Over the holidays, my daughter, Emily, decided to attend a local
production of the Nutcracker ballet with her boyfriend, Pablo. She
forwarded me the link to purchase tickets and I started clicking away on
my computer.
The first link took me to a page that was difficult to navigate.
It was four or five more clicks before I actually got to the page where
I could buy the tickets. I put in my credit card, chose the seats and
clicked “Buy.”
But when I forwarded the confirmation email to Emily, she told me I had bought tickets for the wrong date!
I called the local ballet school and explained that I had made a
mistake. Eventually, after much negotiation and resistance, they finally
allowed me to make a change, despite their “no refunds or exchanges”
policy! Ugh.
In the end, it was a lot of unnecessary work on everyone’s part,
all because the school’s system for selling tickets was too big and too
complex (and probably too expensive) for their needs. Not only
was it not helping them sell tickets, it kept them from easily
accommodating my simple request.
The right solution for the right problem.
I see this kind of problem frequently with my small business clients.
They are often looking for a “solution they can grow into.” Don’t get me
wrong, I’m all for planning. But implementing a solution that far
outpaces the current situation only makes things worse!
When I first started RocketGirl Solutions eight and a half years ago I had two clients. I used spiral notebooks to track my client work – one per client. This worked fine until I had six clients. Then it became unworkable.
When I added my 7th client I started to use Asana,
a simple project management tool that provides checklists. It was free
and could move easily out of my notebooks and into Asana. Now I could
also access my lists from an app on my phone (a big perk!).
When I reached twenty clients and the work became more complex, I went looking for the next solution: TeamWork
and moved all my work into the new system. I’ve been using it daily for
about six years and it has plenty of room for growth. In fact, it’s
easily able to accommodate my 55 clients with no end in sight.
Yes, it took eight and a half years to get here, but if I had tried to use TeamWork in the beginning, when I had 2,6, or even 10 clients, it would have been overwhelming.
When it comes to tech solutions for your business, look for what works
today and a little bit beyond. You can always ramp up as needed, but if
your solution doesn’t work right now, you’ll never get to that next
level!