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Re: [LUG] Linux in business - polemic warning.

 

On Monday 05 November 2007 12:34, james kilty wrote:
> On Mon, 2007-11-05 at 11:29 +0000, Tom Potts wrote:
> > Its easy to take the M$ approach and sell people lots of copies of office
> > for people to hide their data in but if we really want to help people we
> > must make it clear to them that if they really want to take advantage of
> > computing they have to actually organise their data and business.
>
> Could you explain? I use some office type software (OOo) for invoices,
> records, some data collecting sheets, letters etc plus email and sparse
> calendar use - nothing that actually need a heavyweight suite -
> supplement it with more specialised software as needed. I shall do my
> accounting in Gnucash in future (no VAT). I have the tiniest of
> businesses, more a large hobby that has income to cover expenses
> actually. So I don't know the needs of larger businesses. Nor how having
> been straitjacketed into MSO restricts their capabilities (I understand
> the lock-in issue).
Your invoices will be entered into stock control and then again into gnucash 
and then again into (add apps as you go). A sensible system would allow one 
entry  generate your invoice and update your cash stuff and feed other apps. 
You could click on your calender for that day and see the things that 
happened that day.
At a later stage you may wish to add access control so Joe in finance can see 
that and not Emily in sales. You can achieve that with W$ but then you'd have 
to go through all your documents and work out who should have access. If you 
keep the data separate its a lot easier to control as it comes from one 
point.
GnuCash has improved lately so it may now allow you to import bits of accounts 
from different sources - so Joe can input his expenses and Emily hers in 
separate controlled areas and then they can be merged  centrally. A lot of 
systems dont allow you to move easily from one user to many: M$ itself forces 
you to upgrade to a server system for big bucks to allow multiple users to 
cooperate.
If you want an office setup you dont want to have to radically re-design it 
from the ground up when a new staff member arrives or one leaves, or for 
there to be a massive hurdle at some point because you have to redesign your 
whole computing infrastructure when you move from a 10 licence system to an 
11 license system. Kevin Lucas example shows the way - new user new browser 
client!
Another way of looking at the problem is imagine this (very common) document 
centric approach: You have template documents and forms for every last job in 
the office - I've seen companies with 10,000+ templates.
And then the phone number changes. Thats 10,000 things that need modifying by 
hand or someone writing a script to do it SAFELY.
In a more sensible system you change the phone number in the dbase and all 
generated documents are updated instantly!
When you adopt the approach of data in the database and generate documents 
dynamically you suddenly find that, even if you insist on W$, you only 
actually need one copy of office in an organisation.
I could go on but I hear snoring...
Tom te tom te tom


>
> >  They can do it early
> > on in the process or they can try later - and almost certainly fail.
> > M$ have made billions out of selling people a pup, please dont sell that
> > pup to others just because its free.
>
> So, to promote GL we'd need a set of essential software requirements,
> perhaps in order of priority. Is there a LUG fact sheet on this anywhere
> in the UK we could refer to? And we could refer business contacts to to
> whet their appetite. Or a published guide to migrating a business.
> --
> james kilty
> http://www.kilty.demon.co.uk


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