Business Software For Free
BusinessWeek:
Bassim Hamadeh’s $5 million company, University Readers, has to keep track of about 1,000 professors scattered around the country. That’s a tall order for the 25-employee San Diego business, which produces customized textbooks and reading materials for instructors. Hamadeh needed customer relationship management software that he could easily customize. Such tools were pricey, running $750 to $1,000 for each of the 10 employees who needed them. Then, much to his surprise, Hamadeh found Sugar Community Edition. The free software had the features he wanted and gave him a great deal of flexibility. After some tinkering, Hamadeh’s it staff quickly built a tool that helps employees manage projects for professors. And, Hamadeh says, ‘the fact that it was free was icing on the cake.’
You often don’t have to spend big bucks to get the software your operation needs. In fact, you may not have to shell out anything at all. Free software for tasks from word processing to accounting is increasingly available, thanks largely to the growing popularity of open-source applications. With open source, developers agree to give users access to the code, essentially the recipe for the software. Although that might not seem like a big deal for anyone other than programmers, it makes adapting the software much easier and cheaper. Other companies, including Microsoft and Intuit, do offer free entry-level versions of some software, such as accounting packages, but because those products are not open-source, they can’t be retooled for your business.
Of course, there’s a catch. Some open-source desktop software programs, such as OpenOffice.org, an office suite, or the Firefox browser, can be easily downloaded, but you may need to hire someone to help set up or customize those programs designed to run on servers. IT support is usually offered online in community forums, so if you need a great deal of one-on-one attention, you may also need to hire some help. ‘I tend to think of it like the accounting profession, where the tax code is free but businesses need to hire professionals to help guide their way through those areas,’ says John Locke, manager of Freelock Computing, a Seattle company that offers open-source consulting services for small businesses. Read more.
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