Good business systems are about liberating your staff, not getting rid of them.

As you might suppose, I’m a big advocate of computers and computer systems. I think the right bespoke software can make the difference between a company being good and great, especially in the eyes of their clients.

However, I would not for a moment suggest that computers are better than humans. Sure, there are some jobs that a computer can do faster, more accurately and more effectively but, in business, an awful lot of the time those jobs are the ones that humans don't want to do. Repetitive, predictable, frequent, labour intensive tasks.

And, really, no business wants to take people on to do those tasks. Businesses like people who contribute to the company’s success because of the skills and talents for which they were hired. They don't want to take people on whose sole role is to chase around bits of paper, add columns of numbers or keep track of where items are kept in the warehouse.

Most small businesses, as they grow, develop processes. A lot of the small, successful businesses that I go to see have very evolved processes, often involving spreadsheets and order forms and bits of paper being moved from one tray to another one. And I’m not being damning there: these are often very good systems that have helped the company to make its presence felt in its marketplace.

But, as these companies grow, so these systems start to creak. Bits of paper go missing, the person who understands how the formulae in the spreadsheet work is off sick, an order gets lost. The people who have other, important jobs to do, like making sales or sending out invoices are distracted by the work required to keep the system turning over. At this stage, a small business might start to consider hiring people just to administer that process. And just how do you go about recruiting someone to do a really dull job?

You don't need to have pre-cognitive powers to spot that I would suggest that at this point you get my company in to build you a bespoke software system to replace that process, or rather to emulate it on an application to let your company run the same way, only better. However, that is not the point of this post. What I want to say is that by introducing a bespoke system to replace the process, you not only save yourself the difficulty of recruiting those lovers of mundane tasks but, crucially, you liberate your staff. You are not replacing anyone, you are benefiting them and your business.

Those people who were beginning to flag, who were complaining that they didn't have time to do their job properly, who had stopped thriving in the workplace, suddenly find that those dull aspects of their job, tasks that, in fact, weren’t really part of their job have gone. They have hours in the day to do the role they were hired to do. Rather than looking over their shoulders for yesterday’s missing order form, they have time to look ahead and think what they could be doing to improve the way they work and the company’s prospects.

Bespoke systems will save you money, not least in saving you from hiring staff who do nothing but administer your business. But they won't replace your staff, rather they will help you to get the best from them.