Oftentimes, the larger a company gets, the more money they have to invest in tools and technology. This often means not only better software solutions for things like CRM, marketing, sales enablement, productivity, and administrative tasks, but it typically means more tools being used. In fact, estimates show that the average American enterprise business uses 91 marketing cloud services in their business!* But with using so many different solutions for each little task, are enterprise businesses really improving their productivity – or are the software solutions becoming a problem themselves?
WHY DO MORE TOOLS NOT ALWAYS EQUAL MORE PRODUCTIVITY
While it’s true that there are many software solutions, particularly SaaS platforms, on the market today that can make manual tasks simpler, easier, and faster, it’s important to consider that there may be transition periods for change management, onboarding, and even training that need to be factored into incorporating new technology into a business.
When businesses decide to implement dozens of new tools, it can equate to an enormous amount of man hours for ensuring that all relevant staff are knowledgeable and equipped to utilize the software optimally.
Not only may there be an onboarding period, but tools that do not integrate with each other or share data may end up costing time through manual reporting or task switching. When employees must change between apps or tools that each have specific purposes, they can actually lose productivity. In fact, task switching and multi-tasking account for up to 40% of lost productivity time, according to the American Psychological Association.
ENTERPRISE COMPANIES ARE LIMITED IN MARKETING AND SALES
When it comes to business processes and multiple internal departments with many employees, enterprises cannot afford to waste time and money, but connectivity and integration can prove to be difficult.
Unfortunately, there are fewer options on the market that cater to the full scope of needs for enterprise businesses that address issues of truly making software solutions productive. Specifically, with marketing and sales alignment, many solutions fall short of creating a productive working environment for the two departments that are seeing an ever-increasing overlap in roles and shared responsibilities. Add in that customer service and support have become an integral part of marketing and sales, and many enterprise companies struggle to leverage proper solutions and rely on accurate data.
HubSpot’s Enterprise solution may be what large companies have been looking for. Instead of losing time or wasting money by using multiple tools and software solutions, enterprise businesses can now have a much more streamlined process for all their marketing, sales, and customer service activities through one hub.
IT CAN BE DIFFICULT FOR ENTERPRISE BUSINESSES TO FIND THE RIGHT SOFTWARE
With many companies, the software is selected based on reviews and referrals, marketing materials, and the features and capabilities of the product itself. Enterprise businesses often need extra services by way of customer support, handling multiple account functionality, additional data reporting, and other unique needs.
Even for small companies, sometimes a SaaS platform just doesn’t work out. Maybe it isn’t intuitive enough or doesn’t integrate well enough with other programs. But with enterprise businesses, trial and error is just not something that is possible.
Typically huge monetary investments are made, and many months go into planning and negotiation. Because of this, larger companies often need specialists and consultants who can advise on which particular software to invest in, knowing exactly how to onboard employees and design a plan of action for implementation.
In the last year, HubSpot has focused more on its growth suite enterprise platform, which includes many in-demand features, without sacrificing its all-in-one platform value. HubSpot is working to tackle issues for their customers, such as too much time spent on switching between tools and technology and having software that doesn’t integrate together.
Not actually knowing the best software for the needs of large companies can hurt an enterprise business’ productivity. But through actually using fewer tools, ensuring that programs are streamlined and integrated, and having a plan of action for onboarding and implementation, then enterprise businesses can be really maximizing their use of software solutions.
