Generally speaking, if you can describe a process in words, software can be developed to perform that process. In the world of custom software, the answer to the question “Can you do this?” is, most often, yes.

Business Team solutions is a partnership of professionals in the auditing business, helping companies and municipalities determine whether there is a software solution to their needs. Each of us is a small business, under 20 staff, and each of us has multiple offices, including offices in our homes. We use the software we’ve built, use it every day, to stay on the same page, to share files and calendars, to maintain track of our projects and tasks, and to make the process of running our businesses and doing our work efficient. Every member of our respective teams is involved in those processes every day. This gives us a front row perspective, a practice what we preach business model, and aids considerably in the consulting work we do for our clients.

There are companies for whom a “canned” solution works, the kind you buy off the shelf at a Staples or Office Depot. You know who the developers are - - the biggest names in software development. Those applications are large, perform many functions and offer many features. It’s likely that your company doesn’t need all of them, however, and you end up paying for more than you will actually use. If your company’s business operation is not in sync with that “canned” solution, though, your operations have to change and adapt to the software.

Every business is different. Of course, there are common practices among all of us, but there are processes unique to each company’s history and habits, too. Software should take those unique practices and habits into consideration and meet them comfortably, and that’s the benefit of the Open Source philosophy that technology should adapt to business practices and not the other way around. In the software world, it is possible to fit a round peg into a round hole, and the fit will always be better.