99 problems...and they're all apps

Running your business across multiple apps is detrimental to your operational improvement and performance.

Doing so adds needless complexity to your operations and if that’s not enough the costs - both seen and hidden - creep up on you, fast.

Having been in the wider industry for a long time it is interesting that we’re seeing traditionally ‘smart’ companies – those that have consistently thought and acted way ahead of their competitors - making the mistake of using a multitude of single purpose apps to drive their business.

Despite these companies being forward thinking enough to ditch archaic management structures and obsolete legacy information systems they have forgotten that you cannot short cut the all-important process development phase.

We know that enabling connectedness, collaboration and communication are keys to business success.

We also know that installing one single-purpose app after another can never replicate this and doing so will take your business nowhere, fast.

Except back to where you started, if you’re lucky. So what are the problems that businesses encounter when trying to take this shortcut?

Information is difficult to locate when people need it.

Information is often spread all over the place as people in the same team use different apps and tools to send, receive, edit and save documents.

Research shows that employees average nine hours per week locating reliable documents and information with the 2018 'State of Digital Workplace' report finding that 20% of employees have avoided or been unable to share a document with a colleague because it was difficult to find.

Visibility of who has access to information diminishes

Most of these apps allow employees to “attach” a document or file from an already uncontrolled file system or shared drive and share it. Anywhere.

A recent survey found that your information can be independently sitting in up to 20 different systems!

Confidence that the document you are working on is the right one is compromised.

The 2018 'State of Digital Workplace' report also reported that nearly 25% of all workers take 5-10 minutes to find the most-recent version of a required document.

The problem is that when multiple employees’ work on the same document it can be difficult to know which the most up to date version is. It is easy to understand a scenario where people are working from and making decisions based on defunct data and information.

Endless app chimes and notifications serve to distract teams from getting work done.

You know so I don’t think we need to elaborate on this one.

So let’s see where we have landed with single-purpose apps:

· We have chaotic results with information often spread all over the place.

· We have people in the same team using different apps and tools to send, receive, edit and save documents.

· We have a degree of disarray with no one on the same page (hence the need for all those endless meetings, emails and messages).

· We have research showing us that employees spend an average of nine hours per week locating reliable documents and information.

· Most importantly we have managers telling us that that none of these apps are solving real problems.

It is clear that, far from making life easier, these apps and tools are sowing confusion - doing little more than driving a lot activity for very little action.

If these apps, which aim to instill connectedness, communication, and collaboration in your business, worked why do we still have to attend so many meetings? Why do we still have to respond to so many emails? Why are we still always hunting for information?

It’s because they don’t enable us to work the way we expect them to.

The solution is straightforward:

A smart platform that’s brings work, people, and information together in one place. Where decisions can be made, document versions updated, tasks and workflows completed and monitored, and communication connected to each piece of work.

Sound like the perfect platform for today’s remote working environment? Sound like an environment in which your teams would thrive? Sound too good to be true? It’s not.

Learn about PIQNIC and how your can build a highly productive team, Download the eBook. 

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