Microsoft Adds Items for Small Businesses to Its Lineup
Microsoft Corp. on June 7 will release Office 2000, the newest version of its best-selling suite of office applications.
Although updated with new, Internet-friendly features, the basic function of these programs hasn’t changed. But this year Microsoft is adding components for the fast-growing small-business market.
Microsoft has added an overlay to its existing Office applications to provide tools for small-business customers, who can purchase either the Small Business edition of Office ($499 new, $249 upgrade), the Professional edition ($599/$349) or the Premium edition ($799/$399). The tools are the Small Business Customer Manager, Business Planner, Small Business Financial Manager and Direct Mail Manager.
These tools aren’t stand-alone applications, but rather serve as a bridge between what a small-business owner needs and what the basic Microsoft Office applications can provide. The tools include templates or files that help you get the most out of Office applications, such as the word processor, spreadsheet, database program and presentation software. There are also plenty of “wizards” that walk you through a variety of tasks as well as online reference guides and links to many useful Web sites.
One tool, the Small Business Customer Manager, is designed to help businesses track, analyze and manage customer information based on data they have stored in the small-business accounting package. The product can extract customer data from more than 50 financial packages.
With those data, for example, you can use Microsoft Outlook and other Office tools to look at your customers by sales volume or see which products people in various regions are buying. Business Planner helps you start or fine-tune a business and write a business plan that you can present to a lender or investor. You start by filling out a short questionnaire. It draws from leading business reference books and uses Microsoft Excel to help you analyze information, and then uses Word to help you write it up. There are also hundreds of Web links to additional resources.
One of Microsoft’s partners in this venture, Berkeley-based Nolo Press, provided two books, “Legal Guide for Starting and Running a Small Business, Volume One” and “Tax Savvy for Small Business.” Nolo Press is known for its sometimes-irreverent books and software packages that help consumers and small businesses create legal documents without having to rely on an attorney. Small Business Tool also comes with access to InfoUSA company profiles and phone directory and business listings. You get 150 downloads for free and a discount on subsequent downloads.
Even if you already have a small-business accounting program, the Business Financial Manager can help you make better sense of your accounting data. Using Excel, this feature helps you create “what if” scenarios to explore the implications of business decisions. The program, like the business planning module, “mines” data from your accounting program so you don’t have to enter a lot of new information.
Some of the analysis tools included in this package help you with buy/lease decisions, comparisons of your company with industry norms, and financial projections based on past and current data. Using Excel’s graphing features, you can chart your revenue-expense and cash-flow trends.
Finally, the Direct Mail Manager helps you use Microsoft Word to send out direct-mail “mail merge” letters to potential clients or customers.
Most of the features in Microsoft Small Business Tool can be found in other products or on the Web for free, but Microsoft has done a good job of putting together all the pieces for you in a single product that is well integrated into the company’s basic Office applications.
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Technology reports by Lawrence J. Magid can be heard at 1:48 p.m. weekdays on KNX-AM (1070). He can be reached at larry.magid@latimes.com. His Web site is at https://www.larrysworld.com. On AOL, use keyword “LarryMagid.”
