Scary Software – Is Your Software a Trick or a Treat?
Disclaimer: This post has scary content which some readers might find disturbing.
Warning: Bad software can have uncomfortable side effects and can even cause business death
“This one time, I stayed late at work to finish my sales forecast. I was in on my own and it was really creepy. Then all the lights went out! We’d had a power cut. I was terrified because it was the dead of winter and the office building was completely dark. But the worst was yet to come. When the emergency generator kicked in, I rebooted my software to find that the forecast I had been working on for the last three hours hadn’t saved! NOOOOOOOO!” – Rose (Edinburgh) Sales Manager FMCG Industry
“Bad CRM is the stuff of nightmares! I once found that my bespoke system was failing to properly record bookings. There was a “Save Transaction” button at the top and the bottom of the page. If you clicked the one at the bottom it was actually dismissing the record rather than committing it! We found the error within a month but I know I definitely lost sales because of it.” Elaine (London) Account Manager IT Sector
“We had been using Sage to run our reports for years. It was fine for a while. But the business was getting bigger and the number of transactions was increasing. Sage would just fall over after a while. You’d try to run a report and it would just collapse. We just couldn’t breathe life into it anymore. It was total Night of the Living Dead stuff.” David (London) Financial Controller Professional Services Industry
“Don’t talk to me about Phantom Orders! Sometimes when we ran a report of sales at the end of the quarter our system would pull information through from the PREVIOUS QUARTER without any reason! Our figures were all over the place. It was so painful removing those phantom orders from the figures to reflect our real result” Leanora (Manchester) CFO Marketing Industry
“I’ve never heard a sound like it in my life before. That day, I had to tell a sales person that they hadn’t, in fact, hit their target. Our system couldn’t properly recognise revenue. As a result, the sales person had booked a 12 month recurring sale all into one month and was expecting commission on it. When I told them it couldn’t count and that we had to manually recognise the revenue…….the scream! It still sends chills up my spine when I think about it!” Lisa (London) General Sales Manager Media Industry
“The worst place I ever worked was full of Zombie staff. I’d go up to the sales team and say “who are you going to call today?” and they’d stare at me with these blank expressions. “how many more sales to hit your target? What product do you need to work on today?” their eyes were so vacant! The MD wasn’t much better, “Who’s your most profitable customer?”…..nothing……” Mike (Belfast) Consultant Various Sectors
“I once had an FD who was terrified of getting new financial software. He only knew how to use Sage and just couldn’t conceive of getting something better as a replacement. So I killed him. Only kidding. But let’s just say I didn’t just replace the software. Mwah hahahahah” Paul (Glasgow) FD Software Sector*
“Forget Killer Clowns. It’s Killer Software you need to watch out for” Paul Tindal (Renfrewshire) Director Cofficient
Your business software should be a treat to use. Don’t put up with any of these nightmare scenarios.
If your software is scary – please get in touch
Written by Emma Stewart – Sales and Marketing Director at Cofficient
Cofficient – The Ghostbusters of the Software Industry – Who you gonna call?
*No accountants (or their careers) were harmed during the making of this blog.
