Take a good look at your business. Do you run your entire system on multiple software solutions and integrations that break with every update? Do you have data silos that disrupt the flow of your operations and cause information and task duplication? Do you often find yourself re-learning app interfaces, turning to various online resources for help, and attending conferences in hopes of streamlining your existing processes?
Many businesses today experience these challenges, especially when they consistently invest in new cloud applications. As they scale, they often end up with several best-of-breed solutions, and this can lead to frustrating software issues. This article offers a path towards productivity and growth for all aspects of your business so you can achieve peace of mind.
A journey down the multi-vendor spiral
With industries and markets changing all the time, new business trends are created every day. These trends provide quick fixes for inefficiencies and help optimize daily operations. Businesses continue to adopt new solutions so they can stay current when it comes to digital transformation, artificial intelligence, sustainability, security, privacy, and social media influence.
Digital transformation typically starts with the implementation of customer relationship management (CRM) software. When sales reps manually added sales figures to spreadsheets, it complicated data consolidation and made it difficult to forecast each quarter. CRM software allows teams to easily see sales projections on a consolidated dashboard. However, as businesses grow, it often becomes tedious to add leads to the CRM system manually, and this reduces overall efficiency and productivity. Inevitably, this also reduces opportunities, which results in lost revenue.
This, therefore, leads businesses to seek out and invest in the “best” marketing automation tool—one that will enable them to nurture inbound leads, qualify them with lead intelligence, and efficiently add them into the CRM system. After working alongside an implementation partner and setting up the chosen tool, businesses are able to dissolve lead generation issues.
As they continue to scale, businesses adopt inventory management tools to manage products and send more accurate quotes to customers. This makes it easier to fulfill orders and ensures products are automatically removed from the inventory when necessary.
With increasing customer bases, businesses then work with vendors who specialize in support desk implementation. They set up support systems that assure customer account traceability and help deliver good customer support. To provide the same level of support to their growing workforce, companies also implement human resource management system (HRMS) software.
At this point, as much as software adoption has increased, it’s still impossible to have a consolidated view of company data. This eventually leads back to where it all started: siloed data. Investing in a business intelligence (BI) tool seems to help consolidate data from various applications; however, the problem of training employees to use different UIs still persists. The businesses themselves also run on multiple integrations, and the total cost of ownership (TCO) to acquire and maintain these applications becomes very high. As part of this multi-vendor spiral, does it seem the owners of these businesses have achieved peace of mind?
Choosing a sustainable model: moving beyond ERP
A sustainable ecosystem of software allows you to break down multiple data silos and accommodates apps and services that speak to each other without the need for manual intervention. This model also cuts down cost in terms of individual product licensing and implementation. You can consolidate data from all your applications and predict growth, restoring balance to your business and tending to stakeholders that need immediate attention.
No, this isn’t about switching to ERPs but rather something beyond: an Operating System (OS) for business that sandwiches layers of apps, services, and experiences in one unified platform. The OS is entirely cloud-based, provides over 45 business applications, and caters even to the smallest of business needs. Plus, the user interface is unified across all applications, which improves training during onboarding and increases productivity. Its flexibility even functions at a BI layer that spans across all the applications. This gives you one consolidated dashboard and eliminates your need to manually accumulate multiple data sets. That’s Zoho One for you.
The path to peace of mind
For more impactful growth, you must have a strong vision and keep the TCO in mind. Gone are the days when you had to rely on implementation partners to set up apps and experience product updates that broke your integrations. Now you can focus on what matters most to you: your business. Align your goals with Zoho One and bring peace of mind to yourself and everyone in your business.
Designs by Vivek and Mohammed Adib
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