Cheap Tech- Courtesy of Google

If you don’t have the budget for expensive software and updates, you can still adopt technologies to improve your business’s efficiency and productivity. According to BusinessWeek, more than a million users, including the government of the District of Columbia, have adopted Google Apps—user-friendly software that can be accessed from any Internet connection. Instead of working with the conventional (and costly) Microsoft products, you and your staff can use Google Apps to increase productivity.

With Google Docs, users can upload files from their Microsoft Office applications—Word, Excel, and PowerPoint—and share them. Google Docs displays the date you shared your item and with whom, as well as which items you own versus the documents someone else has created and handed off to you. It is important to note that any documents that you create in Google Docs do not have the full functionality
of Microsoft Word or Excel documents.

For more advanced collaboration, Google Sites, a free website with wiki-creation software, allows users to create an Intranet for collaboration among employees, contractors, freelancers, or anyone else. The web pages are permission-based (you can designate someone as an owner, viewer, or collaborator) and can be customized with your own look. There are templates to get you started. Most importantly, knowledge of HTML is not required.

Google Apps also includes Google Talk (an instant messaging program that facilitates real time collaboration with on- and off-site employees), Gmail (a free e-mail program, and Google Calendar (a calendar that can be accessed by any authorized user on your team). Calendar can be synced with Microsoft Outlook and has a similar “schedule a meeting” function. However, there are reports of problems with managing identities on Google Apps. There have been reports of identities for business Google calendars or a co-workers calendar being swapped. Google Apps is available in a free version as well as a more robust Premier Edition that you can license for $50 per user per year.
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