Spreadsheets are a great tool due to their flexibility. However, relying heavily on spreadsheets is probably hindering your growth and your ability to scale.
There are 3 main reasons why we recommend moving to Cloud, even if you are comfortable with Spreadsheets:

1. Spreadsheets are usually managed by a single person. This means they are likely the only person who has knowledge of that spreadsheet. If they were to leave, change roles or are no longer available, their knowledge and knowhow of the spreadsheet leaves with them. Cloud software, on the other hand, provides a standardised experience that can easily be taught and shared amongst your team, making it easy to grow, change and adapt with new changes in the company.

2. Whilst spreadsheets are extremely flexible, particularly when multiple spreadsheets are linked together, an error in one spreadsheet cascades an error to all your systems. These errors could range from mistakes in calculations or simple data entry typos. The big problem is that once an error is inputted into a spreadsheet, it’s like finding a needle in a haystack. It is very difficult. Cloud software on the other hand, provide validation, resilience and restrictions that make it easy to avoid, identify and undo errors.

3. Finally, spreadsheets are not scalable for growing teams. This is because it is difficult to control spreadsheets across multiple departments. This results in losing the ability to gain a complete picture of how your business is performing.

At kounteq, we’re very experienced in holding clients’ hands and walking them through the whole process- from discovery all the way to go-live.

Our focus from Day 1 is to understand your business. This means knowing the workflows our client has in place, and the tasks their staff are currently doing to run the business.

Once we understand your workflow and how your team work, we will configure a solution to meet those requirements. Not the other way round.

This ensures that your team is confident that we understand your business, that we are trying to support them, and that our solution will make their life easier.

We’ll be alongside your team throughout this process, providing continuous in-depth training tailored to how your team learn best, whether that’s through videos, messaging support or in-person. This creates a smooth handover, empowers your team and makes them feel comfortable with any new change.

To ensure that we minimise disruption, Kounteq have 3 ways of handling any implementation process:

1. A one time switch, where go-live is a simple switch off/switch on process from one system to another, with an instant transition.

2. A staggered implementation. Here we will introduce specific features one by one until you are comfortable with the complete system.

3. Running parallel systems. This is the process of running the old and new systems together, with a gradual transition over a few weeks.

Which approach we recommend is dependant on your business, your staff and complexity of your processes.

Before we recommend anything, we use our experience of previous implementations to understand the client’s business, identify any risks beforehand, and plan the best way to hand over and migrate to a new system whilst minimising disruption.

There are two ways Kounteq help you overcome time and resources constraints you may be facing.

Firstly, the team at Kounteq have resources to help you with any task throughout this process. Whether it’s data cleanup, installation, process management, or anything else. This depends on you as a team, and we are happy take on board more of the burden if you do not have enough resources or time.

Secondly, and more importantly, we help you plan. We are sticklers for planning. This includes creating a defined project team. We will assign one lead from Kounteq and one lead from the client’s side. This leads to one channel of communication. Planning these details ensures we are aligned, responsibilities are established, and your time and resources are used effectively. This ensures the process does not become over burdening for your company, at any one point throughout the implementation.

The way Kounteq ensure that you are implementing the right software, is by ensuring that we understand your business.

We always start our discovery with a scoping and design process. And we know, scoping and design sounds very fuzzy, but it’s not. Its a specific exercise. It’s sitting down with you, writing down what are your pain points, where do you want to be in 3-5 years time. We’ll translate your current processes into workflows and prepare process diagrams of your key workflows such as your sales workflow, financial reporting workflow and procurement workflow. From there, we’ll get an idea of what your business requirements are.

Before we even decided what app to go with, we’ll understand what your business does.

Then we can provide solution designs that compare and identify the right apps for your business and how they should connect with each other.

Because we are experts in multiple competing apps across a variety of functionalities, we can pick and choose from those apps and propose integrations that meets the workflows we designed in our scoping exercise.

So it’s a process. We’ll never come to you on day 1 and say these are the apps that work for you, not at all.

We’ll first understand your business, have your workflows, and then from there recommend the right apps.

In some cases, some business will want to have a demo or even do a pilot project to see if it works for them or not. That depends on your business and how you want to approach it.