I see a number of online businesses getting started using hosted platforms or encrypted software solutions.
Initially, it might be okay when you think you know exactly what your customers want and need. As things progress you will realize the business model you had in mind may not be very accurate.
The success of a great business is to adapt to a successful model early in the life of the company. The slower you are, the more painful it is going to be.
There is a number of articles about the flexibility of business models. Two main examples cited are Paypal and YouTube.
Paypal started out as a company to beam money between palm pilots. Fortunately, they figured out how to reinvent their model in time. YouTube started out as an online dating site.
Imagine what if YouTube was created using a hosted application or using software that is encrypted.
Some of you creating online businesses know exactly what your business model is and know who your customers are.
Good for you, since you are among the tiny fraction of entrepreneurs. For most of us mortals, we have a good idea of what we want to do and we have an idea who our customers are what they need. Beyond that, we have not done any user group research that would cost us tens of thousands of dollars.
Our focus group testing is normally at beta launch or for some, after the site launch. Sometimes we know we have been right all along, sometimes we figure our models need little bit tweaking.
The Importance of Flexibility in Business
Many of the small businesses succeded because of outsourcing. The trend towards outsourcing is a plus. The challenges of smaller firms can be done easily with outsourcing.
Your business can fail if it is too rigid. Because technology and the economy are changing rapidly. So, the organizations that are flexible can adapt to these changes.
Wouldn’t it be nice if you have the freedom and flexibility to do so?
When you are using a hosted solution or an encrypted software solution you will not have the freedom to do so. Before you buy any web business software, you want to know if you want it takes to customize the software and what’s involved and the cost.
You would be surprised by the answers from many solution vendors.
iScripts develops the turnkey web software and distributes it with full source code that runs behind it. We don’t encrypt anything at all and we are proud of it.
It’s not the smartest thing to do for a software company to share the source code with the world. We understand it and we are fine with it. We want you, our customers to have an option to change your online business any way you want to.
With the source code, you can get any PHP programmers to make the changes. iScripts can also do these changes for you. In most cases, we would be the most economical and timely solution as we created it from scratch.
You come to us for customization because you choose to, not because you have to. You need to improve customer satisfaction in online business.
Compared to hosted solutions and SaaS offerings, installable software might be a tiny bit time consuming to install and set up. You might save a few minutes in setting it up.
But you are trading it for being stuck in a rigid business model for a very long time. Once your business is established what would be the cost of migrating to a new platform if you can at all.
However, for short term projects hosted or encrypted solution is very well fine. Do you know how to start an online business?
Here is the bottom line you might need the flexibility for your business model more than you think. It’s good to know you have the option with us at iScripts.
