(empo-tuulwey) Tools aren't easy. Why use them?

The New CRM blog recently posted something about tools. Since I (still) talk about tools on this blog, it defintely interested me.

The post talked about several things - tools needs vs. tool "nice to haves," why CRM should instead be called "Customer Experience," and how cool cell phones can be. But I want to concentrate on one point that was raised - shoes.

Here's a bit about what was said about shoes:

Think about your closet. You have thirty pairs of shoes tossed in haphazardly. It is faster getting them in there then if you were to neatly organize them. What about when you want your black boots? You start digging, pushing shoes out of your way, and you’ve found one! It’s a start. So you go back to digging out the second. By the time you have both boots in your hand (or on your feet) all of your shoes have made their way out of your closet and you have to get them back in. The time you save by tossing them in instead of organizing is lost by digging through sixty shoes and re-shoving them every which way but where they belong.

The moral of the story is: it’s a lot easy to find things when they are put away. It might be harder but in the end, it’s worth it.

And the post concludes by saying:

There is a difference between what is easy and what is going to make your life easy.

A tool is often not easy to use. If you have some type of shoe sorter, you have to organize it and remember to put your shoes in the right place every time - and that's BOTH of your shoes. If you have a hammer, you have to make sure that you don't smash your fingers. If you have Twitter, you have to login every once in a while, and you have to restrain yourself from tweeting every little thing that pops into your head. (Well, you SHOULD restrain yourself.) If you have a Capability Maturity Model-based process, you have to read the process and follow it.

The benefit, as The New CRM notes, occurs AFTER you've invested time in using the tool. That's when you see the payoff.