Your business is never too small to use software

Something I hear often from starting out or very new service business owners is that “we are too small to use software”. The gentle response I have for these companies is as follows, “Are you too small to save time and cost?”, “Are you too small to maximize profits?”, “Are you too small to offer the best service you can?”, “Are you too small to focus on your customers and their needs?”.

The answer to these very direct questions is almost always a resounding “no”. And the reason why it is no is that every business owner understands the core of the business, that is the generation of profit, and every business owner wants to provide a fantastic service to their customers and be a successful, and thriving company. And all business owners know first-hand, just how much hard work is involved, in taking their idea and making it a reality.

If there is one point I could put my finger on when it comes to starting a service business, it is this, the beginning is painful, it’s tough, it’s rewarding, the cards are stacked against you and you need every bit of help you can get if you are going to make it a success. The beginning of a service company is not unlike the birth of a child, those first years are crucial to establishing success in the child-rearing endeavour, and the starting business is as every bit delicate as a new born child.

The team at Kreloses understands these points as intimately as any other service business. Looking back to our early days, like many other service businesses we were running heavily on manual process and a mixture of disconnected software systems. We had one system for our invoicing and sales reporting, we used a bunch of customized excel spreadsheets for tracking our subscriptions, customer feedback was mostly in people’s heads, jotted on paper and cell phone memos. We had expenses tracked in an accounting package, and the list went on.

Now running through the obvious problems here, that is, the time spent needing to learn each of these spreadsheets and systems, managing the computers running them, needing to purchase pricey accounting services just to perform basic functions like invoicing and expense tracking, the inability to easily relate sales to customer records, feedback to communications, reconciling multiple google calendars to figure out appointments, following up customers for payment, the list really goes on.

All of those before mentioned things cost us time and money, time and money that would have been much better spent on building a better product and providing a better service to our customers. This really is the crux of the problem, a starting business more than any other stage of a company has limited resources, and anything that eats those precious resources up, is going to pull you away from focusing on the delivery of a great service, a service which is going to drive customers to your door and profits to your pockets.

Now interestingly, it was over a strategy team lunch (a nice cafe named the Fifth Palette, in case you are also a big hash brown fan) that we solved this problem, not just for us, but for our customers. A member of the Kreloses team made a suggestion. They suggested, why don’t we expand Kreloses beyond its basic functions and start bringing in all the features that a service business would need, and further, why don’t we then use Kreloses to run the Kreloses business. That is to say in some circles to “eat your own dog food”, or in our case, I prefer “eat your own cat food”. And that is exactly what we did.

We worked with our customers to better understand their service business needs, and we worked internally, shifting our business processes to Kreloses, and to this day we use Kreloses to run the majority of our Kreloses business today (with the objective of moving entirely by this year). Kreloses is committed to a strategy of consolidating all service business functions into a single simple to use platform. Our customers are at the very centre point of driving these changes and we’re excited to see the kind of value growth we will be delivering as we serve more and more service business needs.

Having experienced the benefits ourselves internally within Kreloses, it’s great to know we are sharing the same value add from the platform as our customers do. This unique perspective allows us to stay fully customer focussed, and in the coming months and beyond we will be constantly and tirelessly committed to ensuring Kreloses works for our customers when they need it, how they need it, for their needs of today and the future.

As I’ve just shared with you, we at Kreloses know first-hand what it means to not have a quality software solution in place. Early business can benefit tremendously from using software, from driving down the cost to improving efficiency, through to full oversight of financial performance, all these things lead to more profit and less waste, leaving you to better focus your time and resource.

Before I finish up, there is one other response we hear from some starting businesses that I want to share with you, that is, that software is too expensive. Thankfully this isn’t the case anymore, modern cloud-based SAAS (software as a service) models mean companies can get started on software at a price point that’s never been so low. There are no long-term commitments, no purchasing of servers or specialized computers, and with low monthly pricing, there are no real capital constraints to be had. It really is a great time for services businesses to be in operation.

I encourage all starting service business owners whether they choose Kreloses or any other quality platform, to make the change and get on board with receiving the overwhelming benefits. Modern software platforms are a powerful tool to help you succeed in business, no matter what definition of success you may have. And like many things in life, and in business, there is no better time to start than now.