A lot of businesses, regardless of industry, tend to think the same way when it comes to technology.
Teams or Zoom for meetings, Salesforce or HubSpot for CRM, and some combination of other tools to fill the gaps for their workflows (think Confluence for project management or Mail Chimp for email marketing).
This is due largely to the fact that these brands have successfully marketed themselves as the industry standard in their respective markets. They all work out of the box, and no one questions their efficacy or capability in running a business through their software.
This is certainly one way to do it, although you know Positive Results has always advocated that small and midsize companies ought to use tools customized specifically for them (see this post on raising expectations for your software as an example).
But that’s not what this article is about.
Too often, we’ve spoken with clients and prospects about either CRM, Communications, or Document Management tools and realized that they are paying for two or more platforms that have overlapping capabilities.
One prime example: when speaking with a recruiting firm client, they told us that they use Calendly for scheduling meetings with candidates, and Zoom for their meetings.
Not a bad process by any stretch, but Zoom has a scheduling capability built natively in their platform. Calendly charges $16/user for their services, and touts the ability to integrate with popular CRMs and ATS platforms as the benefit of paying their relatively low price.
Zoom has those same integrations, and they were already paying for it. Why not save the money?
Is $16/user a life-changing amount? No. But is it a cost incursion that can be avoided? Absolutely.
Subtract that cost across all users and the savings start to add up.
This isn’t a revolutionary subject, but we humbly request before you purchase an “industry standard” tool that you look at the platforms you’re employing and ask yourself:
Do I really need this, or is there an existing feature we already pay for that can close this gap?
Every dollar counts.
If you and your team are looking for capabilities in Communications, CRM, or Document Management, Positive Results has decades of experience and we’d be happy to talk shop.