28 Sep When Did You Last Evaluate Your Software?
Albert Einstein once (allegedly) said “The definition of insanity is doing something over and over again and expecting a different result.” Whether he really said it or not, it’s applicable to so many different aspects of life.Quite simply: it’s easy to get stuck in a rut. The hard part is getting out. Sometimes it’s even harder to realise that being stuck is exactly what has happened. When people get into routines, they might stop thinking critically about what they are doing everyday. The same thing goes for entire businesses. They just hum along at the same pace, maybe being moderately successful, never really going out of their way to question how they got there or how they could improving.This even applies to businesses and their software choices. According to a survey on from F-Secure on Marketwired: [tweet_box design=”default”]87% of corporate computers are using outdated software[/tweet_box] This outdated software comes with big risks- and it’s not just decreased productivity we’re talking about here. Even security updates are being neglected, leaving entire companies vulnerable to attack.Of course, maybe your staff is highly trained and your IT staff are on top of all necessary software updates. Hopefully you’re secure, but there is still the question of productivity, profit, and potential.
Evaluating your current software
Take a step back, look at your company, your current software choices, and your business model, and think about whether you could benefit from custom software development services.It might not be easy to see at first; again that can be the hard part. If your business is already experiencing exponential profits and growth, then maybe there is no reason to take part in a dramatic software overhaul. If any improvements can be made, though, frequently some of the most effective ones can be made with the tools that employees are using.Whether you’re looking for software development in Perth or you want to outsource across the country, determine whether your company could benefit from a productivity boost that an integrated solution might provide.
Still using Excel?
If you’re still using Excel to cobble together massive sets of data, there’s some program problems going on here. First of all, there’s nothing wrong with Excel, however every program has its limits. It’s just not meant for huge databases. That’s what programs like Access are for. Luckily, using Microsoft 365 and especially Sharepoint means every document and all data will play nice together.Plus, by utilising custom software services, you can ensure that you get a system that works for your exact industry, rather than trying to make an off-the-shelf solution do something that it simply wasn’t designed for.Chances are, you have some kind of project management system in place. If you do, hopefully it allows you to keep track of how efficient your employees are and maybe even where they are wasting time. It can be useful to survey your employees, too, to find out issues that they might be having that can possibly be resolved. One of the best ways to do this is by using corporate social media like Yammer, which is built into SharePoint.
Making collaboration easier
One of the biggest time sinks and productivity killers is actually one of the biggest developments in business: email. Email is great, and won’t be going away anytime soon. As a sole collaboration tool, though, it completely fails. Think about the chain that goes on when employees use email to collaborate: Employee A needs to work on a specific project, but first they must wait to receive attached documents from Employee B, download those attachments, edit them, re-attach them, send them back to the other employee, and wait for feedback.Hopefully, the changes were correct. If they weren’t, the whole loop starts all over again. And that’s only with two employees! Things get even more complicated when it’s a team working together, not just a pair. So much time, and so many mistakes, can be saved from just using tools designed specifically for collaboration. Communication is easier. The same documents can be worked on at the same time.Of course, the staff actually has to use the new software in order to benefit from it. In order for them to be open minded about it, it actually helps for them to have an open minded manager.Tools have been getting more advanced for all of mankind’s history. Programs are just more advanced tools, designed to make our lives and work easier. They exist to solve problems, and every industry has their own problems. One of the other ways to think about whether or not your business is suffering from old software is to first consider exactly what problems plague your industry or office. Sometimes, solving the problem is as simple as finding the right tool for job.
