Steps to Successfully Changing Your Business Software Part I: Business Process Analysis

Whether you do everything in-house or hire any consultants, these are the steps to follow:

1. Business Process Analysis
2. Interaction Design
3. Software Selection
4. Implementation

In this article, I begin with business process analysis.

Shopping for commercial software, a cloud application, or a programmer to create software, should never be the first step you take.  You must first be sure you have a clear understanding of your current processes and the changes you intend to make.  If you don't have processes and people's jobs documented already, now is the time to do it.

But before I go any further, there's a fundamental item to address, which is the reason why you are looking for a new software solution.  Is it to fix broken business processes and employees?  If it is, that's the wrong reason.  See if any of these statements ring true for you:

• If feels as though you and your business are always playing catch-up.

• You keep having to fix problems, sometimes doing the work yourself that you had delegated to an employee.

• You have high employee turnover.

• Important items too often fall through the cracks, causing upset customers.

• You have multiple prices for the same items for multiple customers.

• You have individualized processes for catering to the desires of several, or many, of your customers.

• You experience many bad and stressful weeks, dealing with crises, emergencies, or some bad news.

• You continually make changes to  processes and workflow in an attempt to resolve problems.

• You call unscheduled, on-the-spot, meetings to address and resolve issues.

• You are often upset and angry with one or more employees, and lecture them for problems when they pop up.

• Work in some areas is always behind.

• Employees routinely or intermittently make mistakes in their work that have major negative impact on customer fullfilment and satisfaction.

• Your employees routinely experience issues and downtimes with computer equipment and software.

• You lack documentation for procedures, processes, and job positions.

If much of the above describes what your business is like you should seek out the help of a business management advisor or coach.  These statements are indicative of a business that is badly managed from the top.  As a business owner, it is often difficult to see that the root cause of many issues lies with you, and not with the people who work for you, or the software they use.  We all tend to think we know what's best.  An outsider like a business coach should be able to help you see where you can make changes in yourself and the way you run your business.  From there, processes can be improved, and you'll be better able to assess what changes in software you should make.  When new software is purchased and implemented in businesses that are not well managed from the top the results are often not good.  It usually just introduces more problems to solve.

No matter how small your business is you should have your jobs and processes documented before attempting to make any significant changes in software.  If you're interested in replacing the core software your business needs to operate this is critically important.  The process of working through documentation will reveal inefficiencies you may not have noticed before, and details you need to consider for process automation. You should then have a clearly written plan for process improvement, which includes what improvements you want to make in software. If there's nobody in your company available to create the documentation, or you need help or guidance, you can call on a business consultant who specializes in this area.