Last week I embarked on a seven and a half hour road trip with Steve Ecclestone (Jonas's VP of Product) to pay a visit to one of Jonas’s stronger reference accounts. This long time plumbing and HVAC contractor is one of the most engaged and knowledgeable clients on the Jonas solution. Steve and I had proposed the meeting to get some feedback on some elements of the system that we are considering changing and to show them a new mapping application that they are planning to beta test for us, but, upon our arrival we found that the client had a slightly broader agenda for us. In addition to our discussion points the client had organized meetings with each of their key Jonas users to ask questions and provide feedback on any challenges that they were facing. While this certainly made for a longer day Steve and I were very happy with the outcome.

Over five hours we went through a list of areas that each person wanted to improve in the system. From this meeting Steve gained a number of great ideas for further development but he was also able to show the client team a number of things that would help them improve operations with the software that they already have. I will follow up with the client to get an estimate of exact savings from our meeting but at a minimum we saved them a couple of key strokes for each new work order they enter, provided them with some maintenance advise that will dramatically improve the processing speed of their system and provided guidance for how they can move from managing their auto renewed service agreements from Excel in to Jonas.

For me this experience really drove home the value of software audits. Every year our system changes and we add new features. We provide clients with the release notes but we know that few people will take the time to read them. Also, over time the people that we have trained on the system will leave and their replacements are rarely fully trained. As a result, clients will often not know what they have in their system and often develop bad habits. A short software audit is a great way to get back up to speed.

To me there are three components of a good software audit:

1. Review of how you are using the system today to determine if you are being as efficient as possible.
2. Look at any processes that are being done off line and see if they can be done using the software that you currently have.
3. Review new modules to see if there is new software that can help you streamline your processes or drive incremental revenue.

At five hours our impromptu (at least from our perspective) software audit was pretty much the perfect amount of time. We did not go through every possible thing but certainly covered off the most critical elements. From this both we and the client have some homework to do to make improvements. This last part is really the key. A software audit is just a start. In most cases it should lead to some follow up conversations and probably some further training to help the client get more from their system.

At Jonas we are now offering two or three hour overview audits free of charge to help our clients get the most from their systems. Our primary focus is currently on longer term Jonas users that have had turnover since the initial installation to show the new team what is available and to help them change any settings to better suit the new processes that they are implementing. If you are a Jonas user and would like an audit please contact your account manager and they can get one organized. If you are not a Jonas user I would suggest doing the same thing with your software partner. Most software companies will probably charge for this service but I would still say that it is worthwhile. Money spent on any sort of software training (which in the end is really what an audit is) has about the highest ROI you can get for IT investments.