You may be trying to continually get your business to work efficiently. Getting your team working in one direction and responding to customer inquiries quickly is a relentless and often elusive goal for many business owners.
One of the illusions and traps that I see repeatedly is a hope in a holy grail tool. I call it this because there is this misconception that there exists some piece of software or product that will solve all the problems of a business operations in one fell swoop. This would of course assume the following:
- Some software company out there knows exactly how you run your business with all its peculiarities and designed it just for you
- The system is low cost and affordable
- The way you do business is not unique
Just because there is access to technology easier than ever does not mean that your problems can be solved easily. There is a large gap between finding some kind of software tool and making your business work. Most often the solution for your business requires intelligent design. This means that the processes have to be mapped out and the tools have to fit in the right part of the processes.
Furthermore, one tool typically does a job well and is not configured out of the box for other parts of your business processes. Thus, there has to be customization and integration of best-in-class solutions for different parts of your business process to work effectively. This is both technical and strategic in its nature to scope out and get done well.
Once the systems are laid out, there is still the people issue. Business is easy if it weren’t for the people. Having people change habits and adopt new tools and process is far from a guarantee. These have to be done with ease and refinement continually to see that an entire business offense is working in tune.
Here’s the point – there is not a holy grail tool out there. It’s usually not the tools that make much of a difference anyways. Walking through the details of strategy and process and ensuring there are amenable tools to support these is where the hard work truly lies.
If you are seeking to get your business working, try strategy. Connect with me and we can build a roadmap as a start. In the meantime, realize that tools are limited and need far more than just a feature set.
