5 ms·
Avoiding any custom software development and purchasing is the number one priority for small to medium businesses that want to survive if you ask me. I've seen
by iasay 4y ago
Avoiding any custom software development and purchasing is the number one priority for small to medium businesses that want to survive if you ask me. I've seen a couple of them killed by software. At this point I'd rather work for a company that is held together with Excel than "domain specific enterprise software" having worked in that sector for years.
Actually the most fun I ever had was being the "IT guy" as a secondary function in a small engineering business in 2001. That was amazing. I didn't have to do a lot and could concentrate on my primary role with enough distractions to make it and my secondary one interesting. We just ran a Windows 2000 domain with 9 workstations on a switch with a 512K ADSL router and it basically just worked flawlessly. Excel 2000 featured heavily.
I occasionally get the urge to build out a Windows 2000 and Office 2000 box just because it was the last windows release that I enjoyed.
- cosmodisk 4y agoI've seen enough cases where the opposite is the case. Businesses running off Excel spreadsheets are often very inefficient, drowning in more problems than solutions and the day to day workflows for employees are awful. I'm not trying to say a small shop should go all in with Oracle or SAP, however a healthy investment in specialised software often pays off extremely well.
- TAForObvReasons 4y agoSpecialized software is a market for lemons. Most businesses running off Excel spreadsheets are ill-equipped to judge the vendors in question, and more often than not the net result is worse than the Excel mess.
- cosmodisk 4y agoIf you are an average business with no internal expertise to evaluate vendors: well of course everyone's going to spin you whilst the money keeps flying out of your pockets. Smarter companies would at least hire people that could advise on such things.
- lazide 4y agoIf you had the organizational expertise to hire such a person, and the leadership to prioritize it enough to happen - you already would probably not need them that much.
- cosmodisk 4y agoPeople like that get hired through recommendations. I interacted with some companies where nobody would know shit about anything tech related but the senior managers were fairly well connected in the business world, so getting someone impartial who could advise on how to proceed wasn't too bad.
- iasay 4y agoYou waste it on Excel or you waste it on subscriptions, opex and consultants. Or you hire someone who can shape the business processes towards efficiency with the tools you already have...
- hef19898 4y agoIt cuts both ways, doesn't it? Excel is no replacement for a dedicated ERP system, as soon as you need one of those get one. Excel can replace a lot of analytics and KPI software packages, and fill in gaps in any ERP system. It is cheaper to, cautiously, fill those gaps with an Excel solution (if well documented) than developing a customized ERP solution. I currebtly see people using Palantir as the default for anything and everything, only to export stuff from Palantir to Excel anyways.
- threatripper 4y ago> Avoiding any custom software development and purchasing is the number one priority for small to medium businesses that want to survive if you ask me. Yes and no. I think it depends on the problem being solved. Many small companies solve the same problem. For them a working commercial solution should exist. Many other small companies exist because they can flexibly solve special problems. Special problems on which the big companies fail. Mainly because commercial software solutions don't exist and the problems often change quickly. In that case in-house-IT can be THE deciding advantage that makes them move faster than the competition. Yeah, it depends on the kind of problem being solved (or not solved) which is better and sometimes things change unexpectedly making the other choice better for some years.