Technology Is Key To Small Business Success...
 A recent issue of Entrepreneur magazine had articles on the following:
- Start a blog for your business
- Go virtual with your workforce
- The new era of IM (Instant Messaging)
- Mobile banking tools
- Use Skype to save a ton on your phone bills
- Quiz: BlackBerry or iPhone
...Open Source Is Key To Keep Its Cost Down
How are you going to do all of that without gearing up with technology? As a small business, you can leverage technology in one of two ways:
- Use expensive commercial software.
- Try free open source software for those areas where it meets your needs.
Thankfully, the same issue of Entrepreneur magazine went on to offer 5 tips to revamp small business IT for serious savings. One of them was to use open source software. They estimated that a small business could save $18,950 in a year by switching to open source software.
Stars Are Lining Up For SMBs To Use Open Source
In the past, smaller businesses often have been reluctant to bring in open source because of a lack of in-house skills. While small businesses still do not have that much open source expertise, that barrier to adoption is diminishing as open source software is becoming more mature, commercial open source vendors gear up to support smaller businesses and a growing number of firms emerge to provide third-party support for open source projects.
While larger enterprises look at open source for reducing cost and the ability to customize, small businesses in the forefront of this trend, are viewing open source as an opportunity to bring in state-of-the-art technologies that in the past were available only through expensive, proprietary applications, analysts say.
With hundreds of millions of downloads and a very visible public profile, Linux, Apache, Firefox and OpenOffice provide highly visible examples for those who are still either unaware or skeptical about open source software. In addition, it has come to a point where you can read in popular print magazines as well as leading online journals successful case studies about larger enterprises using Linux, Apache and other open source software extensively. That eliminates a lot of the concerns that small and medium businesses had about going down an unproven path.
License Cost Savings Are Just The Beginning
In our experience, cost savings are just the beginning. CNET Blog Network author and popular open source columnist Matt Asay puts it more eloquently: “With budgets being cut, now is the time to tap into the innovation and flexibility of open source. Open source isn't solely or even chiefly about reducing costs, but that's a great side effect.”
SMBs Can Put On Your Thinking Cap Again
Small businesses are, understandably, gun shy about looking for opportunities to leverage technology to improve their business. In the past, every time they thought of a good idea, the cost of commercial software was so sky high, they not only dropped that idea, but also stopped thinking along those lines. With open source software, that calculation has changed dramatically. We invite small and medium businesses to start putting on your thinking cap again. Now you can get creative. With such a wide choice of open source software now available, even if you come up with the zaniest innovative idea, there probably already is an open source application that can be customized to implement it.
- Retain good employees: Finding, hiring and retaining good employees has been identified as a major challenge for small businesses. If you provide good tools for them to be more productive, they will enjoy working for you and will be motivated to stay.
- Improve customer service: For small businesses, generating new leads and converting leads to paying customers is the hardest, and most expensive, part of doing business. Small businesses need to focus on delighting their existing customers, a lot more than larger enterprises. Technology can help in many ways.
- Improve your work-life balance by automating operations: Senior leaders of small and medium businesses wear many hats and their week never seems to end. Technology can help automate most of their operations so that they can stop worrying about the routine tasks and focus on handling the exceptions as well as business growth.
- Gear up for growth: Small and medium businesses are much more caught up in the chicken and egg situation. They cannot afford to gear up for growth until the revenue is in sight. And they may not be able to win new business until they gear up. Open source software can help you gear up for growth at lower cost.
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