So how can you leverage custom software development to improve your internal processes?

Although a bandaid will cover up a larger issue (temporarily), this is not a solution. As a fast-growing business with changing needs, you need to be able to manage complex data quickly. Why? As your business grows with the increased likelihood of human error – duplicate entry tends to happen, data is entered wrong and the process becomes too complicated to manage efficiently.

That’s why we’re going to talk about the three signs you need to improve internal processes with custom software development.

3 Signs you need to improve processes

1. You’ve outgrown the functionality of your current program:

The first sign you need custom software development is that you’re outgrowing the functionality of your current program. While it may work, you might be required to enter all of the data into thousands of tables, which becomes extremely tedious. To manage, analyze and report on the data, a new program would make the process less stressful and more efficient, especially if you have multiple employees managing that data. Data management might require multiple reviews to ensure quality control. Imagine if you owned a medical lab company that analyzes data on cancer cells and there were an error in the data, leading to a doctor telling a patient they had cancer when they really didn’t. The doctor and hospital most likely would be sued. While this is an extreme example, there’s always a possibility of bad data leading to bad repercussions. So if there are currently no ideal programs on the market, building a custom software program could lower your risk, improve efficiency and help your business grow.

2. Your Excel spreadsheets that run your business are massive and difficult to sort through:

In a growing business, massive Excel spreadsheets are not sustainable. If you find that your team is consistently finding errors and duplicate entry, it may be time to examine the possibility of turning it into an internal software product for your team. Fortunately, technology makes your company’s processes and workflows more efficient, which allows you to handle additional business and drive growth. A workflow can be simple or it could be a complex series of processes that involve many people or departments. In either likelihood, your current spreadsheets are the foundation of the software initiative. It contains the structure of what you are going to build.

While it may seem like a foreign concept to reach out to a software vendor, remember that you are the expert and have already designed the process. Now it’s up to a software partner to determine whether it makes sense to build and help you come up with a better way to make you more efficient. On the same note, there’s a common misconception that streamlining your business processes with software automation is a massive initiative. While it requires a timeline, normally the software vendor will slice up the project into short manageable chunks to test the functionality.

3. Your customers are unhappy with your service:

This may seem like an odd sign but think about it like this: Imagine you can’t call anyone from your iPhone. (Which is a big problem in today’s technology-driven world.) As consumers, accessing data anywhere is extremely important for us. You call the service provider (let’s say it’s AT&T) to ask them what the issue is, but AT&T puts you on hold for an hour. This is frustrating, but what does it have to do with building a new software system? The employees at AT&T can’t find information quickly to service their customers. They use a program to manage their customers, but the functionality of the program doesn’t allow them to get their job done. Of course, they don’t want to put customers on hold for hours, but the software is limiting them.

By modernizing this legacy system and updating its functionality, employees could be more efficient resulting in more customers’ questions getting answered. What does this mean for the business? It means happy customers, an increase in sales and productive employees. They have a program that helps them be productive and as a business, you can staff fewer people, save money and drive revenue.

In Summary

If your business is outgrowing the functionality of its current software, massive excel spreadsheets are becoming unmanageable or customers are unhappy with their service from you, it may be time to investigate a software vendor to help improve your processes.

We are a software development company that can create custom software to integrate and streamline your processes. Let us help your business run more efficiently, ultimately leading to more profit for you.