SUCCEEDING
in Spite of Print Software’s Weaknesses
You purchased print software for your business; web-to-print, pre-press automation, Print MIS or maybe a CRM
application and after the sale you discover it doesn’t work as you thought it would. There is this critical time in
the life of a software solution where the culture of your organization is either going to look for ways to succeed in
spite of the issues or look for reasons why it won’t work.
This is so important.
Based on zero statistical studies and relying
on just my own experience; more than half of all
print software failures are due to the fact that
the print business’ culture is setup to find reasons
why software won’t work vs. finding ways
to succeed in spite of software’s inherent weaknesses.
This has nothing to do with the vendor.
This has nothing to do with the software. This is
something that is 100% in the printer’s control.
How do you know if you have the culture of
“ looking for reasons why it won’t work?”
There are obvious signs. Look for statements
like, this won’t work with our workflow, our
processes are unique, they don’t fit into the
way this software works. This won’t work. The
word “won’t” is a popular word to listen for. When print
businesses are looking for ways to succeed despite the
issues, they reach out to the vendor and say stuff like,
“this is how we do this today, it doesn’t seem to be ideal in
your software—how would you suggest we might change
our processes to better optimize
the software?” That is a real
statement from a real printer
about a real software product.
This printer is constantly
looking at how they might be
able to change in order to better
use the software solution. It is
refreshing to hear, and I’ll share
one other thing about that
printer – they have been consistently
growing 20%+ year over
year for many years. I think
there’s a correlation.
Software is tricky, especially
if you’re replacing a manual,
human driven process where
you literally have the option
of treating every situation differently
because humans can
do that. The biggest challenge
with software is that it forces
you to define a process. The
biggest advantage of software
is that it forces you to define a
process. Humans resist this; yet it is the path to consistent
execution and the ability to delegate repetitive tasks to
software, so humans can do what they do best and you
can profitably scale your business.
You (the leaders) can change your culture. When you are
faced with a “this won’t work…” comment, respond with
“how can we succeed in spite of this challenge?” What is
your proposed workaround to this challenge? You have to
direct your team to be solution focused rather than excuse
focused. If you buy into the fact that software has to work
exactly how you want it to work; you will spend a lot of
time waiting on software changes or a lot of money paying
for them.
Unless you have a truly differentiating workflow—you
have to be willing to change to optimize the tool for you.
Workflow processes are easier and less expensive to
change than software is. If you can mold your processes
to optimize your software tools—you will use less labor,
spend less on software, and be more efficient. I know this
sounds funny—you paid for the software; shouldn’t it be
flexible enough to work how you want it to? Ideally yes
but it is very difficult to build software that is both super
configurable and still easy to use. When software gets
too flexible/configurable it can be too complex so most
software vendors are balancing “ease-of-use” and configurability.
A print business’ ability to optimize software
tools is a great indicator of their ability to compete moving
forward. Software must become your largest labor force;
eating up all tasks that don’t require the unique skills of a
human.
By Jennifer Matt
Jennifer Matt has a passion for the
online world and how print software
can be leveraged to both differentiate
your print business and make it
more data-driven. Jennifer writes,
speaks, and consults with printers
worldwide who realize their ability
to leverage software is critical to
their success in the information age.
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