Social Media – Why Use It For Your Business?

If you are already using social media for your business, the answer to “Why use it?” may be obvious. But if are still unclear of its merits, or you aren’t using social media yet, then this brief introduction will be useful.

“Social media” is a collection of services including social networking services such as Facebook and Twitter. Each service is best suited to specific situations.

As a business, you can set up an account with any of these services that are relevant. This can be for your company, a specific brand, or yourself as an individual. People can then link to the account from their own account, such as by clicking a “Follow” or “Like” button.  You can then:

1. Broadcast to these people, including text, photos, videos and links to blogs or web sites
2. Get feedback and questions from these people, and enter into conversations
3. In some cases allow discussions between these people. This can be positive or negative, so the latter needs to be handled carefully

The main uses are therefore for:

1. Marketing, such as news announcements and special offers
2. Interacting with influencers and other people who you can help or can help you
3. Customer service, including answering questions
4. Technical support, such as for software
5. Public service announcements

This can be for Business to Consumer (B2C) or Business to Consumer (B2B), depending on the service used

There are also services for specific purposes, such as to issue electronic discount coupons and based around location, which are becoming increasingly popular.

As with many things, a key reason to use social media is to get ahead of your competitors, or not to be left behind. However using it poorly can be detrimental to your business, and it's worth having clear objectives of what you are trying to achieve. There’s a number of practical do’s and don’ts.

Bear in mind that these services are public. They don’t replace the need for private communication mechanisms through your website, such as for complaints.

Taking a look at the main services:

Facebook

You set up an account using “Pages”, which people can “Like”. For them your site becomes similar to one of their friends.

You can set whether you will allow people to add comments, photos, videos and/or links on your “wall”. If you do , then you can hold a conversation just with that person, or a discussion involving potentially many people.

As Facebook tends to be used in a personal capacity, this service is best for B2C and of limited use for B2B.

Twitter

By setting up an account people can “follow” the tweets that you send. They can also send you tweets, which you can choose to reply to or not.

Tweets are only 140 characters. But they can contain links to web sites, which is also the basis for communicating photos, videos and longer pieces of text.

Twitter can be used for both B2C and B2B.

MySpace

In 2006 this was the leading social networking service worldwide, but has since been eclipsed by Facebook. MySpace has recently announced that they will become a media hub for music, TV and video. They now link to Facebook for social networking.

MySpace is therefore of limited business interest. However for businesses in entertainment, especially musical acts, it is still a useful place to have an account.

YouTube

By posting a video onto YouTube:
•    People can comment on the video
•    You can link to the video from your web site, tweets, etc
•    You can embed the video into a web page on your main site


There are many other systems, so this article has only been a quick introduction to the uses of social media. If you would like to discuss further, do contact me.

Forecasting and Performance Analysis - Alternative Systems

Forward planning and performance monitoring are both important management functions for any business or organisation.  This is true at any time, but especially when finance is being raised or banking facilities need to be monitored.

Budgeting and forecasting is a regular activity for most organisations, together with variance analysis against actuals.

But all too often these processes are using systems which are difficult to use and maintain. In many organisations they are the most ineffective practices in management. They take everyone too much time.

In this article I've written for the IT Faculty of the ICAEW, here are some tips for how alternative systems can help, and what to look out for.

Cloud Computing – Which Type? Does it Matter?

When putting your business applications such as accounting and CRM “into the cloud”, there are various ways this can be achieved.

In each case the server that stores your data and runs the centralised software is hosted by a third party, and you typically pay a form of subscription. This is therefore called “Software as a Service” (SaaS). The main methods are:

• “Pure SaaS”: Systems written specifically for the internet, accessible using a web browser. Usually adopt a multi-tenancy database whereby the various users share the server and software.
• Hosted traditional software: If a system can be run on-premise and accessed remotely through a comms link, it has the potential to be hosted in the cloud.
• Hosted systems that you access using software other than a web-browser. This allows the whole screen to be optimised for the application.
• Smartphone/tablet apps: Again you can access the hosted system using an app downloaded to the device

These methods are termed “public cloud”. There is also the concept of “private cloud”, whereby systems written for the internet are run on-premise (or hosted by your regular outsourcer).

Whilst some people would disagree whether all these methods qualify as “cloud”, they nonetheless share many of the benefits and risks. Each method then has its own pros and cons. For example “pure SaaS” is usually only suitable if you can work with the standard functionality that everyone is sharing. If you need any custom functionality, you’ll usually need to take a different approach.

When looking at a particular offering that is being called “cloud”, it is worth understanding exactly how it will work and the practical pros and cons. This can have a significant effect on which service you decide to use.

If you would like help in this assessment, do give me a call on 01628 632914 or send me an email.

News Update - Monday 24/1/11

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

Use of Quick Response (QR) codes. Initially for tracking parts in vehicle manufacture, there are other uses in general business now smartphones with QR readers are becoming widely available

Barcode display. Conversely getting a smartphone to display a barcode can unlock activities such as payments from a pre-paid account.

Tablet computers such as the iPad.  Why use them in your business?

Passphrase rather than password. A more powerful security technique we’re likely to see more frequently

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.

Social Media – How (Not) To Handle Complaints

For a business, a customer is much more likely to spread news of a bad experience than they will a good one.

Social media provides the opportunity to spread bad news far further and faster.

This can be, for example:

• On their own Facebook wall for their friends to see
• By sending out tweets for their followers to see
• By putting a comment on a location-based service such as Foursquare, for anyone else visiting that establishment
• By putting a comment on your business’s Facebook wall (if you have one and you allow comments), for other customers to see

What should you do?

The first challenge is to identify when your business is being maligned. Comments on your own wall should be obvious, and there are various tools available to search the other social media tools.

If the complaint appears to be true, then you can respond to it in accordance with your usual customer service principles. Whether you then publicise your response, such as by a reply to the posting, is up to you. If the complaint is snowballing by involving other people, your response needs special care.

If the customer looks like they are trying it on, then your response would vary accordingly.

But what if the complaint appears to be untrue? Has it been posted by a competitor or a genuine customer?

What about the Law?

The laws of libel and slander apply equally to social media as to any other form of communication. Should you go to law?

That is a tricky question. They say “any publicity is good publicity”. Suing a competitor is likely to provide both you and them with publicity. But what if it is a customer?

The recent case of System Graph suing a customer for EUR200k in Greece highlights the dilemma. Apparently the customer had a legitimate complaint, and after the initial experience couldn’t trust System Graph to put it right, which they had offered to do. He made a posting on Twitter about the company, which the company considers defamatory.

The PR professionals appear to be in agreement that legal action is not advisable. Would you want your company’s reputation to be one of suing customers, whether the action proves successful or not?

Excel Add-ins for Management Reporting

Just a reminder that if you want to use Excel for dashboards or management reporting, there are three useful sets of add-ins:

1. Gauges
2. Sparklines (mini graphs)
3. Traffic Light Charts

Click each link for further details.

What's Driving Revenue, Costs and Cash Flow?

At the end of each period, you look at your business results and hopefully admire the revenue, the margin and the net profit. You may even look at the balance sheet, especially if your bankers are interested in key ratios.

But maybe there's a problem with a result, and you need to fix it. What’s driving these figures?

If you were running a multi-stage production process, such as a brewery, you’d have a control room that was monitoring each stage of the process. Each key statistic would be represented on a gauge or other form of display.

A business is like a multi-stage process - typically marketing to sales to operations to cash, depending on the business. What are the key statistics that you need to see? How often do you need them?

These statistics are known as Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), or Key Performance Drivers (KPDs) to distinguish them from results such as revenue.

Designing a set of KPDs has to be done very carefully to ensure they drive behaviour which is actually consistent with corporate objectives. It is easy to implement KPDs which actually promote the wrong behaviour.

KPDs provide early warning of where business processes are off-track, and the insight to tackle any shortfall in results.

If you'd like to take advantage of KPDs, do contact me by email or by phone on 01628 632914.

Cloud Computing – Reducing Costs using VideoConferencing

The improvements in the internet are opening up a whole new set of applications that are remotely hosted within the cloud. In each case all you need to use them is a PC (or other suitable device), a reasonable internet connection, and typically a web browser.

Videoconferencing has proved increasingly popular for multi-site organisations, to reduce the need to travel and thereby cut costs, time and hassle. But videoconferencing has typically required use of a meeting room and an expensive teleconferencing system.

You are probably familiar with Skype as an internet-based system that allows simple videoconferencing from your PC desktop to one other person, announced to be extended to 5 or so. However video quality can be poor and unreliable.

There are now other offerings that offer business-class video meetings to the desktop, for a modest monthly fee. One system better optimised for the internet, delivers on a reliable basis up to HD quality. It is possible to have up to 100 participants at individual PCs, or in combination with a room system. Whoever is speaking takes centre stage on the screen. It is also possible for any speaker to display a presentation, document or other window from their desktop. Two screens allows the presentation on one screen, and the video links on the other.

This opens up a wide variety of possibilities, where holding a virtual meeting is far cheaper and easier than traveling. Video meetings can also significantly improve a meeting's effectiveness. For example:

Sales Teams
The sales director can now hold face-to-face meetings with some or all of their team, wherever they are located. This allows such meetings to be held more regularly than  would otherwise be possible.

Development Teams
Multiple members of the team can join a video call, even if working in remote locations, and can show prototypes or their other work to each other.

Group Board meetings
Directors can join in video Board meetings from their desk or home, almost wherever they are. If some of the members are able to meet physically in a videoconferencing room, then those that can’t can join in.

Recruitment
Initial interviews can take place with candidates by inviting them as a guest.

Telemedicine
Other 1to1 calls can still take place at high quality, such as doctors' discussions with patients, or any other professional with their clients.

Remote Training
One trainer can relate to up to 100 delegates at individual locations, where the person asking a question is clearly displayed. Alternatively, the course can be presented on a large screen in HD quality to a room.


If you’d like further details of these options, do contact me by email or ring me on +44(0)1628 632914.

System Consequences of the VAT Rate Change

Now the standard VAT rate in  the UK has increased, here are some tips on dealing with it with your systems over the transition period.

This is the latest in a series of articles I've written for the IT Faculty of the ICAEW. These cover how to benefit from management reporting, KPIs, cloud computing and other topics to profit from technology.

Social Media - Why Use Twitter?

Last week we looked at some tips on how to use Twitter, but not why. There are four main reasons, which we shall explore in turn:

1. Broadcasting
2. Following
3. 1-2-1 messaging
4. Searching and discussing

1) BROADCASTING

Whenever you send a message on Twitter, called a "tweet", this is a public broadcast (unless you send a private Direct Message, discussed below):

• People who follow you can see it
• If they "retweet" it to their followers, they can see it
• People who look at your profile can see it
• Anyone searching for a word or phrase in your tweet can see it

I say "can see it" as it is best to assume that a tweet will only be read by people who are logged into Twitter and reading their tweets within one hour of a tweet being posted. Regular tweeting, without being excessive or too repetitive, is therefore a good idea if you are trying to get a message across.  

Tweets are simple, short text messages no longer than 140 characters (140C). But you can include a link to a web page, a blog, a photo or video, or indeed anything else that can be linked. This makes it a powerful form of communication.

This is of obvious interest to any business or celebrity wishing to promote a product, book, show or blog. It is also a cheap, simple way of organisations such as IT companies or emergency services to alert the public to important information.

Individuals may also wish to broadcast their thoughts, photos etc to the world. Clubs, societies and families may wish to provide information to members, in which case you can restrict followers to people you approve.

You can set up multiple accounts for different purposes if you wish.

2) FOLLOWING

Many people have little to tweet, but may do so occasionally. For them the main point of Twitter is to follow interesting people, be they celebrities, organisations or other individuals.

Anyone can follow anyone else, though each account holder can "block" people they don't want, or can set their account to approve follower requests.

By following someone, this typically brings your existence to that person's attention, so can be a useful business marketing tactic.

3) 1-2-1 MESSAGING

Anyone can send a message to anyone else, unless they have been blocked, by putting their @username in the tweet. This can be someone you know, or a total stranger. You can send the message to more than one person, subject to the 140C overall limit.

Provided you talk in a similar way as you would to someone you'd just met in a pub, and don't overdo the number of tweets, most people will respond. Even well-known celebrities will respond on occasions, which can be interesting.

If someone follows you, you can send them a "Direct Message", which is private between you. Follow each other and you can hold a private conversation. Just start each tweet "DM @username" followed by your message. However the recipient can retweet your DM publicly, so privacy is not guaranteed.

Note also that non-DM messages sent to someone will appear in your profile. Also, if someone is following both you and the recipient, they will see the conversation in their main “timeline” listing of tweets. 

People use different software to access Twitter, and each has a different way of accessing their DMs and other tweets mentioning their username. Some software makes these tweets very obvious, others less so. Also not everyone accesses their account regularly, just like email, so don't expect an immediate response.

4) SEARCHING AND DISCUSSING

You can search for any word or phrase in tweets, if there is a topic you are interested in. You can also search for @usernames, which will display all tweets except DMs sent by that person and to that person. You can therefore see the tweets being sent into a radio/TV show or celebrity.

To aid searches, people put "hashtags" starting with the # symbol in their tweets. This could be their comments using #bcs10 for a conference called Business Cloud Summit 2010, or #scd for a TV show such as Strictly Come Dancing. The shorter the hashtag the better. Hashtags can be placed anywhere in the tweet, though often tagged onto the end of a message.

By following hashtags using a search, you can see what’s being said and contribute as much or as little as you wish to the debate - be it frivolous or serious.

IN CONCLUSION

So Twitter gives you the opportunity to broadcast, follow, communicate privately and join in discussions. As it is currently a free service, it can be a powerful communication mechanism.

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Escaping Excel Hell – Tips for Forecasting and Budgeting

When preparing a budget or forecast, especially if extra funds are being sought, the last thing you want is a major error. If it is found by the potential funder it’s one problem. Not spotting it at all is another. Unfortunately it is very easy to make a mistake using Excel, such as missing costs and getting links between sheets incorrect.

Excel is a great tool for one person preparing a budget for a simple business. As things get more complex, other tools are more appropriate to handle aggregation and use by multiple people. Some of these tools use Excel as the user interface, or a grid that looks somewhat like Excel.

Whatever tool is used, it’s important to remember:

• Cash flow is typically what matters, and this is not the same as the P&L account. There can be significant timing differences. Often costs have to be paid in advance, including capital expenditure, and customers may pay some significant time after a sale.
• Funders, especially banks, like to see projected balance sheets, against which the level of lending is assessed.
• As mentioned above, with Excel it is extremely easy to make a mistake in formulae or links.

To address all these points, it is vital that the forecasting model consists of three main elements:

• Profit and Loss account
• Cash Flow
• Balance Sheet

If these all balance, there can be some comfort in the formulae, although it is still necessary to check the model carefully.

If you would like help in building a successful forecasting model, do ring me on 01628 632914 or send me an email.

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Performance Management – Garbage In, Garbage Out

Management information needs to be timely, relevant, clear and reliable.

Relevant and clear comes from the design of what information is presented in what way. Timely comes from ensuring that the information process is efficient and cost-effective.

But none of this is worth anything unless the information is reliable. Garbage in produces garbage out. Reliable information requires events to be recorded and transactions to be processed as accurately as practical.

In many cases information is reliant on analysis by department, region, product type or some other grouping.

eProcurement systems can make purchasing more efficient. They can also help to ensure costs are recorded against the correct department.

On the sales side, analysis is done typically in one of two ways:

• Analysis codes against customers, products etc are pulled into each transaction, where they can perhaps be manually adjusted, or are otherwise linked when a report is run
• Analysis codes are input to the system when each transaction is processed

In either case it is important that analysis data is entered accurately if reports that are reliant on it are to be in any way accurate. Fields left blank are an obvious problem, and it helps if values are validated, perhaps from a drop-down list. But this also means choosing an appropriate value from this list.

This may not always be possible – for example, the transaction is urgent and the information may not be to hand. If this is a common issue, it may be sensible to include “Unknown” as a value to choose rather than guessing. Such transactions can then be reviewed and a more appropriate value chosen.

In any case it is worth reviewing and correcting analysis codes before information is passed to people who will make decisions based on that information.

Setting up a reliable management information system therefore needs careful thought and design.

If you’d like to discuss this further, do ring me on 01628 632914 or send me an email.

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Cloud Computing - Issues to Watch

Last week we looked at the key benefits of cloud computing and how to select a SaaS (Software as a Service) system.

In this article we will look at some of the issues to watch out for when selecting a cloud system. These need to be covered by the end-user, though in many cases with help from and dependency upon the provider. Some issues are highlighted in the “Code of Practice” recently published by the Cloud Industry Forum, to which section references relate:

A.1.4: Provider going out of business: What arrangements are in place if the hosting company goes out of business or has a major technical malfunction? What if one of the other parties in the supply chain goes under? For how long will these arrangements run? What contingency plans can be put in place that could be used within these timescales?

A.2.1: Commercial Terms: Worth understanding not only the basics now, but what happens on renewal of periodic contracts? What happens at termination? (further details in section A.2.4)

A.2.7: Information Security: Are arrangements for user access, password storage, the use of encryption and other security issues adequate for the specific system and data?

A.2.8: Data Protection and Other Legal Matters: Are data storage locations acceptable for Data Protection and other legal reasons, such as access by foreign government organisations?

A.2.9: Service Continuity: Backup and disaster recovery arrangements are often better with cloud services than are achieved with on-premise systems. But what are those arrangements, and are they good enough?

Functionality: It is usually easy to trial a SaaS system. This is important as it is not usually possible to change the software beyond the configuration options offered. It may be possible to link to independent bolt-on software, but what are the possibilities?

Software Upgrades: Do you get sufficient visibility of upgrades, chance to test them, and chance to amend staff guidance before they go live? When do upgrades take place, and can you choose when?

User Access to Internet: Are there practical contingency arrangements in place should the usual means of accessing the internet malfunction?

System Speed: This is not usually an issue, but are response times adequate for the specific application with the internet access available? At all required locations?

Whilst the benefits of using a cloud system can be significant, they can only be consistently achieved if matched by suitable arrangements in all the areas above.

If you’d like further guidance, do ring me on 01628 632914 or contact me by email.

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News Update - Monday 20/12/10

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

Upgrading to MSOffice 2010/Windows7: With many businesses expected to make the transition in the next few months, why is it so difficult? Why do we put up with such problems?

Alternatives to MSOffice: With Sun’s OpenOffice the only real desktop alternative, Sun’s acquisition by Oracle has resulted in the “Oracle Cloud” productivity software alongside GoogleApps, Microsoft’s own Office 365 and a few others in the cloud

Google’s ChromeOS: With devices that run Google’s ChromeOS operating system being launched as a pilot, be aware that the idea is to use cloud-based apps rather than load any apps on the device

Twitter – Follow or Tweet: Some interesting statistics about how usage of Twitter has changed in 2010 compared to 2009. Here are some further tips on using Twitter.

A final thought  - It’s all in the name: Looking at “To Skype”, it reminded me that names that also work as verbs have a distinct advantage in a competitive market. “To Google”, “To Hoover” and slightly differently “To Tweet” capture interest in a way that “To iTunes” and “To Bing” doesn’t. How do your business names fare as verbs?

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Social Media – Some Twitter Tips

Whether you are using Twitter for business or personal purposes, are new to it or experienced, here are some tips to utilise the tool without falling into pitfalls:

Accessing Twitter

By going to www.twitter.com you will be able to sign up to the service, and will be presented with a means of posting messages (“tweets”) and seeing tweets posted by others.

Having opened an account you do not need to use Twitter itself. Popular alternatives “apps” are Tweetdeck, Twitterific, Hootsuite and a host of others. The choice is dependent on whether you are using a PC, a Mac, an iPad or which type of mobile phone. The format and way of working varies significantly, and as the apps are usually free, it is worth trying a few out.

Photos, Videos, Long Tweets and Scheduling

Tweets are short text messages, no more than 140 characters (140C), originally designed to be used in conjunction with SMS text messaging.

By including a weblink in the text, it is possible to link to photos, videos and longer text. It is also possible to pre-schedule tweets so they are made automatically at the appointed time.

Popular add-on tools include plixi.com, twitpic.com and twitlonger.com . You’ll see other people using other tools in their tweets.

Some of these tools can be used on their own, or with other tools such as Facebook. To use them with Twitter, the usual approach is:

• Log in to chosen Twitter account
• Find and log into the required add-on service using “Sign in with Twitter”
• Add photo etc to the add-on tool, which will automatically post into Twitter

Following & Consequences

There’s no need to post messages (“tweets”) to Twitter regularly. You can simply follow other people to read their tweets. These can be celebrities, friends or anyone who might be interesting.

Depending on the Twitter software tool you’re using, there is usually a “Follow” button next to their name. The consequences of following are:

• You will see their public tweets in your listing (“timeline”)
• They will be able to send you private “direct messages” (DMs) that no-one else will see
• Other people can see that you are following them
• They will usually be notified that you are following them, which usefully brings you and what you offer to their attention

Some people will follow you back, either automatically or when they see you’re following them. If this happens:

• You will be able to send private DMs to them too.
• They will see your tweets in their timeline

Conversely, you need to consider whether to follow everyone back or not, as both DMs and following can have drawbacks.

How Private are your Tweets

Unless you start a tweet “DM @recipient message” which will only go to the intended recipient you have to assume all tweets are public:

• Followers will see them
• They will appear in the list of tweets that people see if they view your account
• They will appear in the public timeline used for searches (which is how the Robin Hood airport tweet was spotted that resulted in a criminal prosecution)

If you start a tweet @recipient, this will not usually appear in followers’ timelines, but:

• Will also appear in the list of tweets that people see if they view your account
• Will appear in someone’s timeline if they are following both you and the @recipient

There are many other quirks to the way Twitter works. Further tips are in the “Twitter Away” blog.

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Escaping Excel Hell – Automating Business Processes

Excel is a marvelous software tool. It’s pretty well standard on business PCs, and most people have at least a rudimentary knowledge of how it works.

You can list data in a simple database, and use the range of formulae to add and manipulate data. So Excel (or some other spreadsheet) is often the first tool thought of and used for a business application such as order processing or budgeting.

However it’s worth thinking of Excel as clever electronic paper, suffering from similar drawbacks:

• Excel has no automatic facilities for additions. All formulae have to be set up manually, directly or by copying, and it is easy to make errors
• Excel is a “personal productivity” tool which is not designed for use by more than one person. Whilst it is possible to share and link spreadsheets, again there is considerable possibility of error.
• Data entry does not have an audit trail. Whilst it is convenient that changes can be made easily, no changes will get logged.
• Once you’ve got a database of data, you can produce summaries by creating additional tables or pivot tables, but regular reporting is difficult
• You won’t get any workflow capabilities to automate processes

So Excel can be very useful to generate small-scale systems. But for larger systems, or a small system that has grown, a more appropriate solution is needed.

Sometimes it is possible to find a package that does exactly what’s needed, in the cloud or to buy to use on-premise, such as for a simple order processing system. In other cases a system needs to be customised to do what is required. For financial systems, it may be appropriate to bolt this onto a packaged accounting system, and share aspects such as the customer, supplier and product details.

The first stage is to document exactly what is required, including data structures, basic workflow process and automation sought, reporting needs, data volumes and other key aspects.

Then the market can be assessed, and a short list established for demonstration and/or trials. Selection is an art.

Implementation needs to be handled carefully, to ensure the software works, people know how to use it properly, and initial data is loaded correctly. Any changes to the business and how it operates need especial care.

Camwells has experience of all stages of a range of packaged and bespoke solutions to replace Excel. If you would like to talk further, please ring me on 01628 632914 or send an email.

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Performance Management - Designing Business Metrics

When designing the metrics which you will use to monitor and control your business, it’s important to ensure they drive appropriate behaviour.

This is especially important with any metric with one figure being divided by another.

For example it is important in a B2B (business-to-business) sales team to convert quotes into orders. So how about monitoring the conversion rate of quotes to orders by salesman or region, by dividing the value of orders by the value of quotes?

Before you do so there are two main issues, manipulation and timing.

On manipulation, the conversion rate can be improved not by better conversion, but simply by only raising quotes that are likely to become orders, and not bother with others.

That’s probably not the sort of behaviour you want to encourage, as you may miss out on business. Depending on how tightly you like to qualify prospects, you may prefer to raise quotes in less likely situations. So it will also be appropriate to monitor the total value of quotes, and a ratio like quotes to first-time visits to get a better picture.

There’s then a matter of timing. There’s no point comparing the value of sales this month to the value of quotes raised this month if there is any significant delay between quote and order. If it’s possible to discover when quotes are lost and why, another approach is to look at each month’s (or week’s) quotes and establish the ratios between wins, losses, not proceeded and still in progress. This may be too complex, and "keep it simple" is a good principle. The best approach will depend on the business and its sales methods.

Similar principles apply in other areas of a business. The point is that designing a set of business metrics requires careful thought to ensure they make sense, and will drive the right behaviour.

If you’d like to discuss this further, do give me a call on 01628 632914 or contact me via email.

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Cloud Computing - Selecting a SaaS System

When I first used an application that was provided as "Software as a Service" (SaaS), there were five clear benefits:

1. We had access to an internet-enabled system that couldn’t be afforded in-house
2. The system could be used and maintained from anywhere in the world with an internet connection
3. The provider looked after all the data security, administration and disaster recovery
4. Payment only had to be made according to the extent used.
5. We could start using the system straight away

These benefits are still applicable today with SaaS cloud systems.

However when you go looking for a cloud system, the choice is very much dependent on which sector. There’s lots of choice for bookkeeping and CRM, for example, but less for more elaborate systems.

With cloud systems, they are typically “multi-tenancy”, which means all the users share the same functional software code. It may be possible to bolt extra customised functions on, but this shouldn’t be taken for granted. Whilst customising an on-premise package itself is best avoided, there are times when the benefits outweigh the disadvantages. But with SaaS cloud packages, in-app customisation is almost always unavailable.

So when choosing software it is worth checking that the software will do the job you need of it today and as far as can be foreseen for the next few years. A concise formal specification covering the key points helps. Cloud apps can usually be trialed relatively easily, but it’s important this is done thoroughly for any app of business importance.

In practice you may need to look at cloud solutions alongside on-premise solutions. Running a selection project involving SaaS cloud solutions is therefore somewhat different from pure on-premise. Here is a selection process summary which I hope you find useful.

If you would like to discuss this further, do ring 01628 632914 or contact me by email

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News Update - Monday 13/12/10

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

Personal Privacy: If you are operating on the web, privacy for your customers, employees and partners matters. Here’s a round-up of privacy with key players in social media and the web

Security Tips for Business: After Wikileaks, here are three simple tips for improving data security in your business

Platform as a Service: If you want to develop apps or mobile and social media, here is a cloud-based database system from the salesforce.com stable that will be launched in early 2011

In-App Purchases: Technology is now coming forward to allow purchases to be made from within an app on a mobile device, such as to run it, so it can be initially provided free.

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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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Social Media - Integrating the Tools

As a business you probably want to spread your marketing messages far and wide, using whatever tools that are available. Letting one social media tool feed another potentially makes this more efficient. For example:

• Twitter tweets can automatically appear on your company website, such as to be part of the News section
• Using RSS feeds to drive content into other services
• Photos and videos added to Flickr for your followers there can be added automatically to Twitter and/or your Facebook account
• For professionals, Twitter tweets can feed into LinkedIn, so they appear in the “Network Activity”  seen by people who are connected to you
• YouTube likes and comments can automatically become Twitter tweets
• FourSquare check-ins can be fed into Twitter

Generally these links are permanent, until you sever the link. But some, such as FourSquare to Twitter, you confirm during each check-in.

Whilst these links can be very useful, you also have to be mindful whether they are appropriate. On feeding Twitter into LinkedIn, is the frequency and topics on which you tweet appropriate to your LinkedIn profile? Is the use of hashtags on Twitter appropriate for LinkedIn?

You may find that it is worth having two or more Twitter accounts. There could be a “business” one that feeds the website and/or LinkedIn, plus another for tweets that are more personal and you wouldn’t want to appear in such places.

With a bit of careful thought, these interfaces can be leveraged to your advantage.
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Traffic Light Charts for Excel

We’ve looked before at add-ins for gauges and sparklines, but haven’t looked at “Traffic Light Charts”. These apply colour highlights to trends, as in the example left.

Here improvement is shown in green, and deterioration in red. The thicker red line is especially poor performance, and will jump out at anyone reviewing this simple dashboard. This and other styles are achieved using Excel add-ins.

If you like what you see, the add-ins can be purchased at reasonable prices from the foot of the page.

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Cost, Revenue and Cash Flow Drivers

Many moons ago I was Head of Finance at Celltech, the biotechnology company. Some R&D costs were project or department-specific, but others were allocated by the number of people in each section.

Then the first manufacturing process started. Initially the same cost basis was used, but this began to produce bizarre decisions, such as expensively automating a process cheaper to do manually, simply because that didn’t attract such a high overhead allocation. Another approach was needed.

We invented the concept of “cost drivers” to produce more suitable estimates. Costs that only related to R&D only ever got charged to R&D. I was amused to attend a course some years after, only to find these concepts were now called “Activity-Based Costing”.

The point was that if management looked at the results of actual vs budget and asked the simple question “Why are they different” there would be a valid reason, not some fudge due to accounting treatment. We could get to the bottom of any issue, and be able to do something about it.


What is Driving Costs, Revenues and Cash Flow?

But what we didn’t do was identify more directly what was driving costs. Now we would think one stage further and devise a way to monitor anything critical to the health of the company.

So not just what is driving main costs, but also driving revenues and cash flow. So factors like footfall, quote conversion rates and debtor days. Possibly staff turnover if costly or disruptive. Plus drivers in other areas. These Key Performance Indicators can then be reported and managed at the divisional or departmental level.

Out of these would come maybe half a dozen KPIs that would stand out in importance to the business as a whole, and which could be directly controlled. Follow and action these regularly and the financial results would take care of themselves to a significant extent. However as the term KPIs is so often applied to the results such as revenue and profit, I prefer to split KPIs into two distinct types:

• Key Performance Drivers (KPDs)
• Key Results Metrics (KRMs)

Have you consciously made that distinction in your business? And determined what will be important for 2011? It could make 2011 a far more successful year!

Do contact me or ring 01628 632914 if you would like to discuss further.

Thoughts from Business Cloud Summit 2010

Earlier today I attended the Business Cloud Summit in Hammersmith. Incorporating an exhibition and panel interview sessions, it provided a very positive view of the cloud as an option for organisations of all sizes.

But some aspects did strike me:

Two Types of Providers

There are two types of providers – those that look at their service from a customer perspective, and those that don’t.

Aspects like making it easy to leave to make it easier to join, through data export or no minimum commitment. Or by producing a “customer charter” - though beware the title matches the content!

Cloud or Outsourcing

The largest cloud-based system in the world, for HR, sounded very little different from any other form of outsourcing agreement. There are weekly meetings between provider and customer, and I suspect dedicated servers not the multi-tenanted systems usually provided. It also wasn't clear whether access was via the public interent or some private connection, as is common with other types of hosted HR and payroll apps.

That’s a very different situation from a typical cloud user, who may have little if any influence on the way the service runs.

Commercial Business Models

The majority of exhibitors were companies formed specifically to develop and market a SaaS cloud app. The main exception was Microsoft which has recently decided to embrace the cloud before someone else does it for them.

Other on-premise vendors who have cloud offerings were not there promoting them, reflecting their approach in other situations. The cloud business model is not especially attractive to on-premise vendors, and I fear is a major barrier to development and promotion of cloud offerings. Is the cloud too cheap?

Risks and Rewards

One of the industry representatives said the cloud “brings new risks and rewards”. Some of the new pitfalls and risks we’ve discussed in earlier articles.

Clearly cloud providers are no different from any other IT vendors in telling you all the benefits, but little if any of the issues. Choosing a cloud provider is certainly as much a minefield as on-premise. It’s best to be well advised.

If you’d like to discuss any aspect of this please contact me – details to the left.

News Update - Monday 29/11/10

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

Cloud First policy: In the week the Cloud Industry Forum in the UK launches its "Code of Practice" for cloud providers, the US federal government has announced it will soon adopt a "cloud-first" policy, meaning federal agencies will be required to used cloud services "whenever a secure, reliable, cost-effective cloud option exists."

The EC announces at the same time that a cloud without clear and strong data protection is not the sort of cloud we need. 

100 uses for RFID: Radio-Frequency ID tags can transform business processes and open up new business opportunities

Libel Laws on the Internet: A reminder about how punitive these laws can be. Your staff certainly need to be careful what they say online.

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Social Media – Making Comments and Controlling Comments to Generate Business

You may remember the term “Web 2.0” which meant so many things that it became meaningless jargon. But at it’s core was the idea that the internet was originally developed as a collaboration tool, where people could exchange information, ideas and questions. Social Media is a key part of that vision, especially for businesses to move forward from providing just a static, broadcast website.

Using social media tools to comment on the web, and encourage comments from people is a great way of building a presence and relationships to generate business. However you also need to be wary of what others are writing about your business on these services, and take action accordingly.

COMMENTING

You don’t need to do much to get involved with social media. Registering some basic details with services like Blogger, Facebook and Twitter lets you take part by submitting comments to the system, thus raising your profile in the particular community:

• By commenting on blogs
• By getting involved in on-line forums, especially in helpfully answering other people’s questions
• By bringing yourself and your business to a site manager’s attention, and to other followers of that site. This can be done for example by commenting on someone’s Facebook wall, sending a Twitter tweet to someone, or simply following someone on Twitter.

Everything in moderation, with aggressive selling likely to be counter-productive.

CONTROLLING COMMENTS

Operators of commercial social media sites are keen to gain followers, and to hear from those people to generate relationships and business.

However there are three categories of comments that are not welcome:

• Overt sales messages, especially by competitors. With music acts for example, there is a distinct line between one band complementing another publicly, and another using the platform as a way to also sell their own gigs or download.
• Unpleasant comments, which may be unsavoury photos, soundtracks, videos or links to other web pages
• Derogatory comments, especially if unfounded

In the latter case, this can be on sites over which you have no direct control, such as TripAdvisor and FourSquare. Sadly there are a number of cases coming through of businesses going bust due to scathing, unsubstantiated comments.

So what can you do to leverage the benefits of social media tools, without suffering the downsides? To take a few examples to set the principles:

Blogs

This article has been written in Google’s blogging tool “Blogger”. It provides three key facilities:

• Option whether to allow comments or not
• If allowed, whether you want to “moderate” comments before they appear on your blog
• Opportunity to remove offending comments that already appear on your blog

Other popular blogging tools such as Wordpress will have their own set of facilitites.

Facebook

Firstly you need to decide whether to have a standard wall or use the “Pages” facility designed to be used by businesses. Pages look very similar to personal profiles, but amongst other things allows posts to the wall to be clearly separated between those made by the business and by visitors. To compare the two approaches, with a mixture of text, photos, videos and soundtracks, here are two bands:

• Theory of Six Degrees (as personal profile)
• Turisas (using  business pages)

For Pages, you have the choice:

• Allow/stop postings to the wall
• Allow/stop photos to be added
• Allow/stop videos to be added

For personal profiles (within “Customise Settings” within “Privacy Setings”), you can:

• Allow/stop friends from posting to your wall
• Allow/stop friends from commenting on your own posts
• Block specific people from making posts

You cannot moderate other people’s posts on your wall before they happen, but you can remove anything you don’t want.

Twitter

Twitter is a public system, without the concepts in blogs or Facebook. You have little if any control on what people post about you or your business. However you can:

• Block people from using your Twitter @username in tweets, firstly so they cannot address a tweet to you, and secondly so others can’t see any further tweets with your @username in it. However this doesn’t stop the username without the @ being used
• Monitor tweets featuring your username, and where necessary counter.

Remember that libel laws are applicable to Twitter and other social media systems, which you can leverage should there be any untruths tweeted about you or your business.

Foursquare and other public systems that allow comments

I was sitting in a hotel bar and decided to see what others had recommended about the place on FourSquare. All I could find was a derogatory comment about the bedrooms. The staff on duty had no idea about this, nor did the comment appear at all reasonable to them. As comments now appear in services like Bing maps, the so-called “tips” can spread far and wide without readers needing to be on the premises.

Valid complaints can be dealt with on the relevant service. The way you do this can actually have a positive affect not only on the person involved, but also those people who can see what you let be seen.

But what if you want to remove a derogatory comment or incorrect tip? It depends on the specific service. In the case of Foursquare, the first step is simply to send an email to Foursquare

IN CONCLUSION

There are a variety of ways that you can take part in social media to further your business, whether on other people’s sites or by setting up your own.

But be aware that not everyone plays ball fairly. You need to keep an eye on what people are saying about your business on each platform, and take appropriate action where necessary.

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Avoiding Excel Hell – Developing Better Spreadsheet Models

There are various ways you can suffer in spreadsheet hell, as these real-life examples illustrate.

With Excel now the dominant spreadsheet system, we’ve already looked at how to escape Excel Hell in the articles on these subjects where understanding the limitations of Excel means there are better alternatives:

• For business processes
• For reporting
• For planning and forecasting

But what about for financial modelling? For this, Excel has a real and valid role. But how can models be developed that give real and valid answers?

Best practice has been developed, and there are three leading initiatives. These overlap, but between them offer a sensible practical approach:

(1) European Spreadsheet Risks Interest Group (EuSpRIG)

The advice from IBM and ICAEW is still relevant and useful, although dating back to 1999. This approaches spreadsheets as for any software development, recommending that :

• Should be easy to use, through good design
• Focused on the important issues
• Easy to understand
• Reliable, through being tested

Testing is key, especially as a spreadsheet model evolves and develops. Getting someone independent to test it with a fresh eye is far better than just trying to do it yourself

Here are some tips on how to minimise the risk of errors in a spreadsheet model. and other tips for best practice

(2) The FAST Methodology:

The idea here is to make a spreadsheet model “Flexible, Accurate, Structured and Transparent".

Appendix C of the FAST modeling standard summarises all the “rules” they suggest: for

• Workbook Design, being a collection of worksheets
• Worksheet Design
• Line Items, including use of formulae
• Functions and Formatting

(3) Spreadsheet Standards Review Board

The SSRB's Standards cover each of 16 aspects:

1. General Concepts
2. Workbook Structure
3. Sheet Structure
4. Formats & Styles
5. Assumption Entry Interfaces
6. Sensitivity Analysis
7. Outputs & Presentations
8. Calculation Formulae
9. Naming Principles
10. Time Series Analysis
11. Error Checks
12. Printing & Viewing
13. Multiple Workbooks
14. Security & Protection
15. Visual Basic Programming
16. Miscellaneous

So if you are keen to avoid Excel Hell with your financial models, these standards and tips will certainly help!

If you require any further advice or assistance, then do contact us.

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