It should be no surprise that software is everywhere nowadays. You can't escape it. It is used as a tool to help us improve efficiency,
increase safety, access entertainment, organize information, just to name a few. Think about how much software you use daily on your smartphone,
or all the software running the systems in your car. Software is a tool, and those tools need to be implemented properly to help you. I'm
a firm believer that you should never use software for the sake of using it, but you need to get some kind of value out of it.
Medium to large scale businesses spend millions of dollars every year implementing large software systems to run their business.
What benefits are they getting out of that software that you're missing? Some obvious ones are:
- Process Efficiency: save time and effort with your processes by using a piece of software to ensure you adhere to the process. The
keys here are that your business has formalized processes to adhere to or this won't work for you.
- Time Savings: Similar to process efficiency, repetitive tasks can be streamlined with software.
- Tracking Information: As we've been living in the information age for arguably more than 30 years, this is key for any business.
It's much easier, cheaper, and takes up less space to track information in software than it does on paper. Gone are the days
of customer files in filing cabinets, paper invoices, paper estimates, and paper proposals. Even things like paper receipts and
cash are slowly disappearing.
Can you get the same kinds of benefits those big companies are, without spending the same amount of money they do or having a large IT
department?
Additionally, one of the keys of the modern world is data. As we move from software tools installed on our computers to software
tools out there on the internet ("the cloud"), the data and information we collect and maintain are becoming worth more and
more. The only way that things like "machine learning" and "artificial intelligence" work is with data, and lots of
it. You need it for your business, and you'll find the more data you have, the better decisions you can make for your business.
The challenge here is turning that data into information and filtering out the noise, to get useful insights.
The businesses that can most efficiently turn their business data into useful, accurate information, the more competitive they
will become. The businesses that are successful here will be most poised for success, now, and in the future.
You'll hear terms thrown out there like data analytics, and business intelligence. Don't fear these terms. They simply
mean looking at the data and information you have for your business, combining it, and gleaning some kind of insights from it. You
can do the same!
More insights can be found in our soon-to-be-published e-Guide!
