Leaders face challenges around making companies more versatile. Ideally, your company's leaders like to be more flexible so your company can move into other geographies or possibly other industries.Have you ever felt like your business has hit a wall? Do you feel terrified to open another location due to lack of automated business processes? Fear like that can put you out of business! So what can custom software do to help?The following is an excerpt from How to Plan a Successful Custom Software Project.
Manual Processes
Custom software can take over your manual processes, so routine tasks become easier or even completely automated.For example, to open a new location:
- You would need to hire competent people to manage the location.
- Next, determine which employee is going to be in charge of human resources and who is in charge of training. Through a custom software program, you would add employee names and positions.
- Locations could automatically be assigned by position.
- The software would invite the employee to join as a user and automatically provide them with documentation unique to their position. Employee paperwork, like documents, checklists, and disclosures could be delivered instantly, with reminders set to go out for acknowledgments and other necessary actions.
- The software could also help with onboarding new employees. Internal checklists defined by job position could be assigned to an internal resource. For instance, Accounting would know to set up payroll for the new employee, Human Resources would know to provide paperwork for signatures, IT would know what permissions and applications to provide, and a manager would know what training was needed.
With custom software, something that would have taken 100+ hours in the past can be reduced to as little as one hour. And as you can imagine, costs go down drastically too.
Reducing Time and Cost
Consider how a company manages their product inventory. You have 50+ employees who install residential alarms. In the past, installer's product inventory was tracked manually in an Excel spreadsheet.The installers came into the office to pick up inventory. Then an employee in charge of inventory has to check a box in Excel manually to note the part and who took it. If the item is returned later in the day, the inventory clerk adjusts the Excel spreadsheet. As you can imagine, with all of this manual intervention and with 50+ installers, the possibility for human error is enormous. In the end, inventory tracking is a nightmare!With custom software, the installer can check out their own inventory and return items with ease, possibly just with a quick scan of a barcode. And inventory is tracked and recorded with little to no human error.Similarly, let's look at managing vacation days and personal days for a few dozen employees. With each employee having one to three weeks of vacation and five personal days, managing this in Excel introduces the opportunity for human error. Employees would be left with fewer (or more!) days off.Custom software can automate that. Now the employee logs into the system to request days off and the human resources department is notified for approval. Vacation and personal days are tracked and recorded, again, with little to no potential for human error.Oftentimes, software packages have limitations where they only narrowly focus on certain tasks. For example, inventory tracking, CRM, and timesheets would be sold as separate solutions. However, with custom software, you won't have those types of limitations.To learn more about making your company more versatile with custom software, download your copy of How to Plan a Successful Custom Software Project.