Think like a consultant-coming out of a software Workshop: How can a dozen people develop regular army)

I have been trying to increase the sales price of management software.

In terms of software products, it is divided into the pro edition, Standard Edition, and simplified edition. Tests are introduced to improve product quality. A text is introduced, and a product White Paper, operation help instructions, installation instructions, configuration instructions, maintenance instructions, new version update instructions, Operation videos, and demo versions are created. In terms of software UI, an artist is introduced. In terms of implementation, a gold medal implementation consultant, silver medal implementation consultant, and bronze medal implementation consultant were introduced. Also in terms of service support. Everything is designed for a single product. It can be used to cut and combine different levels of customers, sell different prices, and provide different service items and quality, it is proportional to the target and the amount paid by the customer.

However, enterprise management software is a form of software, and management methods are the most important. However, this management method is implemented using Excel or software. The difference is not big. Excel and software are just a tool to collect and process output statistical analysis data in the management process.

Some people say: how can excel be compared with management software. Well, you may notice that enterprise businesses often use Excel to process their business without software. In addition, some companies have specialized in Excel, infopath, and SharePoint for some moderately complex management software, which is part of the cake of enterprise management software. Complex enterprise management software is indeed not competent in Excel. However, complicated enterprise management software is not what most enterprise management software developers can do. Therefore, a large number of enterprise management software developers are working on medium-complex or even simple addition, deletion, modification, and query systems. These software systems precisely overlap most of the markets of Excel, infopath, and Sharepoint. This forms an odd competition in the field of enterprise management software development. OA, workflow, business platform, ERP, and CRM vendors are all competing for the same market, strange to outsiders, how can these vendors join the enterprise management software development field? This is the reason. That is why many enterprises compare their enterprise management software with Excel. Excel can be stored on the Internet at random, with a disc worth 5 RMB. How much is the most expensive for enterprise management software? This is why enterprise management software has become cheaper and cheaper in recent years. Especially for enterprise management software, the technical requirements are not high. It is generally possible to add, delete, modify, and query an SQL statement, and sign a contract if there is a customer relationship, so the price is not low.

Therefore, the competitive value of software competition is no longer high. Prices are falling. You reported 100,000. The team of the two men reported 20 thousand. Everyone has a relationship with customers. How can you make a competitive price with the team of two people?

The management method is a weakness of many management software. Management software companies are not managed, which is a joke in the industry for a long time.

Many people discuss management with me and complain that their company management level is low. But what are the manifestations of low management level? What is an excellent one-step management method that is better than the current management method? What are the management methods that can be used to improve the existing management methods? I have asked many people, but many people cannot tell me clearly.

Many people also work on enterprise management software. Every time I ask them, what are your management methods more advanced than your customers' management methods? Can you tell me about this management method?

Many people have heard of my problem. Although they have been engaged in enterprise management software for many years, they never thought about this problem. Management method?

No, how can I manage software?

They are very embarrassed: We just do what the customer needs. It is our goal to make them easy to use. What if you have a management method? The customer will not accept your management methods at all. Customers have their own management methods. We only need to develop the features they want for them.

After talking for a long time, it seems that software is software, management is management, and management software is a strange term. Management + software should have been put together, but it cannot be combined.

Therefore, management software must be competitive in terms of management methods. This is the only way to increase the price of software.

Therefore, I advocate the establishment of a consulting department. Nothing else, just to improve the software Price and software competitiveness. Of course, you can also have an independent consulting list at the right time. However, this opportunity for consulting projects is bound to our software products. After all, we are not an authentic consulting company. The image we release to our customers has always been an industry software provider. It's just as hard for IBM to become Disney.

The first step for the consulting department is to refine the management methods in the software.

Many enterprise management methods do not have this concept in mind when developing management software, because most of them are developed and cannot jump out of the development circle to develop industry software, it is to carefully go to the customer's front-line to understand the customer's current situation and understand the customer's needs. They have no way but experience.

In fact, there are methods for enterprise management. In the consulting industry, we also have our own Consulting Methods to sort out and refine the enterprise management methods.

There are several methods in the consulting method. I will list them one by one and then explain them. I am not a professional consultant, so I am not talking about professional terms. Of course, I also try my best not to talk about consulting terms, because most people are still unfamiliar with consulting.

1. Write down what you are doing now and follow the instructions. If the written content does not match the written content, the written content will be improved until it is consistent. Execute a period of time and review the content you have written. You need to correct the content or make sure it is complete. Then proceed to strictly follow the instructions you have written. This idea is the idea of ISO. It is also the idea that CMM can be repeat. If the status quo is good or bad, put it aside first. The current situation has already been formed, and it must be in line with the current situation and historical development. The formation of each thing is not without reason. The existence must be reasonable. Therefore, it is the most important thing to match what you write with what you do first. First solidified, then optimized.

2. plan, execute, check, correct, re-plan, re-execute, and re-check. This is also a method. Many netizens asked me what test tools, version tools, and design tools I used and how to improve the management level. I said, you should not use any tool first. Use Excel. This is the most familiar tool. If you are not familiar with Excel, you should always be familiar with notepad. It doesn't matter what tools are used. What's important is to record what each person has to do every day. As software development, tasks come from both needs and bugs. Therefore, first make a requirement Excel and bug excel. With the root cause of the task, plan the task again. Otherwise, the task will be determined by the development director. A lot of things have no clear goals, and they have been overturned, changed, or abandoned by themselves. This makes the staff very uncomfortable. As a result, the management level is very low. Besides, you may miss many imaginary tasks that have no root cause. With the Excel demand, all the requirements are collected. do not conflict with each other, and the proposed one must have its own touch. All bugs are collected. You can filter and prioritize tasks based on requirements and bugs to quantitatively arrange tasks. Clear tasks, clear progress, and clear responsibilities. Continuously iterate by planning, executing, checking, and correcting methods, and your management level will gradually increase. For enterprises, the same is true. They all manage and manage, so this method is universal.

3. Organization, position, process, and assessment. This method is also a general management method for enterprises, and is also common for software companies. A software company is also a company that also needs to produce and sell products. It is the same as the enterprise customers it faces and cannot be separated from this methodology. The organization structure of the company, the description of each person's responsibilities, the workflow of each person's responsibilities, and the assessment after the workflow of each person's responsibilities. According to this method, the management process and methods are on the paper.

Iv. Questionnaire scoring. Does the management level improve? How can this problem be solved? Therefore, we need to investigate and conduct periodic surveys to continuously compare whether the management level has increased or declined. What is the magnitude of the increase? What are the main reasons for the increase and the reasons for the decrease? The questionnaire scoring model can achieve this goal. Many enterprises, including management software companies, cannot tell the real benefits of enterprise management software. They only know that they have spent a lot of money, but what is the result? Not clear. It can only be said that the work efficiency is improved, and department coordination is easy. However, these are ambiguous words. However, it is difficult to get away with the money spent on purchasing and implementing management software. Nowadays, many enterprises refuse to pay for the enterprise management software, that is, they do not know how much yuan can be paid after the real RMB investment. I have no bottom in my mind, and the software company cannot say it, so it is better not to take the RMB. Don't wait for ERP to die, go to ERP to find dead. This cannot be solved now. Why don't I wait for ERP to die? I also need to clarify the input-output ratio when I invest money to do business. You can't say it in one sentence. It must be good to go to ERP. In this case, how many hundred thousand yuan of investment can I make? Therefore, we need a questionnaire scoring method to quantify the effect after implementation. It also needs to be quantified cyclically to identify whether the improvement is caused by the overall rising factors of the industry, whether it is affected by ERP, or whether it is affected by innovative product sales, it also increases the enthusiasm of employees.

V. benchmarking. The questionnaire scoring method is self-evaluation and self-comparison. You can view yourself by yourself. However, the competition is not a matter of self-improvement. You think you have increased by 30%, but it is unpleasant to put yourself in the industry and stay in the Middle and Lower Reaches of the industry. Therefore, we also need to compare ourselves with industry leaders to see how big the gap is and where it is.

Vi. KPI method. Management method, You can't sort out the process according to the current situation of the company, and then set up the software according to the process. This kind of software is to simulate the reality. What is the value of management improvement. A metaphor: the management of an enterprise is similar to a scenario. You can give it a sketch with a pencil. However, enterprise management is dynamic and competitive. However, the sketch you make can only be static at a certain time point. Therefore, you take a pencil for sketch, which is similar to sorting out the business process of the enterprise and then remake a software. Even if you have a very high business flow sorting method, even if you have a fast business flow remake into software, it is just a remake. The most vivid metaphor is taking photos. You can take the business processes of an Enterprise immediately and take photos of them very realistically, not as distorted as the pencil drawing. However, even in this case, you can take snapshots quickly (which is equivalent to developing quickly), and it is just a remake. This is not a lot of money. We have never heard of how much the photo is worth. Therefore, the price of such management software is naturally clear. Why is the "Sunflower" in Chennai worth the money? Is the painting of Chennai very lifelike? No, this is a layer that comes from reality but is higher than reality. Just like watching TV series, such as the golden wedding played by Zhang Guoli Jiang Weili, we are very interested in it, but it is really difficult for us to go through golden marriage for a lifetime. We like movies and TVs because we see life, but we see things higher than life. If you are living a sketch, I think this TV series is also boring. Therefore, after sorting out the enterprise management process, we will propose the KPI indicator model, how to comprehensively and comprehensively evaluate its sales, how to evaluate its production, and how to evaluate its financial capabilities. KPIs have been developed. In addition, the goal will be raised to increase by 10%, 20%, or 30%. We have different strategies for each improvement goal. Different strategies, however, require different change time, scope, capital, and resistance. Every enterprise wants to improve most, but we can see in reality whether you can adapt to the matching changes. If they do not match, it is very likely that the failure of the change will cause the enterprise to bleed or even the middle-level rebellion. In the enterprise management field, there are two ways to develop the enterprise management process. One is: I want to achieve a goal, and then I have developed an overall management process to achieve this goal, and then I have made management changes in the existing enterprise. This method is revolutionary. The first consideration of this method is that I have to achieve a goal and think about the current situation of the enterprise after the complete thinking. This kind of change is called revolution. However, we do not make strategic decisions for our customers and bosses. This is not what we want to do, nor is it our goal. We cannot replace the role of the customer boss, which will be a strong blow to the business boss. We serve as a consulting model that provides decision-making basis and suggestions for business owners. Therefore, our consulting recommendations are also improved, not transformative. Therefore, we first recommend the improvement of KPI based on the management process of the current situation of the enterprise, and then suggest optimizing the organization, process, and assessment methods. We will implement improvements to several points based on KPIs. In this way, our work can be quantified, targeted, quality, and progress controlled. Some people who have been engaged in enterprise sales management for many years have finally turned into management consultants, but they are still promoting their own management methods and hope other companies can also apply them. This is not an authentic consultation. The core of the consulting industry is the consulting method, which is a fast way to find answers to questions. This is highly adaptive and universal, so the consulting industry can expand to grow. If a consulting company's consultation is the sales method extracted by the boss from the actual sales management of the company and then promoted to other companies, this kind of consulting is very narrow. Because the Method of Self-success may not succeed in an enterprise, many conditions need to be met at that time. In addition, this kind of consulting is very thin. You can only do this kind of consulting and cannot make the business bigger. This kind of consulting is highly professional and is not conducive to supporting a consulting company to grow bigger. Therefore, such consulting companies tend to turn their methods into software, and finally form a consulting company that does not like consulting, software is not like a software company. Therefore, in order to avoid the emergence of such a company, and to prevent the management of software development companies from becoming a consulting company, we need to have a consulting method, it is not higher than the so-called excellent management methods of enterprises.

As a consulting service, there is no need for too many requirements. There are still many differences between such consulting and professional consulting companies.

We generally sort out the business process according to the customer's current situation, analyze the process, analyze key nodes, and summarize key KPI assessment points. Then, based on the KPI improvement scope, formulate the improved organizational structure, job responsibilities, processes, and assessment. Then, plan, execute, check, and correct the results. Questionnaire scoring and benchmarking are conducted after a period of iteration. Continue to propose an improvement and Improvement Plan for the next stage.

As a result, the required consulting talents generally have the following capabilities:

1. Draw out the current organizational structure, job responsibilities, processes, and assessment of the enterprise based on the current situation of the enterprise.
2. You can find blank, multi-management, stressful, and unoptimized Business Process nodes.
3. Identify key process nodes and develop KPI indicators
4. Ability to design a questionnaire return visit scoring model based on KPI indicators

A consulting team often leads multiple assistants by a consulting consultant. These assistants do not need to be consulted. They mainly collect data according to the requirements of the consulting consultant, draw the organizational structure diagram and flowchart according to the template required by the consulting consultant, take the questionnaire to the client to answer questions, and count the score of the questionnaire. Therefore, our consulting department is 4 people. This is in line with the general organizational structure of the enterprise: senior talents are often individual and they develop methods. Most employees are basic employees and do not require professional skills. They only need to do things in their own way and have very clear tasks and quantitative work.

Since the establishment of the consulting department, we have contributed to our formal and systematic detailed Consulting Methods. When we open a ticket, other IT developers only become coding vendors, it cannot match the enterprise's expectation for higher management, but we make the customer company feel that this is a very unique and powerful real management software company. Our management software is no longer a sketch of the company's existing processes, but has a clear system, focus and functional objectives, and can also clearly evaluate the input and output effects of the customer's enterprises. Our consulting project also started last year. Our goal is to increase the software Price. Another business revenue source is becoming more and more important, and will become the third main business revenue pillar following product development and sales and outsourcing sales.