The world has changed, how do you adapt your business?

The last 18 months have seen major shifts in the way we all conduct businesses across the whole business process chain.

No matter the industry, business sector or market that you work within, we are all having to find ways to adapt our businesses to the changes, often struggling to manage remote workers, data access and control, all compounded by general staff shortages through illness and lockdowns.

All of these enforced changes have had a considerable impact to our business decisions, performance and reliability as well as our ability to deliver effective services and solutions to our customers.

In many medium size business that have recently grown, we are finding that parts of the business are totally reliant on key personnel who have developed or grown with the business and carry a lot of business critical knowledge in their head. In normal times this can be acceptable, but the risk to the business should that individual become unavailable through illness, or worse, is huge and potentially threatening the growth or survivability of the business during these times.

Similarly many businesses still relay on excel spreadsheets for their management reporting. This requires time and effort to produce and often requires the collation of several reports or data sources.

Compass Data passionately believe that all business can benefit from accessing all their information in real time without any processing delay. What difference would it make to you if information was available at any time as required? What if you had a centralised repository of business critical information all in one place? Think of how this would improve your decision making and business control, not mention cashflow, HR and purchasing decisions.

‘So what?’ You say, ‘what I have works for me’. Well I’m sure it does and may continue to do so for a while, however as the business grows it is ultimately unsustainable and will hamper your business growth.

How does your excel based approach handle remote working from home?

Now its pretty obvious that the answer to this is a computer based system but which one? There are a plethora available all offering different parts of the puzzle, some more complete than others but all with a price tag and it’s definitely a case of ‘you get what you pay for’.

At one end of the spectrum there are off the shelf apps which can provide you with functionality for just one aspect of the business, but then you need several disparate systems which don’t talk to each other, or you can go the other way and spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on a totally bespoke platform from Oracle / NetSuite etc which will do everything you need but requires a team of people to configure and maintain it.

Wouldn’t it be nice if there was something that provided everything your business needs that is completely customisable, easy to use and a fraction of the cost which also allow your business to adapt?

How do I adapt my business?

There is – it’s called a custom software solution where the developer designs and implements a bespoke business system built around your company workflow processes that perfectly match your requirements.

Here at Compass Data Solutions, we use several different methods to develop such systems, one of them utilising the development platform Filemaker from Claris Inc.

FileMaker is a workplace innovation platform that allows Compass to develop a bespoke custom solution to meet your exacting business requirements. Whether that’s a stock control system or a more complex business management system, quickly and cost effectively. What’s more, as you can start small and grow, nothing is ever wasted.

If you want to start with a simple CRM solution you can develop it over time by adding purchasing, sales management, stock and logistics, from small acorns and all that.

Are you ready to adapt your business?