Modern businesses need to use applications in one way or another to streamline their operations and simplify some of their tasks. But which criteria should managers use to determine the best software for their business? With tons of software in the market, managers must be careful with their choices.
The right software improves staff efficiency, automates routine tasks, and enhances communication. It also improves the costs of running the business and replaces paperwork. Managers need to consider the tips below before choosing the software to run their businesses.
Understand the Problem
Businesses must identify their unique challenge to identify the right software for their needs. They need to ensure that the software aligns with their strategic business goals. Itemize the challenges with the current systems and processes. Other things to consider are efficient project collaboration, communications, and content sharing.
Prioritize Your Needs
It is unrealistic to get perfect software that can automate almost every business process. Every software has unique features designed to provide a particular solution to business processes. Businesses must therefore go through their priorities in the order of needs. These are as follows:
- Fundamental Needs– These are the must-have features integral to their processes.
- Conditional Needs– These are important features in the application for enhanced productivity but are not fundamental.
- Nice to Have Features– These are application features that a business would run comfortably without but are good to have, thus not essential.
Go For Scalability and Flexibility
As business managers figure out the right software for their business, they must factor in scalability and flexibility. Scalability is the capacity of software to grow with the needs of a company over time. Does the software accommodate business growth? Would it support additional users working from different locations simultaneously? These are questions that fast-growing companies must answer before settling for a software application.
Business owners should also check into the flexibility of software. They need to find out if it can adapt to usability requirements and environmental changes. The software has to be free of rigid layouts that can hinder functional evolutions.
Consider Security and Access Control
Before buying software, businesses must consider its security features. Companies must secure customer data, transaction details, employee files, financial or legal data, strategic documents, and more. Managers must ensure that the software has the right access controls. This is to regulate access to sensitive information. Controlled access protects data from accidental or intentional deletion, and the management can tell the identity of the users logged in.
Consider Cost
Managers must consider free alternatives in the market before going for the paid packages because they work just as well. In this case, we will go through the RingCentral video vs. Slack overview to see their differences. Slack is a conferencing and project management tool but can be easily replaced by RingCentral.
RingCentral offers free unlimited messages, video chats with 100 people or less, you can add as many guest users, and unlimited storage. Slack’s free plan is severely limited with only 5GB of storage to offer, no guest users, only one on one video chats, and a limit of 10,000 messages.
Find the Right Fit
The comparison of RingCentral and Slack clearly indicates that managers can get reliable software applications for free. However, if the business has larger needs, the manager can always opt for a paid plan. The points highlighted above are crucial, and managers need to consider them before deciding on the best-fit software solution to invest in.
