The Business Software Guide 2020. The article showcases six guiding principles for choosing the best software for your company.
Companies invest in business software because it can help the team do their job better. But a poor choice (by fit-to-need) only worsens the problem and adds to their burden.
too many enterprises choose the most popular option, only to realise (after making an investment) that it does not suit their unique needs. It ends up being an exercise in waste of resources and time, and frustrates employees leaving the organisation back to square one.
Every SaaS product in the market seems to have great features, clean design, and customer logos of Fortune 500 companies on their website. But which one is the right one for you?
Below the Business Software Guide of 2020 with six guiding principles on choosing the best software for your company.
1. Less is more
Problem: In most large enterprises, an average employee interacts with about 15 to 20 apps, making it hard for them to keep track of things. And this can result in adoption fatigue, error, and utter confusion.
Solution: Try to choose software providers who bundle multiple modules into a single super app. For example, your team would want to access all HR related modules/apps from one place. This includes Onboarding, Leaves, Attendance, Payroll Management, Referrals and R&R – they’d want all of these to be packed into a single app on their phone.
2. Customisation over everything else
Problem: A best practice that works for company A will not always work for company B. And the same goes for a process workflow. Most enterprise apps are notorious for forcing companies with different needs and realities to choose a standard process workflow from available options.
Solution: Pick a software product that lets you customize three key aspects
- Workflow: It should let you shape the process workflow and decide how your work flows through the teams and through different levels of your organisation.
- Business Rules: The software must let you create business rules across the workflow using a no-code interface. These rules are very important as they will help you govern your business process using automation.
- Nomenclature: Whether your process is warehousing, inventory management or invoicing, you need to be able to modify the nomenclature for every drop-down menu, field, metric or item. The software should allow you to modify these specifics.
3. Facilitate habit formation
Problem: Your software might become more efficient, but your people need to grow with it, else you won’t see an upside.
Solution: Good products help create good habits. Common knowledge, right? But it is still something that most enterprise apps fail to facilitate.
4. Be big, powerful AND nimble
Problem: Giants are big, powerful, and armed with the best resources – but this also makes them incredibly slow.
Solution: How can large companies quickly reshape their workflows and business processes to take on young, nimble start-ups that are disrupting their market? With no-code tools.
There are some standard practices that all SaaS businesses should be deploying if their services are in any way affected by the global health crisis:
5. Include gamification and rewards
Instilling a healthy, competitive spirit across your organisation might be the oldest trick in the book, and it still works.
We are in 2020 and many consumer apps use gamification to engage their users. They often use leaderboards, badges, report cards and more. While not all Enterprise apps leverage such gamification capabilities, there are some that do. Try to choose them, as they can help you do two things: Recognise the organization’s top performers, and Raise the standard for the entire organization through healthy competition.
Topping all of this with a rewards and recognition program would make the whole experience incredibly satisfying. Imagine winning gift cards or holidays for reaching specific milestones or finishing on top of your team. This is the experience that millennials will love and find relatable.
6. Enable mindfulness
Most apps display metrics onto a beautiful dashboard to tell you how your business is performing. But very few of them do this for each individual employee.
Wouldn’t it be great if your business app could help your people audit their own day? It could show them what they accomplished and what they missed. This data could help them introspect, measure themselves, and plan better for the days ahead. This is a basic strategy used by professional athletes after every single day of practice. It helps them figure out what they can do to get that next big boost in performance
Conclusion
- Revisit the basics when you choose the next enterprise/business app for your team.
- Focus on the desires, needs, and aspirations of your organisation, and map them back to your app. If there is a connection, then you have made the right choice!
Source – Vinay Agrrawal