William Faulkner uses a southern expression is his novels when he says a man does what he needs to 'by main strength." No need for extraordinary machines, tools, automation, just put your back into it. You'll be exhausted but that thing, and usually that thing only, will get done. I love entrepreneurs and small business people. They're still close enough to the business to understand the grit and determination that it takes to build something. I've worked at my share of the Fortune 500 and one thing that permeates their cubicles is the smell of entitlement. Too many people there don't remember the desperation, the early struggles. So let's put the two ideas together now: The entrepreneur does it by main strength. That's the secret strength of people who put a company on their backs and stride uphill. They have this space of undisturbable confidence in them because they know that when it comes to crunch time they can get it done, no matter what 'it' is. I've talked before many times about Integration, here, here and here and the great value that a business can achieve through integrated systems. It's not enough to have some automation, you have to have the gears all working to drive the same machine. Lots of small and medium sized businesses believe that they can get by without Integration, but can they? Consider the larger context of the American Economy over the last century. 100 years ago there were very few large businesses. Wagons were made by craftsmen, one at a time. It was the ability to automate the process that allowed Henry Ford's company to grow. Sure, the assembly line enabled him to build more cars and at a lower cost, but it also allowed him to grow the company by an order of magnitude. You simply cannot grow a large company while making things one at a time, by hand. I talk to small business people every day who are rightfully skeptical about spending the bucks for an integrated system. For them it makes more sense to solve each problem as it becomes a thorn in their ass. Number of customers increases buy a contact manager. Have to have an accounting system. Customer service is next. Maybe purchasing and inventory. Email and web are now de facto. So you have 7 or 8 systems and a lot invested. But at this point your systems are no longer enabling your growth; they're hindering it. You re-key data here, here and here, from one system to another. Your trying to build cars one at a time. No matter how much main strength you have you'll never be able to ramp up and really build the company. Integrate it. That's the only answer. One of the main reasons we chose NetSuite for our practice is that is offers an integrated suite; CRM, ERP and Web presence/e-commerce in a single application. Of course it's not the only one on the market, but you'll find more interfaces than you will integration in the IT marketplace today, and you'll find more people telling you that an interface and integration are the same thing, too. Frankly, an interface between two unrelated systems simply shifts the grunt work from the clerks to the IT staff. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Take a step back and look at where you are really spending money in your business. It's in the personnel that you need to maintain the data in multiple unrelated and/or interfaced systems. The answer is integration. It may not be possible today for your business, but don't let anyone sell the idea that it's not important. Integration needs to be the long term strategy of any business that really wants to grow. | 
