How to save money in your business
ByCutting your software costs
I want to help you save money and I am never going to ask you for anything in return.
Every year I save thousands of pounds by not spending any money on software. I needed a better deal and systems for my business, I was evaluating NetSuite pricing which left me cold and inspired me to write this article. Most of the essential tasks I have to perform on a daily basis in my business are done using free software. So here is a skill they won’t teach you at business school. The facts I share with you here are not things that most business owners would know about.
Follow this approach to copy me and start saving money.
- 10 minutes/day search on one term ie free wordprocessor.
- Use Evernote (free at www.evernote.com) to record your findings.
- Just ten minutes at the end of each day exploring the features of your findings.
It took me about for weeks on and off spending max twenty minutes a day to discover all of the tools I am ever going to need. I want to make your life as easy as I can so here are some examples of stuff I use everyday.
OK, this is easy on the right I have listed the paid for equivalents to the free software tools you can start using immediately at zero costs (please note that some of these may have “upgrades” that offer more features at a cost).
Here we go:
Just type the name of the free product to the search engines
One system to manage customers and accounting
salesorder.com pricing: free NetSuite pricing – really expensive
Sorry I couldnt resist this one…
Creating and writing Documents
Google Docs pricing: $0 Microsoft Office pricing – at least $100
Or
OpenOffice (www.openoffice.org)
Sharing ideas online
Bubbl.us pricing: $0 Mindjet pricing – at least $200
Making videos
Jing pricing: $0 Camtasia Studio pricing – at least $300
Teleseminars
DimDim pricing: $0 AdobeConnect pricing – at least $200/month
My thanks to the NetSuite pricing incident for the inspiration to write this up and help you out.
More soon…
