In The Solution Space

I always get asked, “Craig, what do you recommend for [fill in the blank for an application, tool, website]?”  After being in the business for 20+ years, I have seen a lot of princes and frogs.  I really enjoy sharing sites, tools and applications that I have come across and thought were really interesting or ones that I actually use and love.  Here they are in no particular order.

Email & Collaboration

Google Apps and Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite.  These are great for the small to medium sized business who doesn’t need or want to own their messaging and collaboration infrastructure.  Both of these services are backed by robust hosting, high availability, excellent security and really good functionality. Downsides?  Google plays better to a wider browser set than does Microsoft and support for Google is mostly web based versus live people at Microsoft.  Microsoft has a very robust partner network for design, implementation and support.

Customer Relationship Management

salesforce.com.  These guys invented the Software as a Service space for CRM and they continue to innovate.  They offer different editions that fit any budget.  Microsoft and other players offer their solution but they are in the taillights of the clear leader in my opinion.

Accounting/Invoicing/Project Tracking

I have recently discovered FreshBooks.com, a totally online hosted solution that is easy to setup, affordable and has functionality at its heart.  Imagine tracking your expenses, time sheets, generating an invoice and have that invoice delivered electronically to your client, all with the push of one button.  Additionally, you can give your clients online access to their invoices through the system.  This is some really good software on a hosted platform.  No software to install=easy.

Website Management / Content Management

If you are looking for solid software to get your site up and running quickly, using WordPress blogging software as a content management system is an excellent (and free!) choice.  You might spend some additional time getting all the right plugins in place for your site (contact forms, search engine optimization and others) but this is one flexible platform that is easy to use and update.  ALSO, if you want/need a more customized theme for your site, Artisteer is an easy to use graphical design application that will create your WordPress theme and template pages in no time.  In fact, that is how this blog and my website (www.solutionspacetechnologies.com) was designed.

Hope that this helps answer some questions about available technologies for the small business owner and operator.  However, if you want some additional strategy or expert advice to your particular business problem, please contact me at Solution Space Technologies.  As we say, get out of the “problem space” and into the “solution space”.