Small Businesses that are just starting out face a huge challenge when trying to find a competitive foothold. In the 20^th century business owners relied on “location” as their main competitive advantage, but what do we do in the 21^st century world of business where most businesses are just a “click away’ via the internet?

Technology…

Office automation through technology will drive your operating costs down if implemented in a balanced approach that combines smart, well-defined workflows with a flexible information management system. This can be done incrementally and during each improvement phase you will be rewarded with increased productivity without requiring a hefty up-front cost.

Some common applications used for lowering your back office costs include:

• Go paperless whenever possible by using an open source PDF application (you will be amazed at the savings this move can bring.) NitroPDF | Foxit Phantom PDF Suite
• Use the Alfresco Community – Document Management System to track and store your new paperless office
• Take advantage of easy to manage Email organizing applications such as Thunderbird
• If Microsoft Office is out of your price range, use Open Office Suite for word processing and spreadsheets.
• Use FileMaker Pro 10 for all of your information system needs and business applications

Each of the applications listed above can stand on their own merit, but together they compliment each other as components of an Office application suite that can rival even the best commercial products available.

During the next few weeks I will discuss how to integrate these products with FileMaker Pro in order to build a custom office workflow that will provide the flexibility needed to free up productivity time more suitable for pursuing new business, instead of office administration.

Each week one or several articles will be published for discussion with others in the FileMaker community. All of us at FMBiz.net are looking forward to sharing all things FileMaker with our visitors.

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