Social Media – A Reflection of the Human Condition?

As a survey in the US suggests 40% of those surveyed admitted to being "Facebook addicts” (and 42% of 18-24 year-old women are okay with sharing photos of themselves on Facebook looking "visibly intoxicated,") the UK government is beginning to use Facebook in a big way.

With an estimated 23 million “users” of Facebook in the UK , the government has just announced a plan to use the “Spending Challenge Channel". They see it as their ‘primary channel’ for communication with the public on the spending cuts issue.

Whether you agree or not with the idea, it raises the question “How can you use social networking for business advantage?”

Here’s some ideas:

Fab Four Case Study

B2B Examples

B2C Business Apps

Social Media Tips & Facebook Privacy

How are you going to use social media?

Do add a comment with a link to what you’re doing.

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Escaping Excel Hell - Forecasting and Budgeting

What's the most common forecasting and budgeting tool? Undoubtably Excel. Whilst it is a powerful and useful tool, that will inevitably be loaded on every "contributor's" PC, forecasting is probably the main example of Excel Hell.

Whilst I was in industry, newly qualified, I was compiling the annual budget and managed to miss out two employees from the SUM function for their department's salary expense. Their annual salary was more than half the total company contingency. I had to explain this to the Board and the departmental manager in every month's management accounts commentary, until I managed to get agreement to formally use the contingency for the purpose. Ouch, that was painful!

Excel can also be a right pain as soon as multiple people are involved, as Excel is not designed as a multi-user system. It's very easy to get versions confused, and miss some of the changes.

I've also seen massive integrated spreadsheets, some handling over 300 cost centres. The users said it was held together by "sticky tape".

Yet as forecasting is essential in every business - especially for cash flow, and to achieve corporate plans - Excel is often the only apparent solution. Or is there something better?

There is a big gap between expensive corporate forecasting systems (such as Hyperion and Cognos Planning , formerly Adaytum), and Excel.

There have many attempts to fill the gap, but commercially it's a difficult proposition. For example, Inca Planning (formerly Dillon) nearly disappeared in 2009, only to be bought by COA Solutions and re-branded "ClearView Planner".

Confusing as a London company similarly called Clear Plan (SAAS) Limited is marketing the US-based cloud solution Adaptive Planning into Europe. Adaptive Planning comes in various flavours, including a free starter edition, and for its sins is the planning component of Netsuite.

Otherwise TM1 is probably the best known mid-market solution. But as part of the IBM Cognos stable, it's difficult to know how it will progress. I was sorely embarrassed for the TM1 specialist who was giving a demo at Cognos's offices, when the Cognos Planning representative came in and effectively rubbished TM1. I'd like to have heard what was said afterwards! Interestingly Inca, the company that sold off Inca Planning, is now selling TM1 alongside their traditional role with Cognos Planning (Inca started as a spin off from the sales team of Adaytum, with Adaytum's consulting team becoming Budgeting Solutions).

Another cloud solution worth considering for larger businesses is Rocket's CorVu CorPlanning. This allows multi-user development of integrated P&L, balance sheet and cash flow statements, with the most sophisticated logic when you need it. Sadly the entry price is not for the faint-hearted.

When Microsoft canned the forecasting component of PerformancePoint in early 2009, as part of the migration of its reporting functionality into SharePoint, one of the executives founded XLPlanning. The product is browser-based, and available hosted in the cloud or on-premise. Simpler than CorPlanning, it is priced for businesses with revenues of £10-100m.

There are various other cloud and on-premise forecasting systems, stand-alone or as a module of a broader financial system. If you are a vendor or user of a sytem you'd like to tell us about, especially for start-ups and businesses in the £5-£500m range, please comment with a suitable link.

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Performance Management - Dashboards

The idea of management dashboards, taking the automobile concept into performance management, has been around since the 1970s. Best practice has advanced considerably, not least as technology has provided ever more powerful and cheaper solutions.

But as with anything powerful, the opportunity to do more harm than good is ever present. Cheap tools make it tempting to do a DIY job. That could prove very expensive.

CIMA, the management accountants, have produced a useful paper that sets out the role of management dashboards within the overall topic of performance management – “Improving decision making in organisations - Unlocking business intelligence” . This was published in September 2008, so some of the details are a little out of date - for example Microsoft PerformancePoint has now been incorporated into SharePoint, but dropping the budgeting functionality.

CIMA also run a series of public Masterclasses that cover dashboards. Discounts are available for CIMA & ICAEW members and some other people - see details for each course, pages 10-13.

A lot of people like speedometer “gauges”, as in the graphic above. Here is an example that can be incorporated into Excel.

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Cloud Computing - Why Not For Everyone?

I've mentioned the Intellect document "The Business Case for Software as a Service" (SaaS) before. It's the best. well-balanced document I've seen on the subject. As it says in the introduction "This paper ... examines the commonly claimed benefits ... also takes a hard look at the questions that need to be asked before considering SaaS...."

Having said that I do not agree with everything said, and there's a couple of key points missing. More on that separately.

The point I disagree with most strongly is in the conclusion "We recognise that SaaS isn't for everyone and for all circumstances...". Sure SaaS applications are essentially packaged software, and generally can't be modified. But with that one proviso, why shouldn't cloud SaaS be for everyone and all other circumstances?

The benefits are considerable, and the key risks are identified. The risks are not insurmountable, in most if not all cases at reasonable cost. So why doesn't the cloud industry aim higher - to be for everyone, in most circumstances?

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Weekly Review - Internet Psychology, BT Strikes and Browsers

The Psychology of the Internet

Graham Jones, the internet psychologist was, he believes, the first person to have a business book published about the internet in the UK. His blog articles turn news in sometimes obscure areas into practical and valuable business advice on using the internet profitably.

Graham also provides tips on the best internet tools to use, as he is trialing and using them extensively for his own purposes. So well worth subscribing to his blog.

This last week there have been two absolute crackers:

1. "Do not use Twitter for business", but that depends on how you define business
   
2. "Five powerful reasons why you should start blogging", to which he and I would add a couple more
   

Turning a problem into a sales opportunity - “Re: Impact of potential BT action”

First prize for FUD must go to one of my ISPs (I use two ISPs, plus BT by default as broadband supplier – this goes back to pre-ordering the very first broadband accounts in the UK). Here are edited highlights of an email I received from the ISP recently:

“Dear Customer" (don't they know my name yet? - it's only been 10 years!)

"Re: Impact of potential BT action

You may be aware from stories in the media that BT staff have been balloted on industrial action over pay, having rejected a final pay offer from the company. BT has informed us that it is committed to averting any such action and remains open to continued dialogue with its union to avoid disruption to its customers.

However, if industrial action proves unavoidable, the company has contingency plans that it will implement to safeguard service where possible. The earliest any action can be taken is July 12th. BT is committed to providing updates as and when the situation changes.

Our recommendation is that if you know you have a requirement for additional lines you should place the order with us as soon as possible so that we can get it placed before the action starts. For DSL services this will allow the implementation to be carried out in normal timescales, for Ethernet based circuits we will be attempting to escalate through planning to try and remove as many BT departments from the process as possible before strike action takes place.

We will also be evaluating alternative delivery methods using XXX and our other tier 1 provider networks, please contact your account manager who will be able to check for other delivery methods.”

Just to put this into context. There is concern that strikes amongst BT's call centre and/or maintenance workers will mean that any problems on broadband (and indeed telephones) will result in excessive delay in repairs.

Whilst the first reaction might be to think this email is alarmist, it’s worth dusting off those comms contingency plans (you know you’ve got some, don’t you?)

Perhaps a comms specialist would also like to tell me if such new lines, presumably running into BT exchanges, will actually be any better?


Internet Explorer Bounces Back

According to netmarketshare.com after at least 9 months’ of falling market share, Internet Explorer’s has risen slightly. In June 2010 shares of the top 5 browsers were:

• 60% Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE)
• 24% Firefox (open source)
• 7% Google Chrome
• 5% Apple Safari
• 3% Opera + Opera Mini (kept free by Google)
  
• leaving 1% for all the others

I switched from IE to Firefox recently, as that seemed to fix the continual need to re-boot my PC when IE froze. Other than that critical advantage, Firefox doesn't seem to be any better, and I miss two IE8 features that I haven’t found in Firefox (yet?):

• If you open tabs from another tab, they are all in a distinctive colour. This makes it much easier when simultaneously doing a lot of Google searches on different topics (as I often do, especially when preparing these blog articles)
• Opening groups of favourites with one click (such as to check a group of ebanking sites)

Talking to a PC expert, they swear on Opera (rather than at it). With the lowest usage, Opera is kept in the game by a string of awards, yet remain last of the five.

If you’ve tried 3 or more or these browsers, which is your favourite, and why?

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