When a business looks at productivity improvements and improved profitability, they often look outside their company for the skills to help them get there. This is particularly the case when new software is installed. They look to the software company as the "experts".
The software company are experts in their own software, but not necessarily in getting value from their software. In order to get value from software, it has to help you to achieve your goals. That starts with your existing business processes.
Your business already does some things right. There may be opportunities for improvement, and many of the opportunities are already known by your staff. They just don't know how to make the improvements.
When you turn over a software project to your supplier, you are giving them the keys to your business. They don't know your business! They know their software.
The challenge is to get the knowledge from your staff of what works and does not work. Help them to develop solutions to improve productivity, increase sales or reduce costs, whatever your current priority may be. Focus on the issue that is most important to you. Once they understand the priority, and have a way of making their knowledge known, they can help to redesign the process to achieve the improvements. Once they understand that they will be able to see where the software can help them.
Most small businesses don't have the kind of skills and experience to bring people together
to achieve this goal. So they have to go outside for help. The mistake that is made here is that they turn the whole process over to outsiders to design the new solution. What is needed is someone who can help bring that knowledge to the surface, educate your staff about process improvement and help them to redesign the process. Notice the emphasis on help, not do it for them.
Doing this will ensure that they are focused on your goals, they will buy into the solution and own it in the end.
Not only will the job be easier, the solution will be better, and the cost will be lower (you are paying for a facilitator or coach, not a designer).
Showing posts with label productivity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label productivity. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Monday, April 20, 2009
Business Software - Buy first, pay later
Does anybody remember the old Fram oil filter commercial "pay me now, or pay me later"? It describes a situation where, if you don't change your oil and filter in your car on a regular basis, you will pay maore for it later, by having to buy a new engine.
The same thing applies to buying software. It has gotten very easy to buy business software. Just download it. It is easy to use. There is no effort to install. Most business managers will buy first, then investigate later. This can be a waste of money, time and effort. You may get some value from it, but you can get a lot more, if you plan for it. In addition, the cost of implementing new business software goes far beyond the price of the software. There are many other hidden costs. Check out my articles at www.thevirtualcio.ca for more information.
The problem comes with the changes to your business: the process, job definition and training. If you aren't prepared for that, you will lose in the end. Your productivity will go down. Your costs will go up. You may not get any value from the software.
By doing a little planning up front, you will understand the total costs, understand exactly what benefit you will get and how you will get it and minimize the lost productivity.
We have all heard the old The problem with not preparing for what you will do with software that you buy.
The same thing applies to buying software. It has gotten very easy to buy business software. Just download it. It is easy to use. There is no effort to install. Most business managers will buy first, then investigate later. This can be a waste of money, time and effort. You may get some value from it, but you can get a lot more, if you plan for it. In addition, the cost of implementing new business software goes far beyond the price of the software. There are many other hidden costs. Check out my articles at www.thevirtualcio.ca for more information.
The problem comes with the changes to your business: the process, job definition and training. If you aren't prepared for that, you will lose in the end. Your productivity will go down. Your costs will go up. You may not get any value from the software.
By doing a little planning up front, you will understand the total costs, understand exactly what benefit you will get and how you will get it and minimize the lost productivity.
We have all heard the old The problem with not preparing for what you will do with software that you buy.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Getting Business Value from Software Training
Learning to use new software can have a big impact on software productivity. Your goal in getting new software is to make your employees more productive. That may not always be obvious, because you may be using the software so that you don't need as many staff, but you still are getting more productivity. You get more work done with fewer people.
Most organizations don't think of that when they buy new software. Training is considered to be a necessary expenditure, but not critical to success of the project.
On the contrary, it may be the most critical element. If you are looking for a productivity boost of 25%, but actually get a reduction during imple,mentation and for 6 months after, you are losing a lot of the benefit that you expected, even if you gain that 25% later on.
Part of that may be due to resistance to change, peak workload issues, and new staff, but I believe that most of it is due to poor training methodology.
Most software training follows the firehose approach. It's like drinking from a firehose! You get a crash course on the software features and functions, but very little context. By context, I mean the standard WIIFM (what in it for me?). Unless I understand how I will use a function, I am not likely to remember much about it. Many trainers may try to put context around it, by showing how it would be used, but that context may not apply to your organization.
When you buy new software, you typically are buying a new way of doing business (you don't want to do it the old way or you wouldn't have bought it!). This new way is a change in your business process. If the context that the trainer is providing is based on the new process and your people don't understand it, the context will be meaningless.
The solution is to start with the business process, understand how the software will help to improve the business process, then to provide training with this new context in mind. You employees will have less confusion, you will get less resistance to the change and your employees will become productive much more quickly.
Most organizations don't think of that when they buy new software. Training is considered to be a necessary expenditure, but not critical to success of the project.
On the contrary, it may be the most critical element. If you are looking for a productivity boost of 25%, but actually get a reduction during imple,mentation and for 6 months after, you are losing a lot of the benefit that you expected, even if you gain that 25% later on.
Part of that may be due to resistance to change, peak workload issues, and new staff, but I believe that most of it is due to poor training methodology.
Most software training follows the firehose approach. It's like drinking from a firehose! You get a crash course on the software features and functions, but very little context. By context, I mean the standard WIIFM (what in it for me?). Unless I understand how I will use a function, I am not likely to remember much about it. Many trainers may try to put context around it, by showing how it would be used, but that context may not apply to your organization.
When you buy new software, you typically are buying a new way of doing business (you don't want to do it the old way or you wouldn't have bought it!). This new way is a change in your business process. If the context that the trainer is providing is based on the new process and your people don't understand it, the context will be meaningless.
The solution is to start with the business process, understand how the software will help to improve the business process, then to provide training with this new context in mind. You employees will have less confusion, you will get less resistance to the change and your employees will become productive much more quickly.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Why not Experiment with Software during a Recession?
Most of the software that we use in business today far exceeds our normal business usage. Even with normal office products such as Microsoft Word, most of us use very few of the features. Even though I have been comfortable with computers for many years, and always work with multiple products at the same time, I use very few of the functions. I only expand my use when I have a problem and need to do something that I have never done before. Even then, I often use the products and features that I am comfortable with.
This works just fine if I only have to do something once. It isn't worth the time and effort to learn new products and features, when I can do the job faster with the tools that I currently have.
Most businesses are using much more complicated software these days Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software coordinates data from many different parts of the business. These products are designed for many different businesses and provide functionality to support them all. Any single business probably uses a very little percentage of these products. Luckily, many of them are modular, so that you don't have to buy all of the components. However, the complexity still exists.
Implementing an extensive software product is a very painful operation. Everybody has to be retrained and becomes uncomfortable because they no longer can do their jobs easily until they learn the new software. As they become comfortable and learn how to get the job done, they typically stop learning about the functions of the software, even though there may be much easier ways of doing the job if they knew more about the software.
The reason they stop learning is that they are getting the job done. They don't need the extra features and don't have time to learn them because of business volumes. They may also not know how to start looking for additional features. Most software suppliers have a standard training package, that doesn't allow for investigation and/or experimentation.
During a recession, volumes are lower and employees may have time to learn, but don't know how to go about doing it. Where do they start?
I worked with one software company that was receptive to the idea of developing specialized training. I set out to see how we could get much more effective use of the software. I asked them to show us how we could get much better use as well as where they would not recommend it use. It worked very well. Our organization became much stronger for a number of reasons:
This works just fine if I only have to do something once. It isn't worth the time and effort to learn new products and features, when I can do the job faster with the tools that I currently have.
Most businesses are using much more complicated software these days Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software coordinates data from many different parts of the business. These products are designed for many different businesses and provide functionality to support them all. Any single business probably uses a very little percentage of these products. Luckily, many of them are modular, so that you don't have to buy all of the components. However, the complexity still exists.
Implementing an extensive software product is a very painful operation. Everybody has to be retrained and becomes uncomfortable because they no longer can do their jobs easily until they learn the new software. As they become comfortable and learn how to get the job done, they typically stop learning about the functions of the software, even though there may be much easier ways of doing the job if they knew more about the software.
The reason they stop learning is that they are getting the job done. They don't need the extra features and don't have time to learn them because of business volumes. They may also not know how to start looking for additional features. Most software suppliers have a standard training package, that doesn't allow for investigation and/or experimentation.
During a recession, volumes are lower and employees may have time to learn, but don't know how to go about doing it. Where do they start?
I worked with one software company that was receptive to the idea of developing specialized training. I set out to see how we could get much more effective use of the software. I asked them to show us how we could get much better use as well as where they would not recommend it use. It worked very well. Our organization became much stronger for a number of reasons:
- It wasn't their first exposure to the software. They had all used it for over a year.
- They had a lot of questions, that they had been too busy to ask.
- We addressed the business problems and looked at how the software could be used to improve things.
This worked because the supplier was receptive. I have worked with other suppliers that weren't as receptive. Mostly this was because the trainers didn't know the software well enough. This may be one of the criteria. Judging the capabilities of your trainers may be one of the most difficult things.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
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.
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.
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