What are we doing?
We are massively searching for alternatives to American cloud services such as M365/Gsuite/Azure/AWS. Salesforce and Zendesk are also on the list. This search is driven by changes in the world. It forces companies to think about risks. Those risks have changed. Not European governments wanting to look into your data and possible boycotts. And some think it won't escalate, but that doesn't lessen the impact if it does happen.
The button is pressed
We hope it doesn't happen. There will be a significant number of services that will no longer work and that you will be affected by, such as Whatsapp/Signal. It becomes really annoying when your systems are down. No sales, no email, no deliveries, and no inventory management. Your business is out. Data is gone. Back-ups can be difficult to restore because the service is down. In which program will the data from the back-up run?
There is no alternative to M365/Gsuite
And that is true. And then the majority of entrepreneurs shrug their shoulders and stop searching. That is not strange, but logical.
"Is there an alternative?" is not the right question. Searching for an alternative doesn't work. Because how many products are you currently using to manage email, calendar, tasks, contacts, CRM, newsletters, polls, forms, inventory management, HR, cash registers, events, and accounting? It's really not just M365/Gsuite.
Fewer tools is the solution
The use of data (as that is what it comes down to) occurs in business processes. A simplified example is a form on your website. Does that result in an email after completion? Where does that email go? Does it end up centrally? And can an action be taken immediately afterwards? Because when someone fills out a form, it is (usually) a sales opportunity or a support request.
So it is useful if it can go directly to the right place with the right people. Shall we create a quote right away? And send out the invoice? Create a project to start the delivery? Product from stock? Start a purchasing process to replenish the stock? I think the point is clear. How many systems have you used?
There is another danger lurking
If you do not ensure that employees have all the tools they need, they will start looking for them themselves. File sharing?USB stick or WeTransfer. Chatting?WhatsApp. Ensuring that emails arrive in the right place?Copilot does create a filter.
Shadow IT is the name for this phenomenon. Not new, but now that AI is a standard tool for every employee, it will certainly occur more often.
"Can you ensure that emails with such attachments are forwarded to inkoop@ and please make it clear that it concerns an invoice"
Certainly. I will forward it and change the subject to "invoice". I will keep the sender address the same.
It is certainly not as handy as it seems, but you suspected that already :-). Why? Read the following.
- This will be an automation that belongs to that user. If that employee leaves and the account is cleaned up, then the automation is also gone.
- The subject is not supplemented but replaced. An email arrives in purchasing with the subject "Invoice" without further information.
- The sender address remains the same, and therefore the sender's address is used. Mail servers will not accept that email at all because you are not allowed to send as that sender. The rejected email will, if you are lucky, come back to this employee as a complex error message with the subject; Bounce: invoice.
- The question is too vague. such an attachment? Clear for a human, not for an AI. Is such one with the same file name? Same size? Same extension?
It seemed so simple and convenient.
So:
Do not look for an alternative, but examine the business processes and then look for the right applications. And do you not know which tools are available? That is the moment you click on thecontactbutton. If you know how you want to work, we know which applications correspond to that.