Posts Tagged ‘pipelinedeals’
With the impending release of Google Wave, an insidious thought has crossed my mind: Would it indeed be possible to outfit an entire office and even develop a complete online presence for yourself or a client without spending any money on software? I’m talking e-mail, office applications, Web sites, analytics, CRM, social media, etc. What if you took a contrarian approach to your enterprise software and developed a bias toward the free and easy instead of the expensive and difficult? Would you or your clients really be missing anything essential?
If it is true that most users don’t use all the fancy features in many commercial products, why not give them tools — yes, less powerful in the abstract — that they will actually use? Isn’t the point that customers use the software? And if the tools were free, you could spend your money on training, customization or even change management.
Sure, Linux has been offering a free suite of alternative software for years (I’m typing this on an Ubuntu-powered laptop), but now it’s becoming increasingly possible and viable to use free tools to accomplish the tasks and objectives that most customers want to achieve. (Now, whenever I hear the phrase enterprise software, I tend to cringe at the expected cost and complexity.)
Or, failing the totally free route, what if you used, for example, a combination of free and low-cost tools that included Pipeline Deals (a Salesforce alternative), Box.net (a SharePoint alternative), OpenOffice.org/Google Docs (an Office replacement), MindTouch (collaborative networking), Joomla!/Drupal/WordPress (CMS), GMail/Google Wave (e-mail) and Google Analytics? Or what if you just used as many free Google tools as possible?
What do you think? For consultants, is there a business in helping customers configure and use free tools? And is this another example of the ‘freemium’ model at work, where some companies would choose to outsource customization and training?
Social Media & Management Mojo 