In the wedding industry, most of our businesses are small, and, therefore, we don’t have the financial or time resources to design and create a customer management system built specifically around our needs – and for those that do have the resources, please know that it is almost always the wrong way to go.
This leaves most of us in the wedding industry limited to the systems that already exist, and thus limited to their current and future planned functionality. This doesn’t mean we are screwed – it just means we will be compromising. Therefore, our goal should be to find a system with the least amount of compromises, and where we do have to compromise, we have a livable workaround.
Which leads me to the first, and most important, piece of advice that I can give when you are investigating business systems for your wedding industry business, followed by some more advice:
- Write down your needs and wants: This can take some time, but the way to get the best system for you is to know exactly what you need, and want, the system to do for your business. Document each of your business processes and determine their importance level. By understanding all of the processes that you want the system to manage, and the importance of each to you and your business, you can best determine which system will require the least compromise.
- Take future promised functionality with a grain of salt: It is always important to know what future functionality is planned for a system, and when it is scheduled to be added. Yet, I can almost guarantee you that the functionality will not be exactly as promised, and will be delivered later than expected. It is just the way of the software world, especially in the price range in which we are shopping.
- Don’t limit your choices to just those in your category or industry: For my wedding officiating business, Ceremonies by Bethel, I use ShootQ, because although it was developed specifically for photographers and most of their users are photographers, I found it required the least compromises for the officiant business that I wanted to build. On the other hand, my needs are different as a business coach, so I use 17hats for that business.
- Plan to be in the System for the Long Term: Thinking you are going to try a system for a year and will just switch if you don’t like it isn’t the best approach, because each system will require a decent amount time to setup and learn. And, as you use it, you will be entering data that may not easily migrate from one system to another, and therefore will need to be entered fresh into the new system.
- In almost every scenario, couples or clients come first: What I mean by this is, a system that makes your business run smoother for you, but makes doing business with you harder for potential and current couples, is probably (likely!) not the one you want.
- And finally, get demos and ask lots of questions: Once you have a few systems in mind, request a demo for each, and ask questions to verify that the functionality you need or want (from above) is part of the system. And, if the person giving the demo doesn’t have the answer, make sure they get back to you with a definitive answer before you commit.
I hope that this helps, and, of course, if you would like one-on-one assistance in evaluating wedding industry business systems, or mapping your customer journey and determining your needs for a software package, please feel free to contact me.
