Who should be making the decisions on systems in your business?

Have you ever tried to make the right decision in your business, only to come up short? One of the greatest skills a leader can have is the ability to make effective business decisions. Do you make all the decisions in your business or do you delegate some decision making to others? There is nothing wrong with delegating to others, but ultimately the buck should stop with you.

Sometimes engaging a consultant to guide you to the best course of action is the way. Making the wrong decisions could be very costly and prevent you from reaching your goals. Time and time again we come across clients who have made the wrong move, and to sort it out sometimes ends up costing them double than it should. There are many reasons why the wrong decisions come about in business. You can chalk it up to experience, but sometimes there are better ways to approach those important decisions to be made.

In our line of work, we service many businesses on integrations of systems to execute the processes within their business. Sometimes this can be as simple as implementing a customer database that integrates into the accounting platform they use. Other times it can be quite a complicated process that involves multiple applications that need to talk to each other.

There are many do's and don'ts when it comes to making decisions for your business, some of the don'ts we commonly come across include: 

- Delegating to an employee who has the least amount of responsibility in the business.
- Delegating to an employee who will not be primarily using the systems.
- Not doing research and going with the cheaper option, because well, it's cheaper.
- Waiting too long to make a decision, which can impact effective business operations.
- Key stakeholders not being involved in the decision-making process.

For us, as consultants, it is important that we get to talk to the right people in the first instance. Otherwise adopting systems can end up going round and round in circles, and perhaps result in your business not getting the right fit. Key stakeholders should be involved in the decision-making process, as well as those who will be using the systems. One such example we see is where the admin is put to task in choosing what systems to adopt for the engineers to use in the field when they aren't the ones using it or don't grasp what is exactly needed.

If you really value your business and understand the change that can come from implementing new systems, you need to ensure you or other key people are involved and driving the change. We like to attend on-site to get a better picture of who would be using the system and what their requirements are in a system. Once we have the bigger picture we are better equipped to sort your needs.

During implementation, we can provide training and support to help ensure the transition is as smooth as possible. We also encourage that your staff be guided and communicated to through the changes and that you ensure they are all on board and ready to adapt.

There's a better way to do business.

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