In the never-ending quest to improve efficiency and productivity, businesses are constantly on the lookout for ways to ensure operations are as streamlined as they could possibly be. One of the factors (among many) that influence workflow is typically the software that your team uses to perform whatever tasks they have been hired to perform. Great software ensures things run as smoothly as can be, while software full of bugs or that is unavailable to access outside of the office can cause bottlenecks, delays, and all sorts of issues that can cost money or brand damage. Nevertheless, it’s not always so simple to find the kind of solution your business needs because of specificity, industry, and more. Instead, your best bet is to put a tender out to software development agencies that have the ability to create custom software that meets your exact needs. Throughout this article, we are going to look at how you can streamline multiple processes by investing in bespoke software.
Identifying Operational Inefficiencies In Current Processes
The path to high levels of optimization first begins at the identification stage. Without first spending time performing this task, you run the risk of investing in software that simply won’t have the desired outcomes (which isn’t only costly in monetary terms but could cause significant issues with existing workflows and all of the requisite problems that come from that). When in the market for any type of custom software solution, understating your pain points and hiring a developer to solve them via way of software will help you to end up with a solution that can slot perfectly into your business with menial friction in terms of employee training and integration with existing systems (more on those points later). You can achieve this in multiple ways, with the most common being:
- Conducting a thorough workflow analysis: There are many ways in which you can perform a workflow audit on your business (or departments), but most will involve analyzing what processes are taking up the most time, what the most common errors and mistakes tend to be and mapping it all out in a way that is easily digestible to those who will spend the money.
- Gathering feedback from stakeholders: Your employees are the ones who will know the most about what’s happening on the front lines, so including them in the process can uncover insights you may never have thought of.
- Checking for any delays in existing flows: If you already know of delays impacting operational efficiency, these should be the first things to explore. You will locate what might be causing the issue and, therefore, be able to pass this information on to your software developers to help them improve the final product.
- Evaluating existing tools and systems: Even if you believe your existing tools and systems are working well, it’s worth inspecting them to see what could be improved.
Ensure You Select A Highly Reputable Agency
Creating bespoke software for your business only tends to be a much more significant and more involved undertaking than most people anticipate. However, by selecting the correct company for the job, you will ensure that you remove as much of the stress as possible and are safe in the knowledge that the end product will be precisely what you need. When in the tendering process, there are a few things to look out for that should give you a good indication of whether or not to hire them:
- Experience: For such a momentous task (which software development can often be), any company you select ought to have a raft of experience they can use to develop what you need without a hitch.
- Industry knowledge: In some very specific cases, you may want to hire agencies with a deep understanding of your sector. This unique insight can increase the likelihood that they will understand the brief and develop the software on time.
- Communication: Creating bespoke software will take a lot of time and much toing and froing between you and the agency. Therefore, their communication skills must be impeccable in order to save time and costly errors that occur from miscommunication.
- Development methodology: The way they run their projects will tell you a lot about whether they will complete your job on time and within budget.
- Cost: Although we would all love to have unlimited funds to improve business, the fact is that budget will always be integral to what you can achieve.
Involve Your Team In Decisions
As stated earlier, your team is the ones who have to put up with whatever inefficiencies currently exist within your organization and, as such, are best positioned to provide valuable feedback. By including them in the process, you will uncover a treasure trove of information you can use to implement into the software you’re developing. You should take an open-door approach to this task and try to field as many responses as possible to pass along to the development agency during your initial consultations.
Provide Training For All Employees
There is no use in investing vast sums of money into developing a non-commercial software solution to improve operational efficiency if you’re only going to drop it into your employee’s laps with minimal training. This, by its very nature, will cause massive inefficiency and disrupt existing workflows to the point that you could see damage to your brand due to broken delivery times or poor quality products, etc. By planning ahead and setting up the proper training for those who will use and evaluate the programs, you can ensure that your staff can hit the ground running once the solution has been created. Moreover, once the software has been fully integrated into the workflow, you might also consider adding a new entry to your new employee onboarding documentation in order for them to become au fait with the system, further boosting overall efficiency.
Measure Success And Gather Feedback
Those who fail to measure outcomes and listen to feedback are destined to fail in general. When you gain feedback from those using the software, you can ensure that it is (or isn’t) performing as intended. Furthermore, gathering and actually listening to the feedback of those using it daily will give you the information you can pass on to your developer, who can improve it with each iteration.
There are numerous advantages that can come from investing the resources into developing bespoke software for your needs. By following the tips laid out in this post, you should make it more likely you’ll end up with a final product that follows through on its promises.
