<story><title>Why Small Businesses Aren’t Spending More on Tech</title><url>https://www.comptia.org/about-us/newsroom/blog/comptia-blog/2017/01/19/how-to-get-small-businesses-more-excited-about-new-tech</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>LoSboccacc</author><text>Exactly this. Big names want big money which small businnes don&amp;#x27;t have and small businnes already got burned badly by fresh internet startups last time around.&lt;p&gt;Also, few bigs target small business because, let&amp;#x27;s be honest, they&amp;#x27;re a pain to work with at scale, each one of them brings variations to the base product flavor but no budget to implement them.&lt;p&gt;Hence, loads of them run off custom excel sheets.&lt;p&gt;I once proposed to have a sort of web excel with security controls and a way to let authenticated guests to work on a subset of cells as a way to move small businness online leaving control to them of their process implementation but couldn&amp;#x27;t find a sponsor.</text></item><item><author>joemi</author><text>All the small businesses I&amp;#x27;ve worked at have another huge factor to consider, when it comes to new tech: Will the tech be supported long enough for it to be worth dealing with?&lt;p&gt;Anecdotal example: A few years ago, my workplace at the time (a bookstore near a university in NYC) decided to try that payment method Square used to have that let you check in to Square when you enter a store and then just &amp;quot;pay with your face&amp;quot; or whatever. Sounded neat, I knew some folks who loved to pay for things that way in NYC at coffee shops and such, and the Square rep told us about all the other places near us that were adopting this. So we figured what the hell, jumped on in, got some iPad bundles from Square to use for this, and I was tasked with setting it up. Just a few weeks (!) after we had set it up, Square discontinued that service. Needless to say, ever since then, that bookstore has been very apprehensive about &amp;quot;new tech&amp;quot;. Why bother investing time and effort into something new if it could vanish at any moment?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>canadian_voter</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Also, few bigs target small business because, let&amp;#x27;s be honest, they&amp;#x27;re a pain to work with at scale&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Absolutely. A big business has the clout to request features and demand support. A small business might not even be able to get anyone on the phone, let alone get an on-site rep or have a feature added.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Hence, loads of them run off custom excel sheets.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;We use a few spreadsheets and a custom POS system developed in house by me on top of OSS. It&amp;#x27;s portable and endlessly customizable. I don&amp;#x27;t have to worry about propriety file formats, services outages, changing terms or cost increases.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why Small Businesses Aren’t Spending More on Tech</title><url>https://www.comptia.org/about-us/newsroom/blog/comptia-blog/2017/01/19/how-to-get-small-businesses-more-excited-about-new-tech</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>LoSboccacc</author><text>Exactly this. Big names want big money which small businnes don&amp;#x27;t have and small businnes already got burned badly by fresh internet startups last time around.&lt;p&gt;Also, few bigs target small business because, let&amp;#x27;s be honest, they&amp;#x27;re a pain to work with at scale, each one of them brings variations to the base product flavor but no budget to implement them.&lt;p&gt;Hence, loads of them run off custom excel sheets.&lt;p&gt;I once proposed to have a sort of web excel with security controls and a way to let authenticated guests to work on a subset of cells as a way to move small businness online leaving control to them of their process implementation but couldn&amp;#x27;t find a sponsor.</text></item><item><author>joemi</author><text>All the small businesses I&amp;#x27;ve worked at have another huge factor to consider, when it comes to new tech: Will the tech be supported long enough for it to be worth dealing with?&lt;p&gt;Anecdotal example: A few years ago, my workplace at the time (a bookstore near a university in NYC) decided to try that payment method Square used to have that let you check in to Square when you enter a store and then just &amp;quot;pay with your face&amp;quot; or whatever. Sounded neat, I knew some folks who loved to pay for things that way in NYC at coffee shops and such, and the Square rep told us about all the other places near us that were adopting this. So we figured what the hell, jumped on in, got some iPad bundles from Square to use for this, and I was tasked with setting it up. Just a few weeks (!) after we had set it up, Square discontinued that service. Needless to say, ever since then, that bookstore has been very apprehensive about &amp;quot;new tech&amp;quot;. Why bother investing time and effort into something new if it could vanish at any moment?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>samirillian</author><text>The non-profit I work for has been using airtable+zapier for precisely these needs.&lt;p&gt;I think a fundamental grasp of relational databases is a very handy skill.</text></comment>