Social Media – Business Impact

In the last few days MySpace has announced that nearly half its workforce will be made redundant, and that the business will be sold or spun off.

So what?

The story has several practical implications for using social networking profitably, by businesses large and small. These include pitfalls to avoid, and opportunities to leverage.

In this article I've written for the IT Faculty of the ICAEW, here are some tips for using social media profitably.

Escaping Excel Hell – Cutting Reporting Time

Excel is an excellent presentation tool for reporting. But a key problem is that business analysts spend too much manipulating data, and not enough time analysing. Another issue is the struggle to have a report available by its deadline.

One aspect of this is the time needed to get data accurately from a source system into Excel, which might currently involve re-keying.

There are several solutions to this, depending on the nature of the source system, the data volumes, and the nature of the report. These include:

1. Export data from the source system, and import it, by one of several techniques. This is especially useful if you have a template to automatically populate, such as a regular monthly or weekly report.
2. Extract data directly into Excel from the source database. Depending on version, Excel has standard data links, including links into pivot tables. Add-ins are also available to make the process as easy as possible.
3. Extract data into a database such as Access, where it can be checked and managed, for example to check and repair analysis fields. That database can then be the source into Excel.

Linking directly into the source system helps to maintain a "single version of the truth", but this isn't always practical. The next best thing is to export into a database (data warehouse), especially if multiple sources are involved. This then provides the single version that members of the organisation can access.

If you’d like further help with improving the efficiency and effectiveness of your reporting, do ring me on 01628 632914, or send me an email.

Performance Management – Will Your Business Fly?

Business performance management usually refers to managing the performance of an existing business. But the first step with a new business is to assess whether it will fly!

Further down the track, market changes may mean performance has dropped and action needs to be taken. How should it continue? Or there’s the opportunity to start a new business. Again will it fly?

Many new businesses quickly come to grief, or fall well short of expectations. Usually this is because the basics haven’t been covered:

1. What Demand for the Product or Service? Preferably solving a “headache” that is urgent. Is the need in some way repetitive? Both make selling far cheaper.
2. Competitive Position? From the customer’s viewpoint, what other options are there to solve the issue? Strengths and weaknesses? Pricing? How marketed and sold? How are they getting on?
3. Marketing and Sales Approach? How’s this best done? Off the page? Resellers? How much will it cost, including any sales commissions and others’ margin?
4. Is the Business Model Profitable? What different approaches are there? Putting everything together, would the business provide a good return to an external investor (or indeed yourself)?

Would you buy a house without getting an independent survey?

Likewise would you start (or change) a business without an independent review?

Here’s the Camwells approach, which with its unique traffic light feedback provides you with:

1. Extra confidence when the business is clearly a good idea
2. Ideas to improve the proposition, or address weaknesses
3. Just like a house survey, an opportunity to spot any potential showstoppers which you’ll need to address before your investment in money and time is wasted

Do ring me on 01628 632914 or send an email if you’d like to take advantage of this service. Confidentiality is paramount.

Cloud Computing - Using Security Questions

Logging into Facebook yesterday I was prompted to provide the answer to one of several “security questions”. These were factual questions including “Where was your mother born” and “Last 5 digits of driver’s licence”.

Choosing one that nobody else could easily guess, I wondered what it could be used for. It turns out there is only one usage, to unlock an account if you cannot otherwise use the original email address and password. To avoid someone changing the security answer if they managed to hack the account, the answer cannot be changed.

I had hoped the security question would be asked each time I logged in, even if only as an option I could switch on or off. This would have provided a third level of security, in addition to username and password. As with many cloud systems, the userid for Facebook is an email address which is usually public knowledge. The only barrier then is the password, which can often be easily guessed. Having to answer an additional security question would make the account much more difficult to hack.

For many apps, it’s important to avoid an account being hacked. For accounting, a hacker could post an invoice for payment, or could glean private information. For CRM, customer contact information could be stolen. 

Almost every banking system has at least three levels of security, such as a PIN, a second password, or the use of some physical device. They also tend to ask for random letters from the PIN or password, so the whole password can't be intercepted.

When you assessing whether to use a specific cloud-based system, what access security is provided? If just a userid and password, then is that sufficient for that system and your data?

News Update - Monday 17/1/11

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

Tablets and Smartphones: The recent Consumer Electronics Show had a raft of new products, based mainly on Android. Here are some of the best. For business, there are opportunities to sell/provide apps to end-users, or provide a means to take advantage of the growing library of downloadable apps.

SaaS adoption: Forester expects some 25% of 123 types of software products run on-premise will be disrupted by Software as a Service cloud offerings

New web-based services: On the back of SaaS are services that use hosted apps, in this example to improve contract renewal rates

Mobile payments: Whilst you can use a mobile to make lo-value purchases such as car parking, ways for salespeople to use their mobile phone to swipe credit cards for higher valued transactions are on their way here.