I had dinner with a friend, former co-worker at Boeing. Orexi, a nice little Greek restaurant in downtown Bellevue. Seeing him reminded me of my work as a technical writer at Boeing and that got me to thinking about the software I currently use versus the software that was the mainstay over there.
While I’m not going to give away any company secrets, I can tell you that engineering houses are some of the biggest and most sophisticated users of software on the planet.
You might think that they are big on hardware; and many are. Think Boeing – big monstrous airplanes – all planned out, down to the last rivet with engineering software.
And while companies like Boeing do use office software like Microsoft Office or Visio, etc., the hearts of these companies is in the prowess of their engineering software.
When I worked at Boeing, CAD was huge as was project management software. And while you might think that project management software would be more for the office side rather than the engineering side of things, this was not the case at Boeing.
I think that the main reason for this was that the project management software enabled planning over time; and if you’re putting together anything as massive as an airplane, you need to know that the different pieces of the project are going to be ready at the appropriate times.
But it doesn’t stop there.
Inserting technical drawings into Word documents was a very effective way of archiving the information and attaching meta-data to the drawings.
Now – you’re not going to get the highest end or truly specialty type products on the cheap; at least not usually. But you can find some very serviceable engineering software applications on Craigslist (I just checked it out and saw AutoCAD 2009 selling for under $600, which is pretty darned cheap. If I was going to be working with engineering software, I’d be checking these two sources out. Another source that provides comparison prices is PriceGrabber.com.
Posted in technology, tools.
By Bal
– July 31, 2009
At a business lunch this afternoon, I got to talking with some of my fellow entrepreneurs about the software they use to manage their books.
Like me, most of them use Quickbooks, but I thought it might be of interest to let you know about some of the others that were mentioned as well.
One of the folks is a small gear manufacturer with a payroll of about 30 people. He and his wife swear by Epicor, but that looks a bit high-end for someone in a one-man, or few-person band. It looks like it’ll do everything in the world – maybe even make your bed in the morning.
More my speed was a product called Cashbook Complete. That looks like it competes directly with Quickbooks. If I wasn’t already pretty well entrenched with QB, I’d take a closer look at Cashbook.
The only other product of note was mentioned by a realtor, who said she uses Owl Software’s Basic Bookkeeping for Realtors. I checked out Owl, and it looks like they’ve got a number of products for the small entrepreneur.
Again – most everyone – about 8 of us – use Quickbooks, but that doesn’t mean that you should just follow our lead. You should probably take a look at the different software out there. Some of the software companies operate on a shareware model, which means that you get to try it before you buy it. I like this model and have saved myself tons of money by going that route.
- Bal
Posted in hotsheet, technology, tools.
Tagged with bookkeeping software, software tips.
By Bal
– July 27, 2009
I’m a big fan of Naturally Speaking. You can find older versions on Amazon, Craigslist, and eBay, but I went ahead an got the latest (version 10 – Standard) from Nuance.com. I have to say that overall I like it a great deal.
But it’s not perfect. For one thing it uses a lot of resources. It also requires a fair amount of training, and even then it’s not perfect.
That said, I can author longer texts about 4 times faster than I can type by using dictation.
One big tip I can offer is this: use the dictation pad that comes with the program instead of Microsoft Word or a text editor. I don’t understand why, and really I don’t care why, but for now at least, the accuracy is better in its native editor than in others.
The only other editor that comes close to giving me results as accurate is a relatively obscure program called TurboNote, which is another great tool, but that’s another story.
I’m not sure how version 10 stacks up against version 9 or earlier. You might check some of the review sites that are out there for that information. But it’s really worth checking out if you think that dictation might be a part of your productivity puzzle.
- Bal
Posted in technology, tools.
Tagged with dictation, software tips.
By Bal
– July 23, 2009
Unlike small companies, larger companies (500 people or more) generally have formal software and hardware policies in place. Having done work in both types of companies (including major Fortune 500 companies), you might think that the policies are all alike.
Well – surprise, they’re not.
One of the largest software companies in the world let me bring in my own software tools, and did not worry about me making a mess of their networks. Another company – an aerospace company – was so air-tight that even FREE programs had to go through their Requisitions and Purchasing departments. Even with mid-level managers saying that I should be able to test the software to see if it was something usable by others in the company.
When you’re dealing software and you want to approach a major company, first get a bead on what kinds of polices they have.
If they’re loose, like the software company at which I worked (you’d know the name if I mentioned it), then it might be worthwhile approaching anyone you know within the company. I think of this as the “post-its” model.
One of the many stories about the origin of Post-Its™ is that an engineer at 3M was trying to develop a very strong adhesive. Instead he got a very weak one. He had a bunch of tablets all held together with the adhesive and, rather than let them go to waste, he just dropped them on everyone’s desk, letting them figure out if they could use them. When they started clamoring for more, Post-Its™ was born.
If the company is has a much more restrictive and formal policy in place – those that work with the Government tend to be exceptionally tight on this because of government requirements – you will need to go through Purchasing. Thus it behooves you to get to know the players at such companies.
And this is true, even if every bit of your contact is online. Don’t make the mistake that I’ve seen many make of thinking that “online” means “relaxed.” The two are not related; treat your online contacts with the same seriousness as you do your “real world” contacts. After all, is there any other world than the “real” one?
- Bal
Posted in B2B sales, communication.
By Bal
– June 5, 2009
It’s been a long time since I’ve posted here – and a new site is coming – but for those who just might still have an ear to the door to see if I pop up, well – here I am.
I’ve started on a new business model with John Delavera as my guide. One of the more immediate results of this is to run a WarriorsForum Specical Offer (WSO) in the Warriors Forum. It started out good, and my product is good, if I can say so myself.
Here’s who it can help:
1 – Anyone looking for content that they can use. My product is an ebook with both private label rights (PLR) and master resale rights (MRR).
2 – Anyone looking for a product to sell outright to their customers. The PDF of the ebook is included in the WSO, ready to go.
It’s priced extremely low ($9.99), and I’ve included a few passages from the ebook in the WSO thread so you’re not buying a pig-in-a-poke.
If you’d like to check it out, you can see it here.
Posted in to categorize.
By Bal
– October 27, 2008
