How to Choose the Best Business Software for Your Small Business?

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Whether you’re buying a new accounting tool or a project management suite, selecting the new best software for small business should be a mutual decision that considers and cover the needs and desires of everyone who are involved in your business day to day operations. It’s important to consider customer needs, employee needs, and your needs in aggregation with one another. If you estrange the needs of any group, you might wrap up with the wrong solution.

Everyone’s Needs Should be Your Top Priority

Whenever you ask something, consider every employee’s opinion working in your company. If you impose your decision, you might not get the full potential outcome. Therefore you need to create an environment and say, “We care for you.” This assurance will create a positive impact on everyone’s mind.

Here’s an example. Let’s say you hold a weekly meeting on Monday mornings. To make the meetings more appealing, you make a habit of providing coffee and doughnuts for the attendees. And because you’re the caring executive that you are, you kindly take requests from employees in regards to how they like their coffee and doughnuts. Some like their black coffee and doughnuts glazed, while others prefer one cream, two sugars, and cream-filled doughnuts.

So, you start the meeting off by handing each employee his or her food order. But, when you start digging your meeting conversation on meaningful things, you share only your views without ever asking for a single opinion from anyone else. Or, if you do invite others to speak, you quickly slash what they say and continue walking on your own path.

Do you notice the contradiction in this example? You’re giving your employees freedom to make choices when it comes to deciding and choosing small things; in short, you’re willing to provide them with an illusion of control, but when it comes to things that really matters, you’re restricting them and making choices your own choice.

What to Consider When Choosing Business Software

With all of that being said, let’s look at what this means in terms of choosing new software for your business. How can you cover everyone’s needs without compromising? Well, here you need to think primarily about three target groups:

Employees.

When it comes to your core team, you want to consider a variety of factors. The software features you need will likely depend on:

How many employees will be using the software? There’s a major difference between selecting the software for 1000 people and choosing software for ten people.
How important is the level of support? Does your IT team need to provide on-site support, or will you need vendor support?
What other software do your employees currently use–and how different is it from the existing software you’re currently using?

These are just a few questions for your understanding; there are many other factors you need to consider with time. Keep your employees at first, and you will notice that your employees are satisfied and productive.

Customers.

Next, you need to think about the needs of your customers and clients. While they may not directly interact with the software you choose, their needs will be indirectly connected to your chosen direction. Think about the following:

Does the product or service you offer customers require you to give them access to a dashboard or profile? If so, how will the software you select impact this user experience?
How quickly are you expecting to scale? Can the software you choose meet the upper end of these projections?

Consider these questions and answer them honestly. When used in conjunction with the information you’ve compiled on your employees, you’ll begin to see a clear picture emerge.

Leadership (Yourself).

Finally, the time has come to think about executive leadership, including your own needs and preferences. These will come naturally to you, but think about the following:

Do you need software that is quick, responsive, and easy to use for employees, or can you afford to deal for a longer time?
Are you looking for an interface that’s visually pleasing and intuitive, or are you more worried about finding a highly functional and feature-rich platform?

Are you looking to discount some aspect of the software selection process? Well, customer and employee needs are crucial, so are your needs. Give equal weight to these elements.

Choosing Business Software: Criteria to Look At

The best way to evaluate software is to classify specific criteria that are crucial and then cross-reference your findings with the needs and demands you’ve identified for your employees, customers, and leaders. Have a look at some criteria you may want to consider:

Price vs. Value.

When choosing software, there’s always the debate in favor of price and against overpricing. The question is should you spend a few thousand dollars extra to get a particular feature, or is it better to save some money and find an alternative to handle a specific task?

There is no final answer; it depends on your needs and preferences as per your business structure.

“Quality products may cost slightly more or slightly less than others; however, the real concern is value,” writes Katie Hawksworth. “Taking time to look at what software offers the best value for money in terms of all its functionality, as well as taking into account how often you would be using the tool within your business, will make it easier to decide based on overall suitability, longevity and scalability of the tool as your business grows.”’

Accessibility.

How accessible is a specific software solution? Can it be easily accessed by everyone who needs it, or is it restricted to just a few employees? Even more important, can it only be accessed from specific locations/devices, or does it allow remote connectivity? Accessibility is a big deal when you’re investing in hugely inexpensive software that will ideally be around for many coming years.

Collaboration.

How much collaboration a software solution allows for is very important. In many situations, you’ll need the platform to simplify communication between teams, clients, support staff, and yourself. If collaboration is limited, you may find yourself in trouble from time to time.

Let us guide you with some of the best examples of business software solutions and tools.

Best Accounting Software for Small Business You Can Choose.

FreshBooks
Pabbly
Wave
Sage 50cloud
Xero
Zoho Books
Kashoo
AccountEdge Pro

Best Project Management Software and Tools You Can Pick.

Basecamp
Asana
Citrix Podio
Workzone
Jira
Notion
Redmine
Trello

Conclusion

Before you begin to hunt for the ideal software, you need to become more familiar with your business. To choose a software solution, you need to consider everyone that truly benefits everyone.

Do this, and the growth and profitability of your business will surely benefit.