How Much Is Your Time Worth?

If you spent twenty hours a week developing your own system, assuming it takes you only 6 months to create, how much money does that system end up costing you? Let’s assume it would cost you $100 an hour to get a homemade system built. For six months of work that’s 480 hours for a grand total of $48,000 for a homemade system. Whoa! That’s a rather large investment. But it could be worth it if you get what you need, right? What You Get

With a self-built system you get a custom system developed specifically for your shop, with your pricing, cost structure, and business methods. The only problem that exists is that all of this is obtainable without building a system yourself. The company that Steve decided to go was Cyrious Software. Cyrious gave him personalized software system he needed including his own custom pricing, cost-structure, and business methods in addition to what he wouldn’t have with a self built system, such as technical support. Steve said if he would have kept with his self-built system not only would he have to support it himself but he wouldn’t have been able to take advantage of features like reports, invoicing, CRM, and Activity Manager.

What You Don’t Get

With most estimating and business management systems on market today, you usually have option of purchasing support. This is a major aspect you can’t get with a self-built system. Most software users believe that support is extremely important, and as Stan Yamamoto from FASTSIGNS® said “Software is only as good as support system behind it…The support offered by Cyrious surpassed all of my expectations.” A good tech support staff is there to help solve questions, problems, or issues that arise, when using software. Who would you go to in order to get answers to software issues with a self-built system?

Buying Software Includes Perks!

Being a software customer, usually entitles you to additional perks. For example, Cyrious Software offers customers on support, software upgrades at no extra charge. These upgrades include many different advancements and improvements to software. If you choose to build your own system, you become one responsible for developing, testing, and supplying upgrades. Unless you plan on staying with same old system year after year, upgrading your system will cost you additional time and money. If you are unable to provide continual support to enable your software to grow with your shop, is it really wise to go forward with building a system yourself? Think about it.

Bad will generation must be factored into cost of marketing this way. How many people vow never to do business with company that sends endless junk mail streams?

The sophistication and alientation of American consumer will not support this system for much longer. (Did we learn NOTHING from Do Not Call list?)

Moving to e-mail is not solution! It is much easier for a person to close an email account than it is to move.

Solutions? Can't think of any? Wait for my next article on April 13th.