Possible Issues with Business Software and How to Avoid Them

Business software is an integral part of many businesses from small to enterprise levels. However it can be a powerful tool to take your business to the next level, or a thorn in your side never reaching its full potential. There are a lot of factors, which can influence how well software meshes with your company and business processes however, so I’m going to talk about some of the common problems people face in business software so you can avoid them.

Integration

Not any mathematical integration today, but software integration; business software really shows off its full potential when you can integrate all of your systems into one location. This can include your CRM software, document management, ERP software and even your phone system. The advantage of this is that it cuts out the hassle of going between systems, saving time and increasing productivity and probably most importantly, it cuts out the mistakes which can be made when reading information from multiple sources. This can make you look more professional as a company and keep the important clients on board.

Adaptability

This is something that may often be overlooked, but it could be one of the most important factors; find software which works with your company that all your staff can benefit from, if people don’t want to use the software, its unlikely to take off and giving people a product that works well for them is far better than forcing people into something which only works well for management. For this reason, having a package which you can adapt to your current business as well as change with your business as you develop is vitally important. There are many robust ERP and CRM software packages out there, which can go from the smallest business all the way up to enterprise level, so there’s no reason to use something that will soon get overloaded.

Scalability

Some smaller software packages work very well on the small scale, but can then flounder as the amount of information they need to cope with becomes overwhelming. Equally though, for a small business, having enterprise level software would be overkill and likely result in convoluted processes to look at your data. What is needed here then is going back to adaptability; picking a system which works with your company size now, but can adapt and change as the business develops. A great tool here is to use cloud based systems such as cloud based CRM. Such systems are hosted by a third party who take care of the day to day running of the servers, updating software and hardware as well as keeping the system secure. This means there’s no need to keep your own tech support on site to manage the system, which can be a big cost, especially for a smaller company.

So if you’re in the market for business software, keep these things in mind; look at how the software works with every aspect of your business (not just management), integrates with all the other systems you use as well as ones you might use, is flexible enough to change with your company and can expand with your company as well. Easier said than done like most things, but well worth spending the time to get right!