I think most SMBs don't even know where to begin. They don't know how to identify things that may already have software solutions available, nor would they kno

I think most SMBs don't even know where to begin. They don't know how to identify things that may already have software solutions available, nor would they know how to implement those solutions even if they were aware of them. And they're even worse at identifying business processes that could easily be automated via custom software. There's also no way in hell they know how to find a programmer to develop that automation (unless by some stroke of luck they happen to know one). "What do I need, an iOS guy? A ForTran guy? My website is in Internet Explorer, does that help??" I think this is why consultants are able to charge hundreds of dollars an hour for this stuff. Our company was paying $200/hr for simple SSRS reports before I started doing them. I also sat in on a couple meetings with outside software dev firms when our company was trying to hire one for a single project. The whole process was a long, time-consuming disaster that ended up going nowhere. We wound up doing the development ourselves in the end.