Business Software

Archive for July, 2009

You’ve decided to take the plunge.  Finally go off the deep end.    You swing open the door to your manager’s office, walk back to your desk and begin to sweat.  A cocktail of stress and jubilation spills down your body from head to toe.   Your feet start to move and then you are walking, out the door, down the elevator, into the city, and then out into the world.  You’ve decided to start your own business- escape the grind and finally pursue your dreams.     You’re free.  You’re screwed.

Then comes the details.  You need to strategize – figure out what needs to be done to get it rolling.   What kind of paperwork do you need to fill out?  How are you going to find your employees- designers, developers, sales, recruiters?  Where will your office be?  Where can you find advice from those who have already gone through this chaos?  What if you have a patent to submit?  How will you collaborate with your contractors?  How can you keep track of money, prepare for taxes?  What about business cards, business plans, PR initiatives and exit strategies?

These are just a fraction of the questions a small business owner needs to answer when forming a start up.   Fortunately, there are a host of new and cutting edge Web 2.0 software tools that have been created to help answer these questions.  Today’s entrepreneur can utilize a variety of enterprise software applications that will help them get on their feet without giving away an arm and leg of their nest-egg.  I’ve created a list of some of my favorites- feel free to contribute with any others that you know of.

Basecamp: For your project management and collaboration needs, basecamp is a web tool that allows a small business to interface with clients and collaborators.  It has an incredibly intuitive UI that allows an entrepreneur to keep their head on straight while managing several projects at once.

Dropbox: A nifty web application that rids you of need to carry around USB flash drives or larger external hard drives.    Dropbox allows you to synchronize various computers to common accessible folders.   Its as easy as drag and drop, and allows several collaborators to share files wherever they are, without the hassle.

http://www.getdropbox.com/

Google Docs: Google Docs provides a suite of online MS-office-esque applications that all are extremely accessible and easy to utilize.  Whether you want to create a spreadsheet that tracks potential clients, or an online word-doc business plan, Google Docs allows multiple collaborators to contribute simultaneously, instead of the tediously sending a document back and forth via email.

Odesk: Odesk is an online web tool that allows a small business employer to outsource work to freelancers around the world.  While an entrepreneur must be weary about those bidding to do work from overseas for a fraction of the cost, very often Odesk provides a great interface for a variety contract jobs.    The online application allows an employer to adeptly track their freelancers, from up-to-date progress updates to an actual live webcam feed of their hire.

LinkedIn: LinkedIn is the most popular and free social networking tool for business professionals.  You can essentially post your online resume and qualifications, as well as list your current business venture and why its great.  One useful feature on the social-networking side of things is the ability to get in touch with other local small business owners, who may have helpful advice for you.  It also provides a great forum to let your client’s tell the world about all the great work you’ve done for them through the recommendations engine.

Newton On Demand: Newton provides an online software service for your company’s recruiting and applicant tracking needs.   Easier to use than many of your favorite websites, Newton’s online recruiting software enables your entire hiring team to access, manage and share recruiting information across your entire company.  The great thing about this piece of software is that it is extremely intuitive to use, allowing hiring managers and recruiters to easily collaborate from wherever they are.

http://www.newtonondemand.com/

Zazzle: Whether you want to design your company’s business cards, coffee mugs, or kickball Tees, Zazzle provides a great online tool for enterprise branding.   Although things like these may seem ephemeral when trying to make deadlines, some branding can go along way for your small business identity and marketing.

Twitter: If getting some attention in your niche is what your small business needs- Twitter is a great tool to keep fans, clients and family alike updated with the latest news.  If utilized effectively, Twitter can be a modern day PR agency, minus the headache of management and associated costs.

QuickBooks:  This time-tested financial software package is still as relevant as ever.   I recommend getting set up with QuickBooks from day one to track every dollar going in and out of your business.  The intuitive interface and online access makes it a breeze to create invoices, track payments and manage your small business expenses.

By: Darwin Redshield

You run a business and it’s growing…fast. You are getting busier and busier by the day and it feels like your time is spent constantly resolving issues and concerns.

You have a computer and its working…hard. Your business is so dependent on your computer the power cable is starting to look like an umbilical cord. If your computers crash, your business is down.

If the software you rely on has a hiccup, it feels like an earthquake. So, why is it that when you bought software for that computer, you didn’t even think to ask about what kind of support the creators offered?

Every day, people get stuck on the phone for hours with cut-rate technical support, often a price that exceeds that of the software itself. Email requests go unanswered for days on end and you feel that all hope is lost. Want to avoid this situation all-together? Never buy software unless it has a solid, professional support system to back it up.

But isn’t all support just long minutes on hold waiting for the “next available operator”? Test it out, find out for yourself. Download a demo and call support with an issue. If they don’t help you now, what makes you think they will help you once you are a customer. Try both email and phone a few times and see how friendly, knowledgeable, and quick the support staff is to respond to your needs.

Then, when a crisis comes, as they inevitably do, you will not only know who to contact but you can lower your stress level by quantum leaps knowing that your issue will soon be resolved.

By: Gregg Blanchard

The importance of keeping your mailing list names and personal data up to date and accurate can not be understated. Billions of dollars are lost every year by large and small businesses because they ship correspondence to people who have moved, send duplicate mailings, mailings to addresses that do not exists and similar mistakes. By combining data and USPS software together the benefits will be significant.

Data Quality Software is the software that can convert the existing data into an integrated format by creating new fields, merging various files, and by summarizing and filtering it. The process “Data Quality” is the reliability and effectiveness of data, particularly in a data warehouse.

Data quality is much more than just records, fields and values-it’s about establishing business. From personal decisions, customer relationship to control of inventory, operations and even regulatory compliance, quality data forms the very foundation of a successful and flourishing enterprise.

Data quality assurance (DQA) is the method employed to verify the reliability and effectiveness of a data. Maintaining data quality requires going through the data periodically and scouring it. Generally this involves updating it, standardizing it, and de-duplicating records to make a single view of the data, even if it is stored in multiple variant systems.

Since data quality is so important from a business perspective, many large companies employ a data steward to be in charge of data quality. There are many vendor applications in the market to make this job easier.

It becomes easier to match your customer’s records with the help of this software. This improves the quality of your data. Usually computers trip over or ignore if the records don’t match. For instance a computer won’t know that Mac and Mack is the same person. The system is not designed to identify the slight variations in the characters, but data quality software knows this. It uses many other parameters to check the identity of two persons/names. The software also ensures that each customer has only one profile in your computer. This can have the added advantage of properly greeting a customer online when they log in. If certain criteria match, the system can anticipate that the person or group are affiliated and properly populate data.

How significant it is to have a Data Quality Software is we can understand by the following factual example: Gartner study says that poor quality customer data costs U.S. business an estimated $611 billion dollars a year in postage, printing, and staff overhead of reading data from operational systems.

The USPS is the least expensive way to ship letters and small merchandise in general in the USA. The USPS software and Data Quality software will enhance the profitability of every business. By maintaining the cleanest data records there will be less duplicate mailings, less returned mailings, a much stronger ability to sort potential customers and track results. In the challenging time the clean interface and ease-of-use of data quality tools makes is fast and a definite for all businesses looking to maximize their marketing dollars.

By: Mr. Software