Back at the beginning of 2007, I signed a reseller agreement with Qqest Software Systems, maker of the Timeforce time and attendance system. I had implemented Timeforce for a client after a comparison of the system with comparable systems from Kronos and ADP. I found that the Timeforce system has a great breadth of features and is much less expensive than its larger competitors.

And after I learned that one of my other clients used Timeforce as well, I figured that signing the agreement would do two things:

• Improve the level of service I was providing my clients, and
• Open up another line of revenue for my growing consulting business.

However, in considering the agreement I forgot that the main mission of a reseller is to expand the vendor’s sales reach. There’s no way for a reseller to provide a greater level of support than the vendor. You can be more responsive to the client, and you can use the tools that the vendor provides to move support closer to the client. But you can’t support their product better than they can. And if the vendor chooses to focus on sales over client support, then there’s not much a reseller can do.

I recommend that any business in need of a time management system evaluate Timeforce. There are certain company types for whom Timeforce is definitely not a great solution. So I’d be happy to assist you in your evaluation.

But as often happens with lower cost products, Qqest has to focus on new sales in order to grow. Any reseller whose core business is reselling Timeforce will be in a similar situation, since they only receive a percentage of the sale. Understand this going in, and you will likely be very pleased with your experience.

Microsoft Office is undeniably the leader of office productivity suites.  It’s a standard throughout all businesses and the need to have it installed on your PCs is almost a given.  But free or open source alternatives are available.  I’d used Open Office before and never really got excited by it.  That might have been my own fault though…I was trying it on a Mac and I’m not a proficient Mac user.  Competent, but not proficient.

Anyway, I don’t think open source alternatives to MS Office will ever be viable until someone puts millions of dollars into refining the software over 3 or 4 major versions.  So when I heard that IBM had released a version of Open Office, I figured I should try it out.  They’ve got the ability to dedicate this type of commitment if they really want to.

Lotus Symphony consists of the basic modules everyone needs – Spreadsheets (i.e., MS Excel), Documents (i.e., MS Word) and Presentations (i.e., MS PowerPoint).

I was pleasantly surprised with how quickly the software downloaded and installed.  I don’t have an exact timing, but I seem to recall my last MS Office installation taking over an hour to install.  Of course, that was MS Office 2007 Enterprise which also installed Access, InfoPath, Outlook and Publisher.  In retrospect, I guess I should have expected the trimmed down offering from IBM to install much more quickly.

The interface looks ok.  It’s certainly not familiar like MS Office.  In the end, this may be the one thing that dooms all open office suites.  But I got used to the new MS Office ribbon, and I’m sure I can get used to Symphony’s toolbars.

I’m really going to try to use Symphony over the coming weeks.  I’m going to try to keep an open mind and work with the product as exclusively as I can.  I readily admit that I’ll be fighting my own biases.  For example, I’ve already got a couple gripes:

• I can’t open the MS Word template that I use for my business correspondence,
• Spreadsheets doesn’t highlight a copy area,
• There’s an extra menu layer with only one option when you select File > Open,
• You can’t connect Spreadsheets to an ODBC data source to pull data into a file from a database.

I’ll let you know what else I find.  I’m pulling for Symphony.  I really am.  I’d love to be able to recommend a free office suite that handles all the basic functions an SMB needs.  We’ll see if Symphony is up to the task.

As someone who loves technology geared toward the SMB, I found an article on the NY Times fascinating. It’s about small businesses who have begun marketing their own software as solutions built specifically for the SMB market. One solution, NetBooks, looks very promising.

Last week, I posted a notes about the release of SAP Business ByDesign. There are only a few vendors that offer an on-demand ERP product that includes everything from your standard accounting functions through inventory and customer management. SAP joins NetSuite and Salesboom in this regard. But even SAP targets businesses with more than 100 employees.

NetBooks is specifically focused on product based (as opposed to service based) businesses under 50 employees. The recorded demo shows a complete “call to cash” process. A sales order is created directly from the customer contact screen, and a shipping request is automatically created. Viewing the shipping request in an open orders view, the user is alerted that there is not enough inventory on hand. You change the request to a partial shipment and the system generates another shipping request for the remaining amount. An invoice is created, and payments are easily applied to receivables when collected.

Two areas lacking include integration with a web store and with point of sale systems. Both are only possible today in a manual fashion, although the company says automated integration is slated for a future release. I also don’t see any mention of payroll on the website. But, if you’ve read any of my prior posts, you’ll probably guess that I favor outsourcing your payroll responsibilities.

Pricing is right at $200/month for 5 users with additional users costing only $20. Your external accountant or bookkeeper gets free access to your data. And all your data is stored securely on the company’s servers so you don’t need to worry about installing and maintaining the software on your own servers.

This looks like a great development for small businesses.

p.s. – The company’s founder, Ridgely Evers, runs a blog. His recent “Where’s Your Weakest Link” post is a great corollary to my “16 Ways to Prepare for Technology Failure”.

Despite my own quest to help companies use technology more effectively, I often fail to do that in my own business. Case in point is writing this blog.

For the past couple weeks, as I came across ideas for potential blog posts, I would create a draft message in Outlook. When I got around to writing the actual post, I’d write the post like I was writing an email. When I was satisfied, I’d copy and paste the content into my WordPress administrator panel and then publish the post. Several times I forgot to add in the title or categorize the post.

Well, in the course of my Stumbling last night, I ran across Windows Live Writer. I had no idea that there was software that was designed specifically for writing blogs! I wrote my earlier post using the tool and it was so slick that I doubt I’ll ever go back to Outlook.

To be fair, there are many applications out there that target this niche. A quick Google search brought me to this list posted by McKenzie.

I wish I’d figured this out earlier. Come to think of it, this must be how my client’s feel when we uncover stuff they own but aren’t using.

Although I’m not a huge SAP follower, I saw the announcement on Tuesday that SAP was going to announce a hosted solution. I believe hosted ERP suites have great potential in the SMB market. SMBs don’t typically have a significant IT staff capable of keeping up with the configuration, maintenance and integration of typical ERP products. But their needs are not that much less complex than much larger organizations.

Currently, NetSuite seems to be the leading the way in the hosted ERP industry. Microsoft has a hosted Dynamics GP option. And SalesBoom has an intriguing solution although I have to admit that my knowledge of it extends only to what I’ve read on their website and found through other Google searches.

So I was eager to learn more about this service which is dubbed SAP Business ByDesign. The SAP website is very sparse. And I hate registering on a site just to receive marketing material, so I haven’t gotten in too deep. But I saw these two questions in the FAQ document:

15. How much does SAP Business ByDesign cost?
SAP Business ByDesign will be offered on a subscription basis, priced per user per month for the specific capabilities being utilized. Pricing starts at US$149 per user per month in the United States and China or €133 per user per month in Germany, the United Kingdom, and France.

16. What is the minimum and maximum number of users for an SAP Business ByDesign installation?
We expect the typical SAP Business ByDesign customer to have between 100 and 500 employees. There is no maximum user limit; however, a minimum of 25 users must be licensed.

The $150/user/month seems like a reasonable base price point. But the 25 license minimum? I have a real hard time picturing a 100 employee company spending $45,000 per year on this software.