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Displaying posts tagged "business decisions" (Clear Search) Monday, March 8th, 2010
By Tyler King
We recently decided that this blog should focus on the technology needs for small businesses. You might wonder why a small business shouldn't just use the same tools as bigger companies, so this post will outline just a few of the reasons.
In case you're not sure what we mean by "big-business software", here's a trick: you can normally tell the target market for software by looking for annoying acronyms and buzz words. If software is described as an "enterprise-level data-driven ERP solution", that means it's meant for giant companies. At giant companies, decisions are made by people that want to feel like they're doing something really complicated, and software vendors know how to pander to that audience.
We'll write a lot more on the topic in future posts, but companies like Oracle, SAP and even Microsoft make most of their money by selling to huge corporations, and they simply don't offer products that are right for small businesses (most of the time). Here are six reasons why you should look elsewhere for your technology needs:
You don't want to overpay This is the easiest of these reasons to measure. Big companies have a lot of money, and software vendors want as much of it as possible. Most small businesses simply can't afford to use "enterprise-level" (read:overpriced) software. One easy way to tell if a company is charging too much is if they don't publish their prices online. If you go to a website to buy a product and you can't tell how much it costs without talking to a sales rep, you can bet it's way too expensive.
You don't need all those features
Big-business software is meant to do everything. This sounds like a good thing until you try to actually use it and you can't figure out how because it's too complicated. Your software should do what you need it to do, and anything extra is just unnecessary clutter. This is also related to the price issue, because even if you're not using all the features, you're still paying for them.
You don't have an I.T. team
We've already said that big-business software is complicated, but that doesn't just impact the users. The more complex the software gets, the more work is generally required to set it up and keep it running. Big companies have large I.T. departments to take care of everything, but who's going to be responsible at your company when your fancy new server crashes? You won't be taken seriously
If a software company is used to serving large clients, why would they spend their time worrying about you? Most big-business software companies won't even talk to you without knowing how many employees work at your business, and they obviously aren't going to treat you quite the same as they would a larger client.You're lucky enough to have a choice
Many people assume that the tools used at large companies are better than the ones used at smaller companies. They cost more, they have fancy buzz words, and large corporations must know what they're doing when it comes to software purchasing. This couldn't be further from the truth. Many large companies are still using horribly outdated software (like IE6) because it takes a tremendous investment for a large company to make even a small change. You have the ability to avoid all that endless bureaucracy.
Software can be one of your competitive advantages I wrote an earlier post about how trying to copy the big guys is a mistake. By assuming that you should use the same tools as big companies, you're effectively deciding to play the game using their rules. In order for a small company to succeed, they need to be disruptive. If you're lucky enough to work at a small company (or run your own company), you can gain a serious edge on your competition by using technology in ways that they can't. The main point that I want to make is that you should celebrate the fact that you don't have to use big-business software. Hopefully if you keep reading this blog, we can help you decide what you should use instead.
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010
By Tyler King
As you probably know, Google released a new social networking feature called Google Buzz. Just like any Google product, some people love it and some people hate it. There are a lot of legitimate criticisms (mostly about the major privacy holes), but there's one criticism that I just can't stand:
"Google Buzz is just a repackaged combination of Facebook and Twitter"
This criticism seems to suggest that a new products don't have any merit unless they offer never-before-seen features. Aside from the fact the Google Buzz does have tons of new features, that's not a legitimate criticism anyway. I absolutely agree that every new product needs to be unique in some way, but that doesn't mean that it needs radical new features.
Toyata didn't invent the car, so why were they (until recently) so much more successful than the companies that actually did invent the car? Why did Google search beat out Alta Vista and Yahoo? Why did Netscape lose to Internet Explorer, and why will Internet Explorer lose to Firefox and Chrome? The companies on the winning side of all these examples had one big thing separating them from the competition: they were better.
Toyata didn't feel the need to put out a five-wheeled car just because Fords have four wheels. They just made the same types of cars Ford was making, but they did a better job. Being better can be what makes your company unique.
At Less Annoying Software, we offer a CRM (or "Customer Manager" as we prefer to call it). Our CRM doesn't have any special features to differentiate it from the competition. Here's our business plan: "There are a lot of CRMs out there. Let's make a better one". It's that simple, and so far it seems to be working.
So when I hear people complain that Google Buzz can't possibly be worthwhile because it's just stealing ideas from Facebook and Twitter, I have to disagree. What if Google just does a better job than other companies? Isn't that worth something?
Friday, February 12th, 2010
By Bracken King
As you may have gleaned from our previous posts, Tyler and I are pretty big fans of many Google software products. Among other things, Less Annoying Software uses Google Voice to handle telephone service, Google Apps for email and documents, and Adwords for the majority of our advertising. It probably comes as no surprise then, that we keep a lot of what we like (and don't like) about Google in mind when we're developing.One of the things that I find interesting about Google is that despite being a huge company, they are remarkably agile in moving into new areas as well as dropping old projects. The latter of these is the one that I actually find more intriguing. Over the past couple of years, Google has basically stopped developing Google Notebook, Google Video, Orkut (a social networking site that you've probably never heard of if you're from the US), and probably plenty more web services with which I'm not familiar. If you've visited Gmail recently from IE6 or Firefox 2, you may have noticed Google Apps is phasing out support for older browsers. Over the past few months or so, they have also transitioned away from Google Gears (a framework for webapps to store data locally to allow offline access) in favor of HTML5. Gears seemed to be a huge part of Google's webapp strategy for a while as they integrated it into almost all of their services, but they seemingly jumped to HTML5 without any major qualms.
So how does this relate to small scale software development? Seeing that even Google feels the need to focus it's resources on the important aspects of it's huge suite of web software emphasizes how important it is for a small company or individual to think carefully about what features are really essential, and which ones are worth forgoing in favor of improving the core experience. Similarly, it's easy to hold on to older technologies even in the face of clearly superior alternatives. If a company as big as Google is able to readily update their technology platforms -- despite significant investment in the previous one -- a smaller company has no excuse to exhibit less agility.
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010
By Tyler King
I recently had a conversation with someone about what type of people a start-up company should hire. I obviously weigh the importance of technology more heavily than most people, but I'm of the opinion that one of the first hires any company makes should be a CTO (or just a developer if we're being honest).
The purpose of this blog post is to discuss the merits of different types of developer hires. Here are some assumptions:
Considering these assumptions, I see two main hiring questions: (1) How much money can you really justify spending on a tech guy, and (2) what is the appropriate balance of experience vs. talent.
Let's start with the second question (weird, right?). One important thing to be aware of when deciding between experience and talent is your own ability to measure both qualities. Raw talent is pretty easy to judge when it comes to technology. Any strong developer should be able to show you something they've built. It could be a web app, a video game, or a school project. Whatever it is, you should be able to play around with it and decide if this person has the technical skill you're looking for.
Experience seems a little harder to gauge because it is almost entirely intangible. Working at a company doesn't necessarily provide "experience" unless a person is actually faced with challenging problems that they can learn from. A resume is helpful, but there's just no way to know how a candidate will perform in the real world. I've also never really believed that references are trustworthy.
Having said all that, I think experience is potentially much more valuable than raw talent, mostly because a candidate can only gain valuable experience if they are already talented. However, because I don't think anyone is any good at evaluating experience, I would probably try to hire someone that has ridiculous technical chops with the expectation that they will need to be managed by a non-technical person.
Presumably, the company already has a leadership team with lots of business experience. These people should be knowledgeable enough to guide a 22 year old programmer. The main mistakes a young developer might make are almost entirely business related (poor communication skills, lack of end-user focus, etc.) and a non-technical person can help with that. The opposite is not true. If you hire an experience developer that isn't a technical rock star, they will eventually run into a tricky tech problem that they won't be able to solve.
You might be wondering why I'm acting like experience and talent are mutually exclusive. That gets us to the first question we originally asked: how much should this developer cost? I think a company can hire great talent right out of college for about $80k per year. Great experience will cost more like $120k per year. Both will cost $250k or more. I just don't think it's worth paying that premium for experience that other members of the company already have (for the most part).
An added perk to hiring a young person is that there is a small chance they will end up being truly remarkable. You pretty much know the ceiling for a 35 year old. If they're looking for a $120k salary, that means they're only worth $120k. A 22 year old might be worth $500k, but nobody knows that yet so they have to prove themselves. When a talented 22 year old asks for $80k, that's their floor, not their ceiling.
So obviously every case is different, but if I had to give general advice it would be to hire the most talented young person you can find. Make sure a founder or manager will have time to carefully oversee this developer so that his or her inexperience won't be much of a problem, and hope that over the next few years, this person grows into the CTO your company really needs. If that doesn't happen, hire a real CTO when the company is more mature and can justify the cost.
What do you think? If you have to speak in generalities, what type of person makes for a good early technical hire?
Thursday, January 14th, 2010
By Tyler King
When Bracken and I decided to start Less Annoying Software, I left my full-time job so that I could dedicate most of my time to building our customer manager, but I still do some consulting work for my old company. For the past two weeks I've been spending some time redesigning their signup process. It recently became clear that I spent the past 20 hours of work designing screens that we won't actually use, and I couldn't be happier. I spend a lot of time on this blog preaching the value of simplicity and I'm not sure I've ever seen a better example of how great simplicity can really be.
The section of the form that I was redesigning started out with about 6 screens that went into unnecessary detail and were pretty confusing. The form worked perfectly well, but it was designed with an emphasis on functionality rather than user experience. My first attempt at redesigning the section led to mockups of three different pages that were all kind of complicated. I spent some time making the user interface more intuitive and it turned into four pages that were all incredibly simple. I thought I was done. The signup process was much easier and I was happy with the results.
When I showed the mockups to someone working on the project with me, he said, "why do we need these forms at all?" It turns out we were collecting a bunch of information that we didn't really need. It took about two minutes of conversation to decide to completely remove the section from the signup process which meant throwing away my work. Awesome.
I spent about 20 hours designing these pages and I was really proud of the new form I came up with, so why am I so happy to see everything thrown away?
I'm happy because it means I accomplished my task. It wasn't even my idea to remove that entire section from the signup, but my goal was to improve the user experience of the signup process, and now it's way better. That's all there is to it. It's hard to remember this when you're working on a project, but the user won't see all the work you put in. Users won't know how many people worked together or how many hours it took. They'll only know if they liked the product, and getting rid of six pages from the signup process will certainly make them like it more.
I personally feel much better about spending 20 hours of work removing needless features than I would if I had spent 20 hours adding needless features. My instinct was to defend my work and come up with reasons to keep the pages I made, but that's what gets so many software companies into real trouble with feature bloat.
If 20 hours of work leads to a two minute conversation which makes all the work obsolete, but also simplifies the product, that's time well spent.
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About this blog
This is a blog for small businesses interested in how they can better use technology. Most tech
is targetted at either individual consumers or huge corporations. We'll help you find the tools
that are powerful enough to help run your business, but simple enough that you won't need an I.T.
team to use them.
There are two main writers on the Less Annoying Blog: Tyler has worked on the tech side of several small businesses and knows first hand what the little guys need, and don't need. Bracken is finishing up a PhD at MIT and he's always experimenting with any new software he can get his hands on. We also run an online customer manager tool called Less Annoying Software which was created specifically for small businesses to track all their customer activity.
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You can reach us at blog@LessAnnoyingSoftware.com
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