Technology has done wonders for human kind in the last 20 years. Business community in particular has enjoyed tremendous gain in productivity with the help of computers and software. The time savings offered by Smartphone that allow you can check the inventory with a click of the button and approve purchase order from anywhere could not even be imagined just few years ago.
Technology improvements have helped not just large corporations. They have also helped small businesses level the playing field by offering them solutions that were not available to them earlier without spending a fortune. Nowadays it is possible to establish a computer department with just few thousand dollars compared to tens of thousands of dollars you would have to spend several years ago.
While computers have become cheap it’s the software that drives the productivity benefits mentioned earlier. Applications such as Microsoft Office and QuickBooks have become must-haves for small businesses. These applications have added more and more functionality over the years to address the needs and demands of all types of businesses. At the same time, these applications have become too big, too complicated and difficult to use. The training required to learn the nuances of these applications is quite large. To make matters worse, most users don’t even use more than 20% of the available functionality in these applications.
The challenge these large software providers face is the fact that one size does not fit all. Different industries and users have different needs and they cannot be addressed satisfactorily with just one type of software. Yes, you can make Microsoft Excel work to track inventory, but it requires considerable effort and learning on users’ part and even then it will not be the right solution.
This has led to the recent trend of smaller software designed to address one specific problem. Think about the apps you use on your Smartphone. This makes it easy to learn and perform specific tasks such as timesheet reporting or inventory tracking. For software companies there are tools for ALM software and project management which help boost production. When these applications are tailored for specific industries small businesses can use them without spending much time learning.
Most businesses that belong to a particular industry share common needs. For example, all retail stores need to track inventory, sales, rebates and employee time. If you can customize the software to do these tasks for a retail store it can provide out-of-box solutions for them. This makes it easy for small business owners to input data and generate reports with an intuitive interface. Training time is reduced considerably compared to using Excel spreadsheet.
To find an example of such specific business software visit Salon Software Providers. This software is developed with the needs to salon owners in mind. It makes it easy for them to automate record keeping and other salon specific tasks that otherwise would take considerable time and effort.
