Small Business App requirements

[SmallBizOrg]

Hello

We are about to beta launch our application designed to help small businesses manage their operations, marketing, finance, hr, etc etc.

In order to further improve on current functionalities we are seeking input from the small business community as to what features may be of interest i.e what are some of your pain points related to managing and growing your business that we should look to find solutions to.

Thank you and hope to receive as much input as possible.

Smallbizorg team

[Harold Mansfield]

This is a really general question. "marketing, hr, finance, etc, etc.." has thousands of individual functions, and possibilities dependent on the industry and company.

Can you narrow in on what you're trying to do? Are there specific tasks or problems that your app is supposed to solve?
I'm sure it's not an all on one, solve every problem app. Or is it?

[SmallBizOrg]

Hey Harold

Thanks for the question.

In fact it is intended to become an all on one.

In version 1.0 we'll provide all of the below:

General productivity/utility tools
-emails: up to 5 accounts per user
-voip phone system
--can make and receive calls from the computer - good if one uses re,mote contractors/employees
--can buy and use "1-800" numbers
--can create create a cloud PBX (forward calls, play messages, interact with caller (press 1 for so and so, press 2 for that other thing)
-to dos by function (marketing, operations, HR etc)
-central scheduler/calendar
-central file management system, like windows explorer but on the cloud

Finance:
-full bookkeeping module for small businesses (online) with invoicing and payment capabilities.
-bookkeepers/accountants will have remote access to clients' data.
-various ways to upload receipts.
-taxes management by region
-reporting, overdue payments, etc

Marketing/Sales:
-Products/Services set up and history.
-Orders (and quotations) set-up and management with invoicing capabilities and further flowing into bookkeeping system automatically
-Clients/Prospects management with activity history (orders, invoices, emails, notes, to dos) - a CRM, essentially
-Lists management (prospects list that is)
-Forms management (forms can be used for surveys like surveymonkey, to get additional info on orders or to enter answers to specific questions in cold calls campaigns)
-Marketing campaigns management (email marketing, newsletters management, cold calls, voicemail campaigns)

Operations Management
-Project management - with tasks, notes, messages
-Central scheduling
-Ticket management as well with notes, to dos and messages
-vendors management with activity history
-purchase orders management with purchase products management
-asset management (scheduling, maintenance of vehicles, rooms etc)

HR management
-set-up different types of resources (employees, contractors), with history of orders or projects each may have been involved in
-time sheets management and payments - flowing also back into the accounting system
-payroll deductions

More to come:
-functionalities like business plans, social media management,

Right now this is a general collection of tools with general workflows between the different functions but we are always looking to add and improve on those so we'd like to hear what are some specific challenges small business owners and entrepreneurs have, especially now that we are still in building mode.

Thanks again
smallbizorg

[Harold Mansfield]

And this is an app? Or is this a website that compiles resources and features solutions?
Because if small business is your market, everything you just named can be done with existing software, and apps, much of it pretty cheap, and there are quite a few open source solutions too.

I guess I'm confused. Are you building an app, or are you trying to compile every possible thing that a small business would need?

[SmallBizOrg]

We call it application (I used "app" in the title as shortcut for application), saas, but yes, all the functionalities are available online through a website. What would you call desk.com a website or an application? Think of ours the same way only with more functionalities than just customer service. At the top you have Finance menu option that will take you to the Finance module, Marketing menu that will take you to the marketing module, so on so forth. There will be a mobile version available too, now it is just responsive.

All functionalities are developed by us (actually we use a couple third party services in the backend for phone and bulk email but run everything through our code and database and developed the front end views to manage those functionalities too). Everything is available under one sign-on and the information flows between functionalities as needed. So users will always face us only, no need to open other accounts (even for the third party services that we use), pay us only and have everything working together.

Indeed, for most functionalities there are other websites/applications out there with similar specific functionalities. We are providing a one-stop-shop solution though for a very affordable monthly fee. This is not necessarily a proposition for IT people who can build anything they need themselves (at what cost/time/effort, though?) but mainly for everybody else.

Hope this clarifies a bit where we are coming from?

But the reason why I started this thread was to see what issues other small business owners have perhaps we can create workflows and modules to solve problems that we have not thought about yet, or even just to confirm that the application would indeed help solve actual issues for some people. Any thoughts and points of view are welcome.

[Harold Mansfield]

As you know every business is different, but when you say something like Desk it starts to make sense.

You can look around the forum, specifically in the Starting, Managing, and Accounting sections and see that many people ask the same questions over and over.
Most have to do with how to structure, tax info, templates for things like business plans, agreements, contracts, partnerships and so on.

As for day to day operations I find that most people have trouble organizing accounts, workflow, billing, and so on.
I had to learn all of these things myself through trial and error, trying various solutions, scripts and apps till I found a set of tools that worked best for me.

I think one of the areas for opportunity is security. Most people don't have even a basic sense of securing their own...well anything. They don't back up their computers, don't know how thier websites work and couldn't recover them in the event of a loss. Don't really understand email. The differences between $3 hosting and a dedicated server. In my experience, it's really, really bad. The average small business is frighteningly unsecured and unprepared for even the slightest interruption of anything at all.

Maybe that's not an area that you're focusing on, but I think a little something to help would go a long way.

[SmallBizOrg]

Thanks Harold your summary is helpful. I will take a look around.