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There are no two businesses that follow the same path to growth. Consequently, there is no single solution that encompasses what every company needs for its expansion. When you’ve exhausted your resources, you look around for something new, or you switch up to the Enterprise solution. In most cases, the Enterprise solution is the best option. It doesn’t matter how many times you change the scheduling software; there will always be a ceiling against which the growth of your business will push. The best choice is to opt for the scalable option that will keep growing along with you. Why do companies choose the enterprise scheduling solution? It’s the only sustainable choice.
You don’t need to be Jeff Bezos to need an enterprise solution to your businesses booking problem. Because enterprise scheduling solutions are customisable and flexible to suit the needs of the client, they are an ideal investment when a company enters a period of growth or even in preparation for it.
How Does Enterprise Scheduling Differ from a Small to Medium-Sized Business Scheduling?
There are dozens of online scheduling software providers available right now, and most will do a great job of assisting the online appointment booking and service management of a small to medium-sized concern. However, enterprise business is an entirely different animal.
Established enterprise business needs so much more than the small business, not just in terms of the number of bookings or locations, but also in the technical resources, customisation, and top-level management.
It’s not easy to scale a single iteration of a scheduling solution for the needs of a large enterprise. The virtues that make some scheduling management systems ideal for smaller and medium-sized business are also constraints that cannot cope with the demands of a high capacity enterprise. It sounds like an either/or situation. Still, SimplyBook.me has an answer that takes the simplicity of the small business online booking and transplants it into an enterprise-level scheduling solution.
1.Room for Growth
Beyond a certain point in a company’s development, there comes a time when the question is “to grow or not to grow?” Invariably, if they want to to keep working on the business, the answer is “Grow!” In some cases, it might even be a necessity to maintain the status quo of the company. While many SaaS scheduling platform providers offer a scalable solution, very few can deliver on that claim when it comes to enterprise-level requirements.
It’s all very well using a multiple location feature for a small region, but if you’re going national or even international, that won’t cut it. The need for a long list of locations and potentially isolation and segregation means that using a single iteration of a scheduling solution is problematic at best.
With a growth outlook, an enterprise company needs the freedom and simplicity to add new locations and subsystems to keep up with their increased demand.
2.Isolation & Segregation
Not all enterprise-level businesses want interconnectivity between their subsystems. A company that has distinct and isolated branding will want to keep those subsystems separate from each other, but still want an overview of the whole.
There are other reasons for needing isolation and segregation. Sensitive data that shouldn’t be accessible from one subsystem to another needs to be protected. Alternatively, a company operating in multiple time zones will want to offer appointments in their clients local times.
Another example is the use of franchising arrangements. A large company that has a section of franchised branches will need to keep their core business systems separated from individually owned franchise systems.
3.We need more of everything!
In preparation for a period of growth, both medium and large business enterprises need to prepare for everything. There’s no point in planning, strategising, and marketing to hundreds or thousands of new clients if your systems can’t handle it. Increased visitors and bookings, more queries to the system, and more users required to keep on top of it, all means that your system had better be able to cope with the increased traffic or your service reputation will go downhill fast.
4.High Degree of Customisation
Something that enterprise companies have that smaller businesses do not is an established online presence and internal processes and programs. For this reason, a high degree of customisation and integration is required for all the systems to work together. An effective API with easily understandable documentation makes this process faster and more likely to succeed.
While an enterprise scheduling system will carry out many of the same functions as one designed for a small business, the number of things it will need to report to external systems is significantly higher and more complex.
5.Additional Resources, Support & Options
While I’ve already mentioned that enterprise-level businesses need more from their scheduling system, they also need options, support and additional resources.
Enterprise scheduling systems keep their customers happy by dedicating significantly more cyber resources (server space) to them, and they need it. A large company has considerably more throughput on its system, with potentially thousands of bookings per day. Sometimes, with many at busy times, which can strain a server shared with many other businesses. If a company requires isolation from other systems for security, they also need the option to have their scheduling system on a dedicated server.
When you have so much to organise, and a system to create, enterprise-level management requires a dedicated account manager. With a complex system to administer, no enterprise CEO or manager wants to explain their system every time they have an issue, to a different support person. A dedicated channel of contact is also crucial to ensuring seamless communication and problem resolution.
Another option that some enterprises may demand of their scheduling system is the setup. A large enterprise could have hundreds of branches, subsystems users and integrations to perform. That is a vast amount of time and staff hours to dedicate to the implementation of a scheduling system that works for them. The option to request set up by the people who know the system perfectly is not uncommon.
6.Top-Level Management & Overview
What every CEO and enterprise owner, manager or administrator wants; the ability to control and manage their business from a single point. Simple to use interface and management dashboard is essential for efficient management of vast, multi-faceted concerns.
With that crucial top-level control also comes ultimate control over the various subsystems under the company umbrella. The ability to control what others can’t.
Another aspect of needing overarching access to every subsystem in the company is the need to monitor progress, compare performance and consolidate the data from dozens (or even hundreds) of separate entities, into a single coherent business performance evaluation. If you don’t want your subsystems to access each other, you have to do it all from the top.
Scheduling is for so much more than services, now.
While scheduling systems have long been advertised and marketed to service businesses, changes in customer needs and societal changes have demanded that scheduling is available for other things.
Companies providing retail and events are embracing the online scheduling solution as a way to avoid closure, but also to enhance the customer experience. Retail and purchase advice is by no means a new idea, but ensuring that your customer has the guaranteed attention of the staff member is so much closer when they can book their time-slot in advance.
SimplyBook.me and Enterprise Scheduling Systems
If any of this resonates with you, your business has probably reached the point of exhaustion, whether that’s with an existing scheduling platform or you’ve decided to infuse your large company with the new blood of online client-side scheduling.
The newest release from SimplyBook.me is a simple yet comprehensive approach to enterprise scheduling management. All the aspects that made SimplyBook.me scalable from small to medium business are still there, but now it has the added functionality, separation, resources and integration required for the largest of enterprise businesses.
To find out more, you can go to the new webpage for enterprise businesses. See what we have to offer and book a meeting with an account manager. It doesn’t matter whether your enterprise business needs scheduling for internal or external use, or maybe you need it for both, there’s is a solution here for you.
