How Small Businesses Can Save Money: Software

When most people think of technology costs, they generally think first of the hardware, such as computers, printers, and the like. But the truth is that the greater part of your computing costs are likely to be for the software that runs on your systems, rather than the systems themselves. It is not unusual for a £500 computer to have well over £1,000 running on it, even if all the software is “off the rack” rather than proprietary. The smart business owner will take many elements into consideration when selecting software, realizing that initial purchase price might not be the most predominant factor in determining its ultimate cost. A Payday Loan could provide the necessary funds to purchase the software you require when your monthly budget doesn't stretch to cover additional purchases.
Proprietary programs, commercial software, shareware, freeware, or open-source?
Obviously, there isn’t sufficient space in a short article to address all the factors – much less, all the available programs – upon which you’ll ultimately have to decide. However, there are a few factors that can make your decision easier, as represented in the following questions.
Are you already running proprietary or customized commercial software, such as accounting, materials control, or payroll systems? If so, you’ll likely want to continue with it, so long as the license structure isn’t too constricting or costly. Most small businesses opt for commercial software applications, but even these can be pretty expensive, and there may be restrictions as to how the software is to be used, and how many machines it can be installed on without additional licensing requirements. There are, of course, a number of relatively inexpensive commercial programs that may be readily applicable to your operation. Particularly if your business is a new start-up, you might want to stick with the more popular commercial programs, so as to avoid having to go through a painful emigration to unfamiliar software in the future.
Office suites
Shareware or freeware programs abound in the marketplace, and many users have found them to be a good alternative to more expensive commercial offerings. Just to give one example, Microsoft’s Office Suite© is the de-facto standard for basic business applications. While it is wildly popular and familiar to most workers, a single license of the suite can cost hundreds of dollars, and if you’re looking to maintain compatibility on a number of computers, the cost can skyrocket rather quickly. There are, however, open-source office suites available that are fully compatible with Microsoft’s offerings, offer a similar user experience, and are available for download at no cost. The two most popular examples are the Apache OpenOffice suite (http://www.openoffice.org/) and LibreOffice (http://www.libreoffice.org/). Both suites are capable of opening, editing, creating, and saving to the standard Microsoft formats, and are continually evaluated, improved upon, and updated by teams of developers who are committed to providing a product that is as good as or better than available commercial offerings.
Antivirus, anti-malware, and security software
Given the increasing efforts of hackers, as well as the prevalence of always-connected networks, system security is a factor that no business or individual can afford to ignore. And while there are a number of good commercially-available products with which to protect your computers and – if necessary – rid them of malicious code, there are also a number of free or low-cost products that are arguably as good as or better than the most popular commercial programs. A couple of examples are AVG Free Antivirus© and MalwareBytes©, both of which do a commendable job of protecting and cleaning your computers, often with a less significant performance hit than their commercial counterparts.
System utilities
The system utilities that come packaged in Microsoft Windows© are adequate, but lack the power and/or versatility that most IT personnel recommend. Once again, there are a number of third-party utilities that offer additional capabilities, and are either low-cost or free of charge. A few of note are Glary Utilities©, Eusing Free Registry Cleaner©, and Iobit’s Smart Defrag©. The only caveat is that since these utilities have greater capabilities than the more generic offerings included in Windows, they also have somewhat greater potential to get the less computer-savvy user into trouble. That said, by leaving all settings at the developers’ defaults, you’ll be pretty safe using them, and will benefit from a more responsive and secure system.