The three finalists in Microsoft’s $100,000 Technology Makeover contest detail what they’ll do with the money if they hit the jackpot.
One small business is about to find out just how far $100,000 will go toward improving its business.
The three finalists in Microsoft's Total Technology Makeover contest are vying for that $100,000, which must be used to buy Dell hardware and Microsoft software and services to overhaul their businesses.
Allen Schulman, who has been in the bicycle business for as long as he can remember, starting as a teen working in his father's store, knows the money could make a difference for his two-store chain.
Schulman started New York-based Sid's Bikes in 1993, at age 23, with a single DOS-based computer and point-of-sale software. But when Y2K loomed on the horizon, Schulman decided it was time to move to Windows. He taught himself Microsoft Visual FoxPro and cobbled together a program that helped him run his store.
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But in 2006, when Schulman decided to open a second store, it became painfully apparent that his homegrown approach wasn't working very well. Although he invested in a server and learned how to use Microsoft Terminal Services, it was becoming increasingly difficult to run the business. To handle the second store—and before he can expand further—Schulman knows he has to overhaul his aging equipment, homegrown software and laborious processes.
"I'm stringing this together, and I'm not even sure I'm doing it right," he said. "I'd like to upgrade the server, create a better Web site, and replace the software I wrote more than a decade ago with some sort of ERP [enterprise resource planning]-like software geared to small businesses. And hiring someone to help me is my dream."
If he gets the chance to invest the money in technology and services, Schulman said he could quickly filter data, get information on best-selling items and supply pricing to site visitors.
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"Right now, I can't get this information into the system quickly enough, and that hurts the business," he said. "Getting reports is the key to helping me do a lot more with the business."
Another one of the three contenders for the $100,000 Technology Makeover is GymStars Gymnastics. The Stockton, Calif., children's gymnastics facility, is a fairly low-tech operation. When kids come in for a class, employees track attendance and progress on paper—to the tune of about a case of paper per week—and enter it manually into a computer when they have the time. As for the myriad forms parents fill out, those are kept on paper in a storage facility.
What the company really needs, said owner Bob Tanon, is a way to digitize and protect the multitude of data the company collects, not only to reduce its carbon footprint, but to keep the data secure. Today, in addition to the paper kept in a storage facility, digital data is laboriously backed up to an external hard drive and then physically taken to a second server, where it is uploaded.
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"Because we live in a litigious society, and because California law requires it, we have to keep our records until a child turns at least 21 years old, and right now, we're not able to do that," he said. "We need a way to digitize everything and keep it permanently in a safe and secure manner."
That's one of the major initiatives GymStars plans to undertake if it wins the $100,000. Also extremely important, said Chris Curtis, vice president of IT, is creating a more consistent, reliable and redundant backup system, upgrading aging server software and using technology to improve how students' skills are tracked.
"The less time we have to spend on our technical issues from a management perspective, the more time we can come up with creative ideas on how to market and advertise our program and provide additional and more improved training to our staff," Tanon said.
MouCo Cheese Company is used to winning awards. After all, it recently won first place for its Camembert cheese at this year's American Cheese Society Conference, and MouCo routinely wins accolades for its products.
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But winning $100,000 to upgrade its technology infrastructure would be an entirely different—and welcome—kind of award.
The seven-employee company has subsisted on a bare-bones peer-to-peer network without server components, so employees can't currently share contacts, calendars or project lists, and they can't collaborate on projects or document creation/editing.
"Today, employees communicate with each other on a dry erase board, and it's not very efficient, said owner Robert Poland.
To remedy the situation, Poland wants to implement Microsoft Exchange Server, a file server and an application server. In addition, Poland would like to shore up the company's backup system from its current jury-rigged hot-swap hard drive that resides in one of the company's computers.
"The goal is to allow us to be more responsive to our customers, and enhanced communications will enable us to do that," he said.
The winner will be announced on March 24 at the Microsoft Small Business Summit.
