The future of small business is not dumbed-down big business

Small and Mid-size Enterprises and Organizations (SMEOs) struggle against the onslaught of large corporations in part because they lack efficient management software.

Collections of spreadsheets, disconnected apps, and manual processes are wasteful. Attempts to upgrade with subscription software may end in an expensive journey into intentionally complex modules and user fees.

Not all of the complexity is intentional, however, because the assumption that SMEO solutions should be dumbed-down big data solutions misses a simple fact.

Clearly most program designers have never actually run a small or mid-size business. If they had, they would know that SMEO managers are experts in their field. SMEO managers already model their business with forms and reports, and they can—and often already do—represent their entire business data flow in spreadsheets.

So the purpose of SMEO software should not be to ape big business by hiring programmers to analyse business data structures and deliver comprehensive front-end / back-end solutions.

The better task is to

enable business managers to utilize their existing knowledge as expressed in forms and reports to build their own integrated management systems.

Sumer can do this. No knowledge of IT required. Probably not good news for business software purveyors, but it is certainly good news for owners and managers of SMEOs.

Ignoring the obvious

Why are Big Tech subscriptions, modules, and user fee solutions so complex when simpler solutions are available?

Probably because it is easy to be so intimidated by authority and flashy displays that we forget our own common sense.

Business patterns like

have been routine for thousands of years. They have patterns.

So seriously, with all our advances in technology including now AI, we cannot create a tool to convert these basic patterns into a coordinated management platform?

Of course we can. Big Tech could have delivered something like Sumer 20 years ago.

The essential technology that ensures Big Tech dominance is the relational database*. Programmers know how to build them, SMEO managers don't. The inequality creates a cartel.

Current business software delivers unnecessary complexity at premium prices to SMEOs that are capable of assembling a complete relational database. management system for themselves—if they had a tool like Sumer.

* (Relational databases are essential, but unless you are a programmer the details are not important. 'Relational database' just means a way to store data as a collection of data tables—price lists, inventory, sales invoices, accounting, etc.—all logically linked. )

The Big Tech promise... 'never do simple again'

When Microsoft realized in the 1990s that they had made a terrible mistake with Excel and Word by making them so sufficient that customers no longer needed yearly upgrades, they rescued their cash flow by converting to Office 365's subscription service. The modern Big Tech strategy was born, and no one would ever do simple again.

From social media to business management programs, high-tech solutions are designed to

1. push subscription and advertising revenue,
2. split off features as proprietary up-sell modules,
3. keep customers' hands off the controls, and
4. most recently, collect customer data for mining.

The technology behind business data, however, is low tech. In fact that is why this is called 'Sumer', because the Sumerians were doing it 6000 years ago.

The problem with a low-tech solution in a high-tech market is that it violates the goals of Big Tech, but if you don't have an issue with that, you should look at Sumer.

Opportunity in simplicity

Advantages for Sumer stand out when comparing modules with templates, because why buy modules if templates are free?

Modules are a marketing, not a technical, invention. Modules are intended to split and repackage your data as forms and reports to sell back to you separately.

Sumer allows SMEOs to create their own forms and reports. Spreadsheet-style setup forms are almost intuitive, and Sumer has a library of existing templates that can be easily customized.

This Price List demonstrates how Sumer templates work. The template behind the Price List is almost self-explanatory.

• Column names across the top, parameters down the left side. You probably recognize most of them.
• Add new columns—anything you want—with the 'AddColumn' button.
• Set DataType, Width, Alignment and so on. You can even add Filters and Formulas.

This price list can be recalled and used automatically in sales entry forms and reports.

Other forms for purchasing, production, sales, scheduling, and more have additional parameters, but all work the same way.