The modern business climate seems to have given birth to innumerable software innovations, providing our teams with a software tool for every need we might think of. Indeed, every need has a plethora of options catering to the more generic requirements or the industry specific needs of different professionals. More and more small businesses are cottoning on to the fact that using these innovative software tools can reduce the hassle of menial and repetitive tasks, improve the efficiency of workflow, allow for broad and inclusive team communication, and provide valuable statistical data which can offer incredible insight into the ways we work and help identify where we can improve.

Improving our efficiency and creating more value through the use of software solutions is one way in which we can provide a point of difference against our competitors. Any advantage we can create in order to get ahead in our chosen industries is critical, and it’s no secret that accurate time tracking software can create data to provide valuable reporting insight into our time management practices, but it isn’t enough to just grab the first app you see and call it a day – you need to make sure you are picking the right option for your specific and unique requirements!

There’s one really common trap to fall into: the all-in-one solution seems at first glance to be a great idea, catering to every software need your team might have. But the problem is that an all-in-one solution is that while they cater to a variety of needs, they tend to be unable to compete with dedicated products when it comes to the value of each service they provide. A dedicated software app will, inevitably, be able to provide a better service for their specific niche than a jack of all trade’s product is able to.

Cost is also likely to be less of an issue than you might imagine. Large scale, all-in-one solutions will tend to be drastically more expensive than any individual, specialised product, so you are likely to be able to afford a few specialised apps for a similar price range as the all-encompassing option, letting you extract greater value out of your software solutions without straining the budget too much more than you would have by sticking to a singular choice.

Software as a service is a broad community, and a true community in the sense that businesses in the sector tend to have strong partnerships and relationships. Companies will often look to create more value for their customers by designing their software to work specifically with the software of other companies, to the point where the apps may work almost as an extension of one another, to allow for ease of use and greater efficiency for customers.

For example, MinuteDock’s time tracking software for professional services has a variety of accounting software integrations, because one of the primary uses of time tracking is for billing purposes. So, by syncing time tracking data and generating invoices which are sent across to accounting partners like Xero, the overall billing process for clients is made easier, allowing the apps to operate together almost as seamlessly as if they were in fact just two aspects of the same solution.

This means you can get the best of both worlds! By choosing a suite of software apps which have integration features, you can get the increased value that comes from a dedicated service while maintaining much of the benefit associated with an all-in-one solution, as the apps you choose will work together in a similar fashion.