How do you decide within your business on what software you want to run on a continual basis?
There are so many types of considerations!

• What operating system, versions and hardware do you have and what software versions will be compatible?
• What functionality does the whole business need?
• Do all staff need the same range of functionality on every computer?
• Are there open source solutions that will exactly meet needs and save money?
• Will changing software in use require staff training to migrate?
• How much time and energy can be spent on ensuring all software licenses are up to date and meeting your needs?

Most larger organisations have found that it is simply not worth their while taking the risk of having unlicensed (often called pirated) software in use.

The fines are way larger than the cost of the licenses (you could actually be fined up to $150,000 per offence - that is the maximum penalty) and a large organisation could find itself basically shut down if critical software was removed from their machines.

Interestingly whilst it is often employees who download and install unlicensed software onto company computers, it is also often employees who report companies for license infringements!

What can I do to protect my business?

• Understand the licensing on each software product you use
• Comply with all licensing
• Keep your records accurate at all times

OR

• Use open source licenses

Tough I know, but if you are going to use Proprietary licensed software then you need to do this.

If you use open source then your record keeping savings can be huge, your license fees savings even bigger, but you may need to spend on staff training, lower productivity during change over period and occasional compatability issues when sharing documents with users outside your business. This last issue should be the least of your worries if you use high quality open source software, not just some downloaded freeware.

There are also all kinds of open source licenses and if you head down that path you need to understand clearly what kind of license you are using and what implications that may have for your business.

Wikipedia as usual has a good lot of further information you can read up on.

When it comes to the programs or software on our computers – what do we actually own?
When you ‘purchase’ software you are not actually buying the software but licenses to use that software.  As a business owner it is critical to understand what licensing you have on your software
A typical license grants a user permission to use one or more copies of the software. Licenses generally fit into two distinct categories – proprietary and open source.
Proprietary licenses grant use of one or more copies of software but ownership and virtually all rights regarding the software remain with the publisher.  The click wrap license ensures the user must accept the terms of the license to use the software at all.  This ensures the publisher will win any court case regarding use of the software as the user has explicitly accepted the license terms.
Open source licenses allow ownership of the copy of the software by the user however every business owner must understand that this does not give copyright ownership even though the user can use the software without accepting the license. Open source does not mean free of obligation.  Within the category of open source there are a range of license types.
Businesses have an obligation to track and maintain their software licenses and large organisations use software to monitor this.  Schedule an annual software license review. This important activity allows you to decide how many copies of software are required and therefore the annual cost to the business can be included in your budget.
Although the cost of upgrades and renewals may seem onerous, the potential legal costs and your systems degraded performance due to not being able to utilise updates resulting from running unlicensed software are much higher.

There are a host of tools out there in cyberspace that can assist you in business.

They range from incredibly expensive to sublimely free, including everything in between since cyberspace is a pretty big place. (a bit like the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy’s description of space - it’s big, I mean really, really mind-bogglingly big!)

Don’t walk around in the dark or with your eyes blindfolded to the possibilities that are out there - see how you can make your business life easier and more efficient!

Then there are just so may ways of using technology within a business to manage your business and so many pros and cons to weigh up in deciding how you might structure your use of technology, especially software.

One of the major factors in weighing this up is the size of your business and the size of your budget.

A large business with a good budget is going to get the best return for their money by investing in top quality integrated packages that manage an entire business. Usually there are large database applications available to the different industry types that allow a certain amount of customisation to allow the system to work completely for each different business. These solutions are usually quite expensive, but with a big business the returns by having an integrated system that reports on all aspects of the business makes the investment a wise one that gives returns and therefore is usually the best choice.

But what about small business? No small business can justify that they will get a fair return on investing multiple thousands of dollars into software solutions, but too often this leads to a decision to do too little and they remain inefficient which also costs money.

The nature of the business of course will also dictate greatly on what kind of technology investment is going to suit.

So your first task is to do some hard thinking on just what kind of business you are running and just what kind of business solutions you need. Surely though there is some kind of minimum requirement that will be common to most everyone:

• Customer records
• Time scheduling
• Invoicing
• Receipting
• Tax reporting

These are the basics of record keeping in business even on the level of an owner operator micro business. Small business that also have employees of course need a payroll system of some kind.

Most small business I think would use either Quickbooks or MYOB for the bulk of these activities, but it’s not always the case. I find that micro business often shy away from these systems because they have no real understanding of accounting and therefore find the software too complicated (even though they are in fact really simple if you do understand accounting basics).

So here are some links to some interesting online tools that can be used by business and I guess you will make up for the savings on free tools here by paying your accountant to make sense of it all at BAS and Tax time. Mind you, some of these tools are not accounting type tools, but business management and client management tools and could provide a terrific compliment to your micro business!

Campfire - web based chat including sharing of files and images. This tool could be used to communicate with clients if your business involves you in project type work.

Basecamp - a similar concept by the same company in that it allows you to manage projects online and include your clients in the process.

Blinksale - an online invoicing system that allows your clients to check their own account status.

If you are using any cool online tools within your business, please feel free to leave a comment here letting me know what it is and how it is helping you so that others can benefit.

What would we do without the internet today?  If I could ask that question to a group of people in a room I know that I would receive a variety of responses from good riddance to cries of the world would come to an end.
But like it or not, the gigantic resource is looking like it will be around for a long time yet.
So we may as well make the most of the resource and use it as wisely as we can.  Besides the benefit of having a colossal amount of information at our disposal, we also have access to a wealth of handy online tools that can help small business.  Many of these software tools are free or very cost effective but you may have to spend a little time testing which will give you the most benefit or best suit your particular business situation.
I’ll give you a brief description of the kinds of tools that are available online and are particularly useful for business use.
Online file storage/backup systems allow you to store or back up your computer files across the internet.  A benefit of this is having a copy of your files completely outside of your building should any disaster happen.
You can maintain documents using online document sharing tools which allows with your permission more than one person to access and edit.
Collaboration with a team or even with your clients to share schedules, tasks and time tracking can be done using online project management tools
Intranets allow sharing of calendars, task lists and online bookmarking. Online invoicing systems often include the ability for your clients to check their account payment details.
Of course all of these tools carry the added advantage of being available to you from any computer that accesses the internet, rather than just being available from your own computer or inside your network.

Following on from the last entry that talks about using google to search where you rank on a good range of keywords your prospective customers may use to search for you …

… just how do you find out more about why these sites rank higher than you do?

How do find out how well designed your own site is?

Did you build your own site or do you need to go and ask someone else all this?

Now don’t get me wrong there is no rule that says you should be a web designer as well as all the other roles you take in your business.  In fact if you don’t have the skills well honed you are way better off out-sourcing this kind of important marketing work.  But one of the problems that arise can revolve around the fact that you don’t have enough knowledge to know if you are hiring the right contractor for the job.

Some tools to try

Online Ranking Checkers

There is a wealth of tools out there that can assist you.

Start with this ranking checker, then go to google and search for more and compare them for yourself (please don’t just take my word for anything!)

Information sites

Search Engine Optimisation

Australian Optimisation Information Site

There are various avenues you can use to conduct market research with the technology available today. I have two approaches in mind.
Firstly there are services available online for conducting market research with a variety of reporting tools, and secondly checking how your competitors are performing on google searches evaluates how your target market might find you online.
Spending time searching in google for the products and services that form your core business returns a wealth of information.
Search Engine ranking is of utmost importance– we all want to rank #1 with google! There are a variety of influences to this ranking.
Start searching with the kind of keywords that you would expect your business to rank well on. For example if you supply office goods in this region you may search on “Office Supplies” +”Far North Coast” +NSW
The inverted commas around Office Supplies and Far North Coast make sure they are joined together and plus signs say that all these need to be included in the search but not necessarily in order.
Concentrate on the first 5 sites returned, and where you are.
If you are in the first 5 - great, you are ready to search again with different keywords.
If you are not in the first 10, then you need to find out why are other sites there?
Look over their sites and see how much information they give on their products and services, how big they are and how well they are linked up to other sites.
Be prepared to spend time on research as potential customers may be missing you because you are too low down the results list. This has nothing to do with how great a product or service you offer!