Your business is unique. Even among others who sell the same types of products or services, your business has its own needs and works in its own way. We have discussed the benefits of custom-made software in regards to getting more productivity from employees and making many of your tasks easier, but custom-created software can do a lot more to help your business thrive.
The Numbers
The best way to tell if programs and strategies are working is to be able to put the information into numbers. You need to be able to compare current behavior to past behavior, and you need to be able to make projections into the future in order to know what actions you need to continue and what things need to be changed.
Just as every business is different, the figures you want to pay attention to differ greatly. These can include data on:
- Average daily production
- Where your customers hang out
- How much of a product is produced within a particular time period
- What your projected sales for the quarter (or year) may be
- and much more
You can rely on current statistical programs, but they often fall short because they are designed to measure only a set of specific items. It may end up that you require several software programs simply to get the particular information you require. There is a solution.
Custom-Created Dashboards and Reports
With software that is created especially for you and your business, you can access all the analytical data you are interested in from one place. You don't need to bother with information that you do not find useful and your reports are always exactly what you need to know.
The need to learn a complicated data-gathering program is also eliminated when you use custom created software. Consider something like Google Analytics, one of the most often used data collection tools. It is so involved and does so much that there are actually books written to explain how to utilize it. By the time all your employees have learned the system, it is highly likely things have been added or eliminated and the learning must start over again.
This isn't an issue with your own analytical software. You can work with the developer to design a software solution that provides the information you require and only that information. Because you and your employees are working together with the developer, the learning curve is greatly reduced. That isn't the only benefit.
Compatible
Custom created statistical programs are designed to work with the programs you already use. You do not need to be concerned that the program will be incompatible with your system or that part of the program will be inoperable. You also do not need to concern yourself with space being used by programs you find useless. Any program that is created will be designed to give you the information you require but won't produce useless reports that don't have anything to do with your business.
Flexible
Custom software can also be designed to gather relevant information from many different areas of your system. For example, you may need to get data from your website, information on employee production and data on sales. Instead of requiring three individual data mining programs, your specially designed software can be programmed to get all three types of information. This means that every department within your company, whether local or overseas, will have ready access to whatever information is needed at any given moment.
Communication
By providing software that is specific to your business, you enable your entire staff to communicate much more effectively with each other. You can see how the data from one area influences the other aspects of your business and you make it easier to find inconsistencies that need to be addressed before they become problems.
Final Words
Analytics is important to every business, but not every business requires the same data. As an individual company, you have needs that need to be addressed and you don't need the complication of having to depend upon several different sources of data collection, correlation, and analysis. You can better utilize the time needed to gather all the information and determine how it all relates. By having all the information you need at hand, you can put that information to use more effectively and in less time. In the end, your business becomes more productive and your employees are more sure of what they need to do to help move things forward.
Take time to consider exactly what information you need and how you can use that information. Next, contact a developer that can take this information and work with you on designing analytical software that is as unique as your business. In the end, the time, money and frustration that is saved will make your business even more successful than you ever thought possible.
