At this point, I have reconciled myself to the notion that there really aren’t any software products out there that meet my needs fully. Not for project management, not for contact management, not for accounting, not for todo lists, not for time tracking. Not a single one.
So, what am I doing about this?
- Using several products. For example, I manage contacts using sugarcrm and an Excel spreadsheet, and will likely add some raw SQL into the mix. The SQL can be backed up using cvs or svn.
- Understand that I will “lose” data on a temporary or permanent basis. Temporary insofar as data may be located on a computer I don’t have access to, or somewhere on the network. Or with some software that suddenly expires or file format gets corrupted or whatever.
- Change my needs. Do try to do what can’t be done, no matter how obviously useful it would be.
- Worry about data integrity when I have the several hundred thousand $$$ per year revenue making it cost effective to worry about it. That is, I can charge it to customers.
- Changing my business processes to “support the software” rather than having the software support my business processes. For accounting, ok, fine, Quickbooks knows best. But for other things, that seems a tail-wags-dog situation.
This is nothing personal against any particular piece of software. Most of them work well enough for their intended customers (I suppose).
On the other hand, I find myself using MS Excel more and more often. I truly hate to say it, but it has the flexibility to allow me to create a one-of-a-kind structure (my business) that better reflects how I think and operate.
