 Technology
Best Practices
Custom Software
Sounds Expensive but Saves Money
By T. Scott
Plumley
Published: February / March 2008
What do you do when the software you need is not on the
shelf?
Finding the correct software can streamline your work
processes; provide a professional presentation and
aggregate information; and much more. Knowing what to
buy and assessing your individual needs can save you
time, money, and headaches and make your team more
productive. The most common off-the-shelf software
solutions you can find are for documents, presentations,
spreadsheets, financial software, inventory control, and
contact management software. Many times your industry
will also have industry specific software for
“ordering,” “search,” and “sharing information.” What do
you do if you have a problem to solve for which there is
no software on the shelf? One solution is to have a
custom program designed and implemented.
A web-based solution is
ideal because you don’t have to install any software.
You can access the information from anywhere and you can
share the solutions with field teams. In addition, this
is often the easiest to implement because all Microsoft
server software packages have web-hosting software built
in. Also Windows XP Professional and Windows Vista
Business have web-hosting capabilities as well. You can
easily access the program by using the Internet Explorer
browser that is already installed on all Windows-based
PCs. Another advantage of a web-based solution is that
once you update the software on the server, your
upgrading is done. There are no updates to pass on to
the client machines.
So with this in mind, here are some examples of programs
that I have created to help clients become more
efficient, provide real time updates on work and allow
for communication between staff and management.
Our team has created several custom web-based and
database driven programs to solve small problems. One
example is a simple sign in and sign out program that
allows employees to update their work status throughout
the day no matter where they are in the country. There
are products on the shelf that allow for sign in and
out, but this particular customer wanted something that
was specific to their organization and was web-based.
This way their branch office could sign in and out on
the web; they could sign in and out from client sites;
and it also solved the problem of different time zones
that the products on the shelf didn’t address. Work
status and updates eliminate needless phone calls and
check-ins and provide much needed information for your
team or client.
A more complex system I have created is for a contractor
in the Tampa Bay area. With over 75 technicians in the
field who were manually filling out work orders and
turning them into their supervisors, the paper trail was
long and inefficient. Accounting would manually type in
and approve these forms in several different systems.
This process took over thirty hours per week to
complete. We developed a web-based work order system
that stores all the work orders in a database.
Supervisors can log into the website and approve the
sheets and the accounts payable and run the billing
report on a weekly basis. This system cut the amount of
time to calculate this billing report from 35 hours to
less than 1 hour.
When you are looking at your business processes, look at
what you do that is a manual process of copying and
pasting information between different programs. Consult
with your IT professional regarding affordable, custom
web-based solutions that can be created to make your
business more efficient and productive.
T. Scott Plumley is the
President of High Speed Network Services. High Speed
Network Services provides full IT support to small and
medium sized businesses. Scott has over 10 years
experience working with small, medium and Fortune 100
businesses. Contact Scott at 813-404-5498 or scott@hsnsfl.com
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