Quasi-Evil

Posts Tagged ‘software’

ESPs, CRMs, SFAs, Oh My

I’m starting a new business. I’ve started businesses before but not like this, this is my baby, there’s nobody else involved except very soon, a whole bunch of customers and consumers. I am starting a community magazine for families. It will be funded by advertising and thus free for the consumers. So I’ve been looking for software and man, is that complicated. I want one or more programmes to handle the following:

• Database of possible advertisers - so sales leads basically which I can then convert when I start selling space.
• Database of possible distribution locations - again sort of sales leads although there’ll be no money involved here.
• Advertising sales manager - which from rigorous searching seems to be either a specialist Contact/Customer Relationship Manager or a Sales Force Automation tool or some other things that get shortened to three-letter acronyms. Unfortunately the ones aimed at print publishing seem to cost an absolute fortune.
• Accounting software with invoicing capability and preferably some kind of integration with my advertising database.
• Project management software - for handling copy deadlines, print deadlines, etc.

And you know what else can do all that stuff? A spreadsheet.

Whilst I eventually want some software with a few bells and whistles, I’ve so far wasted about 10 hours looking for it (not counting the Project Management software - I’ve been trying to find my favourite one of those for three years). So for now, it’s all going in a spreadsheet. A Google Spreadsheet in fact. With that clever form building thing they’ve got going on for idiots like me that don’t understand spreadsheets.

Here goes.

There goes the weekend

My mother has obtained a laptop. It’s a Dell Precision M90 which basically means she’s got a flamethrower to do the job when a match would have done. I’ll be spending this weekend getting her set up and teaching her to use it; scary thought. It may take more than a weekend. A lot more. So now I’m making a list of the things I want to get installed so she learns to use them from the beginning rather than getting used to e.g. Internet Explorer. And so I’ve got all the links in one place, here they are:

• Opera - I’m not a big fan of Firefox, since v2 it’s been far too buggy for me to be willing to let my mum near it. I’ll trust Opera to stop her breaking everything and it’s got the built in e-mail client so she’s learning one programme rather than two.
• Pidgin - She doesn’t actually know what IM is yet but, as with Opera, it’ll be easier to teach her to use one programme than all the different IM programmes according to what her friends have. I’ve always used Adium since I’m on a Mac and this seems to be the best equivalent. Plus I like the logo.
• VLC - It’ll play pretty much anything going and I’ve been using it for a couple of years without a problem.
• OpenOffice - I’m surprised people still pirate buy MS Office. OO is free and I love it.
• ClamWin - She lives therefore she clicks links she really shouldn’t. A virus programme is a must on Windows, especially for my mum.