Actillion

Google Docs Viewer - Hidden Gem

2012-01-19T17:43:00.001+11:00

Every Gmail User is so familiar with Google Document Viewer opening an attached document that they hardly ever think about it. Few people even realize that they are viewing a document such as Word or Excel, even though they may do not have MS Office or for that matter PDF viewer.

The thing is that it will open most commonly available formats and does so admirably without fuss is terribly useful. I find it particularly useful when I am using my iPad which obviously will not have most of the applications which may have been used to create and email attachment in the first place.

The viewer also happens to support not just the viewing of the document but also the printing of it. Granted that the printing features are somewhat limited but it will get the job done more often than naught.

Remember all those times when you needed to grab an email attachment but did not have you own device on hand. Well worry not because you can easily signin to your Gmail account from just about any device that has an web browser running, open the document and read or print it as required

What a refreshing win for simplicity and applications that just do a few things and do them so well

Small Business And The Challenges of Social Networks

2011-11-18T15:00:00.000+11:00

If large corporations struggle to come to grips with social networking what chance has small businesses got? With restricted manpower, small businesses simply do not have the ability to even examine the issue. But before one gets carried away with all the new jargon that has comes with the territory, it is worthwhile considering what all this fuss is about.

Simply put, social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and now Google+ is all about conversations and the influence that these conversations exercise. These services have transformed the concept of "word of mouth" to new levels never seen before. People give more weight to what friends and other customers say about a product or service and this has always been the case. The thing with social networking today is that an individual's opinion can be transmitted to more people and at a fraction of the time it used to take, magnifying the influence of these electronic conversations both positively and negatively.

Small businesses are not immune to the reach of social media. In fact they are more vulnerable especially since they are unlikely to be monitoring what is being said about them in social networks. Negative sentiment about the products and services of a business that are not responded to will impact the business sooner or later.

The irony for successful small businesses is that they are actually good at listening to customers. The problem is that because they are not familiar with this new medium, they miss the signals simply because they are not monitoring it.

Creating a page for your business has never been easier. Facebook and now Google+ allows small businesses to have one up and running in no time. The real challenge is not simply creating a page but ensuring that you have new content and also responding and engaging customers who post comments to the page. Having virtual conversations with your customers is another means for keeping your customers engaged

Younger employees are more apt to make use of these facilities so make sure that you tap into them. Business owners would also do well to make posts regularly. It goes a long way to putting a human face to your business

Google Apps Marketplace - The Sleeper

2011-11-16T14:00:00.000+11:00

I have to wonder why large software companies struggle engage effectively with small businesses and the the current battle between Google and Microsoft is a good example of this. Microsoft describes Office 365 as productivity applications and Google describes Google Apps as communication and collaboration tools. Visit the web pages for both these services and you will find descriptions of IT related benefits and features and of choice of device, of access anywhere, anyhow and anytime.

But when you speak to a small business owner their eyes start to glaze over when you try to be passionate about email and realtime collaboration. It's not that they are dismissive but its not something that is in their vocabulary and it does not give them a blood rush. And let's remember that Australian small businesses almost never have a dedicated internal IT person.

If this wasn't bad enough start talking about "the cloud" and now you have really lost them. And this is at the heart of why small business uptake of cloud services has not lived up to expectations beyond the early adopters. The early adopters get this whole cloud thing so its preaching to the converted. However mainstream small business owners simply do not get that excited about technology, not when they are struggling to deal with challenges such as increased competition, rising costs and interest rates to name but just a few. Just telling them about "productivity" or "collaborative" tools is just going to cut it.

And this is a tragedy because Google Apps is perfect for small businesses provided we can start talking to them in their language. A recent assignment I completed with a small Australian business with 12 full time employees is a good example of this. Migrating their email to Google Apps was not seen to be a big thing after all it is just email. Ok Google Talk and Google Docs was useful too but not earth shattering for them.

It was only when they started using Google Docs did it become more clear to them that the collaborative features of Google Apps would significantly help them get their customer quotes better managed. Whereas they had to email each other to work though revisions to a quote done correctly for a customer now everyone was working on the same up-to-date version of the quote.

It also quickly twigged that simply creating and sharing the spreadsheet which they use to track material shipments in Google Docs would give everyone up-to-date status on where everything was. And all this was done using standard Google Docs.

And just as quickly, they soon started to explore the business applications available on Google Apps Marketplace and are now looking to select and implement a simple CRM application. Google Apps Marketplace is a hidden gem for small business owners. Not only does it make it easy and simple to find relevant applications, they can try it out before buying all in one place.

Solving business problems is the language that small business owners understand and appreciate. Google Apps is the underlying foundation and piping that enables them to get on with addressing their business process problems. Google and its partners do a really good job of helping them migrate to Google Apps taking care of all the technical issues but it is identifying and solving their business pain that is going to get them interested enough to look at Google Apps.

Why Small Businesses Should Consider Google+

2011-11-08T10:40:00.000+11:00

Does the world need another social network when we are already inundated with Facebook and Twitter? And to make matters worse, business owners are now being told that they need to get going with social CRM. Is it any wonder that businesses owners are getting overwhelmed with the confusion and complexity.

Let's firstly be clear that Google+ is a social network. It is a place where people post views and comments and holds electronic conversations. At this point, the business owner is thinking "so what". Some of these conversations are about products and services. Ah ... getting warmer now. These conversations in social networks are going on whether a business likes it or not. The real problem is that it is visible for all the world to see and thats why a business should need to know.

Businesses have been increasingly active in social networks so why should small businesses have any reason to be interested in Google+

Google+ is best understood when taken together with Google Apps, the productivity, communications and collaboration suite of services. In this context Google+ serves two primary functions:

Acts as a gateway linking the Google ecosystem to other social networks
Provides a simple means to link various Google App content repositories

Gateway to Other Social Networks

No single social networking service has a monopoly on online conversations which means that businesses need to active in all the major social networks. Google+ allows its users to share posts in Google+ as well as Facebook and Twitter. This is great to post in one place and share in the other networks.

Links Apps Productivity Environment

While Google Apps users have had a number of services for engaging its customers such as Google Sites, Blogger and Google Groups which serve a variety of purposes. Google+ adds social networking capabilities similar to Facebook to this growing arsenal at the disposal of small businesses and in some ways allows you to pull together content from all these and other sources for sharing both within and external to your organisation.

What is different about Google+ for Google Apps users is that it naturally and seamlessly adds social networking capabilities to the productivity and collaboration functions available to Google Apps user making it easier to incorporate into ones daily activities. For a small business with limited resources this makes it so easier to incorporate social networking into the normal business activities. Google Apps users will notice that their organisation is an option that is available when sharing a post in Google+

Google+ uses a concept of placing contacts into Circles and sharing content with one or more Circles. Google have wisely made it easy to not just share a post to the members of your Google+ Circles but also share the post to Twitter and Facebook at the same time.

Google are in the process of creating a variant of Google+ for businesses and this is going to bring more specific capabilities for businesses in the near future.

Why Golf Reminds Me Of Social CRM

2011-11-06T13:01:00.002+11:00

I play golf badly and it struck me today why trying to improve one's golf game is like social CRM. I keep being told to visualize where you want the ball to end up, imagine the flight of the ball then keep your head down and your eyes on the ball all the while you are taking your swing.

Oh and by the way you have to keep doing that for every shot until you sink that little sucker and repeat it all again for 18 holes.

Social CRM is in many ways just like that. It isn't a one shot implementation of a piece of software or even a business process. It needs to be ingrained into the culture of the organisation. It is serious business. Conversations are going on all the time about organisations, it's behavior, it's products and services and what you don't could actually kill your brand, reputation and credibility. The recent negative tweeting about a company in Australia called Gasp is evidence of this.

But simply assigning people to monitor what is being said about you and your business is not enough. You need to know the environment and ave an idea of where you are going. Like golf it simply sin't just about you, your clubs and the golf ball. You need to take into account the stupid trees that line the fairway, those damned bunkers that get in the way and oh yeah, what about those water holes and ponds that just pop up round the corner that you did not see when you teed off.

A old hand at the game said to me at the end of a round the other day said that if you want to really improve your game, you can't just play once a week. You gotta do it regularly which is the same of social CRM. Its not something you just do when you feel like it. You have got to be in it all the time. It has to be part of your DNA of your organisation otherwise you will never get better at it

The East Must Be Mildly Amused With The US Senate Google Hearings

2011-10-05T15:27:00.000+11:00

The opening of the Senate Hearing into Google is quite amusing when considered in the broader global context. Regardless of whether you believe Google's arguments or not, episodes such as these leave me wondering whether the overall business and political environment in the US is reaching a point of being destructive.

Companies seem to be reaching for their lawyers instead of their innovators to compete. The patent wars are an example of protection of intellectual property rights gone out of control. Apple suing Samsung in just about every significant market looks remarkably about hobbling competition than protecting it's patents.

The US Senate seems hell bent on investigating it's major corporations like Microsoft and Google but yet the big players on Wall Street who in no small way precipitated the GFC get away with a hand slap and a fine and carry on their merry old ways.

Their Chinese and Singaporeans who many hold up as shining examples of economic miracles must be bewildered at all this rather wasteful and destructive behavior. There is effectively no anti-Trust in both these countries and their big corporations do not get investigated for expanding their operations or influence. In fact they are encouraged to do so.

I cannot imagine a Chinese company being investigated simply because it is judged to be wielding too much power. I am still trying figure out whether Google is actually being asked to justify anything that they are purported to have committed which is wrong, harmful or illegal.

If all that can be said is that if we are so afraid of Google misusing its market share and power then we had all better hope that the next successful global company is not a Chinese company because they are not going to be constrained by the likes of that which Google now and Microsoft previously have been subject to. When Eric Schmidt that they could be only days away from being obsoleted the new player could very well come from China and then what would the US authorities do?

Who Am I In This New Connected World

2011-09-30T15:24:00.000+10:00

Remember the time when "connected world" was a buzzword. When connected meant having a connection to the Internet. Fast forward to today and we enter the world of the social wars of Facebook vs Twitter vs Google+

Today's consumer, you and I live in physical as well as virtual networks in cyberspace. We have conversations with people in our network all the time and it is these conversations that businesses are interested in or what the geeks call signals.

A new market segment called social CRM has emerged recently which is attempting to allow organizations to tap into these virtual social networks. The challenges are huge and no one seems to have a definitive answer yet.

Identity is one key element which Google has recently been grappling with. For the most part social networks do not confirm an individual's identity unless they purchase something online. Business systems such as CRM maintain contact information and track transactions and interactions with individuals.

Social networks on the other hand are largely unstructured conversations. The primary touch points of interest to a business is mainly around products, services and the business in general. Accessing this data and making meaningful sense of it is another matter.

For starters there is no easy way for a business to associate content in social network sites such as Facebook with their contacts. It could be argued that there is no need for this after all the business is mainly interested in what is being said about its products and services. Whether this is a real contraint on tapping into social networks is yet to be seen.

Google made headlines with their stand on "real identities" for Google+ and in some ways I tend to agree that a real person is more likely to be credible than a pseudo identity. But if you look at the areas which have been put forward as areas that benefit from Social CRM, they are marketing, sales and services. Sales and Services interactions do depend on an individuals identify. Even with marketing, the approach of customising marketing content relies on the individual preferences, albeit not necessarily their real identity.

The topic of identity is one that will not go away and will need to be addressed as it is a significant part of integrating the social networking world with the world of business systems

Focus On The Business Process

2011-09-28T16:21:00.001+10:00

I have posted many times that small business owners should seriously consider Google Apps for their businesses. The problem for many of them however is that a lot of the media talks about cloud computing and collaboration which is technically correct. But this is not small business language.

Speaking to a small business owner this week I asked him what problem was trying to address and without hesitation, he said that he had 6 people creating job quotes and he was having problems just keeping track of them. Staff were creating quotes that looked different and they had challenges keeping track of the revisions which happens quite often on a single quote. This is an example of how they express their problems.

Could Google Apps help manage this business process better? Of course it can. A very simple solution would be to create a template for Google Docs and to create a place where all quotes would be stored in Google Sites. Each quote could be worked on even simultaneously if necessary and all the revisions would be automatically tracked by Google Docs. Comments could be used to communicate with other staff members why changes were made and all staff members would always be working on the most up to date version of the quote. And yes they could download and send a PDF copy's of the quote to the customer using Gmail.

It isn't hard to see that this is an example of how Google Apps greatly simplifies this whole process and also throws in document management at the same time. This is the kind of language that a small business owner understands and can relate to. Telling him about cloud computing and realtime collaboration only gets you blank stares.

The underlying technology in Google Apps is more than ready for prime time. We just need to talk to small business owners in language that makes sense to them

Small Business Owners Don't Care About The Cloud

2011-08-15T16:28:00.000+10:00

Talk to most small business owners about the benefits of cloud computing and you quickly get that glazed look which is interesting because I have just attended two events lately that were promoting cloud computing and one of them were specifically targeting SMEs.

One of those events was hosted by Google promoting Google Apps. The challenge for most software vendors who target small businesses is the fact that technology, no matter how sexy it is simply is not top of mind with small business owners. This is not to that they consider it unimportant but simply that solving their specific business problems is what gets them excited - not technology. Selling them on cloud computing just does not get their attention.

In both events, the focus was on cloud computing and why cloud computing is the current paradigm. This positioning will appeal to the technically inclined including IT managers, CTOs and CIOs but not to small business owners and quite frankly, the majority of them will not get it

If we listened closely them we would be hearing things like. "I need to improve my cash-flow", "we need to improve how quickly can get quotes to customers" or "we need to be able to ship orders on the same day". They rarely say "we need a better email system" or "let's get better at collaboration". They consider these as means to an end. Clearly there is a gap in the communication. This is not to say that email and collaboration are not important or relevant. The problem is one of context.

Being able to get a quote out to customers more quickly may be dependent on having an appropriate email system as well as two or three individuals working together, perhaps simultaneously on the same document. Small business owners are very interested in specific applications of the technology not in how the technology works. One of the most often cited reasons why people choose the iPhone is quite simply "because it works". Business owners are very interested in the outcomes that a technology can help them achieve and this is why the industry together needs to start doing this so that there is more widespread adoption of this fabulous suite of online applications and business application platform

Your Mobile Phone As A Business Process Workflow Analysis Tool

2011-07-08T10:57:00.001+10:00

I wonder how many people have thought about that camera on your mobile phone as a business process workflow analysis too. Yes there are numerous applications available that allow you to store pictures of receipts for expense tracking or transcribe business cards into your address book and many other uses as well.

But what I mean us whether you have considered using it to help you visualize inefficient work practices. For those of you who are looking for ways to improve efficiency you can simply record a video of a particularly poor workflow or conversely a very good one and then subsequently analyse it for opportunities for improvement.

It is one thing to observe a workflow but recording a video of it means that you do not have to try to remember what you have seen or even be taking notes as you are observing the workflow. Having such a record means that we can go back over the workflow again later and analyse it more carefully for things that we may have missed.

Consider situations like warehouse putaway an picking, data entry, or any service associated workflow. The major advantage of the mobile phones are that they are convenient and inconspicuous and can be activated almost instantly.

The biggest challenge for using this technique is transparency so avoid using it in public situations like in a retail store. Also make sure that the you have agreement of the people whom you are recording. They must be assured that the recording does not turn up on some public forum like YouTube without their knowledge or permission. One way to foster trust is to share the recording or even give them a copy. Get them to review it and make their suggestions for improving the workflow. You will be surprised what people come up with when they see themselves performing a task.

If you are going to attempt this practice first so that you at least end up with video footage that is useable. Out of focus or jerky footage is next to useless. Also make sure that you take short clips and lost of them concentrating on the actual performance of the task rather than lengthy clips of the whole end to end process in a single clip. A long lengthy clip is tedious to watch an unless you are willing to do post editing will be impractical to use.

Remember, the purpose is to encourage participation of the people you are recording and not making a movie epic so keep it simple short and to the point.

Google+ For Project Management

2011-07-07T09:05:00.001+10:00

The more I read about Google+ the more convinced I am that there is more in it for business users. Project managers have always faced the challenge of securing updates from team members and keeping everyone up to date on the status of the project. Additionally while a Project Manager may be dedicated to a project almost full time, many of their team members are likely to have normal operational responsibilities at the same time. Add to this a geographically spread team and different time zones and the complexity multiplies.

It seems to me that Google+ with its integrated social networking capabilities provides the perfect platform for keeping project team members up to date, hold scheduled meetings and well as meetings on the fly and is self documenting to the extent that a history of discussions is always available.

This really changes the game for project collaboration and allows project manager to create different Google+ Circles for different aspects of the project so that project team members get to engage in the relevant aspects of the project rather than being bombarded with updates and information of parts of the project that are not relevant to them.

And if the rumours that Google+ is also going to become available for Google Apps users, the potential for business users is tremendous as it would mean potentially opening up access to all the applications that are available in Google Apps Marketplace. The combination would be unbeatable.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Google+ Not Just Social Networking

2011-07-04T08:49:00.001+10:00

The launch of Google+ seems to have caused a big stir in the industry. Commentaries, opinions and views about its implications for social networking abound and sound terribly positive.

The implications for business are significant as it seems to provide an easy way for business users to share content in a more targeted manner and collaborate more effectively. It has the potential for professionals to create and build knowledge sharing networks in a seamless way without having to spend too much time on maintenance by bringing the ease of sharing of Twitter and the networking features of Facebook together.

Professionals do have distinct circles which are based on common interest. Imaging creating circles of each one of these and connecting your contacts around them. This would make is so much easier to share news and developments and allow for comments and opinions to be shared only with the specific circle.

Hangouts appear to be a mashup of video conferencing and forums all brought together into a single function. The big plus about Google+ is that rather than having to deal with several different applications, it is all in one and by bringing all of the best in social networking today together into one place, Google may just have leapfrogged the competition.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

The Missing Element In Adopting Google Apps

2011-06-20T00:49:00.000+10:00

I have blogged several times that cultural change is required in order to fully realize the benefits of adopting Google Apps. But what does this actually mean. At a recent event in Melbourne, Australia, Google presenters talked about shifting from individual to team productivity and I fully agree with this. But what does it actually mean.

A recent situation made me realise that making such a cultural shift is not as easy as it sounds. During a recent project, I was faced with continually updating the status of a list of items which was changing throughout the day. That's easy, just create a shared document in Google docs and share it with the 6 people who were performing the various activities and make use of the collaborative features in Google Docs.

The first problem was two of the 6 team members were external to the organisation who by the way was not a Google Apps shop. 1 external member and 1 internal team member did not have Gmail accounts which meant that they could not access the spreadsheet to share . Ok with some persuasion, I got them to create their own Gmail accounts and away we went.... well sort of.

They were fine with the idea of always seeing the most up-to-date information since everyone was working on the single document. It was when they needed to collaborate together that the cultural change became immediately obvious. Here is a list of some of the things I saw happening:

Changing the colour of the text that they had changed to indicate to the others that they had made a change (these individuals just did not appreciate that the versions capabilities already does this)
Sending an email instead of using the comment and discussion features. When asked why they did that, the answer quite simply was that they were used to doing this by email - yes those of you who are Google Docs users know that they discussion feature is easy and simple.
Only 2 team members said that they used the integrated chat facility even though they could see that some other team members we online. These same two team members were also the only two who used Voip capabilities of chat. The others just picked up the phone or used Microsoft Office Communicator

This would have been understandable if we had been talking about conservative users who were not really into technology. However the surprise is that we are talking about a bunch of IT managers. What this confirms is that change, and in particular behavioural change is no easy. Here are some possible reasons for what I observed:

Business users are very Microsoft Office centric and were attempting to do the same thing in the same way with Google Docs. In fact almost half the team were operating as if they had sent out the document and were expecting to meet up to "synchronise" the latest status via a telephone conference
The leader of the team himself acted as if Google Docs was a one for one alternative for Microsoft Word.
This organisation does in fact use Microsoft Sharepoint but in the majority of cases, documents are checked out an never checked back in for the next person which leads team members to make a copy of the document and work on the copy.

I could go on but you get the point. My biggest mistake was assuming that they were IT people they would "get it" and the experience would be great. But this was hardly the case. And this I think is the problem with many Google Apps deployments. The IT folk focus on the more technical aspects like email migration and the business users think in terms of replacements for Microsoft Office and possibly Sharepoint. Hardly anyone I have come across considers the changes to the work practices and the way teams work together.

Interestingly what I did find was that the individuals who had children at university or collage seem to have a better grasp of what I was going on about with culture and behavioural change. Their kids who need to work in groups to complete term assignments love the collaborative components of Google Docs. They do get that it is a far more effective way of working together. This is the Facebook generation. The though of different people working on different copies of the document is not natural to them and these are the ones will start to seed the workplace. Until this generation starts to dominate the workplace, it will require a concerted and conscious effort to introduce the existing workers to this new way of working. Without this behavioural change, the benefits to a small business of adopting Google Apps including Google Docs will never be fully realised.

This is not in fact difficult, it just needs to be recognised and taken into consideration when planning any Google Apps deployment

Netbooks Chromebooks and Small Businesses

2011-06-06T23:23:00.001+10:00

Googles announcement of the Chromebook has raised much commentary and opinion on both sides of the argument. What does this all mean for small businesses? Small businesses have over the past years been seeing the cost of providing computing services, at least from the hardware perspective, fall significantly. In Australia a netbook can be purchased for as little as $400 and a decent laptop for well under $1000. Add the cost of Microsoft Office for $350 when purchased together with the laptop for around the $1000 mark is what it costs to provide your staff member with a suitably configured computing device.

The real question for small businesses is what they are equipping their employees with and for what reason. Google has positioned Google Apps for $5 per month per user. Yes it is not as functionally rich as Microsoft Office but it does a good enough job for most employees most of the time. It does require an adjustment in thinking as all documents and content is stored in the cloud. There is a plethora of opinions readily available so I will not even attempt to repeat them here.

From a practical real life point of view not storing your document on the device you are actually working on does take getting used to especially for those who have been brought up on PC applications and this adjustment should not be underestimated.

There are three categories of devices spanning a wide spectrum of uses. The Chromebook sits at the pure Internet user end and it will do the job more than adequately. The laptop is more like a general purpose workhorse. it can do everything that the Chromebook can do and more but it does come at a cost both in terms of the device itself and PC applications which are at the present time more expensive than their web based counterparts. Netbooks sit somewhere between the two. The device costs significantly less than a laptop but offers the same capabilities but with lower processing capabilities.
But the picture is incomplete if you do not take into account the ongoing maintenance cost. All software needs to be updated and while most PC applications are now updated via the Internet. Upgrading PC software typically involves what in reality amounts to purchasing the new version. (for example Office 2007 to Office 2010).

It will cost $40 per month to get kitted out with Google Apps on a Chromebook which is a relatively attractive proposition for $480 per year. You will however need to be connected to the internet to access the services. To anyone new this type of computing, it can be somewhat unnerving. Despite the unfamiliarity with this computing model, there are several benefits which are not always obvious:

No loss of data if the device is lost or damaged
Immediate Continued access to the applications and data via any device with a browser
No additional cost of upgrading applications

The biggest potential benefit is improved team productivity that comes from the inbuilt team collaboration features that are baked into Google Apps which come sharing and working on a single copy of documents (not sending and having to manage multiple copies and versions of documents).

Make no mistake there is a culture change required in moving to Google Apps but the platform is sufficiently mature to make it worthwhile to make the change. The adoption of the the Google Apps platform can be undertaken with all the devices noted above and Chromebook is another option, while radical for many users, is a perfectly viable business proposition.

Google Apps - Its Not About The Features But The Work Culture

2011-05-27T13:12:00.001+10:00

We are feature addicts and love new features whether it is on our favorite device or application. Google Docs is a good example. It is not as feature rich nor, many would argue, or as pretty as Microsoft Office.

However the real question is what impact it can have on the way we work. In a previous blog I put forward a case that merely sharing a document is in more efficient and effective than sending it by email. Newer platforms such as Google Apps really enables better collaborative working and this is often missed by people who evaluate it.

Take Google Docs as an example again. you certainly can make comments in Microsoft Word and review and communicate changes. But these changes are only visible sequentially and by that I mean it is fine if you are working on the latest copy of the document. One way of ensuring that this happens is by using Microsoft Sharepoint and enforcing checking in and checking out the document. With Google Apps the paradigm is completely different. Anyone who has edit access to the document can simply work on it. If another person accesses the document while you are working on it, both of you will simply be able to work on it concurrently and see the changes the other person is making in real time.

Additionally, you can target a comment to specific individuals so that only they see it. The point of mentioning these features not to get into the feature debate but to illustrate the point that features such as these change the way we work and this change is not always obvious. Many individuals simply do not realize that this is a more effective way to work and have difficulty adjusting to it.

Students and people who are big users of social networking get it easily. To make matters worse, if only a few individuals in the organisation choose to work in this manner, adoption will be slow in the same way that the uptake of forums and group discussions have been slower in businesses than in the broader consumer arena.

With the rise of newer web based applications many organisations approach it purely from a feature or cost perspective and ignore the less obvious benefits and productivity gains that can result from changing our work practices that are possible with these new technologies. These gains can be very significant and unless you incorporate them into your assessment and subsequently into your implementation project you are going miss out on them and instead end up trying to placate what you currently do on a different albeit newer technology platform.

To Send Or Share That Is The Question

2011-05-25T13:35:00.001+10:00

We live in an email dominated world. Hardly anyone gives a thought about sending a document with an attachment. Despite the advances in online collaborative tools we are all prone to just attaching a document and sending it to several people for review and comment.

But have you stopped to consider the productivity consequences of this practice. Just think about what happens after this initial act of sending an attachment. The recipient reads the document and either makes a change in the document, adds a comment or even replies to you or forwards on the document making their comments in the email reply. This process can be repeated several times. Several days later, you now have several emails which contains some comments as well as attachments of the document you sent out with revisions. The question now is what is the current state of the document. You guessed it, you have to follow the whole trail to find out.

Online web based applications such as Google Docs all but eliminates this problem by having only one copy of the document filed on the internet which you share with the people whom you need to work on it. They make their changes or add comments to the document and these are updated immediately making it visible to the next person who views the document. In fact the enhancements to Google docs now allow more than one person to open and work on the document simultaneously.

The productivity gains of working in this manner is so easily overlooked unless you take a moment to consider the total impact on everyone who touches the document. Even if you consider that it takes a mere 2 minutes to initiate a reply to an email and attached a changed document, if the process is repeated 5 times for a single document thats already 10 minutes. Then if you now take into account perhaps 5 mins to ascertain the most current status of the document this adds another 25 mins giving a total of already 35 minutes in total for just one iteration. Now if you consider that you get on average 3 documents a day thats a total of 105 mins lost in a day. So what may seem to be just a few minutes to you as an individual is no longer insignificant when taken together as a whole for all the people within your organisation just on a simple activity as reviewing a document.

This is the kind of productivity gains that is so blindingly obvious that you wonder why we still cling to the "attach and send" way of doing things. There are real cost savings to such simple changes which have nothing to do with how sexy the technology is (although it helps with adoption). This is at the heart of the new generation of online web based applications. It is sad that we often get so carried away with wanting to customise software so that it works exactly the way we want it to that we miss the obvious opportunities to do things simpler and better by taking steps out of the process.

Are You Pricing Your Products Correctly For Your Online Store

2011-05-19T13:25:00.001+10:00

Everywhere you look traditional brick and mortar businesses are facing competition from newer online only businesses. Many businesses respond by doing the same and getting an online store and starting to sell online. While this is a logical response, what I have noticed is that they offer the same products at the same price as you would get from going to their physical shop.

This implies that the businesses does not really appreciate that their online stores are a completely different and separate sales channel and therefore as a consequence constantly complain about unfair competition from the newer online businesses. The truth of the matter is that online channels have a completely different cost structure. How different it is depends on the products you sell and the structure of your existing channels and business.

Few businesses really perform a detailed breakdown and analysis of the costs that are directly associated with each channel and and as a result merely replicate their existing price book in their online stores. To make matters even worse, the customer is faced with having to pay shipping costs on top of the price of the product which makes for an unattractive value proposition for the customer. If you operate a physical store it goes without saying that your costs that are directly attributable to that store can be easily compared to the total sales for that store. However few companies even attempt to determine the attributable costs associated with online sales.

I suggest that careful examination of all related costs is likely to reveal surprising results. There are some costs which apply to all sales and these include your purchasing and warehousing overheads but from that point onwards the costs diverge so significantly that it would be imprudent to assume that they are the same.

Online sales do have associated costs such as the cost of operating an online sales system and the cost of online advertising but these are variable and easily identifiable costs and there are obviously other associated costs. The real issue is whether you choose to pass on shipping costs to your customers or whether you decide to treat is as a direct cost of doing business online. Recent reports suggest that more and more online businesses are offering free shipping and this makes customers happier to know that they will not face an additional charge after they have made their buying decision.

The way you decide to price your products online is not that simple when you also sell through other channels especially where these channels make up a big proportion of your sales. However not considering different pricing will consign your efforts to sell online to failure especially if there are competing products that are already being sold online. Take the case of smartphone cases which are being sold on high street at typically around $15 which can be purchased and shipped to your doorstep for as little as $5. If you choose to sell that same case at the same price at $15 you will never be able to bridge that gap and your online sales will rarely achieve it's full potential.

Yes you can always put an argument forth that decries the unfair pricing of vendors from HK and China but you are leaving business on the table by not looking more closely at your own cost structures and pricing. Don't take the easy way out. Do the exercise to see what your real margins are for online sales. You could be surprised.

There are naturally many other factors that contribute to how successfully you can add an online channel to your business and these are equally as important but at least make informed decisions about your online pricing based on a thorough understanding on the real cost of doing business online.

The Economics of Free Shipping

2011-05-09T18:53:00.001+10:00

A few months ago, I was introduced to a number of online sites selling everything from electronic gadgets to household goods. These sites were recommended to me by my son and some younger co-workers. I have for years stopped shopping for books in the local bookshops due largely to the inflated costs. I used Amazon for many years but then switched to Book Depository who were offering free shipping to any where in the world which brings me to the point of this post. Is the cost of shipping really a throw back to the days of brick and mortar?

How is it that companies like Book Depository and the online electronic businesses in places like Hong Kong not charge you for shipping and still survive. I suspect that they view shipping as a necessary overhead of simply doing business in the same way that retail outlets view rent and the higher rents that they pay for high street retail shops as part of their overhead. A retail shop does not offer you a price and then say that there is an additional charge for rent, lighting and the like. Exclusively online businesses are volume based businesses and have decided that a greater reach geographically more than justifies them absorbing part of the shipping costs.

The psychological impact on a buyer is not to be underestimated. No one likes finding an item for what they consider to be a good price only to find that the shipping cost often negates the price advantage. I also suspect that with increased volumes these businesses are able to extract better rates from their carriers. The net effect for the consumer is that they can get the same items for sometimes up to as much as 30 to 50 percent cheaper provided they are willing to wait the 5 to 10 days that it takes to arrive at your doorstep.

For me, at any rate, any purchase that is up to $100 is rarely that critical and does not require immediate consumption so a saving of that magnitude is worth it. This goes against the grain of what most people think. That a deeper discount on a high valued item is worth waiting for.

So what are the implications for small businesses? While doing business online is often viewed as an extension of an existing brick and mortar business, you really need to think carefully about whether the same costing is really valid. Just because you have a warehouse as well as retail outlet does not mean that you must price your items in the same way. If your items are sufficient small and are shipped in small quantities to a wider customer base especially if you are selling direct to the end customer, then this has to be viewed as a completely different channel to market and should be priced accordingly. Your service to these customers are different and I would argue that in a lot of cases cost you less so your margins are different. Simply averaging your costs does you a disservice.

A more disconcerting factor is the fact that the younger generation, your future customers are increasingly shopping online and will have no hesitation of buying from an online site regardless of where they are located

So take a much close look at your margins based on the different channels to market. Free shipping may not be as silly as you would think especially for small businesses that do not have wide geographic reach.

Mobile Computing Today

2011-05-07T21:41:00.000+10:00

You have to wonder with all the progress and developments with smartphones and tablets what difference it makes productivity in everyday practical business situations. It takes just a $59 monthly plan to provide a smartphone to your staff so consider then what it means for your business productivity.
Having both a smartphone and a tablet I have come to some conclusions. Firstly, these devices are wonderfully simple for consuming content. By this I mean that it is great for searching for and finding information outside of your office. Think about reading email, getting directions, reading news and updates from the web and the like. They are not terribly good for anything that requires extensive input and editing such as writing a report or entering extensive amounts of data into a system while people are out on the road.

Based on these broad generalizations what then does it mean for business use. It provides an affordable means of keeping your staff connected to the business when they are not in the office. They can retrieve and read documents and have access to many online systems that you may use. It is easy for them to make short notes and quick updates while on the go saving them having to jot things down and remember to update systems and reports when they get back to the office. The key thing here is collaboration and quicker or immediate updating of information so that is it available to more people in the business more quickly.

They can complete whatever they are doing and move on to the next activity without having to worry about having to play catch up when they get back to the office which in some cases may be a few days later. For a busy individual who is going from meeting to meeting, that half an hour in between meeting is no longer wasted. And what about all those action items that invariably one agrees to in meetings. Jotting it down on a piece of paper is the surest way to ensure that it will get lost.

Barely 5 years ago, mobile computing was all about getting computing capabilities from the desktop onto something that we could take with us gaving rise to laptops and netbooks. While this was happening, phones got smarter and today we have the iPhone, Android powered phones and these have been joined by tablets led by the iPad. These are radically different, not just in terms of form factor but also in capabilities. Smartphones and tablet applications are very simple to use in comparison to their laptop counterparts. The smaller form factor, simplicity and enhanced sharing and collaborative capabilities allow us to do things differently from the way we would do them with a mobile laptop.

They are however, not yet ready to completely replace laptops which we will still need for at least a little while yet.

Attracting Customers With Online Mobile Offers

2011-05-04T13:38:00.001+10:00

Getting online has gotten a whole lot easier these days and can easily be done by getting listed in Google Places. But the real challenge is how you differentiate yourself from everyone else who is out there offering similar things. Everyone loves a deal whether is it is a sale or a special offer. The problem for small business is making sure you get noticed. It is one thing to have a website but what good is it if people don't know what you have on offer.

Well new apps such as Yumtable and Scoopon have sprung up which make it a whole lot easier for you to engage with your existing and prospective customers. Yumtable is a restaurant reservation application app which presents the user with a list of offers from restraurants near you based on the location of your smartphone. With the proliferation of Android and iPhones people who have one will simply open this app and can easily see what's on off near them. So they are more likely to make a reservation from their device and take advantage of the offer than they are to walk around to find some place. This will give business who get themselves listed a leg up on the competition.

Another service is Scoopon which again makes use of the device location to present to the user a list of offers in the vicinity. Scoopon is not just limited to food and has other services on offer as well.

The real point is not whether you offer is attractive, but more that customers are more likely to call up an app about food especially when they have something to gain from doing it this way rather than just do a generic search on Google Search. So it's all about getting yourself visible which is always the challenge with new emerging businesses.

Is Big Brother Tracking You Really a Problem

2011-04-27T18:34:00.001+10:00

I have followed with interest the storm that is brewing over Apple, and now Google keeping track of your location history. I will put in my two cents for what it is worth. I will not add to the debate on whether it is true or not and whatever the merits or demerits are. To me the point is whether you are better off or worse off and what can you do about it.

Simply put, you could choose not to purchase any device which is purported to be keeping tabs on you. It really is that simple. You don't have to buy and use any device which you feel uncomfortable with. If this really a major problem people will simply stop buying such devices.

It also seems that we have an inflated ego that people really want to track you for some nefarious reason. Is it an invasion of your privacy? Well it depends on your point of view. The arguments put forward so far appear to be terribly theoretical and hinge only on this point. I for one don't have a problem with location history being tracked so long as the benefits to me out weight any supposed infringement of my privacy. But hey I don't live in the USA where increasingly it seems that people reach for their lawyers at the first hint of anything that vaguely resembles an impingement on ones personal space.

For goodness sake even with a basic phone without GPS your location can be tracked and this capability has been around for far longer than iPhones and Android phones. So why is this now such a new and dangerous issue.

I do not support deliberate acts of invasion of privacy and yes Apple and Google can and should introduce better user control of the data but I hardly think that this justifies the hysteria that is being generated. There comes a point where excessive control and hysteria about one's privacy become barriers to technological advancements especially when lawyers encourage class actions at the drop of a hat.

OK let the hate mail begin

It really Is About Being Simple Stupid

2011-04-14T09:03:00.000+10:00

My son and daughter gave me an Apple TV for Christmas and I would just like to share with you what the experience taught me about all the confusing array of technology available to us.

So what did I really learn from unpacking my shiny new Apple TV. First let me say that the set up and configuration was a breeze and was done in a matter of minutes. It just worked and within minutes I was viewing things on my TV. It has many limitations and things that it does not do. But what it did do it does well and simply. It just worked.

Now think about technology, cloud computing, tablets, social networking and just about everything you can think of that businesses struggle to come to terms with. So very often we get bogged down by the things and features that we do not have or do not quite work the way we would like it to and then spend most of our time grumbling about it. While we all quote the proverbial 80:20 rule, the problem is that we focus on the 20% of the things that are not right instead of getting on with the other 80% that actually does work well.

This is a terrible frame of mind which is actually quite pervasive and terribly destructive when it comes to people adopting new technology. We somehow naturally gravitate towards the things that it does not do. Just take a look at all the recent commentary about the new tablets or smartphones. We have hardly got beyond unpacking the box before we are hit by a large dose of things that people would like to see in the next version of the product. What's wrong with what you have just got? My take is that it is the 20% of dissatisfied folks who are making all the noise.

We see this same thing with software applications. Developers are faced with a torrent of requests for enhancements which by the way invariably add complexity to the product for the other 80% of the people who did not have a problem with it to start off with. The advent of the online application stores from the likes of Apple and Google presents an interesting lesson in adoption. The majority of offerings started off with very simple and intuitive hardly needing a manual to be read before using it. Simply stated, it was a simply matter of try-buy-and start using immediately. This is the way it should be for business applications too.

This is the reason why something like Google Apps together with Google Apps marketplace has the potential to transform the business application market in the same way that Apple changed the game with the mobile phone. Google has created the ecosystem which makes available an amazing array of business functions at a cost unimaginable just 2 years ago.

Small and medium sized businesses really don't care too much for the underlying technology. They simply do not have the propensity nor the time to deal with complex technical solutions. The KISS principle truly resonates with them. They want things to work consistently and this is an area where companies like Google and Apple excel in different ways.

So what does simple really mean. It means being able to do things and achieve outcomes quickly and easily with tools that just works in the shortest time possible.

Why are products from Google, Apple, Facebook and Twitter so well and widely adopted? Well they are simple. They are cleanly laid out and perform all the necessary things they were meant to do easily and simply when compared to other available offerings.

Simplicity means less hassles and time taken to do what all businesses should consider to be non-value adding activities to spend more time on value generating business activities. Technology must serve this end. Those that do will succeed. Those that do not will end up as a footnote in history

Enhance Staff Participation in Google Apps with iGoogle

2011-04-11T08:44:00.000+10:00

iGoogle is a great vehicle for use as a personal portal by individuals who are members of a Google Apps installation. iGoogle has been around for sometime and is intended to act as a personal portal to the Internet. It is a customisable home page for individual users that can be the first thing that a user sees when they open their Internet browser.

What is important is that it is customisable by the individual simply by adding gadgets to the web page. What this means is that a user can configure iGoogle to show their email, ToDo, and a wide variety of things limited only by what the gadgets they add to their homepage.

When used in conjunction with Google Apps, this provides a simple and effective one stop shop for staff to be able to access their work as well as personal content. This could include links to all key business applications, email and links to news and other things like Google Docs.

If you make use of Google Groups for your internal discussions these can be easily deposited on their iGoogle home page too. The real point of this is to make it more engaging for staff to collaborate. It isn't the technology that matters but what it enables people to do and for the most part they just don't know what is possible. Mixing work and personal also provides more incentive for people to want to make use of the underlying technology. You cannot force people to collaborate but you can definitely provide the tools that enables and encourages them to do so

Taking The Confusion Out Of Online Document Sharing

2011-03-30T00:54:00.001+11:00

There are more document online sharing facilities than you can poke a stick at and it gets more confusing with each passing day. So which one is the best? It depends on what you are trying to do.

In broad terms there are two categories of offerings. While both allow you to share your file they use different method to achieve the outcome you may be seeking.

In the first category you have the file sharing method where you give permissions to view or edit a file that you upload to the Internet. Good examples of this include Dropbox and Microsoft Sharepoint. With Sharepoint you check-out the document so that no one can edit the master copy while you work on it until you check it back in. With Dropbox a local copy is available to you on your local hard disk. Any changes that you make are automatically synced with the master copy on the Internet so that anyone attempting to use the file will have the most up to date copy.

The second category of offerings only ever had one master copy of the document stored on the Internet and everyone who has the right permission updates the master in real time. Google Docs is a good example of this.

So which one is best for you? Naturally it depends on what you want to achieve and how you work. As a general rule of thumb if the people you share the document make very infrequent changes to the document then the first file sharing method will work well for you. If more than one person works on the file simultaneously then the real time collaboration capabilities are the way to go.

So in the end, the real issue is not which one is better but how you and your team work and there are real productivity gains to be had from choosing and implementing the right workflow

The Tablets Are Coming - So What?

2011-02-25T18:30:00.001+11:00

The phony tablet war appears to be coming to an end as Apple's competitors finally roll out their offerings. But even as the slew of new devices hit the market, the real question for a small business is so what? The real challenge facing small business owners is not technology per se but the economics of computing.

So here is my take on the current environment. Firstly there are already lots of viable and cost effective computing devices in play today, Smartphones, net books and now tablets. These veritable variety of devices today cost anything from $400 to just under $1000 and serve different functions and consumers and it certainly is confusing enough with every vendor making a play for your purchase.

But the real issue question that any small business needs to ask and answer is what business problem you are trying to address. The real question is the total cost of ownership and operation and this is where Google Apps becomes more than just a compelling proposition. Google Apps is not dependent on the actual business applications running on your individual specific device. In fact you can access all your critical business functions via any of the stated devices and yes even your existing laptops and desktop machines. All that is required is an internet browser.

Therefore the role of the device is simply to provide you access and bear in mind that you are no longer limited to the specific device where your application was installed on previously. By this I mean that if you happen to want to read a document that you wrote previously on say your iPad but you are in a cafe with say your Android smartphone just go ahead. And oh by the way remember that time when your laptop got fried and you didn't have a backup copy of your documents? Well that is a thing a of past now as you will always have access to Google Apps unless of course you don't have access to the internet or in the unlikely case where Google actual goes down. So this means that your choice of device is now truly a decision of form factor that is suitable for your activities. Tradesmen have typically found it difficult to handle touch screens on smart phones and the same applies for tablets. So in this instance a net book with a more hardly keyboard may be appropriate. It is small enough and will do the job nicely.

When is comes to the cost of software applications, it is terribly difficult to go past Google Apps. At $50 per user per year it makes Microsoft Office look exorbitant by comparison. And that yearly $50 also includes automatic updates unlike having to purchase the next upgrade to Office which happens once every 3 years.

So what has this all got to do with the tablet wars. To put it frankly with the cost of net books dropping to $400 and with the tablet wars likely to bring tablet prices down to the $500 mark in the next 12 months, there really isn't too much in it. It you are looking for business productivity at a reasonable cost without your staff having to lug around those comparatively heavy laptops then both will actually do the job. In reality the major practical different is the physical vs the screen keyboard. Yes I know that the technically inclined will put forward all sorts of technical arguments, most of which are valid but for a small business its all about practicality and cost. If you Google Apps into the equation, the hardware decision, whether it is a tablet or not pales into comparison.

So get the focus right and start with the right question. What are you trying to achieve and if it is business productivity then you really cannot go wrong with Google Apps and any portable device, tablet or otherwise.

Using Video to Enhance Your Online Presence

2011-02-09T08:59:00.000+11:00

In my previous blog, I put forward the case for the use of video for small service based businesses. In this post, I will focus on some things that small wholesalers, distributors or manufacturing businesses could use video for to improve the online experience for your customers.

A lot of things haves been said about using video to promote your business online which is a good starting point after all its about revenue generation. But let's not forget that there are other facets of your business which could also benefit from the use of video which often does not come immediately to mind. Take photography for example. New camera equipment is subject to intense scrutiny often backed up by video reviews. Photo editing software h tons of training and education and tips and trick videos on YouTube. So why not do the same for your products.

The important thing here is to get away from the "sales pitch" and focus on how to use your product. People are skeptical about ads, so show them practical real life uses of your product rather than just telling them about all the great features you offer just show them in use. Even better, if you can, put up short videos of different customers using your product in real life situations.

A power tool company has a series of videos that it made available to its distributors of new equipment so that they can be well informed of how to position and talk about their new models. Software companies already make available videos of their products online and often on YouTube. So whether you sell pen knives or kitchen equipment think about getting some video up.

For small businesses, the issue often comes down to cost again. You don't really need to get professional actors. In fact, I would say that someone on your staff who is passionate about your product is probably a better bet. The fact that they may not look as slick is probably a good thing as it will not look that staged.

Another area is after sales service. If you are getting calls about how some feature works on your product, why not just shoot a video on how you, the seller and manufacturer of the product does it. Showing a customer is far more effective than trying to describe it in text. And by the way it will reduce the number of calls you get and the time it consumes for your staff to deal with a commonly asked question.

The one thing I found about the photography industry is that there are a whole bunch of people who will do reviews of your products. Some of it informed and others not. If you don't tell people how to get the best of of your products, you will be leaving it to other people. It is a good idea to take a look at what other people are doing in other industries so don't just look at what other businesses are doing in your own industry. You will be surprised to find out just what better ways there are of presenting your business in a better light

Google Docs Your Filing System in the Cloud

2011-02-04T09:08:00.000+11:00

Something happened to Google Docs while you weren't looking. You used to simply save your documents that you had created using Google Docs. Then you were able to upload and store other documents you created say such as a Word, Excel or PDF documents.

Large businesses continually talk about document management and there are a lot of products out there that help you do this. But for a small business, the last thing you want is another piece of software to install and maintain and you are probably tired of trying to organize all the documents generated in your business, let alone organize them in a meaningful way. Oh and yes there is the other problem of running out of disk space. Remember those times when you find that you need to add more disk space or someone says that you have to delete files to make space available on the shared hard drive in the office. Even worse, remember the time when everyone in the office was told that the disc drive packed in and you hoped that someone made copies of all the important documents that were on it.

Google Docs stores documents online which avoids all these problems altogether. Initially only spreadsheets, word processing documents and presentations were supported but over time, Google added the capabilities of uploading any file and also started providing capabilities for you to work and edit those files. This has meant that Google Docs very quietly became an online filing store for any file and not just documents.

This week Google made another enhancement by adding Collections which really is a great feature that helps small businesses to better use Google Docs as their online filing system. Simply put, you can add any file stored in Google Docs to one or more collections. This is a really simple and effective way of organising your files. Sure you could have always created folders and place your file in that folder on your PC of office shared hard drive but it could only ever be in one folder. But with collections, a file can be attached to as many collections as you like. And you can even have collections within collections which helps you even better organise your files.

Combine this with the sharing capabilities in Google Docs and you now have a very simple way of controlling who has access to sensitive files and documents. You can give any individual or groups of individuals permission to only view or edit individual files or all files in a collection.

What this means for small businesses is you now have a pretty powerful and comprehensive yet simple document management system without all the complexity and overhead of installing and managing one. And you also have the added benefit of not needing to purchase and install upgrades to your document management system

The bottom line for small businesses is that Google has provided you with the means to tame the document filing beast in a simple and effective way.

Why Australian Small Businesses Should Consider Switching To Google

2011-01-31T22:55:00.001+11:00

Australian small businesses typically have typically between 10 to 20 staff, are owned and run by the founder and generally do not have a full time IT member of staff. They have been big users of Microsoft Office and Outlook for most their IT needs for a long time. So what's changed now that warrants them seriously considering Google.

Part of the problem is that Australian small businesses are not all that familiar with what Google offers. Most are familiar with Google Search and some may even know and use Gmail. Do a search on Google Places and you will not see too many small Australian small businesses listed. That unfortunately is about the sum total of their knowledge of Google.

So why should an Australian small business (or for that matter any small business anywhere in the world) now consider changing to Google? To answer that question, we need to introduce small business owners to a more complete understanding of services offered by Google. Fortunately Google have made it a whole lot easier with the advent of Google Apps and Apps Marketplace. What you might ask are those? This would be a typical answer you get from most small business owners. I asked this of two friends of mine who own and run fairly successful businesses and all I got was glassy eyed stares

Google has a formidable portfolio of applications, tools and utilities which has grown and been enhanced over the past few years. Today this portfolio covers just about every conceivable area that you can image. But part of the problem is that outside of search, most small business owners have never heard or used any of them. So perhaps and introduction may be in order.

A useful starting point would be with the key applications that most small business use and you will find almost universally that email, spreadsheets, word processing would be the main productivity and communication tools. An accounting package would also figure high in the list and maybe a website of some sort. A quick check will reveal that all these are used as individual, independent tools with probably lots of emailing of documents or perhaps even a shared folder on some server in the office. Google has packaged all that an more into a suite call Google Apps.

While this brings useful productivity benefits, it ignores the far greater benefits of working together collaboratively. It is when this factor is taken into consideration that Google suddenly becomes a far more attractive proposition for small business and the key to it is its simplicity. The Google Apps website contains a good facility for assessing comparative costs between using Google and Microsoft so I will not repeat it here. However this comparison does not even touch on the benefits of collaborative working which for most small businesses are hidden and hence not taken into account.

How often have you heard the anguished cry of someone wanting to find a file or document that they know they have seen before but cannot now find. If they are lucky someone will locate it after some furious searching for perhaps 10 to 20 minutes at a conservative guess. That's lost productivity. multiply that by 2 or 3 if that many people go looking for that missing document and you get the picture.

Collaboration is at the crux of the case for Google. Most people will admit that they hardly use perhaps 10 to 20 percent of the features in Excel or Word and most will tell you readily that they keep their documents on their laptop or PC. Loose that or the hard drive and you can almost be certain that no one bothered to make a backup copy. Because Google's applications were written from the ground up to be used on the Internet, all your data is stored safely and securely on the web which means that it is nearly impossible for you to loose it especially if you use Google's famed search to look for it. It also means that you have a single version of the truth, not multiple copies located on everyone's individual PCs.

Next consider the way that Google's applications are integrated. Take the simple example of online chat. While you are working on any document in Google Docs, you can easily open a chat session to start an online conversation to discuss the document contents while sharing the document so both of you can view it and even edit it at the same time.

This is basic simple foundation which small business mimics the way small businesses operate in a simple, intuitive and informal way and that is only the beginning. I will expand on this and open up other ways a small business can significantly improve productivity and collaboration in future blogs based on the wealth of functionality that Google has assembled under it's Google Apps banner.

Using Video To Promote Your Service Business Online

2011-01-30T18:58:00.001+11:00

Do a search for a restaurant and what do you find? Typically a description of the restaurant, some photographs, its location, hours of operation and a menu. You might even be able to make a reservation. But it really does not give you a feel for the place.

Whatever your service is, adding visuals on your webpage is always a more compelling way of conveying who you are and what your customers and prospects can expect when they engage you or buy your service. Photographs are a good starting point but video done properly can be much more effective. But how does a small business without a Hollywood budget go about doing a video. It may not be as difficult as you think. A practical (and cost effective) way to start is to think about your circle of friends and family. There is probably people there who are more just just your casual happy snapper. Given that the cost of video cameras and digital SLRs which have video capability has dropped significantly in the past few years, you just might be surprised just how many of your friends and family would be more than willing to have a go.

What you need is some good content (video footage), some basic video editing skills and a way to publish your completed video. For starters think about what you want to show. It is important to have some sort of a theme. It should reflect who you are and how you conduct your business. If you you are a family sort of restaurant, get footage of children and happy smiling waiters playing with the kids. If you are a more formal environment then get the right clips of the more deliberate and polished kind of service. And don't forget the back room. Some clips of the food preparation and chefs preparing the food would also help convey the kind of restaurant you are.

If you are a restaurant, you want to convey the atmosphere of the place and some of your key cosy areas, for example if you have a nice outdoor area or a fireplace. So take plenty of footage of what you would like to show from all different angles. It doesn't matter if each individual sequence is not perfect after all you will be editing and picking the best bits later. Just get plenty of footage first. Typically each individual clip or sequence shot should be short between 10 to 30 seconds. I will explain a bit later why.

The editing stage is next when you start to assemble your masterpiece. Remember that you are trying to give people an impression of your place especially those who are not yet your customers. So do not plan to do a 5 min video. Its just too long. After all you want people to view this on the internet and the last thing you want is them waiting for the video to load up. I would suggest that the finished video should not be more than 3 mins and probably closer to 1 minute. It is better to have several different short clips rather than one long one so that you can more effectively present them on your website. For example if you have a separate bar/lounge and a restaurant proper, then do two different videos rather than one long one.

Your finished product will be a combination of several clips so make each sequence between 4 to 8 sec and pick the kind of transition between one scene or sequence to convey the impression that suits your service. For example avoid the snazzy flashy transitions if you want to convey a quiet tranquil atmosphere. Your video must reflect what your place is like. Snappy snazzy transitions are probably appropriate for a nightclub which has that kind of atmosphere.

Use labels and titles where appropriate as it helps to narrate your video unless you are thinking of adding audio commentary. Audio commentary is good especially if you or any of your staff have a good voice but you will need some kind of a script otherwise. You do not have to do to the audio while the video is being shot. In fact it is often better to add it later as part of the editing process. Obviously it goes without saying that you will need to have appropriate music to go along.

Ok when you have finally got it done and are happy with it, where do you place it. YouTube is a good starting place. But wait a minute you say, wasn't the whole point putting the video on your home page. Well yes. Uploading your video to YouTube has several advantages. It is simple to upload your video onto you tube and then make you use tags to help the audience find your video. Another useful thing about YouTube is that you have your very own YouTube Channel which allows you to neatly organize and present all your subsequent videos. Think about it you could had different themes for different times of the year, for example a birthday or anniversary theme. This is som much better than uploading the video to your own website which makes it more difficult for people to find.

To display the video on your website is really simple. If you are using something like Google Sites it is really simple to add a video to your website by embedding the link to the video on YouTube.

Ok so this may sound like a lot to do but it really isn't all that bad. All that stuff about video editing is just stuff that people who play around with video do all the time. If you have secured the services of a video enthusiast friend or family member they are more than likely to already be familiar with editing.

So you may not get a super slick cinema or TV ad but what you really want is a way for prospective customers to get to know you better than your competition. It is really not all that hard once you get started. And you know what that? Your YouTube Channel could soon start to look pretty neat as you add more an more content.

Small Businesses Cannot Afford TV Advertising - Really?

2011-01-10T13:24:00.001+11:00

Wouldn't it be good to be able to advertise on TV? This is a question that small business owners only dream of but have never even dared to consider simply because of the prohibitive cost of doing so. But dig a bit bit deeper and you will be surprised at what is possible.

There are two things that a major barriers to advertising. The cost of producing something for public consumption and the cost of distribution. The proliferation of cheap video and video editing facilities means that almost everyone can afford to take videos but I am not suggesting that you go out there and buy a video camera and software and get on with it. The truth is that actually producing even a 3 or 5 minute clip takes a lot of time. You still need to get someone with knowledge and skills to create a script and pull it together for you.

This is where you should consider approaching your local university or institution of learning. Talk to folks teaching marketing and media and offer them a project of some sort to offer their students as a project or even a competition. It won't cost you an arm and a leg and you could be very surprised at what they can do. The lower cost of equipment means that their students can actually take on such projects affordably now.

Ok so thats a starting point for getting something produced. What about distribution. This is where Google brings to the table a number of different and very cost effective options. For starters the video can be hosted on either Google Video or YouTube so it costs you nothing. Next make sure that you tag your video appropriately so that it can be found. Direct your customers and prospective customers from your website or your directory listing to the video. Don't have an online listing then get yourself listed on Google Places. If you don't have a website check out Google Sites.

There really are a lot of different options open to you. The point I am trying to get at is that there is an affordable way to get your video intent online to promote your business today so you can start to differentiate your online presence. I will cover this topic in more detail in future posts.

Using Google Apps To Create Delightful Customer Project Experiences

2011-01-10T13:14:00.001+11:00

Having worked on more projects than I care to remember, one of my biggest bug bears is all the amount of loss of momentum that is lost due to poor engagement and communication. A typical project will involve individuals not only from different departments but also from possibly some of your suppliers. In the heat of a project with all the activities that are going on, it is all too easy to forget who the customer is and loose sight of their objectives and requirements.

Project managers are charged with the responsibility of bringing all relevant parties together and have at their disposal a veritable plethora of quite accomplished tools. The real problem is most of these tools are aimed at managing projects and not really aimed at helping people work together on projects. That is until now. Doing a quick search on Google Apps on project management lists a fairly long list of applications and while there are the usual suspects of project scheduling applications, the majority of project management applications now sport some incarnation of social networking features.

The biggest challenge remains a cultural one in that in a business environment, a lot of individuals are just not used to sharing information in such an open manner. But this is changing as the younger generation that have grown up with Facebook and Twitter enter the workforce.

In the fast paced environment two factors come into play. The first is that conditions change so rapidly that those once a week updates are, well simply too late. People involved in a project typically resort to email to get the latest updates on items and information that impact the activities they are responsible for.

At the other end of the spectrum, individuals do not want to get inundated with masses of data that they have to sieve through to get what is relevant to them. This is where a lot of the new applications come into their own. By encouraging team members to post important changes and let the team members decide what they need to follow and avoids the problem of the person who has the information having to figure out who needs to know or worse still sending am email to everyone they feel needs to know adding to our already bloated email inboxes.

Having customizable dashboards also means that individuals can more easily tailor the content that is pertinent to them and also at the same time contribute to discussions about relevant items.

The second factor is the growing number of small form factor devices. Over the past 6 months the computer industry has been abuzz with new developments and announcements about tablets and smart phones. The iPad has definitely lent credibility to the new form factor and together with Google's Android significantly pushes the envelope and offers small businesses a cost effective way of collaborating on projects in a way that could not even have been imagined barely 18 months ago.

The easy availability of good project and collaboration applications on via Google Apps Marketplace means provides a means of acquiring these capabilities easily and at a fraction of the cost that it used to. Just consider for a moment that a subscription to any of the available project collaboration applications on Google Apps Marketplace costs less for a year than purchasing a single license of Microsoft Projects and you get an idea of what is now feasible.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iP

Location:Garland Rise,Rowville,Australia

Mobile Phone Access Hassles In The USA

2010-12-16T08:35:00.001+11:00

As a visitor to the USA, I was surprised by just how difficult it was to get a local SIM card for my mobile phone. Arriving it LA, it took me the best part of a day to find a store that would sell me a prepaid SIM card for my mobile phone which given that this is supposed to be the technologically advanced country in the world borders on shocking.

I travel quite a bit, mostly for pleasure and being a photographer, having access to maps and the internet is important to me. I don't claim to know very the ins and outs of mobile communications in the USA but arriving at any airport in Asia, one can just walk into one of the many mobile outlets and pick up a mobile SIM card with ease. This is certainly the case for Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong and most major cities in Asia. Even in Hanoi, the hotel organized the SIM card for me with ease.

You just buy the SIM card which typically comes with a set amount of calls and data and then top it up, again at any of the numerous outlets simply walking in and paying for a top up. and by the way you get the pick of dozens of carriers. OK I wasn't able to get a pre-paid micro SIM card for my iPad in most of the Asian countries as it had not been released at the time I was there. But I certainly had my choice of carriers and pre-paid plans for my iPhone.

I follow with amusement all the arguments and hassles US customers seem to have with Apple and AT&T and the pending availability of iPhone plans for Verizon. This is never been the case for Australia where you can pick any of the major carriers.

One is left wondering why for a country that espouses free trade and competition, the US seems to be lagging so badly behind in making choice of mobile carriers for consumers so difficult and confusing.

Tablets Netbooks and The Changing Landscape For Small Businesses

2010-12-09T19:11:00.001+11:00

Sometimes I just shake my head when I read all the news and pronouncements about tablets and netbooks. You would easily be forgiven in coming to the conclusion that there was some life or death battle going on. The truth is small businesses are actually better off for the increased availability of choice when it comes down to the hip pocket.

Having used both a netbook and an iPad, I can safely say that they both can make life easier and cheaper for small businesses if deployed and used in the right way. Small businesses struggle with the cost of providing the right tools for its staff and in today's environment it is not simply the cost of the PC, Laptop or Tablet. It is also the cost of software, network access and the often invisible cost of providing and maintaining the backend infrastructure to allow connectivity within and outside of the four walls of the office.

Netbooks are scaled down version of PCs and laptops at a much lower price point. Unlike their bigger siblings, they were intended to be used with the internet very much in mind. Hence to benefit from them you need to be considering using the internet as your platform rather than just replicating what you do on a PC and all the associated costs of buying PC software.

This is where Google changed the game by offering the same functions such as word processing and spreadsheets for free over the internet. Today you can get almost any internet based application over the internet and some of them are even free or nearly free thanks to what Apple did with the iPhone and now with the iPad.

Part of the appeal of this new way of working is a return to simplicity. Employees do not all need all singing, all dancing devices. They need tools that help them perform their key activities quickly and efficiently and if they are not in the office, they need something small and portable.

Now consider netbooks and tablets. they fit the bill perfectly. If you have adopted an internet platform such as Google Apps, then why would would you really need all the other "stuff" that comes with a traditional laptop. The truth is you don't even need heaps of disk space after all most of the data will be stored somewhere on the Internet.

Which brings me full circle to where I started. All the growing variety of devices and platforms and form factors really do not mean much when it comes down to doing what you need to do when you are out of the office. They will all do it. There is no killer feature of function.

This is where Google and Apple really excel in that they simplify things for the user. We already have too complex a life.

What's The Big Deal With Internet TV

2010-12-06T21:17:00.001+11:00

One cannot help wondering what all the fuss is about with Google TV and Apple TV and what all this has to do with you, the humble viewer. After all why bother with additional devices and more stuff simply so that you can watch it on your 50 inch LCD or plasma screen.

There is a lot more than meets the eye and it actually has to do with they way we consume content and even more so for the folks who produce and distribute content.

If we think about the way we currently get content we are all familiar with free to air TV and with cable. It's got to do with who produces content and how it is distributed to the consumers. In the days before cable and satellite TV, the networks controlled what we would be allowed to view. You had no choice other than switching from one channel to another until you found something you liked.

Cable and satellite were supposed to give us more choice. Right? Well sort of. We were presented with a massively increased number of channels which individually carried categorized content eg humor, drama, documentary and the like. While this may give the appearance of providing greater choice to the viewer, the problem is firstly that you ended up paying for the privilege and purchasing content that you really had little or no interest in. In other words you purchased a package of channels which included the content that you wanted and ignored the content that did not interest you. Depending on how you view this it could be said that this was an improvement.

If we are honest with ourselves the problem really is not choice but too much choice. We simply have too much content to consume. This is why internet TV has the potential to be a game changer and this is why the TV networks and Hollywood will fight it to the death.

Think about internet TV and Google search and you get the idea. The ability to find content that is relevant to what you are looking for and to able to view it when you want to, not at some scheduled time and without having to record it for later viewing. This is the real promise of internet TV. Just think about YouTube and you will get the idea.

So the real problem then is that the networks have been fighting tooth and nail to keep control over the distribution of their content. Only recently have you been able to watch TV episodes streamed from the TV broadcaster's website. The networks are not going to make life easy for the likes of Apple TV and Google TV to offer access to popular TV episodes so this means that you will have to go to their website to view those episodes.

Understand that technology I really not the problem. The really problem is that Hollywood and the TV networks have used control of the distribution channel (ie TV channels, satellite, cable, DVDs and Blue Ray discs) to make their money. However they are unable to do the same for the Internet.

Furthermore, there is a whole industry that is totally dependent on distributing content the old way. These organizations have not come to terms with the distributing content via the Internet.

Two other trends will had further headache for Hollywood and the TV networks. The cost of production and distribution used to be so high that only they could afford it and hence were able to control and hence charge a premium for anyone to produce and use their channels to market.

Technology advances now mean that production costs are sufficiently low that they no longer are a barrier to entry. Distribution via the internet also bypasses most of the existing distribution channels. The amazing thing is that artists and content producers are still so intrinsically tied into existing business models that they simply are too afraid or too Ignorant that they now have more control over their own destinies than ever before. It would take only a fraction of the cost for them to produce and distribute their content directly to the consuming public and in the process generate more revenue than currently accrues to them.

At the same time, only a very small proportion of consumers understand that they they can and should purchase content directly from the source producers themselves. This started changing when iTunes created a Marketplace for buyers and sellers to find and transact with each other.

It is only a question of time before companies other then the exiting major players produce TV content that the viewing public is interested in which they can view directly. This is where something like Google TV and Apple TV comes into play. It offers a TV like user interface and experience for any content that an be found on the Internet and this is really what has got the TV networks and Hollywood worrying. Their long held control over the entertainment industry is slowly being eroded and like the proverbial frog swimming in a pot of water being brought to boil slowly they are, like the music industry fighting rather than embracing the brave new world. If they continue is this vein, they will sooner or later find that their views and opinions (and along with that, their power) while interesting will no longer be relevant.

Stop Trying To Manage IT

2010-11-22T08:33:00.001+11:00

How often have I heard the cry from owners of small businesses that IT is simply getting too complex and is just too hard work trying to get a handle of it. While devices have got smaller and supposedly easier to use, the challenge of managing all the various devices, software and networks is increasing all the time.

Just consider a typical small business environment. Staff make use of PCs or laptops and are connected to a network in the office.There are likely to be several printers sprinkled all over the office and of course a wireless network was installed so that staff could use laptops in the warehouse.

Staff make use of Skype to contact international suppliers and recently the sales team found that they could make more presentations in a day by holding video conferences with prospective customers and of course the business just signed a with a telephone company and they threw in new iPhones into the deal.

So what we have is a small business with an IT environment that is anything but simple. Just think about it, different vendors for your PCs and laptops, phones and internet an then there are the vendors for your accounting software, productivity tools and video conferencing. And by the way, your staff using those iPhones are also using it to access your company data files. Oh an by the way, you just decided to get yourself one of those new iPad tablets and simply love being able to get to your data files while on the road.

Now you not only have to worry about managing your servers and hardware in your office but have to get worried about all that company data that is no longer on hard disks on your premises but also on a whole host of other places somewhere on the internet. As if managing the environment in your office wasn't hard enough.

The real cost to a small business is that someone has to be looking after all this stuff and it means additional headcount. Yes we all know the proverbial comment that small business owners want to spend more time on the business and not on running and IT shop.

You could outsource the management of the whole kit and caboodle to someone but this doesn't come cheap and you still have to but and own the assets which isn't easily easy on the working capital.

This is what makes Google Apps worth considering. For starters all the basic communications and productivity tools such as word processing, email and online chat and even your internet site are immediately available and hosted and managed by Google. Oh and yeah they guarantee 99% availability which is more than you would expect if you did it in-house yourself. Most of the business applications that you will need such as finance and accounting can be obtained from Google Apps Marketplace.

The whole environment is managed via an administrator function. and includes managing your users and access to your applications and data including access via mobiles. And because the software is delivered via the web, there is really no need for expensive beefy laptops and PCs. Cheaper net books can be used.

Small business who have long felt that they should be focussing on their businesses and not on managing IT should really look into Google Apps.

If You Are Not Listed You Are Invisible

2010-11-09T18:50:00.001+11:00

More and more these days, if I want to do anything, I do a quick search to find places and businesses before even stepping out of the house. Just last week I did a quick search for brake pad replacements and did a quick comparison of businesses offering the service before finally deciding on two which I called and made a choice.

It occurred to me that if a business was not listed in my search then it would have next to no chance of me considering it. In days gone past, it was almost mandatory for a business to get a listing in the Yellow Pages but in todays smartphone and iPad world with GPS location capabilities inbuilt into these devices, the search is aware of the location the person is at and offers listings around the location.

Which brings me to Google Places. Firstly it is a free service from Google and any small business that does not take advantage of it is missing out as they are not visible and do not appear on any searches done on Google. This is particularly relevant for small business who do not have advertising budgets to any size to speak of.

But merely getting a listing is not enough, you do need to think about how you classify your business so that you get the most chance of being listed in a search. To do a good job of this you should reverse your role and think like a customer and think about how they would search for you so that you tag your listing appropriately.

So go get listed and become more visible to prospective customers

Location:Wellington Rd,Mulgrave,Australia

iPad For Workers In The Field

2010-10-20T08:56:00.001+11:00

The iPad is not just a fancy device for gadget conscious individuals. Apple just revealed that business are purchasing significant numbers of them for their employees. So is there a place for them in small businesses? in Australia prices of the broadband editions of the iPad start at $799 for the 16GB model going up to $1049 for the 64GB model. Add a mobile plan for $20 per month ($240 a year) means that it is not a prohibitive proposition.

While it is a beautifully crafted device, it is not a rugged piece of equipment. Mobile phone vendors tell me that adoption of smartphones by individuals such as plumbers and the like is low simply because of the environment in which they rare used, quite naturally. But there are other small businesses which do not operate in this manner. Think about situations like getting a measure and quote for curtains, wholesale sales reps and the like where there is a need to have a catalogue and immediate pricing and the ability to provide the customer with a quick and accurate quote.

Being able to show and give the customer a high quality picture of what they will receive, perhaps even take a picture to send back to the factory of the window or customers environment and provide them with a quote will put you in a very good light. You could even email them the quote right when you are with them. Think about eliminating all those handwritten quotes and filing and getting it back to the office.

The form factor is different from that of having to carry a net book or laptop. It is much better for showing and browsing catalogues and show and tell for the customer.

Small business do not have to be left out and it will not cost you an arm and a leg. It is worth considering

Fields Of Yellow

2010-10-19T13:24:00.001+11:00

I came across this field of canola just outside Moe in Gippsland, Victoria.
From Moe Walhalla" target="_blank">

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Moe, Gippsland, Victoria

Why Contact Data Matters To Small Businesses

2010-10-05T18:57:00.001+11:00

We all maintain contacts on our laptops, our mobile phones and in our back office systems. Think about it for a moment; debtors and creditor applications and CRM systems all have contact information. We use them for communicating with people and organisations.

So why does it matter? Simply because we spend time maintaining the accuracy of them. Just think about email. It's ubiquitous, we just type and go.

As we do more an more online, the duplication and effort required to maintain contact data grows. And we use the data for all sorts of other things including marketing and the like. It is a valuable resource to an organisation. Remember the days when a staff member, and in particular, a sales person leaves the organisation and takes with them their "private" list of contacts. This is precisely why contacts has to be viewed as an asset and treated accordingly.

We don't always think about it but all it takes is the loss of that data and we incur a lot of pain to reinstate or even recreate it. So take some care to protect and use it properly. Treat it with respect

Managing Projects Virtually on Google Apps

2010-10-05T08:33:00.001+11:00

Google Apps is a great platform for managing projects not only because it is internet (or cloud) based but also due its excellent collaborative capabilities. Mention project management and many people conjure up images of gantt charts, Project Management Office (PMO) and the like but this is not what I am referring to. This can be daunting for a small business that does not necessarily have the luxury of having full time project managers.

Sure, there is a place for these tools but at its core, project management is really all about getting a team of people with diverse skills and experiences to work together to achieve a specific agree outcome. In a business this typically is associated with a business outcome that is not what would be described as normal recurring activities. For example this could be an office relocation, a launch of a new product or simply the yearly office picnic.

Simply put, in a small business, project managers are responsible for pulling together a plan which largely consists of tasks and activities that ensures that the individual members of the team complete the necessary tasks in the necessary order and time to accomplish the desired objective.

Along the way, data is gathered, analysed, various courses of action debated, decisions taken and issues raised and resolved. One of the challenges is individual teams members have to juggle these activities and priorities in addition to their main day-to-day activities and responsibilities and this requires good coordination.

While having a good scheduling tool such as Microsoft Projects helps, it is actually only a scheduling tool and requires other collaborative tools that make sharing between the various team members more easily. This is where Google Apps can make a significant difference.

Google Apps provides an organization with a rich and secure environment for collaboration to occur. There are several ways for this to occur. You could use the standard Google Apps, such as calendars, email and docs to manage projects and this certainly goes a long way.

Alternatively, you can consider using one of the many applications found on Google Marketplace and these come in mammy guises and with different ways of collaboration. Most of them provide some means of creating and assigning tasks and activities and often integrate with Google Calendar meaning that that individuals not only keep a list a single consolidated list of tasks, including project tasks assigned to them in one place.

Some of the available applications also provide some form of project scheduling tools. Additional features typically include the ability to post and track issues as well as store and shared related files. This has the added advantage of building up a knowledge base for future reference.

Workers on the road a lot can access the latest status of the project and update their parts of the project while on the road using a variety of devices that are appropriate to their work patterns and these would include smartphones, tablets, netbooks, laptops. In fact almost any device that is connected to the internet and has a browser.

All this means makes collaborating in real time possible in a cost effective and efficient manner and in the end results in more productive staff and better managed projects

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Lakeside Dr,Burwood East,Australia

Virtual Outsourcing With Google Apps

2010-09-24T15:44:00.001+10:00

In my previous blog, I put forward a case that with small business could have a better chance of getting cost efficient outsourced services. In this blog, I will explore some possible scenarios today.

One of the biggest challenges of providers of services to small business is the combination of lower rates that they are willing to pay and the fact that they only need small portions of your time. These factors alone mean that unless a provider can service them entirely remotely by phone that they are unlikely to earn a reasonable return the moment they have to turn up at the customers premises.

On the other hand, a small business owner and their staff are only ever able to spare a limited amount of time with an external vendor. I have suggested that remote service by phone would be a possible technology, old as it is, that can allow these two parties to come together meaningfully.

So why would I think that Google Apps would make any difference. Firstly, Google Apps provides a secure environment for an external party such as an outsourced partner to have access to your working environment. With appropriate access, they can be granted access only to the documents that are relevant to them. It also means that they can create documents meant for your business and work collaboratively with the employees of the business. This can also include granting access to relevant applications.

Let us say that you have an outsourced marketing consultant and you are working on a project that involves them having to design some new collateral. Using a private Google Site project you can grant them access to the specific project site where they can see the overall project, its timelines and the project brief. This completely eliminates the need to play email tag and it means also that they are always up-to-date on where the project is up to. They can join in discussions and contribute their views without even being physically present.

They can work on documents such as spreadsheets even in possibly in realtime on a team meeting which is facilitated through Google Talk. This means that you can have them for only the time required efficiently and cost effectively without worrying about having to incur travel time. A further side benefit is that you could actually be engaging an outsourced service provider specialist that is even located in a different country altogether which is particularly useful if your are working on a project in a different country. Imagine not even having to incur the cost of the telephone call.

It also means that short queries or exchanges can be achieved even it the individual is away from their office as they could access the relevant data via their smart phones. This really opens up the door for individuals or very small but highly specialized or small organisations to offer their services in a very effective manner which is a win for all parties.

Can Google Apps Bring Small Business And Outsourcing Providers Together (Part 2 of the series on Outsourcing for Small Businesses)

2010-09-15T08:52:00.000+10:00

In the first blog of this series, I argued that small businesses can benefit from the right kind of outsourcing arrangement and that is engaging a small outsourcing organization or even an individual. The problem is where would you find such small outsourcing organizations or individuals and even if you could how would you work with them.

Looking at the challenge from the perspective of the small business owner, the problem simply stated is how can they obtain the regular recurring services of an expert as and when needed at a cost effective rate. For a small business, there are activities that need to be performed not on a permanent basis including marketing, IT infrastructure, legal and human resources. What most small business do is to engage the services of a company as an when they need the service. The problem however is these are typically one off assignments and it is difficult for the provider of the service to really be a part of the team and the business.

From the service provider point of view, the challenge becomes one of being able to provide small discrete parcels of time to several customers throughout the day often on demand as circumstances arrive. In addition it is impractical for an individual to be physically present at the premises of the small business to perform whatever task they have to do especially if the work if only one or two hours of activity in a day is required and significant amounts of time is lost simply travelling from one location to another.

This is where cloud computing and in particular Google Apps has the potential to change the business model significantly. Service providers are able to access all the necessary systems and work on the business issues as if they were physically present in the business. Google Apps provides a rich environment for collaboration and engagement without them leaving their office. Using a virtual office environment made possible by Google Apps means that a service provider can work on several parcels of work throughout the day without needing to incur the wasted travel time. Small businesses get the benefit of immediate access to services as and when the need arises through the virtual environment as if the outsourced service provider were truly a member of the team. This allows for a closer and more intimate relationship to be established and at a lower cost to both parties.

In the next post of this series, I will explore some scenarios of how this can be achieved

Is Outsourcing A Realistic Option For Small Businesses? (Part 1)

2010-09-14T00:56:00.000+10:00

Multinational companies were the first to seize on the opportunity to take advantage of low cost skilled manpower in less developed countries. While this appears commonplace now, the journey has not been a smooth one and many lessons have been learnt along the way. So what has outsourcing got to do with small and even medium sized businesses?

Ask this question to a small business owner or manager of a medium sized business and you are likely to be get some response about the difficulty of working in different time zones, cultural differences with India and China and the like. This perception is understandable given that scale has been one factor behind the efforts of large companies moving call centre and software programming to places like India, Philippines and Malaysia.

Fundamentally, outsourcing is paying an external party who has the appropriate skill and experience to perform activities which are not considered to be a core competency of the businesses. This allows small businesses to focus on what they do best instead of getting bogged down in compliance and other activities they consider to be less important to the business.

Small businesses are familiar with "outsourcing" their accounting and possibly their bookkeeping functions. Some might even engage an external marketing agency to do some marketing for them. But is this really outsourcing or merely purchasing a service. Is there really any difference or is it only just semantics.

Without the benefit of scale, small businesses need a different business model for outsourcing. For starters, small business need a degree of intimacy rarely offered by larger vendors of outsourcing services. Being small their key criteria is simplicity and low cost. Small business are looking for outsourcing partners, not vendors.

The real trick I believe is to find individuals, not necessarily companies, who are able to take on activities that the company does not want to manage. Such individuals may service a number of small companies and therefore bring their experience and expertise to the business. This is possibly a coming trend especially for individuals who may not necessarily want to be working in one place as an employee all the time and yet have much to offer by way of talent, experience and expertise.

The challenge, up until recently, was how could such operators be in several places all at once often on the same day. The coming of age of cloud computing and in particular, the availability of Google Apps has provided a platform for small businesses and "small outsourcers" to come together in a practical and meaningful manner. Part 2 of this series of blogs will consider how this can be achieved.

Small Businesses Do Not Like Big IT Words!

2010-08-31T00:20:00.000+10:00

It has always irritated me that technology companies always seem to choose terms that simply scare off small businesses. My favorite gripe at the moment is "electronic collaborative technologies". What a mouthful. Small businesses just want simple stuff that just works. Complex sounding words simply mean that they are most likely to think that they are intended for bigger or more sophisticated organisations which simply isn't true.

Small businesses do not think in such terms. They simply look at the day-to-day activities that they perform such as meetings, coordinating activities with supplier and responding to customers. And they are interested in things that help them to do that cheaper and more effectively. It doesn't get any more complex than that.

One of the things I love about Google is that the things they do exemplify this. The screens are clean, easily to understand and simple to use. The stuff that it can do isn't necessarily so but they have done a good job of hiding this from the user.

In this post, I will illustrate what I mean by using Gmail. Those of you that do use it will know that the screens are simple with limited clutter. But what is not immediately apparent is the number of things that you can do, all from this one screen.

For starters take the chat panel on the left hand side of the screen. It lists the contacts that you regularly deal with. But more importantly you can see if they are currently available from their status is which then means you can decide whether to have an instant messaging chat with them (using Google Chat) or have a voice chat (using Google Voice) or send them an email. This is simplifying the choice and enhancing the effectiveness of how we contact them all from the one screen. Simple to understand? Well the industry refers to this as "presence". Which small business owner would make that association?

So what does this do for productivity? Well phone calls are exclusive. As far as I know you can only do one at the time serially. Well instant messaging is not which means that an employee can be engaging in multiple chats all at the same time. OK those of us who are older may bulk at this but with younger employees this is just normal. Think about what this means about the number of contacts an employee can get through in a day! That is real productivity gains.

Small organizations stand to benefit greatly from the efforts of companies like Google who help make the internet a more friendly place for non technically savvy users. But as a whole, small business owners simply are overlooked when it comes to getting the message to them.

Implementing Collaborative Tools - It's The Culture Not The Technology!

2010-08-24T23:18:00.000+10:00

With new collaboration tools and features being introduced at such a rapid rate, you would think that most organisations would be lapping them up. But the truth is that they have not be as widely adopted successfully as you would expect.

The single biggest hurdle has nothing to do with the technology but with culture. It is easy to forget that collaboration is about sharing and the bigger the organisation, the more difficult this is to achieve than you think. In smaller organisations, sharing information is a natural thing simply because there are less people and also because it is the way to get things done. People simply gather together and discuss things, share information and experiences and just get on with it. With more people and more formalised structures and greater specialization, bigger organisations struggle and often do not even recognize that this is a problem.

Consider the amazing success of social networking sites such as Facebook. They are successful because people willingly share what they want to (sometimes more than they should). This is not always the case in companies where knowledge and information is protected by the owner and is believed to provide the holder with an advantage.

This means that small and large organisations face different issues when trying to introduce collaboration effectively.Google Apps is a good example of the kinds of collaborative tools that are available today:

Google Sites provides a variety of templates and tools that enable a team to work together collaboratively.
Google Docs has features that make it easier for two or more people to work on content in contained in documents.

The key to capturing productivity gains from introducing collaborative tools lies with changing the way you think and work and not merely making the tools available. At the simplest level, Google Docs allows two or more people to simultaneously work on the same document. This completely eliminates the email revision problem that we experience today where a document is sent to several individuals who then make changes and send it back to the sender, who then need to work out what the changes are and then merge the changes from several people back into a single consolidated document.

With Google docs the document is always updated in real time and is always up-to-date when it is worked on. If more than one person is working on the document then the changes are updated as they make the changes.You will know who is working on the document when you open it and you can also open a separate chat panel to communicate with any individual who is currently working on it.

While the technology is neat, the real productivity gain is significantly reducing the time it takes to prepare reports and documents. The richness of the engagement makes it more compelling to collaborate and share. To this end smaller organisations should find this easier to deploy simply because it is closer to the way they work. Larger organisations would be well advised to spend time positioning not just the technology but the benefits of sharing information and knowledge. This is often overlooked when a company decides to just roll out the technology. It is the human side that often brings the introduction of such new collaborative tools undone.

Wireless 3G Broadband Access For The iPad The Asian Way

2010-08-18T13:46:00.001+10:00

Asia always amazes me in the way they will find ways to get things done. I have just returned from a two week holiday to Malaysia and Vietnam and carried my shiny new iPad with me. Naturally I was did not have access to wireless 3G broadband as the iPad was not yet available in these two countries.

However I was quickly appraised of two interesting developments which caught me completely by surprise. In Malaysia, I was told that a bluetooth device is already available that houses a normal mobile SIM card which the iPad uses to access the mobile 3G broadband service so that there is no need to actually purchase the more expensive 3G iPad model. This same device also serves netbooks and laptops.

While having a beer on the deck of the cruise boat in the World Heritage Ha Long Bay in Vietnam, a fellow passenger told me that in Beijing, they had an even simpler solution which was to cut the normal SIM card so that it fitted your iPad micro SiM slot. The vendor provided an adaptor so that the cut down SIM card could still be used in the normal slot in your mobile phone.

What is incredible is that the iPad is not even officially launched in these two countries. Rather than moan and groan about Apple adopting a different SIM card, the Asian companies in these two countries just saw an opportunity and got on with it. I have not actually tried either of these two solutions so I cannot vouch for them actually working technically but it is interesting to see how quickly these alternatives are sprouting up especially in Asia

Connecting With Your Online Customers

2010-08-03T13:34:00.001+10:00

Whether you choose to establish an online presence is entirely up to you. But whether you like it or not, your customers are already online and ignoring them is like the proverbial ostrich burying their head in the sand. The real challenge for small businesses is that the internet is like one giant shopping mall. This means that whether you like it or not, you are suddenly in a retail like situation. All of a sudden, what your online "store front" looks like matters more than ever before so some canned template which looks like everyone else's is just not going to cut it.

Getting a website started up is an easy thing matter of signing with any ISP provider as most of them will provide some capability to have a website up and running quite simply. The problem is that unless you take the time and effort to personalise your website it will be just another drab online storefront similar to millions of others.

In today's environment with more and more generation X and Y customers, they want to interact with you in a way that is convenient for them. So things like putting your products and services up on the web is just a starting point. It is no different from sending them brochures in the mail. But this can hardly be seen as a real interaction.

When they have a difficulty with your product, they want to be able to find a possible solution for their problem. While some may call you (and by the way maintaining a call centre service is a very costly thing) most would prefer to look on your website for an answer. So providing a forum for self service is not only desirable but quite cost effective as they can find the answers to common issues instead of your valuable staff having to answer the same question repeatedly. And what if they cannot find and the answer and want to lodge a problem ticket with you.

You can find a number of applications on Google Apps Marketplace that will help you do this. Not only do they provide for a means for a customer to log a ticket but will also allow you to build up a product knowledge base and frequently asked questions.

And what about finding out what your customers think. Again you will find some survey solutions on Google Apps Marketplace.

The beauty of Google Apps is that all of these different applications are folded very nicely into a single user environment. With single sign on, your staff only need to sign on once to Google Apps and call up any application that they are authorized to use without the hassle of doing so again.

Your business has a unique personality and your website needs to reflect that. Blogs and news about your people, your customers and your organisation are what uniquely defines the experience customers expect to have in engaging with you.

While you can go out an purchase individual applications and undertake the effort to meld into into something that sits seamlessly in your business, Google Apps already provides you with just such a platform. Granted that some of the applications may not be an powerful or rich in functionality as you might get form other traditional software vendors but they are, the the main, more that adequate. What is more important is that they offer a very good level of integration so that they are easy to implement and allows small business to get on with what they do best - running, growing and enjoying their business.

Facilities such as Google Sites gives you something to go the extra mile

CRM Solutions On Google Apps Marketplace

2010-07-29T18:56:00.000+10:00

CRM post on Google Enterprise

When I finished posting yesterday's blog on why I felt that Google Apps Marketplace offered small businesses an opportunity to adopt business applications easily and affordably, this summary of 13 CRM applications appeared on the Google Enterprise blog which reinforces my view that the proliferation of business applications in Apps Marketplace is accelerating.

This is good news for small businesses as it means that there is more choice and that there will be something out there that is likely to meet your needs. Just taking a look at the 13 applications highlighted shows the diversity of solutions available.

Although there are standard industry descriptions of CRM, different organisations have different needs and understandings of a CRM system. Particularly with CRM, even managing opportunities means different things to different organisations which accounts for the widely differing features available in Apps Marketplace. It is therefore important that you have a clear understanding of what you really need and yet at the same time be open to opportunities to improve and enhance the way you do things.

The most practical approach is to start off by documenting the workflows in your business and to draw up a list of what is core and absolutely essential to you. There should not be too many of them. Then consider what is desirable. The essential items are used to eliminate alternative solutions and the desirable ones should be used to select or shortlist those that survive the cut. Evaluating (and in the case of Apps Marketplace playing around with) 13 applications is simply impractical.

Having more choice means that while you have a better chance of getting something that meets your needs, it also means that you have to be more structured and disciplined to ensure that you end up with something you can really use.

What's The Big Deal About Google Apps Marketplace

2010-07-28T10:05:00.001+10:00

iTunes started the ball rolling with iStore to buy music for your iPod. Then we got Appstore for the iPhone and now iPad. So what so great about Google Apps Marketplace? If you are a small business, the answer could well be a lot.

Google Apps provides a small organisation with the platform and the tools to support business activities that were previously only available to larger organsations who could afford to have a specialist IT function. For $50 per user per year a small business can have most of the office and communications functions at a much more affordable cost. With Apps Marketplace, Google has made the process of buying and equipping it's employees with good business applications a simple 3 step process almost as simple as buying music from the internet for your iPod and all from the comfort of your laptop or PC.

Apps Marketplace can be accessed directly from Google Apps. Do a quick search for the business function you are after and you will be presented with a list of third party applications. The beauty of this is that most of the applications can be activated for a typically 30 day trial period. By activated, I mean no installation. All that you need to do is to sign up your organisation for the application and it appears as a menu item on your Google Apps home page. No waiting for a disc to arrive and installing it on any computer. It is simply activated for your organisation and ready to go.

Implementing business applications for small businesses is a challenge. They simply do not have the resources to find the appropropriate software nor do they have the time to go about it in a systematic way. The real challenge is how a small business would go about analyzing it's requirements and then go out to the market to find something that meets their requirements. Large consulting organizations are costly to engage and the solutions are equally as expensive to implement when you take into consideration additional hardware, operating systems, databases and the like.

I believe that we will see, if it has not already occurred, a new breed of consultants who will take up the challenge based on the new platform that will provide a specification, selection and implementation service for small businesses. These consultants are likely to be individuals who have had experience with larger organizations but are able to apply their skills and experience to work with small businesses at a fraction of the cost and will be able to deliver results quickly and flexibly.

The applications available on Apps Marketplace are far less complex and easier to find and evaluate, given the free trials and immediate access. Experienced consultants would still need to spend time on site to establish requirements but would then be free to quickly establish working models on shortlisted applications. This would mean that organizations would be able not just to view a demonstration of the system based on the consultants proposed solution, but also to try it out first hand from the comfort of their workplace. This will allow consultants to incorporate recommended changes to business processes and allow the business to actually see and experience the impact and possibilities before they commit to the system.

This is a far more practical, less risky and cost effective way for a small business to acquire business applications than previously possible. And it would also allow them to adopt newer and more innovative technologies quickly.

Apple and Google Not Playing Nice On The iPad

2010-07-23T09:37:00.000+10:00

I really like my iPad and I really like Google Apps. It is such a shame that trying to use Google Apps on Safari on the iPad is such a hit or miss affair. This certainly is not the first post on this subject but is seems to me that both companies appear to have left business users out.

After using the iPad for a couple of weeks I have come to the conclusion that this really is a device with a form factor that businesses could really get their teeth into. While it could be argued that the device is designed for consumer use, the larger screen real estate and fantastic resolution means that there is a proper platform to deploy more practical business applications instead of the terribly restricted screens on smartphones.

Much has been said about typing on the iPad and I acknowledge that it is not to everyone's cup of tea but find that I have actually grown to like it. For business users, the larger real estate makes the device alot more practical than any of the current crop of smartphones (iPhone included).

Listening to the interview of Steve Jobs explaining why Apple prefers the consumer market individual buying decision model is understandable given the huge inroads that the iPod and iPhone has made. But the iPad truly offers a real alternative platform for businesses.

So what does this all have to do with Google and Apple? The iPad provides a real alternative to businesses to increase the adoption of Google Apps. While I continue to read about the problems with the 3G service in the USA being available only through AT&T, this certainly is not the case in Australia where you can walk in and purchase as plan from any carrier.

With the iPad, you can get to use the full desktop based browser interface rather than the more restricted mobile interface on most of the Google applications. Irritatingly, using Safari on the iPad opens up the more limited mobile interface and you have to switch to the desktop version manually. If that was the only limitation, it would not be too bad but some of the desktop functions do not work properly in Safari which is frustrating. It is a case of so near yet so far. Installing the Google applications from iTunes and opening the applications from there results in a slightly better experience but it still needs some work.

Let's hope that whatever differences Google and Apple have had in the past do not prevent them from cleaning up their act here as we go forward. Already we are hearing that Android based slates/tables are on their way. This can only be a good thing as it means that the form factor is looking like a genuine play.

While the big end of town will continue to frustrate Mr Jobs, I think that here we have a real opportunity for small (and medium) businesses to deploy a platform that has access to a good set of applications (Google Apps Marketplace) with a solid set of real time collaborative tools on a hardware platform that is affordable and easy to deploy. Consider a small business that has deployed Google Apps with perhaps CRM and project management applications purchased and deployed in Google Apps. All that is needed to equip a user is simply to provide them with the iPad and they will have instant and immediate access to all the office productivity tools and access to their business applications.

For a small business, this is a real boon. No setting up laptops or installing PC applications - just switch on and go. You can imagine why an Android slate would make a compelling case especially since it would bring into play a myriad of alternative vendors such as Dell and the other big Taiwanese manufacturers.

While the iPad is the main game in town today, the playing field will change over the next few months and business users will have more choices. So I wonder whether Apple and Google will play nice.

Establish Your Online Presence With Google Sites

2010-07-16T09:18:00.000+10:00

Goggle Sites is another one of those hidden gems which is often overlooked. Establishing and maintaining a website is one of of those things that a small business always struggles with. Sure you can always get a site up easily these days but it is usually an independent and separate exercise and typically deteriorates into a fairly static state fairly quickly.

Goggle Sites when used in conjunction with Google Apps opens up a whole different set of possibilities.

Firstly it is a powerful yet simple tool to create very compelling and comprehensive websites. A small business can create a website in minutes using any of the standard templates on offer. This gets a started very quickly. Adding sections to a page is easy as is adding more pages. You can add images and text simply and within a very short time, have a decent looking site with a number of different pages for different types of content describing your business, the services and even provide for ways for a existing or prospective customer to interact with you from the website.

Not only is it simple to add images, but you can easily add other items from Google Apps such as documents, spreadsheets, presentations and forms. Adding videos from Google Videos and YouTube is also a very simple matter.

Looking at the insert drop down list gives you a sense that you really can add loads of content to your website very easily. This allows you to build a very tailored and rich and dynamic website.

Additional tools such as recent posts and recent list items allow you to summarise the latest changes you may have made in other pages onto the home page of your website. These could be things like product or service updates in the form of a headlines list.

And if these features were not sufficient, you can also add a any Google Gadget from the very extensive list that are available. I have to admit that some Gadgets are of questionable value but there are plenty of them that really allow you to add valuable content to your website.

The layout controls are pretty powerful too making it easy to choose how many columns you may wish to display on a page.

The point here is not how powerful or clever Google Sites is but rather that creating and managing your website is no longer some esoteric art form shrouded in mystery. Many small businesses struggle with establishing an online presence simply because the tools are either too complex and technical on one hand or so simplified that it is too inflexible on the opposite end of the spectrum.

Google Sites sits somewhere between the two and anyone already using or considering adopting Google Apps would be remiss if they overlooked using Google Sites to manage their online presence. The biggest risk for a business not establishing a proper online presence is the fact that their customers probably are already online.

Working With Google Waves - Will It Replace Email?

2010-07-08T18:40:00.000+10:00

I must admit that it was never quite clear to me what was Google's intention and plan for Google Waves was but the more I played with it especially in the context of one of the applications in Google Apps, it became much clearer to me why I would use it over email.

Consider a scenario where I discovered that our seminar costs were higher than planned. I would have sent an email to Amy (email #1) asking her to explain why this was so. She may reply to me acknowledging what she would do (email #2). I then might reply to her suggesting what area I thought she might want to look into (email #3). She investigates and provides an explanation but also includes Stephen in as she thinks he might know more about what she has discovered (email #4). In the meantime Amy has checked out another related item and remailed me (email #5) what she found out. Stephen then replies to Amy's email giving his explanation (email #6).

By this time I would have 3 emails, Amy would have 3 and Stephen 1 and that is not even counting the emails in our sent boxes. Following the whole flow would require us to each open up a number of emails and that depends on who replied to whom in which sequence.

With waves, we would all be accessing and working on the ONE copy of the whole thread and would all see the same entries from their respective points of view. So anyone opening the wave would see the most up to date view of it.

Although Waves has an inbox, it behaves somewhat differently from a email inbox. In this case there will always be only one entry which in my case is flagged as having 2 new updates.

Opening the wave, I will see the two updates flagged with the green bar on the left hand side of the entry, immediately drawing my attention to them. Admittedly this wave has only 2 threads so far and you can imagine that it can get convoluted if many people are updating different parts of the wave at the same time. This is where the playback feature comes in handy allowing me to step through the entries in chronological sequence.

I first started using Google Waves outside of Google Apps and I did struggle as I had to invite people to join Google Waves and they had to create an account which was a bit of a hassle. Then it hit me that with Google Apps all staff would already have a Google Apps account and therefore would already have access to Waves.

So while I having a Google Wave account could be a barrier to more widespread adoption of Waves as a replacement for email at the present time, using it in conjunction with Google Apps is a natural thing to do.I am still unsure whether I would stop email for some time yet but any organisation who adopts Google Apps would really be remiss if they did not adopt it.

Has Google Apps Come Of Age For Small Businesses

2010-07-02T18:33:00.001+10:00

One of the challenges for small businesses is the growing cost of providing computing facilities for its employees. Add to this the bewildering array of options from laptops, mobile phones, netbooks and now iPads and you have a mix of different computing platforms.

Small businesses face rising costs of maintaining a computing infrastructure. The cost of buying and maintaining servers and software is not insignificant for a small organisation. Add to that the need for internal resources to manage all that and it starts to add up. Cloud computing has come a long way. The fears of security of data and loss of data that is stored somewhere on the internet and not on the business own premises is now much better addressed.

Google apps has now reached the point where it is not only feasible but makes sense economically for small and medium sized businesses. Google has assembled a strong suite of applications which allow a business to provide its workers with a great deal of computing capabilities at a reasonable cost while at the same time hiding all that technical complexity and allowing a business to focus on doing business instead of running an IT shop.

Google apps is much more than just email and calendar. And while Google Docs may still have a long way to go to match the richness of functionality of Microsoft Office, it is adequate for the vast majority of staff to get their job done. What Google Apps does exceptionally well is helping people collaborate in real time on activities and processes.

Two often overlooked applications are Google Sites and Google Waves. Google sites provides a company a very simple means to create internal and external web sites which go far beyond just publishing information. It can be easily and quickly deployed to create working sites for staff to work on projects or departmental work allowing for staff to contribute to the work at different times at their own pace.

Google attempted to promote Google Waves as the new generation email and while I am a keen fan of it, I think that it has far more to offer businesses in terms of starting a "wave" which is used as a repository for views, opinions and activities. I particularly like the growing list of gadgets that you can embed in a wave. One of my favourite gadgets is a mind mapping which allows you to visualise alternatives.

The launch of Google Apps Marketplace is a milestone. What is brings to the table is the ability for a business to find, try and purchase a whole array of applications which can be introduced into the Google Apps environment easily without the need for long drawn out evaluations and assessments. Just try and buy. The great thing about alot of the applications is that they are integrated in some way into the Google Apps framework typically via email and calendar. There are project management, accounting, CRM and productivity applications and a whole lot more.

With the younger Facebook generation now entering the workforce the use of these applications make sense. They are simple and intuitive to use. They also have the added bonus that they can in a lot of instance be accessed using their mobile devices. Add to that the increasing use of netbooks and now iPads and you have a rich environment to significantly enhance productivity without having to build all that infrastructure yourself

Yes Google Apps has come of age and this is only the beginning

Why Google Docs And Collaboration Makes Sense

2010-06-29T09:18:00.001+10:00

When I first saw Google Docs, I have to admit that I was somewhat ambivalent. Having used Microsoft Office for so long, Google Docs looked ... well simple. But I soon learnt that it was because I was thinking about it as a substitute or replacement for Microsoft Office. But shift your thinking a little and suddenly a different picture emerges.

No one really creates a document just for your own use, unless you are just taking notes for yourself. In a business environment documents are created for sharing and distribution.

We have all emailed a copy of our document to someone for them to view and make changes. This means proliferating multiple copies. The really big difference with Google Docs is that you don't email them a copy of the doc. You invite them to view and work on the one copy of the document. This means that all changes are available for everyone who accesses the document as and when it happens.

In addition if more than one person accesses the document at the same time everyone is working on the same document live at the same time. And this is the real beauty, you can see what everyone working on the document is doing at the same time as each person's changes are colour coded in a different colour and is happening right before your eyes.

Add to this the ability to have a chat session as you work on the document and you have a very different collaborative environment. This is what Google are talking about when they refer to this type of collaboration as "real time" collaboration.

Just think of all the instances where you have to figure out what changes a person has made to a document you have sent them and then try to merge the changes from multiple people and you get an idea of what this can do for you.

This is a cultural shift and one that more than compensates for the reduced set of functionality. There is no doubt that Google Docs has less functionality than Microsoft Office but it does cover the majority of things that you would do simply and cleanly and brings a whole different meaning to working together in a collaborative fashion

Why Can't Businesses Collaborate Like Facebook?

2010-06-23T08:31:00.000+10:00

Much has been made about the need for collaboration and the proliferation of cloud based capabilities for collaborating from anything from projects to parties. While Facebook and MySpace has been a runaway success in networking on the social side, the adoption of similar technologies by businesses has been painfully slow.

We all intrinsically know that the real problem is resistance to change. What we don't fully grasp is that people are not averse to collaboration, they are just uncomfortable with real time collaboration. Before the advent and proliferation of online collaboration tools, people felt that they had control over what information they chose to share. And they did this in a safe protected environment.

Even as we entered the email age, we still thought we were in control of what we shared. So what really changed as we moved into the Facebook era?

Information started to be shaved instantaneously in real time literally as the content was being entered. This is actually quite a scary thing because it means that it gets acted on almost immediately. It also means mistakes are made more visible more quickly and can be seen by more people than ever before. For those

Information is being shared the smaller chunks as and when it occurs Exchanging small bite sized chunks of information is best exemplified in the proliferation of mobile phone text SMS messaging. The explosion in SMS usage caught even the telephone industry by surprise. Whether we consider this short bursts of exchanges to be wasteful or ineffective, it has been massively adopted especially by the younger generation.

But for those who just cannot come to grips with whole new fandangled tools, their response is wholly understandable ~ they simply refuse to participate. Here lies the real challenge. The problem is not with the technologies nor with the tools many of which are absolutely superb and effective. This is why most initiatives to introduce systems aimed at improving collaborative working fail.

The real reason why people contribute to the ongoing proliferation of the Facebook experience is the satisfaction they receive when other people engage with them.

A Great Way To Subscribe For Magazine Publications

2010-06-18T08:53:00.000+10:00

I have waited for a time when I could get easier access to magazines and finally, perhaps belated stumbled upon Zinio. It is a wonderful experience. It is as close to the physical experience as you can get.You can browse the magazine and either purchase the single copy or subscribe to the magazine.

The magazine is then available for you to view online or download and read on your PC or iPad in their reader which is clear and very user friendly allowing you to zoom in and even perform searches. And the prices are typically 50%-60% lower than the physical copy which is I believe a great price point for electronic content

I don't know about you but my magazines tend to stack up and when you consider that you only occasionally go back to an old issue, it just gathers dust around the place. With a electronic copy it is always possible to find your copy and go back to it at any time

I have to thank Martin Bailey of Martin Bailey Photography for pointing me in this direction in his podcast about applications for the iPad.

Now if only electronic books could get to this pricing point.

Systems Opportunities For Small Businesses In A Recession (Part I)

2009-02-13T23:56:00.002+11:00

You can hardly avoid talk about the recession in any conversation with a small business owner these days. In a almost perverse sense the slowdown in business activity provides small business owners the time to take stock. Let’s face it, during hectic times, systems and infrastructure is rarely a top priority until things break and are dealt with as a rectification matter.

If you have been running your business at this frenetic pace then it just may be time to use the breather to consider some of the important developments that you may have missed in the past couple of years.

Software-as-a-Service (Saas) or Software on Demand which companies like Saleforce.com and Netsuite helped to legitimise is now available at the small business end of the market. Small business owners really do not want to run IT shops and SaaS should have been a logic choice. But this has not happened and there are a number of contributory factors.

Security ~ those involved with small businesses will know that small business owners are uncomfortable with loosing physical control of their assets and this includes the computers that host their business data. With growing experience and familiarity with the internet over the past few years, small business owners are coming to terms with the fact that externally hosted systems are in fact more secure and stable than systems housed internally.
Cost ~ while vendors like Salesforce.com and Netsuite helped put Saas on the map, they are by no means cost effective for a small business owner. But this has change in the past two years. Fierce competition and entry of new vendors has meant that capable systems are now available at a fraction of the cost barely three years ago. Some vendors also offer free versions with a reduced set of functionality or number of users. Despite this the available functionality is still considerable.
Types of available applications ~ the number and variety of solutions that are available today are can be bewildering. For every solution area there will be many offerings. Interestingly many of the newer offerings are from India which also helps from the cost point of view.
Ease of Use ~ the newer crop of solutions have been developed straight out of the internet era. This means that they were designed with the intuitiveness of internet usage which significantly reduces the cost of adoption
Online Collaboration ~ these are new capabilities that the newer solution offerings have incorporated. These capabilties have the potential not only to change the work practices within the business but also can significantly alter the way your business engages with your customers.

In the part II I will walk through an example of the how such a system could possibly be configured in a practical manner for a small business.

What People Really Use To Manage Projects

2009-01-26T23:36:00.001+11:00

Every business has any number of projects all running at the same time. This can be anything from organising a company picnic to refurbishing a warehouse.

The number of tools available today is mind boggling and there everyone will swear by their favourite tool. However the real problem is that the focus is on the tool rather than what the tool is expected to achieve. For as small business, there is rarely any interest in project governance, critical path or PERT. All they want to do is get the job done.

In really simple terms, it is all about identifying what needs to be done and making sure that someone is made responsible for ensuring that it gets done. Sure the scale and complexity can vary according to the number of people involved.

Most people, when pushed hard, are likely to admit that they use Excel to keep a list of activities with the dates and names of persons responsible for the activity. Lets face it. It works and work very well in many circumstances. So why bother with anything else. Well it works if only one person is running the whole show. If there are several people involved it starts to get messy. Sharing the excel spreadsheet as a means of communicating the plan is Ok up to a point but try maintaining it and the fun really begins.

There are well established and formalised project management methodologies and there are a whole crop of powerful scheduling tools that implement these methodologies. Microsoft Projects is probably the most well known of them. The issue here is not whether Microsoft Projects does a good job – it does. The problem is that it requires the user to be familiar with the underlying methodologies. This unfortunately is the problem for small organisations. Even if they had staff who were familiar with formal project management methodologies and with the tools, the organisation simply does not have the resources to implement and use the methodology.

In recent years, the proliferation of new internet collaborative tools has opened up other simpler alternatives. These tools have driven the phenomenal growth of social networking sites such as mySpace and Facebook by making it easy for like minded individuals to share experiences

This has given rise to a crop of solutions that a a hybrid of project management and social networking capabilities and include the following:

Developed with the internet as the delivery vehicle, these applications are easily accessible and much easier to deploy than the more traditional project scheduling software. This means that a small business could easily adopt it and provide a platform to manage its projects. These new applications incorporate the use of wikis, forums and chat to enable individuals to share information, risks and progress information about the project simply and easily.

So maybe it is about time to consider putting your excel spreadsheet aside and lake a look at the alternative options.

Focus and Concentration Span

2008-11-02T20:31:00.000+11:00

I work for a company that was one of the earliest adopters of wireless networks. I remember the first meeting I attended where almost everyone had their laptops open and appeared to me to be continuously shifting between answering email and taking notes of the meeting. I remember at the time being mildly irritated at this behaviour.

But over the years, I have come to realise that something strange appears to be at play. Like most members of the older working generation, I was brought up in the tradition of paying attention on one thing at a time. Teachers at school constantly battling get me to hold my attention have conditioned me so. So why then am I thinking otherwise now.

When I sit back and take a good look at the content of meetings and the participants, it is clear that not every item is truly relevant to every single participant. So then what happens to all that time sitting in meetings trying to concentrate during when the meeting discusses something that has no relevance to me. If we are truly honest, we are thinking about other things that are presently occupying out mind. Hopefully things about work. So what's the difference when someone someone does the same thing by responding to email.

Many management gurus have continually argued that you simply cannot multi-task in this manner. I for one would tend to agree but then I did not grow up with Facebook, online chat and sms on mobile phones. What I really find fascinating is that the members of the younger generation do not "tune out" when they act in the multi-tasking mode. In fact I have found that the opposite happens, when we force them to turn their laptops and PDAs off I find that this is when they really tune out of the meeting.

Now don't get me wrong, a badly run meeting without an agenda and with no adherence to time constraints is still a bad meeting regardless of whether people are multi-tasking during the meeting. But let us not judge the actions of others so quickly just because it rubs us up the wrong way.

Effective Conference Calls for Small Businesses

2008-08-31T00:47:00.001+10:00

What comes to your mind when you think of video conferencing. Possibly anything from complicated to gimmicky and unnecessary. Well you would not have been too far off the mark barely a few years ago. Video conferencing was peddled as the solution for "virtual meetings" and they were costly and complicated beasts.

Fast forward to today. Instant messaging (chat) is commonplace. Web based conferencing solutions are widespread and costs hardly anything to adopt and deploy with no complicated software to install and configure. Video conferencing can also be had for the cost of a web cam.

So why and what use would this be to small businesses? The real cost of travel, even before the recent increases in the cost of air travel is considerable. It is not just the direct cost of the airfares, taxi and other travel related costs but also the cost of lost time and productivity as the transit time is often greater than the actual meeting times.

Video conferencing was not actually the first attempt at virtual meetings. Teleconferencing was in fact the first and it was very effective. Video conferencing added the visual aspect that to virtual meetings. But is was expensive initially requiring specilaised equipment.

And for many years tele and video conferencing represented the only available tools. Today, new enhanced capabilities and tools together with standardisation has given rise to a whole new breed of solutions which greatly facilitate what I term virtual discussions. What then are these capabilities and how would a small business make use of them. Apart from conference calls which is blindingly obvious, here are other uses of scenarios where such services could be put to use:

Training
Marketing
Demonstrations
Support and consulting

The key to getting a better understanding of how your business can benefit from the deployment of such solutions is appreciating that all these tools focus on sharing content for the purpose of effective communication.

One of the biggest steps forward is that these new capabilities are capable of being shared simultaneously.

Consider a typical scenario: The sales rep is in different location in another country which is 6 hours behind your location. The customer has dragged your local sales rep into their office and has complained of problems with the quality of your products. You operate a small plant but rely on external consultants to design some aspects of your product. Your consultants are actually located in a different city.

Given such a scenario, what would your communication method be. You would probably email or call everyone to organise a time for a telephone meeting. Emails exchanging details of the problem would be sent.

Now consider how this could be conducted using one of the availablee offerings today.

You would set up the meeting that sends out meeting invitations which appear in the receipients' calendars. This part is no different from what you do now. The major difference is how the meeting is conducted. You may choose to use the VOIP telephony capability contained in the solution instead. Video conferencing facilities can be switched on and off on demand.

This is where the collaborative (or sharing capabilities come into their own):

Desktop Sharing ~ this is where the person having control shares selected windows (applications) or their whole desktop with all the attendees this allowing him to walk through an application screen or a Powerpoint presentation of the problem or recommended course of action.

While all this is going on, the sales rep sends you a private message by chat informing you that you should cover the material issue which the production supervisor informed him about 10 minutes before the start of the meeting.

Sound far fetched ? think again ~ here are a just a few solutions that offer some if not all the capabilities described in the scenario and they can be implemented in a matter of hours not days or weeks.

Vyew
GotoMeeting
Zoho Meeting
Thinkature

Over the coming weeks we will take a closer look at each one of these alternative offerings

Taking Notes Anytime Anywhere

2008-08-16T00:05:00.001+10:00

I take note notes all the time and over the years gradually ditched pen and note pad for electronic notes. There are numerous note taking facilities both web based and PC based but I always struggled to find something that would suit my particular way of working. Like a lot of people these days, I have a work laptop as well as a personal one. I take notes using both laptops.

Using the same program on both laptops means that I either need to store the notes in a shared location that both laptops can access (preferable someplace on the Internet) easily or attempt to synchronise the notes between the both laptops.

This is where Evernote comes to my rescue. For starters you can use the web based version or install Evernote on your laptop or PC. The notes on your PC will synchronise with the notes on your account on the Internet.

The web based version is simple to use and has a nice clean interface. It is particularly useful when you do not have access to your own laptop such as in an Internet Cafe. The PC version has more capabilities as one would expect including a rather nifty time band which provides a graph of notes created by date.

On the PC version, Evernote indexes the notes automatically which makes the search facility really very powerful. Just start typing and Evernote displays all notes which contain the word you have typed thus far. It all but makes the tagging feature redundant. Why bother tagging when you can simply search for it. The search capability on the web version is so slow by comparison.

Another really useful feature is the ability to install a portable version of Evernote on a USB drive. Imagine carrying a synchronised copy of your notes on a 2GB USB drive and be able to launch Evernote directly off the drive. I found that trying to use the portable version installed on a USB drive to be quite sluggish so I tried installing it on an external drive and it performed beautifully. Bear in mind that all copies of the notes are synchronised with the notes on your account on the Internet which makes is a breeze to ensure that all copies of your notes are kept in sync.

As if that was not enough, there is a Windows Mobile and an iPhone version as well and at worse you can just about access and use the web based version optimised for mobile phones. You shouldn't really get too concerned with all this different versions. It is just enough to know that you can make notes and get to your existing notes with almost any major device available today.

Another nifty feature which I like is the ability to send email messages or photographs from your mobile phone to your Evernote account and it results in the creation of a note. I find this particularly useful for taking pictures of notes on the whiteboard or recordings of voice notes that I may have taken and post these as notes in Evernote. If you are in the USA there is a service that transcribes the voice recording into text.

And get this ~ Evernote is free. The only limitation is a 40MB monthly usage restriction on a free account. But this is actually quite substantial translating into 20,000 notes per month.

Online Document and Filing Systems

2008-08-14T09:22:00.001+10:00

All businesses produce produce a vast number of electronic documents. These are typically produced and stored on PC's and Laptops and emailed by the creator to the individuals whom they think may need it. This gives rise to a number of problems especially if the document is updated and redistristributed.

Who has the latest version of the document
Where is it stored
How do you find particular documents

For small businesses, the problem is often more acute than they may think. With hardware, especially hard disk storage being so affordable these days, the temptation is simply to buy more hard hard disk storage. Some businesses may even set up shared drives and folders on a PC in their office. While this goes some way to addressing the problem, it does not really solve the problems noted above.

The good news is that there are good reliable ready made solutions which can be quickly and cheaply implemented. These online web based solutions make use of new capabilities to help you organise and share documents not just between your employees but also with external parties in a secure and efficient manner. These solutions allow you to create and modify documents with Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint or most of the commonly used PC applications and store and share them on a shared repository over the internet.

Here are just a sample of currently avaialble offerings:

These are not just shared online folders but offer a more sophisticated interface and combine other features that make is easier to track versions of documents as well a means to invite other people to access, view and work on these documents.

For a small businesses with people in different locations, especially where you do not have a large number of people in the other location or even working from home, this is so much easier to set up and manage and hardly needs any IT expertise to do so. Even better most of them provide some kind of direct interface with Microsoft Office applications like Word, Excel and Powerpoint from within these applications.

Simple Collaborative Web Based Project Management Tools For Small Businesses

2008-08-13T08:59:00.001+10:00

Small businesses manage as many projects as larger businesses. For a long time the only tools that have been available were those that were based on the more traditional critical path methodologies delivered in software like Microsoft Projects. The problem for small businesses is that these tend to be too complex and rigid. Given the nature and size of projects that are characteristic of small businesses what is needed is:

A simple way to create and maintain a list of activities and people responsible for completing them.
A way to the individuals responsible for these activities to know what activities they are responsible for and to update the status of the activities.
A common place where all relevant information relating to the project to be shared and kept up-to-date.

A new set of solutions are now available for small businesses to adopt which are much simpler to implement and use. Here are the links to just a few of these:

These new tools provide a means of creating lists of activities very much like a shared to-do list. But more than that it allows you to assign responsibilities for the list to different individuals and then invite them to participate in your project.

They can then update the status of the activity, share information with other members of the project. All this is done simply and with 24x7 access to the information.

For small business this is a far more effective way coordinating work done by several individuals working in different places (possibly even in different countries and time zones) in a very effective and cost efficient manner. Furthermore you can include individuals who are not in your organisation. Think about vendors, external consultants and even your customers.

An added benefit of these new offerings is that they all allow you to try the solution for free before deciding to make a financial commitment to their offerings.This is usually by allowing you to create one project for free.

This is a great way to start coordinating the work of several individuals in a simple and cost effective manner

Greed - Still Damning

2008-06-22T21:54:00.001+10:00

As the stories surrounding the sub-prime fiasco unfolds, it is clear yet again as with many of the previous corporate failures of the recent past, that greed has, is and will continue to be at the core of all these economic disasters.

What puzzles me is that you would have thought that the alarm bells would have already gone off with likes of Enron et al that we would have woken and and said "enough". The American Dream seems to have motivated a generation of Baby Boomers and spread to all parts of the globe in different guises. Every country is able to quote its own examples of Enron and now Sub-Prime. Why haven't we, as a society come out and say in no uncertain terms that such greed is totally and completely unacceptable. It is not just a matter of money, it is a matter of lives that are destroyed.

Just when are we going to stand up and say that it is not acceptable to derived gain without creating any value. The problem today is that the unrestricted no bounds pursuit of profit is seen not only as good but entirely justifiable. We have established cultural norms that put profit ahead of any corporate or social responsibility. Is it any wonder that no matter how well off we have become of how much we have accumulated as businesses or individuals, it simply is never enough.

If such unfetted pursuit and accumulation of wealth is natural then whey do we always remain unsatisfied. Its about time we start doing something about our responsibilities. Small businesses, I believe are in a unique position to lead the way simply because they are far less susceptible to the excesses of larger businesses as they are always struggling to go about their business with scant resources.

Perhaps it about time that Governments also wake up to this and stop pandering to big business.

Holistic Is Good So What Next

2008-06-19T23:32:00.001+10:00

If you agree that a holistic approach is good the question then is what next. There are so many things out there in the ether of the internet that is is simply confusing.

A good starting point is to review what your business does and what it needs. You know what business you are in and what you do. You also have in place systems and processes you need to run your business. For small businesses the changes are that these are not that structured or formally documented. For a small business, there is actually nothing wrong with this. After all the beauty of being small is that you have the flexibility to respond to change.

One of the problems with the development of computer systems over the years is that it required you to do certain things in fixed ways and they were aimed at larger businesses. So what's different today? The advent of the web has meant that small software companies are able to create small pieces of software that do small things very well. But there are so many of these pieces and they often do not work well together.

So perhaps if we take a different approach, we just may find that we can make all the various pieces work together very nicely for us. So here are a few areas to consider:

Accounting Systems: You must already have one of these. This is a well developed market with loads of readily available solutions. But lets face it only the accounting folks in your business really use these on a daily basic and it is more than likely that you have this well covered.

Sales, Purchasing and Stock: It goes without saying that you probably aready have some system for capturing and processing sales and if you have stock you also probably have somthing to keep track of your purchases and stock. Most of you probably have got this as part of your accounting system.

Communication: Now this starts to get a bit interesting. You have telephone, fax and email which most businesses know about and mobile phones are often seen as an extention of this.

Most people think that they understand these reasonably well used but the real question for a small business is how you deploy them effectively to achieve real productivity gains. This is where small businesses fail to take it to the next step of collaboration ~ where businesses start to take advantage of available technology today to help individuals both inside and outside the business to work together easily and effectively.

But beyond these, there is far more "things" that happen within a businesses that simply do not lend themselves to such stuctured process and systems. So lets see what kinds of things are out there that we could possibly make use of:

Filing Systems: At the simplest level this means having one place to store and organise files. Files contain information that is relevant and the worse thing is not knowing where to find that file and what is contained in it. Today there are many available facilities, often at no cost for storing, categorising and sharing files (and hence the information contained in them). And yet you will be surprised at how many small businesses simply continue to have files stored in individual folders on individual PCs and then have to rely on someone remembering where it was.

Shared Workspaces: There are many offerings on the market that provide capabilities that allow multiple users to share content such as discussions, notes and the like in a single organised place. These can be accessed from any where securely over the internet. Even simple things like shared to-do lists for a project would be far better served with this rather than email.

Blogs and Social Networking: The advent of blogging and social networking means that anyone can start to put content on the internet to cheaply and easily test market reaction. It means being able to get yourself on the map without spending big marketing dollars and allows you to put a human face to your businesses. You do however need to be prepared for both the good and the bad. This can be a very powerful tool expecially if the product or service you sell is typically to the X and Y generation who live and thrive on these social networks.

There are an increasing number of internet based functions and capabilities coming onto the market every day. One major advantage of these internet based systems are it requires no hardware to be installed and maintained in your business premises other than having connections to the internet. And even better wireless broadband allows you and your staff to have fast reliable untethered internet connections.

In the next articles, I will start to specifically address individual topics and explore some offerings that can be introduced simply and easily into small businesses.

A Holistic Approach to the Internet for Small Businesses

2008-06-17T09:18:00.001+10:00

Whether you care or are aware of the developments on the web of the past few years, what is clear is that you simply cannot afford to ignore it. Small business have previously argued that they simply could not afford the expertise nor ther high cost of matching what the big boys were doing.

The truth of the matter is that getting your footprint, however tiny, on the web today is cheaper than ever before and it is not something that you can simply leave to someone who has "spare" time in the businesses. The real problem however is many small businessess simply take a piecemeal approach. Sure your staff use Google to search for stuff and yes they all use email instead of snail paper letters and of course you have some accounting package of some sort. And of course there is the massive number of ad hoc Excel spreadsheets you use for just about everything.

Nothing wrong with all this but are you really taking advantage of what is really out there. Small businesses have always struggled to do real marketing and market research let alone promotion and better customer service. Small businesses typically rely on their better customer service to compete with the larger organisations who have the advantage of scale and have typically viewed new technology more as fads and gadgets.

What they fail to appreciate is that in this day of connectedness there is scope to do things a lot better and not cost an arm and a leg. How many businesses have considered "integrating" all the connectable devices in their businesses. By this I mean laptops, mobile phones and the like. Do all these devices which are widely used work together as a whole to make their business processes more efficient and productive?

With mobile broadband wireless becoming so cheap it worthwhile considering what more you can do for your business by looking at it holistically rather than as individual pieces of equipment. Have a good think ~ you will be surprised to see what you can achieve.

Beware of What Your Customers Are Saying About You On The Web

2008-06-05T00:36:00.001+10:00

How often have I heard a business owner saying that they have little time or inclination to know what all this new "stuff" that the kids are fooling around with on the net. Myspace or Facebook or whatever. And what about all those people wasting time in public forums sharing stuff. You wonder what all this fuss is about.

The problem is that while you might not think nor care too much about all this internet social interaction stuff, they just might be talking and sharing stuff about your business and your products and services.

You remember the old story that a customer who has a bad experience will tell 10 friends and so forth. Well in today's world that will not be just 10 friends but it could be thousands within a few minutes of a bad customer experience being published on the web.

Just as an example Whirlpool Forums contains discussions about every major broadband provider in Australia. Just take at look at some of the postings and you might just get a surprise. Better still do a search on Google or any search engine for the name of your company and your products. You never know what you will find.

This is a double edged sword. It is just as easy to find nice as well as nasty things being said about your products and services and boy do nice things go a long way to getting you credibility that marketing just cannot buy.

Increasingly, the customers today are younger and have grown up with PCs and the internet. They are familiar with social networking on the internet just as the older generation were familiar with face to face networking. And don't we all have stories to recall about things we have said about good and bad buying experiences.

Businesses used to fear that the traditional press would pick up on a bad story to take to print about your business and the press had much power and still do. But the press today is not the only means of getting news out. Blogging is so pervasive today and anyone can publish things on the web. Not only is it easy to publish but so much easier to find things thanks to Google, Yahoo and Microsoft search engines.

So just think again, what you do not know really can hurt you

In the Otways, hatchets are buried as the chainsaws fall silent - National

2008-05-25T11:08:00.001+10:00

the timber industry didn't have to close down here. If it had kept its right proportion and logged for maximum value-adding in smaller coupes, it could have gone on forever

In the Otways, hatchets are buried as the chainsaws fall silent - National

Over the years, I have slowly come to appreciate the arguments on both sides of the divide. As I grow older and also have the opportunity to walk in and experience first hand some of the areas of the conflict, I just couldn't help but wonder that there just had to be some common ground.

Reading this article was refreshing and encouraged me to know that people on both sides can meet somewhere in the middle if only they would seek out the common ground.

And this is a rare commodity these days. We seem to be creating a culture in Australia where one's rights are to be pursued at almost any cost. That the individual is the centre of the universe and that everything else revolves around them. Just how many Cory's do we need to have before we realise that the single individual's rights can no longer be pursued without constraint or boundaries. When are we going to sit of moment to consider there is intrinsically something very wrong when the rights of a single individual are placed ahead of the common good.

The article above is right. Logging in the Otways need not have stopped. And like many things we see today, abstinence is not the answer, responsible behaviour is what is required. No matter what Wall Street may think, Greed is NOT good.

Now The Budget Dust Has Settled

2008-05-17T09:45:00.001+10:00

Its been 4 days since the budget and we have heard replies and commentary that is just about as bad as the budget itself. The problem is with so many interest (or should I say self-interest) groups, no budget will ever be a good budget. You put out a "tough" budget the welfare people get on your back. You put out a "soft" budget the economists tear you to shreads.

Let's face it, Australians have become far too self-centred, self serving and conceited. Everything seems to be referenced around "what's in it for me". And guess what - it really isn't.

As a whole, Australian society is getting to the point where if something does not fit our view of the world then it must be put down, stamped out and thrown into the fire. I can't help but it wasn't that long ago when this was called intolerance. Now it's called execising your rights. And boy does everyone have rights. The gays want their rights, the old aged pensioners, the blue eye, green eyed ... and the list goes one.

If we want to pursue our unfettered rights then it's about time we also started looking seriously about our responsibilities. Everything has a price and the price of securing rights is giving and exercising responsibilities. Funny thing is that "responsibility" has become a dirty word. When was the last time you heard a politician talk about responsibility. You will hear them say that we need responsible action and so forth ..... but when was the last time you heard one say they they would stand up and be held accountable and responsible.

So why are we so shocked then that we have children who insist on their rights and have no inkling of what it means to be responsible.

So another budget is done, the rumblings and grumblings go on and we move on

Online Sharing in a Connected World

2008-02-13T08:52:00.001+11:00

Ever wondered why big companies spend an awful lot of money on "connecting" people so that they can work more effectively? And what is all this fuss about Social Networking all about? Isn't it just something your teenaged children use to just "hang out" with other teenagers in cyberspace.

There is a whole lot of stuff out there, at little or no cost that a small business can make use of to connect people both internally within your business and externally with customers and suppliers that.

Online Groups

Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Myspace and the like all offer the ability for you to create a group that can either be public or private. Private groups are only by invitation. These are simply places on the web where you can put up content for free.

These can be used to publish content about your business and your products. Creating your own web site on the internet is that it allows interaction. You can publish information about your company and products and people and add provide feedback and comments.

These simple groups give you the ability to do things that the big boys pay alot of money to have. You can publish newsletters, conduct surveys, share information about new products and services in a reasonably secure manner. They are simple to use and cost you nothing and you get customer feedback in a non-threatening friendly manner.

Its intereting that few businesses make use of this and yet are prepared to spend alot of money trying to create a "corporate" website to create an online presence on the web. Here are just a few things you can consider:

Information about your products and services
Discussion groups where people can post questions and have anyone make comments and replies - Pentax recently announced its new D20K digital SLR camera and on one of the more popular sites dpreview passionate users of their products started numerous discussions about everything from pricing to the whole experience of a new camera which was not even available at the shops yet. This is feedback that would have been costly to get
Blogs - have someone talk about things your business is doing. This provides a personal face to your company. You don't have to be journalist to do this. People are interested in your personal thoughts and feelings especially when you talk passionately about things you care about.
Questions and answers about the use of your products - Don't be afraid to provide answers to questions people ask. It shows your confidence in your products - warts and all. This helps you to be transparent and accountable

Just because you are a small business does not mean you have to be at a disadvantage. You can do the same things to increase customer intimacy at a fraction of the cost that big companies spend on getting the same thing.

CRM for the Small Business

2008-02-12T09:07:00.001+11:00

So you don't have millions or even thousands of dollars to spend on a CRM. And you don't even know what those dreadful acronynms like SFA actually mean. But as a small business you do know that customer service, especially the peronalised service that you offer is keeping your business alive.

The good news is that there are actually things that you can and should do which do not cost you an arm and a leg. Forget for a moment all the hype and not to mention the costly budgets quoted as needed for a CRM implementation. For any business, small or large, securing customer intimacy is key to your survival especially in a world where your next competitor may not even have a physical presence in your geographic location.

Being customer centric means making the customer the main thing. It means focussing your business activities on the customer. At the most simple level, it means that anyone in your business who engages with a customer for whatever reason should be able to know enough about the customer, what they do, who their key contacts are, what they have purchased and what interactions you have had with them so that you can service them well with a personalised service.

Successfull businesses have been doing this for years. What's different now is that as your business grows you have more people and interactions are getting more complex. You interact with your customers in many different ways; email, fax, telephone, face to face meetings and the like.

So the challenge is whether your current business processes and systems enable you to capture and share these interactions throughout your whole businesses quickly and in a cost effective manner. The good news is that there are readily available solutions to this problem today which many small businesses simply are not aware of. Simple CRM systems bring together capabilities to capture interactions with the customer in a simple and collaborative manner.

A solution such as Zoho allows you to get going with a minimum of investment in IT infrastructure and software. In fact the first three users are free which allows you a very cost effective way of trying it out before committing to a fee paying contract.

Small businesses should at least consider giving it a go with minimal risk and investment so that you can easily determine whether the benefits are worth a more comprehensive investment in a CRM solution. Seems like a pretty good way to give it a go

Is Any Thing Really Free?

2008-02-11T09:01:00.001+11:00

The threat to businesses of someone coming along some day to give away what you do for free is a frightening thought. This has never been more true in the software industry today. With the increasing proliferation of the web, many Web 2.0 companies offer use of their software for free.

Companies like Zoho, Basecamp and many others offer a free license, not a limited trial but full fledged license. They can do this because the marginal cost of doing so if so low that for all intents and purposes it is "free". In the past, geographic isolation provided a real sense of protection because there simply wasn't any way of getting the product or service other than the local provider.

However the web changed all that. Today, the software provider could be anywhere in in the world and all you need is a connection to the web. This provides an opportunity not just for the sofware developers but also for small businesses.

Take the simple example of word processing and spreadsheets. Small businesses hardly ever make use of the full capabilities of Microsoft Office and yet fork out for licenses. Google and Zoho offer the most used capabilties for nothing.

Today these capabilities go beyond just word processing. Start up companies now offer free CRM, Project Management and team collaboration capabilities. The problem is that many small businesses simply are not aware of them and consultants who can help small businesses do not seem to want to offer their services around these products.

The opportunity for small businesses to save on costs is real but have no way of knowing what is available and what it can do for their buisnesses. The simplicity of use of these offerings should not be overlooked as they bring real benefits to small businesses despite the lack of a known brand. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth

How Delicate the Balance

2007-12-31T16:02:00.001+11:00

Taking a walk in Kosciusko National Park really brings home the reality of the just how delicate is the balance that sustains our very existence. Somehow the raging political debates and lack of agreement between all the State and the Federal Government about water rights and usage seems so surreal when you consider that what is at stake here is really the continued existence of this environment that is the source of both the Snowy River and Murray River systems.

Preserving this environment is by no means a simple matter. The issue of alpine grazing is indeed fraught with difficulties and valid arguments rage on both sides.

While the vegetation may not look like much, I was surprised to learn that the moss actually stores water and gradually releases it over the drier periods. It really starts to hit you how intertwined every bit of the whole environment is linked to the live (or death) of our major Australian river system. Just seeing some of the little streams that are fed by melting snow drives home just how critical this area is to the East Coast of Australia.

It is the destruction of this vegetation that lies at the heart of the battle between the conservationists and the alpine grazers. And it did come as a surprise to be that the wild horses (Brumbies) were also a threat to this environment if left unchecked.

Striking a balance is at best a monumental task. at worse impossible. But for me at least, seeing the park for myself in person and learning about exactly what role it plays in our river systems convinces me that the environment must be protected at all costs before it is too late

'Pay what you like' for CD download makes everyone a winner - Business

2007-11-04T13:48:00.001+11:00

One recording industry executive I spoke to said that Radiohead might now get anything up to 90 per cent of every album sold against as little as 5 per cent previously. So on that basis, they are much worse off selling the average album through the traditional process in the shops for $22 or more.

'Pay what you like' for CD download makes everyone a winner - Business

Reading this on a Sunday morning while sipping my coffee really makes me really wonder just when all those artists are going the get it. I applaud the band, Radiohead, even though I am really not a fan of their music.

What is really so silly about the whole existing music CD and movie DVD distribution game is that it is so outmoded that the only people who seem to not know about it is the artists, actors and the distribution industry itself.

Back in them "good ole days" the only way to get the music in your hands was on some physical medium - vinyl records, cassettes and then CD. The need for a physical medium encouraged the establishment of the present economic model that we see today of a complex web of promoters, producers, managers, distribution right and a massive infrastructure between the producer (namely the artist) and the consumer.

This system actually provided an efficient and effective service to get the product from the producer to the end consumer. However that was in the days when there was a physical medium. Today its all a matter a bits and bytes whizzing around the internet - the whole foundation for the business model changed ..... only problem is they forgot to tell the artists and the folks who control the music industry.

Ironically, the people who have really jumped on this are the ones who were ignored by the giants of the music industry - niche artists have already recognised that this is a viable means of getting their stuff to consumers in a cost effective way. Oh and by the way you can set your own price - let the record companies and retail chains.

The problem is that the existing business model has really too many fat and vested interests all along the chain more than half of which just are simply no longer required if the artist makes use of the internet and goes straight to the consumer. And boy can these fellows be expected to put up a good fight.

The sad part of it all is that like so many dominant business in the past, few of them survive into the future where something fundamental has changed. The music (and DVD movie) business has experienced such a change and they are unlikely to be capable for making the necessary change to completely change the economic model they currently operate under. The new giants in the future of this industry are not sitting in the board rooms of the big players today. In fact they are also unlikely to be sitting in the lower echelons of these companies. Its probably some young fella who is passionate about music and just wants to be able to get hold of what he wants immediately and easily and is mightily frustrated with all the barriers that the music industry continually puts up to this happening.

Ask Mums About Inflation

2007-08-06T09:04:00.001+10:00

Isn't it interesting how the press and the media (and the politicians) talk about inflation and CPI and prices. Arguments rage about whether it is representative and whether it is makes meaningful.

Spare a thought for a moment for the vast majority of folks who really experience price increases on a daily or weekly basis - the mums. They know for sure that bananas cost $6 a kg today when it was $4 a few months ago and that the fish and chips have gone up by 30 cents in the past 6 months.

Imagine what they are thinking when the they are told that the CPI is 3% or 4% and doing the simple arithmetics and it simply does not tally. Yes we kinda know that there is that fictitious bundle of goods and services that takes into consideration rent and petrol and the like but for they things that they purchase again and again on a regular basis they just know that 3% or 4 % just does not compute.

Proctor and Gamble (who make soaps and detergents and lots of other stuff we use around the house) have a very successful program using groups of real mums to get feedback about their products and they treat it very seriously because they should and really do know what they are talking about.

Is it any wonder that the vast majority of real life people are so skeptical about these official figures that are brandished about when they struggle to make the connection with what they are experiencing. Perhaps politicians should start to take them as seriously as companies like Proctor and Gamble do.

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Betting Big

2007-07-31T08:45:00.001+10:00

Everytime I read about big investments in innovation by big companies that are reported it sets off in me. It is as if only big really matters. That only big companies can make a difference. But the truth is there are probably more small simple innovations that have impacted the lives of far more people than the big ones.

Big also means bigger bets and bigger risks and correspondingly means more processes to manage the risk which in turn requires even bigger returns to justify the investment. There comes a point where the overhead of managing and administering the project is greater than the actual effort and manpower engaged in the actual doing.

It is simple arithmetic that a 100% return on investment on $10m requires sales of $200m whereas the same return on $100k is $200K. There seems to be this notion that thresholds like this are treated as cast in concrete.

But take a moment to just consider that not every innovation, no matter how good the market research, assuming that you can in fact research the market which may or may not be known at the time, can possibly give you any real certainty just because you can muster up some numbers.

Very often small businesses can only go on gut feel and a hunch. This does not mean that they go in blindly but simply that they deploy less of their resources on managing the process and simply get on with making something new and go for it. Small bets with smaller expectations and smaller wins along the way. This is the real advantage that smaller businesses have over the big boys.

The risk to them is no less than for the bigger boys. In fact it is often far greater given their meager resources. But their lower cost base from which they are starting from gives them a big advantage to compete in the future as they start to see those small wins along the way.

Innovative Disruption - Friend or Foe?

2007-07-30T08:50:00.001+10:00

One of the biggest threats to any successful business is being blind sided by something round the corner that it simply did not see. There are numerous contemporary examples. Yahoo did not see Google coming, the music industry did not see the ipod and iTunes coming. The book Innovators Dilemma captures the heart of this beautifully as it describes the effects of such discruption.

Small businesses are in a unique position to capitalise on this phenomena simply because they are not encumbered with the history of success nor of the surrounding processes that generally tend to follow a success.

Big business thrives on standardised processes and procedures and must do so as a consequence of doing business. But this tends to blunt flexibility and responsiveness as layer upon layer of process complexity and rules weigh down the innovation efforts. Large businesses are notoriously bad at finding new ground breaking innovation.

Additionally, it is not about new technology but more about putting together new ways of using what is largely already there. You do not need to invest millions to find something simple and effective that meets simple needs of customers

Small businesses should take heart. Even with the seemingly unstoppable growth of big business there is plenty of room for small smart innovations to unseat established players

Business Networking

2007-07-19T08:39:00.001+10:00

Social Networking has taken off with a vengeance. In Australia, even the politicians are getting into the act. So many different sites and different capabilities have emerged to suit a whole variety of needs and groups of people covering all areas of interest.

And yet this whole phenomena seems not to have gotten any real traction with the business community and by this I mean, I really have not found any significant adoption of business people using these same capabilities to share and collaborate.

One of the most common things I hear is that business people simply do not have any time to go "playing" around with this social networking stuff. Another is that it simply isn't all that intuitive for a business use. And the list can go on an on.

This is changing as the new generation who are familiar with instant messaging, blogs and bulletin boards start to become more influential in the workforce. However the challenge still remains that there does not seem to be any place for them to go to.

We all know about the power of the collective mind, about sharing idea and capitalising on the collective knowledge that is available on the world wide web. It would be good to start to see the same capabilities put to use for business purposes in a meaningful and powerful way. It would be such a powerful and useful resource for small business.

Beating The Big Boys

2007-06-19T23:45:00.001+10:00

Just mention the work competition and most companies will tell you about their meanest, most aggressive competitor out there. Most companies are fixated on their biggest customers and will go to any lengths to protect them from the competition. This is understandable and necessary for survival.

What is often overlooked is that the most dangerous competition is not the one that you can see but the one you cannot. And the good news of small businesses is that the competitors of the large established market leaders of today are not going to be the big guy next door but the little guy who is going after your most unattractive customers. Small companies cannot compete with the big boys who have deeper pockets but they certainly can go after the "low" value customers that the big guys most probably are trying and are happy to get rid of.

One of the most obvious ways of doing this is offering different products and services at a lower cost but a simpler and move convenient for the customers to use. As companies grow larger, they gravitate naturally to their most profitable customers who by and large demand more features, more capabilities and ever better quality. All this comes at a higher cost to the customer.

This results in a pool of potential customers who cannot afford to buy the product or service at the current higher prevailing market prices. Everyone eyes the high margin customers but overlook the ones who would purchase if the price was right. These potential customers generally look for simpler products and services at a much lower price point. The market does exist, if we care to look carefully for it.

So rather than go upmarket, next time consider what you can do to provide products and services with less features and are less complex but can get the job done at a lower price. You never know what you might find at that end of the market.

Technorati Tags: small business, competition, innovation

Afraid of failing-think again

2007-05-09T01:05:00.001+10:00

Killer Innovations

Phil Mckinney (of Killer Innovations blog) lists the following as some of the reasons why innovation efforts fail and together with his podcast clearly explains why these reasons contribute to ineffective innovation efforts.

Innovation for awards and recognition
Meaningless innovation
Non-user driven innovation
Innovation as long as its green
Innovation by committee
Lightspeed innovation
Copycat innovations

But more importantly it is absolutely crucial to grasp the fact that failure is inevitable in any business venture or activity. Then can be very little learning without failure. yet many businesses operate as if failure could be avoided altogether. This is clearly unrealistic and sends the wrong message to the business. What needs to happen is businesses have to learn how to fail successfully.

It means being prepared to recognize that it will take several failures of ideas before we hit on a success. All too often, organizations simply look for excuses rather than look for lessons to be learnt and thus very expensive tuition fees for the cost of the failure is wasted.

often times u overlook the obvious which is than the idea itself may not be a failure tons the timing or even target market or customer was his right. In his book, Innovators Dilemma, Clayton Christensen explored in great depth, the challenges faced by established businesses in dealing with destructive innovation in their very own industries. In a significant number of instances, the established players failed miserably to identify new emerging markets not because they did had not created the right products but because they did not see or feel the business pressure to take those products to new sets of customers

Failure is often expensive although it does not have to be so. But as costly as failures can be, it is far more tragic if we do not learn from them or create a culture that does not foster creativity and experimentation. This is a sure sign of a dead or dying business.

Dare To Be Different

2007-02-28T15:18:00.000+11:00

There are a great many good and must read books around; Competing for the Future, Blue Ocean Strategy, Good to Great and the list goes on and on. The trouble is for a small and mid-sized business is that there is hardly enough time to run the business let alone read more management books. So here is my take on it, short and simple; and this has been around for ages - "Dare to be Different"

Which books or course you have read or attended, the underlying message is that businesses who do things differently succeed. Forget the fancy names and the eloquent methodologies. For a small business its all about being sufficiently different so that you (1) attract attention (2) get to compete on some other factor other than price. Don't get me wrong, in this day and age, we cannot get away from price but it doesn't mean that it is the only thing we compete on.

So there are lots of ways of being sufficiently different but the real trick is whether the difference matters to your customer - if not who really cares - your customers won't and if they don't it does not take a genius to figure out that it won't get you anywhere. And by the way the difference does not have to be only big things that the big boys can do.

Sure it would be great to be able to throw a billion dollars at developing and promoting something new (like the new Fusion 5 bladed shaver - OK I still haven't bought one yet!) but there are small things that a small business can do. Have you ever had that Deja Vu feeling when walking in a shopping mall. I did but it wasn't just another shopping mall in Australia, it all is starting to look very similar in Singapore, London, San Francisco and New Zealand; all the same well known brand names and the same consistent fast food chains and coffee drinking outlets. OK I appreciate the value of the brand but does everyone have to follow the same format. Hey if the big boys already spent gazillions on establishing their brand surely following exactly what they do is not going to help you make a dent in the market.

So I say look at what everyone is doing and DON'T do what they are doing.

Going Beyond Normal

2007-02-20T23:50:00.000+11:00

It is a common tendency to look at what we deem to be normal behaviour. Businesses are no exception. We talk about the 80:20 rule, bell-shaped curves and a whole host of analysis tools which are commonly used to seek out what is considered to be the norm. Whenever we find extremes in whatever form it comes in.

Difficult customers or incidences are often treated as extreme or unusual which is the conventional wisdom. And there is nothing really wrong with this. However completely ignoring "the extremes" also means that we are potentially overlooking important signals and feedback. Consider the whole process of "normalisation" which involves removing extremes from both ends (extremely favourable and unfavourable results) from data. By doing this we may actually be missing out on important insights that the information or data could reveal to us.

What is important is not the extremeness of the information but what the underlying causes that led to the result in the first place. In simplistic terms consider a extremely poor response to a customer survey. More often than not, the simplistic view of this is that the customer is not really representative and is dismissed out of hand. The fact that something is on either extreme end of the spectrum often means that the underlying sentiment could nevertheless be perfectly valid albeit exaggerated. We should never discard extremes without at least seeking some insight into what the information is telling us

Competing For The Future

2007-01-17T08:57:00.000+11:00

Anticipating the future is difficult at the best of times but this does not mean it is impossible. In their book " Competing for the Future" Hamel and Prahalad examines why it is necessary and provide a framework to go about doing it. The challenge for small and medium sized businesses is that it is another item to add to their long ang growing list of things to do and it would be tempting to say that this is the kind of thing that only the big boys have time and resources to do.

However this misses the point that many new innovations and businesses are started or at least incubated in small and medium sized businesses. One of the key points the authors stress is being able to imagine the future of the industry and this does not mean conducting massive market analysis or huge R&D spends. The power is imagine cannot really be bought but can be promoted by doing several different things, one of which is encouraging a sense of curiousity and looking not just at existing customers but future customers.

I came across a rather nostalgic example of this in my recent trip back to Malaysia and Singapore. The Cafe culture in these countries has been around for many years. albeit in a form not familiar to most Westerners and while Starbucks and Coffee Beans outlets are springing up all over the place in these countries, a new chain of localised chain has risen which taps into the more nostalgic vein of coffee preparation and consumption.

These chains are tapped into the unmet market of aging baby boomers who wanted to recapture the atmosphere of the old coffee shops but with newer requirements for a cleaner more congenial atmosphere which provided them with a link to the local and traditional culture with modern trappings. The result is a service replete with even the old style coffee cups, wooden chairs and ceiling fans (even though the outlets are airconditioned) distinguishing themselves from the Starbucks outlets. Here is a less grandiose example of a business imagining the future of the then dying traditional coffee shops and revitalising the industry and appealing suddenly to the younger generation. And oh by the way a cup of coffee in these outlets are one third the price of a latte at Starbucks.

So for small and medium sized businesses, take heed, your vision of the future does not have to be that big or grandiose but even you can still make a difference to your industry even if it is as mundane as providing that cup of coffee.

An Alterntive to Brainstorming

2006-12-20T08:13:00.000+11:00

Mention the word "Brainstorming" and most small businesses dive for cover. For many it conjures up images of some formal process or procedure to do things which they typically do over a coffee or simply shooting the breeze. But this really misses the point.

Tyner Blain recently published a short article called "Idea Seeding" which really is quite simple to use and produces some really useful output and is particularly useful for smaller more informal organisations.

Constrained Idea Generation. Each person works independently for 30 minutes to document the ideas
Edit And Refine. The collaborators swap, and for 30 minutes, refine or complete the other person’s ideas.
Collaborate And Polish. In a final 30 minute session, they collaborate to discard, improve, and select the ideas they have created

I like it because it allows for a small group of people to collectively and collaboratively work together to get meaningful feedback and refinement of ideas. Check out the posting on their blog
Idea Seeding Better Than Brainstorming.

So What Is An SME?

2006-10-25T12:22:00.000+10:00

The term SME (Small to Medium Enterprise) or SMB (Small to Medium Business) is brandied around, tossed about and used as if it were univerally understood. After all everyone knows or should know what an SME is ..right!

The truth unfortunately is far from convincing. Lets just take Australia for starters. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) describes a small (the "S" in SME) as as business with 1-20 employees and medium (the M in SME) as 21-199 employees. Not to be outdone, Telstra adds another category called Micro business into the mix as well.

As for comparisons with other countries - principally the USA...well an SMB over there includes businesses with up to 999 employeess. I remember visiting a company in China who apologised for taking only being able to arrange for me to visit their smallest plant - it had 12,000 employees in their smallest plant.

So where am I leading with all this. Well ask any business how they see themselves and I will guarantee you that at least 8 of of 10 will NOT use the term SME or SMB. The also do not see themselves as small or medium sized businesses. They simply think of themselves as a business. They have neither the time nor the inclination to think about such general categorisations which actually mean very little for their business.

An this perhaps is part of the problem for company's, governments and political parties who regularly use these labels assuming that they all mean the same things to everyone else. Well it doesn't and even worse, the businesses which these labels are being applied to actually dislike or even dispise these labels.

In so far as these labels are placeholders for market and customer analyses, it is fine, however broad unqualified application of these terms is not only inaccurate, it is downright misleading and certainly does not help the people and businesses who are labelled as such or for organisations and individuals wishing to engage with them

Tools for enhancing teamwork and group collaboration a reality for small businesses

2006-10-22T10:31:00.000+10:00

Mention topics like "groupware, instant messaging, wiki's foums" and a whole host of the Web 2.0 widgets and whatchamacallits and most small business owners will dive for cover. Isn't this the kind of things their children or younger sibblings play with and aren't these just social networking tools - you know things to get people talking about common things in a social context.....

What...isn't that what happens in the business world too - expect maybe we talk about business stuff.

There are an increasing number of solutions coming onto the market and more surprisingly they offer a great deal of useful capabilities at a fraction of the cost of the major players. I think that there some of them such as Zoho Virtual Office and ContactOffice have reached a point of sufficient maturity that they are truly serous alternatives that should be considered by small and growing businesses expecially those that have little appetite for funding an internal IT team or infrasturture of significance.

These types of applications bring together email, forums. file and document sharing, individul and group tasks and calendars in a simple and easy to use manner without the fuss and complexity of having to purchase individual products from different or even the same vendor

The time is ripe for small business to provide the kind of integrated personal and collective tools only previously available to businesses with deeper pockets. Just visist these two sites ( and these are not the only ones) - it may be the best 10-20 of time you have invested for a long time

Is Enterprise Resource Planning Becoming a Commodity?

2006-09-01T17:59:00.000+10:00

"All was fine, methodical, and elegant until enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendors started aspiring to new customer acquisitions in the hundreds per annum. And with the advent of "ERP for small to medium businesses," the numbers are mind boggling"

Source: Is Enterprise Resource Planning Becoming a Commodity?
Originally published on 25/08/2006 3:00 PM

This article likens SMB's to Owner-driven cars when it comes to analysing what they want. Using that analogy they draw up a list of what they need:

A fully functional ERP
Coexistence of flexibility and control
Simplicity of adoption
Ease of maintenance
Affordable and predictable

There is still a great gap between the expectations of SMB's most of whom are familiar with Accounting packages which they started off using as their first system. Many SMBs are not adequately prepared to deal with the challenge of implementing an ERP no matter how simple (at least in the current environment).

While there is a great deal that the ERP vendors can and are doing, there is an equally, if not larger, effort needed in educating growing SMB's on the effort and resulting benefits of upgrading to a full fledged ERP

Am I Getting The Right Reports From My System

2006-08-28T22:34:00.000+10:00

I find it quite remarkable how many individuals cling to that specific report that they have been using for the past 5 or even 10 years. This is always evident when a company changes or upgrades their existing system. Most small companies start off with a compunterised accounting system of some sort and gradually upgrade to more sophisticated business management systems as their business grows.

All too often, I hear the common complain that the new system does not have those reports that I have in the old system. Let's just pause for a moment. In this day of rapid change, pehaps one should be examining what all those new reports in the new system actually bring. Surely it would make more sense to look at what additional insight and information new reports bring rather than belabour the fact that you are no longer getting that report that you have been used to for the past 5 years.

This opportunity to gain better insights is so often overlooked that it is almost tragic. I would even argue that small business should be looking at new reports reagrdless of whether they are considering changing their systems. The point of this it to get new insignts into the business and here I am not just referring to accounting reports.

CRM, for example, is very topical at the moment and there are a whole variety of vendors who can provide you with a CRM system of some sort. But even before you embark on that path, just consider for a moment - when was the last time you tried looking at your sales reports in different ways. And I am not meaning the sales register report here.

Even basic accounting systems today allow you to perform some very simple analysis of your sales data. Take a look at the trends of geographical breakdown by product over time. See any trends or patterns? Geographical concentrations of sales of particular products may suggest that you may want to consider promoting your products and services in local public places such libraries, supermarkets and local newsletters. These are likely to be quite effective both from a marketing and cost perspective. And guess what? It is alot cheaper than paying for market research.

How about a quick peek at purchase orders. Are you buying odd quantities at all different times instead of at irrregular intervals when we could be taking advantage of changing the frequency or buying mimimum quantities to take advantage of price breaks. Remember that creating and placing a purchase order costs you something to process. It is not free.

Here are just two examples of reports which you can easily get by just taking a slightly different look at reports you can quite easily get from your basic accounting systems. You could be surprised with what you find out about your sales and purchases. And it is more than likely that you could even tweak the standard report yourself. Its really not that hard and you never know what you may discover about your business.

Web Customers - What are they looking for?

2006-08-24T10:15:00.000+10:00

There is a growing awareness and an increasing trend towards selling via the web. Web Stores are proliferating all over the net and size of organisation is getting to the point that cost is no longer the main barrier to any company offering this service.

However few companies, especially small businesses, actually take the time to gain an understanding of the kinds of customers (and prospesctive customers) who actually buy your specific products and services on your web store. With limited manpower resources and expertise, small businesses tend to just put up a selling presence on the web without a proper appreciation of who the target customers are likely to be. The younger buyers are more likely to be using this means of buying because they are familiar with the whole internet experience. There is also the question of the type of products you are offering.

It would be wrong to assume that the thinking process they go through is the same as a non internet purchase. Typically, they would want access to more relevant information about the product they are evaluating. Many companies miss this - just take a good look at some of the web stores out there. Many of the catalogues contain information that simply is not relevant to a prospective buyer. More often, it is only pure technical data but very little on the actual use and benefits they provide.

Give it some thought - it might make a big difference to your online sales effectiveness

Gold Nuggets in Customer Complaints

2006-08-22T08:41:00.000+10:00

Customer complaints are a fact of life. Large companies have dedicated customer service departments to handle these. For small companies, these are often dealt with by the person who simply receives the complaint. Most of the time the customer is frustrated, confused and sometimes irate and it would be easy to just try to deal with it quickly and get it over with.

However if we just stop and consider for a moment what they are telling us, small companies who do not have big budgets to do market research and customer surveys can learn a great deal. Complaints very often point not just to problems with our processes, products and services but to opportunities which we can exploit to the mutual benefit of the customer and the company.

It could highlight gaps in our product features or services which can be sources of new revenue or things that we can do to create a better experience for our customers. In the current environment where the cost of getting a new customer is so much higher than retaining an existing one, it makes business sense to really see through the emotion of the customer complaint to see what underlying opportunities exist to make our range of products and services better.

So the next time you get a complaint, try asking the customer what would help alleviate the problem - you just may be surprised what they tell you

Innovation Is Not Just About Product

2006-08-21T22:11:00.000+10:00

Just mention the word "innovation" and most people will think about a product, gadgets or technology. Yes, there is a great deal of innovation associated with these. But for a small business this can be costly and time consuming, both of which are not in abundant supply in small organisations.

If you think about the small business, there are many other forms of innovation that can yield great benefits especially in the area of enhancing the customer experience. Think about creating a better customer experience by just looking at your delivery or ordering procedure. It doesn't even need to involve complex technology. For exmaple, rearranging the way people have to queue and line up to pay. Customers value convenience and that friendly attitude.

Spend time to look at the way your procedures and processes are set-up. Don't think about "steamlining" - its internally focusses and looks at efficiency. It does not necessarily do anything for delighting customers.

A small company looked at hampers which can be purchased at many retail outlets. What they did was to offer gourmet hampers beatifully packed and made it easy to buy them over the net. This wasn't really about technology although it involved some new technology. The innovation was a new concept of being able to quickly and easily buy and get delivered beatiful hampers to their customers and loved ones.

So don't limit innovation to just products and technology - it is much broader than that and easier to achieve than you think

Two Companies Same Service Different Result

2006-08-21T00:27:00.000+10:00

Sitting here in the airport having just checked in using the self service kiosk made me think. Two airlines introduced this same service at about the same time, yet several months later, one has all but virtually stopped the service and the other has gone from strength to strength. I made me think about what made the difference.

I the case of the first airline, they retained the whole concept of the check-in procedure. Essentially, the self check kiosks were set up to replace the checkout person. Same experience for the customer - walk up to the counter, do whatever you have to do at the counter and someone there takes your baggage. The waiting time and experience for the customer was not really very different.

The other airline had more kiosks which really meant a shorter waiting time and then you take your baggage to a baggage drop off counter. Whether you prefer this experience or not is a separate question. I found it more convenient. Addiditonally this airline also subsequently introduced the convenience of checking in via the web even before you got to the airport.

So what was the difference. In one case the customer experience changed very little but in the other the whole check-in experience was changed. That I think is the critical. If you make changes which impact the way the customer engages with your organisation their experience comes first. Small companies do not have the means to compete with highly sophisticated processes and technologies but they do have the means to delight their customers with a differentiated personalised customer experience and thats what really makes a difference.

technorati tags:customer_service, customer_experience, small_business, sme, smb

CRM News: Customer Service: Small Bank Allows Customers to IM Managers

2006-08-15T23:21:00.000+10:00

CRM News: Customer Service: Small Bank Allows Customers to IM Managers

At Leader Bank, with just three locations, customers are given the online screen names of bankers, and are encouraged to instant message them with questions.

"It's just a very quick response," said Tony Madan, president of the Somerville, Mass., real estate developer Boston Investments, who said he instant messages Leader Bank about once a week. "You don't have to wait on hold for someone. You don't have to deal with those voicemail systems, and you can reach someone who knows what they're doing very quickly."

I was so pleased to see this article about the use of Instant Messaging (IM) for engaging with customers. Businesses have slowly started using IM internally but this is one of the rare cases of a business using it for customer service. Two things caught my attention.

Firstly, it was a bank, an organisation people just simply love to target for poor customer service. Secondly and more relevant for me, it was a small organisation and here I think is an important lesson. IM has been around for a while. It is something that we tend to associate with teenages. The thing we seem to forget is that teenages grow up and the first generation of IM users are now in their late 20's and early 30's and are just as comfortable using IM for personal as well as business purposes.

IM is hardly costly to implement and done well can really provide a really effective means of improving customer service and the whole customer experience. It can make a real difference to small companies with fewer resources.

So the next time you see your teenager on Instant Messaging, just bear in mind that they could be your customer in the not too distant future.

2006-08-09T01:10:00.000+10:00

Greg Eisenbach in his blog Grassroots Innovation: It’s best to bet against growth by innovation makes the following observation:

"There is a tremendous amount of hype about innnovation and it’s a good thing that everyone recognizes innovation’s importance. But knowing and doing are separate things. There is a danger in the innovation community of over-hyping all things innovative to the point that valid disciplines such as operations and system engineering get dismissed"

The problem is probably more acute with larger organisations who have bigger budgets and resources to begin to implement more structured innovation initiatives. Exclusive pursuit of innovation is a receipe for disaster. Small businesses do not tend to experience this as they typically have little time to chase after the latest developments.

This does not mean that they do not innovate or are not creative. On the contrary, the discipline of having to work with less resources means that innovation is just a part of the course. No one needs to suddenly promote the fad to them.

It seems to me that larger companies are merely trying to re-create the small business environment in order to foster innovation. Attitude is a key element of effort but perhaps a more enlightened change in attitude is not towards innovation itself but an attitude towards some of the stiffling constraints in larger organisations that stifle creativity and innovation

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) for Small Businesses

2006-08-03T23:51:00.000+10:00

"Asked to define CRM, most enterprise executives will tell you it's the process of moving a company from a product-centric focus to a customer-centric one. Since customers ultimately write your paycheck, it's not hard to see why enterprises have embraced this concept and the technology to enable it. However, it's a different story for smaller businesses, which almost by definition are already customer-centric. It's the size -- and inertia -- of big organizations that builds barriers between companies and their customers."

CRM News: CRM Systems: VoIP Delivers CRM Power to Small Businesses

While this article deals with the impact of VoIP and CRM to small businesses, the point that really caught my attention was the frequently overlooked assertion that customer focus is wired into small businesses simply because they have fewer departments and functions that get in between their staff and the customer. CRM systems typically fulfill the requirement to make information about the customer and interactions with the customer available to anyone in the organisation who has a need for it.

Small businesses have limited resources and this forces them to be very focussed on a few things and to do it very well. This means that things that have little or no direct association with the customer just do not get a look in. It's just a fact of life.

As companies grow, functional specialisation is a way of dealing with the increased volume of transactions. Depending on the role and function, this has a tendency to isolate some roles from the customer.

This is perhaps the secret of small businesses that large companies are trying to recapture through implementing systems like CRM. However at the end of the day, its really not about the system but the culture and attitude towards customers.

technorati tags:CRM, Small_business, Customer_Centric

Who "Owns" the Customer

2006-07-31T08:49:00.000+10:00

Resellers of products, especially those of well known large corporations, will inevitably face a very thorny problem. In this current CRM (Customer Relationship Management) climate, where companies espouse the notion of closer more intimate relationships with their customers, who really "owns" that relationship with the customer. Who is the one who really defines and sustains the customer experience which is at the heart of the customer relationship.

Any company that uses some kind of a reseller or partner channel to service the end customer struggles with this. Computer software vendors are an example. A commonly used model is one where the reseller channel provides some sort of implementation on ongoing software service and hence has a direct relationship with the end customer. When you purchase a washing machine from a retailer, which organisation does the end customer perceive as having a relationship with. Ironically both organisations see themselves as having a relationship with the customer. The one protecting the brand of their products and the reseller protecting the relationship in order to drive future ongoing sales to the customer.

This can lead to a tension between the two companies as they vie for the attention of the customer. In one instance that I have come across of a telephone company, it makes it difficiult for their reseller channel to get customer information, which is required to complete the sale of a mobile phone plan, to receive the information electronically forcing the resellers to manually rekey this information for their own systems.

This stems from a lack of appreciation of the different goals of the two organisations in same supply chain. Instead of streamlining the supply chain process, it has accidentally or deliberately created more friction in the process and while invisible to the end customer makes it more difficult for the mobile phone outlet to create its own value proposition to the end customer.

While new collaborative technologies exist today and are growing at an ever increasing rate, none of it will help if the basic fundamental problem of creating a collaborative symbiotic relationship is not addressed first. Perhaps it is time for companies to start to re-examine their partner relationships in addition to their customer relationships

technorati tags:CRM, Channels

Innovation Failure and Small Companies

2006-07-27T08:39:00.000+10:00

It's impossible to have innovation without failure

Stanford's Bob Sutton, co-author of the recently published Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths And Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Management, weighs in with his opinions about the role of failure when it comes to innovation and creativity. According to Sutton, "it is impossible to run an organization without making a lot of mistakes. Innovation always entails failure. Most new products and companies don’t survive. And if you want creativity without failure, you are living in a fool’s paradise. It is also impossible to learn something new without making mistakes." With that in mind, Sutton offers the following question as "the single best diagnostic to see if an organization is innovating, learning, and capable of turning knowledge into action": What happens when they make a mistake?

In other words, how does an organization respond to failure? Does it forgive and forget? Does it create a climate of fear? Or does it forgive and remember? As Sutton points out, innovative companies like Amazon "forgive and remember" as they find ways to build failure into the innovation process.

Tags: innovation failure Bob Sutton

[image: Bob Sutton]

Small companies are characterised by their ability to be felxible and due to their size able take on small innovations quickly. Being small, they make smaller bets and smaller bite size pieces of innovation. The real trick for small companies is to be able to jettison failures quickly before and learn quickly from these failures

technorati tags:Innovation, Small_Business

Innovation Culture in Small Austalian Companies

2006-07-20T23:58:00.000+10:00

Innovation is very much alive in the Australian economy. But don't look to the large public companies. It is in the small to medium sized companies where innovation is thriving. But just talk to any small business owner and you will find that innovation is not talked about in glowing strategic terms. Just do a Google search on the work "innovation" and you will see the names of increasingly more large multi-national corporations popping up in the search results.

Unless you have been living in a cave for the past 12 months, you would have seen a rising interest in Open Innovation, Creativity and a whole host of related themes and topics. Phil Mckenney has been producing a great podcast, Killer Innovations, for over a year. The information economy is being overtaken by the creative economy.

Small Austalian companies have been doing this for years quietly and without much fuss and fanfare. It was just good ole Ozzie ingenuity. No one ever told them that they needed formal processes or structures to do this. They did it because they had to survive in a an increasingly competitive world. As the business environment changed, many companies moaned and complained. The smart ones just got on with it and found better and clever ways to get create new and innovative products and services. Necessity and survival was a great motivator.

Few small business owners need reminding that product life cycles have are becoming ridiculously short. Every industry from IT to motor vehicles has experienced this and it is not getting any better. It used to be that this was thought that this related more to large multi-nationals operating in international markets. However globalisation has changed all that. These same pressures are now brought to bear even on smaller local companies who may not trade internationally.

So may be owners of small businesses should start to get a handle on these very same challenges quickly. It is not about the buzzwords or big formal plans but establishing a working environment that encourages curiousity and fosters creativity.

Who speaks for the people and can we truly give meaning to "Power to the People"

2006-03-05T23:53:00.000+11:00

How much of what we read and see in the media can we really trust these days. As much as the mainstream media would have us believe, the fact is that in this day of highly vested interests and competition for ratings, trusth and honesty often are the first victims of the rush to bring us news and information.

We are bombarded daily with a continuous stream of information and opinions from all sorts of sources. But what we yearn for is not more information or sanitised opinions but genuine candid sharing of heartfelt views and opinions. We yearn for truly collaborative engagement, individual to individual or to a community of interested individuals.

Never before has "Power to the people" been more achievable than ever before. But what is the use of power without reponsibility and accountability. This goes to the heart of our revulsion when we hear or read of the excesses of some self serving politicians. People do want to connect with and engage with other individuals and share views and opinion but not on some impersonal level but as a "friend" as people who have some skin it the relationship.

Dave

Sunset over Lysterfield

2006-01-29T23:27:00.000+11:00

The hills surrounding Lake Lysterfield is just 15 minutes from my home and provided a wonderful backdrop to the setting sun at dusk. These pictures were taken just barely 100 meters from the car park. This Lake Lysterfield area was the location of the Mountain Bike competition trails for the 2006 Commonwealth Games.

The sun partially hidden behind the clouds threw up a fairly dramatic effect with a silouette outline of the hill side