[TriLUG] [OT] What's the value of IT?

[Phillip Rhodes]

Justis Peters wrote:
> Jim,
> 
> You can certainly make a good living by selling exclusively to people
> who focus on "saving money", but you'll also find yourself eternally
> justifying prices and speaking to customers who only care about that. I
> encourage you to look at the positive, the "value creation", side of the
> equation. 


That's good stuff, Justis.  And you hit the nail on the head in that
the other side of the equation (that I'm particularly interested in, 
truth be told) are small businesses that intend to become less small 
over time; and grok (or can be educated to grok) how technology can help 
their growing business.

Jim, do you recall our discussion about the long-term view and
the way it would be good to work with small-businesses that grow
up to be the next $BIG_PROFITABLE_CO, so you can grow with them?
That's part of what I'm getting at with this discussion.

I'm certainly interested in working with/for both types of small
businesses, but the latter case (growth oriented) is more interesting in 
a lot of ways.  If nothing else, because the technical needs of the 
business  probably grow as it grows, so it keeps things interesting to
pursue that model.

So I'm interested in how to help a mom and pop flower-shop that
will never be more than 1 store, but more interested in a mom
and pop flowers-shop that wants to be the next 1-800-FLOWERS.

And to keep this from drifting TOO far off-topic, I do think
that Open Source is one of the ways that IT can deliver value, 
cost-effectively, to smaller businesses.  But the cost-advantages (or 
lack thereof) of F/OSS vs. proprietary is a whole other argument...  :-)

 > I'm looking forward to seeing what Phillip comes up with.

Feh... you should know by now, I have no original ideas.  I just leech
off of all the other smart people around me!



TTYL,


-- 
Phillip Rhodes