When I started my company back in 1994 I could only dream of certain things. I dreamed of no longer having to wear a "pager" when someone needed to contact me. I dreamed of not being forced to find a payphone to call clients when out of the office. I dreamed of a lighter laptop computer with more power that was easier to use.I dreamed of a day when I would no longer have to synchronize my data to my main database (because that never worked very well anyway) or when I could access information right from a portable device. I dreamed of getting on to the Internet from just about anywhere, accessing vital information about my customers and prospects and being able to do data entry while on the fly. I dreamed of a day when I would have more choices than just Microsoft. And I dreamed of a truly integrated and affordable business system that would allow me to enter information once, and only once, and have it flow easily from an initial phone call to a cash receipt....all in one shared database.
Of course, many of these dreams have come true. Today's small business owner has the choice of many applications, many devices, many sources of information and many vendors besides Microsoft. But one dream still remains elusive for me and just about all of my small business customers: the truly integrated and affordable business system.
Instead we have this: a quote prepared on a spreadsheet and then re-entered into an accounting system. A prospective customer met at a trade show whose information must be re-entered into the order system. An inventory item purchased that has to be re-entered into the website's database. A service work order from a job that must be re-entered into the billing system. And that's not all.
Visit a typical small business today and you'll find some things very similar to 1994.
Despite all great cloud-based applications, there will still be dozens of people with their own contact lists and calendars and tasks and information that is kept in dozens of different spreadsheets, internal and external databases, email applications, even paper files. Much of it is duplicated. Little of it is shared. There's a salesperson doing a quote this way and another one doing it that way. A customer calls in and nobody knows who spoke to her last. An inquiry is made on a website and nobody knows if it's being followed up. An order is processed and then manually recorded in three other places. Hours are still spent exporting data from one source and then combining it with data from another to generate a management report. A proposal is stored here, and there and even up there...which one is most current?
And my clients ask me, again and again: isn't there a reasonably priced system that just "does it all" for a small business?
Isn't there a truly integrated business system? One that tracks information from the first time you met someone at a conference last year to the receipt of cash from an order he placed a few weeks ago? One that shares all of the communications with that customer between sales, service and management? A system that handles quoting, sales management, order entry, inventory management and customer service too? And one that's not only easily accessible by employees but where certain data, like order status or inventory levels, can also be available to customers? One database. One vendor. Is there such a system for a small business? And one that doesn't cost six figures?
No, there is not such a system. Not in 1994. Not in 2013. No one has solved this problem. Not Intuit. Not Google. Not Microsoft.
Oh, there are lots of cool technologies available for small businesses today that do a great job with some of this. And with much better capabilities than those old 1994 programs. There are inexpensive cloud-based billing applications like Freshbooks and Invoice2Go. There are great and affordable customer relationship management applications like Zoho and SugarCRM. There are plenty of excellent software choices for doing order entry and accounting like QuickBooks and Peachtree. There are terrific and inexpensive e-commerce offerings provided by services like GoDaddy and Yahoo.
And of course there are excellent social media outlets like Facebook and LinkedIn for tracking customer interactions. And lots and lots of mobile apps to help you manage expenses, track your time, and play scrabble with your friends. None of it is integrated very well.
Many software vendors will tell you that this is not the case. Some companies like NetSuite and Intacct are bravely offering their fully integrated cloud-based systems as the answer to this problem. Other vendors showcase their "marketplaces" of add-on applications that attempt to bridge the data gaps between their systems and others. And then of course there are thousands of developers eager to create even more software to accomplish that holy grail of technology that small businesses have been searching for: a truly affordable and integrated business system.
Vendors will struggle to show how their software does it all, from quote to cash receipt. They will demonstrate how zip-zip-zip you can suck in this spreadsheet data with a couple of clicks and a wave of the wand and convert your quote into an order in a blink of an eye. But really? Can I get ALL of what I asked above? Are all of my company's emails showing up under this customer's account or are they still stuck in Gmail or Outlook-land? Does my order-entry staff see the collection calls made by accounting for a late paying account before accepting that next order?
When a customer goes to my website to order a product, is she seeing the latest inventory and pricing specific for her based on her past activity? And can I accomplish all of this for my 25-person company for something less than $100,000 or $10,000 per month?
Large companies seem to do this, right? Wrong. The Amazons, Dells and Staples of the world spend millions each year on teams of developers who do nothing other than integrate all of their disparate systems with each other and then fix all the problems created by integrating these disparate systems.
And believe me when I tell you that most of my larger clients have data all over the place too. They struggle with the integration issue as much as my smaller clients. They just have more resources to spend on more band-aids to the problem.
Why haven't our leading software companies like Microsoft, Google and Intuit solved the problem of integration? Because they can't.
There are too many people, third-party developers, programmers, partners, integrators, and database geniuses who are part of this ecosystem and who would passionately resist such a thing because a truly great integrated system would take away from their livelihood. There are too many small businesses who all think that what they're doing is so incredibly unique that they couldn't conform to a specific pre-designed, integrated system. There are too many risks that if a company like Microsoft were to design the ultimate, affordable, integrated system that eliminated so many moving parts they would once again be dragged before the courts and charged with monopolization. There are too many players who are better at what they do in their specific expertise then any one single vendor like Microsoft. And there are easier ways for software makers to make money.
For most small businesses an affordable solution to this problem is still just a dream. And one that will not come true anytime soon.
