man with computer frustrated Uh oh. Your staffing agency has reached the dreaded decision: Is it time to upgrade your staffing software solution? Of course, every business owner has a reason to stay with the older version. “Everybody knows the old system.” “Research and training will cut into our bottom line.” “We don’t want to deal with the cost of an upgrade.” No matter what the reason may be, upgrades are a part of your business’s success. Here are 5 reasons why you should upgrade your staffing software solution:

1. Current. 2012 has seen a whole new level of advancement in social media and social recruiting. These changes have made a major impact in the way recruiting and staffing agencies function. From features, apps, tools, and the way they are used, they are always constantly changing. To tackle these and other industry dynamics, your business will need to alter the way it works with clients, candidates, and the market. Essentially, your software will need to expand in its capabilities in order to continue to provide value to your business. For the most part, these necessary changes often require software upgrades.

2. Performance. Your staffing software’s flexibility, speed, dependability, scalability and other factors that affect efficiency within your business are heavily influenced by software enhancements. By not updating your current system, you are doing your business a disfavor. Upgrades that use new software can greatly increase the performance of your staff and your business.

3. Compatibility. Your ever-changing business needs combined with the introduction of new technologies often require software upgrades in order to be carried out correctly. If the staffing software you’re currently running isn’t “forwards compatible” with new technologies than you might have no choice but to upgrade.

4. Simplify. Staffing Software is built to make your life easier. Developers are continuously observing, tweaking, and inventing new ways to enhance a software solution’s usability. No product, tool, application or channel is ever quite finished. As soon as a new release is out, it’s back to measuring and analyzing user behaviors in order to refine the product to best fit user needs. The resulting upgrades will have a more streamlined and intuitive interface, contributing to your business’s productivity levels.

5. Exterminate. Software vendors want to fix the bugs. Developing software is a complex and never ending task; no software is blunder free. It’s a constant process of improvement and maintenance. Developers seek out and correct defects that have a significant impact on performance, usability, reliability, etc., resulting in an upgraded version of the staffing software.

At the end of the day, a staffing software upgrade has more positive outcomes than the negative ones. Instead of dealing with malfunctioning old software, you can be increasing your business’s productivity and efficiency with a new software upgrade. The world does not operate the same way it did 5 years ago, and neither should your outdated software solution.

Megan Curth is the Marketing Coordinator of Automated Business Designs, Inc., software developer of Ultra-Staff staffing software for the staffing and direct hire industry. Ultra-Staff is a staffing software business solution with components for front office, back office and the web. Megan’s email address is megan.curth@abd.net or for more information on Ultra-Staff go to www.abd.net