Matt: Business Technology & Communications Consultant
One of the services that I offer to companies is to show them how they can both accommodate a greater slice of the market and save money doing so.Take for example the area of sharing documents. Most companies that I encounter fall into two groups - those blindly trying to use whatever the IT salesman gave them and those with a market needs awareness.
The vast majority fall into the first group. Most are using Microsoft Windows on the IBM compatible PC and Microsoft Office with Microsoft Word. Microsoft Office 2007 Professional ships at around £320 (including VAT) per seat (basically per computer). If you have ten PCs that is going to cost you £3,200 on top of the cost of the PCs and the 10 Windows licenses.
What you get for your money is software that is the same on each of your PCs and that can read and write files that a lot of other companies and clients can also read and write. This is a De Facto standard and it is more than likely costing you time, money and new business.
The reason for the hidden cost is a mater of bandwidth. You can easily address all the other Microsoft Word users because you have this expensive software in common. However this is at the expense of being able to communicate effectively with a growing slice of the market.
Those people that Use Apple, Linux, BSD or something esoteric may not be able to communicate so efficiently with you.
The reason for this is software patents and shared standards. You have access to the former but not always the later.
Microsoft are very proud of their file formats and software. They should be they spent a lot of money developing them. The problem is that they would like not to share the right to use the format with others.
Also for reasons that no one fully understands they do not wish to include that many outside formats into their software. So while users of more universally agreed standards are for the main part able to deal with your files with a little extra effort you are unable to read theirs.
At first this seems like a problem that belongs to them rather than you.
However not being compatible with clients and partners is expensive and short sighted. It sends a weak message about your understanding of the technology and your willingness to communicate effectively.
So while innovations written down using the software that the largest group within the market have chosen can be shared inside and outside of that group innovations outside of the group are not easily passed inside of it.
So as well as making things difficult for one or two potential clients you miss out on what the entire market is doing.
It's not just Microsoft products that are an issue - they are simple an example of the underlying issues you face.
Take for example PDFs. Creating a good PDF with active hyperlinks requires additional software that you may well have to pay for. That's more hard disk space, more licenses to track and more installations to have the IT crew carry out for you. Then it's one more software package to train all your staff to use.
There is no denying that PDF is very useful. It is not gong to be edited and almost everyone can read it (or get a free reader from Adobe). It is perfect for things like user manuals, ebooks and final drafts to be sent to the printers.
A big secret that I will share with you today is one that I also share with clients.
You can access this increased bandwidth of companies and clients with whom you can communicate and save money doing so!
The product that I will always recommend to any SME is called Open Office. Open Office does everything that Microsoft Office does, it can be installed on the same PC as Microsoft Office and it is just as easy to use. However it can also read more file formats including the Open Document Specifications, it is free to use if your download it from OpenOffice.org yourself and it can export to PDF without additional software.
When an SME is specifying for new computer equipment and they call me in to oversee this I can offer them options that will save a lot of money at the offset while actually giving them more power to do what they do.
Open Office, to continue with our example, is able to "Save As" almost all Microsoft Word formats and is able to open them without effort. So you can continue to use any older files without needing to convert or do anything else. You are also free from costly upgrades every few years.
Of course there is a lot more to effective communication with clients than just being able to accommodate their choice of file format. That's why I am available as a consultant in person within the Thanet and surrounding parts of Kent as well as by Internet anywhere in the world.