Israel Matzav: Republican Mormon Senator writes Chanuka song

Israel Matzav: Republican Mormon Senator writes Chanuka song

How To Pick Your Business Software

As a Small or even medium sized Business Owner one of the main challenges is that our business or service is usually unique and it is often very time consuming and costly to start to use off the shelf software only to find out that it's really not contributing to running our business more efficiently!

So how can we find the software that will meet our needs?

Finding software solutions for small business could be broken down to two basic types of businesses or scenarios:

1) Software for a brand new business just starting to operate

2) Software for a business that has been operating for some time already but without a Software Solution but with various off the shelf adhock computer programs.

Lets start with the brand new business:

We’ll start with a simple 2 step approach:

1) Define your information and information handling needs.

2) Define the four “W”’s of your business who where when and why the information will be used. (the fifth W -what we defined in stage 1.)

Stage 1:
This is the critical stage but its very simple. Take a piece of paper and write down all the categories of information that you as owner of the business look at each day.

For Example: Client Information, Prospective Client Information, Products or services you sell

From this list we can already learn what the major components of your small business software will be. Part 2 of this article will deal with recognizing and choosing the components.

Stage 2:

the 4 W’s a very simple task that is often overlooked.

Who:
Its best at this early stage to define the who will be using the Small Business Software. One needs to take into account will these people be “computer savy” or not.

Where:
Isn’t that a bit obvious.. on the computer… Its a little more involved than that! Will the use of information be only in the place of business? or will people be working from home or even on the road?

When:
Another one that seems “so obvious” but will the small business software system have to be time sensivite? Available 24/7?

Why:
Now we come to the most important aspect this point actually ties in very closely with stage 1. Why is each category of information important?

Now for each category from stage 1 write down the 4 w’s….

See you next time when we will discuss how to take the category list and pick our Small Business Software base components.

Have a great day. Article 2 will be out shortly.

Regards

Meir Rotfleisch - C.E.O.
M.R.R. Computers and Systems Ltd.