WHY CAN’T SOFTWARE WORK LIKE A SHARPIE?

From creative shops to children’s classrooms, most everyone has experienced the beauty of a Sharpie®. Admittedly low tech, these colorful pens help us get our ideas on paper fast and furiously here at Sukle Advertising and Design. They’re invaluable when we need to ardently capture a priceless concept that’s going to make a difference in our client’s brand campaign.

They help us harness our “Suklear Energy” and make our product development process fluid. They keep us focused.

I wish I could say the same for the business management software applications we’ve tried.

We love the applications we rely on to generate artwork, design layouts, craft presentations, and produce campaign calendars. Yet I was mystified by the challenge we faced in finding an equally elegant small business application that could complement the natural mindset of people in advertising.We just wanted something simple, smart and creative, just like us. Over the ten years we have been in business, nothing has been more of a joy-killer than fighting sluggish, buggy business software purportedly designed to make running a small business easy.

For years I accepted mediocrity, software is just a necessary evil. There isn’t a decent business application designed for Mac-based shops like ours. Management and staff would just have to put up with the slow, underperforming $10,000 software we bought to track jobs and capture billings. Our accountant would simply need to waste a day a week on the phone with the vendor to figure out how to produce client invoices and reports. Besides, putting up with it would surely be easier than switching. Let’s just make it through one more billing cycle and then we can forget about it until the next one.

But one day I started listening, and comparing. The angry din of complaints about “that [insert expletive here] software” was clashing with the softer creative scratching sound of Sharpies writing on concept paper. Bad technology was getting in the way of good ideas. Not to mention how much time and negative energy we were burning. Mid-2004, I decided it was time to take action.

I tasked our Account Service team to find an application that “works like we do.” Something simple and smart, that would improve efficiency by not getting in the way, and that gives management accurate and timely visibility into every aspect of the business.

It took six months, but we made our decision. Late last year we switched to an application designed by and for people in creative agency businesses.The whole reason it exists is because there were hundreds of small agencies like ours out there, all with the same complaints.

It was vindicating to know we weren’t the only firm making software mistakes. But even better to know the world can produce software that works as well as a Sharpie

Editors Note: This story was run in the Mar/Apr 05 issue. I found it ironic that the heading is "My Biggest Mistake". Our mistake was omitting the last two paragraphs of this fantastic recount of Mike Sukle's thoughts on "why can't software work like a sharpie". We regret the error and hope you enjoy the full story!