Managing a business using reports is like driving a car while looking in the rear view mirror. We can only see where we’ve been. What’s happened in the past is only interesting to historians. For the rest of us, where we’re going should be the only thing that counts.
Strong statements – Yes. Counter intuitive – if you think so. Logical? – read on.
We’ve always avoided printed reports. There are all sorts of reasons, but the truth is we don’t believe reports are the way to manage a business.
We’re committed to providing “best practice operations management” and in our view that’s all about planning, acting and reviewing. Planning what we want to do in series of objectives, scheduling tasks within the plans, and reviewing progress against the plan.
Front Office Box organizes the plans in context – companies, people, dates and assignments – and presents the relevant information our users need to find, where they need to find it. This way, managing a business is like driving with a Sat-Nav. It’s real time management – not rear view mirror management.
Of course some users still think they want reports – that’s the way the software industry has educated them, albeit based on 50 year old technology.
We could put reports in – who did what when? who hasn’t been contacted since? who hasn’t delivered? But there’s a cost to that. Building a reporting tool to meet everybody’s perceived need would add to development and maintenance cost. More importantly, it would add to complexity. Users would have to learn the reporting tool, figure which reports they need and how often, then read them.
All of this is a waste.
If they want to know progress against their plan FOB just does that, everywhere, and in context.
If they don’t have plans, and just want activity reports, they’re using the wrong software.
salesforce.com and a bunch of other “CRM” systems out there do a good job of recording and reporting what’s happened.
Our view is “failing to plan = planning to fail”. We really don’t want to encourage that.
So, if you want activity reports, and “not contacted since” reports, please go to salesforce.com.
They’re operating in the last century too.
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