Ford or Chevy?

It’s a question that could instantly divide a room. Choosing sides seems to be built into us, but there are situations where choice of tools has a real impact. 

Are you going to buy into the DEWALT battery platform? Or are you going to go with Milwaukee or Makita? When those tools are how you make your money, the stakes are a little higher than just a free (or indeed incredibly expensive) badge to put on your key ring.

Picking a single battery platform makes sense. All your cordless tools can use the same batteries, you can have spare batteries charging using the same chargers, and you can buy new tools skin-only to save some cash. But that choice comes at a cost. 

Maybe you like the Milwaukee nailer, but you’re on the DeWalt platform. Do you use a worse tool, or do you start dealing with two different platforms? If you ever want to switch platforms, the cost can be steep indeed.

Buddy Punch lives in the software world where the tool options are effectively infinite and comparing functionality between tools is complex. There is software for almost any conceivable business need, and the lines between categories of tool are very porous. 

Your help desk does some of what your marketing tool does, the marketing tool sort of does what your CRM does, and the CRM might also take on some of your sales pipeline. Figuring out how many tools you need, what is worth paying for, and whether you’re getting full value from them can feel impossible. 

How is a small business working with limited resources meant to manage all of that? Let’s try making a plan.

Too many tools?

Early on, it’s easy to keep track of all your tools. You probably don’t have much to spend on them, and you’re also likely the person who’s setting them up. As the years go on though, new software tools seem to silently attach themselves to your business like subscription remoras.

Each tool can be individually helpful, but shifting between them and managing their various inputs and outputs creates extra work that should be accounted for.

In our research paper, “The Invisible Workplace Problem Stealing Hours,” more than half (52%) of the 500 operations leaders surveyed say they’re using too many tools, and 72%(!) estimate that they lose at least 5% of their weekly hours just to switching between platforms. The problem is real.

So step one is to just audit where you are right now. Which tools do you have, what do you use, and who owns them? A simple spreadsheet might be all you need to keep track of it all.

Upgrading tools can make people much more efficient, but changing tools can be time-consuming, both for administrators and end users (who might be your employees, customers, or suppliers). 

Once you have completed a tool audit, you’ll have a baseline to work from. That way, when a team member comes to you with a request for a new tool or a complaint about the systems they’re already using, you can have a consistent and informed approach to responding. 

Managing the business tool stack

There are two things every business needs in order to manage their tools. An API-driven database and a massively complex RFP process… we’re kidding, of course. For most businesses, what is really needed to make a tool stack manageable is some self-awareness — and a way to know what’s not working.

Self-awareness in business means understanding your business, knowing what you need to do your work, and vitally, knowing why it is needed. We’re all vulnerable to wanting to buy “the best” of any product, scouring the internet for reviews, but someone else’s idea of “best” might not apply at all to your specific situation.

When you’re choosing a battery platform to invest in, you know the type of work you tend to do. You’ll have an idea of which category of tools you’re likely to need most and which brand has the best versions of those tools. Nobody else can tell you the answer. The same applies to your time tracking software, your help desk, and your asset tracking platform. 

Avoid the temptation to buy more than you need. Pick something that solves the problem you have right now, not the problem you might have some time down the road if everything goes according to plan.

There’s no benefit to taking on unnecessary complexity and cost before you need them. Leave that to the mega companies who have no other choice. As you grow, you will hit some pain points, and that’s when you need the second part of this process.

Knowing what’s not working when a tool is annoying, or limited, or too expensive — whenever there is a pain point, you need some way to keep track of it. Where should it go, and who is responsible for recording it? Make a plan, even if that’s a simple shared Google Doc. If it’s not recorded, it’s just a passing complaint, and nobody should expect any action on it.

Signs that there is an issue with one of your tools might include:

• People making their own workarounds for software limitations by using an external tool like a spreadsheet or messaging tools.
• Account managers telling you that you’re not using features in the tools you pay for.
• Repeated complaints from multiple people about the same issue.

Give people a home for those complaints, and encourage them to notice the pain, not just work around it. 

As that list of issues develops, you might start sensing the approach of that most delicious of software temptations, “Let’s burn it all down!” The desire to just throw away all that messy lived-in software and start over is strong, but it’s rarely worth the effort or cost.

In “5 Hidden Causes of Workplace Slowdowns, And How to Fix Them,” 58% of respondents cite frequent changes in direction or priorities as a leading cause of workflow breakdowns, so moving too quickly to a new system could actively make things worse.

Instead, look for opportunities to tweak and improve. Your existing tools might already have features you’re not using. Talk to their support team or your account manager and share your challenges. Let them tell you how to make it better.

See if you can add integrations to connect your tools with others that might solve an issue without a whole new platform. Real-world switching costs include the risks of data loss, new training time, and lost productivity in addition to the direct financial impact, so you don’t need to rush into it. 

You might find that a new tool is indeed the answer, but if you’ve worked through a process first, you can be more confident that the move is going to pay off for your whole business. 

The battery is never the point

It doesn’t matter if you’re into Ford, or Apple, or DEWALT. They’re all just tools. Even a 54 V behemoth of a battery can’t actually build anything for you. The battery is only there to make doing the work a bit easier. 

So first keep your attention on delivering value for your customers, and then judge your tools by their contribution to those efforts. Spend some time and effort to understand what you need from them, and identify where and when you need to make a thoughtful change. Tools can’t do the work, but the wrong tool stack can definitely make it harder than it needs to be.