Advancement in technology has augmented every sector where becoming a fast growing company means having an improved management system. Enterprises are now facing challenges with the traditional methods of maintaining day to day tasks and are moving on to secure and reliable solutions. With over 45 years of success, HarrisData offers a number of solutions such as ERP, CRM, HRIS and Financial Management. They have succeeded since 1972 through a commitment to excellence and a determination to serve customers well. HarrisData’s determination to be the best in the marketplace reflects on their dedication to quality people- people who are satisfied only when they develop and market excellent quality software, support services, and education, and who operate within a quality work-life environment.
Customer Centric Services
HarrisData makes it a priority to listen to clients and view the relationship from their perspective via user groups/conferences, customer tours, even interviews of competitor’s customers. Every listening opportunity is a chance to learn about a way to improve customer focus. Every client voice provides a unique perspective that needs to merge with their overall vision to deliver maximum value.
An Established Leadership
Lane Nelson is the Chief Evangelist at HarrisData. He combines experience in sales, marketing, and management positions at Pansophic Systems, Pilot Software, and the largest franchisee in the Budget Rent-a-Car system, with knowledge gained at Yale University and the Wharton School, to provide the HarrisData community with leadership and long-term vision.
Improvement is the Key
HarrisData is a nearly 50-year-old software company, their CEO has over 35 years in the software business, and they have learned many lessons along the way;
Continuous improvement is critical to survival – helping clients improve continuously is the best way to forge long-term relationships.
Never assume that one-size-fits-all – clients can and will customize products to meet requirements, unless their vendor makes it too difficult.
Project success comes from owning the project – make sure clients have the knowledge, skills, and confidence to execute projects; reduce the knowledge, expertise, and time required to complete projects wherever possible.
Automate. Do not perform the same service twice when you can develop a product to do it.
Comprehensive Strategy
HarrisData sets non-traditional performance benchmarks based on customer behaviors. The three key metrics traditionally used are retention, adoption, and focus.
Retention is a key metric in software, even more so in a subscription-based world. Customer retention represents a win for HarrisData, but they do not measure customer retention with naïve user counts. Instead they look at retention from the perspective of revenue retained. Before cloud-based solutions began automatically updating themselves, clients running business software had to decide whether and when to upgrade those solutions. Even when an upgrade promised substantial upside, clients resisted any changes because of the costs and risks of implementing that upgrade.
Adoption is measured at HarrisData by the number of clients that adopt new versions over time as a performance goal. As high-value upgrades are delivered more frequently to clients, HarrisData focuses on delivering upgrades with exceptional low cost and minimal risk. In a cloud-based world, software is upgraded automatically whether the client is ready or not, making this metric irrelevant for HarrisData cloud applications. However, the management goals associated with HarrisData’s decades-long focus on adoption is still relevant: make certain that the value of the upgrades are clear and significant, and that the costs/risks of the upgrade are negligible.
Focus is measured as the percentage of revenue earned from product licensing as a percentage of total revenue. For many ERP solution companies, the Focus metric would be about 50%. Because HarrisData is a product company not a services company, that metric exceeded 90% annually for over 20 years. HarrisData won’t make money by saying ‘yes!’ to every client request, fulfilling it with cheap offshore labor, just because it looks profitable at the transaction level.
Long Term Goals
HarrisData has been re-tooling their application platform to deliver on the vision of dramatically reducing the mundane, repetitive labor in the administration of a business in the same way robots are eliminating mundane, repetitive jobs in the warehouse and the factory floor. They are creating software designed around information robots to automate administrative tasks – such as a “hands-free” payroll solution. Additionally, the company is developing plug-ins to allow for seamless end-to-end integration of information flows both inside and outside the organization. Also, HarrisData is collecting data that machine learning algorithms will use to make recommendations to decision makers about which products to buy and which bills to pay today. There are many innovative solutions being created around the edges of decades-old ERP solutions implemented just before Y2K. However, delivering true end-to-end, hands-off information processes to their market is going to require a new set of core applications designed around information robots – and AppsInHD is going to be one of them.
User Friendly Approach
There are always new, marketing-driven fads that claim to provide a new level of customer intimacy. The HarrisData approach is based on proven success. The company exemplifies by giving two instances-
Collaborative Development Program for client enhancement requests. Unlike other software companies, HarrisData will evaluate client enhancement requests and provide a quote in writing with a fixed price, a guaranteed delivery date, and support for the enhancement. Client management can quickly and easily determine whether the investment will provide enough return to justify the expense.
Customer-centric licensing, HarrisData listened and studied the typical complaints about software licensing, and created simple, easy-to-understand licenses including a variety of client-centric terms such as guaranteed access to source code.
Testimonials from HarrisData’s Clients
“We shopped around extensively for other software companies last year and found out we prefer to stick with Harris for a host of good reasons… cost wise, user wise, support wise and everything else in between.”
“The effort and support from HarrisData was superb,”
“Went Live on HarrisData on time and under budget”.
