Can you move your business processes online and actually make everyone happier?

Whiteboards, clipboards, and Post-it notes can be the backbone of wonderful small businesses. Alan, Bettie, and Charlie are happy and productive. Until you hire your first employee, Zoe, who works remotely or from another office. Zoe cannot see or update these critical workflow tools.

So Zoe tries to help move your operations to online tools like Excel, Google Sheets, or Salesforce.

Yet, Alan, Bettie and Charlie continue to use whiteboards, clipboards, and Post-its. The offline world. This system worked for them.

They don't empathise with Zoe enough to change. And Zoe hasn't yet given them tools and workflow that is substantially better than what they already had.

The solution is not to merely replace old tools with new tools. Let's focus on our staff. How can we massively upgrade the lives of Alan, Bettie, Charlie, and Zoe at the same time? The benefits of the new operations and new tools must be substantially better than the old tools and processes.

Massively upgrading everyone

To help Zoe, we must also lift up Alan, Bettie, and Charlie. They were happy with their previous processes... but not that happy.

Bettie couldn't read Charlie's handwriting. Alan worked at the other end of the building from the central whiteboard. And the clipboards were often not where you first looked for them.

If you asked them, they'd all prefer to use the phone that's already in their pocket. Or to have an iPad on the wall that's always showing the latest status of operations.

They've been scanning QR codes since COVID broke out in 2020. Alan wonders why there isn't a QR code at each stage of operations, and on each piece of equipment. Scan the code with your phone, and immediately proceed with the work at that position or with that item.

Charlie could stop handwriting, and could start entering data with his voice. And Alan could communicate what he needs without waiting for daily meetings around the whiteboard.

And Zoe would be able to do their job remotely from the original worksite.

Great, you can see the benefits from massively upgrading everyone with an "always online" cloud solution. But can you find a platform that will work with your existing business processes? Or is it best to write bespoke software for your unique business?

Finding a cloud platform

If I owned your business I would try very hard to find an existing platform that let me run my business, whilst massively upgrading everyone. Bespoke new software may be expensive to write and to maintain.

If the core business operation to be upgraded was quoting, timekeeping, cost tracking, delivery, invoicing, and payments, then the platform I would investigate is Allio, at https://alliohq.com/.

It would also help me with safety incident tracking which is likely important in your business. Even if no one came to any harm, you want it to be very easy for staff to record that something bad might have happened. Then you can investigate and improve your operations to prevent it happening again.

What I like about Allio is their forms and workflow are heavily configurable. Alan, Bessie, and Charlie can continue to enter the same critical data. Zoe can wire up Allio to their own systems.

I like that Allio also provides QR codes to bring staff from the physical world into the online, cloud world.

Alternately, you could investigate Salesforce. By the time you've finished paying consultants to configure it, you might have benefited from your own solution. The UI for Salesforce might be great for Zoe, but I would be fearful that Alan, Bessie, and Charlie will not feel that their lives have improved at all.

Massively upgrading each job

Software doesn't always make everything better for everyone.

Alan, Bessie, and Charlie know how to run operations with their whiteboards, clipboards, and Post-its. If you give them software, it has to be better on day one. The software needs to be easy to find, and needs to continuously train your existing staff, and future staff, how to do the tasks.

For each job, the software needs to massively upgrade each staff member.

If staff currently go to a location to update a clipboard, and you're replacing the clipboard with an online form on their phones, then leave the clipboard in the same place. But put a huge QR code on the clipboard.

Out of habit, Alan goes to the clipboard to update the status of a shipment. The status sheet is gone, but the clipboard remains. He seems "Shipment status" and a QR code. After scanning the QR code, he's taken state to a page of WIP shipments. He updates their status; and puts his phone away.

Eventually, Alan stops going to the clipboard. He knows he can update the shipment status from his phone. Yet the transition from old process to new process was empathetic to staff, to the original jobs, and it massively upgraded everyone.

The decision to write custom software

Zoe discovered that you cannot force everyone to switch to the tools that work best for you. Zoe can only succeed if they massive upgrade everyone else, so that it is easier to switch to new operations than to keep doing things the old way.

Before you start trying to find online tools, such as Allio, Excel, or Salesforce, first start by imaging how you will massively upgrade each staff from their currently daily jobs.

Will Alan be thankful that we replaced their Shipment Status clipboard with a QR code and an online form?

Can Bettie get phone notifications about Shipment changes, that they could never get before?

Will Charlie figure out that they can dictate their status reports with their voice, rather than get angry that they can't do their job anymore because of fat fingers, or an old injury?

Does Zoe get the charts and reports they wanted, and integrations into other systems?

Can your customers be massively upgraded?

Can your vendors and partners be massively upgrade?

When you start with the nuances for each staff, and how you want to migrate everyone from their old processes to new processes, then you might decide to write custom bespoke web software. Software that massively upgrades everyone from where they are now, to where they'd like to be. If you upgrade everyone, then you've massively upgraded your business.

Can I start small?

Zoe can wait. They'll get everything they need, online, once we have finished upgrading Alan, Bettie, and Charlie.

We can choose to upgrade each one independently. We can choose to upgrade individual task or jobs.

Start small. Get wins. Get positive internal word of mouth buzzing.

Help Alan, and then Bettie and Charlie will be excited.

Finding someone to help write software

Whether you pick an existing platform like Salesforce or Allio, or you choose to write a new solution that is fantastic for everyone, you will find an external development partner or consultancy.

At Mocra, we help you and all your staff by creating software to migrate your existing business processes and massively upgrading everyone along the way.

We will care about Alan, and Bettie, and Charlie, and Zoe. We will care about your business, its history and future. We will care about your customers and your partners.

We will help you to help them.

We specialise in always-online web software. We use tools like Ruby on Rails and Jumpstart Pro to rapidly create delightful, yet secure, software.

Everyone will use your new software to do their jobs and they will be massively thankful. It will be a joy to continue working and making your business better.

As a first step, say hello via the contact form below, and then we'll organize to meet you, and hear the story of your business. Tell us about your team. Hopefully we can help you with new software and massively upgrade your business.