Mavance, LLC

One of the nice things about running your own business is the decisions you make on how you will work. In the past, I received a work laptop with a standard stack of programs that I must use even if they do not serve any useful purpose. Further, some employers disallowed the introduction of programs I found useful (generally freeware or open source stuff.) While I was able to run Linux on my laptop during a gig I had in 1999/2000, I have found most companies want you to use a standard laptop build of MS Office, Windows 95/NT/2000/XP, Notes/Outlook, MS Project and Visio/MS Visio.

It is very liberating to run whatever stack you want to run. I also decided that I would use my personal MacBook Pro as my work laptop. Before I went off a deep end and do things differently just because I can, I should consider what I need to run a business. Decisions on the following software products were required:

• Accounting/General Ledger & Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software. This topic is covered in this post on this blog.
• Office Suite
• Project Management Software
• Planning Software
• Presentation Software
• Collaboration Tools

Office Suite
An office suite provides you with a word processor, a spreadsheet program and a presentation package to show off your brilliant ideas. Some choices you can run:

• Microsoft Office - This software runs on both Windows and Mac OS X. It is the de facto standard for office suite functionality and true compatibility.
• Apple iWork - iWork is a great alternative to MS Office if you are a Mac user. The presentation software, Keynote, is the real gem of the software package. Apple, the producer, has not ported this to MS’ operating systems nor Linux.
• OpenOffice & NeoOffice - OpenOffice runs on a variety of systems including Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. NeoOffice is a Mac specific port that looks prettier and does not require you to run a copy of X Windows.

I’d like to use either Apple iWork or OpenOffice. The issue I have is that I must have true compatibility. The partner I have in Atlanta uses MS Word & MS Excel files for a good portion of the spec’ing process. While I use NeoOffice on the home PCs, I decided, that for business, I should use MS Office. Apple’s iWork is a close second in my book…

Project Management Software
Project management software is used to report on the progress of projects. I see it more as a communication tool rather than a management tool. Sure, you can use it to manage but I would argue that project management is more about reporting rather than doing.

Desktop products:

• Microsoft Project - MS Project is the de facto standard in this arena as well. However, you must run a MS OS to run MS Project. Also, it’s very expensive so be prepared to dole out some cash if you decided on this product.
• Gantt Project - Gantt Project is Java based an runs on any operating system with a Java VM (in other words.. pretty much any PC/Mac) Its usability is passable but not great in my opinion.
• Merlin2 - Merlin is a great product if you are Mac shop. It syncs with iCal, has a nice bookshelf/set of reference materials and had built it workflows. Perhaps I should emphasize the sentence before last - if you’re a Mac shop then this is a great product and you should look at it. As an added bonus, during an evaluation, I threw MS Project files in both XML format at regular format at it. It was able to open both.
• ConceptDraw Project - ConceptDraw is a great value if you buy all the ConceptDraw products. However, if you’re a Windows user I’d have a difficult time recommending it over MS Project. If you are a Mac user, I’d have even a harder time recommended this over Merlin2. So, where does this leave the product? A second, in my book, for both OSs.
• OmniPlan - OmniGroup puts out really good software for Macs and OmniPlan is a good program. However, it pales in comparison to Merlin2 and ConceptDraw Project in my opinion.

SaaS/hosted:

• 37Signal’s Basecamp - Basecamp provides task management/to-dos, simple project document management (pay versions only), whiteboarding and time tracking for projects. Basecamp is provided in multiple pricing tiers - from free to an “enterprise” max version for $149/mo.
• Daptiv (previous eProject) - Not sure why they renamed it. Suppose Daptiv sounds fresh but eproject makes sense… Anyhow, I have not reviewed this product in detail. It looks feature rich. I’m listing it in the event you are in need of evaluating multiple product offerings..
• SugarCRM/Netsuite/Concursive project management. These platforms offer project management as a tertiary feature if you’re having a good day.

Host your own:

• DotProject - Dotproject is a great alternative if you have the time and resources to host your own server. It requires a fairly standard LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) server, a VMware image or you can host at a low cost provider. The major downside I’ve seen with DotProject is in the project planning stage. Yes, you can assign a project a prebuilt template. However, adding and manipulating tasks is not overly easy. If only the DotProject guys would get together with some Web 2.0 folks and worked out some nifty AJAX interface…

For my purposes, I chose Merlin2. I really like the interface and I’m in luck because I run a Mac shop. If I ran a Windows shop then I would have to think long and hard between MS Project and ConceptDraw’s Project though MS Project would probably end up being my choice. If my company expands to multiple location with multiple OSs deployed then I’d have to seriously look at hosting a DotProject server and centralize this functionality.

Planning Software
Before you can manage something you have to plan it. While some use a project management tool, a text pad or a text pad on their computer, I prefer to dump my brain using a mindmapping tool.

Software:

• Novamind Platinum - Novamind makes great mindmapping software. It’s not cheap but generally the good stuff on the desktop side costs you (yes… I made a point of saying on the the desktop side…) The Platinum edition of this software provide screen writing capabilities (like I’ll ever use that..) and a really nifty presentation interface. A nice feature of the software allows you to dump the mindmaps directly to Merlin2 so you can kick off the project quickly. While this feature is touted for Merlin, it does work with other PM software as well…
• Freemind - Freemind is Java based and works on just about any computer you’ll use in the wild. It has a development community that has developed some nifty tools like a Mediawiki plugin for displaying Freemind mindmaps in both Flash and Java. MediaWiki is the software that runs wikipedia.org..
• MindJet MindManager - MindJet is one of the pioneers in the computer aided Mindmapping software. They have lots of experience on Windows platforms and have recently ported this software to Macs.
• ConceptDraw MINDMAP - Again, ConceptDraw does a good job and this is, in my opinion, one of the better products they put out. However, it feels a bit clunky compared to Novamind.
• Inspiration - Inspiration runs on both Windows and Mac OS X. I have not used this product but I thought I would include it if you want to evaluate it. I have heard good things about it…

I chose Novamind Platinum over Freemind. Having used Freemind for over a year on multiple platforms, and now Novamind for 6 mos, I can say Novamind’s product is hands down worth the price. In hindsight, I did not need to get the Platinum version of Novamind and could have gone for a cheaper Novamind product.

Presentation Tools
I am referring to tools that visually diagram processes and systems as presentation tools. Both mindmapping and Powerpoint/Keynote have been discussed previously so I will avoid talking about these again.

• MS Visio - Visio is the de facto standard for diagramming. However, this only works on MS’ OSs and it is costly in comparison to the alternatives.
• ConceptDraw - ConceptDraw is an excellent program that runs on both Macs and Windows PCs. ConceptDraw does a good job of importing MS Visio files. The interface is a little clunky to me though…
• Omni Group’s OmniGraffle - OmniGraffle is an excellent program for Macs. It takes a bit of time to deprogram yourself if you are a Visio type like me. However, the importing of MS Visio files is not as good as ConceptDraw’s.

Since I run a Mac shop, Visio is not appropriate. Sure, I could use a virtualization solution like Parallels or VMware Fusion to run Windows program, or worst yet, use Bootcamp to boot into Windows on Mac. However, I think either option is looking to the past rather than move forward.

For Mac users, it’s a tough choice between OmniGraffle and ConceptDraw. In the end, I chose OmniGraffle since it felt like a better designed product. The Visio import feature on the professional edition is much better in the 5.0 release.

Collaboration Tools
Collaboration tools are growing very quickly. Collaboration tools range from desktop products including:

• e-Mail clients like Mozilla Thunderbird, Apple Mail, MS Entourage, Lotus Notes (it still lives… check out this humorous post..) or MS Outlook.
• Instant messaging clients & aggregators (like Adium on the Mac, Pidgin on Windows & Linux and Trillian on Windows.)

Web based tools:

• e-Mail clients including SquirrelMail, Horde IMP, RoundCube - All these clients require a server to run on but you do not need a server to run Google’s mail client. Google Apps allows you to configure your own domain (bob@somedomain.com instead of bob@gmail.com) for free in most cases. If you have not checked out Google Apps then you need to do that now…
• Instant Messaging clients like meebo.
• Wiki software from MediaWiki among tons of other packages you can install on your server.
• Blogging Software from hosted provides including wordpress.com and Google’s blogger.com of you can host your own servers using software like wordpress.org or Drupal’s platform. Like Wiki software, there are tons of of choices here too.
• Forum software like phpBB and vBulletin.

I am certainly missing some great products in the list above. As I started typing up this note, I began to realize that I have looked at quite a few products over the past 6 months to a year. The software available on both desktops and online is truly remarkable and is getting better every day. At this point, I will highlight both the hardware and software stacks I chose.

eMail is still a killer app. However, I have distinct patterns of conversation depending on who I know. Many business conversation are in eMail but I have noticed a change here.

My Hardware & Software Stack

• MacBook Pro with EVDO card (see this post for more info on the card..)
• Microsoft Office 2004. 2008 is in the mail and I’m looking forward to the speed increases for the native Intel Macs.
• Merlin 2.5 Project Management software.
• Omni Group’s OmniGraffle.
• NovaMind Platinum.
• Apple Mail and Adium (iCal & Contacts used as well..)
• Adobe CS3 software. This was not discussed earlier but I thought I would throw it in to have a complete list.

Wrap-Up

I’m interested in hearing about comments on this post or other tools I did not list above. The post became a whee bit bigger than I expected but I think it is important to see the alternatives.

Thanks for reading and feel free to drop me a line via the contact form if you do not comment on the page directly.

In this post, I will cover some of the options you have for managing the money flow and your relationships. The two main systems I am covering are:

• Accounting/General Ledger Software
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software

Accounting/General Ledger Software
This is the software you run your business on. The technology alternatives to ledgers are vast. You can simply add entries to Quickbooks on your laptop/desktop on the low end to having a shareable online portal via Netsuite. Let’s take a look at the options out there and some pros/cons of each method:Desktop Products:

• Quickbooks - The de Facto standard for both businesses and accountants.
• Peachtree - Quickbooks is a better option..
• Excel, OpenOffice, NeoOffice (Mac OS X), iWorks’ Numbers (Mac OS X) - A very manual process but a possible solution if you’re launching on a shoe string.

Software as a Service (SaaS)/hosted products:

• Netsuite - Netsuite is an expensive proposition for many companies. It is a very complex system due to the feature richness.
• NetBooks - Netbooks is less expensive solution than Netsuite. It is definitely a product/service to watch
• Quickbooks Online - Quickbooks provides some good solutions for small business for the price. Intuit, the maker of the Quickbooks software/services, is making a huge push to move its customers to online solutions

Overall Pros/Cons of Accounting/General Ledger Software:

Desktop Pros:

• Great usability compared to SaaS
• Application response time is generally better than SaaS.
• Generally a more secure - your data is with you.

Desktop Cons:

• More difficult to share information with other parties like your accountant or partner.
• You are responsible for backups (of your managed services/IT person..)

SaaS Pros:

• Easy to share information
• Easy to extend services with online partners of the service offering
• Backups are someone else’s problem.
• Upgrades are someone else’s problem.

SaaS Cons:

• You must trust your provider. Your data is in their hands. You must know how they protect it and back it up.
• Application performance may be impacted by a number of factors. Then again, if you do have a problem, is it with them, your Internet provider, their Internet provider, a transit network, your computer? You get the idea…

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software
CRMs are critical for organizing your sales process and customer touch points. I’ll go into more detail about CRMs in another post. As you will see from a survey of some of choices, it is a VERY crowded field. The trend, with the exception of Rave CRM, is to move this interaction online as a hosted service or as a client-server interaction for company networks.Desktop products:

• Goldmine - A client/server solution that may work well for small businesses and those who are accustomed to being attached to their corporate network on a regular basis.
• Rave CRM - A newer product - I’ve seen some good writeups on it.
• ACT! - This product has been around for almost two decades. It’s a great product but the trend moving to online services.

SaaS/Hosted:

• ConcursiveSuite - Concursive is both an Open Source/community support product and a pay/enterprise version. Without getting into the technical details between this, SugarCRM and vTiger, it’s a great product. It may be worthwhile trying it, for get this, free for five user for a year.
• SugarCRM - Like Concursive, SugarCRM has multiple versions available. You can host your own or subscribe (minimum of 5 users) to either Sugar’s Professional or Enterprise editions. Sugar provides the differences between the pay editions on this page.
• Netsuite - In my opinion, Netsuite’s CRM capabilities are good but not as great as Sugar or Consursive. However, it’s integrated so that you see a single view of all customers. In other words, you don’t have to enter information in your ledger and then add another customer record in Netsuite. The unified view is very valuable in my mind.
• 37Signal’s Highrise - 37Signals makes software that’s easy for people to use. The usability rivals desktop products in some cases. However, Highrise simplicity takes away some functionality found in other hosted/SaaS product.
• heap - You may have never heard of WBP System’s heap. I stumbled across it ~ 6 mos ago when going through my own analysis of products. It, like 37Signals Highrise, is a very simple product to use. It’s **VERY** cheap at only $9/user/month and has what amounts to unlimited storage at that price. WBP provides widgets for both Vista and Mac OS X and email workflow processing. That’s cool! I’d recommend taking a look at it if you need something simple.
• SalesForce.com - SalesFoce.com is a pioneer in this space. The only problem, it’s like Frankenstein. It’s so patched together that I’m not a big fan of it. Netsuite is a much better (and cleaner) approach though SalesForce.com does have some great addons..

Overall Pros/Cons of CRM Software:

Desktop Pros:

• Same as above - Great usability compared to SaaS, Application response time is generally better than SaaS, Generally a more secure - your data is with you.

Desktop Cons:

• Same as above - More difficult to share information with other parties like your accountant or partner, You are responsible for backups (of your managed services/IT person..)
• Miss out on features and innovation occurring on the Web. There’s a larger community behind both SugarCRM and SalesForce.com.

SaaS Pros:

• Same as above- Easy to share information, Easy to extend services with online partners of the service offering, Backups are someone else’s problem, upgrades are someone else’s problem.
• Innovation - the pro of the software con previously noted.

SaaS Cons:

• Same as above - You must trust your provider. Your data is in their hands. You must know how they protect it and back it up and possible application performance

Host Your Own:

• Concursive (Registration on site required for download of community edition) - You can use open source or a corporate supported, professional edition. Requirements: A compatible OS (Linux, Windows, Mac OS X or Sun Solaris) a J2EE stack and Postgreq DB (other databases are being developed but this is the reference database..)
• SugarCRM - To host SugarCRM, you need Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP (LAMP Stack) by default but other OSs, including Windows and Mac OS X, work. If you need Oracle support then you must buy the Enterprise edition.
• vTiger - vTiger utilizes a standard LAMP stack.

Pros/Cons of Hosting it Yourself

Pros:

• Could be cheaper decided on one of the three options above - Concursive, SugarCRM or vTiger
• You control your data.
• You get the benefits of innovation on the Net/communities in a controlled environment.

Cons:

• For a small number of users, hosting it yourself may be more expensive. You must do a break even analysis of your internal hosting costs.
• You are responsible for administration including backups and upgrades.

My Decision
I am a big fan of both SugarCRM and Concursive. However, I am more interested in having a single view of my customers. As noted above, if I have a customer record in QuickBooks and a customer record in SugarCRM then I must synchronize the data manually. Netsuite has solved this problem. This is the main reason I chose Netsuite. Sure, it’s expensive but I know myself well enough to know I would be annoyed sync’ing data between the two systems.I did not include OpenBravo in this writeup. OpenBravo is a full blown ERP/CRM in the similar vein as Netsuite. However, it’s a consultants come in type situation and hosting is not readily available at last check.If you are a medium/large sized business with an IT department or budget for managed services then I would seriously look into OpenBravo. I think it’s a smart idea.I’m interested in hearing your comments on this post. Inevitably, I missed a product (or 20…)