Custom Software vs Off-the-Shelf Solutions: 3 Factors to Consider

Many businesses face the challenge of assessing the different options when it comes to developing process automation solutions. Custom-developed software can often seem intimidating because of the planning and requirement gathering need, however, the final solution can ultimately fit around a business’s specific needs. On the other hand, off-the-shelf software can be more accessible but often come with a pre-set solution that might not capture your business’s requirements and force you to customize later on anyways.

Based on our experience working on Process Automation products and solutions, we’ve put together three key factors that can influence your decision towards a specific approach.

1. Functionality: If an off-the-shelf package can complete 80%+ of what your business is looking for in terms of a process automation solution, then it might be a more attractive option. However, if there’s a larger percentage that needs to be customized to fit the scope and requirements of what your organization is looking for, then building something more customized can be a more cost-efficient and effective solution.

2. Integration: Depending on the processes you already have in place and the platforms you currently have in your ecosystem, the integration of this solution could make a difference in which solution you decide on. If your ecosystem is complex and would take a lot of effort to transfer your processes into an off-the-shelf solution, working with a customized software developer can enable areas to fit in your existing processes.

3. Uniqueness: What industry your company falls in might be an important factor to consider when choosing a solution. If there is a well understood, common process in your industry then your confidence in an off-the-shelf solution can be much higher. If you know your industry is unique than finding a solution that offers flexibility and customization is going to be very important for the long term sustainability of the process.

At Pontem Innovations, we work with our clients to develop the best fit solution. We offer a wide range of both custom solutions based on the Microsoft platform, which makes it a good middle ground to total customization and pre-set off the shelf solution. If you’re weighing your options for a new software solution for your business, our expert team at Pontem is here to help. Contact us to get started on crafting a solution that fits your organization’s needs.

Why External Data Should be a Part of Your Sales Strategy

At Pontem, we often talk about the importance of harnessing the power of your organization’s data and using those insights to make data-driven decisions. We believe in creating a data ecosystem that can put you strides ahead of competitors and unlock improvements in performance and productivity. An MIT study deemed that “analytical innovators” – companies that incorporate analytics into most aspects of decision-making – are four times more likely than the average organization to use a variety of data types, including mobile, social, and public data.

Public data sources provided by third parties and vendors have so much potential when linked to internal data to drive holistic decision-making. For example, utilizing Census data on the COVID-19 pandemic can give your organization insight into consumer purchasing habits and digital behaviour which might justify a pivot in sales strategies. Creating this ecosystem of data can allow you to more granularly examine your own information and identify patterns, allowing you to respond to these changing trends in the optimal way.

External data can add real-world context to high-level decision-making. Especially when it comes to a complex department like sales, areas like lead generation and customer lifetime values can be optimized based on robust data. Many companies use historical data as a basis of developing sales strategies, however by integrating external data sources such as Stats Canada, companies can generate a 360-degree view of the customer and provide a more granular level of detail on target customers. Taking it one step further, news reports and social media can provide an additional level of detail to be incorporated into your sales strategy.

At Pontem Innovations, we want to enable all of our clients to become analytical innovators. Having a strong understanding of your internal data is the first step in differentiating yourself from competitors, connecting it with external data is the second. Contact Pontem today to get started with building your data ecosystem.

The Art of Data Storytelling

In a world where data is at our fingertips, the quality of information an organization has about their internal operations, the competitive landscape, and their customers can be the differentiating factor in making them a competitive force in the industry— how they use this information can make them an industry leader. 

Tools such as business intelligence, dashboards, and spreadsheets have helped lay the foundation for businesses to start to utilize their data but analytics and data can only tell you what is happening. It is up to organizations themselves to tell their story and why it matters.  

Adopting a Data Storytelling Culture

The three elements of data storytelling include the insights from the data itself, visualizing these points in a digestible way, and tailoring the language and story for the intended audience. Understanding the audience sets the vision and the narrative that can ensure the insights drawn are connecting and can be used to make decisions.  

• Insights: Being able to look at a large array of data and make the connection of what to highlight is crucial in ensuring the audience gets a high-level view of the operations while maintaining a level of detail customizable for the intended user.  

• Visualizations: Utilizing dashboards to present information can make the data interactive and can focus the audience’s attention on the important components through the use of charts and graphs to contextualize the data insights at a glance. 

• Story: The narrative behind the data is the piece that links everything together — speaking the language of the audience can put the insights and visualizations into perspective and can lead to higher engagement with your target audience. 

Who's Doing it Well?

One example of a company that was able to blend data, visualizations, and story is Uber. They use data storytelling to highlight the impact the company has on each user by showcasing personalized statistics and quantifying the user’s experience on the app.  

Beyond that, they also use this data to tell a story about the company as a whole such as the campaign they released titled “10 facts you may not know about Uber drivers.” This campaign was made to tie the brand’s values to societal trends through the use of data storytelling. Uber Movements is another solution the company released to provide anonymized data from all their trips all over the world to shed light on topics such as analyzing holiday travel trends or visualizing access to healthy foods in certain cities. 

Pontem Innovations work with companies to extract their insights and create visualizations to tell the story. Contact us today at info@ponteminnovations.ca and let’s talk about how you can integrate a data storytelling culture into your organization.

How Scorecards Can Create Customer Service Success

Why is an Agent's Performance Crucial to Success?

Regardless of the industry of the business, nothing is more important than providing exceptional customer service. An American Express survey found that more than half of respondents have cancelled a subscription or planned purchase because of poor customer service and one-third of them would switch to a competitor if they have better service. This level of competition incentivizes businesses to strive to better answer the question of how they can improve customer satisfaction.  

However, the subjectivity of what exceptional service means can often make it difficult to ensure consistency in customer service interactions across all agents. It requires regular feedback and insights to shape and mold criteria to act as the basis for positive experiences that meet the rising expectations of customers. A company can never truly understand what a customer wants by relying on customer satisfaction surveys and can rarely redeem themselves if a customer is unsatisfied; one survey showed that 52% of customers left without giving the company any warning. This is where customer service scorecards can be a game-changer for businesses.  

Implementing Scorecards for Your Customer Service Team

Customer service teams need scorecards to measure what the business deems to be important in a customer interaction from objectives such as building rapport with a customer, to time it takes to complete a ticket, to proper procedures being followed for different types of customer inquiries. Using internal guidelines to measure against agent individual performance and the effectiveness of current procedures can turn data into key insights that will improve customer service substantially. Agent scorecards can act as a way to align the business’ goals with customer interaction expectations. It is a transparent way to ensure the team knows what they need to do to create a consistent and excellent customer experience every time.  

The first step in creating an agent scorecard is to determine the objectives the scorecard will achieve. For customer service teams, tone of voice and speed of service might be key differentiators. Using key performance measures such as CSAT (customer satisfaction), NPS (net promoter score), or CES (customer effort score) can determine customer pain points. With scorecards, feedback can become more streamlined because of the scorecard’s ability to provide measurable data and examples to highlight where agents are doing well and where the room for improvement might be.  

Maintaining internal quality standards through the use of agent scorecards can improve the customer experience, align these interactions with business goals, fill in training gaps, or develop more effective processes. Our team at Pontem has worked with customer service teams to develop digital scorecards and lay a foundation for better customer interactions and in turn, better retention and growth. Contact Pontem for a demo of our agent scorecard and to start building your solution today.

Compass Collective

As the uncertainty associated with Covid-19 continues, organizations will need to use data to identify and assess the impacts on their business and monitor how a phased recovery should be approached. As part of the Compass Collective, Pontem is offering two different ways to provide clarity during this unprecedented time.

Use Power BI to Better Communicate Company Metrics

Improve your Power BI skills through a personalized training session

Utilizing tools other than excel to manage your data is an important way to strengthen the foundation of a data driven culture. Pontem will provide a personalized 60 min tutorial on how to get started with Microsoft Power BI, so you can increase your organization’s skill set around analytics.

Create More Resilient Processes

Identification of Process Automation Opportunities

In order to increase the resiliency of your organization, it is important to have strong processes that are optimized and automated; however it is not always easy to know what processes are good candidates to be automated.  Pontem will spend 60 mins with you reviewing processes of your choice and provide you with a prioritized list of opportunities to utilize process automation.

Unlocking Value from Data: An Integrated Approach with Workflow Automation and Business Intelligence

Business intelligence and workflow automation have drastically changed the world of productivity and performance throughout the years. By automating workflows and reporting methods, organizations can better focus their time and efforts on tasks that require the specialized skillsets of their employees. On the other hand, business intelligence, or customized analytic solutions, provide a way for organizations to unlock value from their data and use it to improve business decisions and increase overall performance. 

So, how do these two tools aid your business growth?

Workflow Automation: Productivity and Performance

At Pontem, we’ve found ways to make process automation easy and create a digitally-driven competitive advantage. The processes that help run the business from document generation, time approval, and customer satisfaction forms can often be repetitive, tedious, and don’t necessarily make the best use of your employee’s skillsets. They can be prone to human error and can create issues that stunt performance and deflate productivity. That’s where workflow automation comes in. It gives businesses better opportunities for collaboration, improves workload management, and better captures and sorts data with minimized errors.  

Customized Analytics: Insights and Planning

At Pontem, we create customized analytics solutions that propel data-driven decisions and actionable insights for your organization. Business intelligence creates context for present and historical data and leverages performance and competitor benchmarks to help shape your future-looking strategies. From identifying ways to increase profit, analyzing customer behaviour, optimizing operations, and comparing data of the market and competitors, business intelligence is a necessary tool to ensure your team is equipped with the insights you need.  

How Do They Work Together?

We believe in the best of both worlds. Organizations that use both process automation and business intelligence solutions can see increased productivity, scalability, and ensure that all decisions they make are data-driven and propelled by actionable insights. Integrating the two can bring your organization the advantages of both tools. By exploring your data with a customized analytics solution and using it as a central source of information, you can use those insights and connect workflow automations to that central data source. 

At Pontem Innovations, we believe that combining workflow automation and customized analytics can give your organization the tools and power to unlock your data, deliver key insights, and build the future of your organization with enhanced productivity and performance. Contact Pontem today to learn more about how we can integrate these solutions for your organization.