How Software Improves Visibility and Why it is Important – Part One

Among all the efficiency, automation, and ROI arguments for software, one important benefit of business software goes missing. Both the seller and the buyer are equally culpable in this. Both sides continuously harp on what they consider to be the important parameters but fail to grasp the importance of visibility that comes from deploying software to manage business processes.

In this post, we’ll look at the importance of this little-cared-for benefit and how an organization can benefit from visibility afforded by software. When we mention visibility here, it really is not limited to one employee or one business process or one single task. It is about bringing to the fore everything, positive and negative, that happens within an organization and everything that can affect the performance of a resource or a unit and the final output.

What makes visibility important? In any organization, while employees and business processes depend on one another to churn out the final product or service for the customer, they often work in their own silos within their own teams. All the stakeholders are not always kept abreast of developments as often as they’d like. There is not enough communication and sharing. And to a certain extent, you could sympathize with the employees too. Should they be working hard to finish their tasks or should they be expending time on making it visible? They have neither the time nor the tools to increase visibility.

This is where software comes in. Most business software solutions are centralized platforms from which employees can manage multiple tasks. Instead of interrupting the employees, the stakeholders in the process can use their access rights to view every action that takes place. Apart from the efficiency and productivity benefits this offers, it also increases the visibility of the process and entire business at large.

For example, the HR manager can now view the performance of every employee in the organization and make important decisions. The supply chain manager can understand the potential risks and prepare for them.

We’ll see more about this in the next post.