Adam Shapiro | CEO | AutoCollect | mail me |
In today’s ever-changing technology landscape there are quite a few business owners who are unsure about which systems they need in place to ensure that their business is not only well managed now, but also geared for future growth.
With every software system promising to deliver more and more, it’ is easy to start thinking that one can use one system to cover the needs of another. But the reality is that it’s not that simple.
Luckily for us we have been in the software business for long enough, and have tech-savvy team that can easily evaluate and implement these systems. In addition to that years of experience in implementing bespoke system after bespoke system for our customers have given us some valuable insight into what’s required, and what is not.
Task management
You would think that a workflow management or BPM system would top our list of must haves given our core focus, but the reality is that it does not. A completely process driven business is an awesome goal to have but I guess you have to learn to walk before you can run.
Basic task management is easy to implement, yet so many business ignore this fact. Instead employees rely on leaving email unread, keeping lists on pieces of paper or in MS Excel. Given the ease of getting basic task management implemented this is unforgivable.
At a bare minimum every employee should have a tool available that allows them to:
- assign tasks to themselves and other employees.
- collaborate with other employees and ask their input on a task.
- monitor tasks they’ve created and re-assign it to someone else if required.
- report on what’s been done.
Once this is in place and things stop slipping through the cracks it’ll be time to start thinking about automating the critical, often used workflow processes.
Document management
Having a file share is not the same as having a document management system.
A document management system must serve quite a few purposes:
- allow employees to easily create and edit documents, preferably based on pre-defined business templates.
- allow access to previous versions of documents where required.
- allow employees to collaborate when working on a document, or better yet to co-author a document at the same time.
- allow easy, but secure, access to documents to the right people (internal and external) at the right time.
- allow document such as legal contracts to be kept in a secure place from where they cannot be deleted.
We’ve found that Office 365, or more specifically SharePoint Online ticks all the required boxes based on our requirements. But in all fairness, we’re a bit biased given our in-house SharePoint expertise.
Financial management
Last but definitely not least. I’m sure all of us have different reasons for running our own businesses, but one thing we have in common is that we would like to make some money. And too many businesses I’ve seen are run in a haphazard way without keeping proper tabs on things such as invoicing and cash-flow.
Given the ease of getting set up with a product such as the SAGE One Accounting system, there’s no need for business owners to accept anything less than real time insight into their financial status.
Yes, every business is different and might need additional software to run. We’re running at least 3 other software systems to support Autopilot. But in our opinion the above three are the most critical.
Without them in place we will not be able to grow in a sustainable fashion and I’m pretty sure that’ll go for most business out there.
If your business is missing any of the above you’ll always struggle to stay on top of what’s happening. And given the ease of getting today’s software as a service systems set up there’s no excuse to get stuck in.
