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

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

Collections of spreadsheets, disconnected apps, and manual processes are wasteful, but navigating the jungle of sales pitches for expensive and intentionally complex modular software can be overwhelming.

Some of that complexity, however, is not intentional. The assumption that SMEO solutions should be dumbed-down big data solutions misses a basic pattern.

Clearly most program designers have never actually run a small or mid-sized business. If they had, they would know that SMEO managers are experts in their own business. 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 problem for SMEO software is not to ape big business programmming by analysing business data structures and delivering comprehensive front-end / back-end solutions.

The task is to

enable business managers to utilize their existing knowledge to build their own relational database 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.

So seriously, with all our advances in technology including now AI, we cannot create the 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.

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.

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. introduce features as proprietary up-sell modules, and
3. keep customers' hands off the controls.

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

Opportunities for Sumer seem almost inevitable once customers begin to compare modules with templates, because why buy modules if templates are free?

Modules are a marketing, not a technical, invention. Module-based software vendors split your data into tiny pieces so they can repackage your forms and reports and sell them back to you separately.

SMEOs already have forms and reports. Recreating them in Sumer is simple. Sumer's spreadsheet-style setup forms are almost intuitive, and Sumer has a library of exisitng templates that can be easily customized.

This Price List demonstrates how Sumer templates work. The template behind this 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.

Now that you have created this price list it can later 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.