Overhauling Your Office Software – What You Need to Consider
Your office software is one of the most important parts of your company. They will keep you able to do all the small tasks that you need to when completing your tasks at work. However, with that, comes a need to occasionally overhaul your software. If you feel like what you could be doing certain things around your office a lot better, you need to think about overhauling your office software now. Here are some of the things to consider.
When Should You Overhaul Software?
It is incredibly important to identify why you want to overhaul a piece of software. To use an old adage, if it isn’t broken then it doesn’t need fixing. If you think the software you are using is indeed doing the job that you want to do.
You need to make sure that all the programs you choose work well together. Even if they have been developed by different companies, the software you choose needs to have some sort of compatibility. This means that you will be able to move data between different programs as easily as possible. Let’s take a look at some of the different programs you could decide to use.
Email Marketing
If you send out any sort of newsletters within your company, you may use a service like Mailchimp. While it does serve its purpose, it is also notoriously difficult to use. Many people are left frustrated when they have to do something simple with Mailchimp that actually ends up being quite difficult.
Instead, you should think about using one of the many Mailchimp alternatives on the market. This will allow you to find the program that works best for you while also not losing any of the capabilities that you are used to.
Task Management
Setting up tasks for your employees needs to be easy to manage and quick to do. From the point of view of your employees, you also need to make sure that they are able to view all their tasks properly and tick them off as they need.
If your current task management does not allow you to do so, you may need to find a better one. There are so many options on the market that you should have no trouble finding one that works for you. In addition to this, you should try to find one that has something like a live chat feature. This would allow your employees to work through certain problems together, even if they all work from home.
HR Portals
How do your employees currently register days off or sick days? Where can they monitor their payslips, or how many holidays they have left to take? Is there anywhere that they can raise a claim with the company that is not a formal chat with a supervisor or an email to the right persons?
If the answer to those above questions is no, you need to think about getting a new HR portal. This could massively overhaul how you currently do business. Give your employees a secure platform that they can actively use for all of the above things. It will help to foster more respect within the company, and could help your employees to monitor themselves and their own performances at work in a more efficient way.
CRM Platforms
Customer relationship management, or CRM, is an important part of any business. You need to be certain that everything here is going to run as smoothly as possible. One thing you need to do is ensure that your software is able to store the information of any claim up until that point. Nothing can frustrate a customer more than if you ask again and again for the same details about their claim.
Instead, you need to make sure that you have a platform that keeps all such information is one easy to manage place. Ideally, it should give your customer service representatives all the information they could ever need, plus the tools they need to solve the queries. If you do not have access to a piece of CRM software like this yet, you need to make sure you find one soon.
Asset Management Control
Finally, you need to make sure that you have the right asset management control for your company to use. Even if your office does not have much in the way of stock, you still need to ensure that you have a form of asset management in place. This could prevent you from overspending on office supplies like paper and ink.
If you do have stock, you must have asset management software. To try to do business without it would be foolish as you could never be certain of what you actually have in stock. In terms of usability, you need to make sure that the software can speedily answer any queries put to it. For example, you should be able to pull out any piece of stock you could want and then find out how much you have. You can even set up automatic routines that can order pieces of stock when they run low. This is a key piece of software that cannot be ignored.
Look Over Your Company Software Now
There are so many companies claiming to offer solutions for your company. No matter what, you need to work out which ones are going to be best for you. The flashiest of software does not always mean that it will be the best for you. Take the time to work out if the features of one are right for you. For example, you should always take any free trials offered. This allows you to explore every aspect of the software to determine if it is compatible with your country.
Even if something is not the top of the line and the most popular, it could be right for your company for other reasons. Take a look at your existing software and then look for some alternatives that could replace what you are using now.
