Choosing the right quoting software or proposal solution for your business can be an arduous and confusing process. Several solutions exist under the varied labels of “quoting software”, “proposal software”, “estimating software”, etc.; some run on Windows, others on Mac, and some are web-based. Many offer overlapping features, although there are some significant differences that make each better-suited to certain types of businesses.

Determining the best solution for your business can involve several important considerations.

1. Choose web-based software for ultimate flexibility.

While desktop apps have merits, an online product is ideal for quotation management. A web-based solution provides the benefits of reduced maintenance (since there is no software to install or update), security and peace of mind (with no need to worry about backups), and accessibility from anywhere, anytime. Support is managed by the vendor, and set-up time is virtually instant.

2. Choose the right flavour for your business or industry.

If creating sales quotes or proposals has caused you to pull out your hair from the monotony of grinding through Excel price sheets or tweaking documents to send to clients, an automated quoting software solution is for you. Examples in this category might include IT companies, software vendors, or service providers. Socket’s quoting software eases the daily routine of pumping out quote after quote through automation. Socket automates quote calculation and PDF generation, emails your quotes to customers, accepts payments online, and integrates with your website and CRM.

For companies such as web design or software development shops where quote or proposal documents differ significantly between projects, a more manual solution is appropriate. “Proposal software” allows each response to be uniquely tailored to the project you’re bidding on. This is great for businesses that involve a significant level of human decision. Two solutions worth checking out in this space are Quote Robot and TinderBox.

Manufacturers or engineering firms that need a tight integration with an ERP system for funneling data into build-to-order processes might look toward a “configure-price-quote” (i.e. CPQ) solution. Software from companies such as Big Machines is appropriate for such a need.

3. Consider a solution that integrates with your CRM software or other marketing apps.

By tying in with your existing client management system you can derive extra value from the data that prospective customers provide when they request a quote. For example, you could build a customer profile based on a history of inquiries, and direct follow-up marketing to people who have requested quotes in the past.

4. Consider a solution that allows you to accept payments online.

Producing a quote is a crucial first step, but one that ultimately doesn’t pay off until it turns into a sale. By integrating a payment process into the customer experience, you will significantly increase the value of the quoting solution by allowing the customer to buy right away.

5. Ensure the solution supports your currency.

Every quoting package supports U.S. dollars, but what about other currencies? If you do business internationally, it’s crucial that your system be able to as well. Look for a product that allows for configurable currencies, or at least provides a selection that includes those in which you do business.

6. Make sure that the software is flexible enough to support your pricing requirements.

Depending on your business, the structure of a typical quote or proposal might range between straightforward and complex. A good system will provide the flexibility to accommodate the various scenarios you may need to offer your customers, such as percentage-based and volume-based pricing.

7. Look for a free trial and month-to-month billing with no commitments.

A vendor who offers a test-drive for their quoting software demonstrates a confidence behind it and a willingness to let their customer judge it on its merits. That’s usually a good sign that the product is worth investigating, and can be trusted to run your business. Furthermore, by subscribing on a monthly basis, you know that your provider will be regularly concerned about keeping you running smoothly. And without a lengthy contract to tie you down, you can rest assured that the vendor has faith in their product’s ability to retain customers simply because its value outweighs its cost.

Conclusion

By doing your homework and taking a few apps for a test drive, you can find the right quoting, estimating, proposal, or CPQ software for your business. There are plenty of resources to help get you started in your search, including directories such as GetApp, Capterra, or even The Big G.

(Or how to say no to your customers)

Henry Ford said famously in reference to popularizing the automobile: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.” Instead, Ford thought more broadly and created a product that addressed the true needs of his customer. Similar discrimination is key in any creative industry, and particularly in software development.

Throughout the development and ensuing public release of our quoting software, Socket, we encountered countless ideas and suggestions for new features from both our own team and our customers. Many were great and would likely serve useful to at least some users, however only a few truly fit the greater goal for our software. Since our goal was to build a sales quoting system that takes care of the grunt work without unnecessarily complicating the process, only a few made it through our gantlet of validation questions.

Scratch your own itch

To produce an effective piece of software, a developer must have a clear vision for the goals and design of his product, and must be judicious in deciding what features will and will not make it in. Intimate knowledge of the problem domain is necessary to ensure that the end solution achieves its goals in the least complex manner. The best way to ensure the efficacy of your software is to start by scratching your own itch — developing a solution for a problem you are naturally familiar with. Naturally, though, this can sometimes come at odds with what customers seek.

Needs do not equal wants

Customers don’t always see the big picture, and often misunderstand their real needs. They can often become impatient with a feature, and try to misuse it in an unintended way. In response, it’s often easy for the customer to request new ways of doing what they specifically have in mind.

On the other hand, as a developer, acting on every feature request would quickly turn your product into “bloatware” — bogged down by layer upon layer of confusing and redundant features. (By the same token a developer’s own visions can also lead to boundless “feature rampage”, so restraint must come from within, too.)

“Say no by default”

Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, in their book Rework, give the advice to “say no by default”. The benefit of this position is that popular requests will make themselves heard repeatedly, making it easier to evaluate their importance.

Despite turning down a request, saying “no” doesn’t have to mean leaving your customer high and dry. You can still be diplomatic in response, and even helpful. Often there is an alternative and perhaps simpler solution that will work just as well at solving the problem at hand, without needing to complicate the software.

Your vision must withstand the tests of time

Inevitably, customers will eventually grow out of your product. Resist the urge to grow with them by relentlessly expanding scope, because such a pursuit might risk alienating new customers whom you’ve been targeting all along.

With a clear vision, and as you begin to acquire customers and build an understanding of their needs, it will become easier to thoughtfully refrain from adding undue features — while knowing when to move ahead with those that truly benefit your target market and best serve the product.

Deversus recently released a new product called Socket, currently in private beta testing. Socket is an online quoting system that lets businesses build their own online quote forms, plug them into their website, sell online, and track and manage leads.

Socket addresses the common problems faced by B2B firms such as service providers, commercial software vendors, and manufacturers. Typically, such companies are unable to benefit from online sales via the traditional and overly-simplistic “add to cart” model of e-commerce software.

Through a combination of complex product and service offerings, and requirements that differ between customers, most B2B companies are forced to manually generate sales quotes and process orders offline – a highly inefficient way of doing business. Currently, these companies are faced with the choice of developing costly custom software, or foregoing the online revenue stream entirely.

Socket is built on a foundation of 5 key components: Configurable Online Quote Forms, Customer-Facing Instant Quote Builder, Simple Website Integration, Online Payment Processing, and Lead Management and Reporting.

Configurable Online Quote Forms allow businesses to easily build their own online Quote Forms, which define what products/services their quotes contain, and how they are calculated. An intuitive drag-and-drop interface and rule-based pricing system support the easy creation of configurable products, volume or percentage-based pricing, and customizable shipping and tax calculation by region.

The Customer-Facing Instant Quote Builder utilizes the pre-configured Quote Forms to allow customers to build their own custom-tailored sales quotes, with real-time pricing calculation. Quotes are automatically e-mailed in PDF format and the Online Payment Processing component allows customers to place orders securely online via credit card, with support for recurring billing.

Simple Website Integration allows these companies to integrate their Quote Builders by copying and pasting a small piece of auto-generated code directly into their web page of choice. Customer and sales quote data are collected in a secure, centralized database and Socket’s Lead Management and Reporting component provides companies with valuable insights into their business.

For more information about Socket, or to register for the private beta, please visit www.socketapp.com.

We got a heads up from our friends at Invoke Media about Make Web Not War hitting Vancouver (now totally sold out!) and we thought it would be a great opportunity to check out what they have to offer and network with fellow web devs. The event is on May 7 at Masik Studios and will showcase a ton of new web tech. We’re most interested in the cloud computing aspect, as our new SaaS product Socket is hosted in the cloud (Rackspace). With the impressive advances cloud hosting and cloud computing in general has experiences in just the last few years, it will be exciting to take a peek into the future and see what we can look forward to.

You can check out more info on their website: http://www.webnotwar.ca – hope to see you there!

It appears as though Apple is requiring content providers to expressly allow AirPlay video in order for video to be playable from Safari onto an Apple TV.

To enable AirPlay video in an HTML 5 video player, simply add the following attribute to the video tag:

x-webkit-airplay="allow"


So, your HTML5 video tag might look like (remove spaces from tag open/close):


< video src="/path/to/video.mp4" x-webkit-airplay="allow" preload controls>< /video>


We recently launched a teaser page for a new (SaaS) product we’ve been working on called Socket. Socket completely rethinks how e-commerce should work for businesses that offer more complex products/services than those that fit in with the “add-to-cart” model.

These businesses typically include those within the B2B or service industries. Until now, these businesses have been forced to either completely forego an online revenue stream, or develop a custom e-commerce website that fits their requirements. Unfortunately, most fall into the former group. Until now, of course…

We’re currently accepting applicants for a private beta, which we’ll be launching soon. To request an invite, go to plugyourbusinessin.com and leave your e-mail. We’ll give you an invite code, which if you share and invite 3 other people, will get you priority access and 3 months of free service once we launch.

Recently I was looking around for information on how to begin syncing my iPhone 4 with my MacBook Air rather than my old work PC. It seemed somewhat daunting, and I didn’t want to lose any of my purchases or more importantly, my stored App information, which isn’t transferred with a simple “Transfer Purchases” request through iTunes. It ended up being quite easy to switch from my PC (running Vista) to my MacBook Air – here are the steps:

1. Plug your iPhone into the computer with which it is currently synced.
2. Open iTunes, right click on the iPhone, and click “Transfer Purchases” (just to be safe, we want to ensure everything is backed up).
3. Right click on the iPhone again and click “Backup”.
4. Ensure that all of the photos, videos and music not purchased through iTunes are backed up on your computer. The music is especially important, as it will not carry over to the new computer.
5. Locate and copy your iPhone backup from the old computer to the new computer
   • On Windows 7/Vista, you can find it here:
     C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\AppleComputer\MobileSync\Backup
   • On XP: C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup
   • On OSX: /Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup
6. Before plugging your iPhone into the new computer, open up iTunes. Go into the preferences, and in the Devices tab, check the box that says “Prevent iPods, iPhones, and iPads from syncing automatically”.
7. Plug the iPhone into the new computer, and ensure it is tied to your iTunes account by clicking Store -> Authorize This Computer.
8. Right click on the iPhone, and select “Transfer Purchases”
9. If you haven’t done so already, move the iPhone backup file into the correct location on the new computer, right click on the iPhone through iTunes and click “Restore from Backup”.

You’re done! The only thing you may have to do is copy all of your non-iTunes purchased music from the old computer to the new, and then add it to your iPhone. Also, if there are any issues you can always restore from the backup from the old computer.

I was looking for a nice loading animated .gif for a site I was working on today, and stumbled upon this site and thought I’d pass it along: http://preloaders.net

When storing currency (or any decimal number for that matter) in mySQL, it’s extremely important to be aware of the differences in the decimal place storage methods available. Doubles and Floats are imprecise storage methods (as they use floating point arithmetic), and can lead to major problems when representing currency, as the cents value is obviously important. Thus, always use the decimal type for currency or money storage in mySQL! In most cases, 10 digits before the decimal place and 2 digits after should be sufficient, as shown in the screenshot of phpMyAdmin below.

phpMyAdmin screenshot showing how to properly store currency/money in mySQL

Mac OS X Quick Look is a great tool for being able to take a quick glance at a file’s contents, without the delays associated with launching a full app. However, there are some limitations in the file types it’s able to preview. As a web development company that deals with SQL on a daily basis, we were finally annoyed with the inability to quickly preview .sql files to the point that we decided to do a little digging.

Here’s what we came up with as a simple hack that allows you to preview .sql files with Mac OS Quick Look. This method could be used with other file types as well (e.g. .csv); you’d just need to change a couple of lines.

How We Did It

Basically, we created an empty application with a simple Info.plist file that instructs Mac OS to treat .sql file extensions as plain text.

For the impatient, you can download a zipped copy of the empty application here. Unzip and drag the application to your Applications directory and skip ahead to step 4.

UPDATE: One of our developers, Francois, wrote a quick little Spotlight importer bundle (DeversusSQLQuickLook.mdimporter) that accomplishes the same thing, without the need for an empty application. You can download the plugin here, and simply unzip and drag DeversusSQLQuickLook.mdimporter to /Library/Spotlight. You will need to restart Quick Look per step 4 below, too.

1. Launch Terminal and create the empty application in /Applications

# cd /Applications
# mkdir SQLQuickLook.app
# cd SQLQuickLook.app
# mkdir Contents
# cd Contents


2. Create a basic Info.plist file in /Applications/SQLQuickLook.app/Contents

# nano Info.plist


3. Paste the following into Info.plist

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
	<key>UTExportedTypeDeclarations</key>
	<array>
		<dict>
			<key>UTTypeConformsTo</key>
			<array>
				<string>public.plain-text</string>
			</array>
			<key>UTTypeDescription</key>
			<string>SQL File</string>
			<key>UTTypeIconFile</key>
			<string></string>
			<key>UTTypeIdentifier</key>
			<string>com.deversus.sql</string>
			<key>UTTypeTagSpecification</key>
			<dict>
				<key>com.apple.ostype</key>
				<string>sql text</string>
				<key>public.filename-extension</key>
				<array>
					<string>sql</string>
				</array>
			</dict>
		</dict>
	</array>
</dict>
</plist>

This is what tells the operating system to treat .sql files as plain text so they can be previewed via Quick Look.

To add support for more file extensions, simply modify the following section:

				<key>public.filename-extension</key>
				<array>
					<string>sql</string>
					<string>[additional_extension]</string>
				</array>

4. Save the file (Ctrl+X, Y) and restart Quick Look:

# qlmanage -r


5. You may need to restart finder for it to take effect as well

# killall Finder


That’s it. Simple and hack-ish, but hey, it works! Hopefully this helps a few other web developers out there with the same problem.

If you have any suggestions for a simpler means of accomplishing this, feel free to suggest them in the comments and I will update the post accordingly.