Starting something new in your business is an exciting time, but can be full of unexpected things as well. Sort of like the purchase of a new home. You can’t wait to jump in and start this new journey, but as every homeowner knows, there are always things to be fixed and worked around.
One of our Software Engineers, Matt Mercieca put it this way:
“I live in a century-old house. It’s charming, but it was designed before forced air heat and air conditioning were invented. Those were added much later. As a result, to be cool enough to sleep in the summer I have to run my air conditioner most of the night— I’m sure I’m not the only one to have arrived at that particular solution. Then I got my July electric bill: triple digits and substantially more than I had budgeted for. That was my wake up call and also reminded of one of our clients as I had taken the first two steps on their journey.”
What Matt is describing here is the idea of The Workaround.
What is a Workaround?
The workaround starts when a business, like yours, starts to do something new. Your team is smart and motivated. They want to help your clients or their company; they want to do what was asked of them. They have tools and processes that almost fit. They can cobble something together that will work. But, at the end of the day, this is just a workaround — not an actual solution for now or the future.
At Mutually Human, we see this a lot. We see spreadsheets used as inventory management or as a customer relationship system. There are web sites where forms email people instead of going into a lead generation system. Also common are access databases that run a company but can only be used by one person at a time. All of these are workarounds and they do work, for a time. But, inevitably, they’ll begin to fail.
The Wake-Up Call to Custom Applications
The Wake-Up call to realizing you need a new solution can be a lot of different things:
- Increasing costs
- Processes that rely on a single person.
- Asking the same question of a customer multiple times, because information doesn’t transfer from one system to another
- Multiple meetings or multiple emails for one client meeting because the information needed is spread out across spreadsheets maintained by different people in the organization.
These are all forms of workarounds and they have their limits. There’s a cost to improving technology or processes, like creating custom applications. It’s only when the limits of a workaround are reached that people start looking for a new solution and are truly motivated to “find a better way.”
Creating Custom Applications for YOUR Business
You know your own business better than anyone. You know what you want to do and you know what you’re doing should be easier. You feel the pain of the workarounds, but because the business has to keep going you don’t have time or resources to develop better solutions on your own.
This is where custom applications can begin to alleviate the burden of the workaround. Custom applications are different from any software you’ve used before. How? Because there will quite literally be no workaround since it has been tailored for your business, your team, and your needs.
Building a Solution That Works for You
Your business has a unique need, unlike any other organizations need. Creating custom applications can be the solution that not only eliminates your workaround for now, but is actually worth the cost, and will keep working as your clients needs change and grow.
If you’re frustrated by your current workarounds and are ready for a new solution, like custom applications, we’d love to chat with you. Schedule a free consultation at any time.
