Sunday, April 22, 2007

Open Source for small business owners

Being productive & efficient is not “nice to have” anymore, its necessity...even for SMEs

Running the small or mid sized business and enhancing its business efficiency and productivity through automation and implementation of suitable IT software solution has not been a difficult thing to do for quite some time already. More importantly, it's not a “nice to have” option anymore. World is moving from an old Information Age into the new Conceptual Age. What does it mean for us, SME business owners? In short it means that having your business automated and efficient is not a competitive advantage anymore, not even for SME. The new sources of competitive advantage are becoming aspects like design or emotional value of products and services for customers, not delivery or information provided on time.

Sadly, there are still very few SMEs in Singapore that have either looked into “IT challenge” or did something about it. The negative reaction of many SMEs business owners when IT word is even mentioned is very surprising. Excuses about not being IT savvy or high price of IT solutions are no longer valid either. IT solutions are becoming so user friendly that even 5 years old can use them and thanks to initiatives like Open Source, utility computing or agile software development, IT solutions are more affordable then anytime before, even customized ones.

Open Source Movement, for example, hit Singapore long time ago but the response hasn't been very good and I wonder why. Maybe it was not understood properly or natural loyalty to other IT applications historically used in companies or fear from something unknown overtook the message that Open Source tried to communicate to business owners. Open Source became the domain only of IT companies and “IT people” in Singapore and never a domain of business owners who can also benefit from it a lot. Open Source has been around for many years now, its not new anymore, its been tested and proved very efficient and contributional. There is nothing to stop us from fully utilizing it in our businesses.

Open Source is an initiative of IT professionals from all around the world who believe that certain things do not need to be proprietory anymore and can be shared for free for the benefit of all. That's how many amazing softwares, technologies and solutions were created and are open and available to all for utilization. There is of course much more behind it, but as this article is mainly targeted at SME business owners, we can leave the rest to IT experts. All we need to understand is that there are alternatives and options that can be used in the area of IT for our business.

Costly proprietory Microsoft Office suite can be for free substituted with Open Office suite, for which no license fee has to be paid. Open Office is available for download at www.openoffice.org. All you need is to download it into your computer and run it. I have been using it myself since few years back already and I am a very happy user. It took me approximately one day to get used to the slight changes in navigation, but that was all. Open Office documents for example can always be saved as MS documents and thus there is no problem with compatibility. I have not faced one problem with Open Office so far and I am using it on my Mac computer.
I am also using Mozilla Firefox, which is an amazing Internet browser, which I prefer to Internet Explorer or Thunderbird that I use for emails management.

There are many other examples of Open Source applications that can be used for daily business benefits – for example SugarCRM for managing your contacts and customer relations or GnuCash or Compiere for your accounting purposes and many more. There are solutions available for project management, documents management, free shopping carts solutions, content management systems and many more. All are ready to be used and implemented and you do not have to pay a single cent if you know a minimum of downloading them and installing them to your PC or using them on-line.

As I have personally tested SugarCRM, I would like to share my experience. SugarCRM is a Commercial Open Source Customer Relationship Management. It is a great way to start managing and organizing your contacts and communication with them to ensure follow up, to manage your sales pipeline or generate reports. SugarCRM is available for download at www.sugarcrm.com. There are also paid versions available with support and enhanced features if you decide to switch later in the future. SugarCRM is not ideal as my expectations are quite but for the beginning, the free version is more then enough. This way, first step to the world of IT and automation is made very simple, right?

On the other side, Open Source applications have also limitations you need to be aware of:
Applications are usually ready made and you have to use them as they are with no customization unless you are willing to pay extra for someone to customize the application for you. You would still need either internal or external IT expert to maintain and service your application and thats where IT outsourcing companies come in handy. That is how both, customers and IT vendors, can benefit from Open Source if Open Source will be your acceptanble choice to more productive and efficient business or operations. Eventually, everybody grows and benefits and that is exactly what is behind Open Source open sharing initiative.

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