Administrative Management Tools Implementation Mistakes

Typical mistakes made during implementation of Administrative Management Tools in small to medium sized businesses. This is just a list of mistakes, which I have often seen in a business.

“Right software will solve all the problems”

Usually, in administrative management a software only helps in the most obvious targets: control of orders for staff, calendar planning and communication targets. Software by itself cannot develop a company structure that will help company to grow and expand, and it cannot organize strategic planning. Even using of software for automated customer services, so-called CRM, doesn’t give a big result if the company itself doesn’t have correctly organized processes of operation. In small businesses it makes sense to bring all the basic administrative tools in order first: structure, KPI, job descriptions, coordination, communications, strategy and so forth. And when managers have learned the tools and are using them in the real world practice, only then it makes sense to start looking for software and implement it.

“Almost-implementation”

To start implementing different tools, necessary for company management, and not bring it to completion. This is very demotivating for the business owner and for personnel. There are companies that look like “innovations graveyards” – innovations that have not been followed through to the end.

Perfectionism

Another extreme is to try to do everything ideally from the first time. The World is not an ideal place, and people are not ideal either. In business, you don’t need “ideal”, you need that something is working, for starters. You could spend endless amount of time, polishing any administrative tool till it shines. But it is much better to understand that administrative management is not a goal in itself, it is merely a way to increase work efficiency. It is not more important that the job itself.

Implementation “to oneself”

Of course, many of the administrative management tools can be applied to an individual: planning, KPI and so forth. However, most importantly, purpose of these tools is to align the actions of a group of people. So it makes sense to implement them for real, when you already have people that are going to use them. It makes no sense to develop regulations for the execution of coordination meetings if you do not have people to coordinate with. If this is a new business where the owner stands behind the counter himself, then it is too early to deal with administration management.

Administration will solve income problems

Bad news: the administration management itself does not solve income problems. If there are no buyers, then even all the diagrams and graphs KPI won’t help you. Administrative tools are helping to better align and increase work efficiency, but for that you need people who know how to do the job itself.