For any SMB(small and midsize business), selecting the right business management software is one of the most critical tasks.
First of all, SMBs do not have the resources of a big enterprise so they have to carefully allocate their resources into products that can yield the best results. On top of that, there are a lot of other niche-specific requirements for SMBs that every business management software can’t fulfill.
In this guide, I will show you how to choose the best business management software for SMB. Use these tips and accordingly select the best and most efficient business management software for your SMB.
What Does a Business Management Software Do?
When it comes to business management software, a lot of SMB owners do not fully understand what this software does. If you want to select the best product, you first have to know what it does and how it can help your business grow.
In short, business management software can help you support, enhance and automate your business processes. This includes enhancing and automating your sales process, helping sales reps prepare quotes, managing inventory, etc. With the right business management software, you can streamline your entire sales process and save a lot of time and resources, thereby increasing your profits significantly.
Now that the world is moving towards the technological era, it is self-evident to automate tasks and become more efficient.
How to Choose the Best Business Management Software for Your SMB?
Choosing the best business management platform for SMB requires you to weigh in on several important factors which are discussed below:
Take Your Employees into Consideration
The very first and most important point to keep in mind while selecting a business management software for SMB is to see it from your employees’ perspective. Your employees will be the people who are going to use the business management software.
What is the Learning Curve?
See which business management software is the easiest for your employees to learn. If you want to get the one with better features but has a longer learning curve, then you have to decide if you can afford to have a long learning curve or not.
It is comparatively easier to train employees to use the software if it is simple and easy to use. That way, your employees can quickly learn and get to work.
How Many Employees Are Going to Use it?
This is also an important thing to keep in mind. Because the dynamics change drastically when you talk about software for 10 people vs. software for 1000 people.
How Do Your Employees Work?
You will have to see whether your employees mostly work from the office or if they are on remote sales calls all the time. That also affects what type of software you are going to use.
If they work remotely then you would want to have cloud integration and mobile app support with your business management software.
What Are the Pre-existing Software Your Employees Use?
If your employees already use a business management software or another software for communication then you will have to analyze how the new software fits in the equation.
Think About Your Customers
Although your customers might never use your software directly, they will be connected to it somehow. That is why it is important to think about your customers as well.
Do Your Customers Require Personalization?
If you want to provide a very personalized experience to your customers then you will have to find software that can do the same. Personalized experience might include providing personalized sales quotes, offers, and proposals. All of these features can boost your sales significantly.
Do You Create Profiles for Them?
Many businesses create dashboards or profiles so that the customers can manage their orders easily. That is something that can build a stronger brand image for you. So if you want that, you will have to find software that can support such features.
Price
One thing that we have to understand is that SMBs do not have the money resources to impulsively invest in something new. They would want to select the best software application because once the purchase is done, it is an irreversible decision.
So pricing also plays a big factor in selecting the best business management software for SMB. You have to weigh in all the features that you are getting against the price that you are going to pay. Then you also have to consider how other providers are pricing their software vis-a-vis the features being offered. Once you compare all the options on your table, only then you can select the best software for your business.
Features vs Gimmicks
Understanding this point will not only help you select the most appropriate business management platform for SMB but it will also help you better select other tech products in the market and make more informed decisions.
The goal for any software company is to provide the best value to their clients. However, they are also in the business to sell more, so that they can earn and grow more. So to boost sales, software companies may add some gimmicks to their business management software, to make it more appealing to the buyers.
Distinguishing Between Features vs Gimmicks
You can easily distinguish between a feature and a gimmick just by analyzing its use case. If it is useful for you in many situations, then it is a feature. In case it is designed to resolve a special problem, and the chances of it occurring are close to zero in normal circumstances, then it is merely a gimmick.
The bottom line is that you should only select and pay for the features and not the gimmicks because you will never or hardly use them.
Integration
If you have been in business for quite some time, then chances are high that you and your employees are already using some software to communicate and manage your business. In that case, you would want software that could provide proper integration with all of the other business tools that you use.
The whole point of using business management software is to automate the business processes and it can only be achieved through integration. Just make sure that your software comes with strong integration capabilities with various business and communication tools and software.
Ability to Support in the Long Run
The end goal for any business is to grow and become bigger. So it is important to select software that can handle the challenges when you scale your business. Changing software, again and again, is a hectic and time-consuming process. It is not only challenging for employees but also takes a lot of resources. Just make sure to select software that can support your business in the long run and can be easily scaled.
Customer Support
When you involve anything that has codes and computers involved in it, there is always a chance for errors and bugs. That is where customer support plays an important role. Before selecting a business management software for SMB, try their customer support and see how they help you. Because you and your sales reps should always have access to customer support when they are on sales calls.
Finally
That was all about how to choose the best business management software for your SMB. The central objective is to take your employees and customers into consideration. Then you can move on to the technical aspects and pricing of the software. This guide will help you in selecting the best business management software.
