Imagine you own a cabinet-making company. You hire excellent carpenters who are hard working and skilled. They work diligently every week to meet deadlines and satisfy customers with a great product. But over time, your competitors start to edge you out of the market. Business slows down even with your solid business model, great team, quality materials, and dedication to customer satisfaction.
Puzzling, right?
Now imagine that all your carpenters only have access to manual hand tools. No table saws, no routers, no power drills. Every tool they use is powered by their own strength.
Obviously, that’s why your business is struggling to compete. Every other competitor is using power tools. It has nothing to do with your employees’ skill or your business practices. It’s all about the tools you use. Continuing to use outdated tools will cause your business to fall further and further behind because everyone else’s employees get the same results with less effort and time.
Even if you don’t own a cabinet-making company, the analogy still applies. If you are struggling to keep up with your competitors, it may be that your tools need to be updated. Providing your employees with better software tools allows them to get better results with less time and effort. Moving from an Excel sheet to custom software can be the equivalent of switching from a hand saw to a table saw. Both may eventually have the same result, but the effort and time required are vastly different. Better software tools have three main benefits.
The benefit of increased efficiency should be obvious. Automating simple tasks like data entry and collection, syncing data across multiple systems, or generating reports can save hours each day or week. Reducing the amount of time spent on non-strategic tasks frees your employees to spend more time on strategic tasks that improve your business. Even strategic tasks can be streamlined, allowing more work to be accomplished in less time.
Efficiency may be the star of the custom web application world, but quality is the ultimate goal. Quality of work can improve in several ways. The first is linked to efficiency; more time available for more important tasks is bound to improve quality. Second, custom web applications and mobile apps can solve problems with internal communication. Instead of passing around documents via email constantly, everything can be accessed from the same portal. This keeps every team member and department working with the most updated and accurate information. Quality improves as communication and unity improve.
No, I’m not going back to the hand tools analogy. I mean here that employees will have time to improve their skills. Not only will they gain the ability to work with a new software system, but they will have more time and energy to spend on self-improvement. They can pursue further training and certification, add skills, and fill knowledge gaps. Your greatest asset is the people who work for you, so give them room to grow.
