Businesses who are looking for software solutions often come across the challenge of "Best of Breed" versus an all-in-one solution. During my many years in finance and software consulting, I worked with many large companies to assess the difference and determine what is the best solution for them.
First, a high-level explanation of the difference:
Best of Breed - using different software packages that are the best at the specific task they were designed to do.
All-in-one Solution - software that is created to perform many different tasks or processes. As they try to "do everything" they usually excel at only one or two of those processes. The rest are just extras or afterthoughts and not robust.
Usually, large companies take advantage of the Best of Breed approach as they know they can get more specialized features and a wider-used better product. This is the way we have designed our solutions at Home Watch IT.
Let's look at some of the details as to why:
1-Always get the latest features and functionality. Best of Breed solutions are focused on doing one thing and doing it very well. As a result, available features plus regular enhancements are better and more frequent. An all-in-one solutions may be very strong in one area, like scheduling, but weak in another area, like accounting.
2-Business flexibility. Best of Breed solutions can be implemented one at a time, as a business requires the functionality. An all-in-one locks you down to purchasing/implementing everything on a different timeline than what may make sense for your business. Best of Breed solutions can be implemented quickly as the scope of the implementation is more limited and focused to a business' immediate requirements.
3-Reduces risk. As the scope of each Best of Breed solution is smaller, you have less business risk if only a single solution is unavailable. With an all-in-one, it's all-or-nothing!
What all of this means for Home Watch IT clients is that we use the best solution for each of your important business functions, thereby providing the best feature sets possible.
Reporting. An application that focuses entirely on managing checklists, reports, photographic evidence, and is used by thousands of companies worldwide, will be the best-tested, flexible and full-featured application available. We use that application along with custom-designed home watch templates and support to provide an excellent and extremely flexible solution.
Client Management. We start with a robust Client Relationship Management system, completely synchronized with QuickBooks, to manage customers and client data. When you add our custom Home Watch IT App 2.0 on top, you have the most flexible software available to manage schedules, client calendars, RBO bookings, miscellaneous client data, and push everything automatically to invoices (which are synchronized to QuickBooks).
Accounting. QuickBooks is the de facto leader when it comes to accounting systems and everything is fully synchronized with the Client Management system (this is not a one-way integration but rather a robust two-way sync).
Using these three systems together gives you a complete business management system for your home watch business. Each solution is a best-of-breed, meaning each solution is the best available at what it does, and the sum of the parts is an excellent system. An all-in-one will definitely be lacking in some areas as it just can't be the best at everything, whether it be scheduling, accounting/invoicing, RBO processing, etc. and you have a much better chance at functionality gaps.
Call us today to review our entire solution and compare it to what you may be using today -- we think you'll be impressed.