Bidness Project Software Help??????

[Whip]

Looking for some simple, easy to use software to help me with a new bidness. There is so much on the web I don't know where to start. I am hoping the collective will help me narrow down my search.

 

At this time each job is put on a clip board and hung on the wall in a central area. It works, but I hope to make the bidness grow.....and then it won't work anymore.

 

We offer four main services.

 

A different person is responsible for each service, but sometimes a customer will request more than one service so we need to be able to sort that out.

 

Customers can call, come to our location or email us.

 

I want to be able to track the progress of jobs from the time they are taken till completion. We will prolly have to add updates along the way, like we sent a proof to customer, or waiting for call back ...or if we had to order something to complete the order...etc.

 

 

It would be great if the due date could be entered and appear on a calender so I can make sure we accomplish what we promised.

 

Web based would be better, so I can access the calender from anywhere and each work station can see the calender without having to leave their area.

 

Finally....I would like it to produce different types of invoices. Some customers pay in advance or when they pick up the finished product and others are billed with 30/10 day terms.

 

 

What do y'all think????

 

 

Am I dreamin?????????

 

 

 

 

 

TIA

 

 

[David]

Probably pay someone a few hundred bucks to customize FileMaker Pro.

[Bob Palin]

Does it need to tie into QuickBooks at the end of the process?

 

(sorry I didn't ask that last night, didn't think of it)

[Whip]

Does it need to tie into QuickBooks at the end of the process?

 

(sorry I didn't ask that last night, didn't think of it)

 

Nope.

 

I would rather it not connect to quickbooks.

[John Ranalletta]

Find a piece of off-the-shelf s/w that approximates your needs. Trying to customize s/w will take on a life of its own and start an endless stream of telephone calls to expensive programmers.

 

Your business can't be that unusual that someone, somewhere hasn't written a FilePro or MS Access database to handle it.

[Bob Palin]

Your business can't be that unusual that someone, somewhere hasn't written a FilePro or MS Access database to handle it.

Would they satisfy the online access requirement? (preferably including iPhone) That's important as The Boss moves around a lot between the various locations in his empire.

 

Some people at Teradyne used FilemakerPro for process tracking and really liked it.

[cali_beemer]

Probably pay someone a few hundred bucks to customize FileMaker Pro.

 

+1, after working for several different companies, the ones with an off the shelf software were completely horrible. Lots of features never being used only adding to the complication and slowing the system down. I worked for another company that had a custom made software program. Relatively inexpensive and it was great. It was custom tailored around the business model with no extra fluff features that werent being used. As the company made changes, a few hours to the software designer and the program is modified to match the business's changing environment. With todays economy, I am sure a simple ad on craigslist would yield a starving programer desperate for some under the table work.

[Bob Palin]

Probably pay someone a few hundred bucks to customize FileMaker Pro.

 

+1, after working for several different companies, the ones with an off the shelf software were completely horrible. Lots of features never being used only adding to the complication and slowing the system down. I worked for another company that had a custom made software program. Relatively inexpensive and it was great. It was custom tailored around the business model with no extra fluff features that werent being used. As the company made changes, a few hours to the software designer and the program is modified to match the business's changing environment. With todays economy, I am sure a simple ad on craigslist would yield a starving programer desperate for some under the table work.

What is 'realtivly inexpensive' - hundreds? Couple of thou? I will soon be a starving programmer (OK, it'll be a while before I actually starve) and I already work with Whip, but I think that the infrastructure provided with something like FileMaker would be a good start if it can be customized enough to make it simple to use for the employees.

[Natche]

I've used this (37 Signals) web-based software in the past. It makes collaboration easy and you only pay as you go so it's very inexpensive in the short term.

 

Since you are just starting, you probably do not want to make a big investment in software as you really don't know where you will end up. You can try any of the applications free for 30 days to see if they suit your needs.

 

Disclaimer - I have no affiliation with 37 Signals - I just like their applications.

 

Good luck!

[Dennis Andress]

+1 Good place to start...

[yabadabapal]

I looked this up and it is interesting. I dont know if this would help you. Let us know what you think.

http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/index.html#utm_campaign=en&utm_source=en-ha-na-us-sk&utm_medium=ha&utm_term=office%20software

[chrisolson]

Am I dreamin?????????

 

Yep ...

 

Given our chat about the business and knowing you ... custom is the only thing that will do what you want. You need specific data input forms, a custom set of database tables to support the data you've collected on those forms, ability to edit and custom reports and outputs (your calendar requirement is a form of report) based on the data you've collected.

 

Its not difficult, but you have relationships and interconnections of the various processes that make up this business and specific time sensitive views of those processes that make it a custom application.

[tallman]

So Y'all are building hybrids?

[bayoubengal]

Have you looked at MS Project? May be to "big picture". Probably worth exploring...

[Bob Palin]

Have you looked at MS Project? May be to "big picture". Probably worth exploring...

Not suitable, far too complex to use and doesn't fulfil some of Whip's requirements (invoices?).

[yabadabapal]

Does anyone have an opinion of the Google Apps business Premier edition. I looked at it but am not sure when, where,how, and if it would be applicable and who it would best be of service to.

[Bob Palin]

I've looked at some Google apps features but not with this in mind. I was hoping Greg H would respond as he's done a lot with Google products, but I just learned from Facebook that he's in a casino in Vegas...

[yabadabapal]

I hope he wins! Here is a review I just read but it was from a year ago. Informative but somewhat suspiciously onesided.

http://www.itpro.co.uk/609617/google-apps-premier-edition

[Francois_Dumas]

I studied the 37Signals stuff last night. That Basecamp app looks nice indeed. Might try it myself actually..... AFTER we get back from skiing, that is.

[steve.foote]

I've used this (37 Signals) web-based software in the past. It makes collaboration easy and you only pay as you go so it's very inexpensive in the short term.

 

Since you are just starting, you probably do not want to make a big investment in software as you really don't know where you will end up. You can try any of the applications free for 30 days to see if they suit your needs.

 

Disclaimer - I have no affiliation with 37 Signals - I just like their applications.

 

Good luck!

 

Another +1. This is a good place to start.

[yabadabapal]

I looked briefly at the 37signals and at Goggle apps premier edition for business.

37 signals is 49.00/month

Google Premier edition is 50.00/year.

Are these similar platforms and functions or not?

[Bob Palin]

Can Basecamp follow the whole process from order entry to invoice generation? I don't see the latter anywhere.

 

Can an employee check to see what needs to be done that fits their skills? i.e. a waiting list of jobs that can be picked from.

[Dennis Andress]

37Signals has other products besides Basecamp -- Backpack or Campfire might have something to offer. (A couple of years ago they offered a free membership, must be getting greedy.)

 

Whether or not Basecamp does invoices goes back to the question of custom or off the shelve software. You can use off the shelve stuff that does most of what you need. Your business can grow with it and someday (maybe) be able to pay its own way for custom software. Or, you can contract a programmer to write (notice that I skipped design..) what you think you want, and you can keep working on it until you figure out what you really need. Keep it simple until you know what you are missing, then spend your money to get exactly that.

 

 

BTW, 37Signals are the people who brought us the Ruby programming language...

[tallman]

hijak

Dennis,

being barely literate I admire the skills board members like you, greg, Killer, ryetuhspin, David, and others possess wrt to programming.

/hijak

[Tasker]

I've worked with several companies doing exactly the kind of work your new company is doing and, in some cases, much more. Until they got extremely busy, with dozens of employees, they managed their processes with basic procedures, some manual and some using various software programs.

 

My advice to you is to focus on your people and growing your business and when they begin to beg you for help with the processes, then that is when you figure out a better method. Being the keeper of the books and being the keeper of all control, as you must, I'd develop a simple method of deadline-based reporting that comes to you from your manager(s). Of course, software planners, designers and consultants will strongly disagree with this simple notion. ;-)

 

At the end of the day, you need to know if the projects are on schedule and if they are generating a profit and if your customers are happy. Pretty simple stuff, don't make your life more complicated.

[sgendler]

You are looking for a CRM package (Customer Relationship Management) - many of which can be made to suit your needs. All are customizable so that you can modify how an order flows through the system, automatically sending emails to interested parties as an order reaches certain stages, integrating with company email so that emails to and from a customer can be attached to the order, etc. salesforce.com is the most widely used web-based CRM package, as far as I know - at least without including the very high-dollar packages from SAP and Oracle/Siebel. It is relatively easy to customize, but there are lots of salesforce pros who you can contract with to set things up for you.

 

In truth, the biggest difficulty in setting up a CRM is defining exactly how you want your process to look, not setting up the CRM to implement that process. Without a good specification or intimate knowledge of your business, it can be difficult for anyone, let alone an outside consultant, to customize things in a useful manner, so you may well be better off waiting a bit before trying to modify process so that you can be sure you meet your actual needs. SugarCRM is just one of a number of open-source and free CRM packages. SugarCRM is web based and can be hosted by someone else or run on your own servers. Just google up 'CRM' and I'm sure you'll find lots of options. 100% of my experience with commercial CRM packages (other than as a customer interacting with a company through one) is with salesforce and Sugar, so I'm of little use outside of those 2.

 

I quite like salesforce, but it costs a lot more than the free CRM packages, especially after accounting for consulting costs and such. From my experience, salesforce is a lot easier to get sophisticated with compared to Sugar, especially if you don't have true programming skills. Salesforce is much more modifiable from within their point and click interface - but sugar allows you to modify the source code to do anything you damn well please. 'm sure microsoft has some kind of CRM package.

[yabadabapal]

Great info sgendler. After checking your recommendation, I signed up with salesforce.com for a month. I will also check out your reference to open source sugarcrm. The crm software looks like a bunch of very functional templates all sewn together in some logical manner to facilitate a sense of organization and strategy.

I checked out MS/CRM but they seem to require running from the MS browser unless I misunderstood.

 

 

[John Ranalletta]

We use SF CRM. We don't have a manufacturing process to monitor; so, I can't speak to that functionality; however, it's robust enough that a sales person can "live" in the system, managing daily sales functions; and, it can tie right into accounting and billing processes.

 

"Testing" a CRM system is like taking a little bit of heroin. Once in and having plugged in your existing data, you're not likely to migrate away; thus, the "free" introductory periods offered by all of them.

[Bob Palin]

Sam (et al), both Salesforce and SugarCRM seem to be focused on the sales process, from what Whip wrote in in his OP (and from my discussions with him) he seems to need a tool that starts when the sale is closed, order entry, job generation, job assignment, job tracking, job completion and billing. Is that right Whip?

 

edit: I just watched the SugarCRM demo - that doesn't seem to offer anything that Whip wants. It's also not particularly cheap at $360/year/user, Saleforce is even more.

[Whip]

Sam (et al), both Salesforce and SugarCRM seem to be focused on the sales process, from what Whip wrote in in his OP (and from my discussions with him) he seems to need a tool that starts when the sale is closed, order entry, job generation, job assignment, job tracking, job completion and billing. Is that right Whip?

 

edit: I just watched the SugarCRM demo - that doesn't seem to offer anything that Whip wants. It's also not particularly cheap at $360/year/user, Saleforce is even more.

 

Yes, when the sale is closed that is when our work begins.

[Bob Palin]

and if you are wondering, no, I'm not trying to sell my services to Whip (though that would be nice). I'm trying to help him find the right solution.

[yabadabapal]

[

Yes, when the sale is closed that is when our work begins.

 

Finally, someone who is interested in customer service!

That's the ticket right there and a successful 2011.

[Whip]

A secret member sent me this

[chrisolson]

Nice try, but no ... customer database and billing modules are good, but the rest doesn't fit. Its central premise of "services" don't translate well, if at all, to your business.

[yabadabapal]

I just studied the demo and screenshots, customer support and services. It looks great and I like the idea of open source because it attracts new and better ideas from people that other companies might not even consider. The one thing I noticed is that in the invoicing, there was no mention of sending the bill via Email. I must have not noticed it.

It looked like it was all hard copy billing. I think it would be a cool idea to offer paperless billing and reward the customer for participating. Its 44 cents (snail mail) to send and 44 cents to receive so thats a total expense of 88 cents a month. So if the customer agrees to paperless they should get a reward of some sort like paying them with a check at the end of the year in the amount of 2X88centsX12 equal to $21.12. That may not seem like much but if your monthly billing was say 19.00 per month, then after 10 years with a customer, that customer has actually received one full year of service for free. Anyway I like the citurs link you shared. Its exciting!

 

[Bob Palin]

The Citrus system requires that you set up a server, you can use one at a site like GoDaddy of course (assuming they have the right PHP permissions enabled, a problem I've run into before). But their shared servers are not PCI compliant so if you are planning on keeping credit card data you will have to look further afield, probably a dedicated server. That can get expensive if you pay them to maintain it and a hassle if you do it.

[markgoodrich]

I don't think anyone should be helping Whip with this. I hear the new business is converting Hybrids to conventional gasoline engines. It's wrong.

[Bob Palin]

I don't think anyone should be helping Whip with this. I hear the new business is converting Hybrids to conventional gasoline engines. It's wrong.

Oh no, he's onto us. Hey at least we're using the power cells to heat the chicken coop - yes, they'll be battery hens...

[yabadabapal]

Good point Bob. I had to look up PCI to understand what is means.

Now I understand. This is quite a puzzle we have here.

Happy New year to you. I have to go to work.

[sgendler]

Great info sgendler. After checking your recommendation, I signed up with salesforce.com for a month. I will also check out your reference to open source sugarcrm. The crm software looks like a bunch of very functional templates all sewn together in some logical manner to facilitate a sense of organization and strategy.

I checked out MS/CRM but they seem to require running from the MS browser unless I misunderstood.

 

 

So, it turns out that sugar revamped their license in a relatively unfriendly way, so the community made a new product based on the sugar source code called vtiger. I'd recommend vtiger over sugarCRM, for sure. There is a live demo at the vtiger website, but bear in mind that it has basically every available module installed so the interface is very complex and confusing. It can be as simple or complex as you want it to be, depending upon what features you enable and what fields you choose to make available in the interface. The entire app can be nothing more than a simple purchase order form or it can be a sophisticated workflow that starts with initial contact through the entire sales process, including integration with corporate emails, into a purchase order, and integrating with service and support modules. That's why I say it is very important to know what you want before you start playing around or else it is very easy to get lost in the available functionality rather than sticking just with what you need.

[sgendler]

Am I dreamin?????????

 

Yep ...

 

Given our chat about the business and knowing you ... custom is the only thing that will do what you want. You need specific data input forms, a custom set of database tables to support the data you've collected on those forms, ability to edit and custom reports and outputs (your calendar requirement is a form of report) based on the data you've collected.

 

Its not difficult, but you have relationships and interconnections of the various processes that make up this business and specific time sensitive views of those processes that make it a custom application.

 

This is not true - yes, he needs to be able to build custom forms and reports, but there are lots of packages available that allow such things to be built without any programming chops whatsoever - simple enough that the manage of individual departments can modify the relevant forms and reports to suit the specific needs of the department as they evolve so that you aren't constantly going back to your custom software engineer for minor tweaks. That's the whole point of CRM softare - so that you don't have to reinvent the wheel and implement in custom software functionality that is 95% the same as what every other company is using. Instead, a properly configurable package will give you your 95% right out of the box and make the remaining 5% easy enough that actual programming isn't necessary.

[sgendler]

Sam (et al), both Salesforce and SugarCRM seem to be focused on the sales process, from what Whip wrote in in his OP (and from my discussions with him) he seems to need a tool that starts when the sale is closed, order entry, job generation, job assignment, job tracking, job completion and billing. Is that right Whip?

 

edit: I just watched the SugarCRM demo - that doesn't seem to offer anything that Whip wants. It's also not particularly cheap at $360/year/user, Saleforce is even more.

 

A lot of companies use CRM to feed the sales process into the rest of the company, so that is what their default sales documentation focuses on. Forget Sugar, which got open-source unfriendly and look at vtiger, which is still free unless you want it hosted. I've used both salesforce and sugarcrm (prior to the vtiger fork) in modes that go far beyond the sales process. You can build any 'process' you want in either of them. vtiger has modules specifically for integrating service and support, ordering, sales, and a whole bunch more besides.

[chrisolson]

Am I dreamin?????????

 

Yep ...

 

Given our chat about the business and knowing you ... custom is the only thing that will do what you want. You need specific data input forms, a custom set of database tables to support the data you've collected on those forms, ability to edit and custom reports and outputs (your calendar requirement is a form of report) based on the data you've collected.

 

Its not difficult, but you have relationships and interconnections of the various processes that make up this business and specific time sensitive views of those processes that make it a custom application.

 

This is not true - yes, he needs to be able to build custom forms and reports, but there are lots of packages available that allow such things to be built without any programming chops whatsoever - simple enough that the manage of individual departments can modify the relevant forms and reports to suit the specific needs of the department as they evolve so that you aren't constantly going back to your custom software engineer for minor tweaks. That's the whole point of CRM softare - so that you don't have to reinvent the wheel and implement in custom software functionality that is 95% the same as what every other company is using. Instead, a properly configurable package will give you your 95% right out of the box and make the remaining 5% easy enough that actual programming isn't necessary.

 

Well, we all are entitled to our opinion. I think most are making a mountain out of a mole hill given the actual work required for Whip's situation. We're not talking fortune 100 here, we're talking one single, very small shop with an owner that has very specific requirements ... not unique, but unique enough not to fit into that 95% model. Custom don't always mean big bucks unless you go into it with that mind set. I believe Whip wants an efficient, simple Piper Cub, not a 747 ... but that's just me :smile:

[Whip]

How bout this one?

 

http://projectbubble.com/tour/manage-projects

[yabadabapal]

I like it. I tested the invoice portion which is important to you.

Its great. And you can email the invoice and have records on hand all the time. I spent some of the morning playing with sales force as well. I was looking for invoice templates on salesforce but did not find them so thats a negative. My hunch is that the Bubble link you just posted is a great place to get started and covers some of the main items you were interested in. I love salesforce as well, and Im bettin that you can use that down the road at some point.

Happy New year!

[chrisolson]

Interesting UK based start up ... looks to be still in development which can be both good and bad.

 

The issue with all of these applications is that even the most general still have to be based on some specific process flow. Per the site, it focuses on simple project management: time tracking of tasks and collaborators and billing based on hours assigned.

 

I suppose the "project" paradigm sorta translates into orders, but maybe not. It will depend on the details. However, it does have your calendar feature. :smile: Wonder if it will handle 20 projects per day over a year's span without choking?

 

No detailed screen shots or user manual on the site so besides the calendar option, lots of unanswered question. Price seems reasonable though for the small business option.

[ghaverkamp]

I've looked at some Google apps features but not with this in mind. I was hoping Greg H would respond as he's done a lot with Google products, but I just learned from Facebook that he's in a casino in Vegas...

 

Actually, in a casino in Kansas City... The most hellish experience ever in a casino, and I wasn't even losing money. Anyhow...

 

Google Apps, Premier or otherwise, is pretty basic. Email, Docs (spreadsheets, word processing, presentations), Sites, etc. With the new infrastructure they're in the middle of rolling out, they also integrate nearly all of the rest of Google services, but without any support. Google does have a Javascript-based macro language and a UI interface (largely for spreadsheets) that a masochist could use to write what Whip described in the first post, but I wouldn't go there. (As with nearly everything Google, there are hidden limitations -- functionality, rate, etc. -- everywhere, which I managed to bump into with my very first custom function I wrote for our deputy CIO.)

 

There are, however, plenty of lightweight Google Marketplace apps that could plug in. The nice part about that is that resources could be shared among employees, partners, and customers, so long as they have Google (or in some cases, OpenID) accounts. We have people using both SmartSheet and ManyMoon, which are both lightweight Project-like applications. They don't specifically do the invoicing, but they do allow linking to Google Docs documents, and there's probably no reason invoicing couldn't be handled from templates there.

 

Lots and lots of options in the Google Marketplace, depending on how much one wants to spend, customize, etc.

 

For basic stuff as described, I could see cranking up a new SmartSheet sheet (it's the one of the two I'm most familiar with) based on a template, edit to the customer's specifications, link to the appropriate invoice (if pre-paid) or have the step to invoice in the sheet if not...

 

If more automated workflow is required, things like JIRA plug in nicely, too, plus there are lots of CRM options.

 

I may be way off base. From the posts here alone, I'm not entirely sure I understand the requirements, and I'm really just spitballing.