The Apps Small Biz Needs Now

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4. RFID Already

Radio Frequency ID (RFID) has been promoted as a huge step toward managing inventory. With chips embedded in a product's packaging, physical inventories that once took days could be done in a matter of minutes just by broadcasting a signal that says "Hey, if you're on the shelf, send back a beep!" Processing time would become much more automatic as inventory is shipped. Inventory levels could be checked quickly and reorders made automatically. Tracking inventory would be a snap as long as its RFID chip is talking to a global positioning system. Business owners spend so much time and money accounting for their inventory that any change in how it's done would be a benefit.

So let's go already! The technology is there, it's expanding, and the cost is coming down—but not fast enough. Just ask Wal-Mart (WMT). We could be saving a ton of dough if this technology were inexpensive enough to deploy. Isn't there a country to invade with cheap resources to develop this? Let's think out of the box and get this technology into the hands of small and large businesses.

5. Voice Recognition That Works

Imagine that when you call Visa (V) customer service you can just speak your credit-card number to the automated attendant and it'll be repeated back to you. Impressive stuff. Of course, being asked for the same frigging number five minutes later when the human gets on the phone takes us back a few decades.

Such annoyances aside, voice-recognition technology has come a long way. Big businesses are deploying it successfully. But what about us guys down here? There are some nice off-the-shelf products like Nuance Communications' (NUAN) Dragon Naturally Speaking that can translate even my wife's screeching into a legible Word document. But I don't see many small businesses really taking advantage of voice recognition. Sales guys are still hunting and pecking to do a quote. Order-entry people are keying in orders. Invoices are still being typed up. When will there be an inexpensive voice-recognition interface for popular small-business applications like Intuit's (INTU) QuickBooks or FrontRange Solutions' GoldMine? When will we be able to easily create a voice interface for our custom applications, too? Figure that one out, and you can buy Visa, or at least a piece of it, yourself!

Gene Marks, CPA, is the owner of the Marks Group, which sells customer relationship, service, and financial management tools to small and midsize businesses. Marks is the author of four best-selling small business books and writes the popular "Penny Pincher's Almanac" syndicated column. He frequently speaks to business groups on penny-pinching topics. More penny-pinching advice from Marks can be found at www.quickerbetterwiser.com.