Business basics - Market planning, staff scheduling, surveying and time billing software - Software Review - Buyers Guide

Home Office Computing, Oct, 1997 by Carol Holzberg

To scoop the competition and maximize your business performance, you need a variety of software tools -- the basics that will help you and your staff get the job done. Why stop at word processing, number crunching, and information management software? With the right programs, you can easily handle marketing and promotions, time tracking and billing, employee scheduling, and feedback received from customers or coworkers. And you don't have to pay the high-end prices that corporations pay for similar programs.

With that in mind, we've reviewed programs in four different business basics categories that almost every small business needs to get ahead and stay competitive. We look at Marketing Planners that help you create a cohesive advertising budget and strategy; Staff Schedulers for managing employee appointments and commitments; Survey Software that tracks the likes and dislikes of your clients; and finally, Time Billing Software because nothing is sweeter than getting paid for your hard work. Unless otherwise noted, we give list prices.

Do-It-Yourself Advertising

With Do-It-Yourself Advertising you learn how to grow your business through advertising and promotion. This upbeat, multimedia-enriched program teaches you how to design and execute a marketing campaign that not only makes clients aware of your business but also motivates them to open their checkbooks. Along with a helpful video demonstrating the importance of advertising, there are 18 templates that fall into three different ad types -- service, retail, and product -- with special layouts for headlines, taglines, and other ad components. We created a simple print ad by filling in the template's empty spaces.

The program is divided into seven topics that follow the logical sequence in developing a creative ad campaign: positioning, promotions, media planning, creativity, and printing. Within minutes, we learned how to set goals, choose strategies, develop a positioning statement, and choose an advertising medium. The program's question-and-answer modules offer more than simple instructions; they got us thinking about our business and what we have to offer our clients. Do-It-Yourself Advertising can't guarantee that your business will turn a profit, but it's a great collection of advertising tools. Adams Media, 617-767-8100, 800-872-5627, www. adamsmedia.com; $25 street CIRCLE 135 ON READER SERVICE CARD

Marketing Builder

Marketing Builder is a project-specific sales and marketing program that also ships with 18 text and spreadsheet templates for creating a cohesive marketing plan. The Microsoft Word- and Excel-compatible templates sport cryptic names such as 1-mktanl.doc, 2-marcom.doc, launch.xls, and Ops-budg.xls. However, when we opened these files, we discovered fill-in-the-blank templates covering market analysis, marketing communications, and sales plan formulation.

As we filled in the templates, we consulted the Marketing Builder Reference Guide, a 400-page business promotion manual that ships with the software. The guide's different chapters prompt you to launch specific templates that are explained in the book. For example, the Sales Plan chapter sent us to the Saleanal.xls spreadsheet template, and the Market Analysis chapter directed us to the Break-Even Analysis template. Because the software is loaded with templates, we would have appreciated an at-a-glance summary sheet to explain them and their specific mission. The templates don't have the bells and whistles of standalone applications, but we found Marketing Builder's documents and spreadsheets helpful. Jian, 415-254-5600, 800-346-5426, www. CIRCLE 136 ON READER SERVICE CARD

Marketing Plus 2.2

There's nothing quite like one-on-one help and Marketing Plus 2.2 never left our side while we created an advertising campaign. Unlike Do-It-Yourself Advertising and Marketing Builder, Palo Alto Software's Marketing Plus is a complete program, not just a collection of templates. Not only does Marketing Plus offer structured guidelines for planning and implementing a practical marketing strategy, it also includes several spreadsheet and charting tools to track potential vs. actual sales and expense budgets. Thanks to an intuitive interface with context-sensitive help, we formulated a plan from scratch with a comprehensive task list.

Task-list items include such topics as vision, objectives, target markets, expense budget, sales forecast, implementation, and tracking. Marketing Plus provides instructions for each task, sample text you can use in your own marketing plan, and a built-in word processor complete with a spell-checker for writing a plan. Although the instructions and sample text weren't as detailed as those in Do-It-Yourself Advertising, they were sufficient enough to get us started.

Marketing Plus uses a Pyramid Strategy feature to help organize planning tactics into an easy-to-read diagram. Each block in the pyramid identified specific tactics and programs that we would undertake to implement our marketing plan strategies. Marketing Plus doesn't have any multimedia bells and whistles, but we liked its effective integration of numerical tables and charts in your reports. It also offers a useful way to compare marketing forecasts with actual results. Palo Alto Software, 541-683-6162, 800-229-7526, www.palo-alto.com; $65 CIRCLE 137 ON RUDER SERVICE CARD