In a world where technology influences every one of the things we do, it is important that we look at how we can take advantage of it to our benefit. One of the areas where we must prioritize the use of technology is in our business, where we can generate new ways to increase profits and automate tasks that would help us reduce costs.
Now it is technology based on free software which offers us the greatest freedom when applying it in our business, regardless of whether it is physical or online. That is why we must evaluate each of the areas that make up our business so that in this way we can use the appropriate free tools.
Advantages of using free software in business
There are many advantages of using free software in business, but we can highlight three:
- The total cost of implementing free software and open source tools tends to be low.
- Free and open source software is constantly updated and secure.
- By using free and open source software in our business, we free ourselves from vendor shackles.
Steps to take before including free software in business
The evaluation process leads us to different paths and forces us to take priorities or follow a general plan, my experience tells me: «that we must evaluate each of the steps we take when including technology in our business«. That is why, as a reference, I will share with you some small steps that I commonly take when including free software in online or physical businesses.
Analyze the current business model.
Whether we have a physical or online business running, or we want to start a new one, it is of the utmost importance that let's thoroughly analyze our business model, evaluating among many things:
- The way we carry out our procedures.
- The advantages and disadvantages of our business model.
- The processes that need improvement.
- Evaluating and clarifying who our competitors are.
- Evaluating and prioritizing our possible and current clients.
- Documenting and classifying the technological tools we use.
In this process of analysis I rely on open source canvas tools (For example, him ), which allow me to properly structure my business model.
Structure the business by priorities
The evaluation of our business model will create a fairly broad structure for us, so we must structure it according to our priorities, if we want our business to grow We must first address the areas that bring us the least risk of loss, followed by the areas that have the objective of increasing income.
This may sound confusing, but mainly if we want to include technology for example in a restaurant, the main thing will be that we start with marketing, continue with our administrative accounting areas and culminate with the automation of our sales and cooking processes.
Clarify our capabilities
A very common mistake nowadays is that we believe that we can replace anything with technology quickly and without any knowledgeAlthough it is difficult to recognize it, it is important that each application, automaton or tool that we use has a minimum evaluation involved and also the application will have a learning line that we must take into account.
In many cases "less is more«, So it is advisable to only use the tools that are going to give us satisfactory results and not get carried away by euphoria using as many tools as we can find for a specific purpose.
Growing our business with free software
We already know that we are going to include free software in our business, to help it grow or, failing that, to avoid losses. At this point I want to give you some recommendations to achieve these goals.
You must bear in mind that our main objective should be: "Increase profits and reduce expenses or losses" but in the same way we must add to this the "Create a Brand and retain customers." Starting from these two premises, let's divide our actions into several areas.
Create a Brand
The main objective of our business is to create a brand and corporate identityNo matter the magnitude of our undertaking, it needs to be easy to identify and last over time. Likewise, we must be omnichannel and have a single identity in any circumstance.
The Brand and corporate identity, should not be represented only visually, also in our actions as a business, in our objectives and in the way we carry out our processes. This identity process must also be associated with analyze the keywords of our business, in addition to representing our mission, vision and scope.
There are several free tools that at this point could help us as: GIMP, Scribus, Inkscape, blender, pencil project, Dia Diagram Editor among others.
Build Customer Loyalty
The process of customer loyalty is quite long, following a path that goes: from having an excellent corporate identity, through sales and monitoring tools, to having functionalities to manage our business projects.
Automation in the sales, monitoring, marketing and added value processes of the product is undoubtedly one of the the most correct ways to retain our customers.
For this important but complicated task we can make use of various free tools such as CRM, project planners, ecommerce platforms and solutions, blog, among others. If we must mention some we could say: Magento, SugarCRM, Idempiere, Taiga, Prestashop, WordPress and more.
Increase Profits
If we have an excellent corporate identity, with good processes and procedures focused on the loyalty of our clients, in addition to this, we include free software tools in our business, we are probably aimed at increasing our profits.
Increase the profits of our business, is undoubtedly the objective of all, reaching favorable results is almost always the result of previous actions. Increasing profits is closely associated with increased sales or conversions, although this is not always the case.
Free software has an infinity of tools for this important process, the easiest thing is to introduce tools such as CMS, ERP, statistics, billing software, CRM, communities, points of sale, Blogging, SEO, Web Optimization, Social Media, Forms , Landing pages, Email, Call Center among others.
Among the list of tools that can help us in this work we have: WordPress, ghost, mephisto, seo panel, socioboard, piwik, mautic, discourse, invoicescripts among others.
Reduce Expenses and Losses
Perhaps the key to any successful business is the reduction of expenses and losses, there are many physical and online businesses, which present many sales and large income, but whose profits are greatly affected by excessive expenses in production or incalculable losses based on the poor quality of the product or its high support.
To avoid these problems, we can use customer and supplier management tools, as well as ERP that allow us to control our production, accounting and administrative processes. Similarly, the main way to mitigate losses and expenses is by analyzing our data.
Data analysis tools, machine data, predictive models, among others, are gradually becoming essential in business. He correct analysis of the results of these tools They can be vital when making decisions that allow us to reduce expenses and losses.
There are several free tools in charge of helping us to reduce expenses and losses, Among which we could mention: Odoo, Idempiere, Zurmo, vtiger, ERPNext, learn, r, among others. But it is also worth noting that using free software on many occasions also helps us reduce expenses of up to 80% associated with licenses, support and infrastructure.
To conclude, I can say that the use of free software in our business is one more weapon, in order to stand out among our competitors, we must not be afraid, it is a decision that will obviously bring a great effort in some cases, but that will allow us to grow in the long run quickly and safely.
This is perhaps the introduction to an article, where we see in more detail tools and techniques that will allow us to apply the four premises that we have learned today.
I hope you liked it and do not forget to leave your comments and opinions
Very good, waiting for the second more detailed article and if you need to extend to a third or fourth to leave us good implementation ideas based on your experience, it would be perfect.
I don't think proprietary software is used for fun. But because there is no other. For example Photoshop. No matter how much it is said, it gives gimp a thousand turns. It is clear that the number of developers behind is very different. But in the end a designer goes to the adobe package. And more of the same with blender.
It is interesting how the company brand tries to mix two philosophies with the philosophy of the tools it uses, but to be honest I think you are trying to connect two things that have nothing to do with it ...
The Creation of the Image, Brand or Acceptance of your client's loyalty has to do with how you act as your product is, how easy it is to acquire it, and what benefits it offers for your clients, and what is your differentiator with your competition….
On the other hand, what tools do you use to do that… it has nothing to do with that goal. In the article he mentions and I quote "but that your profits are greatly affected by excessive expenses in production or incalculable losses based on the poor quality of the product or its high support" if the product is bad, use whatever you use is free software , proprietary will always be bad.
I agree that if you want to use all these tools and you cannot pay for proprietary solutions, you have solutions offered by free software that can help you with this task.
There are applications that are really difficult to replace with free software solutions, there someone mentioned Photoshop. Gimp really lacks a lot, Autocad, despite the open DWG solutions Autocad 2d and 3d are superior.
And finally, how much of your cost structure is spent on technology ...
Good post!
And I almost totally agree!
If it is true that free software opens a way for us to start or expand the business, however, there are areas in which reached a certain level, require more powerful software and / or with specialized technical support, since it arrives a point where there are more problems than personnel! An example would be in the case of ERP, when my company was born, 2 years ago, we started with a free software one and the truth is that it worked in a great way, we had a computer scientist on the staff and more or less he was capable of carry maintenance.
When we managed to grow a bit as a company, it became more complicated for us, so we decided to request the implementation of a more powerful ERP, and to be able to take the maintenance concerns to an external company.
I leave you here a comparison of erp! http://www.ekamat.es/navision/comparativa-erp.php
But I insist, free software, forms a wide range of possibilities and without it we would not have come to see the usefulness of it!
Good contribution!