Plants need bees to pollinate. Bees need plants so they can make honey. How does this relate to business technology? It’s about symbiosis.
The software, programs or apps operate individually, but if you ensure they’re compatible, they work symbiotically and add efficiency and value to your company.
After all, compatibility and integration of data systems has been one of the biggest changes to business management technology systems in the last 10 years, and even more so since the advent of the cloud.
The term “technology stack” means all the software that you use to run your business.
Compatibility and efficiency of software should be the first thing you consider when deciding on software for your technology stack.
Essentially, does X work with Y? Chief information and chief technology officers complain that in businesses, the chief financial or executive officers decide on a program or app because it performs particular functions, but they forget to look at how well the software integrates with what the business is already using.
Simon Chesson, accountant and business advisor for AustAsia says a challenge for business, particularly on the small side, is seeing the wood from the trees.
“As a self-employed business owner, people don’t have much cash flow and they look at the cost and say; ‘I don’t want to pay $50 a month and a few hundred bucks to set this up’. They forget to look at things from a value perspective,” he says.
“They forget that if I’m spending three days a month in paperwork, I’m not out talking to customers. How many more customers could they get if they did that? They could spend the extra time working out ‘What other business and what other services can I provide my clients and my customer base?’.
“That’s the biggest thing I’ve seen as a challenge and why there’s not more take-up on this.” he says.
Chesson is seeing a change between old school and new school in business. Quite rightly, old school believes you need to be on top of everything, but sometimes this stretches to every piece of individual data. The new school says ‘look, in five minutes I can pull you off a report of everything that you did last week, and you can analyse it’.
He believes people are still getting used to the technology, some are a bit scared, some are worried about losing control.
“But when we’ve implemented it (a technology stack) for people they say it’s fantastic and why didn’t we do it years ago.”
