Your back office operations system is the backbone of your business. You need a system that provides the functionality necessary to run your business easily, it must be convenient for the users and deliver a competitive advantage.
The system you have in place today may not be meeting those needs or may not be able to support the growth and innovation that are part of your company’s future success.
Here are 10 reasons to take a serious look at replacing your current operations system with one that is better able to support your company’s needs:
- Your return on Investment is no longer proving its worth. If you have spent a small fortune developing, installing, training and deploying a system that is no longer fit for purpose or still needs improvement you could actually be better off scrapping it altogether. Your system should be giving you the best ROI and just like the many comparison websites you should be shopping around for a better deal.
- The current system lacks functionality, it is hard to use, slow, and/or inflexible. Companies experiencing these kinds of issues should not hesitate to find and install a replacement system
- Operating costs are too high. Older system, especially those installed on local servers with the added support costs can get increasingly expensive to operate, especially if the software is no longer supported by the developer, the hardware is antiquated and increasingly unreliable.
- Your system no longer supports current business needs like customer portal, electronic reporting, mobile connectivity or readily accessible business intelligence.
- Your people rely on spreadsheets and paper to get their jobs done. This is by far the biggest challenge and a definite no no in today’s world. If the function can’t be accomplished within the system you are not getting the benefits you invested in the system is not supporting your business needs.
- You need multiple systems to do one job. If you have a system for scheduling, another system for quoting and surveying, a separate system for work order completion, a disconnected invoicing system and are using another system for customer logins then you are not only spending out on too many systems but the chances are the support and usability of these systems is very poor
- You lose business to competitors because they are simply easier to do business with or their customer service is better. This may not be entirely the fault of the system but the system may be hampering or limiting your effectiveness in pleasing the customers, answering their questions, or delivering products on time.
- Your company is growing or changing faster than the system can support and you need better control of your processes. When new processes and technologies start showing up in your market, do system limitations prevent you from moving forward against the competition? How long does it take your system supplier to add new functionality to your current system?
- Decision-makers are frustrated by lack of easy access to the information they need about the business, sales and markets.
- You are overrun with back-office staff all doing the same task. Information sharing is very poor and customer records frequently get misplaced. You are worried that taking on more clients will mean more office staff or an increased workload.
Now ask yourself “What is stopping me from changing my operational system?”. You may have an answer already reading this article but here are the top 5 responses that ServiceTracker have experienced when talking to prospective clients and helped overcome when it comes to system change.
- We have too much data in too many systems.
Provided you can transfer this data into a spreadsheet, most systems have import tools which migrate your data very quickly and cost effectively and working with big data, moving thousands of records is very straightforward.
- We have invested too much time and money in our current system.
If you can jot down the yearly costs of running your existing systems, estimate any changes required in the coming year and their costs, forecast external costs such as paper, postage, unnecessary travel for your workforce to collect information from the office and compare this to a new system which eliminates most of these costs and can do things quicker, you may be surprised. ServiceTracker offer comparison and ROI calculators free of charge if you are interested in seeing this for yourself.
- Our staff are adversed to change
This is not uncommon in any business and there are challenges with change in an organisation however if the system you are moving to can closely relate to your existing processes and is adaptable to fit around your needs then this is painless for even the most change-averse member of the team.
- Security is paramount and I don’t know if I can trust new technology
The right system should built on trust and nothing should be more important than the privacy of your data. ServiceTracker understands that the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of its customers’ information are vital to their business operations and our own success. We use a multi-layered approach to protect that key information, constantly monitoring and improving our application, systems, and processes to meet the growing demands and challenges of security. Any system worth its salt will be very transparent with their security processes and protocols and provide you with detailed documentation to support it.
- We do not have the budget for a new system
This may be paramount on your list of reasons not to change and rightly so as it is important. Software, especially software-as-a-service has become relatively inexpensive in recent times and weighing up the costs of running your current system Vs the cost savings and benefits a new system could bring could give you a different perspective. ERP and full end-to-end systems used to be a concept for only big businesses with big budgets but today these system are available to any business large or small and are a fraction of the cost allowing you to scale at an incredible rate.
A properly selected and implemented operations system should be an enabler, not a preventer of efficient and effective operations and market-leading customer service. You can’t afford to let an inadequate system hamper your business. If your current system is not the solution, it’s the problem.
Contact us now at ServiceTracker for more information: 033 022 31022 info@servicetracker.uk.com
