The 3 Top Mistakes of Buying Software Without Support

With software this good do you even need support? The answer is always yes! Despite how user-friendly the software seems, you should always provision that someone on your team will require extra training, especially if you’re not in a 100% tech savvy organisation.

Rather than bog down IT, focus on the increased adoption value when there is a customer support team to ensure success. By having people in the background, you can quickly capture value from the solution and ensure adoption. Additionally, solutions become more secure by keeping a human in the loop to avoid phishing attacks, monitor alerts, and do live troubleshooting whenever necessary.

Below are the three top mistakes of buying software without support:

1. Adoption Suffers
With new software, an organisation needs installation, set-up, integration and training. When employees are left to deal with new software without sufficient support, training, and education, they may feel intimidated by the technology or find the software unhelpful.

Hence, it’s no surprise that adoption suffers greatly. When researching and selecting new software, be sure there are people (not just computers and FAQs) to provide support and insights. After all, if you’re going to invest in your organisation’s success by implementing the latest software, why not make sure your staff is fully equipped and trained to take advantage of the new resource?

2. Usage of Key Features Never Happens
Training on key features is essential to make the most of your software investment. Without it, your staff may not be aware of key or new features. Will your staff know how to utilise the software to its fullest potential? What about best practices, tips and tricks?

Like the rapidly changing digital landscape, today’s software is also evolving to keep up with the demands of the customer. When success and support teams are in place to help users along every step of the way, even when new features are released every quarter, users are trained efficiently by live people and as a result, clients capture that value more than if those features were simply buried in a set of “release notes” that is never read.

Without people-powered software, key or new features may go unused or, even worse, be misused while opening vulnerabilities to your company’s sensitive data.

3. Security Risks Emerge
With new software, proper training and support are still needed to ensure employees aren’t putting sensitive data at risk. You need people-powered software to check-in to make sure everything “under the hood” is running soundly and smoothly.

Having a dedicated team to secure data is far more beneficial (and profitable) than a faceless “call centre” or “email support line” that’s only contacted when a data breach occurs. Rather than be on the defensive about security measures, you can be on the offensive by making certain that everyone knows each other, which helps prevent phishing attacks, and ensures that there’s a person at the software vendor that feels responsible for a client’s security versus a tragedy-of-the-commons situation where it’s “everyone’s problem” and hence, no one cares.

Without proper training and support from the people who create the software, you can never really be sure if security processes are working properly or as rigorous as they’re meant to. It may sometimes seem like software doesn’t always need people. It’s a low-cost solution to having a dedicated customer success team that’s available 24/7 for training and IT support. Yet, bringing in new software is just part of implementation; the other part relies on proper adoption, usage of key features and using the new software with security protocols put in place.