Believe it or not, there are still things that are done manually today. Go inside nearly any organization, and you’ll find processes or tasks that may have been left alone – for a variety of reasons.
Sometimes it’s because that’s just the way it’s always been done.
Or maybe other areas seem more important to explore solutions.
Or maybe there’s an assumption that if something is brought in, it will blow the bandwidth of your IT staff.
Or maybe the thought is that whatever is brought in will be expensive.
Any of these sound familiar?
I have conversations like these a lot.
Our mobilePLUS solution focuses on automating asset inventory and tracking activities. These activities seem to fall into those areas that frequently get left behind when it comes to improvements. But whether you’re curious about automating your inventories – or some other task – I would recommend putting the different solution options through these four questions:
How does the solution make the end result better?
In our corner of inventory solutions – that means better data. You should be seeing accurate, timely – trustworthy data produced by the solution.
This may seem obvious – but you’d be surprised how many times companies purchase a system because of a flashy new device – but the output of the solution is the same or worse than whatever they were doing before.
Does the solution make the job easier – or is it more of a burden on the existing process?
Again – are you selecting technology for technology’s sake – or for the benefit of your users? If your users feel like it’s not intuitive or is harder to use than what they did before – I guarantee they’ll work around your new solution. If something is easy – it gets done.
Does the solution streamline the process? Or complicate it?
How many times have you tried a new system or app – and you end up swearing at it within minutes because you have multiple hoops to jump through, whatever you were trying to do seems to have 14 more steps, and life felt so much easier before this shiny new tool.
Again – you’re going to get a lot of user resistance if the tool requires more effort than the previous process. Tools should make things run more smoothly – not make things more complicated, IMHO.
And then the big question –
Does the solution offer a positive financial impact?
Again, this may seem like a no-brainer. But if the value of the product of the solution doesn’t outweigh the investment, there’s a problem.
And look carefully at “free” solutions. Often times they require significant effort to get up and running – and may not be supported (because they’re just a “free” offering).
I’m sure you’ve heard much of this advice before. But given the frequency that I hear from teams where solutions they’ve implemented have fallen short in one or more of these areas – I thought the fundamentals could bear repeating.
And if you’re considering automating or replacing automation for your asset inventories and tracking, let’s talk.
