Hunting for the perfect software that supports your business exactly the way you want is very overwhelming. You look for the perfect software and start your search probably at google or some internet site. You may rely on some software advisory companies as well. And then you start getting 50 -60 calls a day from different companies to show you demo or getting you onboard for a free trial.
Human minds can absorb very little of new information in a short period. You probably find time to look at 7 – 10 demos and by the time all are over you are still clueless which one is the right one for you. Here is a list of things to help you choose your software.
But here we will talk about some critical things you need to know about and possibly didn’t know. Watch out for these points while choosing a software:
- Unexpected Price Bump: To get you on-board companies might offer you competitive pricing to get started as they want to get you hooked into the system. But do you really want to always stay in the getting started level? As a business person you would want to grow and scale. And the tools supporting you needs to grow and scale with your business. What happens is as soon as you want to scale and add more people in your business, you have to pay unreasonable amount to get to the next level.
- Limited Features: You get started with basic features the software has to offer. And you know in your mind that these features are just enough but not quite how yo really imagined it. You still sign up because the need is urgent and you need a platform to run in a reasonable price. Well and good! But soon you may realize it would be nice to integrate with Quickbook or send SMS notifications to your customer or crew members on site. Guess what – you can’t. You can do it only if you pay more.
- Lack of Customization: Using a software for a considerable amount of time can generate some new ideas. You might think – “It would be nice if I could have multiple invoicing templates geared towards different customer”. And that feature may not mean much to others but for your business it’s a big thing. But alas! There is no way you can get your custom request through. There are many customers we surveyed who had to break out of the contract with field service company because they couldn’t get a invoice to generate in less than 7 clicks.
- Mechanical Business Support: Software is all technology but the usage of it is basically an art. It’s the art of designing your business operations in it. You will often see that customer support who were there before you signed up are vanished, may be because they are working on getting new customers on board. Or even if you have customer support they just may be telling you to go through the tutorials to explain the mechanics. Not exactly brainstorming with you to get the perfect business design incorporated into the software.
- Not Deep Analytics: You as a business owner need to have access to the data about your business. In a report format, or in analytics format. You need to know what’s happening to your business from every possible angle. You are often handed with basic reports or a pretty dashboard and if you want to see more , you have to pay more. Or if the report is unavailable in the report catalog then sorry, you can’t get it; as no one will build it specifically for you.
- Inability to Scale Up: Running a business is hard and growing it is harder. You need to focus most of your time away from the daily operation so that you can put that time to acquire customers. Getting new customers requires persistence and ongoing communication. You need to have a system where you can collect all the cold leads and work on them till they become hot. You are mostly stuck with a system which can run your operations but doesn’t support your growth, doesn’t provide you with the right tools to drive new customer acquisition.
- Hidden Fees: Software as a service goes by subscription fees, monthly or yearly. You can also be bound by contract. For signing up you may be presented with three different sets of fees. Subscription Fee , Setup Fee, Usage Fee – plus some of the other fees might be like data migration fee, training sessions fee, customer support fee etc. And while using the system you may be charged for SMS fee, email fee, notification fee. When you get a platform on which your whole business operation depends, it should not be bound by so many fees.
If you want a software that supports your business and supports your growth like a friend in Service Business, then checkout the most innovative software for automating your business.
