Social Media - What Can Digg Do For You?

You may hear a lot about this system called Digg. But what can it do for you?

Digg is in a branch of social media called “social news”. It allows anyone who is registered to the service to post a link to an article or web page, to appear on the system. People who see it will decide whether to “Digg it”, so it rises further up the rankings.

The top business story today isn’t news, but “Top 10 Ways to Fire the Client From Hell"

Whilst the service is US-based and a lot of the news and articles are from the US, it can be very useful:

• To find interesting and useful articles
• To promote your own blog or webpages

It’s free to use, so why not give it a try?

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Escaping Excel Hell - Management Reporting

If you have two choices of how to produce management reports, which would you prefer:

1. Into a web browser direct from the relevant system(s)?
2. Into Excel and manipulate before distribution?

Most people would choose option 1, as that avoids the need for manual manipulation, which takes time and may introduce errors.

But if you want to add commentary to a report, there needs to be the means to do it.

There will also be differences in the graphics available, and the overall ability to format the reports.

So the best direct reporting tools can be magnificent, otherwise is it Excel?

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Performance Management - Multi-Dimensional Forecasting and Reporting

You sell 60 products across 25 countries. In one country you have 5 salespeople. Fairly modest numbers – there could be thousands of products and many more salespeople.

Now you want to forecast sales, cost of sales and gross profit by month. You may have significantly different sales prices, purchase costs or shipment costs in different countries. What about currency and management of currency exposures?

You’ll also want to report actual information against budgets and re-forecasts.

There are just too many dimensions for Excel to handle comfortably. So you have three choices:

• Somehow set up all the spreadsheets and consolidate them
• Simplify the situation into groups of products, groups of countries, and ignore salesperson
• Use a multi-dimensional software tool which lets you look at each dimension, and adds everything up for you automatically

Which will you choose?

If you would like to discuss your options in more detail do contact me by email or ring me on 01628 632914.

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Cloud Computing - Benefits and Pitfalls of Upgrades

At the Business Cloud Summit 2010 last week, one of the panellists said “upgrades are a two-edged sword” with the cloud app he was using. Unfortunately he didn’t tell us what he meant, but I can hazard a few guesses.

One edge of the sword is the four key benefits of an upgrade of a SaaS app, compared to an on-premise app:

• The technical process happens without you having to lift a finger (unless integration needs to be updated)
• The process is typically free of charge within the standard service fees
• Incremental improvements can be made more regularly, if required
• In part these can be due to the fact that the software author can monitor use of the app, and respond to any obvious problems that wouldn’t typically be apparent with an on-premise app

An Upgrade Example

So let’s take a very simple cloud-based app. You may use bit.ly to create shortened URLs (web page addresses) for use in tweets, and/or for monitoring click-throughs.

The process of creating a shortened URL couldn’t be much simpler – put in a long URL and a new short URL is displayed. A few months ago a new version appeared. This worked in a particular way, providing an easy “copy” button to move the URL to where you needed it. It also allowed the randomly-generated URL to be replaced with a customised URL, if you could invent one that hadn’t already been used. Great. A simple procedure was drawn up, which could be used by anyone in the business, and it worked brilliantly for some time.

Then on Tuesday 16th November it wasn’t there. In its place was a new facility with no copy button and no customisation feature. Had there been any warning? No. Did our little procedure now work? No.

The Other Edge of The Sword

So we were using a free version of the app, and surely that sort of thing wouldn’t happen with a proper fee-based SaaS service? Sadly nothing can be taken for granted when considering a SaaS offering and provider. So when considering using one it’s worth asking:

• What notice do you get of functional changes (upgrades)? What detail do you get of changes (release notes)?
• Do you have chance to review the new version before release so any procedures can be updated and any retraining take place? Or do you have to be in place on upgrade day, and frantically do the updates/training on the fly?
• Do you have a test system alongside your own live system, to do the checks and training?
• Do you get chance to take part in pre-release “beta testing”, so you can report back any significant issue in time to be fixed before the upgrade?
• Or do you have to prohibit access to the live system, by staff and/or customers, whilst these checks all take place after an upgrade?
• Do you get any choice in when the upgrade takes place?

It is traditional with on-premise software to wait until others have upgraded before doing so yourself, and/or thoroughly test a new version of software before making it live. That is not necessarily available with a public multi-tenanted SaaS cloud service.

It clearly isn’t in the provider’s interests to screw up their entire customer base in one hit, and they will be very careful with an upgrade. However it doesn’t mean to say that clangers don’t slip through. I’ve seen it happen with a prize-winning cloud service.

So it’s worth understanding exactly how a SaaS cloud app will be upgraded, and make it a key aspect of your decision whether to use that particular offering.

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News Update - Monday 6/12/10

Here's the pick of the last week's news stories that are likely to impact your business:

Nominet’s release of short URLs: Virtually all 1 and 2-character domain names such as bt.net.uk have never been released, until now. There will be a short “sunrise” period for verifiable trademark owners of short names, like BT, to reserve their names, followed by a “landgrab” for everyone else. Here is the process and rules.

IDC Forecasts for 2011: These include that smartphones and tablets may outsell PCs in the next 18 months, with an increasing use of social media. How might your market be transformed with new apps, threats and opportunities? How will you business take advantage?

Local deals, big bucks: Google is reported as offering $6billion dollars to buy a US company that has already reached $2bn helping local businesses offer e-coupons to customers through what's termed "group buying" (Groupon). Similar services are beginning to appear in the UK, which could be the next big thing to affect bricks and mortar businesses. How will you take advantage?

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