Focus as we approach launch

Small business owners never suffer from too little to do, especially when launching a new business. This is when prioritization is most important. As Daley Thompson said while preparing for the Decathlon “it’s like having 10 jealous girlfriends who are all demanding equal attention”.

Progress

Website development has progressed well over the past few months and we are about to start full integration testing of the dynamic site. We envisage that we will be doing a few bouts of testing and refinement over the next month and will start working with vendors to set up products and profiles through October. All things considered, we should be looking at a launch of date of early November (fingers crossed).

Our focus has turned to enlisting vendors over the past month. We have had a strong response from vendors, who are equally as excited as we are about the service. This clearly shows the value of the SoftwareShortlist offering! We are well on target to signing up our desired quota of top quality vendors within the chosen industries as we go into Beta.

Industry Focus

We have decided to focus our initial efforts on delivering great results in 2 industries: agriculture, specifically farm management software, and professional services, notably software for management consultants and IT consultants.

We will therefore provide top quality shortlisted software options to SME customers from these industries who are seeking timesheet & expense software, accounting /farm accounting software, CRM software, crop and livestock recordkeeping software, and agri-business management software. This will expand to cover other industries and niches over the coming year.

Benefits to all

Finally, the SoftwareShortlist offering will provide benefits to all involved:

• Small business owners will gain an invaluable free software selection and recommendation facility, to aid them in finding specialist business software that meets their specific needs.
• Vendors will benefit from a marketing channel that is unmatched; a facility to manage digital download to a global customer base; the ability to invite their regional service providers to enlist; and a matching service for new service providers.
• Service providers will obviously benefit from the additional exposure, the opportunities that arise and a source of new products to represent.

We look forward to enjoying the journey with you all!

A unique approach to business software

Don’t do what everyone else is doing; that simply leads to competing in a commoditised market and you end up competing on price. Find a niche where you can do something different and special and that attracts customers to you because you have the best solution. — Tom McKaskill

We came across the above quote recently and found it highly relevant to what we’re doing at SoftwareShortlist.

Firstly, we love finding the undiscovered “gems” in business software – specialist solutions that truly understand and deliver great value to a particular niche, but don’t always have the marketing budget or expertise to achieve their full potential. We want to help them get the attention (and sales!) they deserve.

The quote above also reflects our approach to our own business. There have been plenty of times when we have consciously said “no, let’s do it differently” or “there’s got to be a better way” rather than taking a one-size-fits-all approach or adopting the traditional software directory business model.

We believe (and our market research confirms) that small businesses don’t have the time nor the inclination to examine a huge range of software. Nor do they like divulging personal contact details in order to get initial product information. They also tend to be reluctant to pay for software selection advice.

Based on these and other insights, we’ve designed SoftwareShortlist.com as a free recommendation and comparison service that helps small businesses choose the right software for their needs.

Throughout the process, we have strived for the elegant solution – doing more with less – such as generating superior software recommendations yet asking fewer questions, developing novel ways to compare different product offerings, and evaluating software without using confusing jargon.

Different?
Yes.

Special?
We think so.

Attracting customers with the best solution?
Time will tell, but the response so far is very encouraging.