Don’t let the Luddites pull the wool (of complexity) over your eyes

It is sometimes frustrating when start-ups seem to take a lead in your market with better technology – although with the advent of UBER, some private hire companies may say it is a little more than just ‘frustrating’.

Several years ago I was involved with an organisation whose products could, in my opinion, have been sold online. (It wasn’t a moment of inspiration – I’d found smaller competitors were popping up and doing exactly this and we were losing business to them.) Why then don’t we sell online I asked, to be met by many shaking heads and the whistling of cold air being sucked in through gritted teeth of the amassed board room intelligensia. “It’s not that easy; you need to do this, do that, spend here, sign contracts; get a licence for this, for that…we can set up a project”, came the response.

I’m not quite sure what possessed me to do what I did next – I had recently read about the smart talk trap – so I thought I should take action and find out more about this. How come relatively small, unsophisticated start-ups were getting online quicker than we could – without having to complete the necessary business case paperwork?! It quickly became apparent that it was because they weren’t restrained by past experience and out of date knowledge relating to this so called “complexity” I was confronted with.

During that evening I ended up creating a website and, with a few clicks, added some widgets (paypal, I think) which meant that I then had a website that could take online payments. It was easy to do with drag and drop design tools that anybody could use.

Needless to say, when I presented the results, there were all sorts of reasons as to why this was not ‘ideal’. (That was after the IT Intelligentsia and business process experts had recovered from the shock that an individual with only a mere ‘social science’ qualification to his name could have achieved such a feat of project, engineering and contractual complexity overnight. In fact I wanted to use that ‘social science’ prowess to come out with a clever analogy with the Luddites from the early 19th C – but I restrained myself). My point was that in a highly competitive marketplace, the solution I found enabled us to deliver what the customer wanted and had previously liked buying from our smaller ‘naïve’ competitors. New Technology meant benefit realisation was a whole lot quicker.

It’s much the same when implementing solutions to improve customer service delivery. It does help if everyone involved is open-minded and has genuinely bought into the vision and value to be gained and doesn’t try to resist change, like a Luddite.

So to make it simple, here are 4 reasons why implementing a modern, dynamic scheduling and route planning software platform like Maxoptra is easy.

1) It has user-friendly interface, accessible 24/7 from any web browser worldwide – developed using latest techniques in conjunction with users. Forget about endless training courses charged at a day rate. (Unless you have been ‘trained’ by legacy providers to pay for everything from day one.)

2) Fast Implementation – so kiss endless project meetings goodbye. Some of the tools we have developed such as login pages for the customers of industry leaders such as TomTom, means you can be up and running in minutes. www.maxoptra.com/login/. Certainly faster than you can arrange and hold a project kick off meeting and produce a project charter.

3) Subscription based ‘Service’ on a per vehicle basis making things a whole lot more affordable compared to legacy solutions requiring Licence purchase.

4) Start simple – big bang, go-live dates are history and unnecessary. With Maxoptra, even if you have 1,000’s of vehicles you can start with 2 or 3 vehicles; or perhaps roll out on a depot by depot basis, or maybe on a feature by feature basis – taking full advantage of our pay as you go commercials and start benefitting earlier.

Don’t let the Luddites pull the wool (of complexity) over your eyes. Implementing Maxoptra is easy and, like selling online, it will transform the way your business performs. Technology evolution demands that we remain on our guard, that our experience of the past does not prevent us capitalising on the future.

Order Maxoptra free trial now and enjoy all the benefits.
Contact us and we will show you how Maxoptra can help.