Whatever the niche of your business is, you are surely constantly facing different challenges and tasks that you have to solve. All of this can become complicated and overwhelming if you don’t use all the tools available to you. Without the help of tools you will simply not be able to visualize everything properly and therefore it is very possible that you will make mistakes. Mistakes most often happen when everything is not visualized immediately.
To avoid having to do all this in your head or draw on paper, the best option offered to you is to use flowchart software. No other tool can create such a clear picture for you as a flowchart. However, there are certain disadvantages, which can be easily overcome if you know what to look for. We will help you with that, because we will point out all the pros to make the most of them, but also the cons so you can avoid them when using flowchart software for your business.
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What is that?
It is a diagram that serves to plan each step in detail. It can be used by everyone, from programmers who have to plan every step during the development program, to economists, psychologists, and even lawyers. Lawyers say that sometimes it is best way to approach very complex case. Diagrams can be simple, but they can also be extremely complex and it depends solely on how you create them. The software made it easier to create, because all the symbols became easily accessible to you.
Types
There are 3 basic types that are most commonly used:
-Horizontal: This type is created horizontally, all data are entered from right to left. It is the most popular type.
-Vertical: The second most popular type where you create from top to bottom. The importance of each step can be clearly indicated here, and for this reason many prefer the vertical to the horizontal.
-Panoramic: The most complex type of flowchart, because it combines both horizontal and vertical. More complicated to create, but it can display everything.
Symbols
It is not necessary to use many different symbols for your flowchart to be successful. However, especially now that you have the help of software, it will be much more intuitive and accurate if you display using all available symbols. There is a standard for symbols that was adopted 50 years ago. Since the primary topic of this text is pros and cons of using flowchart software for your business, we will now move on to it, and on this website you can find all the symbols you can use and a description of each of them.
Source:lucidchart.com
Pros
1. Analysis
A detailed analysis of everything you do is key to the success of your business. If you do things like new projects or investments at random, it is likely that your business will go bankrupt unless you are very lucky. And luck is not something to rely on in the business world. With the help of flowchart software, you can analyze everything in detail and very easily conclude whether you need to change something. The best organization and reorganization can be achieved in this way.
2. Visualization
As we have already said, the visualization of a problem often leads to its solution. There are people who have the talent to be able to visualize everything in their brain, but you should never rely on that. Once you realize that you are no longer making progress by reading documents, plans, and everything else, it is time to visualize them through creating a flowchart. With the help of software, you can even connect several different diagrams and thus get a solution to a much broader problem than the current one. And only when you can see everything clearly can you make the right decisions. Also explore all the ways in which this can be applied. Don’t just use it to create a plan for a new product for example. It can also be very useful for managing your employees. This way you can understand whether you might need to transfer someone to another department or delegate more or less tasks to him or her.
3. Positive impact on communication between departments
You must have had a problem at least once that two departments in your company do not communicate properly. This leads to less success and productivity, although both do their job well, but poorly inform the other about it. But if both use the flowchart to present all their ideas and what they have done, the others will easily understand everything. Because it is much easier and faster to understand from a visual display than to explain everything in detail and give a bunch of documents which are unfamiliar to the other department.
4. Simplicity
Yes, we have already told you that they can be both simple and complicated. But what we want to tell you is that even the most complex flowchart is much simpler than reading thousands and thousands of words. It is incomparably easier to see a flowchart and draw conclusions from it, than to analyze a tedious multi page document. Since time is money, the more you simplify the tasks that you and your employees have, the higher the productivity will be, and the lower the margin of error.
Cons
1. It can get too complicated
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If the problem itself is very complicated and complex, then eventually flowchart can become too and give you more headaches than it will help you with. That is why it is important to assess in advance whether this is a task where creating a flowchart will help you or not. The software certainly makes the situation even easier and allows you to tackle a more complex task, but you need to know when it’s time to stop.
2. Complicated alteration
Although it is incomparably easier to alter you flowchart than when you use the software for it, it can still be very complicated. For example, if you make a mistake somewhere in the beginning, and you only notice it when you have finished everything, it is clear to you how difficult it will be to change everything. Because every step entails the next one, which means you’re going in the wrong direction from the beginning.
Conclusion:
The most important thing is to know how you should create one and in which situations it will benefit you. If you know how to distinguish such situations, then the flowchart has no flaws. But you also need to know when is not the right time to use it.
