Your company is a software company
The sooner you realise that, the better.
Throughout my working life I have seen a number of companies that see themselves as providing a service. That service is undoubtedly driven by computing technology. However as the product isn’t directly a piece of software, the company do not see themselves as a software company.
This is how things go wrong, and businesses do not succeed.
I use this term loosely of course as your business may succeed without any kind of formal identification, and indeed your ‘software company’ may fail. However I am referring to a mindset that needs to exist at the top of your company hierarchy that will put the business in the best mindset to succeed. The opposite of that mindset is this:
‘It is cheaper to invest in other teams instead of my software team — that will drive my business forward quicker’
It is to an extent indubitable that those who invest in their other teams will see changes quicker, for example expanding a support or customer service team will see a more satisfied customer quicker than expanding a development team. However the only real value this provides to a business is it’s perceived value, not its monetary value.
Let’s imagine this scenario. My business provides an around the world travel package. As a result of this, people are often ringing with queries about their trip, attempting to change their passport details, reporting mistypes and so forth. The workload is becoming too much for my customer service team as my company gains more exposure and as a result I decide to hire 5 new customer service representatives. Seems more than reasonable, right?
Now consider this, my business is a relatively new business, and as a result I do not have a fancy self-expanding budget. My board require that I apply for extra funding — the only requirement for that funding is that I explain what it is for, not what I will spend the money on. I am trusted as a manager to make the best decisions to resolve a situation, I only need board approval to spend a lot of money.
In the short term, the problem will go away. No more queues when customers are ringing my company up for help. Brilliant right? — That is, until in 4 months time, when the same thing is happening again.
Instead of reacting to these problems, companies need to be proactive, think of their customers and measure them against their long term goals and their realistic plans. Being honest, I could have identified this problem 4 months before it was at a point that I needed to hire new people. And if I identify as a software company then I can fix it in the correct way.
If I spend the same (or less, arguably) amount of money on my software team, this will enable new features to the booking system that my users bring in. Perhaps my new system just allows them to amend their passport details up to 5 days before their first flight, something relatively straight forward. I used my foresight and planning to expect that this will reduce 25% of my phone calls, as by allowing changes, I have also stopped the phone calls for mistypes too. Brilliant!
By doing this, I have added a new asset to my software team. Now the work to fix 25% of the phone calls in may have taken 2 months instead of being relatively instant. However because we started proactively, the situation never got as bad as it did in the original scenario, It won’t happen again in 4 months time, and if we identify that the company is growing again then we still have the resource to make future changes. Oh, and this new system is all owned by my company, which means that the valuation of the company has gone up, as well as maintaining our great customer service records.
Added on top of all of this upside I now have scope to drive my business forward by adding additional new features with the new asset in my team, instead of having new customer support personnel who are boxed to only work on their one section of the business. I can now improve the flight manifests, great! And best of all, I don’t need to go to the board to get money for my new project.
Of-course, the scenario that I’m explaining isn’t just fixed by accepting that you are a software company, but I am talking about giving yourself some of the assets and strategies that software companies use daily.
Investing in the software side of your business should not just increase your companies value but help your company scale and grow as you become a leader in your respected market.
If you are just starting out, or looking to grow your business Green Shell Media are available to hire for projects, consultancy and coaching.
Thanks for reading!
