Daniel Mitchell's Blog

Please can I buy a MacBook for Business

 Macs are just so attractive - even people buying shiny, high-end PCs probably really want to set foot in to the Apple store knowing they will walk out with an iMac or MacBook - so what is really stopping you? The huge media attention received over the iPad launch this week has only further served to glamourise the Apple brand - more than ever in the last six months, I am being asked by clients if they can buy an Apple rather than a PC. I see two key reasons for this change in demand with small business users that I work with, firstly the growth in mobile computing ties in with Apple pushing themselves as a mobile devices provider, Steve Jobs emphasised their position as such in his iPad keynote; the second and perhaps major reason is the release of the latest version of the Apple operating system, "Snow Leopard". Snow Leopard provides the opportunity for closer integration with an Apple Mac and a Microsoft Exchange server using the standard Apple mail, calendar and address book applications, these three areas plus a web browser, typically being the most used on any desktop or laptop. 

As a regular PC and Mac user, in my opinion the biggest benefits of using a Mac are speed, reliability and ease of use. The biggest barrier for a business user considering moving to a Mac is the inability to run some business applications without running Windows on a Mac, which I feel immediately negates these benefits as well as being very expensive. I am also not a big fan of Microsoft Office for the Mac, favouring Apple's own iWork suite which offers great compatibility with "native" office documents, though you will have to re-learn processes. The deciding factor is likely to be the requirement to run finance, ERP or other installed applications on your desktop. With more internet based applications running in a browser, the list is probably likely to shrink, not grow and I foresee Apple stealing a growing share of the small-business computer market. Approach with caution if you are running a number of desktop applications, otherwise my advice is go ahead and walk into an Apple store.

Wiki for Small Business - Collaboration in the Cloud

A Wiki is a managed set of web pages that can be collaborated on by a group of people. People still think of Wikis as public on-line encyclopaedias, Wikipedia being the most famous, but in fact a wiki can rapidly be implemented with no technical expertise as the next practical stage in document collaboration for a small business. There are a number of providers, such as PBWiki, that sell the product as true SaaS (Software as a Service) packages requiring no software or configuration to your own servers or PCs.

Businesses and individuals are already comfortable using Google Documents as an easy way to manage collaboration on documents, to centralise storage of these documents, and to provide some backup and security. A private Wiki for a company can be an even better alternative.

For little cost, a team can store large quantities of documents, which can be easily searched, rapidly amended from anywhere with an internet connection and automatically backed up, often with significantly more resilience than is normally within the scope of small businesses. A wiki will automatically track changes to these pages and allow you to compare or revert to an earlier version. At Lifeline IT, we use a PBWiki for our technical documentation and internal policies, but wikis are well suited to any situation where a business has several people contributing to sets of changing documents including project planning, building "how to" articles and for public or private knowledge bases.

Advertise, or not?

Advertising has always been a scary thing for small business. Costs can be high and resources are rarely as extensive as those of bigger organisations. My business has rarely advertised – even for staff. We do see it as an inferior alternative to word of mouth. As a small business ourselves, a big part is of course concerns of poor returns on valuable investment, perhaps it is also because we always feared that our larger competitors could advertise bigger.

Current technology and our financial climate puts an interesting twist on advertising.

• With companies cutting advertising and promotions budgets as a "non-essential" expense in times of financial difficulty, rates are good and competition may well be less visible.
• With the move away from traditional paper based media, things are different and changing rapidly for small business - now is the time to take advantage. Anyone advertising through Google, big or small, has the same ad appearance - there really is very level playing field.

• There is a great volume of free advice on marketing available to small business - on line communities are emerging around some of the world's greatest marketers who are encouraging and guiding their followers - with the agility of small businesses, they are uniquely positioned to benefit.

Gone are the days when adverts needed to have anything to do with the product they are selling. Iggy Pop is now advertising insurance for a company that won't even cover musicians! Entertaining and engaging is as important as showing the product - online discussions about the company and brand will eminate from an interesting advert.

Brand does remains important. We look at ways to get our brand reputation known, as on the surface our product is not unique (the delivery is). In line with our sponsorship of Graduate Fashion Week we placed a full page advert in Drapers and of course we promote our corporate website. Although I see that as more passive, it is still a resource for potential clients that we are about to see or have just seen. It's also important for us to work on getting referrals, which means advertising to existing clients for new business.

10 Great Domain Names

Time Magazine this week reports that VeriSign have recorded 17% fewer .com domain registrations in quarter four of 2008 compared to 2007. Does this reflect the downturn in the economy, particularly branding and new business - has a new economic indicator been discovered?

Despite this, new organisations are still struggling to name their businesses - it is now a prerequisite to get an appropriate domain name.

Now the fun bit - click here for my Squidoo Lens (just a web page, don't worry) on which I am listing ten great domain names that have not yet been registered - they are yours for the taking!

There is good stuff still out there - maybe these domains will inspire something!

I Love Meetings!

Meetings, and company staff meetings in particular, are often moaned about as bureaucratic, frequently parodied on TV and always ridiculed in cartoons.

But I love my company meetings. Every Friday morning we meet to discuss what has happened over the past week and talk about what is forthcoming.

It was Rudi Giuliani's book that helped me understand the value of regular staff meetings at a time that my business was beginning a period of rapid growth. It is probably the single most valuable thing that we do in continuing to develop the company. Cancelling a staff meeting is rare.

• Worthwhile: Lots of decisions get made, everyone knows they will get an answer from me - no hierarchy or structure to go through.
• Open and direct: we tell each other what we think, share problems and help one another.
• From time to time meetings needs agenda items, but typically the agenda is the people - just going round the room to get input, queries, thoughts and reports.
• Social: Interaction between our team sometimes only happens once a week - we have field engineers who are typically out at clients all week.
• I am accountable - to everyone. So is everyone else.
• Some companies lighten the atmosphere at meetings, when I tell people about our meetings and ask what works for theirs, I have heard of afternoon "pic n' mix" meetings (difficult now) and even paper plate awards.
• Look forward and share what most companies view as secret "directors' stuff": Restate goals for the year and ambitions - honest view of plans and forthcoming targets - e.g. an extra 10 clients in the next quarter, new team and team leader, training aspirations.
• Restate key points from training, getting everyone interested in what everyone is learning has really helped get everyone interested in continual development.

We struggle with time, things do sometimes get heated and we disagree, but we make real progress.

***** Edited 27/03/09*****

Take a look at Seth Godin's tips for solving meeting problems, practical things to try ...

Business Continuity Planning - now the horse has bolted, let's shut the stable door

Many small businesses are only just beginning to consider Business Continuity Planning, perhaps more imaginable risks like the recent severe weather will get SMEs moving faster on this. Larger companies now have sophisticated plans in place, the agility of small companies should allow a rapid catch up; agility is a major tactical advantage of small business as well as being a valuable asset in BCM.

I won't begin to outline a "one size fits all" disaster recovery plan, but instead here are five, quick to implement, top tips for small businesses to prepare for the smaller (but more likely) emergencies:

Know how to divert phones to somebody's home
If you have a VoIP phone system, chances are you can have an IP handset set up at home quite easily and cheaply or have a softphone installed on a PC or laptop, make sure you know how to add it to the "hunt group" so it rings with incoming calls on your main line when you need it to. Even with an analogue BT line you can order BT's divert service so diversions to a different number can be set up almost instantly.

Plan to run Accounts systems from a laptop
The accounts system is often the source of important contact information for customers and suppliers. The data files are typically held on a server but a separate online backup which can quickly be restored to a laptop with the accounts software on, provides quick easy business continuity for lots of possible scenarios. Even sophisticated SQL finance systems can often be run from a typical laptop.

Outlook on your laptop
If you run an Exchange Server, consider having Outlook data "cached" to your laptop so that your calendar (and mail, contacts, etc.) are available, even if a connection to your server isn't.

Keeping good communication with our clients helped to keep things going better than anything over the last few days - I found all our clients and partners were very upbeat and accommodating of changes to meetings and appointments.

Staff contact details
Having a Google Spreadsheet with staff contact details on means information can be accessed anywhere by anyone with proper permissions - staff could even keep this up to date themselves. Again this provides an accessible resource that doesn't rely on the standard infrastructure.

Free training
Consider participating in a Project Argus event, these are free simulations run by the National Counter Terrorism Security Office - while geared to disaster recovery from a terrorist attack, there are great lessons for BCM generally.

Other resources
Hertfordshire council produce an easy “10 minute assessment” that give some good pointers, you can download the pdf here.

Browns Footwear, Agility and Engaging with Customers

This weekend our client Browns will open their new dedicated shoe store in Brook Street, London. It is good to work on exciting new projects and hear of growth from our clients in the current climate and it has got me thinking further about patterns for successful business in difficult times.

There is lots of talk of this recession "weeding out the rubbish", it sounds like Darwinian "Natural Selection" for business, but clearly this doesn't really apply, large companies with catastrophically poor performance (RBS, Northern Rock, various auto companies) will still survive, albeit owned (or bailed out) at least in part by government - perhaps the principle of survival of the fittest holds truer for small business, although of course some small companies, through no fault of their own, are struggling.

The truth is in fact survival of the most agile - in SMEs, including the hard hit fashion and retail sectors, success is down to product and service but also agility (perhaps the banks could be considered to have been agile in having achieved change in ownership rather than collapse). Many businesses are having to look at adapting resource to fit changing dynamics in terms of which areas of the company are doing well or struggling. Good reporting systems in companies can allow leaders to analyse and respond rapidly to changes in trends, the natural progression for success and growth now is to build on the areas of opportunity and quickly drop areas likely to be hit over the coming year.

Even in recent months there have been a surprising number of success stories in the fashion and retail sectors, all with important lessons:

New Look
Great sales figures, particularly online, with plans now to extend their transactional websites to France and Belgium. It is worthwhile considering broadening markets by making transactional sites multilingual.

All Saints
Superb product, a total understanding of their customer.

John Lewis
Again, product and service.

Liberty
Exceeded expectations and challenged sceptics with a successful web business launched only last year. A big lesson here is how they have built a web presence which really engages with their customers.

Successful businesses will be those that integrate their IT systems and use them to communicate with their customers not just sell to them - look at Anna Lou of London's "Challenge of the Month", regular photos and use of humour as another great demonstration of this.

Returning to the example of Browns, it is clear from Erin Mullaney's interview with Drapers that success follows from agility, in this case listening to customers, seeing the success of an area of the business and then planning rapid, adaptive growth - quickly adapting to benefit from providing products and services that are desired in a way that will engage existing and new clients.

Inauguration over the Internet - Obama's Science & Technology

Obama's commitment to science and particularly to technology has been widely reported and is evident not only in his internet based campaigning and fundraising, but also in the various social sites that have grown around the campaign. UK politicians have toyed with internet based campaigning and I have no doubt that the most obvious effect will be that the next general election in the UK will take leads from the US and particularly the Obama team’s use of technology. Perhaps this will even filter down to more acceptance by business and organisations of the advantages of social networking. Maybe a less direct result will be IT strategy being taken more seriously at senior levels within business as technology becomes a bigger part of the political agenda.

This afternoon I watched the inauguration via the internet on CNN.com via collaboration with Facebook, very fitting with the online campaign - this unique partnership allowed many hundreds of thousands of viewers not only to view live coverage but see comments and thoughts streaming side by side with the video feed. From a technical point of view I found it pretty amazing that streaming held really well over a standard ADSL connection, while still maintaining my VPN link to the office and a link to my mail server.  This must be one of the greatest bandwidth bursts globally in history and really has set the scene for the future.

On a more political note, I can't help feeling that some of the joy felt across the world at Obama’s election is due to a restoration of dignity among Americans who previously sanctioned a second term in office for a man who history may well judge as the worst president of all time and perhaps even more importantly had as their government a team that sanctioned the shameful history, not to mention legacy of Guantanamo Bay.

I will however miss the humour from eight years of "Bushisms" so will leave the final farewell to Whitehouse.org.

Telemarketing - a converted sceptic shares secrets!

Until 6 months ago, my business was built entirely on word of mouth and referrals. We began to realize that we were starting to exhaust our network, in fact everybody knew each other, meaning referrals started to slow down. We tried outsourcing some carefully targeted telemarketing and six months on have had a chance to review this.

It has paid for itself, bought on board some new exciting and varied clients and will form part of our long term strategy.  We have also learned some interesting sales lessons that I would like to pass on, hopefully these will accelerate success for anyone considering telemarketing for the first time, some points apply more generally.

Business closes - every client we have closed from cold has given us the go-ahead within about a week of meeting; we have learned not to waste time on chasing older prospects, however hopeful they may seem. Whilst our "close rate" is obviously lower than with referral business, decisions are significantly faster (our record is 2 1/2 years from a referred client).

Push for what we want - by being very specific on our target clients, we have achieved a better fit and successfully closing has been just as easy - this means we can get a bigger or more desirable client for the same effort and cost as a small one.

Give prices in meetings - I realize this is not typical sales practice, in my industry "we'll get back to you with a proposal" is more normal, but if you believe, as I strongly do, that the prospect is going to make a decision in the meeting, they must have all the information to be able to do so.

Building trust is more difficult with a completely cold prospect - this is the biggest challenge compared with referrals where they have already been sold on you by the referring person. I have found it helps to research hard prior to the meeting to try and find a common contact, friend or company that they can talk to for a trusted opinion - at worst just experience with a company they have heard of helps.

Don't push too hard for meetings - people that cave in to take a cold call, may also cave and agree to meeting that's not required.

The decision really happens at the meeting - the written proposal is often secondary. It is therefore essential that all the information your prospect needs to make a decision is concisely given during the meeting. Focus on communicating exactly how service will be delivered and what long term differences will be achieved rather than any quick fixes or short term benefits.

With thanks to Richard & Mark for helping me realize some of this, let me know if you want their details!

Host or Buy? A Discussion on Hosted Applications and Services

Hosted applications and services are really popular right now. These are software systems or facilities that are located at a data centre that organisations access typically via the internet, and can include anything from full servers, mail servers, CRM software or even telephone systems.

Compared with the traditional alternative of software and hardware purchase, typically initial setup costs are low and little local infrastructure is required other than a broadband connection and a PC or Mac. The most popular applications include Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft CRM, Salesforce and now even VoIP telephony. Sounds interesting? Here are some of the key 'Pros' and 'Cons'.

Pros

• Low setup costs - A typical CRM application for a small business may cost several thousand pounds in server hardware and software, by comparison hosted services can cost from as little as £35 per user per month.

• Scalable - Users can typically be added either in a main office or at a remote office very easily as the host infrastructure is normally huge compared with a locally hosted environment.

• Fast deployment - Servers and systems are already set up and in place.

• Tax deductible - Rental not capital purchase (but I'm not an accountant!)

• Ease of management - typically backup and maintenance is included.

Cons

• Only as good as your internet connection - If you have a basic broadband internet connection, then you are risking availability of your connection to these hosted services. Not a problem if you have lots of remote workers but if you are hosting your phone system and lose internet for five days, your phones go too!

• Long term costs may well be higher - I have found about 18 to 24 months is the breakeven point on most installations we have carried out.

• Limited interface to existing systems - hosted applications may have limited connectivity with your local databases and integration can be more costly.

• Flexibility - in a shared environment products are typically 'one size fits all'.

• Data transfer speeds - again, only as good as your internet service, transferring data to a server on your network could be 100 times faster than an upload via internet.

We are getting lots of enquiries on hosted services, it really boils down to having an appropriate internet connection; with leased lines costing £4000 plus per annum, this can swallow a significant proportion of the savings. Perhaps a better way to look at these services is to examine if the advantages stand on their own without the cost savings.
 
There is no doubt that use of hosted services is increasing rapidly and with increased offerings from major players including Google and Microsoft, the sector will continue to expand. In a further article I will talk about forthcoming changes and development in internet connectivity - it will have to keep up in quality and speed!

***** Edited 27/03/09*****

Take a look at Law.com's legal technology blog article on CRM / SaaS in a legal environment ...