable with the software, starting to do activities subconsciously. Some will then experiment with new functions. In most cases, it will take months or years to become comfortable with the software. Some people will never experiment and never uncover the functions that could make them more productive.



talk about learning curve, complexity, training problems.