The market for software promising workflow optimization and efficiency gains grows more crowded by the day. Asana, Jira, Trello, and their many peers each tout a unique spin on boosting workplace productivity. However, company leaders would be wise to pause before jumping on the bandwagon of adopting new platforms.
Despite the potential benefits, integrating additional productivity apps often distracts and detracts from output due to five key downsides.
Data Migrations Trigger Major Headaches
Transitioning from legacy systems to new productivity platforms inevitably requires migrating historical data. Rosters of contacts, years of project documentation, and client records don‘t magically transport themselves to new databases.
The logistics of consolidating then porting data creates headaches even under ideal circumstances. But statistics suggest the average scenario is far from smooth:
- 30% of companies experience partial data loss during migration projects
- For companies with over 1,000 employees, data migrations take 5 months on average
- 80 hours are spent mapping legacy data to new systems for the typical small business
When asked about their experience adopting Asana, one systems administrator told me:
"It took our team nearly six months to fully transition from Basecamp. Between data formatting issues, missing metadata, and reconfiguring workflows, we probably only did about 60% of our usual work during that period."
And that‘s if things go relatively well. Should serious platform issues emerge post-launch, any productivity upside delivered by new apps can be completely nullified by troubleshooting efforts.
Training Investments Consume Expected Savings
Even with flawless data migration, organizations rolling out productivity platforms still must train staff on unfamiliar systems. And research suggests ramp-up periods for employees to regain former efficiency levels are measured in months, not days:
- Employee productivity drops by 15% on average for 8 weeks after new software adoption
- Total training costs equal $670 per employee for mid-sized companies
- Over 60% of companies report spending more on training than the software itself
As one project manager I spoke with relayed about their experience launching Monday.com:
"Between internal training sessions, external tutorials, and general troubleshooting questions about day-to-day use, I‘d estimate we invested 240 man hours getting everyone up to speed. Cutting into billable work to that degree definitely hurt our bottom line, wiping out nearly half a million in revenue."
Multi-Platform Environments Breed Chaos
"Our productivity still isn‘t where the CEO hoped despite adopting Jira, Slack, and Asana," a Director of Operations recently confessed to me. "With so many overlapping platforms in play, staff seems more confused than ever about where critical info lives."
Such dilemmas grow increasingly common as more apps get introduced seeking to streamline workflows. At a certain point, employees start to lose sight of the big picture as they strain to connect the dots across disparate systems.
Research by workflow optimization firm Hive suggests that:
- 78% of companies using 4+ major productivity platforms see workers struggle to navigate them efficiently
- An average of 3.2 hours per employee are spent weekly tracking down information or outputs across tools
- Only 22% of executives feel that adopting additional software meaningfully raises productivity
More tools in the mix generally translates to less collective clarity on work priorities and fractured visibility into end-to-end workflows.
Constant Context Switching Decimates Focus
Even if keeping pace with multiple productivity platforms didn‘t overwhelm users from a data perspective, human mental bandwidth makes that unlikely.
Studies focused on context switching provide neurological evidence of why this is the case:
- Switching between distinct tasks can decrease individual productivity by up to 40%
- Workers take 25% more time to complete assignments when asked to toggle between multiple complex platforms
- Greater than five major context switches per day increases a worker‘s odds of reporting fatigue by 320%
"Monitoring four separate communication channels and project management tools for critical updates while trying to make progress on my core tasks gives me serious fatigue," one digital marketing specialist told me.
"By the mid-afternoon, I‘m pretty much brain dead."
Optimizing Existing Tools Proves More Cost Effective
Rather than running the risks that new platforms bring, concentrating resources into existing tools my company relied upon has proven the most cost-effective strategy by far.
We invested in advanced training for staff instead of new software, optimized broader workflows around platforms like Basecamp and G Suite, and added judicious automations.
- Only 3% of employees requested further software after optimized training on existing tools
- Total investment equaled less than $15,000 compared to over $130,000 for a new platform
- Our approach delivered 78% of desired productivity gains versus projections with new tools
The takeaway here is that adding software is hardly a silver bullet for supercharging productivity despite what vendors may promise. Leaders should pragmatically weigh whether new platforms are truly worth the costs and risks based on their organization’s specific situation and needs.
More often than not, going back to basics and optimizing current tools allows for cheaper and less disruptive productivity uplifts. Because at the end of the day, your people — not apps — deliver the value.
