I run a small business. Every dollar counts. Small business owners like me say that we handiest put money into a generation when we’re actually positive it’s going to grow our profitability. That’s a lie. We throw money down the restroom on nugatory tech all of the time.
But these 12 months are going to be distinctive! Sure, there are masses of correct technology accessible. But there are plenty of technologies that don’t make feel for a small commercial enterprise proprietor like me to shop for in 2011. And this yr I’m going to take a stand. I’m not buying the subsequent technologies.
Search Engine Optimization. Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, Barbara Streisand, and Ben Stiller in a single film? My God, how can this NOT be a masterpiece? If I’ve learned something from “Little Fockers,” it is if something sounds too properly to be actual, it maximum probably is. Same for search engine optimization. Over the past six years, I’ve likely spent $20K on so-referred to search engine optimization “experts” who promised to raise my website to page, certainly one of Google or Yahoo. And a few of them succeeded…For about 5 seconds. There is not any rapid and clean way to beat the Google rating system. Anyone who tells you that is lying. The search engine era does not make paintings. Search engine optimization services, alternatively, does. But this isn’t always reasonably-priced. The guys I understand who have succeeded with search engine marketing apprehend that it is a provider and have made it a lynchpin of their advertising and marketing efforts. In that manner, they’ve spent big-time cash (like tensor masses of lots of dollars) to make it work. I do not have that form of money. I’ll make certain my site is “optimized” with the proper keywords, meta-tags, and other nonsense. But it’s all I’m going to do this 12 months.
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Virtualization. I get it. Instead of jogging a server farm, this technology, made by corporations like VMware and Microsoft, shall we us create “virtual machines” on just one server. You can dispose of all that other hardware or even keep on electricity. My corporation runs on simply two low stage servers sitting in my basement. The most electricity utilized in my residence comes from my kids’ Xbox, which looks like it’s walking Halo 24 hours an afternoon. If whatever, I’m considering throwing out my servers (together with a couple of my kids) and moving the whole thing to a cloud-based totally carrier. The virtualization software program is incomprehensible to an agency my size or any company with less than four or 5 servers. So I’m not the use of that technology in 2011 either.
Office 2010. Microsoft is like my mother…”God forbid you must call me from time to time and take a look to make certain I haven’t died in the middle of the night. Is that so much to invite from my son?” I experience the same guilt approximately upgrading my Office machine. I failed even to want to improve to Office 2007 in the first place. And now I’m feeling shameful that I’m no longer going for walks Office 2010 too? We moved to Office 2007 this beyond 12 months for the same reason I invited my mom over for dinner ultimate week…Because we felt responsible. And though it’s beautiful, we are really not seeing any more blessings from it than Office 2003. Or Office 1997, for that be counted. If something, we may additionally appear more difficult at Microsoft’s online version of Office this year or maybe take another stab at Google Docs. Or we may also forestall fiddling round with extraordinary methods to write a stupid letter and as alternative attention on something more efficient in 2011 – like bringing in extra business.
Smartphone Apps. Oh, appearance…I just found that a Twitter user with the last call of “Marks” is on the equal Mcdonald’s as me! Hooray…I just modified my TV channel the usage of my smartphone! And how brilliant, that new app I downloaded for $2.99 told me that there’s a Starbucks in the airport I’m going to. Today’s cell phone apps are amusing and enjoyable. Some of them even help us be extra, in my opinion, productive. But for the most component, those packages are toys. I haven’t found an unmarried downloadable “app” that would trade the way my commercial enterprise is administered or be a terrific device to put in force across my agency. That’s because smartphone apps, like the phones they run on, are nonetheless of their infancy. I do not doubt that a few interesting technologies will emerge within the following few years to assist my complete enterprise run more profitably. But except I need to rent a few youngsters within Ukraine to broaden a customized utility, I do not anticipate putting in force any smartphone technology in 2011.
Netbooks or iPads. Can all of us agree that a netbook is simply an inexpensive, underperforming device that’s too small to use successfully in a commercial enterprise truly and handiest exists to trap in people too cheap to spend the more couple of hundred bucks on a decent computer? And can we also agree that, at the same time as the iPad is cool and I would not need to be caught strolling around La Mission or SoHo without one, it is definitely not that clean to apply for commercial enterprise purposes like typing documents, doing facts access and walking maximum business applications? These devices are toys. Get them on your youngsters. Get one because you still need to be a child. But don’t purchase these things in your personnel. There are too many low-cost laptops to be had, walking Windows 7 (which, via the way, works pleasant and speedy) in which your employees can do non-cool, un-hip things like invoices, estimates, proposals, and spreadsheet evaluation.
Anything That Synchronizes. Over the years, I’ve tried syncing my programs to smartphones, laptops, and every different. The exceptional synchronization apps work about 95% of the time. Thank God software program providers don’t build airplanes. I was not syncing anything in 2011. Unless I can get the right to enter the data over the internet, it is just going to must wait.
Business Intelligence Software. This is just a code word for reporting software program. There are plenty of business “intelligence” software program applications and consultants to assist us “run our organizations.” These programs are overpriced, and so are the experts who paintings with them. I’ve simplest got ten people in my business enterprise which (fortunate for me) manner I mustn’t be that clever. Instead of buying business intelligence software in 2011, I’m going to learn how to use my existing software program’s reporting competencies better or purchase a cheaper reporting tool like Crystal Reports or even Microsoft Access and rent someone less costly to attract the records out that I want.
