kompasbank's own expert: This is how your digital solutions become a success

Doing some preliminary work is essential before choosing the next digital solution that can facilitate administration or develop the business. Follow seven simple steps from kompasbank's Chief Digital Officer, Jonas Gudjonsson, and you're well on your way.

There are a myriad of digital cloud services that can make it easier to be a company in Denmark and help drive growth.

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions can help with everything from administration, reporting, and law to sales and marketing, freeing up time and effort for you to focus on the core business. But there is a risk that you will choose the wrong solution, which either does not match your needs or needs better quality.

Although one of the advantages of the many new solutions is that they are easy to use and cancel, choosing a digital service that does not provide the expected value can be highly frustrating. The trick is to find the right tools to help with the 'boring' but essential tasks or the jobs where you need to gain the skills in-house. It pays to do a little preparatory work. This is the advice from Jonas Gudjonsson, Chief Digital Officer at kompasbank, who has worked with the digitization of companies for more than 20 years.

"Technology and IT are rarely what small and medium-sized enterprises want to spend time on. However, most people also quickly find out how much energy you need to use on this - especially for the companies that are growing and where the requirements for reporting and administration are increasing concurrently. In addition, the many solutions can help develop the business, just as there are great digital gains to be gained from the many solutions on the market, if you choose with a little care" he says.

Here, you get Jonas Gudjonsson's checklist for selecting and succeeding with the following solution to streamline and digitize your business.

1. What are the success criteria?

A digital solution should be based on one or more use cases. Which of your current processes, tasks, and challenges must the new system be able to solve, and when is it a success?

Make sure the goals are quantitatively measurable, e.g., with the SMART model. A plan could be to save 3 hours per contract with a new customer because the process is automated or 30 minutes a day. After all, you can more easily handle a case that previously had to go through several colleagues. When you know what makes the solution successful, choosing the right solution and getting value out of it is easier.

It often happens that a system looks good at first glance and immediately ticks the right boxes. Of course, this is a good start, but remember that the solution must also be able to interact with your other systems so there is no overlap or lack of interaction between the systems.

2. Get an overview

There is a massive range of digital solutions and services of varying quality. It may seem like a pure jungle. Searching the web and checking reviews may help identify the worst products, but they should stand with others.

At kompasbank, besides helping with financing, we also want to be a trusted advisor for Danish SMEs. Our platform, kompasbank navigator, is where you can get information and an overview of a wide range of different digital solutions that have something to offer and are worth considering.

Many solutions require no or very few configurations, and the operation is typically part of the subscription. In some cases, having a trusted advisor involved in the process may be a good idea, but be aware of the costs often associated with external consultants.

3. Use your network

It would help not to underestimate the importance of ”word of mouth”. You can get beneficial information by asking someone you trust in your network. If your contact is happy with their accounting software, there's a good chance you will be, too. But of course, you need to know whether your needs and wishes are roughly identical before concluding.

4. Talk to existing customers

I recommend that you speak to one or more existing customers and, of course, someone who reminds you of your business and needs. You will be referred to happy customers who mostly say something positive about the product. Still, it allows you to ask the relevant questions and get some honest answers, for example, about integration with other systems and customer service. During the conversation, you will get some helpful, positive, or negative information that makes it easier to decide whether it is a good solution for you and your business.

5. Test the system

Many of the digital services can give you access to their test system. Here, you can try out a fully functional system for a month and select a real-life scenario to run through. It provides an excellent opportunity to try out the product in practice before you sign a subscription, thus also a greater assurance that the system meets your requirements and what you have been promised.

6. Focus on the implementation

In some software-as-a-service solutions, the supplier will help with the technical part of the implementation together with a few people from your company. Here, getting help from an external IT specialist may be necessary if you do not have one in-house. The supplier can often recommend one. You need to pay the most attention to the non-technical part of the implementation. This means training users and ensuring you restructure processes to use the new system.

In this regard, you need to be clear about which departments and people in the organization will use and will be affected by the new solution. There should also be one or more super users who have more insight, can learn from them, and are given administrative rights.

In user adoption, many often need to reach the goal, which is a shame. One of the worst things is to pay for services that are not used. If the solution hasn't created the expected value within six months (or sooner, depending on your patience), consider a switch.

7. Have an exit strategy

It's super cool that today, you can pull many different products off the shelves to help you in all imaginable areas. But you need to have an exit plan if something goes wrong. If you are 100 percent dependent on individual services, you can quickly run into problems if the supplier is acquired, closes, or fails to meet your expectations. If digital services are part of your business's foundation, you should ensure that the product is future-proof.

Here, for example, it is essential that the supplier has a specific size and stability, that they have other customers, that they have committed to keeping up with the market and continuously developing the product, and ideally also, that you as a customer can influence that development.

It is also crucial that you have access to support and that you can get out of the contract relatively quickly and take your data with you.

Find your next digital solutions on kompasbank navigator.