7 ms·

All the small businesses I've worked at have another huge factor to consider, when it comes to new tech: Will the tech be supported long enough for it to be wor

by joemi 10y ago

All the small businesses I've worked at have another huge factor to consider, when it comes to new tech: Will the tech be supported long enough for it to be worth dealing with? Anecdotal example: A few years ago, my workplace at the time (a bookstore near a university in NYC) decided to try that payment method Square used to have that let you check in to Square when you enter a store and then just "pay with your face" or whatever. Sounded neat, I knew some folks who loved to pay for things that way in NYC at coffee shops and such, and the Square rep told us about all the other places near us that were adopting this. So we figured what the hell, jumped on in, got some iPad bundles from Square to use for this, and I was tasked with setting it up. Just a few weeks (!) after we had set it up, Square discontinued that service. Needless to say, ever since then, that bookstore has been very apprehensive about "new tech". Why bother investing time and effort into something new if it could vanish at any moment?

LoSboccacc 10y ago
Exactly this. Big names want big money which small businnes don't have and small businnes already got burned badly by fresh internet startups last time around. Also, few bigs target small business because, let's be honest, they're a pain to work with at scale, each one of them brings variations to the base product flavor but no budget to implement them. Hence, loads of them run off custom excel sheets. I once proposed to have a sort of web excel with security controls and a way to let authenticated guests to work on a subset of cells as a way to move small businness online leaving control to them of their process implementation but couldn't find a sponsor.
- samirillian 10y ago
  The non-profit I work for has been using airtable+zapier for precisely these needs. I think a fundamental grasp of relational databases is a very handy skill.
- mhurron 10y ago
  > Big names want big money which small businnes don't have Isn't that really the end of the discussion since we've come to the answer to the question?
  - SiVal 10y ago
    If small businesses were limited to buying from "big names", then, yes, not having the money to buy would be the end of the discussion. But, tech is available from many sources with various combinations of off-the-shelf and custom solutions, free & commercial, and various levels of skill & time required from vendor and/or buyer. So, the end of the discussion would have to be something more complex, ex: We don't have the skills to use the free stuff, or the money to hire people who do, or the money to pay for anything commercial that is good enough to not require a lot of skill, or the time and skill it would probably take to evaluate an ever-changing haystack of good-in-theory-bad-in-practice options looking for a useful needle....
- omouse 10y ago
  few bigs target small business because, let's be honest, they're a pain to work with at scale It's not that difficult, it's just incentivized in our not-so-free market. Big companies can afford lawyers and lobbyists and they get all the best tax breaks and subsidies. Small companies, not so much. each one of them brings variations to the base product flavor but no budget to implement them Yep, because the base product is designed for the large clients. It's all incentives to target big companies. Why do you need permissions and user account management in your software? Because you're dealing with 20+ people and you may not know everyone in your company and if they can be trusted. Why do you have a base product that requires at least 10,000 database items in it to be useful? Because the big companies have that many items and they've got a monopoly or oligopoly on the market. I once proposed to have a sort of web excel with security controls and a way to let authenticated guests to work on a subset of cells as a way to move small businness online leaving control to them of their process implementation but couldn't find a sponsor. This is actually what should and would happen in a free market. The majority of companies are not very large; most of them have a bit of extra cash to invest in a tool like that. There is a definite market for it. But why isn't that market pursued? All of the above incentives mentioned above.
  - quanticle 10y ago
    Big companies can afford lawyers and lobbyists and they get all the best tax breaks and subsidies. Small companies, not so much. What does that have to do with business-to-business transactions? Microsoft doesn't care about your subsidies. Oracle doesn't care about your tax breaks. All they care about is how many users you can bring or how many zeroes you can put on the contract. This is actually what should and would happen in a free market. This sort of coordination problem is actually a classic failure of free markets (it was even covered in my Economics 101 course). Coase's Theorem only applies when transaction and negotiation costs are zero. In any real world scenario where transaction costs are nonzero, you'll see failures like this.
    - lkrubner 10y ago
      "All they care about is how many users you can bring or how many zeroes you can put on the contract." Which is influenced by the subsidies you get. Some industries more than others. The extreme case is the agricultural industry in the USA. Many of the big wheat firms would not exist without the vast subsidies offered by the government. For those firms, Oracle or Microsoft are only talking to you because you've gotten money from the government.
- canadian_voter 10y ago
  Also, few bigs target small business because, let's be honest, they're a pain to work with at scale Absolutely. A big business has the clout to request features and demand support. A small business might not even be able to get anyone on the phone, let alone get an on-site rep or have a feature added. Hence, loads of them run off custom excel sheets. We use a few spreadsheets and a custom POS system developed in house by me on top of OSS. It's portable and endlessly customizable. I don't have to worry about propriety file formats, services outages, changing terms or cost increases.
  - trome 10y ago
    How do you handle credit card integrations, any repos I can look at? I can help you with easily integrating the former by the way, no reason not to get integrated payments.
- cyberferret 10y ago
  I'll echo your sentiments. I've done consulting and development for small businesses for nearly 3 decades now, and what I LOVE about dealing with small business owners and managers, is that they usually have great ideas and sophisticated models of things that they would like to implement. Stuff that I can get really excited about building for them. What I hate about small business is the very small budget that they have to work with traditionally. I've had so many project that, for $50-60K would yield a killer solution that would revolutionise their business and (tick all that apply): [] make money [] save time [] increase productivity, but been only given something like a $10K budget...
  - analog31 10y ago
    One thing I've observed about very small businesses is that the owners are very tight with money because they perceive it as coming right out of their own pockets. They are direct stakeholders in the success or failure of any proposed project. In contrast, the managers at a larger business are betting somebody else's money, so they are not stakeholders at all. They know that the anticipated cost over-runs and under-performance will be absorbed by the larger business. So the manager at the big business is inclined to be optimistic about the project, and at the small business, pessimistic. I exhibit both of those personalities at once, since I work for a large business but run my own small side-business. The big business runs on SAP, the small one on Excel 2010. Another problem for the small business is that there is less of an obvious relationship between time, productivity, and actually making more money, due to the problem of scaling. Many businesses rise up to the volume that they can sustain without running into scaling obstacles.
    - mxuribe 10y ago
      You said it right!
otoburb 10y ago
>>So we figured what the hell, jumped on in, got some iPad bundles from Square to use for this [...] Did your employer at least ask for a refund from Square?
- cortesoft 10y ago
  The money they spent with Square for this was probably not the biggest cost... it was the cost of setting it up, learning how to use it, getting customers used to it, etc.
omouse 10y ago
There's also a difference between existing small businesses and ones that were recently set up. If you have minimal or no tech infrastructure, you can spend on the new stuff because that's the best of the market at the moment. If you're an existing business you need a maintenance and transition plan.
ChuckMcM 10y ago
Plus a million. I helped a small business get their point of sale software back online by re-installing Windows XP on their unlabeled OEM server. The installed the system over a decade ago. Explain to a small business how this system will continue to be serviceable for 15 years and they will consider buying it.
- stronglikedan 10y ago
  Tangentially related, but just last night I updated the first application I ever wrote for pay, because the small business I wrote it for saw no need to invest in new tech while this one still served their needs. I wrote it about 15 years ago (coincidentally) in Classic ASP. All it needed was a small JS update to get the menu system to be compatible with modern browsers. Instead of spending $10k+ on a new system, they spent $500 on an update that will serve them for the foreseeable future (or however long Access databases will be supported - lol). Granted, it took the owner about a year to track me down, since I'm not on social media and have a full time gig now, but the system was serviceable 15 years later. I got a kick out of the entire experience.
edblarney 10y ago
"So we figured what the hell, jumped on in" Probably not a wise business planning strategy :) "ever since then, that bookstore has been very apprehensive about "new tech" Probably not very wise either.

by joemi 10y ago

LoSboccacc 10y ago

Exactly this. Big names want big money which small businnes don't have and small businnes already got burned badly by fresh internet startups last time around. Also, few bigs target small business because, let's be honest, they're a pain to work with at scale, each one of them brings variations to the base product flavor but no budget to implement them. Hence, loads of them run off custom excel sheets. I once proposed to have a sort of web excel with security controls and a way to let authenticated guests to work on a subset of cells as a way to move small businness online leaving control to them of their process implementation but couldn't find a sponsor.

samirillian 10y ago
The non-profit I work for has been using airtable+zapier for precisely these needs. I think a fundamental grasp of relational databases is a very handy skill.
mhurron 10y ago
> Big names want big money which small businnes don't have Isn't that really the end of the discussion since we've come to the answer to the question?
- SiVal 10y ago
  If small businesses were limited to buying from "big names", then, yes, not having the money to buy would be the end of the discussion. But, tech is available from many sources with various combinations of off-the-shelf and custom solutions, free & commercial, and various levels of skill & time required from vendor and/or buyer. So, the end of the discussion would have to be something more complex, ex: We don't have the skills to use the free stuff, or the money to hire people who do, or the money to pay for anything commercial that is good enough to not require a lot of skill, or the time and skill it would probably take to evaluate an ever-changing haystack of good-in-theory-bad-in-practice options looking for a useful needle....
omouse 10y ago
few bigs target small business because, let's be honest, they're a pain to work with at scale It's not that difficult, it's just incentivized in our not-so-free market. Big companies can afford lawyers and lobbyists and they get all the best tax breaks and subsidies. Small companies, not so much. each one of them brings variations to the base product flavor but no budget to implement them Yep, because the base product is designed for the large clients. It's all incentives to target big companies. Why do you need permissions and user account management in your software? Because you're dealing with 20+ people and you may not know everyone in your company and if they can be trusted. Why do you have a base product that requires at least 10,000 database items in it to be useful? Because the big companies have that many items and they've got a monopoly or oligopoly on the market. I once proposed to have a sort of web excel with security controls and a way to let authenticated guests to work on a subset of cells as a way to move small businness online leaving control to them of their process implementation but couldn't find a sponsor. This is actually what should and would happen in a free market. The majority of companies are not very large; most of them have a bit of extra cash to invest in a tool like that. There is a definite market for it. But why isn't that market pursued? All of the above incentives mentioned above.
- quanticle 10y ago
  Big companies can afford lawyers and lobbyists and they get all the best tax breaks and subsidies. Small companies, not so much. What does that have to do with business-to-business transactions? Microsoft doesn't care about your subsidies. Oracle doesn't care about your tax breaks. All they care about is how many users you can bring or how many zeroes you can put on the contract. This is actually what should and would happen in a free market. This sort of coordination problem is actually a classic failure of free markets (it was even covered in my Economics 101 course). Coase's Theorem only applies when transaction and negotiation costs are zero. In any real world scenario where transaction costs are nonzero, you'll see failures like this.
  - lkrubner 10y ago
    "All they care about is how many users you can bring or how many zeroes you can put on the contract." Which is influenced by the subsidies you get. Some industries more than others. The extreme case is the agricultural industry in the USA. Many of the big wheat firms would not exist without the vast subsidies offered by the government. For those firms, Oracle or Microsoft are only talking to you because you've gotten money from the government.
canadian_voter 10y ago
Also, few bigs target small business because, let's be honest, they're a pain to work with at scale Absolutely. A big business has the clout to request features and demand support. A small business might not even be able to get anyone on the phone, let alone get an on-site rep or have a feature added. Hence, loads of them run off custom excel sheets. We use a few spreadsheets and a custom POS system developed in house by me on top of OSS. It's portable and endlessly customizable. I don't have to worry about propriety file formats, services outages, changing terms or cost increases.
- trome 10y ago
  How do you handle credit card integrations, any repos I can look at? I can help you with easily integrating the former by the way, no reason not to get integrated payments.
cyberferret 10y ago
I'll echo your sentiments. I've done consulting and development for small businesses for nearly 3 decades now, and what I LOVE about dealing with small business owners and managers, is that they usually have great ideas and sophisticated models of things that they would like to implement. Stuff that I can get really excited about building for them. What I hate about small business is the very small budget that they have to work with traditionally. I've had so many project that, for $50-60K would yield a killer solution that would revolutionise their business and (tick all that apply): [] make money [] save time [] increase productivity, but been only given something like a $10K budget...
- analog31 10y ago
  One thing I've observed about very small businesses is that the owners are very tight with money because they perceive it as coming right out of their own pockets. They are direct stakeholders in the success or failure of any proposed project. In contrast, the managers at a larger business are betting somebody else's money, so they are not stakeholders at all. They know that the anticipated cost over-runs and under-performance will be absorbed by the larger business. So the manager at the big business is inclined to be optimistic about the project, and at the small business, pessimistic. I exhibit both of those personalities at once, since I work for a large business but run my own small side-business. The big business runs on SAP, the small one on Excel 2010. Another problem for the small business is that there is less of an obvious relationship between time, productivity, and actually making more money, due to the problem of scaling. Many businesses rise up to the volume that they can sustain without running into scaling obstacles.
  - mxuribe 10y ago
    You said it right!

otoburb 10y ago

>>So we figured what the hell, jumped on in, got some iPad bundles from Square to use for this [...] Did your employer at least ask for a refund from Square?

cortesoft 10y ago
The money they spent with Square for this was probably not the biggest cost... it was the cost of setting it up, learning how to use it, getting customers used to it, etc.

omouse 10y ago

There's also a difference between existing small businesses and ones that were recently set up. If you have minimal or no tech infrastructure, you can spend on the new stuff because that's the best of the market at the moment. If you're an existing business you need a maintenance and transition plan.

ChuckMcM 10y ago

Plus a million. I helped a small business get their point of sale software back online by re-installing Windows XP on their unlabeled OEM server. The installed the system over a decade ago. Explain to a small business how this system will continue to be serviceable for 15 years and they will consider buying it.

stronglikedan 10y ago
Tangentially related, but just last night I updated the first application I ever wrote for pay, because the small business I wrote it for saw no need to invest in new tech while this one still served their needs. I wrote it about 15 years ago (coincidentally) in Classic ASP. All it needed was a small JS update to get the menu system to be compatible with modern browsers. Instead of spending $10k+ on a new system, they spent $500 on an update that will serve them for the foreseeable future (or however long Access databases will be supported - lol). Granted, it took the owner about a year to track me down, since I'm not on social media and have a full time gig now, but the system was serviceable 15 years later. I got a kick out of the entire experience.

edblarney 10y ago

"So we figured what the hell, jumped on in" Probably not a wise business planning strategy :) "ever since then, that bookstore has been very apprehensive about "new tech" Probably not very wise either.