3 signs you need an off-the-shelf web app not a customised one

Solving your system pain points with digital tools doesn’t have to involve large budgets. Sometimes an off-the-shelf web app (cloud software you’ve subscribed to) will suffice.

Over many years, we’ve learnt a lot about simple solutions to process and system problems for small and medium sized, human centred organisations (organisations that put the humans at the centre of their organisation) . Often that involves building a customised web app but that’s not usually where we start, as it’s a lot more resource intensive. Our typical approach to optimising is almost always to start with off-the-shelf apps. Do some experiments, gather some data, understand the processes better first. If we were working with you, that’s certainly where we would start whether the problems were simple or complex. We’ll look to understand:

• What’s causing pain?

• What’s in place already? Can it be tweaked to solve that problem?

• Are there simple changes that can be made to your culture, processes or systems that could reduce the pain?

• Could an automation between web apps help?

If it turns out that you do need a custom web app, solving these problems first, helps to narrow down the scope of the work so you’re not trying to solve everything at once.

Now, if you’re having a go at this yourself, here’s a few common problems (and potential solutions) to look out for:

Problem #1 - Manual data entry

Struggling with manual data entry doesn’t necessarily mean you need to build something from scratch. You may need a few simple automations. Here’s one example where manual data entry can be solved.

Painful process

1. A lead fills out a form on your website.

2. An automated email arrives in your inbox with the information

3. You manually take that information and add it to a number of spreadsheets (if you remember!).

Solution

1. Signup to an automation tool like Zapier, Make or Pipedream

2. Plug the tool in to your form

3. Setup an action step to automatically add that information to your spreadsheet

4. Switch off the alert to your inbox

Easy.

Benefits

• Productivity: Your key information is getting to the right place automatically

• Peace of mind: Your inbox is quieter

• Scalability: You’ve setup some powerful infrastructure which will:

  • Make future improvements far easier. Need an alert to your Slack team? Want to send a customised email? Add their details to your CRM or finance software? These are all very simple to add to that existing automation.

  • Make process improvements easier. You no longer need to remember what parts of the process you changed, anytime you tweak the workflow, it’ll happen automatically next time and exactly how you wanted it to!

Problem #2 - Inbox overload / Emails are tasks

Perhaps you keep a long list of emails in your inbox. You think of each one as a task that needs to be completed so it can’t be archived until you’ve resolved it.

Painful process

1. New email sounds important.

2. Keep it in your inbox by starring or marking unread

3. Long list of emails becomes overwhelming and hard to prioritise

Solution

1. Plug in a project management tool to your inbox (we use Google Workspace for email and currently a mix of Trello, Asana and Notion for project management)

2. Setup the project management tool with a Kanban structure (ie. lists named something like backlog, nextup, doing, done)

3. Use the new integration to save important emails to your preferred tool’s Nextup list.

4. Organise and prioritise:

   1. assign someone (if it’s team oriented)

   2. add a date

   3. add an estimated effort

   4. categorise by importance

5. Then setup a regular routine to complete those tasks. Ideally you’re building on an existing habit so it’s more likely to become part of your routine. Have a read of The Power of Habit to learn how to program your Basal Ganglia ;) If you know you’ll do the tasks when they’re prioritised, you’re more likely to keep using this new system and process.

Benefits

1. Peace of mind. You can worry less about missing important emails or dropping the ball.

2. Productivity. You’ve done the smallest amount of work to triage your pain point, this will allow you to focus on the most important work first.

3. Impact. If you’re not bogged down in emails and data entry, there’s a better chance you’ll be able to do the work you want to be doing!

Problem #3 - Losing track of sales conversations

Many organisations we’ve worked with have some kind of spreadsheet (or Airtable) process for capturing leads and their current status. Unfortunately spreadsheets aren’t great at storing relational data (and Airtable isn’t great at presenting all the connected information in one place):

• which client is this lead for?

• what contact/s represent this client?

• what tasks have been actioned?

• when was the last conversation and what was it about?

You might try storing all of that information on one tab of a spreadsheet, or multiple tabs with fragile formula’s but it soon gets hard to control. The types of Wacky organisations we tend to work with, want their information to be easily accessible and usable for most people in the organisation, and spreadsheets aren’t good at that (they might be accessible but they tend to be hard to work with, unless you’re a spreadsheet genius and have all the context on how that particular sheet works)

Painful process

1. A new lead emails you

2. You reply to the email asking some typical questions and then you book in a call, which requires more emails

3. You add the time to your calendar

4. You (hopefully) type up some details in your spreadsheet, and hopefully everyone else in the team knows where that spreadsheet is and can view it, when you’re sick.

5. If your organisation has multiple people managing your lead pipeline, hopefully they’re all updating that spreadsheet and not accidentally changing the wrong things.

Solution

1. Setup a contact form (same as in 1. above) connected to an automation to collect consistent information and to ask the questions you always ask manually (or make the form an internal one that one of you or your team fill out).

2. Now when you reply, include a link to your calendar app (we’re enjoying Calendly but youcanbook is good too), giving available times they can book straight away (or you could make the contact form really simple and add more questions to a specific booking setup in the calendar app)

3. Setup a CRM (Pipedrive is the favourite of many of our clients) and choose a pricing level:

   1. If you’ve got the funds and it’s important enough to you, pay for the version that automatically sucks in all your relevant emails straight to the CRM, then you can be sure you’ve got all relevant comms with no extra effort.

   2. If you’re keeping a tight ship and/or it’s not quite as important to see every email, choose a lighter price and then make sure you forward key emails to the CRM.

4. Plug the automation tool into the CRM and set it up to add these new connected items each time (in this order):

   1. organisation

   2. contact at that organisation

   3. lead/deal/prospect (or whatever you like to call it)

5. Now, when you’re dealing with new leads, take notes in that CRM when you’re on calls with them and you’ll now have all key emails and phone calls recorded in one place.

Benefits

1. Peace of mind: This process no longer lives in one or more heads

2. Cost: Sure, there are extra monthly costs now but how many dropped leads do you have to win (because you didn’t have a good system), to make it worthwhile…? I’m guessing not many!

3. Collaboration:

   1. It’s far easier for different people to jump in to the process if they can find the context easily. Making scaling simpler, building in redundancy easier

   2. Increases transparency in your systems - which empowers self-management

4. Risk: Less chance a key opportunity will get lost in someone’s inbox

5. Productivity: Instead of spending your time collecting and administering this information, you’re now able to glean more useful insights and/or do something else altogether!

6. Enjoyment (!): If you’ve got the budget, using a CRM is a far more enjoyable experience as that particular company has spent millions of dollars making it as usable as possible. In Pipedrive’s case (and Copper too) it does one job really well. With some CRM’s (eg. Hubspot) they’re often trying to solve every sales and marketing problem, which makes the tool a lot more complicated to learn, and more expensive (though they might catch you with a free offer to start with…)

In summary,

• You can make your working life easier with a few off the shelf tools setup right.

• A lot can be achieved without building a customised web app.

• Even if you do need something custom, starting with what you’ve got is best.