Is it all systems go for you? Companies often invest heavily in systems, but how often do they deliver everything you need?

Systems can take ages to produce, even longer to implement and then instead of “Eureka”, it’s a case of “How on earth do you do …”, or “This is just too complicated, why can’t we go back to the way we did things before?” Or “We’ll do this if we have to, but I will carry on with the old way of doing it as well.”

You might be surprised to learn that this is a really common problem. We’re often meeting companies of all shapes and sizes who tell us they are only getting half the expected benefits from their ‘complicated’ software or, worse still, are not using it at all. “What a waste of money that was…” they say.

Our research has shown that the most common cause for the lack of return is actually because employees are not being trained fully in how to use it. Moreover, they are not passing on the knowledge they have gained to all the users. Instead the temptation is simply to blame the software. After all, we all like something or someone to blame, don’t we?

But for any program or system to work, all staff that use it will need straight-forward and effective training. Not just a quick ‘sheep dip’ session or training for one person who left the business ages ago, but relevant and engaging sessions, train the trainer sessions and something for new starters. So if your system is not giving you what you expected, maybe it isn’t the software’s fault after all.

That’s not to say there aren’t bad systems out there. Of course, there are, that’s a given. There are also some that are better than others. All we are saying is that sometimes we have to look closer to home to see whether we are realising the full operational and financial benefits from our initial investment.

For example, whilst working recently with three national, consumer-facing businesses (serving millions of customers across the UK), we discovered two were under-utilising tools for effective rostering of the workforce, and a third a stock management system. In each case we speedily gained an understanding of what the client had bought and its full functionality – and also what they initially wanted to achieve. In all cases, it turned out that the right things were bought; they just weren’t being used properly.

We developed new processes for the businesses so they could reap the benefits of their investments, and then developed training and coaching sessions for their teams, which our experienced trainers ran. By highlighting simple steps for the users, we brought the systems to life – and quickly realised cash benefits many times greater than the investment in the training.

So if you are currently feeling hacked off about your software purchase, give Mobius a call. You never know, you might have bought a better system than you think.