How to choose the correct software for your business
When SMEs are at the stage where it’s important for them to use software to help them manage their business in a better way by streamlining it and enabling them to grow the business further, they have a big decision to make. How do you choose the software that is right for you from all the hundreds of options available out there.
Ashish Kumar from WEBalliance has been developing software for 20 years and shares his advice below. Before you start, it’s important to remember that selecting a piece of software is dependant upon the stage you’re at with your business.
Excel
A business is better of with an Excel spreadsheet if it’s just started. Most of the time when a small business is started the teams are quite small and often they don’t know what data they need to store and what the structure of the data is going to be. At this stage they are not in the best position to select any off-the-shelf software and bespoke software is out of the question here because for bespoke software you need to have a specific problem in your existing business, which can’t be resolved by using the existing software tools the business is using.
So as a business owner use Excel sheets to start with then this will allow for getting used to what data is needed to run your business and the discipline of collecting the information, . Excel is quite flexible and powerful if you know how to use it properly. Many documents can be produced by using excel such as Invoice, quotes, proposals etc. by linking the sheets together and it can minimise the duplication to some extent as well. Graphs and charts can also be produced by excel which is a very useful tool to analyse the data and the graphical representation of data is always much more intuitive and easy to understand as compared to list form. Once you have a lot of spreadsheets to update then is the time to consider creating a database to fit your business
As your business grows excel sheets will become hard to manage because of the following reasons:
- Team size is increased
- Sharing the excelsheet is a burden
- Data consistency is the issue as it is difficult for more than 1 person to work on the same spreadsheet at the same time.
Excel is good when the size of the data is reasonable, it can’t handle huge amounts of data so crashes often and performance deteriorates
Off the shelf
This is the stage where you need to think of an off-the-shelf database to start with until you are clear on your workflows and the fields which will require population, then is the time for a bespoke system, built to fit your business, rather than trying trying to shoehorn your business into a one size fits all system .
You can go from excel directly to bespoke software as well, however, off-the-shelf is the cheaper option and gives a more ridged data structure as compared to excel. So once you decide to go for off-the-shelf the question arise which one to buy. Well the answer depends upon what kind of operations you want to perform and what functionality you are looking for. For example:
- If you are looking for a sales funnel, sales and marketing centric system and can handle the compacted system then Salesforce is the best option to go for.
- If you need something simple to use with a reduced version of Salesforce, then HubSpot is the option to go for.
- If you want something visual which has lots of drag, drop features then Pipedrive is the good option to go for.
- If you want a really simple basic system to use, then Capsule is the good option.
In addition to the above there are a huge number of other off-the-shelf systems to choose from and no one is good or bad but they offer different functions to support different needs.
Bespoke Software
The 3rd and final stage for your business to move to is to go for bespoke software. This is the right time to go bespoke as now you know what you really need to help your business become more efficient.
Some of the advantages of bespoke systems are as follows:
- Most flexible option
- Can grow and shrink with the business
- Follow any workflows, easy or tricky
- Once the data is in the system, getting a report out in any shape or form is not a challenge at all.
- Main expense is for the initial build but very cheap to manage and run. In around couple of years there is normally a breakeven point, then from that point onwards bespoke software proves to be the best economical option .
- It demands your time at the beginning but as soon its up and running you don’t have to invest any time in the maintenance phase while with off-the-shelf systems you need to continuously have to adapt to it and it always pull your business operations back as it can’t support full set of business operations and workflows.
So the bottom-line is don’t rush to get the bespoke system, get it when you’re ready for it. you will know when the time is right.
Ashish Kumar is Managing Director of WEBalliance, based in Northampton the company has have over a decade of web development experience to give you guidance throughout the process of web development including short, medium and long term strategic plans. So if you are looking for a real alliance to turn your business web capabilities around then come to us and we will show you what we mean by successful Alliance.
