Salon Software Via Web
With everything moving web-based, it only made sense for salon software to make the transition. After years of testing, a product is now available for salons and spas.
Unlike traditional software in which you pay up to $10,000 or even more and receive a few discs and a training manual in return plus the luxury of paying annual maintenance costs, web-based software is user friendly. There are no up front costs and you pay monthly. Best yet, the software is updating frequently giving users the most current version.
This is good news for the salon industry. Salon software is a requirement of doing business and this gives salon owners added flexibility to redirect their funds towards development of their business instead of the software company they are held hostage to.
Web-based software does everything traditional software does such as appointment book, scheduling, retail, bar-codes, commissions and reporting. In fact, one feature that could be a huge surprise is an app for the iPhone. Your clients can load the app and then schedule their appointment using their iPhone.
Training and learning new software is difficult at best. But web-based software is easier to learn and having online training guides and chat makes getting answers to questions simpler. Like cell phones and other electronic devices, most people only use a small percentage of the features. With this package, use what you want.
While we haven’t committed to distributing this software to our customers yet, I am interested in your feedback on how you see web-based software helping your business. It’s certainly the future and the future is here.
Happy Monday!
January 18th, 2010 at 2:42 pm
Gr8 news! Which software are you referring to?
And yes, Cloud computing definitely the future!
January 18th, 2010 at 3:50 pm
Curious if this creates “buzz”.
January 18th, 2010 at 6:01 pm
Hi larry, sounds exciting! Are you creating something brand new … hope so. Or are you going to sell one of the existing ones?
January 18th, 2010 at 9:07 pm
Welcome back. So what do you recommend for the salons that have already spent big money on different software
January 19th, 2010 at 8:51 am
We are not creating something new, just deciding whether the market is ready for us to deliver something new. And didn’t you hear, SAP is behind this.
HA!
For salons that have already committed to traditional software, the age old dilemma that business owners confront rings true: If you aren’t getting what you need from your current software but keep paying annual costs, eventually you have to commit to new generation thinking. That’s what we did when we switched to SAP. Figure you amortized the old investment and the new investment will pay off and most importantly, make you happy once again about IT.
January 19th, 2010 at 8:51 am
SaaS: Software as a Service, which is gaining ground in many industries. (It is one of the fastest areas of technology growth)
In general it is viewed as a cheaper, simpler and more flexible approach to procuring applications.
Before purchasing SaaS – it’s generally a best practice to understand the following:
Does the service provider has specialized expertise and skilled employees- or will the salon need to be skilled and gain expertise in this?
Can the software can be continuously upgraded and debugged at no cost
Can the software vendor sees how it is used, and can make improvements using that data
What is the true Operating expense
What is the Reliability and availability
What is the risk that the service vendors may go out of business
What is the risk that the service vendor may alter the service, pricing, etc.
Is the Data truly secure at the vendor’s site, particularly if it is out of the country
If you want to transition to another software – how hard will it be. For example: Exporting your data may be difficult or impossible, locking you into the service
January 21st, 2010 at 1:55 pm
10,000 – $25,000 software fit the needs of a very small group of beauty professionals and was never sold as a “service” – like Larry says, all we got was some disks and a manual with costly contracts for maintenance and support fees. Jill’s list of things to be careful about brings up very good points to research when evaluating a Software as a Service vendor.
Some of the great, “buzz” worthy features in the new breed of Salon & Spa technology tools are:
1. When you have pick and choose features in a system, a business that has significantly invested in an installed software may be able to leverage the POS features in the old software while using the new for Online Appt Booking and Emarketing features only.
2. Daily work life is better for every professional and client – not just the business owner. Access to an online system can be made available for every professional – both employees and independent contractors. This can be done while still keeping Client Contact details hidden from view from employees and allowing independent contractors access to ONLY their own client information. Disk installed software never has and never will be able to provide this kind of convenience and protection for everyone in the Salon/Spa environment.
3. A monthly subscription for use of a multi-million dollar system can be kept very affordable for buisness owners or individual beauty professionals because all subscribers are always in the same version of the system. Supporting the online tools is very easy – the answers to questions are always the same no matter who is calling! Disk-installed software creates a support nightmare with the need to have at least one person on staff who can be a specialist in each “version” that a professional may have purchased but never updated. This problem does not exist in the SaaS model.
January 21st, 2010 at 9:35 pm
Larry, what is the name and website for the software that you’re talking about? What technology does this product/service utilize?