Spreadsheets
Many businesses in todays techology capable world still use Pen & Paper, Notebooks & Spreadsheets to manage their business.
Available Software
Many businesses attempt to use available software, also referrered to as ''Off the Shelf Software'', problems arise when they don't talk to each other,
staff end up entering the same data multiple times.
I was meant to start creating a system for a business about October 2021, it is now July 2022 when I write this. At present they use:-
- Google Calendar
- Google Drive
- Microsoft Word
- Windows Explorer
- Monday
- Nearmaps
- Pipedrive
- PandaDoc
- Humm
- youcanbook
- Microsoft Outlook
Could you imaging being a sales person for this company, having to learn & use all of this software, then the order of what you use and when, the risk of errors being made is a
reality not a possibility.
If a salesperson made mistakes do you think that the business would? a) Dismiss the employee b) Have properly written software to lower the risk of mistakes being made.
The next issue to consider is staff fatigue, stress, impact on family life, impact on mental health, this is a workcover claim waiting to happen.
Some of these products are costing on average (each) about $20 - $50 per month per user, this particular business would have about 15+ employees that access this software,
as you can see the cost starts to build quickly.
Try contact these companies for support, bet you will be paying extra for support, want something changed in their software forget it,
if they wanted to do it, they would charge you thousands for 1 thing to be changed.
If the company goes out of business, I hope you have a backup of your data.
The cost also increases due to the same data being entered multiple times, any errors with data entry and translate into incorrect charging of client through or worse,
loosing the client.
The delay in writing the software has come about due to the business flatout putting out fires, in other words, clients will ,
I actually completed a contact us on their website, 6 months later I received a phone call.
Why are spreadsheets bad for business?
According to Market Watch, up to 88% of spreadsheets contain errors. If you think about it, it's not really that surprising - they're compiled by humans after all.
Spreadsheets make it easy to create errors, a simple mistake like misplacing a decimal point can result in huge errors in accounting.
- Spreadsheets are not user-friendly.
- Spreadsheets are not secure.
- It's hard to tell who edited the spreadsheet.
- There will be multiple versions of the truth.
- Spreadsheets are prone to errors.
- Reporting is painful.
- Visualizing data is difficult.
- Critical customer data is at everyday life's mercy.
- There's no native integration with business systems.
- Spreadsheets make it harder for managers to manage team members.
It amazes me when business owners say that their business is efficient using spreadsheets.
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