How Many Apps Do You Use to Power Your Ops? Too Many. (Modern Office Series, Part 2)

There’s a hidden enemy lurking in your ops. 

It’s so subtle. So quiet. So seemingly smart, you won’t recognize it as an enemy but it’s in front of you every moment of your working day. 

It’s called app congestion. And it’s creating an unholy traffic jam in your ops. 

But the hidden cost .. is shocking 

The average small business uses over 100 different applications to run its operation. 

Think it hard to believe? Stop now and count in your head the systems you use: email, instant messaging, calculator apps, search tools, presentation tools, spreadsheets, word docs, sales orders, supplier websites, etc. Now, magnify that times the number of colleagues in your business (designers, accounting, sales, support). See what I mean? 

App congestion is the new traffic jam. One report by Pega revealed that by studying over 5 million hours of live desktop activity, employees switched between 35 job critical applications more than 1100 times a day. Pega dubbed it the “virtual swivel chair.”

Context switching -aggravated by app overload- is killing your creativity and slowing sales. Cal Newport called it attention residue: when you switch from one app or activity to another, your full attention doesn’t immediately follow, “a residue of your attention remains stuck thinking about the original task.” Context switching and app congestion is costing you and your team upwards of 80% of their productivity loss a day. That’s not efficiency, that’s insanity. 

In our industry it’s not just a problem, it’s a raging inferno that slows sales.

We already have a complex supply chain with a million products and a billion variables, add to it the complexity we create with too many bolt-on tools we use to run our business and you’ve got a Frankenstein system for your company’s engine: It moves slow, groans loudly, and requires lots and lots of oiling to make it work. 

But it’s not just hidden costs, actual COSTs are outrageous Too

As a consumer, consider how many apps and digital services you sign up for that once sounded cool but you’ve long since abandoned. I recently saw a recipe that I wanted from the NYTimes and thought, “it’s only $4.99 a month for the recipe app and I could use a recipe saving service, so why not?” 

And that’s how it happens. That small decision adds up to a behavior pattern that results in a lot of wasteful spending. The average consumer (ie, you and me) spends $237 a month on apps, games, digital newspaper and magazine subscriptions, meal services, entertainment, and more. How many times have you looked at your bank statement and thought: I’ve got to cancel that subscription. 

And this consumer behavior bleeds over into our business behavior. While the average consumer spends nearly $3,000 annually on these services, the average company wastes around $135,000 annually on software tools they don’t really need or tools they vastly underutilize.

The solution? Consolidate the number of tools that power your business. 

If you went through our exercise from our last post, you likely created a list of how many applications power your internal ops. As the leader of your org, it’s crucial that you give your team the best-in-class tools to do their job, but that you also don’t simultaneously burden them with so many tools that you’re inadvertently giving them a part-time job ... learning 20 different tools. 

So, the magic question to ask when you consider the software that powers your ops is: 

Will it simplify your world?

It seems every order today is problematic. Right now, the promotional products world is reeling from supply chain issues like out-of-stocks. As you already know (cause you’re living it every day) this causes unmitigated hell for you and your team as you scramble to salvage a sale (and a client). But stockouts are not just an industry problem, they’re a worldwide problem. According to Adobe’s Digital Economy Index, which analyzes 1 trillion visits to retail sites and over 100 million SKUs, stockout levels have recently elevated to over 4 times their pre-pandemic levels - and climbing. 

You can’t snap your fingers and fix stockouts but you can make the problem worse by creating congestion on top of congestion. Too many apps to solve problems adds fuel to the fire. The way you solve the congestion problem with your ops software is to consolidate all of the apps you use and simplify your world. (For a guide on how your ops system can help navigate stockout problems and other supply chain issues, check out our post on PromoStandards).

How to fix it: “Push it through.”

Three things people say they’re never ready for: kids, marriage, and taxes.

And maybe one more thing: consolidating (ie, changing) your internal ops software. It’s never the right time. Never the right season. Never the right moment. Why? Your business will never come to a screeching halt so that you can make all the big changes you want. (If it does, you’ve got bigger problems than dealing with software change).

What not to do: Sit through the problem with a system that’s “good enough.” As we wrote in our previous post, the economy is about to hit all-time highs. And if sales from your clients are surging and stock levels are plummeting, and you don’t have a simple system to handle it, order fatigue is going to be the game you play all-year-long. All the more reason why you should make your ops software changes now. Reduce the overwhelming number of tools you and your team use. Lighten your workload and unburden their work. 

I was talking with the owner of a  $20+MM distributor yesterday about their experience as a large organization implementing new software and when I asked him his advice to others about how to make a big change he said simply, forcefully, “you just have to push through.” 

You just have to do it. The good news? The number one comment we hear from customers is “it was m-u-c-h easier than we thought.” So, whatever changes you have to make, whoever you choose to simplify your ops software, make the change now.

Yes, we’re a tech company and we’re telling you not to buy too much tech, but we’re a tech company telling you this because we do so with confidence. (Our system consolidates all the systems that power your system into one sleek design). But that’s not why we’re writing this: We’re writing this because there is a confluence of events on the horizon for our industry and in our economy that are going to create unprecedented opportunities for some but exhausting situations for others. Because a torrential surge of business is coming your way and you must be both powerful enough, lithe enough, and fast enough to handle it.

Consolidate your ops.

Simplify your world.