Software that matters to your business

Last week we started this exploration of the type of software that matters to you…specifically to you and your business. If you missed last week’s post, you can get caught up here. This week we continue the discussion by taking a look that the two types of businesses that typically win in marketplace competitions. You can decide if your business fits either of these descriptions and what actions you should take, if any.

There are two fundamental types of businesses that win in the marketplace.

The first type is uncommon. These are the businesses that have truly uncommon and innovative products that puts them ahead of their competition and usually they are first to market. These businesses produce tremendous competitive advantages because their product innovation is something that their competitors haven’t thought of yet or just have been slower getting to market.

The second type of business offers common products that you can also get from their competition. They might be in a volume strategy or some other operating strategy that produces the competitive advantages that they lack in their products and that puts them ahead of their competition. And, of course, you could have both an innovative product and operation too. Everyone else is doing some version of the same thing - using common practices to produce common results.

Software that matters to your business.

If all you have are common business practices - meaning, you aren’t concerned with how you operate your business and think that enterprise software by itself is sufficient, then you don’t need to continue reading - this post isn’t for you. If, however, you want to beat your competition and see your business practice innovations as the way to do that…keep reading.

As stated a few different times, enterprise software solutions typically offer the help for “common” business problems - or business problems that all businesses have in common. They offer solutions that solve a problem or meet a requirement that every business in their target market experiences - in one form or another. Frankly, most businesses fall into (or could) this category. But if you are competing on how you run your business - by innovating throughout your operations - that isn’t generally handled solely by enterprise software that you can buy off-the-shelf.

The case for custom software.

Custom software is relevant for businesses that use their operations as competitive differentiators. It could be how you deliver your product or service, the pricing strategy you have, the supply chain practices, the manufacturing processes, the sales process, the customer care practices, or some combination of capabilities - the possibilities are almost endless. The reason for this is the number of different ways that a company could change their operations in their specific market is almost infinite - even though all businesses are fundamentally the same.

These are my customers.

They are competitors that have figured out some ‘secret’ about their operations and have invented a set of practices to exploit that secret to fulfill their business mission - and take marketshare in the process. Those practices can be done manually at first and as they grow they add technology to support them. Soon, they have a scalability or complexity issue that threatens their ability to perform in the manner they and their customers are accustomed.

That’s when they call 8 Penny Labs.

So, if you are interested in competing in a way that isn’t common, have a vision for how to do that, but don’t know how to get started. We’re 8 Penny Labs and we can help.

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