Julie Meyer rallying entrepreneurs

That, to put it bluntly, was the message coming from a panel of esteemed venture capitalists and investors at last week’s Entrepreneur Country event hosted by online Dragon and Ariadne founder, Julie Meyer.

VCs are more worried about exits than they are about deal flow and business angels are on their knees as most have seen their personal wealth shrink dramatically over the last 12 months.

To be fair, as Dharmash Mistry at Balderton Capital rightly pointed out disruptive ideas and entrepreneurs will always find capital and the two largest VC funds in Europe have recently raised $1.5 billion.

Nevertheless this isn’t any consolation for startup virgins.

As Nic Brisbourne of DFJ Esprit put it:

I have a strong personal conviction that there are good opportunities going unfunded. The VC industry has yet to show a consistent ability to generate good returns in Europe.

But despite all this, the mood at the event was overwhelmingly positive. And I began to start thinking less money = good news.

It is after all only going to accentuate one of the sharpest and most important of entrepreneurial skills – resourcefulness.

In many ways I can see the crisis of capital creating a new generation of dynamic, nimble, revenue focused entrepreneurs and small business owners. The very people Julie Meyer is appealing to in her recent ‘individual capitalism’ rallying calls.

The second theme I took away from Entrepreneur Country was speed.

Speed as rapid, agile action and speed as often irrational gut instinct. The instant slicing and dicing of Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink.

Whenever you talk to investors or listen to a panel of VCs, it becomes very obvious that most investments hinge on gut. That split second, sub-conscious feel for the people behind an idea or a business.

It’s an area, of course, where investors and entrepreneurs are perfectly aligned. Both act on instinct often, both get it wrong often. So fail fast is the mantra and rightly so – or at least much of the time.

Which brings me on to the other speed.

One of the more esoteric, but nonetheless interesting speakers at the event was former editor of Business 2.0 and The Harvard Business Review, Tom Stewart.

Tom talked about five key forward-looking themes for businesses of all sizes. Among them was speed – the fact that businesses no longer have time to rest, let alone to rest on their laurels. As he said:

Speed is necessary, but speed kills.

Who does it kill? Well potentially the slower, bigger companies. And that’s where startups and smaller businesses can step up to seize new opportunities.

But particularly in the world of the web, there’s also an ever increasing need for ’speed to scale’ – at least if the VCs are to achieve a worthwhile exit.

And in that case not being able to keep up can kill off startups, just as much as monolithic corporate monsters.

As Tom Stewart pointed out somehow we’ve got to balance speed with the important task of letting things emerge – listening to the traffic, if you like.

Otherwise we’re never going to be able to make a decision about an event or an opportunity we simply couldn’t have foreseen – leading in uncertainty when decisions are beyond calculation.

What’s this got to do with startups, small businesses and VCs for that matter?

Well, uncertainty is where the opportunities are and the world seems to be blessed with an abundance of uncertainty right now.

Exciting, challenging times, but let’s make sure we also pause to reflect on what we’re trying to achieve while we’re racing towards new horizons.

Referring to a 2007 collaborative book-writing experiment as a way of opening the discussion, Ettinghausen explained that Penguin got over 1500 people to collectively write a novel using a wiki. All of the contributions were anonymous so it meant that some well known writers could participate without risking damage to their reputation by association. This was just as well, because the end result was not at all good. He said it has been called, “not the most read, but the most written” novel in history.

However, Penguin learned a lot about collaboration which it has applied subsequently. In the case of the book, though, the question that hadn’t been asked was, “what was in it for the contributors?” And the answer was, “not a lot”. They got to exercise their writing skills and, presumably, saw what others made of them. So they learnt something. But the anonymity meant that no-one could see that they’d participated or, maybe, written a particularly scintillating chapter. The bottom line for these things is that everyone has to be a winner in some respect – learning, revenue, PR value, establishing new business relationships and so on.

Many organisations no longer have all the talents they need in-house, so collaboration with third parties, especially small businesses, is increasingly the case. Project team members can come from several organisations, large and small. And these projects, ideally, have a life of their own which is an obligation to meet certain agreed objectives but remain largely independent of their own organisations.

What turns out to be far more important than the contractual agreement is the chemistry between the participants. Figuring out whether a collaboration is likely to work owes more to flirtation and courtship than to project planning. The participants have to respect, like and trust each other. If not, the cracks will show as the project nears completion.

One audience member drew a distinction between the participants and the organisations they worked for, especially when it came to meeting up. He wondered if ‘neutral territory’ was important. (In the university world, for example, politics gets in the way. Hosting meetings gives a power advantage to the university, even if the project team couldn’t care less.) The speakers suggested that the money spent on such neutral venues, hotels and the like, would be better spent on content and product. They suggested that organisations need to empower people to be part of the project and not be a spokesman for their organisation.

Discussions about the causes of collaboration breakdowns followed and, fundamentally, the issues came down to clear initial objectives, an understanding of the benefits to the individuals, periodic reminders, continuous dialogue and meet up when possible. Not so different to an internal project really.

In wrapping the session, the speakers summarised the key elements for successful cross-organisation collaboration and took a few extras from the audience:

From the speakers:
- A need for the project (collaboration for its own sake will fail)
- A good chemistry between the participants
- Shared needs
- Mutual respect
- Leave egos at the door (acknowledge own strengths and weaknesses)
- Ongoing communication
- The right tools (Twitter, Huddle, BaseCamp, phone conferences, video conferences, phone calls, meeting up. Ettinghausen found phone conferences particularly bad.)

From the audience
- Clear objectives
- Ownership (who knocks heads together if things go wrong)
- Lots of decent human beings

A video of the session is on blip.tv

The economic climate has encouraged businesses to become far more value orientated and companies are keen to make sure their marketing activities and budgets are drawing maximum returns.

However, by putting too much focus on marketing to gain immediate returns, businesses risk falling behind their competitors when the economy picks up.

By concentrating on long term as well as short term relationships with prospects, businesses are ensuring they are in the front line when customers are looking to invest once more.

When a new prospect is first identified and engaged, they are probably still in the research stage of the purchasing decision and not yet ready to talk fully with a member of the sales team.

It is crucial to nurture these leads, develop relationships and collect data during these early stages of research. The stronger your relationship is with a prospect, the better positioned you will be to apply this knowledge and offer them services and products they might actually want at an appropriate time.

SMEs have the potential to enhance their customer relationships, and therefore their data, with every communication sent out. So make sure each one counts.

Collecting and maintaining good data should be considered a strategic move allowing you to deal with current customers better and enable you to address the potential needs of prospects. Any touch point can be used to collect information including mail-outs, click-throughs and white paper downloads.

To avoid putting strain on new relationships and alienating potential customers, SMEs should aim only to ask questions to which the answers will be beneficial.

To work out which questions are most important to ask, a business will first need to establish what its desired outcome will be and work backwards to see the fewest questions that can be asked to gain this information.

By using prospects responses, data from any contact points and applied customer analysis, companies can predict what a prospect (or an existing customer) could buy in the future rather than purely concentrating on what they might buy tomorrow.

A relationship developed over a period of months, or even years, rather than just a few weeks will be in a strong starting position when prospects are again ready to purchase.

But as George Bernard Shaw famously mused, “There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.” And at no time is this more true than when that final promotion happens and you find yourself sitting in the CEO’s office.

For usually confident, high-flying business people, it can be a significant shock to the system to realise that being the CEO hasn’t made them quite as happy as they thought it would during all those years of hard slog and shameless corporate ladder-climbing. So what has changed?

Often the job is fairly familiar even if the responsibility has grown. And their ability is still the same. The difference in most cases however is that ‘staff’ – even if you’re towards the top of the management tree – usually stick together, whereas the CEO? Well, mostly they’re on their own.

Almost every CEO describes their role as lonely in some ways, with the main reason being that they feel they cannot share all their fears with their colleagues or their board members.

They feel they are expected to know all the answers, show no fear and stay positive at all times, otherwise their authority will crumble and their business will do likewise. But as another great writer, John Donne, said: “No man is an island”, and this goes for the CEO as much as the rest of the organisation.

There are numerous reasons why the CEO might feel they have been backed into a rather lonely corner, but often it is because they haven’t hired colleagues of the right quality or don’t have the right board members in place.

Just as Obama and even J-Lo are surrounded by their own coterie of trusted advisers, supporters and ‘do-ers’, so a CEO needs to make sure that they have the back-up of their colleagues. Crucially, this does not mean you want an entourage of ‘yes-men’.

By involving your colleagues in the decision-making process, decisions are of better quality and are implemented with greater commitment and passion, and as the CEO you can be confident that you are being balanced as well as supported by your team.

Sharing your problems and concerns is not a weakness, and in the long run it will actually earn you trust and respect. Build up a culture of openness and lead by example by engaging with the business and consulting the team on matters of importance.

Concerned that sales have taken a nose-dive? Talk to people and find out what can be done about it. Sitting alone in your fancy office stewing about a client complaint? Share it with the team and ask for their help in resolving it.

It may be a cliché but a problem shared really is a problem halved, and the sooner you can make this part of the way you work, the sooner you’ll really start enjoying being the CEO.

And these shifts in priorities are thrown in to stark relief for web businesses like Bview and Cmypitch.com which launched mid-2008 by the full horror of the financial crisis which hit our TV screens and VC funding last October.

It now looks like the Web 2.0 sensibilities of user generated content and community are giving way to ‘where’s the revenue’ as people realise only sites the size of Facebook and Twitter can afford to make no money.

Runways are considerably shorter than they used to be.

When Bview launched in the Spring/Summer of 2008 it seemed set on being a UK Yelp! with networking, local small business reviews and the added hard edge of Experian credit data leveraged by its parent price-comparison company Xbridge.

Bview's design is not a thing of beauty, but is the local business site sitting pretty after a revenue rethink?

Then today I receive a press release which describes Bview as the UK’s largest voucher search engine.  Whoa …  not what I was expecting.

So I quizzed co-founder, Colin Bruce, about the shift in emphasis. He said:

We looked at what businesses really wanted and thought about what new features we could add.  There’s a lot going on in the affiliate space, so it made sense to do something in that area and in essence we’re developing a voucher aggregation site.

The reviews or content element of the site are seen as a commodity to help drive traffic towards the revenue generating vouchers.

Although vouchers from large retailers predominate at the moment, Bview is still very much positioned as a site focusing on the ‘local’.

The announcement today, for example, promotes the fact that Bview’s vouchers will be displayed on Google maps allowing small businesses to offer discounts to a very focused online audience.

An interesting model which as Bview builds out its APIs is likely to create partnership opportunities with other search engines and price comparison sites.

Cmypitch has also had a radical overhaul.

Cmypitch looks a lot clearer than it did at launch, but will it have the traffic to make affiliate revenue count?

At its launch Cmypitch.com seemed to be a UK version of Vator.tv, a place to pitch on video for funding and clients – plenty of user generated content combined with networking, forums and editorial. That said, the homepage design was extremely confusing.

As Ian Wallis at Cmypitch admits:

We always had lead generation services on the site, but the homepage was far too confusing and the navigation didn’t make much sense.  So we decided to switch to a much more product focused site.

Cmypitch hasn’t just reworked its site, it’s reworked its business model by focusing, like Bview, on a share of affiliate revenue from offering small businesses special deals and price comparison.

The original subscription-based model, asking small businesses to pay up front for potential leads, wasn’t proving popular as the recession started to bite.

Building traffic to the site to build revenue is a priority, but Cmypitch is also exploring white labelling and syndicating its deals and quick quotes services to other sites to extend distribution.

Both sites offer a web startup story for our times.

Revenue is very much the new ‘pre-revenue’.

And so it proved in tonight’s final when shrewd business instinct, rather than polish, clinched the Reading entrepreneur and restaurant owner a job with Sir Alan Sugar.

And I’m so happy. Not just because I guessed right, but because Yasmina’s win is a win for startups and small business owners around the country.

Yasmina Siadatan - winner of The Apprentice 2009, giving up grim-faced determination for a touch of glamour

In choosing one of the very few candidates to have built her own business up from scratch, Sir Alan again showed that he and his business values the entrepreneurial over the corporate.

Ultimately Yasmina was clearly going to appeal to the soon to be ennobled business tycoon when you read what she’s quoted as saying from the outset on the BBC website:

Business is about a simple formula. Make more than you spend. That’s what I do, I keep business simple and it works. I’m good at it.

Very business savvy, very focused, but also despite her grim-faced determination, outside the boardroom she clearly knew how to have a good time and was liked and respected.

Kate Walsh put in another polished and very impressive performance and like Debra Barr the week before was unlucky not to taste victory in a challenge that pitted the two young women against each other to design and launch a new brand of chocolates.

Kate went upmarket with a box of chocolates for him, for her and to share. Brilliantly executed and presented and only just saved from being called ‘Intimate’ thanks to Debra who joined Kate’s team along with Ben, Kim and Rocky.

Nick gave his verdict on Kate’s first name for her chocolates: ‘frankly it sounds like something to do with feminine freshness’. Mouthy Debra, put it more succinctly – ‘oh my god, it looks like a box of tampons’.

And in so doing she saved Kate from a huge error as the team rapidly came up with the rather good ‘Choc D’Amour’ in just a few minutes before the deadline to confirm packaging design.

Yasmina also escaped certain death in the boardroom, by bravely giving up on a frankly idiotic idea to create a new range of chocolates exclusively marketed to men.

The moment that convinced her ‘man chocolates’ were a bad idea was when Philip, who’d joined her team along with Howard, Lorraine and James, suggested, like ‘pants man’, people would come around to the idea.

It was good to see Philip back. Most of the comedy in this final episode was his. Taking charge of choreography for a dance troupe for Yasmina’s launch event was a sight to behold, only narrowly bettered by his original pants man gyrations.

Yasmina’s Cocoa Electric chocolates, all electric shock, shocking pink and electrifying taste sensation, was all very retro with danger written all over it in a very 80s Duran Duran video kind of way. A fact confirmed when we caught a glimpse of Philip with a shocking pink thunderflash painted across his face.

Kate’s overall presentation and TV ad, in particular, outshone Yasmina’s. But Yasmina got price right again, bringing her chocolates in at £6 per box, compared to Kate’s £13.

Sadly, the chocolates tasted as shocking as the pink in which they were packaged. But in an echo of the catering task when Yasmina bought poor quality food and successfully achieved a huge margin, it was that simple business principle that won the day.

Ironic that the woman whose restaurant is by all accounts really rather good, should have won by literally sacrificing taste for short term profit.

Some will argue the short term, quick buck mentality is a short-coming of The Apprentice and its series of reality TV business challenges.

In fact the real business lesson from this year’s series, is Yasmina’s dedicated focus on her customer – namely Sir Alan Sugar.

She clearly knew her business flare would appeal and did everything necessary to deliver it in a way that would catch Sir Alan’s eye.

A good winner who I bet will return to her own successful entrepreneurial venture a year after spending time learning all she can from Sir Alan’s organisation. A smart cookie.

Quote of the week, from Sir Alan himself: “They weren’t shocking flavours, they were shocking chocolates”.

Business lesson of the week: know your customer.

But in my absence something strange has happened, if last night’s final five preview and interview show was anything to go by.

Firstly, I think I too may be afflicted by the Mystic Meg intuition of one of last night’s final firings, Lorraine Tighe.

Back in week one I predicted who would be in the final three: Yasmina, Rocky and Debra.

Well, just like Lorraine, my intuition was almost right, but not quite, although I don’t understand how I missed the Stepford Wife-like perfection that is Kate Walsh.

The other thing that struck me was just how popular The Apprentice must have become. The BBC devoted two whole hours to the show in prime time last night and the final is scheduled for peak viewing on Sunday.

Business as entertainment has clearly taken off. Celebrity entrepreneurs are the new celebrity chefs.

The last thing to strike me watching last night, is that the comedy – so easy to play up as the show’s own producers and I have done over the last few weeks – is making way for a programme that does after all have something serious to say about business.

A bit of TV manipulation’s been going on I’m sure, but Debra’s progression is a case in point. She’s appeared obnoxious, loud mouthed and über-ruthless as many of her former colleagues confirmed last night, but her journey through The Apprentice has clearly taught her something – about business and life.

The preview show focusing in on the characters and backgrounds of the final five, proved as, if not more interesting, than the penultimate episode itself.

You got a real sense of the very often working class backgrounds, adversity and inspiring family members that had shaped and motivated the finalists: James’s bricklayer Dad, Lorraine’s battle with a fused spine as a child, Yasmina’s Iranian immigrant family, Kate’s desire to impress her hard-working mum and Debra’s inspirational business father.

Suddenly caricature gave way to a better understanding of the real people battling it out to be Sir Alan’s new Apprentice. Suddenly the show seemed to be a little less about business pantomime.

It also has to be said the finalists, Kate and Yasmina, have to be two of the most impressive business people to have appeared on the show. Sir Alan must be delighted.

Quotes of the week, both from James’s comic CV: “I put a leash on people who spunk money up the wall” and “I bring ignorance to the table”.

Business lesson of the week: never underestimate The Apprentice, it might just have something serious to say about business after all.

Last week, it published some independent research findings among 1,000 UK SMBs which ostensibly pushed the importance of seeking new business. It defines SMBs as organisations of between 50 and 250 employees and the ‘new business’ seeking behaviour was most intense (at 60 percent) among companies of fewer than 50 staff – companies that shouldn’t have been included. However, while the remaining figures are not as dramatic, they’re still quite interesting. See how they match your reality (and comment if you feel so moved):

Important issues by number of employees (Q109)

The 51-150 (surely that should read 50-150) and 151-250 organisations broadly differ in their attitudes to getting new customers/selling to existing ones and in cost cutting versus revenue growth. All four things are important, of course, but each organisation has its own preferred strategies for getting through the present recession. About 28 percent of these same respondents said that they’d consider themselves successful if their businesses don’t shrink during 2009.

Turning to their cost burdens, you may be interested to see where they lie:

Areas of greatest cost overhead

Again, organisation size makes a difference, but not much. IT appears as something of a headache. And this, of course, is music to Salesforce.com’s ears.

As well as the original CRM service and a ‘service cloud‘, which I won’t bore you with here, Salesforce has a third string to its bow called Force.com which is an application platform.

This means that it provides somewhere to run your applications in the ‘cloud’ (no, don’t get me going), taking away from you all that horrible stuff like backup, restore, disaster recovery, reliability, hardware and delivering applications to connected users 24×7. Applications are easier to write (five times easier according to the blurb) and easier to implement. And you have no capital costs. An associated service, called AppExchange, provides many prewritten applications which could save you at least some development effort.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that it doesn’t excuse you from analysing your business processes, deciding what functions you need, writing and testing them (or finding them) and all the other activities that go into implementing business software. You will probably need to consider how such systems are going to work with those that are still running on your own equipment until, and if, you manage to outsource the whole lot.

UK Force.com user, Nimbus, got a 28 year old person with no IT skills (but, presumably, plenty of business analysis and Force.com skills) to do most of the work involved in migrating its home-grown applications, including spreadsheet macros and the like, out to Force.com.

Many companies might be interested in the idea of getting shot of their computing equipment and associated expenses. But, they are also probably concerned about their ability to do it, the cost of doing it and the danger that they won’t be able to get access to their systems if their broadband connection goes down or the Force.com platform goes off air. The last is probably the least of their worries. Salesforce is highly motivated to fix all problems of this nature very quickly. If it happens too often, it goes out of business. The company provide a ‘briefcase’ facility that allows people to continue working when they know they’ll be offline – travelling etc.

With respect to the other two issues: ability and cost, the first depends on your staff and their skills. But, it has to be said, sources of third party help for small businesses wanting to take the Force route are not exactly thick on the ground at the moment. Salesforce is aware of this.

And, since it represents a great opportunity for systems integrators and the like, I think it’s safe to say that this will change. The second, cost, means that you’d be moving capital expenditure to operational. So you could save big in the short term.

You will, however, incur implementation expenses, which wouldn’t be that different to moving to a different internal system. Then you will have your ongoing monthly costs for the service. These you have to hammer out with Salesforce.com and conduct your own ROI analysis. Its blurb reckons you’d halve your costs.

So, although IT is a large expenditure for SMBs, like all ‘cloud’ type solutions, Force.com is unlikely to prove a magic bullet. So much depends on your exact circumstances and your IT setup. But, equally, when reviewing your future computing options, it would make sense to keep it on your radar, not least because Salesforce itself is an established and reputable provider.

Some big name companies have thrown themselves into the social media space e.g. Dell claiming to have made over $1million from their twitter feed. That’s all well and good for the big boys who have spare money to experiment but does social media have any real value for SME’s looking to network?

Many business people are already tuned into the benefits of using LinkedIn to network. But is that where social networking should start and finish for small businesses?

Last year Visa Business launched a new network page designed for Facebook, the social network page. They used it to encourage small business owners to exchange ideas, manage their resources and expand their customer bases. This was in addition to the $2 million Visa already spent on advertising on the website.

But was it really an effective strategy? Undoubtedly many small businesses have signed up for Facebook pages but most of these are for fun; offering ways for Facebook’s 200 million active users to play games, share photos, rate music and track friend’s activities.

Whilst I understand the desire to harness Facebook’s rapidly growing audience for business, in my mind it still hasn’t proven that its social playground is an effective tool.

Businesses using social media may also be in danger of blurring the lines between personal and public life. We’ve all seen the stories of employees moaning about their job apparently in the domain of their private network of friends, only to find it gets back to bosses and they’re promptly fired.

Another unresolved issue with these new sites is privacy. Do businesses really want to be doing all their deals and negotiating out in the open? Surely when competitors see new business lined up they will try to lure them away?

As for expanding business opportunities and customer bases, I’m not sure how many people will want to do business with someone they found on a social networking site, predominantly used by teenagers for seeing what their mates have been up to.

Clearly this technology is still evolving but for the time being I’m not convinced it’s a key tool for SME.

A search on the internet revealed that ‘Voice of the Customer’ is actually quite an accepted term in software circles. It’s about understanding customer needs through market research in the early stages of a project, then prioritising them in order to influence product development. You can find out more at wikipedia’s entry on the subject.

The briefing went way beyond the voice of the customer though. Perhaps it should have been called ’second-guessing the needs of the customer’ or something. Microsoft wants to get things right, customer-wise, in the first place and then make it easy for customers to get resolutions to problems encountered – sometimes before they’ve even encountered them.

You’re probably thinking what I was thinking; “Microsoft has been in business over 30 years, shouldn’t it have been taking this approach all along?” And I don’t have an answer to that, except that I suspect that programmers (who, in general, have little grasp of the average user’s needs) were left to run wild with their clever but irrelevant and often inconsistent (across applications) coding.

Microsoft seemed to have little idea of, or sympathy for, the hours that users would waste trying to find answers to their problems. As the web increased in popularity, Google probably became the first port of call, with real users in forums or Q&A sites becoming the best source of answers.

Although, having said that, I have a note here that says Microsoft itself participated in 13 million email or chat conversations, took 24 million phone calls and served up two billion on-line self-help requests. I presume that was in a year. It represents a ton of work and a huge cost for the company, over whatever time scale. This is, presumably, part of the trigger for a customer-focused revolution.

So, the new order is determined to design products better in the first place, be made better in the second and be better supported in the third. One of the company’s products that has already gone through this particular mill is Windows Server 2008. In a comparative time period, the incident volume was half that of its predecessor, Windows Server 2003.

Rather than have to plough through arcane knowledgebase articles, online users will be able to hit a ‘Fix it’ button. Later on, an online service will be able to undo something that’s harmed your system. Running applications will be monitored for health and get fixed in the background.

Microsoft has 424 full time employees, plus contractors and vendors involved in this quality process. Even so, it has to prioritise its work, it knows, for example, that Windows Mobile is a pain but it’s still not reached the head of the queue.

However the Windows 7 operating system that our beloved leader (Alex Bellinger) blogged about last week, received the full treatment, and it shows. Half a million individual items of feedback were processed. Five diagnostics and 108 design changes were incorporated as a result. It’s no wonder it’s becoming one of the best-received Microsoft offerings.

The company could have saved users (and itself) a lot of pain had it introduced such processes from the start. But then, without the internet, this would have been virtually (no pun intended) impossible.

Let’s hope that this really does represent a fresh start.

Even larger organisations with HR departments and formalised recruitment procedures can be woefully bad at really making sure the people they hire are the right ones for the job. Sure, they may force candidates to endure three interviews and a battery of psychometric tests, but none of this is worth a dime if they’re not actually testing them on the things that matter – their attitude, their ability and their potential.

There are lots of reasons why hiring well can be scuppered from the start. Particularly in smaller businesses it can be hard to make the time to really put a candidate through their paces, and convenience wins out over rigour.

In addition hiring can often be a knee-jerk reaction – ‘we’ve won some business, we’re over-stretched, we need to hire!’ – and the recruitment process is started from a base of panic, without anyone taking time to really define the role that needs filling, let alone the qualities required to fill it.

But hire in haste, repent at leisure – getting the wrong person in can cost your business a fortune in terms of time, money, morale and reputation.

So how do you know when it’s time to call it a day with a specific employee? In general, if you’re even thinking of firing someone because of an attitude problem, then you probably should have done it yesterday.

However, if the attitude is right but the performance is under par it may be worth looking at other factors prior to making the decision. Changes in the office or with client requirements, pressures at home, illness or simply stress can all impact ability to perform, and can often be overcome with the right support.

Whatever the issue, if you have any concerns about an employee it is essential that you address them immediately. Either they’re a keeper, in which case you will want to help them get back on track as soon as possible, or they are not suited to your organisation and the sooner you can remove them the better.

Some CEOs delay firing because of the fear of costly legal action. In such cases, you need to compare the cost of delaying versus the cost to the business. Perhaps leaving the individual in place could have worse financial implications than firing, or would demotivate the rest of the team.

However, this does not give you licence to fire people in an unpleasant or insensitive way as this will only create an enemy in the market for you and your company – not to mention all the legal implications.

So what is the secret to hiring success? My personal rules of thumb are very simple. Surround yourself with people that are better than you. And make sure that they are the kind of people you would enjoy going to dinner with.

You need people that will keep you on your toes but also people that make you want to go to work in the morning. A strong, motivated team is worth more than anything to your business in today’s climate, so hire, nurture and retain the quality, even if that means losing some of the quantity.

And what a very pleasant surprise the open source operating system and all the good (free) things that come with it has been.

But there were a few gotchas: poor multimedia support, no viable Linux accounting package and a power management system that left my laptop hotter than the sun.

These niggles, the fact that I’m a bit of a tech tart, David Tebbutt’s initial reactions, and my never ending quest to find out whether stuff’s good for other small businesses, prompted me to install Windows 7 beta on my main work laptop in February this year.

The following review is based on my experience of the beta and release candidate 1 (RC1) of Microsoft’s new operating system.

Windows 7 wallpaper - Gates & Ballmer ride into a Yellow Submarine landscape, but is Microsoft's new OS blue monster or blue meanie?

Wow, it works now

Remember the Wow starts now? Microsoft’s come a long way since then.

What the Vista launch proved is that a computer OS no longer merits marketing hype. The evolution of operating systems, Apple and Linux included, is now iterative, not revolutionary.

What matters is do they work well? The bottom line is Vista didn’t and Windows 7 does.

Like many others, I’ve found Windows 7 beta and RC1 to be equivalent to or perhaps even a little faster than XP.

A stable, fast, secure operating system that you can forget about is exactly what small businesses want. Windows 7 could be just that …

It’s all in the detail

There’s really not a lot to say about Windows 7. The very fact that people are talking about the new ‘wallpaper’ in the OS is a rather amusing sign of this.

But actually this is great news. It feels lighter and more refined to use and seems to herald a new less is more philosophy coming from Redmond.

Perhaps cloud computing is forcing software vendors away from the bloatware mentality of Moore’s Law where all the extra headroom created by leaps in processing power had to be filled.

What you’re left with focuses on well executed detail and usability. About bloody time.

Windows 7 small business benefits

As a small business owner these are the things I enjoyed about the software:

- at last the desktop search built into the start button works well bringing a touch of Apple’s Spotlight to the PC – this is a real time saver when you want to find a document quickly;

- the ability to mouse over the taskbar and get a peak at files and windows you’ve got open works very well and saves time (click on the image below to see a screencast review to go with this blog post) as do the jump lists which give you quick access to files you’ve been working on;

- Vista was a pig for connecting to wifi networks on the move and Apple MacBooks are also often a pain if you’re trying to get some work done in an airport or down your local cafe. Windows 7 puts that right and is much more intuitive in terms of finding and connecting to wifi networks;

- compatibility is good thanks to ‘XP mode’ which means all your old software should work fine. Much to my surprise my ancient accounting package is alive and well under the new OS, saving me from an expensive forced upgrade;

- with all the data protection legislation around these days small businesses will increasingly value the ability to encrypt sensitive data on computers easily. Bitlocker on Windows 7 does this for an entire hard drive, while encryption on a file or folder basis also works well.

That’s about it, other than general stability and speed.

Similar features are found in other operating systems and arguably Microsoft should have had all this sorted years ago. But it’s here now and it works. Having said that …

Ghosts and the black screen of death

Just like Ubuntu there are some gotchas, albeit I’ve been testing beta and RC1 versions, so some quirks may get ironed out.

I frequently get programmes including Firefox and Microsoft Office documents suddenly freezing and turning a ghostly shade of transparent. Like ghosts they’re then often difficult to lay to rest. This was particularly bad in the beta, but it’s still happened a few times over the last week in RC1.

On much more rare occasions I get what I can only describe as the ‘black screen of death’. Windows 7 doesn’t stop running (which is good), but if a programme crashes I’ve had the background turn a mournful and appropriate black …

Norton Internet Security 2009 has proved extremely problematic to install correctly – but I expect Symantec will rectify this before the RC1 turns final. Windows-targetted viruses and malware remain a pain which Linux and Apple users don’t have to struggle with.

Finally Internet Explorer 8, bundled with the new OS, still feels slow. Firefox is the way to go.

Conclusion

If you’re a sole trader with an XP or Vista computer and you’re sticking with Microsoft, yes upgrade to Windows 7 (assuming Microsoft is sensible with pricing).

If you’re a larger SME, the benefits of Windows 7 are not so compelling that you should shift existing hardware/software upgrade cycles just for the sake of getting your hands on what’s new.

But when you do, you’ll notice a positive difference.

I needn’t have worried. Prince Charles was at one of the other May Day events, but his speech was screened at our event too. And the exhibitors I spoke to were pretty genuine people who were more than happy to share their knowledge and insights. And yes, if you wanted, to flog you something.

What was refreshing to me was getting out of the IT box and looking at the subject in the round. Sure, IT can help a lot with addressing sustainability-related actions, but it’s not the only game in town.

I received my invite through a colleague’s husband, Habib Abdullah, the MD of MITIE Pest Control. MITIE is an outsourcing and asset management company. It had the largest stand by far and, over a drink made of apples from Kent and some cheese from Somerset, a representative talked to me about reducing food miles, ethical procurement, waste recycling and reuse and local sourcing.

You might be interested in flicking through MITIE’s online booklet entitled ‘the little book of big ideas‘ for inspirations of your own.

Couldn’t resist stopping by the 3M stand to tease it about swine-flu face-masks. Poor guy nearly hit me. He’d only got four hours sleep because of global press interest. He pointed out that even the most advanced masks have to be thrown away after a single use. And, anyway, you need to be trained to fit them properly in the first place or they’re useless. However, on the subject of energy saving, he did manage to show me how 3M window film can substantially reduce heat gain through windows, thus reducing the air conditioning work load.

Siemens was interesting because it is an industrial company that has moved to IT, rather than an IT company that’s moving into industry. Its services are probably not up your street but the perspective is worth bearing in mind when listening to potential suppliers.

The University of Cambridge and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development has produced (among other things) a neat e-learning tutorial on the business case for sustainable development. It looks like a great way to inculcate an understanding among employees in a fairly enjoyable way. You can download a PowerPoint guided tour if you’re interested.

Then we come to the Prince and the May Day network. During his speech, Prince Charles reported that about 1000 companies have pledged to do something about climate change in their own operations. About half of them are sending their footprint figures to the network and some of these are also sharing their stories with others. The May Day name was chosen because it is an international distress call (derived from m’aider, it seems). And it was chosen because we have very little time (98 months, in the Prince’s view) to ‘take the necessary action’.

To find out what that means, I strongly recommend you look at the May Day Journey. I’m ashamed to say that I knew nothing of this until last week. It is a great mind-focusing exercise. And it’s not all about ‘doing good’, it’s about doing the right things for your business.

If, like me, you’re feeling a bit fatigued by the doom and gloom stories of the credit crunch, recession, deflation etc. etc. yawn yawn …

Maybe it’s time to remind yourself why it’s great to be a small business.

Whilst big, lumbering corporates frantically look at ways to cut their costs, re-engineer their business to strip out years of institutionalised inefficiency and wrestle to steer their titanic operations in a better direction, it seems to me small businesses have it GOOD.

Why? Because we’re more nimble, we can adapt to market conditions more quickly and by comparison, we’ve got super light power steering to take ourselves where the money is.

So if your business is taking a bit of a hit as a result of the crunch, maybe it’s time to do some smart marketing and have a look at your proposition. If it’s not getting results in current conditions … what can you change about your product … its pricing … its positioning … to make it more attractive to your key audiences?

At the end of the day, you have power to make changes … just as long as you’re in touch with your customers and you understand what it is that’s changed in their world that’s having a knock on effect on your business.

They say there’s always money to be made in a recession. I say hurray for the small businesses that have the sense and capability to grab opportunity whilst its there.

Sir Alan’s own brand of put-downs were so abrasive on this week’s episode of The Apprentice he must have had the BBC’s lawyers scurrying for their tin helmets and copies of slander case law.

Noorul who finally got fired received a particularly shocking parting shot in the back from Sir Alan, who quipped:

Whoever employs him, better get a receipt.

Meanwhile James was likened to a village idiot who’d gone missing.

But it wasn’t just Sir Alan who was hurling abuse. Debra outrageously and unwisely kicked off in the boardroom with Nick (yes .. Nick!), Philip continued his running battle with Lorraine, James berated Ben for almost calling him into the boardroom and Ben refused to take any more shit from a bunch of tough nut antiquarian booksellers.

From the off we were left in no doubt by the programme’s editors and writers that this episode was going to be all out war.

Ben, who’d received a scholarship to army officer training college Sandhurst, but for some inexplicable reason had never taken it up said:

Under those situations where I am under extreme pressure i.e. heavy gunfire, explosions going off around me, people getting injured, that’s when I bring a team together.

All well and good, but valuing and selling a rug, a skeleton and a few jellied eels among other things, proved a mission too far. As project manager for the first time, 22 year old Ben was more Dad’s Army Corporal Jones, than Iraq war Colonel Tim Collins.

The key to this week’s task was identifying correctly the value of a selection of items. They included an expensive rug at over £200, a first edition James Bond book, a medic’s skeleton, some valuable antique shoes, a bunch of old tat and two vats of jellied eels.

Sir Alan had pointed out there was a twist in this task all about selling: the twist being it wasn’t about selling everything, but selling the most valuable items. Judgement day in the boardroom involved subtracting the price items were sold for from their real value to work out a profit or loss.

Both Ignite and Empire sold very poorly and had no real concept of the value of anything. The spectacle of both teams hoiking a £200 rug around the streets of London finding it impossible to sell for a pittance was a great example of turning a silk purse into a sow’s ear.

Ben’s tactic, as the day drew to a close, was to offload everything by ‘finding some absolute nutcase and flogging it”.

Meanwhile Ignite team leader Philip continued to ignore Lorraine who rapidly identified the rug and antique shoes as worth a pretty penny.

He did, however, come up with the ingenious idea of selling a medic’s skeleton to punters in a pub opposite a London hospital. Amazingly, he actually found someone (not a medic) who’d wanted a skeleton all his life and stumped up £150 for it.

Back in the boardroom Ben’s team suffered defeat with a hefty loss of £169, while Philip’s team were also poor with a loss of £39.

When the losses were totted up and it became clear that both teams had completely missed the point of the task, the silence was deafening. The deathly hush wasn’t only the quiet before the storm, it was also recognition of abject failure.

Classic moment for me this week was the look on Sir Alan’s face when Margaret accused Lorraine of being the ‘Cassandra’ of the team (someone everybody refused to believe). His expression was a combination of horror, confusion and strain, like a man trying to give birth to the complete edition of the encyclopaedia Britannica.

By this time Ben was all at sea – so indecisive that he couldn’t work out who to bring back into the boardroom, opting for Noorul (safe bet) and then James before heading back to Debra who’d already received a dressing down by Sir Alan for abusing ‘him’, by which he meant Nick.

Sir Alan speculated that Ben was a broken man, before fixing on Noorul who he’d clearly wanted to sack weeks ago.

The battle was over, but the war goes on.

Quote of the week from Sir Alan describing Ben: “Your mind is like concrete. Thoroughly mixed, but set in its ways.”

Business lesson of the week: no point pricing everything, if you know the value of nothing.

Not only does it seem husband and wife team Mitesh and Krishna Soma have successfully squared up to stiff online competition, but they’ve also achieved pain-free VC funding from investors including Skype’s founders.  No mean feat.

Formerly a management consultant for Deloitte, Mitesh graduated with a degree in business and computing before persuading his wife to sell her pharmacy in Westminster to take the business online.

Mitesh says:

I used to occasionally pop in to see her (Krishna) and I noticed some of the prices that she was buying goods in for. Comparing them to what the retail prices of those products were there seemed to be huge margins. Items were being bought for pennies and sold for £7 or £8.

Mitesh had stumbled on a golden ticket. By going online he had a far greater market at his feet. With ‘smaller margins and greater volume’ he was suddenly in a position to undersell the high street giants and beat them at their own game.

An online consumer-led business model meant the couple could now provide: ‘everything you can buy at your local pharmacy for a lot less’.

Mitesha Soma persuaded his wife Krishna to sell her London pharmacy and move online

Boots of course is a national chain, employing thousands of people across the country, and it would be wrong to assume in the light of increased online spending that they were not taking their own online push seriously.

Online pricing in the sector is becoming increasingly competitive.

Yet Mitesh believes it is Chemist Direct’s ‘small and agile team’ which puts the business ahead of the game, allowing them to react at speed to competition, changing consumer needs and market advances.

With the original business sold and an office in the garden shed, the Somas employed a team of web designers and in November 2007 the site was launched.

Less than twelve months on and the business had grown from a handful of people into the Hitwise number 1 online pharmacy complete with warehouse, a 50 strong team of employees, a product list in excess of 1,000 items and turnover of £4 million.

Fast forward to the end of last year and it was apparent the business was moving on from its pioneer phase.

While looking to expand services, their team and their warehouse Mitesh was not actively seeking funding, and yet a meeting with the former Skype co-founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, now of Atomico, led to Chemist Direct achieving £3 million in VC funding.

You only need to look at LoveFilm to realise that such a consumer led business model can feed off a downturn. People will always need toothpaste and soap, and they’ll always want to enjoy films.

Chemist Direct hoping to do for pharmacists what Glasses Direct did for opticians

You might imagine adding whole new product ranges would prove challenging, but Mitesh and his team have frequently shown startup agility in practice.

In January 2009 a pet team was developed and pet drugs added to the online catalogue.

As Mitesh explains:

I was talking to a pet owner who said she was thinking she’d have to put her cat down because she couldn’t afford the drugs … I thought well we can get hold of these kinds of items as we are a pharmacy. The move has been hugely successful since we launched at the start of the year. People couldn’t get these items for less before and now they can.

All this sounds like the perfect startup story. But it’s only when you dig a little deeper you really sense why Mitesh left the corporate world – his entrepreneurial instincts burn too bright for office politics.

It may be early days for the business, but Mitesh is driven by the desire to create a household name. Yet he recognises that if there comes a time when he’s no longer happy, he will move on. Indeed like all entrepreneurs he already has a number of ideas brewing, although none he would divulge.

It’s very difficult to find fault with Chemist Direct. To get VC funding in today’s economy is impressive. Persuading a partner – which Mitesh calls ‘the power of the entrepreneur’- to sell her family business to set up an online startup in a garden shed is astonishing.

And yet Mitesh’s powers of persuasion and vision have held sway.

This and the recession-fuelled desire for people to cut bills by finding bargains online, mean I reckon it’s a safe bet to predict Chemist Direct is set to enjoy a very prosperous year.

For example, if you don’t print stuff then you avoid paper (client’s copy and your copy), ink, folding, envelope stuffing, then franking or stamping. And, while not strictly your concern, the postal service delivery vehicles and sorting equipment all contribute their bit to the energy and environmental costs.

Then, of course, further savings can be made at your client because they won’t have to open the envelope, handle the paper or rekey its contents.

If you issue documents in a special format called XML, they could go straight into your client’s system and automatically become part of the workflow.

But, even if you take the easiest route and ‘print’ invoices as .PDF files and email them, then you’d still be taking a great step forward. This is readable on just about any machine these days. And the capability to output invoices in this way is provided in many accounting packages.

If your package doesn’t provide for this, or you’re using a database, spreadsheet or word processor to prepare your invoices, all is not lost. You can get a printer ‘plug-in’ – sometimes at no cost – which will ‘print’ your document to a .PDF file. CutePDF Writer is the one that both Alex Bellinger (the boss of SmallBizPod) and I use. You might prefer to go to Adobe itself, Scansoft or other companies that offer more sophistication.

STOP PRESS 1: Would you believe it? Microsoft has just made ‘Save as PDF’ one of its file save options in Office 2007 Service Pack 2.

STOP PRESS 2: Would you believe it? I just tried saving one invoice from Access 2007 and it outputs a completely different one. I don’t *think* I’m stupid, but I’m willing to get a second opinion.

Got it? Well then you’ll pretty much have pictured estate agent Philip Taylor’s extraordinary ‘Pants Man’ performance in Episode 5 of The Apprentice last night.

In what’s become a classic task format, Ignite led by Kimberly, the rough tough cream puff from New York, and Empire led by Kate took on the challenge of devising a character, brand and TV ad to promote a new breakfast cereal aimed at children and their health conscious parents.

The final ad, box and cartoon would be presented to agency big-wigs at McCann Erickson. They’d then advise the famously advertising-sceptic, Sir Alan, who’d have, as always the final say on who won.

And his decision couldn’t have been easier.

Kate’s team rapidly settled on Treasure Flakes as a brand name, devised a pirate parrot character, worked closely with a designer to create some good packaging and shot an advert which, while not inspiring, was OK.

It all seemed too perfect. The only tension came when Kate upset Yasmina by vetoing the female singer on the ad jingle to replace her with team-mate Ben, later described by Sir Alan as “a hoarse Ian Paisley”.

It was going so well for team Empire in fact that James with a sense of sheer exhilaration about being in a jingle recording studio said:

I feel like a monkey learning to use tools.

Fortunately for him all the real monkeys and all the real tools were in the opposing team.

As much as the production team tried to build tension with careful editing, there was only ever going to be one loser last night.

Team Ignite’s efforts were to use Sir Alan’s words “a total piece of rubbish”, although I suspect that wasn’t how he’d normally have phrased it.

Nevertheless, Philip Taylor will go down in the annals of Apprentice comic highlights for single-handedly creating Pants Man, which was only marginally more palatable for an audience of children and parents than his original cereal killer suggestion.

The Pants Man concept was simple and easy to grasp, like all good brands:

a breakfast cereal called Wake Up Call is so good that it makes you want to ‘dance in your pants’, but not emulate the cartoon hero Pants Man who apparently has no Wake Up Call in the morning and therefore wears his pants on the outside of his trousers, like a superhero, something you wouldn’t want to be after eating healthy cereal which would make sure you wore your pants the right way around i.e. underneath your clothes.

The health benefits and appeal to kids are, I think you you’ll agree, indisputable.

The rest of the episode was pure comedy. Noorul was appropriately given the task of dressing up as Pants Man, Philip sang and Lorraine moaned seemingly alone in spotting that Philip’s idea was a dog.

Kimberly resolutely failed to lead or demonstrate any understanding of marketing or branding despite being a New York marketing hot shot.

She even managed to run out of time to brief the designer on box design, leaving him to make something up after a cursory call on her mobile.

The usual showdown was pretty predictable with Kimberly choosing chief critic of Pants Man, Lorraine, and his creator Philip to join her in the boardroom.

As Kimberly tried to defend herself, it rapidly became clear that Sir Alan thought everyone in New York was a psychiatrist, possibly having watched too many Woody Allen films as a youth in the East End.

And let’s face it, the last thing Sir Alan needs right now is a therapist …

Kimberly ultimately proved sickly sweet, rather delicate and largely hollow. And her doeist of doe eyes deserved instant firing, which she duly got.

Quote of the week came from Nick for: “They took logic and tortured it until it screamed.”

Business lesson of the week: laughing at your own jokes and turning them into brands is not big, and not funny.

Small business confidence

The O2 small business confidence survey of 3,000 SMEs released today highlights resilience and some cautious optimism with over a fifth of small firms expecting growth over the next six months (21%) and 66% determined to survive the recession.

A Forum of Private Business survey at the end of last week also showed some green shoots with 25% of their panel of SMEs saying they’d seen an improvement in the demand for their products and services over recent months.

Nevertheless that leaves a huge number of small firms feeling the pinch and living a precarious existence. Nearly half (49%) in the O2 survey said their confidence was at an all time low and the majority still cited cash flow as their biggest threat to survival, with 62% seeing scant improvement in bank lending behaviour.

An SME survival divide?

Both anecdotally and from surveys it looks like there’s a small business divide appearing. At the centre perhaps 50-60% of businesses are doing what it takes to survive and although this may be the worst recession for 60 years, they are quietly confident of getting through tough times.

But at the extremes, there are 20% who will flourish during recession and 20% who are in serious danger of sinking.

It’s very much a thrive, survive or nosedive outlook.

Budget leaks

Treasury purdah is dead and these days most of the Budget is heavily trailed. In a carefully and clearly briefed piece in the Financial Times last week, the government put a scheme to top up supply-chain insurance at the heart of its Budget response to SME concerns.

Andrew Jupp at accountancy firm Tenon suggested to me that this move was valuable as part of the overall efforts aimed at small and medium sized businesses.

But he also pointed out that just like the Enterprise Finance Guarantee (EFG) Scheme we’ll only be able to judge its real impact when we see how it’s implemented and how many businesses are, in practice, able to benefit from it.

The Telegraph has also hinted at business-related moves expected in the Budget.

These include tweaks to Export Credit Guarantees, a temporary increase to £50,000 in the annual investment allowance, but no immediate support for high tech companies struggling as VC funding has fallen by 70% in 2008 alone.

What SMEs really need from the Budget

All these elements are relatively minor and perhaps indicative of the huge debt government is increasingly saddled with.

But when it comes to the crunch most small businesses focus on cash and tax, if you ask them what they want from the Budget.

Budget 2009 - the small business twitterati speak!

A quick poll of Twitter found startups, SMEs and freelancers focusing on cuts in National Insurance, extending the VAT threshold, amending corporation tax rates to benefit small, rather than big businesses, more pressure on banks to lend and incentives for investors, like extending tax relief on the Enterprise Investment Scheme.

Meanwhile, The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) has a whole raft of Budget proposals including resurrecting a post office bank and the introduction of a ‘corporate mediator’ to intervene in disputes between banks and their business customers.

It also points out that National Insurance and basic rate tax thresholds have fallen behind increases in the National Minimum Wage. This means benefits for the employed, benefits for the Treasury and SMEs being £8.28 a week worse off per employee.

So, in common with many businesses it’s calling for an increase in the NI and tax thresholds.

Others want to see the temporary VAT reduction extended to avoid more administrative headaches in the run-up to Christmas.

The FSB also proposes automatic business rate relief (less than 50% of small businesses eligible actually receive it at present) and reform of the AIM market for growing businesses.

AIM needs help

AIM and many of the growth businesses listed on it are suffering badly since the banking crisis hit home. It’s seen a 34% drop in the value of trading in 2008 compared to 2007 and IPOs are a sixth of what they were.

As a result both AIM itself and the FSB want to see Venture Capital Trusts allowed to participate in trading on the market to help increase support in public equity funding for smaller businesses.

Heads will roll

This year’s Budget is bound to be shrouded in nitty-gritty, indecipherable detail.

But SmallBizPod will be recording its regular Budget podcast so look out for it on Wednesday afternoon for some clarity on what it means for your small business.

Finally, as one surreal twitterer responded when I asked him what he wanted from the Budget: “Bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia”.

No doubt opposition parties will be calling for the head of one Alistair Darling. Whether the clamour will be added to by small business owners after Wednesday remains to be seen.

[Update: Take a look at our analysis of what The Budget means for small businesses and our annual Budget Podcast for more information and advice]

And by marketing in this kind of context, we’re not just talking new customers – but being innovative and relevant enough with your existing customers to retain them and get more from them (increase customer value).

Given that ABM is billed as delivering buckets of benefits including better understanding, better focus, better client resonance, better innovation (the list goes on). It’s surprising more small businesses don’t do it.

Typically a formal approach to ABM will have three elements:

- regular (maybe annual, bi-annual or 1/4ly) structured feedback meetings with customers;

- each chunk of feedback will provide the impetus for a Key Account Plan that identifies initiatives to max delivery to that customer … or address their concerns;

- the implementation of a working set of measures that track progress on the above.

Seems like simple, honest-to-good practice to me. But still a lot of small businesses struggle … their client relationship functions lack structure. . ‘it’s so hands-on, feedback just happens!’

But as with so many things – a bit of discipline and formality also builds in a bit of objectivity and forces thinking time (on both the customer and the business’ part) that might not happen otherwise.

Seems like a smart move to me. If you want to read a neat 2page summary of how it works, you’ll find one here.

Never has The Apprentice seen such an indecisive project manager do so little and grasp the basic tenets of business less firmly.

Hardly surprising then that nice Noorul would come to an end as sticky as the lump of honeycomb at the centre of his team’s very soft soap.

Except … his team won and he survived, much to the clear disappointment of Sir Alan who had selected him specifically for a culling by asking him to lead team Ignite following another reshuffle.

So much for the best laid plans of mice, men and knighted belligerent bosses …

The teams began at Kew Gardens for a glamorous botanical clue to this week’s challenge. They then headed down to an industrial estate in Poole to design, produce and sell two natural beauty products.

In his candidate profile, Noorul claims he’s ‘not all talk’. And he certainly lived up to it by saying nothing more than a few umms and errrs as he left his team to it in the tricky selection of natural ingredients for their soap and bubble bath.

Meanwhile Paula was leading team Empire which looked destined to savour the sweet smell of success.

Their seaweed and sandalwood soap and shower gel looked and clearly smelled divine. Their Rock Poole branding was really rather clever and subtle packaging impressive.

But then came one small error made by Yasmina and Paula. Sandalwood was a luxurious £1000 a litre while Cedarwood was cheap as wood chips.

The two got confused with names, weights and measures and thought £5 had bought them a luxury half litre of the more expensive scent.

Sir Alan’s cardinal rule, ‘buy for pennies, sell for pounds’ was in tatters. On having their mistake pointed out by a rueful Nick, the horror on Yasmina and Paula’s face was clear.

Blame game Ben on the other hand – also delegated with Yasmina to keep control of costs – began his ‘I wasn’t there’ defence almost immediately.

Meanwhile, when the teams hit the streets to sell, Noorul again demonstrated breathtaking incompetence, dither and literal lack of direction by getting his team lost in London.

After the scandal of sandalwood, Empire did pull together to do a great job selling, but all in vain as costs eliminated profit and gave them a £68 loss.

So Noorul and Ignite escaped boardroom ignominy.

The boardroom battle was brilliantly played by Yasmina. Staying stum while Ben blathered. Offering compliments while Ben blazed abuse. Politely admitting responsibility while Ben blamed others. Sticking the knife in Paula clinically, while Ben bludgeoned.

Her potential fall from grace only demonstrated her potential for success. Ben’s defence of himself clearly got up Sir Alan’s nose, but he was saved for entertainment value, I reckon. Paula Jones got the boot. Unlucky.

If anyone was in any doubt of Yasmina’s powers you only had to watch the final scene as she and Ben returned to the house.

Her honesty about having to turn on Paula in the boardroom, how she’d have done the same to anyone and her ‘get on with it’ attitude left sensitive Mona in tears of pure fear.

Classic quotes were a little thin on the ground this week, but my favourite goes once again to estate agent Philip for “Kimberley’s as dumb as a doorknob” and his cheeky sushi restaurant quip “I wonder who he’s going to sake”.

Business lessons of the week: buy for pennies, sell for pounds and never forget, business is unpredictable.

What makes the difference between a good and a bad leader is often less obvious than you might think.

A boss who is blunt, bad-tempered and can’t remember anyone’s name may in the long-term prove the better leader than the boss that is caring, sharing and never has a bad word to say about anyone.

It’s not the way they behave or even the actions they take that marks out the successful leader – it’s the impression they leave on their team and how that influences their team’s behaviour and actions.

Of course different types of people are best motivated by different things and different leadership styles.

I’m sure you are familiar with the numerous personality ‘types’ propounded by psychologists the world over, but whether you call them pragmatists or ‘red’ people, theorists or ‘blue’ personalities, what it pays to remember is that one person’s motivator will be another’s total turn-off.

Take money, for example. A classic leadership mistake is to assume that everyone has a price and that if you have enough hard cash to throw at a person, you can keep them happy. After all, that’s why people change job, right?

Wrong. Money is often the easiest way to avoid discussing what’s really making someone unhappy – that their work-life balance is completely one-sided or that they have bitten off more than they can chew and are worried they don’t have enough support to do the job well.

Of course for some people money is indeed the be-all and end-all, but for many a far bigger motivator is an opportunity to develop new skills or even just have a peaceful and enjoyable life. Flash the cash at these people and what they may see is more responsibility, longer hours and more of what was upsetting them in the first place.

It therefore pays to take time to get to know your team, individually and collectively, so that you can create the right package of motivations to keep them behind you all the way. Providing praise and rewards for continued performance and positive attitude work wonderfully.

Don’t think that just by putting on a few free pizzas at lunchtime or having the boss take ice cream orders on a scorching day, will mean that the team owes you a lifetime of gratitude, but genuinely thoughtful initiatives like this that don’t cost much will usually be accepted in the spirit in which they’re offered – with real enthusiasm.

Back regular, spontaneous and interesting gestures up with a solid and competitive benefits and HR package and you have the basis for a happy company. In particular by showing your own personal, positive leadership and joining the team in having a genuine good time every day, employees will find contentment and stay motivated.

Strong leaders are those that inspire their team to work harder and do better because they can see their own success reflected in that of the business. They lead by example and they use their personality to motivate others. It therefore takes great confidence – in yourself, and in your business – to be this kind of a leader, but never get complacent.

You should always try to look at yourself from your employees’ perspective and think – “would I like me for a boss?”

In fact, it’s probably too simple. But this is all part of the plan. The people behind the project are keenly aware that what you cook up in the lab’ can be quite different to what real users want. So they spent about four months building a robust ‘beta’ version and then offered it to allcomers to give feedback. The theory is that they will then respond quickly to the best ideas and the project evolves into something that fits the users’ needs.

This particular project is called redmark, which is a bit of a misnomer because it implies coloured markup of design and it does neither. It simply allows you to click on a spot on a design then comment on it – the comments are arranged down the right hand side and connected to the hotspots with black lines. Here’s a reduced size screen shot:

redmark screen shot

On the left is an image size slider, one of the icons at the top is a hand tool for moving it around and underneath are icons linking to previous designs and their comments.

The designer is emailed whenever comments are made and the clients are emailed whenever the design changes. Two people (the current limit for clients per design) cannot comment at the same time. What’s a little bit frustrating is that the designer can’t comment either, unless they pretend they’re a client (which is what I did, but it’s a waste of an invite.) Two weeks ago, this was added to the ‘planned development list’. It will be a good indicator of how responsive the team is.

If you’re interested in participating in the beta trial, SmallBizPod has been given a code (M27005) which will let you in, providing you’re one of the first 50 to try it. Our beloved leader, Alex Bellinger nicked one. So did I.

To approach an online publication like this was an interesting move for the founders. Co-founder Anton Babadjanov came to us because we’d already written about another online design service called ConceptShare, which he describes as “a good tool, indeed”. But describes redmark as, “a free alternative to it, and we plan to keep it free.” Calling it an ‘alternative’ is cheeky but, as he says, it is free.

I asked him what his business model is. After all, no-one can live on air. He replied, “We believe that by helping the whole graphic community with a widely available and useful application we will be able to explore different monetization strategies.”

Like so many web 2.0 companies it seems to be a case of, ‘build the community first and then see what the options are’. If they want to keep it free, then I guess that leaves advertising or some other access to the user base as the source of revenue. From an exit perspective, ‘get bought’ has to be an option.

The people behind it are young (in their twenties) and enthusiastic. They have squeezed in a fair amount of practical and relevant intellectual grounding while pursuing their graduate and post-graduate courses. They have also recruited others to the team.

Babadjanov started a web design and application development consultancy in British Columbia a couple of years ago while redmark co-founder Deyan Vitanov is an MBA student at Stanford, where he’s been well and truly bitten by the start-up bug. Apart from anything else, he’s responsible for ‘investor relations’ within the Entrepreneurship Club. Smart move.

They have a structured approach to potentially major projects, which enables them to abandon them rapidly if they see trouble ahead. The stages are brainstorming, analysis then prototyping and release. They brainstorm around problems and potential matching technologies ‘that excite them’. They do a first pass filter by consulting as many trusted sources as possible in the hunt for any show stoppers. They aim to identify three projects then conduct further research to find the one with the highest potential. Then they start prototyping their favoured project. Which is where redflag comes in.

Quite whether they should have involved the media at this stage is a difficult one to answer. On the one hand, they collect beta testers and potentially life-saving feedback. On the other, they could simply turn people off if the product is not yet compelling enough or if they are not as responsive as they need to be to sustain the goodwill of their beta users.

As someone who got bitten by the startup bug many years ago while visiting Palo Alto and Menlo Park in Silicon Valley, I know what it’s like. It’s exciting (mine was called Caxton Software). It’s a unique part of the world where almost anything seems possible. Good luck to them. If this project fails, I doubt this will be the last we hear of these two enterprising Bulgarians.

As they are rapidly rushed out of the office by a harassed member of staff, the question everyone is asking is how on earth does turning up uninvited increase sales or enhance a company’s reputation? The fact is it doesn’t.

Businesses would do well to take heed of research which shows that local relationships are what really clinch deals. As a result they should be developing communication and marketing strategies to make the most of opportunities on their own doorstep.

Increasingly in the current climate, businesses are finding themselves fighting harder for a purchaser’s attention so it’s essential that you know your target prospects and give them a valid reason to choose your services over a competitor.

As an owner of a small business myself, I find it hard to believe that many of the big businesses in my locality are failing to realise the potential local relationships can have in securing a deal.

Take office supplies specialist Staples, for instance. We’re less than a five minute drive from a store, yet we’ve never received a single piece of marketing communication from them. We have therefore tended to opt for a supplier who demonstrates an understanding of our business and who has taken the time to get to know us.

You might be reading this wondering ‘how do I find out all this useful information?’. First option particularly for lesser known businesses is to buy the data required from an outsourced supplier or gather it through various collection methods.

A wealth of information can be collected using this approach including the size of a business, location, purchase decision maker(s) and transactional habits. This information can then be used to build a well managed database which will form the heart of any successful marketing and communication activity allowing you to begin to establish a credible relationship with a prospect.

But in the business-to-business sector understanding your customers is difficult. It isn’t always easy to know when and how to make contact or even who to approach.

I take the view that understanding individual business owners and directors will give a much valued insight in to their purchase behaviour which is ultimately reflected in business decisions.

Developing a good understanding starts with a deep analysis of existing customers, as this data holds most of the answers that you need to clearly define who you are selling to (and not) – and to understand what they buy – and which are worth most to you.

There’s a vast opportunity in taking a structured approach to selling to the small business sector and companies who adopt the latest data and insight techniques and make the most of local relationships are the ones that will win the battle for customers.

Rocky, my hot tip to be dodging and weaving his way to the final bout of The Apprentice in ten weeks’ time, has suffered the blow of a technical knock out in round two as the ref decided he could take no more punishment.

Personally, I was hoping Rocky Andrews, at 21 the youngest of the competitors this year, was playing an elaborate game of rope-a-dope in episode 2 of The Apprentice last night.

As the owner of 15 sandwich shops in the North East he was the obvious choice of project manager for a task which pitched the two teams into catering for high-fliers in the City.

A young contender waiting to prove himself, Casius Clay-like before an expectant world.

But in the opening seconds he looked wobbly as the ludicrous 2012 Grecian toga and gold lamé idea perpetrated by smirking team mates landed flush on his chin.

Moments later he swayed back onto the ropes as the only other person in his team with catering experience, Howard Ebison, suggested £60 a head was the going London rate for cheese on a stick.

But when the moment came to sway off the ropes and deliver a clinical one two, poor Rocky proved this was no Rumble in the Jungle re-run.

Decision one to take gobby James into the boardroom with him followed by decision two to take Howard proved fatal.

Other than leading him on, James had done nothing obviously wrong and showed his dismay at being selected with the classic line:

I honestly feel like I did when my cat died.  It hurts inside.

Howard, other than leading him on had also done nothing obviously wrong and Sir Alan had little choice but to put Rocky out of his misery, particularly as under his leadership the team had made a loss.

In fact, I reckon this was good news.

Rocky was the only real entrepreneur in the whole show and will, I’m sure, do much better for himself now than he would have done by progressing.  I think Sir Alan recognised that too.

Meanwhile, Yasmina Siadatan leading the girls team and a restaurateur herself proved she had more balls than Gordon Ramsay.

Forcing her team-mates to shout ‘yes chef’, taking dictatorial control over all decisions, and flogging cheap tuna and tomatoes for ridiculous prices, proved she is a real contender, rather than a could have been.

As one of her team said:

The food looks like it’s come from a funeral at a working man’s club.

Yasmina didn’t flinch.  I wouldn’t want to eat in one of her restaurants though.

Business lesson of the week: lead from the front, sell cheap stuff expensively and sod the customer.

But one thing is very clear, there’s no shortage of supply and the SME cloud computing land grab is on. There’s gold in them there hills.

Only today Alibaba.com subsidiary, Alisoft, announced the launch of free internet-based management software known as Shopkeeper.

The service comprises accounting and finance modules at launch and will be offered free to Chinese SMEs – all 42 million of them.

While it has to be said Chinese internet penetration means only a small fraction of that market will have access to Alisoft’s service, there can be no denying Alibaba.com’s ambitions in this area.

According to Reuters, the company plans to spend $146 million on promoting Shopkeeper to Chinese small businesses over the next three years.

Beyond China all the mainstream players clearly see the future of software in the cloud too.

Microsoft has Live and Azure. Google is already there, of course, with Docs, while hosting companies like Amazon and Rackspace also have massive vested interests in seeing utility computing (paying for what you use, when you want it whether it’s software or virtual hardware) succeed.

Meanwhile, the IBM-led open cloud manifesto betrayed a certain cack-handed attempt to regain commercial ground under the guise of openness. [Update: looks like a more harmonious approach may have broken out today after all].

And it’s not just the big guys.  Look at the flowering of SaaS accounting offerings in the UK. 

Kashflow kicked off the trend, but there’s also FreeAgent Central which only last week secured Angel funding, Clearbooks, Bionicbook and Cashboard. Look a little further afield and you could also add WinWeb, Twinfield, Zoho, Quickbooks Online, Freshbooks and imminently Sage Live.

Looking pretty crowded for such a new market, don’t you think?

So I believe supply will create, if not dictate, demand and do so quickly. Cloud computing for small businesses is already a fait accompli.

In just two years over 50% of UK small businesses will be using some form of software as a service, in my opinion.

This despite the fact the self-proclaimed largest UK provider of SaaS accounting software to SMEs, Kashflow, currently has just 3,000 paying customers.

So what’s going to spur such a rapid uptake?

Well, the the benefits of small business cloud computing have been set out well by Davids Tebbutt and Terrar on this blog recently.

But there’s something else – when SaaS becomes invisible, it will become the status quo.

Two years ago now I anticipated google gears before it appeared. Syncing between the cloud and the desktop was always going to be the killer app in terms of SME adoption.

Of course, both Google Gears, Microsoft Live/Azure and Zoho now have seamless sync, albeit a little unpredictable. But once the transition between online and offline, desktop and web are indistinguishable, SaaS to all intents and purposes becomes invisible.

The really big players will roll out adoption by default to small businesses. Several traditional small IT providers I spoke to today who you’d expect to be flogging hardware and software in boxes were already extolling the virtues of cloud computing. The groundwork is being laid.

Synchronisation will also be the key for the plethora of smaller software as a service vendors out there now.

Without rapidly making the online/offline boundaries invisible, they themselves run the risk of disappearing from view.

As the fifth series of The Apprentice kicked off, it was obvious the production team had done the usual by selecting a motley array of business no-hopers and sociopaths.

The script writers on the other hand had excelled themselves.

Sir Alan’s opening salvo was classic Suralan.

“Someone’s already bottled it”,  “Pressure is what business is all about” and the hilarious:

“I’m as hard to play as a Stradivarius.  You lot are as easy to play as bongo drums.”

It’s as if you’re witnessing a whole new business vernacular evolving before your eyes.  A cross between buzzword bingo and  White Hart Lane terrace banter.

Sir Alan, the Stradivarius with his bongo backing band

But it wasn’t just Sir Alan who had the good lines.  The candidates had clearly polished their sound bites too.

The trailer had already given us “Business is the new rock ‘n’ roll and I’m Elvis Presley”, from estate agent Philip Taylor, and “To me making money is better than sex” from ‘rebellious stockbroker’ Ben Clarke.

But there were more gems tonight.

Kimberly Davis quipped “I’m a rough tough cream puff from New York”, immediately endearing herself to me and dooming her to failure.

While ruthless Debra Barr came up with a phrase that could, even at this early stage, mark her out for the final three:

“If she doesn’t take me to the boardroom, it’ll be a waste of a good suit.”

The challenge, setting up a cleaning business with up to £200 to spend on kit, was a remarkably dull affair.

Business lesson of the week: keep your costs down.

The girls’ team, Ignite, spent nearly all of its ‘budget’ and the passive lawyer in charge of the calculator, Anita, copped it for, well … being a lawyer and playing the ‘I was only following orders’ card.  Never a good option with a Spurs fan.

Empire project manager, Howard Ebison, was weak and doomed, although the boys won.

Ignite project manager, Mona Lewis, was disorganised, but despite her avowed integrity played a blinding divide and rule card in the post match analysis at the Bridge Street café before heading back to the boardroom.

All in all a low key start to the new series, but with some memorable lines.

My early bet on the final three: Rocky Andrews, Debra Barr, Yasmina Siadatan.

But things will get much worse before a Phoenix Economy rises from the ashes of what is a very significant moment in history.

Not your average starting point for a conference on entrepreneurship.

But then the grandly titled World Entrepreneur Society (WES) summit is not your average event and John Elkington, doyenne of corporate-responsibility and sustainability for the last 30 years, is not your average speaker.

Challenging - John Elkington of Volans

John, famous for coining the term ‘triple bottom line’ and founding partner of social innovation consultancy Volans, delivered the above economic outlook in one of two opening keynotes, the other offered by Microsoft’s European Chairman Jan Mühlfeit.

Over the last six months, I’ve witnessed several high profile social entrepreneurs incite revolution, jubilant at the mess left behind by the crisis in the global banking system.

This is a crisis too good to miss. And like any good entrepreneur, many a social entrepreneur can sense an opportunity.

As Big Issue Chairman Nigel Kershaw asked one panel, are you reformists or radicals?  One sensed that reform might not be the preferred answer.

So, the challenging, revolutionary zeal of John was perhaps as unsurprising as the dismissing of the ‘capitalism is dead’ shtick by Jan Mühlfeit, born and educated in communist Czechoslovakia before working his way to the top of Microsoft’s corporate greasy pole.

Other panels during the day oscillated between realism, fear and entrepreneurial optimism in the face of recession-based business opportunities.

With practical sessions running in parallel it was impossible to get to everything.  But for me one of the most inspiring parts of the day, was learning more about initiatives in Africa designed to stimulate entrepreneurship, creating real, sustainable economic value, rather than an addiction to aid.

Jean-Francois Ruhashyankiko of the Rwanda Enterprise Investment Company, for example, was building sustainable businesses for locals by spotting opportunities linked to aid-based flows of money.  For example, an irrigation company built to support charitable investments in agriculture.

Entrepreneurial education was also a major part of the plan for Jean-Francois, as it was for another delegate who had recently won a contract to support and develop startups in Sierra Leone.

Carlo Tortora-Brayda Di Belvedere of Alchemy World was also inspiring, but realistic about the political challenges faced by his social enterprise in Ethiopia.

Mobile communications are playing a big part in the development of business across Africa and it was no surprise to find that two UK entrepreneurs, one social and one AIM listed had an eye on developing opportunities on the continent.

The day ended with a session from the inimitable Oli Barrett and David McQueen.

Playing balloon keepy-uppy with the senior economic adviser to the Rwandan government was a touch of surrealism I hadn’t expected, but it was certainly in keeping with the day as whole.

Earlier one panelist quoted Andre Gide:

One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.

There were plenty of moments when WES09 felt like it had set sail.  Whether you smell the whiff of economic revolution in the air or not, we’re all certainly in uncharted waters right now.

And ultimately Gide’s quote embodies what so many entrepreneurs face and what the conference last week celebrated.

An appropriate thought to hold in your mind whether or not you consider your own entrepreneurial journey an act of insanity or the way to make a real difference.

A SmallBizPod reader, Alexander Deliyannis, had been reading my various posts about social/collaborative software and services but none of them fitted his current challenge, which was to provide an online web-based workspace for a diverse group of people working in different countries of the EU. He was less concerned with the social aspects of the services and much more concerned with simple project-related collaboration.

He approached me for my views and we spent a fair amount of time looking at and rejecting many of what you might call mainstream collaboration software because it was either too social, it lacked a project management feel, it would take too long to implement or, frankly, it cost too much.

He wanted something that he could start up instantly, recruit members from wherever and be productive straight away. And, as he said, “there will be quite a few people in the project that have never heard of, or want to hear of, social networking. This is a game spoiler for us.”

If you’re trying to get strangers to work together, the last thing you want to do is ask them to adopt new working habits. Whatever he chose for the EU project would have to easily slip into their lives and be usable with minimal effort and maximal comfort. He admitted, “If it were for a project performed exclusively in the country I come from I would have taken an altogether different approach.” (In this respect, he is quite seriously looking at Huddle, a service that has been mentioned in SmallBizPod a couple of times.)

Anyway, Alexander’s trail led him to Cork-based Teamwork Project Manager. Slogan: “Project Management Made Easy”. We both fired it up and started loading our own project stuff and it looks as if it will fit the bill. As Alexander remarked, “I find its layout very clean and straightforward to use, though the power is there. It seems to be very well thought out altogether, including small things that an SME would indeed want to do, such as discretely brand the environment for its clients.”

As with any software or service that expects to survive, TeamworkPM is being improved all the time. “Our small team is working flat out adding features and replying to customers.” I usually cringe when I read ‘adding features’ but, having looked through the ‘road map’ and read a lot about the company’s responsiveness to customers, it seems they’re not features for features’ sake. And anyway, because TeamworkPM is an online service, updates are applied at the centre, the users don’t have to do a thing, apart from adopt them if they like them. (The company does have a ‘host-it-yourself’ option, but this post is about the online service.)

The company provides a range of pricing options, starting with free. Yes, you can have two projects and endless sub projects (task lists) and tasks, with unlimited users, for absolutely nothing. The restriction is the number of projects and the amount of memory you use. The ‘Free’ version gives you 5MB, which means that you will probably not be uploading and sharing too many large files. However, for 12 Euros a month the ‘Personal’ version gives you up to five projects and 100MB of memory. These two entry level prices exclude a couple of things that are unlikely to bother the ‘Free’ or ‘Personal’ user.

For 24 Euros a month you can have up to 4 gigabytes of memory and up to 15 projects. The maximum is 50GB and unlimited projects for 149 Euros/month. Pay annually and you get twelve months for the price of eleven. All versions are supplied on a 30-day free trial.

STOP PRESS: TeamworkPM just emailed a discount offer to readers of this blog – 20% off for life on any of the above options – just use the code: smallbizpod

This need-based pricing makes a refreshing change from user-based or other artificial pricing mechanisms. It is more transparent and it gives you the freedom to attach new users without a second thought.

Any pre-written software is going to come with compromises. With online stuff, it’s always a toss up between power and usability. The TeamworkPM developers are widely experienced in project management and other online offerings and they chose the elements that best fitted these constraints. You won’t find a billing element to go with the time recording, for example. And they have always had reservations about Gantt charts but user demand – 56 requests in two weeks – means that it is being added as I write. I know this because the team and product blog keeps everyone in the picture.

Nice.

Its slogan is “Humans Should Not Do Computers’ Jobs”. You can read plenty about the vision, aspirations and background of the company on its website. For now, let’s look at what attracted me to it: an extension to searches which presents the most popular words in the results as a ‘tag-cloud’ which appears at the top of the page. (Word size is a reflection of its frequency in the search results.)

Here’s an example of the company’s Search Cloudlet working with Google’s web search results (it also shows up on Google’s News, Blogs, Scholar and Shopping pages) :

INTSPEI's Search Cloudlet atop Google's results

You can see that I kicked the search off with “desktop productivity software” and I can now click on a term in the cloud which helps refine my search. Each new set of results presents a new cloud. You can click on ‘Sites’ to see which websites are contained in the results, or ‘Net’ to find the top-level domains: you might want to refine your results by country, for example.

The software also works with Yahoo! Web and News searches and, a couple of days ago, it was made available for the Twitter micro-blogging service. Here, it greatly enhances your ability to find out ‘has anyone mentioned xxx?’ You get real answers from real people and you can, again, instantly extend the search by clicking on the tag words.

Here’s a Twitter search for CleverClogs a.k.a. Marjolein Hoekstra, the person who first tipped me off about the service:

INTSPEI's Search Cloudlet atop Twitter's results

To enjoy this browser extension for free (or for a donation – your call), you need to be using Firefox. I won’t drone on but I’ve been using it for years and only venture into Internet Explorer when I’m absolutely forced to. You can download the Cloudlet add-on for Firefox here.

INTSPEI is also developing P-Navigator, currently a Windows desktop application, which integrates with existing enterprise, desktop and internet search engines and provides a range of tools to improve the productivity of knowledge and information workers.

At a click, you can refine your searches as described above but you can also find which pages link to the found pages, the pages linked to from them, tree and branch relationships between them, display documents, and more.

Although the product is in closed beta at the moment the information on the P-Navigator web pages reveals the maturity of thinking of this organisation.

Anyone whose products are motivated by “Humans Should Not Do Computers’ Jobs” definitely gets my vote. I’ll be keeping a close eye on this interesting organisation.

In October 2008, just as the economic downturn was kicking in, Simone Brummelhuis and Linde Wolters launched The Next Women – a business magazine for female internet heroes.

Simone Brummelhuis founder of The Next Women

Having completed two law degrees at the University of Amsterdam, and received a scholarship to study for a Masters in Law at Columbia University, Simone became a lawyer with Dutch firm Loyens & Loeff.

Eight years later and with itchy feet, she spent her evenings setting up publishing company Brummelbooks, while burning both ends of the career candle to provide legal advice during daylight hours.

Today, she remains co-owner of the Dutch Zagat IENS which she later developed with Iens Boswijk into the no.1 user generated content publisher of restaurant guides in The Netherlands.

In 2006 she relocated to London and after two years of refining the business model, in which they renewed the website, added services, took the IT in-house and made a new sales plan, they appointed a new CEO, with a technical and marketing background who could take the company to its second phase.

It’s interesting to sense the level of disquiet in Brummelhuis when she discusses the replacement of a founder with a CEO.

It’s not she feels it shouldn’t be done, but on a personal level she simply cannot decide which option she truly believes is the best for a business.

She values the passion and drive for a product or service that a co-founder brings to the table, and yet can see the value in replacing the founder with someone who can see the business as just that, free from personal attachment.

She is, however, clear on one point and that is you can’t generalise. With every business comes a different product or a different service and a different founder and a different set of circumstances. To advise one way or another would be a tall order. It’s a problem many companies wrestle with.

In 2005 and prior to her London move, Brummelhuis bought Europeanmuseumguide.com to integrate with IENS aiming to create the Dutch Yelp. Although this has not taken off it remains a long term goal which she hopes to evolve with a new partner.

Her next idea was simple and born from a desire to prove thenextweb wrong – consider the adage: Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. During a meeting with them it was mentioned they felt there was a lack of quality women in the tech world worth inviting to their conference.

Adamant this was not the case, Simone agreed to a series of articles profiling these very women. By virtue of the articles she’d written much of her market research was complete, and after a chance encounter in the British Library with Linde Wolters, a journalist and fellow Netherlander, The Next Women was born

The Next Women - a publishing startup that sets out to celebrate and inspire the female internet hero

The site is not an act of empowerment, but an opportunity to make women on the net ‘Notable and Quotable’. Indeed they would like their readership to include a male contingent.

Five months on and the site has some promising credentials – winners of the Challenger Prize in Holland, first prize as Marketing Pioneers at the PEP (Pioneer Elevator Pitch) Talks in Amsterdam and partnerships with Astia and Mudhut.

Nevertheless they are starkly aware of a need to pinpoint an exact direction for the magazine. They hope to broaden the subject matter beyond the web, while raising funds and running events.

Their number one task, however, is to roll out a sleek new design for the site that will lay to rest navigation issues that until now have made it somewhat cumbersome to use and search.

Perhaps one of the biggest barriers to success for The Next Women – and by her own admission the very thing Simone is trying to remedy – is the lack of a network of contacts to help drive her business. For this Simone and Linde see no solution other than to collaborate, partner and network until there are no more London meetups to attend.

Linde Wolters - journalist and blogger

With traffic to the site still lower than hoped for, Simone and Linde want to stay abreast of the news making their site current and high profile on the web. In conjunction with softer subjects they hope to build a concept for all to enjoy – young and old, online and offline, female and male.

If they can get the site sorted, the concept refined and much needed funding in place, I can’t help but wonder whether The Next Women’s long term success will rely on focus and their ability to create passionate users and readers to help speed organic growth.

Having worked with them both, I’m sure this is a challenge that Simone and Linde are ready to meet.

It is therefore essential that you determine from the beginning how you want the business to be perceived by its most critical market – the employees.

Whether you’re the founder or a hired gun, whether you have 2 employees or 200, if you as the MD/CEO/owner/boss aren’t clear on what you want your company to look and feel like, then you can bet that the rest of the organisation will feel similarly rudderless. This is because a business’s culture flows from the top down.

For example, the culture at Virgin Atlantic is markedly different to that at British Airways because every employee embodies the culture cascading from the founder Sir Richard Branson.

For a consumer-facing organisation like the airline industry, the happy faces of the cabin crew convey a mood of wellbeing to their passengers which enhances the customer experience, encouraging repeat purchases.

This is part of the organisation’s DNA, and without such a figurehead would have been harder to achieve.

Programmes of change, training and coaching can help communicate and promulgate a desired culture, but they cannot create it. If it’s your business, you have a responsibility to be that creator, because if you don’t you will find that your employees do it for themselves.

This means you may end up working for a company that you don’t recognise – or possibly don’t even like. It is easy to spot the ‘cultureless’ company almost as soon as you meet it. Telltale signs include a high staff turnover, planning that fails to deliver results, mixed brand messages and dissatisfied customers.

This shouldn’t make you afraid of involving your team in defining your culture though, because empowering your employees to give their best, as well as forgiving their mistakes, is crucial if you’re going to develop a unified team.

Think about and share your values and ideals with them. It’s not about mission statements but it is about personality, and as the boss you need to build the company largely in your own image. Are you friendly, open and empowering or perhaps serious, respectable and clever?

Whatever suits you and your industry, it has to be believable, so don’t try to be something you are clearly not. Culture is about intangibles and if what you want to be clashes too obviously with what you are, it won’t feel right for your employees or your customers and it’s disingenuous.

For some people being an engaging, charismatic and energetic leader that embodies the culture and style of their business comes naturally. They ‘walk the talk’ and the rest of the world follows.

For others it is something they have to work at, but it is worth the effort. Ask yourself why you started the company or took the job in the first place, or what sort of company you want to work for, and build it from there.

If you can create a company you like, chances are everyone else will like it too.

However, in the B2B sector understanding your customers can be difficult. To start with it’s not always easy to get to know them in the same way you might a consumer. Businesses have often hidden behind descriptions that seriously lack value and clarity.

But understanding the culture of a business will bring you much closer to understanding the values and behaviors of those who make the crucial decisions within those organisations.

You may not think it, but these decisions, needs and attitudes have a significant impact within a small business where the ‘owner managers’ are active in the firm on a daily basis.

To secure these deals it’s vital you have as much information in your arsenal as possible. The SME sector is a proverbial battleground with hundreds of businesses competing for the attention of just a few influential people.

To help understand this issue we commissioned some research into SME leaders. It showed you could group business owners into three types, Experts, Passionates and Money Makers each with their own distinct attitudes and behaviours.

These groupings are relatively unaffected by industries and sector. The smallest group (20%) is the Money Makers who are happy to accept poor service in return for a low price. These individuals are more likely to have multiple businesses and are also more likely to fail.

The remaining 80% is equally split between the Passionates and the Experts.

The Passionates display more emotion in their business decisions than the other two groups. They love good service and are willing to pay for it, but will give a provider only one chance to get it right. Crucially the Passionates will also be convincing brand advocates, if they are happy with their service.

The final group is the Experts, who will take an analytical view of the service and ensure that it continues to meet their own specific requirements. The Experts are unlikely to be swayed by sales patter or chutzpah alone. Both the Experts and Passionates tend to put the customer first, (rather than the money) knowing money will follow, if they do a good job.

These groupings allow us to bring psychology into the wider relationship marketing process. Psychology can be used as an extra tool to help businesses understand data and target their prospects in a more meaningful way.

Ultimately anything that contributes to us better understanding the people we’re dealing with can be used creatively to help convert more sales and keep customers happy for longer.  And let’s face it, long term business relationships have never been more important than they are now.

This year it’s the turn of the zero-watt PC. Like all machines, it consumes no energy when in hibernate or off mode but, unlike other machines, it can still be woken up automatically for software downloads and the like. This is of most interest to organisations that make software upgrades across the network. However, the machines do have other features which help to reduce energy costs, such as a highly efficient power supply which directs up to 89 percent of electricity into useful work, and displays which alter their brightness according to the ambient light.

Next year, the European Union is putting stringent controls on energy use in what it calls standby mode – a maximum of one watt and, three years later, will drop this to 0.5 watts. With the introduction of the new PCs, Fujitsu Siemens is well ahead of the game. It is also in the process of patenting the technology which, if other manufacturers can’t figure out how to do it, could prove good for the company’s licence revenues. Or, if it were to licence the design freely (in the interests of a greener planet) and with much fanfare, Fujitsu-Siemens could pick up some good PR karma. (That’s my suggestion by the way, not something the company has even hinted at.)

Greenpeace is a good place to look for comparisons between the various manufacturers. And I understand that, from June, it will be looking at the capabilities of vendors to help customers make environmental savings through the application of IT. This would have proved a challenge for Fujitsu-Siemens, being a hardware company but, at around the same time, it becomes fully integrated with Fujitsu which has a lot of capability in this area, albeit primarily for the Japanese market. The transition to a global offering won’t be easy but, over time and with the help of the ex-Fujitsu-Siemens team, we can expect Fujitsu to make a reasonable showing in the Greenpeace guide.

While vendors would love us to change IT equipment just because new products are greener and can save us a few tens to low hundreds of pounds per year in energy costs, this is absolutely not a reason to change. Nor would they really expect you to. It’s nearly always better to work equipment until it has to be changed – after four years perhaps. But then, if price, quality and performance are equal, but running costs are lower, the purchase of a greener PC does make a lot of sense.

After rummaging the company’s self description and, given that I’d never heard of Manymoon before, I searched Twitter for mentions. They started two months ago. I’m guessing this is when the service emerged from private beta.

Concerned about security of the information being exchanged and assuming it was stored in Manymoon’s own (or rented) facilities, I searched Google for ‘manymoon enterprise security’ (without the apostrophes) and scrolled down the results until I saw a name I recognised. I didn’t have to look far. Bill Ives was the second website mentioned. He’s been on my list of ‘credible commentators’ for years. His blog post on Manymoon  gives a decent run down of its capabilities.

In a few minutes, I’d learned plenty about Manymoon, something that would have been impossible in the pre-web, pre-social, pre-search days. And I hadn’t disturbed a soul to gather that information. It was all dropped into my lap because of people’s willingness to put information about themselves online and for others to add their own perspective on, and links to, this information.

The next step was to try Manymoon. My reservations centred around two things: 1) It ‘integrates with’ Google Docs and Google Calendar and I wasn’t sure I wanted that, and 2) I wasn’t sure that having ‘yet another place to work’ was such a good idea. I believe that collaborative software that surfaces inside regular workflows, portals and applications is going to win out in the end.

Anyway, here goes. After registering – easy (you have to check your email to complete the process) you can immediately add colleagues. Then you can create a project and add tasks to it. Bearing in mind that this is done through a web browser and to a remote site, it’s mostly rather snappy. Then, if you want to mess with deadlines or add Google documents, you need to give permission for Manymoon to access your calendar and documents. This permission can be revoked at any time.

If you’re using Google stuff, a click on a document or calendar entry takes you straight over to Google. If you’re uploading documents from your own desktop then reading them is a case of re-downloading them and viewing them with your desktop application.

You can read Bill Ives’ (much more) detailed rundown of Manymoon. It’s another potential tool for you to consider.

My purpose in writing this post is more to show how far you can get in learning about stuff using web and social tools and none of it is disruptive to other people.

The idea of social networking and such might be disruptive, but the processes are actually less so. Even had I grabbed Bill Ives on Skype to ask for clarification, it would have taken seconds of his time to respond.  And the moments spent responding are far less than the time spent on, say, responding to an email or taking a telephone call.

Saving money for SMEs

We’re always getting sent special offers and deals for small businesses here at SmallBizPod.

Many of them are thinly veiled marketing stunts with little real value to startups or SMEs.

But every now and then I stumble on thinly veiled marketing stunts that actually are worth looking into, if you’re looking to save a little money for your business.

So, the long and the short is I thought I’d initiate a money saving tips blog post once in a while.

The idea is to include one cost cutting nugget of wisdom and a selection of deals and offers that make sense.

The downturn means all businesses are looking to save money and while we can but aspire to reach the heights of moneysavingexpert.com in the consumer space, it would be good if we could create a network of people keeping an eye out for deals that might help keep costs down.

If ever any of the deals involves an affiliate link, we’ll always mark it with an (a) so you can choose whether to avoid it or explore the deal anyway knowing you may in some small way help support SmallBizPod.

So, enough of the preamble.

Money Saving Tip #1

One of the most simple, but effective pieces of advice I’ve come across recently is from Andrew Griffiths who says every year he looks at how he can cut 20% off his business costs.  This isn’t always as hard to achieve as you might think.  

Costs creep up imperceptibly and knocking them on the head annually is a smart idea in a recession or otherwise.

FreeAgent Central

The online accounting service for freelancers, FreeAgent Central, got in touch to say they’ve just released a new version.  This cloud based solution certainly looks very beautiful as well as being fully functional for the needs of freelancers in particular.    

Not sure whether beauty is that important when it comes to doing your accounts, but if you own a Mac, you’ll probably want to check it out.  Seriously though it works on Mac, PC and Linux – part of the beauty of software as a service.

As a SmallBizPod reader, try out the free trial before the end of February and, if you like what you see, you’ll get 25% off your first six months by using the code ‘newfac’.

Business IT Online Store

Last week saw Busness IT Online the software as a service suite for SMEs which recently hit 40,000 registered users introduce an online shop for office supplies (a).  They claim all 20,000 items are heavily discounted, so it should be possible to pick up some bargains, if you’re looking for office stationery or furniture.  

Certainly an interesting idea to mix the software as a service model which is the core Business IT Online offering with the selling of tangible products too.

Digital India and Digital China Conferences

Finally, our friends at Chinwag, working in partnership with UK Trade and Investment, are putting on two conferences aimed at digital businesses looking to understand and enter the Indian and Chinese markets.

The one day conferences take place on 3rd and 4th March with early bird discounts on tickets availalbe for Digital China until 2nd March and Digital India until 27th February respectively.

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If you know of any good bargains for small businesses, do get in touch.

And we have the inevitable follow up questions. How bad will it get? Can my business survive? What should I do?

You have the same questions, I’m sure. This is affecting all of us, worldwide, though differently in each local economy.

So what do we do in our uncertainty? We work. We innovate. We do what we can to help each other. That’s how we make it through a recession, even one lasting several years. One step at a time. That’s how we made it through a decade-long Great Depression, and through austere war years that followed. One step at a time.

My corner of the world, Northwest Oklahoma, is rural, with an economy based on agriculture and energy production. So far, our local economy has stayed strong. But we have reasons to worry. Prices for both cattle and crude oil have dropped. Major construction projects in our capital, Oklahoma City, have been delayed or canceled. Soon, we could be facing a much tighter economy.

Each local economy has its own story. I’d love to hear about yours in the comments.

Like George Best and Miss World in a hotel room full of cash and champagne, we had it all. But somewhere from a quiet corner a voice was telling us that it was all going horribly wrong.

And so today we’re faced with recession, while freudian slips suggest the ‘r’ word could succumb to the ‘d’ word before the year is out.

Errol Damelin, founder and ceo of Wonga.com

A strange time then for a web startup with an in your face name for cash, Wonga, to be attempting to do what some of the largest most sophisticated financial institutions in the world have failed miserably at – lending money with minimum risk.

To be fair to Wonga and its ceo Errol Damelin, the service launched over a year ago when borrowing money was de rigeur, rather than a question of survival.

Nevertheless, one might reasonably ask has this startup got its timing all wrong?

Errol, a serial entrepreneur whose supply chain software business straddled the dot.com recession of 2001, is remarkably sanguine. He says:

As an entrepreneur you don’t pick the environment you have to work in.  You start to build a business when you have an idea and usually it comes to fruition in a different economic cycle.  You have to make the most of the cards you’re dealt.

The credit crunch might superficially look like a good hand for a business in the business of lending small sums.  

Wonga typically gives its customers a near instant decision on short term lending of a few hundred pounds.  

A kind of mini-bridging loan for people who’ve forgotten that pay day is a week away, but still want to take their loved one out for a slap up meal on Valentine’s day anyway.

But here’s the rub.  Short term money is expensive money. That’s good for Wonga’s bottom line, but may be hard to swallow for many who would otherwise be potential customers.

The OFT demands Wonga displays an APR

Legally Wonga has to display a typical APR (annual percentage rate) which makes sense for bank loans or credit cards, but looks like a Zimbabwean inflation figure when applied to short term borrowing.

Annual compound interest of 2,334% is a scary figure indeed. But over the short term, if you borrow £135 from Wonga today, you’ll have to pay back £135 plus £26.29p 15 days later. Cheaper perhaps than punitive unauthorised overdraft rates charged by some high street banks, but still a hefty hit.

But this is micro-lending to people who can afford it.  Wonga is clear they are responsible, transparent lenders and for each loan taken out with them, they give a £1 interest free loan to Kiva, the micro-finance initiative which helps grass roots entrepreneurs in developing nations.

They are not offering a service to desperate individuals. They are lending to people who judge paying for the convenience of cash now, rather than later, is worth the price.

As Errol says:

It’s not dissimilar to catching a black cab.  Of course the tube or bus will be cheaper, but every-now-and-then a taxi’s more convenient, if considerably more expensive.

Not a bad metaphor. In fact, Errol admits that Wonga only lends to 1 in 10 people who apply through the site.

Which begs the question, are there really that many people out there right now who will want to pay a large charge for a small amount of money once in a while?

If younger people with disposable incomes start counting their pennies more carefully, then Wonga might be seen as an unnecessary expense.

Conversely if the service takes off dramatically, it might find the credit crunch starving it of the cash needed to lend on a large scale, even if profitably and at low risk.  Wonga’s ceo acknowledges this may cause them issues and restrict growth, if the lending markets are still frozen in 6-12 months time.

Wonga’s investors which include Balderton Capital (formerly Benchmark) must nevertheless be attracted to the cash-generative potential of the business (which already turns a profit), but also to the back end technology that takes the whole concept beyond simple money-lending.

Which brings us back to Errol Damelin’s first foray into business in Israel where he joined a founding team to build a new steel plant. 

A massive contrast to the low overhead, speedy startup world of the web, this was a big, capital intensive project.  But what it taught the Wonga ceo in his formative business years has clearly had an impact.

He has a strong sense of meeting the demand of real customers and a passion for planning, managing and automating complex supply chains to scale.  As he says:

If I hadn’t had that strong manufacturing background, I don’t think we’d have conceptualised Wonga in quite the way we did.

This attention to process and automation manifests itself in the apparently sophisticated algorithms behind Wonga. They’ve been designed to manage the risk of lending by lightning fast assessment of the credit-worthiness of customers and nimble analysis of data around their repayment behaviour.

The potential value of this intellectual property, if proven to work effectively, is clear.  

Selling short term loans is one thing.  Improving risk management in banking is something else altogether. 

You can almost hear the VCs at Balderton Capital licking their lips at the prospect.

All surveys though, good or bad, tell us something. It might be about the company setting the questions or it might be about the respondents. I’m a sucker for them and find that most of the ones that cross my desk are interesting.

Rackspace commissioned Vanson Bourne to do one on ‘Cloud Hosting Awareness’ among small and medium sized companies in the UK and the USA. It found that UK-based small businesses were more aware of the subject than their counterparts in the USA. (Being an egotist, I’d like to think that this is thanks to SmallBizPod.)

Anyway, the figure is 33 percent. The rest have never heard of Cloud Hosting. And why the heck should they? Why should anyone who’s trying to run a business even need to know that ‘cloud’ anything even exists?

Just to put a bit more meat on the research bones, 28 percent of the UK respondents were considering using cloud hosting. And 34 percent – one percent more than had heard of it – thought they had no need for it or that it provided no additional benefit over their existing hosted service. Cost was the second most cited barrier at 29 percent.

Of course, I’m not privy to the nuances of the research – whether Cloud Hosting was explained before asking the later questions. What I do know is Rackspace’s reaction:

…small businesses may be shying away from Cloud Hosting because they do not fully understand the added benefits over their existing hosting solution and, even more surprising; they may view the cloud as being cost prohibitive. This could be a detrimental mix up for small businesses in that they could benefit from the cloud’s scalability and cost efficiency, especially when coupled with their current traditional hosting configuration. A hybrid hosting solution can make for a truly powerful option.

If a small business is providing web-based services, then ‘cloud hosting’ is probably relevant and Rackspace is probably already on their radar. If it’s just a common or garden small business that’s trying to survive present market conditions, then technical arguments aren’t going to work.

People need to know what’s on offer and how it will help them do better business. And the offer has to relate to business applications, not plumbing.

David Terrar is a decent chap – ex-IBM and all that good stuff – and has a few years experience of providing cloud-based services. Twinfield delivers online accounting to businesses of all sizes, while WordFrame is an online social collaboration and web publishing service.

I asked him to get away from the specifics of his offerings and tell me what additional generic benefits derive from cloud hosting. He came up with three.

First of all, because the services are provided through a web browser, work can be done from anywhere. Or you can get people to do stuff for you from anywhere – data input in another country maybe?

If you have to work with others – accountants, business partners, suppliers, customers – it’s possible to open up (part of) your online system to them, subject to authentication.

Finally, a subject close to my heart, backup and resilience in general is all taken care of for you. (I’m still scrambling through the aftermath of my recent machine crash. I have a mirror of my system but I’m not at all sure I want to buy a replica of the machine that crashed. Ergo, mirror fairly useless.)

Sorry about the last bit. Hopefully this post has given you some things to consider saying the next time someone tries to interest you in buying cloud services. Essentially it boils down to, “Yes, but what’s in it for me?” And get them to answer in business terms.

It’s unlikely that you will be buying your services directly from IBM/Lotus. It would be physically impossible for the company to reach the huge potential market for these online services. It is more likely to come from a systems integrator or value added reseller, especially if you’d like it to be integrated to your existing systems. Or it might come from an internet service provider or, maybe, a telco. I think that reaching out to an unfamiliar part of the market is probably one of IBM/Lotus’ primary challenges at the moment.

The other, which is faced by all sellers of social/collaboration software or services, is to get across the point of the stuff in the first place. This is probably an even bigger challenge, although we are all helped (?) by the fact that many people participate in their private lives. The question mark is there because a lot of private social networking is rather different to what you’d expect to see in the office.

A rather strange actor delivered an opening address. His name is Dan Aykroyd and, for someone who knows nothing about Beldar Conehead, his grand entrance was somewhat less than grand. The (largely US) audience thought it was a hoot. For me, he got more interesting when he narrated the tale of a very famous actor who thought that he should question the minutiae of the filming process. He challenged the director, the cameraman, the dolly operator – you name it, he whinged about it. What should have been done in one or two takes, stretched out, costing everyone time and the studio a fortune. He wasn’t popular. He didn’t even bother to learn anything about the production crew. (They might have filmed some of the greatest movies ever made for all he knew.)

Morale was sagging and Aykroyd decided (for the only time in his life) to deliver a homily to the actor, in private. He explained that all these people were interested in only one thing; to make the actors look good. That’s what their craft was all about. So, in terms of importance, in a production sense, the actors were almost the least important. Aykroyd’s punchline related to the fact that collaboration was way more effective than confrontation.

Later, Bob Picciano, Lotus’ newish boss expanded on the theme by relating it to the way many forward-thinking companies are now being run. Employees used to be just cogs in the machine. Decisions were made at the top and executed by employees, no matter how self-evidently daft. To question authority was to put your job in peril. Now, more and more companies realise that the intellectual capital of the employees (my words, by the way, not his) is what needs to be supported, so the tables are turning. The bosses and the infrastructure exist to support the employees. The hierarchical pyramid is being stood on its head.

This is where the social stuff provides leverage. And it can apply beyond the organisation, even more important to the smaller business which quite often collaborates with outside organisations to achieve its objectives. If people with common cause can find each other and share information then they can accelerate their work. Instant messaging and presence can enable contact and eliminate wasted effort. Blogging is a kind of ‘narrating your work’ so that people can pick up on what others have worked on without disrupting them. Wikis are good for team collaboration. And so on. I’m sure you’ve heard justifications for all the elements before.

One of the nice things about an approach like Lotus/IBM’s is that secure communities can be created which can be internal or include external participants such as suppliers. And everything that takes place is work-focused. The company has another system in the laboratory, called Beehive, which adds a personal dimension to the proceedings. It strengthens the bonds between people who have probably already discovered each other through the more formal system. We know from real world social networks such as Twitter or Facebook that personal bonds strengthen more quickly and defy time-zone and geographic barriers.

I’m not saying that IBM/Lotus is the only game in town, but if it can reach the SMB market effectively, it has a lot going for it, not least the sense of security that comes from knowing that it would be hosting your services.

Of course, you have to be the sort of organisation that sees employees as your source of power, rather than the bosses…