Innovation in Software

With changing what it is Vagueware does for a living, I’ve found myself having to change the processes around how I do business. For the last two and a half years, I’ve tracked my accounts in a spreadsheet reconciling manually with bank statements, produced invoices in iWork Pages and done CRM pretty much through memory and Mail.app’s search function. I occasionally gave clients access to Trac, because being a developer that made sense.

I’ve recently moved all of my clients onto Basecamp so that we can better handle projects – we don’t need integrated svn repos any more, and a todo item seems clearer to some of my clients than a ticket. I’ve been considering other functionality I need. Digging around this morning I was evaluating:

E-commerce systems

It would be nice if I could sell services (and products I’m announcing soon) directly online. Here’s the thing – every single open-source solution sucks. I don’t just mean it’s a little nasty around the corners: I mean it’s horrendous. Yes, I’ve looked at OScommerce, and Freeway, and modules for Drupal, and even plugins for Wordpress. Every one of them is awful. I’m not even going to mention the others.

What surprises me is that so many businesses are able to operate with this poor software. Sure there is Shopify if you’re a products-based business and its feature-set suits, but I am genuinely amazed that so many businesses are able to operate with the dross out there. No wonder so many UK SMEs are struggling to get online.

Accounts system & CRM

I need to upgrade from using a spreadsheet, especially as there is a 60/40 chance I’ll be hiring before the end of the year, going VAT registered, and it would be nice to make invoicing a 30-second job. Thing is, I see accounts and CRM as part of the same process – knowing that your client is happy, and understanding what you’ve done before for a client when creating a quote is all part of the same process. I want to be able to hand that out over to a new employee without having to explain the back-story every time.

Nothing exists that fits the bill.

What’s more the current group of open source CRM packages are hideous, and 37signals’ “Highrise” doesn’t integrate well enough with the sales process for me.

There is a project I’ve been working on with another client that could potentially help out here – I wrote the core in the Spring, and the last bugs are being ironed out this week and next, and that has Paypal integration and is open enough to consider building some CRM functionality on top. Not ideal, but if the client allows it, it could be this is the way forward for me.

Why is nothing out there?

What puzzles me is that these are standard business tools that even those with the open source community must have encountered. Somebody out there must be running a small business and decided to produce a decent, joined-up, services-orientated CRM, project management and accounts system. Heck, even if we just get to the point where we can integrate with a COTS accountancy system like MYOB or SAP I’m going to be happier than I am now.

As a software developer myself with a serious itch here, the solution seems obvious: but I don’t have time. Instead I find myself incredulous that this sector of the software market – a sector that has a potential user or customer in every single business on the planet – has so little innovation. Solutions exist that look ugly, or cost too much, or are too inflexible, or require your business to work the way everybody else’s does.

Why? Why isn’t this changing?

There is a chance that with Thingamy it might just change. However I smell Java with high license prices – it might just be the jolt we need to open up the innovation in this space though.