Innovation in Software

As ever, my business development continues to happen in the open. I thought I’d share a couple of things that have been happening at Vagueware towers:

• I’m looking for a new office. I’ve been desk-surfing at Liquid Bronze this week and last, and whilst my home office in my new pad in Chorlton is starting to take shape, I think something city centre might be a good idea going forward. I’m looking at the usual candidates, but with Fly The Coop taking a direction based on the Science Park, I’d be interested to hear more ideas/suggestions of where to take a look.
• I have retained the services of a sales consultant. If you have never done this yourself, I advise you do (and I’m happy to let you have the details of mine – he’s freelance and understands the software sector). You might think you know what your business does and how it is perceived, but there is nothing like spending a couple of hours over coffee with a guy who understands the sector to tell you how it really is. My favourite quote from his initial report: “Paul is the brand at the moment. It will take time to establish Vagueware instead”. Too true.
• We’re going VAT registered and taking the opportunity whilst changing our accounting procedures to change our accounting platform. All the cool kids at the moment are raving about Kashflow – anybody got any experience with it or others?
• Right now there are 4 sub-contractors working on Vagueware projects, and I expect in August/September for that to rise to 6. The recruitment drive has gone spectacularly well with over 20 applicants – I want to hire them all – and it’s now just a case of getting the order book in a place to be able to commit to salaries for the long-term. I’m not hiring somebody without at least 3-6 months of their salary in the bank.
• There is discussion – don’t laugh – about me writing a book. Early days. We’ll see where it goes, but I’m really curious to find out what the advantages of a publisher actually are given most of the discussions so far have focused on how I will go out and “sell” the book. I could earn more by doing the same but publishing via Lulu. The only big advantage I can see is having “published by xxxxxx” on my CV.

It seems everybody is busy right now. I can’t remember a time when the sector as a whole was this buoyant in the UK. Talk of recession seems to be passing the bespoke/boutique sector by. I hope it’s the same with you, and if it isn’t let me know as I have work I’m directing away all the time now.

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.