What is the best back-office software for SMBs?

Hi Christina - you're speaking my language. I own and run four or so small businesses (I lose count sometimes) spanning manufacturing to property to consulting to wholesale.

The interesting thing for me is that one of those businesses (the manufacturing one) is 20 years old and hence has a bunch of legacy on-premise systems. It's a company that manufactures backpacks and outdoor clothing and sells direct all around the world as well as through retail outlets. Those legacy systems are a major barrier for us - as a simple example, our e-commerce solution is disconnected from our accounting solution which has no relationship with our manufacturing solution and so on - the double up and inefficiencies caused by this are amazing.

Another one of my businesses is a consulting organization. It has the benefit of being formed post the advent of the cloud and hence enjoys the amazing benefits that having connected applications, anywhere access, and instant scalability can bring. So in terms of what rocks my world....

1) Backup and sync - the flavor doesn't matter (FWIW I use both DropBox and Syncplicity). But the ability to know that my documents and files are available on my 4 or so laptops, my 2 tablets and my mobile phone... well that's super valuable. The ability to invite people to collaborate on a file, or to grant third party access to a file while on the road is super

2) Documents - first a big admission. I still use MS office for some things (but not many). However for simple document creation, editing and collaboration, Google docs is cheap, reliable and simple

3) Travel apps - I do a lot of travel - a little application like TripIt keep central record of all of my flights, hotel bookings etc. It notifies me (over the cloud of course) if flights are delayed and even offers up suggestions of alternative modes of transport - all for a few dollars a month

4) Scheduling - I live in New Zealand, travel to Australia a dozen times a year or so, collaborate mainly with US colleagues and run a Pacific time zone. I'm generally working across at least three timezones and trying to sort my schedule into an extensive travel calendar. I use Tungle.me to allow people to schedule time for interviews, briefings or time with the kids (that last one was a joke). It's perhaps a little buggy but still very useful

5) Skype - now so pervasive that no one really thinks of it as a cloud solution, Skype is perhaps the quintessentially cloud offering. I'd say that around 80% of my voice communications happen through Skype (or sometimes the Google equivalent, Google talk). It saves me huge amounts of money on toll calls, and integrated IM and desktop sharing make for a great platform for product briefings.

6) Accounting – call me a geek, but the ability to check my bank account and the state of my accounts receivable while sitting in a Felucca travelling down the Nile is seriously useful. I work remotely and generally take at least a month off in summer to go travelling with the family. The great thing about the cloud is that while travelling I can still be working. I run my businesses primarily on top of Xero, an accounting application from my own home country of New Zealand

7) The bits and pieces – so many little tools that I use from time to time – Evernote as a hyper-accessible notebook. Zendesk as a helpdesk offering for a couple of businesses I’m involved with. Zoho for email, calendaring and documents. Box.net for document sharing. SlideRocket and Prezi for presentations… the list goes on and on

Cloud is amazing. Yes I get paid money to say the cloud is amazing, but the key for me is that there’s no way I’d be able to do what I do without the cloud – it truly enables my world!

Great comments from the others, but we need to add offsite backup! Hard drives die, files get deleted, and every possible screwup imaginable conspires to mistakenly delete data.

The best offsite backup programs work over the Internet, charge a flat fee for unlimited data, and make file restore easy. After trying most of the major offsite backup products, I have settled on CrashPlan, (http://crashplan.com), which has the features I just described.

In the past, I tried Mozy, Carbonite, and BackBlaze, which are all good products, but lack in one of these areas (at least in my experience).

Before making any decisions on back office software I think there are several questions that need to be asked. As mentioned by Michael Dortch, talk with your CPA or accountant about financial software that meets legal requirements and can provide the needed information appropriately. QuickBooks and Peachtree both meet those requirements and business banking accounts can often be directly downloaded into those systems. In addition, you want to know if your choice will grow with your business and can later be integrated into larger financial systems as you grow and your needs increase. The choice needs to be made with long term planning in place for growth. You do not want to be stuck in the position of staying with an inadequate system for your needs simply because the cost of manually having to reenter data into a new system is cost and time prohibitive.

In evaluating any open source or SaaS provider you need to know their track record and if they have been around long enough that you feel confident they are here to stay. Check with companies you do business with to see their experience with conversion of a specific file types. Some are far more compatible than others.

Whether dealing with financial or proprietary information, security is a major issue that has to be considered. Just because that little lock icon appears does not mean that your information is secure within the systems of the provider. Remember Epsilon claimed it was secure but it was far from secure. Sony has been hacked 3 times in recent months and this last time the hackers got far more information and Citibank was recently hacked. No system is absolutely secure from hackers but you need to know what steps are taken to secure your information internally by the provider. If they can't or won't tell you, run don't walk away from that provider.

Hi, Christina!
We are so glad to have found this discussion, because it’s one we are constantly having. We're familiar with much of Krishnan's top 10 list. With the exception of 3, 6 and 9, we have tried them all. As far as CRM, accounting and VOIP go, we would also say our choices are salesforce.com, Quickbooks Online (caveat: surprisingly, 2 out of 2 outside tax accountants we have used don't like the 'dumbed-down' workings of QBO) and Skype (although, who knows what this service will be like once the MS acquisition is completed).

But despite the flexibility and availability of the cloud, we've struggled with existing cloud organization solutions like Dropbox, Sugarsync, Evernote, box.net or GoogleDocs. We’ve been frustrated with the proliferation of these single-feature solutions because it leaves our business data and management completely fragmented. (Michael Allen makes the very good point that multiple applications are a real headache.) Why store in one place and share in another?

So, over at [tilde] we've started a discussion about what a comprehensive organization and storage solution would look like. What do you guys think? What would you like to see in your ideal backoffice solution? We've worked on combining on organization, collaboration and security, but what would you try?

If I were starting a SMB from "scratch", I would look for simple, turn-key SaaS solutions for the basic business processes applicable to my particular business model. That said, complete suites are offered by a number of providers focused on this market: ZOHO, Netsuite and 37Signals being well known (and others like Winweb) for offering a wide array of business solutions on a subscription basis. This approach allows the SMB to focus on building the business, not building the back office. And it minimizes my capital outlay requirements in terms of IT infrastructure.

As an alternative, one could look to a roll your own strategy, picking best of breed from Google Apps, Microsoft, salesforce.com, any of the aforementioned companies, et al. While all are excellent solutions, building and integrating mixed solutions requires more time and effort, thus my leaning towards a one-stop-shopping approach for SMBs.

One other category of importance is the integration of social networking/media into the SMB model - it's an imperative in today's digital age. For those areas I would suggest companies like Jive Software and Socialtext. These companies add the context of social interaction and collaboration into the mix, which is very important for brand and community building, awareness and management.

Krishnan and Ben managed to cover the apps that I use or recommend the most.

I love both DropBox and Box.net, although I use the former more for seamless synchronized storage.

Evernote serves both a bookmarking and document management function.

CrashPlan is pretty good at handling remote backups, as is BackupMyInfo!

While I use both Skype and Google Voice, Skype is for more than phone calls, and I use Google Voice for both inbound and outbound calls.

For systems monitoring and inventory, for those SMB systems that are managing their own desktops and possibly a few office servers, I would recommend SpiceWorks, which is free, but rich in its feature set.

I'd also recommend SysAid for helpdesk & incident management functions.

This is such a timely and relevant question! I use many of the tools already listed here -- great compilation. And I have a few more:

For CRM, two great tools are BatchBook (http://batchblue.com/) and ContactMe (http://www.contactme.com/). The features of each are very specific to the needs of small business owners, especially those who want quick and easy access to contacts and data from anywhere. BatchBook also has a great social component that pulls in social data on your contacts for a unified at-a-glance review.

One of my project management favorites, especially for teams, is Intervals (http://www.myintervals.com/). It offers in-depth project management, task tracking, time tracking, and even invoicing capabilities. It's a terrific tool for assigning work and keeping track of progress.

A newcomer to the cloud scene is Office 365 (http://www.office365.com/). This app has the power to break down the Windows vs Mac platform challenge and give small businesses and teams access to the same data through the same trusted Office tools, from any machine, anywhere.

Small businesses are making social media marketing an integral part of their business activities, so I would be remiss if I didn't mention HootSuite (http://hootsuite.com) as a management tool. HootSuite gives SMBs the ability to track social activity, monitor their brand, incorporate multiple (team) users, schedule updates, and react and interact immediately. A must-have for socially-savvy small business owners.

I started my first company about 12 years ago. I always try to find software that is inexpensive but works. And just because a software (cloud based or otherwise) is popular, don't think that it's always the best out there.

Here are some of my findings:

1. Salesforce is too big and too complicated for most SMB's. I have spoken with other CEO's and they agree. It is not an easy CRM to learn. And you have to go with apps written for SFC in order to get extra features that come with others like: Zoho.com CRM. Plus, SFC is expensive if you add more than one user. With ZOHO I can easily add a 'Web to form' on our site and leads come directly into Zoho. Everything is user friendly in Zoho. I really like many of their products like: Zohodocs, Zoho Wiki(we use this for meeting agendas), and Zoho Calendar (syncs with Outlook). I only wish there was a good email marketing software that worked with Zoho. Still waiting on that. Otherwise I am happy.

2. No one has mentioned a cloud based PBX. Sure Skype and Google Voice are nice for one on one conversations but what if you wanted a professional phone system with features like: an auto attendant, dial by name directory, music on hold, intelligent call queues, call reporting, call recording, voicemail to text, voicemail to email, unlimited long distance charges, toll free numbers, call transferring etc. etc. If you want to sound like a Fortune 500 company, you can do that now without paying a lot of money thanks to the cloud. I would suggest: www.press8.com. (Small plug)

3. As far as document sharing: GoogleDocs or Zoho.com Docs for their ease of use and price.

4. I use a social media product called: TweetAdder. Not super easy to learn, but they have videos tutorials and it only takes a couple of hours to learn. It automates everything! I have tried them all believe me. With TweetAdder.com your blogs will be automatically tweeted to FB, LI, Twitter with different titles in throughout the day. New followers are added and followings accepted without any intervention by you. It even drops ones you are following if they don't follow you so that your percentage of followers isn't below the number you are following (which does matter to the search engines). I love this product!

5. Quickbooks Online is my favorite for accounting although I really love using mint.com. Mint.com will text me information, and I can get a quick and easy view of all my bank accounts, transactions and budgets. Plus it's free.

6. I prefer Webex.com over Gotomeeting for its ease of use.

7. Quotegine.com is a great software for automating quotes and their customer support is excellent PLUS the it's not that expensive and quotes can be signed electronically which is great.

8. www.smilebox.com is a great way to easily and inexpensively send very nice electronic Christmas cards etc. to customers/family.

9. I like www.madmimi.com for email marketing. The price is pretty good and it's easy to whip out a newsletter and send it. Too bad it doesn't sync with Zoho. Hopefully one day soon....

10. Finally we use www.joomla.org for our websites. It takes a little while to learn but there are so many templates/plug ins that it is a breeze to do just about anything once you learn it including SEO.

Frequently in my business, I run into a need that requires a specialized but highly affordable solution that others may need as well.

Having had clients in both the healthcare and financial services industries, e-mail encryption that met HIPAA and banking security standards became essential. ZixMail (Zixcorp.com) has perfect solutions for any size of business. Whether you need a single e-mail account or an enterprise wide solution, Zixmail can meet your needs. It is simple to use and the best part is that the recipient is not required to have the program to read the e-mail unlike so many other solutions. Many major corporations use their enterprise solutions but a single user license is also available.

During all types of research, I have often run into pdf files that were originally tables or spreadsheets. While the information is useful, I needed to be able to re-sort or filter the information. I found an extremely reasonable software program that turn a pdf into a perfect spreadsheet that is compatible with all Excel capabilities. The program is PDF2XL (Cogniview.com). One time it converted a 300 page pdf into a perfect Excel spreadsheet in less than a minute. It can convert a table within a text pdf as well. You select what you want to covert being able to adjust rows and columns, split or merge columns and other specifications before conversion to get exactly the results you want. Their customer service is spectacular and they have both individual and enterprise wide solutions.

Quickbooks is about universally detested by CPA CFOs, because they cannot lock last yrs numbers to stop back adjustments. Fledgling companies often need to report numbers to the SEC or someone. Imagine your officers signed off and certified last yr figures, then someone adjusts (officer trust broken, or worse).

So if you're SMB is expecting to grow very rapidly try to select systems by recommendation from others in similar size and industry circumstances. Biotech, medical device, high tech electronics, online stores (all different). At least choose cloud systems with secure but easy data portability.

Some of these cloud companies will merge or fold (and your data is where).

"SMB" is a very broad category so the answer to this question depends on how you define SMB.

If you are more focused on the "S" (Small) in that acronym, then you likely want to look systems like QuickBooks, QuickBooks Online, Zoho, etc and you may also be more likely to be willing to string together a bunch of different applications rather than settling on one integrated system (a Suite) because your transaction volume will be lower and your processes less sophisticated.

Once you start approaching annual revenue of $5 million and beyond, your system requirements become more sophisticated and many businesses start outgrowing their entry-level bookkeeping systems like QuickBooks. Running a business with multiple disconnected siloed systems (accounting, inventory/fulfillment, CRM, Ecommerce, etc) starts becoming a drag on employee productivity and IT. At that point, more powerful Cloud suite systems like NetSuite tend to be the best fit for those high-growth or mid-sized companies, to help get better visibility across the company, automate operations and streamline processes, scale for growth more efficiently, and expand internationally.

Outright.com has been really useful - simple accounting that works fairly well for my (admittedly basic) needs. Also, I've been using Freshbooks for invoicing, which is very convenient. Both services are essentially free, so that also works for me as a small business. My two cents! Cheers & good luck with the story...!

A great question, and one that should be answered with another: how best to decide? Back in the 1970s and 1980s, too many SMB decision makers ran out and bought PCs and financial software into which they eagerly entered all of their business information. They gleefully printed out reams of reports and proudly took them to their accountants, only to be told that the reports didn't pass legal muster and were essentially worthless.

The lesson: choose your back-office solution based on the specific requirements of your business and your industry. And if you have a good working relationship with a business technology supplier, involve them as well. Access the free trials of the most promising candidates, and evaluate them in concert with those who provide your accounting and technology services today. And of course, learn from the experiences of other users such as Mr. Freed, personally and via online communities such as Focus.com.

Finally, don't ignore cloud-based services such as those being used by Mr. Freed and his business so effectively. Once you evaluate your business constraints, goals and requirements, you may find that the best back-office software for your business is software running elsewhere!

Many small businesses try and manage themselves through multiple applications (because this is something most enterprises must do). They start with CRM, pick up project management software, then billing, the list goes on. The problem in the end is that SMBs are too small to be using so many apps that don't integrate; their departments are small and interconnected, and at times they aren't even separate. That's why SMBs do much better with integrated software, it allows them to manage all operations through one piece of software, while gaining from the added benefits of integration and workflow automation.

It works even better when the software is web based (usually SaaS) as they can access and change business information from anywhere. WORKetc is a good example of applications like this, as it integrates CRM, project management, billing, support, and timesheet management into one system - covering the software needs of many small businesses in one web based SaaS. With WORKetc many tasks can be automated, items can be grouped, and the system integrates with google apps, evernote, and has a mobile app soon to be released. Apps like this are gaining steam because businesses that use 2-4 different apps to manage operations are finding it costly and inefficient, those that can handle all operations through one SaaS are getting a leg up.

Great information! I have been looking for a similar program myself. Thanks!

if you are a small biz with limited budget and want something right out of the box, you can build most of you backoffice with Zoho ( http://www.getapp.com/search/results/Search.query:zoho) . You can pick a few of their popular services to build a very powerfull backoffice for very little cost. The basic online support offered is actually very good

Otherwise you can look at integrated solution such as WORKetc or BrightPearl. We actually published recent detailed reviews of those 2 solutions in our evaluation center http://www.getapp.com/evaluation-center/index/apps-evaluation

Quick list: Salesforce.com (CRM), GnuCash (Accounting), Hostmonster (web and email), OpenOffice (client office suite), ThunderBird (email client)

CRM: Salesforce.com. I have tried others like NetSuite and SugarCRM (and a third I can't remember) and Salesforce is the easiest for a small biz to figure out. More important, with the small businesses I work with, it has been the one that most users have a tendency to use. The cost can be a bummer but, for SMB, everybody you think has to be a user doesn't really need to be a user. I setup a front end PHP site that fed the sales data to one SalesForce.com user who was responsible for the sales tracking and support. Given the communications within an SMB (depending a size) it works great (so they got one license instead of 10)

Finances: GnuCash. It is free and very easy to use. I came across it a few months ago and, after many years of using Quicken/Quickbooks, it was very easy to switch because it is based on professional accounting principles.

email: Not Exchange, hosted or otherwise. SMB's typically do not have the need for all the overhead that goes along with it. Hostmoster will provide all the needed email functionality with a customized domain

Client Office Suite: OpenOffice. Free, works great (lacks some sex and sizzle of MS Office)

eMial Client: ThunderBird. Plenty of add-ons (much more customizable than Outlook). Works great.

I am a technology consultant in Nashville that works with SMBs and startups providing infrastructures they can run on with costing a ton of cash.

Vague questions always get useless answers. How are you defining SMB: Small and Medium size Businesses? The EU Wikipedia def: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_and_medium_enterprises ? Or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_business "Of the 5,369,068 employer firms in 1995, 78.8 percent had fewer than 10 employees, and 99.7 percent had fewer than 500 employees". Or Census or SBA or IRS definitions? They categorize by number of employees and by value of yearly receipts. Or Microsoft or Oracle definitions? They always assume "information workers"; what is an "information workers"?

Then think of the type of business you are pigeonholing ("attempt to classify disparate entities into a small number of categories .... implying that the classification scheme referred to inadequately reflects the entities being sorted, or that it is based on stereotypes"). Does a branch office merit consideration as an SMB, even though some/much of its compute structure is Enterprise attached? Does a (independently owned) franchise merit consideration as an SMB, even though some/much of its compute structure is Enterprise attached?

We've done small and enterprise Banks, Real Estate offices (Brokerages), Legal offices, Mining companies, Manufacturers, Casinos, Restaurants, Retailers, Car Dealers, Medical offices, et al. These have different business models as well as a 1000:1 ratio of computing devices per employee. And some come with a legacy back end to be compatible with.

We range through Washington and British Columbia. Internet connectivity ranges from Cable (always has "random" outages) to Microwave to Wireless (2G,3G,802.16) to Dial-up. There are still parts of the US West that are pulse dial with 2400 baud data limit. Then think of the times you were inside a "coverage area" and your call was dropped. (An Enterprise with 2+ Internet Backbone connections won't have this problem.)

I love the Cloud but it is not for anything resembling mission critical; the cloud providers themselves refuse to indemnify their operations to the businesses they serve ("put your money where your mouth is"). Just as the current Depression mimics 1840s and 1920s depressions, Cloud providers will hit the next Internet bubble: when those online storage businesses crashed the Bankruptcy courts ruled the third party data (your data) they held could be sold to pay back creditors.

Like $5m threshold for SMB to SME. During the great debate between Marc Benioff vs. Hasso Plattner on the future of enterprise software. Hasso made the case for customization of deep business processes functionality as next threshold requiring an non multi-tenant platform, if you had to pin this to annual revenue what threshold would you say?

Thanks to everyone for your thoughtful and useful answers. Some of you are right, my original question was too broad. For my purposes, I'm not really interested in CRM or customer-facing software so I've taken everyone's input, weeded out CRM and come up with a list of good back office software for different functions (HR, inventory, accounting, etc.). That said, there are clearly ERP software solutions that are more appropriate for certain verticals (software best for retailers or manufacturers as examples). If any of you have input that you would like to share on industry-specific back-office or ERP software, I would appreciate it. Otherwise, thank you again for your time and attention to this question.

My quicklist comes from working with hundreds of SMB's. These recommendations will put you in the cloud:

Accounting: Basic is QuickBooks, however Intacct is also simple and will grow with you.

Payroll and HR: Definitely consider outsourcing payroll processing. Look at full service payroll processors with a single system for payroll, hris and time keeping like APS http://www.apspayroll.com. The larger companies such as Paychex or ADP are full service but don't have the single system offering. I noticed that the other posts did not mention payroll processing. This is a complex task with risk of significant penalties if done incorrectly or late.

Also keep the HR and time keeping aspects of the back office in mind. Bringing it all into one system will streamline things and reduce data errors.

Hope this helps
Chris

My quicklist comes from working with hundreds of SMB's:

Google Apps for your word processing and email
CRM: Salesforce.com is ok but expensive. Try other options such as Solve360

Accounting: Basic is QuickBooks but Intacct is also simple but will grow with you.

Payroll and HRIS: Definitely outsource your payroll processing. Look at full service payroll processors with a single system for payroll, hris and time keeping like APS http://www.apspayroll.com

Hope this helps
Christian

I would highly recommend FinancialForce Accounting (see www.financialforce.com) .. built on the Force.com platform, it is totally integrated to Salesforce.com and has added huge value to my company, White Springs, by not only providing quality financial functionality but also contributing to a single view of the customer from sales through implementation to accounting. The marriage of CRM and the finance application via a SaaS model is a must for any SMB looking to cost effectively streamline and manage their business.

Hi! All, Whoa.. am so glad i came across this forum. Preparing for an Experience on Business productivity, Business Continuity and High Availability for SMBs. Other colleagues would be addressing Network, Security and Identity Management, Business Intelligence and Document Mgt.

I would recommend virtual workstyles for SMBs, using the Citrix VDI-in-a-box and provision desktops for workers and have them use the BYOD policy that way SMBs would save on hardware. Also have a central management point to manager servers, documents, data, security, profiles etc.

This way when appps are purchased they would just be deployed on the golden image and made available to the users and acceess would be based on need and relevance to the users Job deliverables.