Determining productivity software needs for your company

With such a large variety of solutions to choose from, it can be extremely overwhelming for a business owner or IT manager to determine which solution would be best for their company. So, I have some steps to help determine your needs, as well as some package options.

1. What does your company do?

This may sound like a very simple question. Good, it is supposed to be. The first step is to see what business functions your company performs, and then determine what software is needed to run all aspects. For example, let's say your company manufactures plastic widgets that go into a variety of devices. Also, your company has a R&D department and has it's own sales force.

For your day-to-day activities, you need to write up memos, reports, advertising material, store documentation, create and store CAD drawings, schedule meetings, track manufacturing metrics, manage your sales territories, manage customer service, track sales metrics, manage the company finances, and perform a variety of HR functions as well. So, just find an all-inclusive suite that will handle everything, right? Well, for some companies and budgets, that may be an option, but for most, this is not cost-feasible. So, what is next?

2. What is the size of your company and how many people will need to use the computing resources?

With our enormous list of software options from above, it appears that your company's needs seem astronomic and unrealistic. Don't worry, it gets worse. So, let's say your company has a total of 200 employees. This includes office staff, manufacturing, and sales force. Do you buy an individual copy for everyone? Can you just buy a few licenses for different software and limit how many people can use the software at a time? Do you just buy a bulk of licenses? Do you develop your own software? Do you try to use open source? Or do you try and operate in the cloud?

3. Choosing what you REALLY need.

I want to say there is no simple answer here. There are cost-benefit trade-offs all over the place. For example, you can go Open Source, but you still need the IT infrastructure to support it, plus the common risk of Open Source is that there is always the change there may not be enough support, support all of the sudden stops, or bug fixes or enhancements stop coming out. In this case, your software is free, but your hardware and personnel costs will be higher.

You could doing the Microsoft Shop method, and spend a ton of money to get all Microsoft products. You still have high hardware costs, but you get discounts if your employees have Microsoft certifications, plus you get the convenience of all of the software working with each other for a seamless experience, making overall maintenance fairly low, assuming you set things up correctly in the beginning.

Another option is to hit up the cloud. You can do this with Microsoft, Google, IBM, and others. You can get online tools like SalesForce.com, Google Docs, Microsoft 365, and the list goes on. In regards to hardware, all you need is a fast, reliable, and secure Internet access, and any device that can run the websites. So, your hardware costs are almost nothing, you get anywhere access, and it's easy to setup new users. However, licensing can very expensive, and if you need steady up-time in regards to your Internet connection, then you may be spending a small fortune on redundant Internet hook-ups.

In the end, you need to understand what the company can handle. Just because a cloud solution would be best, doesn't mean it's practical. There is still a lot of fear over privacy, security, and data integrity when it comes to Cloud computing, and rightfully so. It may not be possible to convince executive management to embrace this. Therefore, you may have to go with something that is either a hybrid or a full non-cloud solution.

As a rule of thumb, most companies go with hybrid models. A good example of this is having laptops and/or desktop computers powerful enough at the office to run Windows 7, Office 2010 or later, SharePoint 2010 or later, IE 10, etc. Then you have your primary data storage and servers on-site, with a direct connection to a secure off-site location for nightly backups of data for disaster recovery. You then use some of the new SharePoint features that allow mobile users to have cloud access and collaboration to the company's Intranet. There are still tons of options out there, and if you ever have any questions on a direction to go, ask me, or demo lots and lots of software. Sometimes, demoing is the best way.