"A good software system? It’s vital,” says Beth Winters, business office manager at Sango Pool & Spa in Clarksville, Tenn. “I mean, in order for us to get all our jobs done in a timely manner, we have to be able to schedule service correctly, we have to keep track of inventory, all that stuff.”
For Mary Jeanne Stanton, who describes herself as a business partner in her son’s company, Kings Pool & Spa in Manassas, Va., the benefit of a software system is tied closely to the realities of company turnover (more on this later). After years of handling the bookkeeping duties, she helped transition the company to a more efficient and automated system.
These days, business software is more than just a solution to your business’s outdated methods. It’s the difference between treading water and swimming with the current. With a good software system, you can leave more time for what’s important — the relationships you build with your customers.
There comes a time for many businesses when a change is needed, whether that means switching software systems or adopting new software entirely. This can be intimidating; even the best software can fail if the team doesn’t buy in. But with time, patience, and the following strategies, the transition doesn’t have to be so daunting.
FIND YOUR SORE SPOTS
The only way anyone can approach change is to identify the issues within their status quo. Stanton and Winters first had to figure out exactly what wasn’t working in their respective business models.
For years, Stanton ran the business “the old-fashioned way,” on spreadsheets. From payroll to sales to taxes, she created a system of her own. However, training someone on a system that works for you doesn’t always make for the easiest transition.
“Part of my role in all of this is to figure out what’s working for the business and what isn’t,” she says. “We were so paper heavy, so we looked for ways to get away from that.” After introducing iPads in the field for their service techs, Stanton quickly realized there was a larger need for an industry-specific solution to make business operations more efficient.
Even deeper than the need for modernization, Stanton says, automation is becoming increasingly important for the future of the company. “As I back out in the coming years, I need to make sure the people to whom these tasks are being delegated can implement it, and we can be confident it’s going to work.”
Thinking about the future — both in terms of employees leaving the company and others entering it — helped root out the major sore points for Stanton’s team. In some ways, greater technology helps grow the hiring pool. “When I’m looking to hire someone, I’m just looking for someone who’s a good face to a customer, because I can teach them the other stuff,” she explains. “It’s not rocket science anymore. In the past, I needed somebody who was good to answer a phone call, and also that could navigate Excel. Now, I can focus on what the important parts of each role are.”
For Winters and Sango Pool & Spa, their problems presented more clearly within their everyday work, highlighting gaps that could be filled with different software than they were already using. Funnily enough, this led them back to a previous system.
“Our inventory started getting messed up,” she says. “Overall, it made us look inept to our customers. We wanted to get back to a level of efficiency we’d had with a previous provider.”
THE BALANCING BEAM
In many ways, identifying the issues with a current system is the easiest part of a software transition. From getting the team on board, to learning the ins and outs of a new system, to balancing the training with everyday operations, the process can feel long.
Even though Winters was going back to a previous provider, the transition still came with its own hiccups. Not every employee was familiar with the system, she says, because some had been hired after the company had already transitioned away from it. And while the move back to an old system felt familiar for part of the team, it posed a new challenge to others. “It had also switched a bit since we last used it,” she explains, “so there was a lot of hesitation as far as learning new software, especially with the register and retail parts of it. But once we got down to it and made the transition happen, our team liked it. It’s always that first step — the idea that change is different, change is bad — that you have to get past.”
Since the team at Kings Pool & Spa is so small — Dan King, the owner; Eileen Giovia, the store manager; and service techs in the field — Stanton emphasizes the importance of open communication when pursuing a new software system. With a smaller group, it was marginally easier to set out on their mission to find a software solution that worked for every aspect of the company. This way, the transition felt like a full team effort.
“We talked about what wasn’t working,” Stanton says. “You know, where do we spend a lot of time? And then the other pulse point was, where is there a human involved where it doesn’t have to be? Where are you typing in a number or an address, or when is the crew writing something down? We thought, ‘show me all the human interfaces first and then we’ll figure out how to minimize the risk of error at each of those things.’”
Since Winters and her team had the advantage of being somewhat familiar with the software they were transitioning to, the process went smoothly. “Sammy and I set it all up,” she explains, referring to Sango’s operations manager. “We put all the inventory in and walked everybody through it. We didn’t give them much of a choice,” she laughs, “because we needed to get comfortable with the new system.”
In hindsight, Winters says, the training process was relatively quick, and most of the team was comfortable with the new software within a few days. “Once everyone learned the basics of what they needed the system for, they were good. Nobody goes further than the cash register and scheduling service calls other than management, so it was pretty easy to train our team on it.”
The team at Kings Pool & Spa represents a different side, although one just as authentic, of software transitions. For them, the process required careful preparation and thorough training.
After choosing a software system that seemed promising, Stanton and the team got to work and set up training sessions with the software provider. “Part of their job is to help me be successful with their program,” she says. “So we used the resources they provide.”
Outside of the provider, Stanton cites their store manager, Eileen Giovia, as the company’s internal champion during the transition. “Since Eileen is our boots-on-the-ground person in the store all the time, we put her as a point of contact during the transition. We’d try to funnel things through her, so when we ran into any issues, we could ask her or have her reach out to the software company.”
If possible, Stanton recommends keeping one consistent line of communication between the provider and your company, as it fosters a stronger relationship between both parties.
Another strategy Stanton’s team used was creating internal “how-to” sheets that could be passed around when needed. Similar to translating a language, they found that writing their own cheat sheets was invaluable to the overall transition. “How do you know you’re good at something? When you can teach it to someone else,” she says.
“Some of this is timing, too,” she explains. “In Northern Virginia, we have distinct opening and closing seasons, which are especially busy for us. For this reason, we try to time any transitions within the company in the less busy months.” Sometimes, this might only allow enough time to train the team on the basics, but it gets the ball rolling, only to be picked back up when the busy season inevitably shifts into the off season.
“It’s always like, ‘Oh, we’ll take care of whatever that task is during our off season,’” she laughs. “It never happens as soon as you want it to. I guess the little bit of advantage we had was that we didn’t have crews coming in or customers calling us during the off season, so we got to play and practice a lot. We got the chance to learn the system, or at least understand the basics, before we had to get back to the real test, which was the busy season. We’d stagger our training plan based on how busy we are, so we could take advantage of the fact that we’re not 24/7/365. Then, after learning the basics, we were eventually able to expand into more of a, ‘isn’t this cool, we can also do’ type of thing. That’s the phase we’re in now.”
Similarly, Winters credits a specific time period that helped their team move the transition along: an overlap in software systems. Rather than cutting ties with their previous system and jumping into the next one right away, they allowed themselves a two-month period where they could ensure nothing got dropped during the transition from one system to the next.
“Having that overlap really helped take the pressure off,” she says. “If something did happen and someone got confused, they still had the other system to fall back on.”
ASK AROUND
One major theme kept coming up in Stanton’s recollection of her team’s software transition: asking for help when it was needed. But this went further back than calling the helpline for their software provider. Even deciding which software system to pursue was a community effort.
“The pool and spa industry in our area is pretty cooperative,” says Stanton. “We’re not cutthroat with each other — our competitors are also our allies. Because of that, we’re able to ask, ‘Well, who’s so-and-so using? Who’s this person using?’”
She’s also honest about the process of completing trial runs with a few different solutions before finding the right system for her team. “Everyone’s going to tell you that they can give you the world. You just have to find the solution that best supports your company’s situation.”
Including key members of her team in every step of the process made for a more productive experience, she says, and helped ensure they settled on the best possible choice. “And at the end of the day, it’s all about building relationships. I need a relationship with that software provider, and I need them to understand our needs, because every business does things differently.”
A good reminder to companies looking for their best fit — leverage the knowledge they have of their company’s inner workings and use it as a benchmark for what their software system needs to accomplish. The right software system for your business is out there. You just have to take the time and effort to find it.
“Make sure that whatever system you choose has a great support team,” Winters says, when asked to give advice to other companies who may be nervous about attempting a software transition. “It really does make a world of difference. You want your support team to be responsive, because your business can’t wait hours or days for an answer to a question. That was a big selling point for us.”
“Try it out!” Stanton says to the same question. “It’s going to be hard work and you’re going to have a transition time, and it may not work right out of the box, but give yourself time to do the demos and complete some trial and error if you need. Most of all, engage your employees, because they’re the ones that are going to have to use it.”
A big transition like this doesn’t come without speed bumps along the way, but it doesn’t have to be painful, as Stanton and Winters show through their experiences. A strong team behind you can make all the difference, changing your company’s future for the better.
