Low Cost, High Value Apps for Your Business

If you’re looking for ways to become more efficient and effective without a serious investment, consider some of the online applications and services that have surfaced in the last few years.  You’ll find many that are well-written, feature-packed, and, best of all, have minimal or no licensing cost to you.  You can practically run your entire company on these applications and services.  Here are a few to help you get started.

 

SplendidCRM (http://www.splendidcrm.com):  A powerful solution for managing your contacts, accounts, opportunities, and more.  If you’ve thought about stepping up to a full customer relationship management solution, Splendid does an excellent job.  Splendid also offers some low cost hosting options.  When researching a CRM tool, keep in mind that there are also several good no-cost competitors to Splendid, like SugarCRM. 

 

GnuCash (http://www.gnucash.org):  GnuCash is a personal and small-business financial accounting application.  It is based on professional accounting principles to ensure balanced books and accurate reports.

 

DotNetNuke (http://www.dotnetnuke.com):  If you’ve grown tired of maintaining your website or paying someone else to do it, get familiar with DotNetNuke.  It’s a content management system, which means that it becomes your website and replaces complex web editing tools with a simple interface for managing what your customers see. 

 

InkScape (http://www.inkscape.org):  This vector-based graphics editor mimics Adobe Illustrator and other popular vector-based tools.  If you’re creating web or ad graphics, this tool may be a good alternative.  InkScape uses the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.

 

GIMP (http://www.gimp.org):  Gimp is a photo editor comparable to Adobe PhotoShop.  With its customizable interface, you can enhance and digitally retouch photographs and other images.  Gimp is compatible with PC and Mac platforms and supports a wide range of image file types (JPEG, GIF, TIFF, etc).

 

Scribus (http://www.scribus.net):  Scribus is a professional page layout tool that supports professional desktop publishing features, such as CMYK color, separations, Spot Colors, ICC color management, and versatile PDF creation.

 

ScreenHunter (http://wisdom-soft.com/products/screenhunter_free.htm):  ScreenHunter facilitates screen shots, which you can save to a folder or use on your clipboard to copy and paste into documents.   Use your ScreenHunter screen shots with GIMP to further edit your images.

 

7-ZIP (http://www.7-zip.org):  7-Zip is a no-cost file compression tool that  equates to WinZip.  It easily creates self-extracting zip files, which can be split into several smaller, manageable files if you choose.

 

Windows Sky-Drive (http://skydrive.live.com):  Sky-Drive provides 25 GB of free online storage.  Use it as an off-site back up for important files or for sharing large files with customers and colleagues.

 

OpenOffice (http://www.openoffice.org):  If you’d like to avoid the cost of Microsoft Office, OpenOffice has 95% of the features that you’ll need in an office suite including word processor, spreadsheets, and database.  While it does many great things at the right price, the pivot table feature in OpenOffice is far less advanced than Excel’s and will not adequately manipulate EDA’s UCC-1 filing data. 

 

Microsoft Web Developer and SQL Server Express (http://www.microsoft.com/express/Web/):  This is an amazing web development tool.  At the least, it’s a powerful HTML editor; at the best, it’s your total web development solution.  It does have a substantial learning curve if you’ve never coded in C# or Visual Basic, but if you’re looking to learn web development, this is the place to begin thanks to the endless tutorials and support forums at your disposal.  Plus, SQL Server Express, a slightly limited version of Microsoft’s top-end database, is included. 

 

FoxIt Reader (http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/reader)Foxlt may be a welcome change from Adobe Acrobat Reader for viewing PDF documents, especially if the load speed for your Adobe is slow. You may also like FoxIt’s organization, with its easy-to-find task icons.

 

CutePDF (http://www.cutepdf.com):  If you can print it, you can convert it into a PDF file with CutePDF.  CutePDF installs a print driver so that anytime you print, you can select PDF as the output and save your file.

 

FileZilla (http://www.filezilla-project.org):  This FTP tool makes uploading and downloading files to an FTP site happen in a snap.  FileZilla is a cross-platform tool with an intuitive interface.

 

Quantum GIS (http://www.qgis.org):  EDA’s Catapult plots your buyers on a map by fleet size and provides additional UCC information for the buyer.  However, if you’d like to do territory mapping, Quantum may be a good solution.  You can import your U.S. zip code and county definitions into Quantum and view your individual territories.  There  is no geocoding functionality in Quantum, so you would need an advanced geography application like Google Earth to plot individual buyer locations.  You can get the free U.S. zip code and county shape files for Quantum from the U.S. Census web site here:  http://www.census.gov/geo/www/cob/bdy_files.html.

 

KeePass Password Safe (http://keepass.info/):  KeePass stores all your usernames and passwords in a virtual safe, which you can unlock with a master password.  It’s a great alternative to keeping network, VPN, bank account and other passwords written on vulnerable sticky notes stuffed into your desk drawer.  The password database is encrypted using the best and most secure encryption algorithms currently known.

 

When researching these applications, be sure to weigh the pros and cons.  Consider the total cost of ownership, since downtime, lack of direct support, and learning curves could alter the opportunity of free licensing.

 

David Austin is the Machine Tool Product Manager for EDA
daustin@edadata.com | 704-845-2971

 

 

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