Whats the most useful software tool you use?

[gpietersz]

Forget collaboration on docs, spreadsheets or slide decks.

There are open source solutions for that. I have self-hosted document sharing (which i do not need) set up as a side effect of setting up a mail server.

Even in most large organisations the vast majority of documents are written by a single person, and very few indeed need simultaneous editing by multiple people.

Then there is the huge amount of work that is not focused on office documents.

 

[JEREMY HAWKE]

Obviously true, but how is it relevant?

No one was suggesting employing someone to do a job software can do.

We domt look for the cheapest option we look for the best option that does not draw our precious time ( and Im wasting time on here )

As we are not computer geeks we set a budget and pay boffins Thats business

 

[gpietersz]

As we are not computer geeks we set a budget and pay boffins Thats business

I agree with that. I make most of my living from people not being geeks therefore paying me.

We domt look for the cheapest option we look for the best option that does not draw our precious time ( and Im wasting time on here )

Time is money. Again, that partly why people pay me so I am not going to argue.

I am serious considering forcing myself away from here. its worse than FB for getting drawn into irrelevant discussions.

 

[JEREMY HAWKE]

Don't be like that I think you are a fantastic chap
I'm just giving you my account

 

[estwig]

I am serious considering forcing myself away from here. its worse than FB for getting drawn into irrelevant discussions.

Working is passe!

Can't do the fancy French 'e' thingy!

 

[AllUpHere]

Working is passe!

Can't do the fancy French 'e' thingy!

Here, use mine. Passé

 

[billybob99]

I am serious considering forcing myself away from here

Not happening.

 

[estwig]

Tar - You're a gent!

 

[ffox]

Lets be honest, this whole free open source office software thing gonna work best for the one-man band, sat at home in his office.

Yep, that's certainly one way.

But, you get lots more with M365. Teams is great for handling project work, both large and small. I even do my weekly groceries shopping list using a SP List, I can view it on my phone in the supermarket (Oops is that personal use? Will I have to declare that in my end of year accts?)

 

[ffox]

I am serious considering forcing myself away from here. its worse than FB for getting drawn into irrelevant discussions.

If IT solutions are your bag, what could be more relevant than a discussion on the merits or demerits of business system deployment?

UKBF allows you free feedback on what you do. And, I say again, that for a client any solution is on the table, what ends up being deployed depends on the business need.

LAN, Cloud, Open Source, or Vendor supplied are all possibilities and customer preferences must always be taken into consideration.

 

[gpietersz]

@JEREMY HAWKE thanks

@billybob99 looks like you are right, so far.

 

[AstEver]

As we are not computer geeks we set a budget and pay boffins Thats business

I find it a strong argument but on the other hand, many alternative software solutions do not require geekiness but only digital competency.

 

[fisicx]

Lets be honest, this whole free open source office software thing gonna work best for the one-man band, sat at home in his office.

That's me.

I get emails with requests. I email back a quote. They pay. I code and send them the files.

There are no documents.

My accountant looks after all the financial stuff.

We had a roofer round the other day. He uses quickbooks. It does everything he needs (on his phone).

My wife uses some complicated financial software to do her job. Everything gets sent to a server somewhere. They don't use any external applications other than outlook.

O365 has it uses. But that doesn't mean it's going to be right for everyone.

As an aside, when I worked for the MoD they has this ginormous SharePoint thing. Despite spending huge amounts of money the MS experts never got it to work properly. It was always as slow as a slow thing, documents could take forever to open and you spend more time waiting for autosave than you ever did writing anything.

And I've recently finished a project that needed to upload form data to a Fleet CRM. They gave me the API and the whole thing was sorted in an hour. The project also needed to upload the same data to MS CRM. A simple thing to do but only if you paid $$$ for their marketing suite. In the end I found a script on github that would do the job. But I then needed to get the field names. To get each one I had to follow a 17 click rabbit hole. Massively complicated that was almost impossible to set up and manage without paying MS. Took nearly 8 hours to do.

 

[gpietersz]

As an aside, when I worked for the MoD they has this ginormous SharePoint thing. Despite spending huge amounts of money the MS experts never got it to work properly.

The government (like a lot businesses, especially big ones) do not buy the best software for the job, they buy the software that is least likely to get the person choosing what to buy blamed if it goes wrong. It used to be "no one ever got fired for buying IBM"). Now its MS/Google/Amazon depending on the product in question.

 

[billybob99]

That's me.

I get emails with requests. I email back a quote. They pay. I code and send them the files.

There are no documents.

My accountant looks after all the financial stuff.

We had a roofer round the other day. He uses quickbooks. It does everything he needs (on his phone).

My wife uses some complicated financial software to do her job. Everything gets sent to a server somewhere. They don't use any external applications other than outlook.

O365 has it uses. But that doesn't mean it's going to be right for everyone.

As an aside, when I worked for the MoD they has this ginormous SharePoint thing. Despite spending huge amounts of money the MS experts never got it to work properly. It was always as slow as a slow thing, documents could take forever to open and you spend more time waiting for autosave than you ever did writing anything.

And I've recently finished a project that needed to upload form data to a Fleet CRM. They gave me the API and the whole thing was sorted in an hour. The project also needed to upload the same data to MS CRM. A simple thing to do but only if you paid $$$ for their marketing suite. In the end I found a script on github that would do the job. But I then needed to get the field names. To get each one I had to follow a 17 click rabbit hole. Massively complicated that was almost impossible to set up and manage without paying MS. Took nearly 8 hours to do.

I agree. The humble man at home shouldn't have to use MS stuff (or any paid stuff), there's plenty of Open Source stuff about.

On the flip side the humble man at home might need to collaborate with clients on documents and doesn't want to t!t about with Open Source office software, host it himself, mess around with Docker and containers all for the sake of a few quid.

Its each to their own. If £8 a month was really breaking the bank for people, they'll be using Open Source stuff already.

When running a business, for most its easier to focus on the things that make you money vs t!tting around with the tech and software.

 

[Clinton]

£8 a month

People keep going on about £8 per month as if that's the only consideration!

You're paying £8 a month for a piece of frigging spyware! MS, more than Google and Amazon and everyone else, try to keep you in a closed loop, force changes on you, control your machine, install back doors, take control of turning off DRM when it suits them...

Being the bog standard software, MS software - whether Windows or Office - is also the main target for scammers, malware, viruses. It is packed full of bugs for the bad guys to exploit. And for Microsoft to exploit!

MS is notorious for forcing upgrades that are not improvements in any way except as a power grab to give MS more control over your machine and your data. They tamper with your machine settings, phone home, make it enormously difficult to block their spying. If you take the trouble to disable some of their spying they will re-enable what you turned off when they next update your machine.

Microsoft secretly collects data from Office users, shares data with the NSA (and, possibly other security agencies in other countries), does lots of other dodgy stuff.

Office 365 is banned in German schools, and elsewhere, it is prone to security breaches, it's a piece of dangerous garbage for which you're paying £8 a month.

As business folk yes, we should be willing to pay well for any tool, including software, that saves us time. But as smart business folk we need to also assess risk and be prepared to pay more in time / expertise to go for a free product if the cost - in relation to risk - makes it a better option.

 

[billybob99]

People keep going on about £8 per month as if that's the only consideration!

For the non-technical humble man, it probably goes something like:

Does it do what I want.
Can I afford it.

End of story.

Can't argue with other points.

 

[Bob Morgan]

Back in 2007 I paid AutoDesk £1200.00 for AutoCAD and ran it on windows 7 for as long as I could, over ten years.

The need to upgrade to windows 10 costs me £440.00 a year for AuotCAD, to say it annoys me is a massive underdstatement, thats a hugh increase in cost over 10 years and for absolutely nothing!

Same for me too, and do not even mention Sketchup!

 

[gpietersz]

On the flip side the humble man at home might need to collaborate with clients on documents and doesn't want to t!t about with Open Source office software, host it himself, mess around with Docker and containers all for the sake of a few quid.

Its each to their own. If £8 a month was really breaking the bank for people, they'll be using Open Source stuff already.

The reason for using open source is not that its cheaper: its that it is more secure, more reliable, and you are not tied to a single vendor.

For one thing, I started preferring open source software when I was living in a country where all new PCs came loaded with pirated software, you could bet anything pirated for the cost of a CD, and the software companies were turning a blind eye to it to get market share.

Your £8/month cost is based on a one person business. Its a lot more when you have a 20 person business. You 8/month is 2k/year!

On the other hand the one person business can use open source for internal stuff and Google Drive or Dropbox or whatever for anything you need to collaborate on - or just email things around. I do whichever of those the clients prefers.

 

[Financial-Modeller]

...Its a lot more when you have a 20 person business. You 8/month is 2k/year!...

I mentioned earlier that in the context of other costs, standard office software is relatively insignificant.

That 20-person business could easily be spending c.£1m per year on loaded salaries, office accommodation, other ICT etc which makes the £2k on office software less of a decision about cost and more about choosing what best meets the requirments of the business.

As we have seen in this discussion, businesses have differing requirements and place value on different functionality (and non-functional aspects) of their office software.

 

[gpietersz]

I mentioned earlier that in the context of other costs, standard office software is relatively insignificant.

I entirely agree. My point is that people are wrong to argue for subscription software on cost grounds.

You also raise the point of other IT. If people assume that they can and should get all their software needs from one or two big suppliers they miss better options. Off the top of my head:

1. Other suppliers of similar non specialist SaaS.
   
2. SaaS industry vertical software - there are options out there for running everything from recruitment companies to stables.
3. Self hosted proprietary industry vertical software
4. Open source self-hosted industry vertical software
5. Customisable self-hosted proprietary software
6. Customisable open source software
7. Custom developed software
   
8. SaaS based on open source (which leaves your options open to move later).

It would be difficult to quantify, but I think its worth considering a lot of these alternatives as having option value. Would you agree people tend to intuitively underestimate option value where you can quantify it? Similarly, people underestimate the value of keeping options open and avoiding vendor lock-in.

 

[Financial-Modeller]

...Would you agree people tend to intuitively underestimate option value where you can quantify it? Similarly, people underestimate the value of keeping options open and avoiding vendor lock-in.

Yes.

Vendors in this space generally have better quality data on usage/consumption of the service that they are providing than the prospective new or renewing customer, and can negotiate from a more-informed position. The value of that break clause is usually worth much more to the buyer than the discount that they receive to agree to a longer term! Buyers don't always get it, and celebrate the discount instead!

 

[gpietersz]

@Financial-Modeller While I entirely agree about typical the value of a discount vs avoiding a long term obligation, I think that is just part of the problem.

An even bigger problem are barriers to moving data from one vendor or system to another: moving data, retraining staff, etc. There is (option) value in avoiding these barriers.