Small Business Services

Most businesses today have a site on the Internet. Depending on the type of business you run, it can be anything from a simple page containing directions to your store and your hours to a complex e-commerce site with credit card authentication and inventory tracking. Regardless of what you use your site for, you need it to look good. This article will introduce you to some Open Source tools that can make that happen with minimal effort.

Data is the lifeblood of every business. You need to keep track of your clients, sales, taxes, inventory, and a host of other little details that make your world go 'round. Unfortunately, many businesses, even the big ones, don't always handle their data in the best way. The results are invalid or lost data and difficulty in producing meaningful information from that data.

Without useful information, you can't make informed decisions about how to run your business, and that means real dollars are lost.

I can hear you now:

FLOSS? I know good dental hygiene is important to customer retention, but why on Earth would you talk about it on the front page of your site?

While good dental hygiene does contribute to customer retention, I’m actually talking about Free/Libre Open Source Software. Now THAT’s a mouthful. So now that I’ve gotten your mouth watering with all this talk of free, let’s talk turkey.