Would you buy a car before test driving? Do you buy clothes without first trying them on? In both cases, it is usually a poor decision to not try before buying lest you be left with saggy pants or wheels that fall off. Caveat Emptor!
The great news for the printing industry, or any other industries with a lot of small to medium sized businesses (SMBs), is that you can often try before you buy — at least with software. With the adoption of software-as-a-service (SaaS), cloud based delivery, and freemium business models, there is now tons of software options that can make employees and companies more efficient. Because of this shift in software delivery, the software companies also try to make the software obvious and intuitive to reduce support resources. Free(ish) and easy-to-use is the new software paradigm.
Leveraging the power of free(ish) software is also the idea behind Andrew Simmons recent Social Print Experiment. Andrew and his partners have cobbled a few solutions together to automate their back-end bookkeeping needs.
(Check their blog for more details.)
Here are a few free services that might be particularly useful that, if needed, can be scaled for SMB use for a reasonable monthly fee. Dependent upon your particular needs, you might need traditional software solutions but at least you can take most of these for a test drive.
- Productivity: Google Apps, OpenOffice, GoToMeeting, Dropbox, Basecamp, Highrise, Backpack, Campfire
- Social Media: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, WordPress, MailChimp, etc.
- Internal Communication: Yammer, PBWorks
- Accounting: Outright, Shoeboxed, Freshbooks
- Design: Gimp, Inkscape
What are you favorite free(ish) software tools? Share in the comments below.
