Thanks to the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) evolution, many employees are using three or more disparate devices in the workplace. That means valuable data isn’t just in one or two places; it is scattered across public and private clouds, servers and networks, which can be a nightmare for data protection, access, collaboration and backup.

So, if your company is playing “hide and seek” with valuable information, how do you make sure it is secure and accessible, no matter where it is hiding?

Laying out the Groundwork for the BYOD Trend 

The fact is, more employees are storing files on their personal devices than ever before, but most businesses have no protocols for making sure these files are securely backed up somewhere else. In the UK, for example, the Information Commissioner’s Office found that less than 30 percent of workers have been given any kind of guidelines on how to properly manage company data.

So, imagine that your company’s marketing manager has an Excel document with the company’s most loyal customers stored on his iPad. Now, what if that iPad suffers an untimely demise from a coffee spill? Well, that data could be lost for good. And, when it’s time to roll out a loyalty program, then what? If only IT knew where that data was residing and could have coordinated a backup plan.

If businesses are playing hide and seek with big data, there’s a big risk for data loss. As IT environments grow increasingly more complex and rely on physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure, knowing the exact location of every piece of data becomes that much more difficult, and important.

Syncing, Security and Policy

To stop playing hide and seek with Big Data, businesses have to implement a streamlined process. The key is to make sure that employees know all company files — whether they’re on a work computer, tablet, personal laptop or smartphone — have to be synced to the network and then backed up in central locations… yes, locations… plural.

A dual-destination back up plan that eliminates single points of failure and optimises the use of the cloud, as well as physical storage, is crucial to making sure corporate data is safe and available when you need it. Nowadays, there are backup solutions that can sync files from any platform, be it Mac or PC, iPad or Android.

If you are playing hide and seek with data, consider ending the game today. With just a few policy tweaks, IT can guarantee that all company information is secure and accessible, not just the files that are already on the internal network.

Are you playing games with your data?

The spate of natural disasters, including the Brisbane floods, hit many businesses hard. While some had no back-up strategy at all, others had their back-up equipment and data stored in building basements that were the first to be taken out in the serious floods.

The impact of disasters on an SME’s business can be devastating. Customer orders, contact information, financial records, supplier contracts, correspondence and emails, stock records – what would you do if you lost it all?

Businesses without disaster recovery facilities need to be aware of the consequences should the unexpected happen and they lose their vital information and means of communications. Unfortunately, it’s only when they have a disaster that they give due consideration to outsourcing their systems, such as when the air conditioning goes out on a weekend, power goes down due to a storm, or worse.

If there is no additional air conditioning backup, machines will fry. Hard drives do crash, and they do lose data. It’s a bit like insuring a car. You don’t really think about it until you have a crash.

A couple of years ago, a well-known fresh food supplier had a fire rip through its hub, destroying its proprietary IT system which essentially ran the entire business from data storage to business intelligence, sales management, stock and its financial and accounting system. It took three months to get the business back to normal operations once new equipment and software had been put in place.

SMEs don’t really think about this. IT managers in SMEs have a lot on their plate these days. They are managing CRM, WAN, telephone, back-up, dealing with mobility, and adapting to new technologies. So it’s not surprising they probably haven’t thought about the impact to the business if the IT system went down.

SMEs who own and manage their own IT facilities need to be planning for a number of things: have they got an uninterrupted power supply; are the back-up capabilities sufficient; are the cooling systems within the building adequate to support the IT systems, and is there back-up air conditioning in the event of a cooling problem.

When you manage your own IT infrastructure, you need to worry about this and it adds another layer of complexity that business shouldn’t need to worry about.

A solution is putting your IT infrastructure in a safe, secure environment. Purpose-built, enterprise grad data centres offer a number of benefits business who are running mission-critical IT systems. These include 24/7 “smart hands”, redundant power, physical security, ability to easily scale-up infrastructure, reduced costs and greater flexibility, improved utilization of leased premise. And less worry.

7 tips for SMEs managing IT infrastructure

1. Have a back-up plan

Considering the IT systems you run in house now, what would happen if one of them fell over or worse, if they all fell over?  What would be the consequences of losing the data that sits on those systems?  Calculating the cost to your business of an IT disaster is an exercise that is well worth doing.

2. Power can be expensive

A lot of power capacity can be expensive to deploy to a standard office building. Find out if there any limitations on power that can be delivered to your building as this could be critical to your growth path.

3. UPS is critical

Ensure you have the correctly sized UPS for your IT equipment to allow for an orderly shut-down of IT equipment in the event of a prolonged power outage.  In the event of primary power failure – could you get someone on site 24×7 before your backup UPS is exhausted?

4. Don’t risk cooking your equipment

Work out what cooling requirements you will need not just for your current technology infrastructure, but critically, for projected future requirements. Some IT infrastructure produces a lot more heat than others.

Hot IT equipment reduces IT efficiency as CPU clock speeds reduce, which increases power-draw as fans turn on. This can eventually lead to the shutting down of your IT equipment if the temperature gets too high.

5. Physical security

Ensure you have the correct security posture appropriate to your requirements as well as your clients. For example, having your company comply with security systems such as PCI DSS and ISO27001 could be important to your clients.

Physical security can mean having audit logs of all access to your infrastructure, CCTV footage stored and a granular access control system to ensure only authorised members of staff can access certain area. Remember, sabotage can come from within.

6. Property Leasing

Check whether your on-premise IT equipment will not affect future negotiations with your landlord. If you have made a sizable investment in infrastructure in your building, it can sometimes hinder future negotiations for leasing rates as landlords know how expensive it is to move a large amount of IT equipment.

7. Consider outsourcing your Infrastructure

As soon as your reliance on your IT infrastructure becomes mission critical, you’ve got a problem.   Relocating your IT assets into a data centre environment makes sense, both from a redundancy and back-up perspective, but also from a financial perspective.

First things first. What exactly is teleworking, also known as telecommuting or remote working? It’s a work arrangement in which an employee doesn’t commute to a central place of work. The employee works from home or uses mobile technology to work from coffee shops or other locations.

Empowering employees to work outside the traditional confines of an office is increasingly prevalent as:

1. businesses realise the bottom line benefits, and
2. a wider range of cost-effective telework-enabling technologies enter the marketplace.

The trend will become even more commonplace due to the Federal Government driving toward its target of 1 in 8 Australian employees having a regular telework arrangement by 2020. This is only 7 years away. At MYOB we’ve reached this target already (2 percent of our workplace have a permanent arrangement and 40 percent have an ad-hoc arrangement), and there’s always room for improvement.

Now, you may be thinking ‘why would the government care?’ Well, it conducted research recently to explore how labour force participation may increase with the NBN rollout and the additional opportunities it will provide. Some key findings were:

• NBN-enabled telework may create 25,000 additional jobs in full-time equivalent terms by 2020-21, with approximately 10,000 of these in regional Australia.
• 60 percent of mature workers said they’d take up telework if it was available to them and as a result delay retirement by an average of 6.6 years – important given the ageing of the population and the impact this will have on overall workforce participation rates.
• 74 percent of the respondents with family or carer responsibilities who weren’t in the labour force said they’d take up a telework employment opportunity if one was available to them.

With productivity on everyone’s lips these days, encouraging teleworking is a no-brainer – it will assist us as an economy as much as it will assist our individual businesses.

MYOB recently surveyed more than 1,000 SMEs to find 57 percent of SMEs have employees who work for their business from a location other than their business premises. One in four (25 percent) have employees who work ‘mainly away from the office’ and one in three (32 percent) have employees who work ‘partly from home and from the office’.

We found that the business operators whose employees worked mainly away from the business premises were 24 percent more likely to see a revenue rise in the past year! Further, they were 32 percent less likely to see a revenue fall. Now that is worth thinking about.

In their own words, these were the top benefits:

Any thoughts on how you can incorporate teleworking into your business? Or perhaps you already do – do you have any tips for those considering it?

But it is something that almost every consumer services organisation will need to address in the next 12 months.  The consumer desire to interact with suppliers across a range of channels is not going to abate and companies that cannot respond to this need for multi-channel convenience risk being left behind.

To avoid being overwhelmed by the challenge, organisations going down the multi-channel path will find it much easier if they spend time upfront working out their customer’s needs, expectations and requirements and the resources and capabilities the organisation has to develop such a strategy.  By documenting it all in an overarching strategy, organisations will find the path to multi-channel customer experience delivery becomes much clearer, and they will increase their ability to achieve, profitable as well as high customer engagement interactions

Step 1: The Strategy

Begin with an internal review of your organisation’s strategic imperatives.  This requires a look at your corporate strategic goals, brand essence and values, your service promise and charter, and current channel strategies.  This is also the time to establish revenue and cost imperatives, and identify the ROI required.

Because your strategy isn’t being designed to please only management and staff, you’ll need input from external sources.  Conduct customer research to see what your most important stakeholders think about current operations. Identify service needs and channel preferences.  Then take a step back and look at the broader environment. Analyse what your competitors are doing from a channel experience perspective and consider the impact of any regulatory frameworks on your business.

Step 2: Data Modeling & Big data analytics

Now it’s time to see what information you may already have in your existing customer data.  Model the how the combination of different channels for different products, customer segments, demographics effect customer experience, engagement, acquisition, retention and up-sell and cross-sell. Also start to consider the role Big Data analytics might play – assess the data for volume, variety, velocity, veracity, value and viscosity.  Use this to model and predict customer behaviour, estimate revenue and cost models, and to calculate the profitability of each channel.

Step 3: Customer Experience Design thinking

Establish the principles for your ideal customer experience and let these inform the design of the strategy.  Co-creation with customers is the key.  You’ll want the experience to be user-centred, so get customers and other stakeholders involved as you create the design.  Consider the probable sequence of requirements and try to design a holistic experience for your customers.  Tools such as stakeholder maps, personas, customer journey maps, cultural probes, storyboards, service prototypes and blueprints will be invaluable at this stage.

Step 4: Understand your operational capabilities

Having decided upon the ideal customer experience, you need to identify any operational changes that may be required to support your design. Look at current operational performance and capabilities, your analytical capability, technology and telephony platforms. Will the company culture and your HR practices support the expanded range of activity?  Does management fully understand what will be required and are they on board?  Identify the changes that will be required to make the new strategy work.

Step 5: Allow your Customer a Voice

Develop a multi-channel customer feedback system, or Voice of Customer program, that allows regular and real time feedback from customers. Use this to drive process improvement, employee behavior, product design and on-going strategy.

Step 5: Contingencies

Never introduce any business strategy without assessing whether there are other contingent strategies or programs of work that will impact your strategy.  Work out what you need to do if there are changing market conditions or internal circumstances.

Step 6:  Document everything in a customer experience strategy roadmap

Having worked your way through all the facets of the strategy, you now need to put it all down on paper.

At the end of this process you should find yourself the proud owner of an enterprise-wide Customer Experience Strategy complete with plans on:

• multi-channel design
• operations and process analytics and possibly big data
• customer feedback management
• technology and telecommunications
• culture and HR
• a well defined business case and
• an implementation plan.

All you need to do now is carry it through.  At least you know where you are going and what you need to do to get there.

Rather than being a passive outcome of everyday business activity, the customer experience has become a strategy in its own right.  Channel design, customer feedback management and analytics are all essential parts of this strategy. Get it right and you’ll find your multi-channel strategy will quickly repay all the effort with profitable and happy customers.

When you watch the V8s fly around the track, it’s easy to forget that the spectacle is, first and foremost, a product sold by a company with the same demands and concerns as any other business.

V8 Supercars is based on the Gold Coast. They have 70 staff that organise (and often event manage) 15 enormous motorsport meets across three countries. In April they will host events in Tasmania, Pukekohe on the outskirts of Auckland and Perth. Next month they head to Austin, Texas for their first American rally.  This involves managing 18 teams, 28 cars, hundreds of support staff, an army of contractors and an in-house film crew.

The logistics boggle the mind particularly when you consider that the company was pretty much running on outdated hardware and a broadband connection until Director of Finance & Systems Peter Trimble identified the situation as a significant risk to the business.

They found themselves in an all-too familiar scenario for many small-to-medium businesses where staff struggled to carry out their designated duties due to systems failures and speed issues.

V8 Supercars turned to the Cloud for salvation and settled on Microsoft Office 365 after situational analysis determined it would be the best fit for their workforce.

After a month-long trial in the financial division, staff across the company  can now access emails and company files from anywhere in the world.

And while they aren’t receiving a cost saving yet (this is expected to come in the future), they have made gains in reliability and productivity according to CEO David Malone. More importantly, they have future-proofed the business.

“As long we have an internet connection we can do business,” says Malone. “[Office 365] has also lead to less [staff] burn out and higher productivity.”

While your business might not be in the habit of shipping hundreds of people and heavy machine around the world on a regular basis, the need for an effective software solution remains the same.

Relying on outdated technology makes your business less dynamic and hampers productivity. It also leaves your business open to financial risk and places your staff under enormous pressure.

$557 million dollars. That was the headline figure –more than half a billion dollars— in a recent AAP story outlining what global roaming “bill shock” has cost the Australian traveller.

This huge number lends support to anecdotal accounts of $10,000 phone bills and the rise of services, like one outfit down in Melbourne, that is devoted to helping consumers negotiate their way out of massive phone bills.

Global roaming is an issue that will be with us for the foreseeable future –despite regulatory rumbling, account limit alerts and heavily publicised telco global roaming packages (most of the time just unsustainable loss leaders that might burn you eventually).

But there is a side to the global roaming story that hasn’t really been told.

If consumers are facing big global roaming bills from the one-off trip, common sense says that businesses of all sizes are facing an even bigger problem.

But aggregate numbers are difficult, if not impossible, to come by. It is the rare business that will publicly admit to being burned by global roaming. What we are seeing every day, however, suggests that businesses are struggling to keep costs low while staying connected.

The problem is that unless your business has adopted a unified approach to telco for overseas travel, high bill costs will become a chronic problem.

An ad hoc approach just doesn’t work.

Instructing employees to reduce phone use might lead to lower bills, but there will likely be other costs: lost business opportunity and reduced business efficiency.

A draconian response that penalises employees or makes them too aware of how they use their phones when abroad can have a chilling effect on good business practice. No sensible company wants its employees to stop returning customer calls in a timely manner or neglect important inter-office business communication for fear of high charges.

Internet VOIP services and Skype might seem like a solution. Indeed, for some telecommunication activities –like long conference from a static location with ample or very low cost Internet— they probably are.

But, again, business continuity is critical for most travellers and these approaches depend on cheap or no-cost broadband Internet. Cheaper global roaming data rates aren’t the answer either.

We’re simply not there yet in terms of delivering comparable rate structures to what Australians are used to back home. In other words, don’t expect VOIP services or Skype to work well or cheaply from your mobile device when global roaming.

Even with the most competitive rates, everyday activities on the Internet will add up. For example, checking a Facebook page usually consumes 40kb of data. If you are paying conventional global roaming rates that one page can cost you over $1.

Even text only emails at 15KB can add up quickly with some of the leading Australian providers charging as much as $0.72 for each one.

Clearly, if text only emails cost that much then many of the mobile data functions we have grown accustomed to, like Google maps and YouTube, need to be avoided.

The general guidelines for both business and leisure travellers when it comes to global roaming data is remain vigilant, seek free WiFi wherever possible and never expect to use your mobile devices in the same way abroad as at home.

So what can a business do in order to ensure telecommunications continuity at a manageable cost?

The first step is to recognise that the biggest cost centre is voice, not data. For global roaming not to burn, your business needs to use providers who can offer competitive global roaming rates.

Unfortunately, the leading Australian telcos really don’t do this. While some of their global roaming rates can be competitive for specific destinations, there can be huge disparities that might mean an employee on a multi-country trip could run the risk of making a long call from a country with an exorbitant rate (e.g., 1 hour at $5 a minute becomes a tidy $300).

Our research suggests that the goal of most businesses is cost control. Standard, post-paid global roaming won’t achieve this goal for two reasons: 1) there is little if no real-time monitoring of costs available through the leading Australian telcos and 2) the disparity in rates means that a series of necessary, but unexpected calls (e.g., a client crisis), can quickly lead to a big bill.

Moreover, with standard global roaming, users can even be charged for calls they never answer.

Ultimately, pre-paid SIMs, SIM cards substituted for the regular SIM in your phone, offer the most effective cost control because costs can never exceed your initial balance.

While some of the lowest rates can be achieved by buying a single SIM in each country visited, this is usually not ideal from a business continuity perspective because: a) it is not always easy to buy a local SIM and b) you will need to buy a local SIM in each country visited (this often leads to travellers accumulating a pocketful of local SIMs).

A better approach is to integrate the pre-paid global roaming solution into business policy and accounting. This can be done by choosing a pre-paid SIM provider that offers highly competitive rates globally, not just in a single destination. Such as service means that a single SIM will work wherever the business traveller goes and cost control will be ensured.

Businesses can be stunned by the bottom line results of shifting their employees onto such a system. We have seen small companies save upwards of $5000 a month by simply requiring employees to use a pre-paid SIM for all outgoing calls.

But the best kind of pre-paid SIM service should also offer more. After all, one of the biggest hurdles to bringing global roaming costs down is behaviour. By far the main issue isn’t technology, it is the human beings using it.

Any business response to global roaming needs to support a shift to pre-paid that will make that shift in behaviour as clear and as easy as possible. What this means is identifying how best to implement the pre-paid for your business.

While strong customer support that is always available and responsive is a must for a pre-paid service; some businesses might need a little more customer support for their employees overseas. In that case, you will want to find a pre-paid service that offers concierge-services for little or no extra cost.

Some businesses, especially those whose employees spend more time in a particular country, will benefit from a pre-paid service that can offer a local number; others will want to ensure business continuity by requiring a call diversion service that means that all calls directed to the employee’s normal phone are re-directed to the pre-paid SIM for a small fee.

The right solution will also allow businesses to manage the pre-paid SIMs from one corporate account with one shared credit amount and the ability to set individual limits on each employee SIM card.

A truly comprehensive service will even offer additional benefits like diversion to toll-free numbers, text messaging flexibility, free-to-receive calling in as many countries as possible and even location-based services that allow employers to know where their employees are anywhere in the world.

If the right tools are used with the right strategy, no business needs to fear global roaming anymore.

Here are three ways to use technology and save money:

1. Marketing

Possibly the most influential and game-changing promotional development of the past decade has been the shift to online marketing. Whether it is through social media, emails, blogs, videos or SEM, the avenues and platforms available to businesses to optimize their web presence are countless.

Small businesses are now able to access their target market in a way so cost-effective it puts methods like letterbox drops and billboards to shame.

However, customers are increasingly savvy to the spam being thrown at them so it is necessary to remember the four Ts – Target, Time, Tailor, Tell – to best use online marketing to your advantage.

Make sure the content is relevant to your target audience!

Also ensure your content is posted at the right time. A recent article by Buddy Media found that marketers were posting too little on weekends when they were likely to get the highest rates of interaction. The article also found that posting on Wednesday would grant you the least interaction (7.4 percent lower than average) with Monday and Thursday being prime days for audience engagement.

It is also important to tailor the content for the medium. Make tweets cursory, Facebook statuses more engaging and blog posts lengthier but specific.

Although online marketing is effective in itself in raising awareness and boosting your brand profile, it is effective to include a call to action and tell your audience to participate, enter, ‘like’ or engage with content.  Statuses which employ a call to action such as “Fill in the blank”, “Like” or “Caption this” gain interaction rates 48 percent higher than average.

Always remember the importance of Google in marketing, as this is where 80 percent of online searches occur. Google AdWords and Google Analytics can help you monitor your search engine optimization (SEO) success.

2. Connecting co-workers

Long gone are the days of bulky videoconferencing equipment and chunky phone sets. Consider affordable videoconferencing systems like Citrix or cost-free services such as Skype to save on connection fees.

Yammer is a fairly recent option for businesses to create their own private social network within the company. Other sites like Confluence also allow teams to create, share and discuss content. Sites like DropBox or GoogleDocs allow co-workers to collaborate and edit files online.

As well as connecting existing workers, new technologies make it easier than ever to find new employees. Sometimes Seek and Career One aren’t the only places to find new employees.

LinkedIn is a great resource to browse promising employees. Finance positions can be promoted on the eFinancialCareers and creative or unpaid positions are best advertised on sites like The Loop or Pedestrian Jobs. Business services or contract positions can be outsourced on ServiceSeeking.com.au.

3. Streamlining administration

The move to a paperless company not only promotes a green and sustainable image but can seriously shrink admin costs.  CMS (Contact Management Systems) are a popular option to manage databases and diarise follow-ups with customers. Move your information to an online (internal if you’re concerned about security) cloud and avoid storage and hard drive costs.

Online timesheet sites like Saasu are a great option to streamline accounting and paycheck administration.

Customer relationship management software like Salesforce.com can help manage sales process, lead tracking and follow-ups. If you don’t have an in-house accountant web-based solutions like Zoho can assist with invoicing.

It is easy to be conned into investing in every new software update that gets released so remember that technologies which track or promote progress, profits and productivity are going to be of most use for small businesses.

In this article, we’ll look at some reasons why you may want to upgrade your hosting package. We’ll also look at some of the alternative measures you could try before you part with any more money.

Do you need more control?

For many businesses and individuals, low-cost shared web hosting is perfectly adequate. On a shared web hosting package, you’ll benefit from a range of features and tools to get your website up and running, without the need to learn highly specialised skills.

Over time, your business website may outgrow the resources shared hosting can offer. As your website is expanded and improved, your web designer may need more control over the operating system and resources on the server. For example, on a VPS plan, you can control the amount of memory available to your site, and also monitor the CPU usage in fine detail. To get this kind of access, you’ll need to upgrade.

Alternatives

• Ask your host whether they can tweak the necessary settings on your shared hosting account. If your needs are relatively straightforward, you may not need to upgrade your package at all.
• Do you need to see how the server is performing? Analytics packages can harvest basic performance data, so unless you need to see in-depth process usage, you can probably get by with an external solution.

Is your site sluggish?

Shared hosting is a great, low-cost solution for many small businesses, but the main disadvantage of the shared model is the potential for bottlenecks. Each host places multiple websites on the same server, and if one website is misbehaving and sucking resources from the server, the others will suffer.

Note that reseller hosting normally uses the same service model as regular hosting. If you’re a reseller, you’re probably going to be exposed to the same risks.

Google Webmaster Tools can give you a broad overview of your site’s speed. Using this data, you’ll be in a better position to decide whether to upgrade your hosting package. Providing you’re comfortable working with technical data, you can also review the processes that are running on your box to tweak and improve your site’s performance.

Alternatives

• Try a caching plugin. WordPress users can install WP Super Cache or WP Total Cache. Don’t install more than one caching plugin, and test your site thoroughly to ensure it’s still working as expected.
• Ask your host if they offer a CDN service, such as CloudFlare. A CDN delivers content to end users more quickly, spreading the load over multiple servers. Basic CDN services are free.

Have you been scolded and suspended?

If your site is using an excessive amount of resources, your host may suspend it without warning. Every host has its own rules about ‘excessive’ use; HostGator allows customers on shared or reseller accounts to use a maximum of 25 percent of CPU for no longer than 90 seconds, for example.

Even if your shared web hosting plan offers ‘unlimited’ resources, your host may still shut your site down if it believes your resource usage is excessive. Shared hosting is really only suitable for sites that don’t need huge amounts of CPU power.

If you’re sure your site is power-hungry for good reason – in other words, your social media campaigns are picking up, or your marketing campaigns are resulting in traffic spikes – your best bet is an upgrade dedicated server. Not only can you use all of the dedicated server’s resources, but you’ll also be allowed to play around with the server configuration for better performance.

Alternatives

• The most common reason for shared hosting account suspension is a badly optimised script or plugin that hogs server CPU. Many customers feel they should upgrade to a VPS, but this is equivalent to sticking a Band-Aid over the real problem. Instead, invest in a specialist web developer who can get to the bottom of your resource usage problems or ask your host for advice.

It’s inevitable that technology for work and play will continue to evolve and converge rapidly, so it’s up to you to stay up to date so your business can benefit and reap the rewards. Here’s how you can:

Be where your customers are – online

With 49 percent of Australians owning a smartphone, technology provides a new dimension to how you do business and how consumers do business with you. They’re increasingly shopping for products and ordering services from their mobile or tablet and in turn, you’re expected to be able to access their records and process their orders instantly. So if you haven’t already, set up a business website to not only retain customers, but attract new ones.

Think of technology as an investment

It’s typical for a small business to put technology investment in the back burner when you’re less likely to have a large amount of cash in reserve. Streamline and future-proof your day to day operations such as accounting software, email, office applications and file storage by moving them to the Cloud. Nowadays, many Cloud-based IT solutions avoid the need to spend money upfront but bring immediate benefit. When it comes to laptops, Ultrabooks, smartphones or tablets – purchase the device with the best features and the highest-spec processor and memory you can afford. This means that it will still be able to operate well in a few years’ time.

Hot tip: Don’t forget, the $6,500 instant tax write-off for new assets can assist in the investment of equipment that improves business productivity and cash flow.

Social is the new word of mouth

Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networking sites are so popular with consumers that small businesses should take advantage of these platforms too. Why? It’s where word of mouth travels online. Best of all, the majority of them are free or inexpensive, and can be monetised. Investigate how your small business can utilise online ads on Facebook, polls via LinkedIn, promotions through Twitter and more. Think of social networking as a new method of communication and a great way to help build your brand.

Stay informed

Changes in the economy and in your industry and emerging consumer and technology trends will likely impact your business. So keep up to date with these developments. In an online era, it’s not enough to quickly flick through the business pages and attend the odd networking event. The proliferation of news websites, social media and IT means a whole new skill set is required to stay on top of developments affecting your business.

If you find that it’s all a bit overwhelming, a bit of research can help. Consider seeking advice from IT consultants, business advisors, other business owners as well as friends and family on what technology they’re using and what they recommend. Read reviews and product information from trusted “how-to” websites and magazines and participate in community forums relevant to your industry as another source of info and advice.

aWallet Cloud Password Manager: Find yourself losing track of your many online passwords? This app will keep track of your passwords, credit card information, banking information- anything that you might want to remain private. Instead of writing them down ‘somewhere safe’ storing them in an encrypted app like this will allow you to synchronise with Google Drive or Dropbox, and will let you back up encrypted data to your SD card, for safety.

Agenda: Make sure you don’t miss out on any important meetings or phone calls with Agenda. While the app syncs with your device’s calendar settings, it provides a cleaner interface with which to interact and keep track of your day to day events. It offers a year, month, week, day and event view, and allows you to add repeats to any event. It also allows for email addresses and URLs to be tappable. It’s still a new app, so doesn’t yet have a widget, but once it does this will be a handy allrounder.

EverClip: If you’re already using Evernote, you’ll understand how handy this easy access document saving app is. By adding EverClip to your arsenal, any website or app that you’re using can be easily copied and cut, sending straight to an Evernote note page. Copy text, images, PDFs- anything you might find online and save it for later access. Handy for anyone who uses their device to search while commuting.

SwiftKey 3: While you’re typing skills on a desktop keyboard might be up to scratch, you find that typing messages on your phone or device ends up in gobbledygook. Try using SwiftKey 3, a keyboard app you can download to use on your phone, and even personalise for your Gmail, Facebook, Twitter and blog posts. While many touchscreen keyboards seem to not understand what you’re trying to say, SwiftKey gives more accurate corrections and even predicts words. This will help you avoid calling your client ‘mum’ or ending up on an autocorrect fail blog.

Paul Keating Insult Generator: this app has absolutely no relation to the man himself, in that he never actually said these phrases, nor does he endorse the app. However it’s fun to think that he might have. While this might not come in handy in procuring new business, it might be useful if you want to confound your creditors or befuddle your coworkers. Wouldn’t advise using this one against the boss though.

Keeping up with the new pace of today’s technologies can make your workplace more innovative, employee friendly, profitable and productive – but can you tell your Big Data from your SaaS? How many cloud-based platforms do you use and for what?

You need to consider these four essential factors when it comes to being a tech-savvy business. They will help you distinguish the smart moves from the slip-ups.

1. Mobile

For retailers, the increase of e-commerce spending and the popularity of mobile devices means that mobile compatibility should be top-of-mind. Predictions include increased advertising opportunities, more 4G rollouts, WIFI as a commercial alternative and a forecasted $81 billion spend on app downloads.

All of this means that if you don’t co-operate with mobile, you’ll be left behind, websites should already be fully compatible with mobile devices and be ready to compete with online only retailers.

This is especially relevant when considering the phenomenal domination of the tablet device, no other technology (including telephones, mobile phones and even electricity) has integrated into society so quickly.

2. Big Data

There is actually still some debate over what the term “Big Data” actually means. Some say it relates to transactional data, whereas others think of it as the technology helps businesses handle their large amounts of data or even the amassing of increased amounts of information and using it in effective ways.

Regardless of its definition, the value it offers businesses who want to understand their customers is priceless. There is also the potential interest from others in the data you may have.

For example, the data associated with any popular social network is the holy grail of Big Data. The resources needed to handle it are vast and the value of the information to others is sky high.

However, for small businesses, this is a little out of reach. But it doesn’t mean it should be ignored. Data, whether big or small, is still data and it’s still valuable. So figure out a way to store it now and you’ll be grateful in the long run.

3. The Cloud

This year, cloud-based technology will grow in popularity. Google Apps, Microsoft 365 and Dropbox are becoming central to the everyday work experience, driving up productivity, collaboration and communication. Combined with the emerging trend of BYOD policies, operating from the Cloud has the additional benefit of security when it comes to work related documents and storage.

Plus the onset of flexible working hours as an employee right and offering the option to work remotely as a workplace perk means that many businesses absolutely must turn to the Cloud to stay competitive as an employer.

4. SaaS for HR

Managing employee data via SaaS technology is on the rise. The development of effective HR data management software and applications means that employers can easily assign HR responsibilities to the Cloud; from storing and maintaining employee details, creating contracts and policies, all the way through to facilitating recruitment and performance management processes.

The increased demand for constant feedback rather than the yearly performance review also relies on the reliability of the data a business can store. SaaS technology is an innovative way to handle HR processes much more effectively and strong HR is driven by good data management.

Identifying and getting on board with emerging tech trends is not a gamble, it’s a strategic move that will position a business well for the future, whether it means signing up to Yammer to add more of a social aspect to the business, or considering an automated marketing platform, the options available are endless.

Many of you will have come across acronyms such as SAAS  (software as a service), or IAAS (infrastructure as a service). Both are methods of renting software and hardware, rather than buying it.

This should be distinguished from hire purchase because you don’t own the hardware (or software) at the end of a fixed period. You don’t have to buy it at “fair market value” and you aren’t forced to keep paying for it for a lengthy period. Subscription is much more flexible, because you can change your plan and your product at any time.

Subscription plans may vary in their form. There may be simple monthly charges. Or you may be charged based on usage. Sometimes there may be one-time charges, or a combination of all these.

The key is transparency and flexibility. You should be able to quickly adjust your subscriptions to what you need right now. Whether that’s more cloud-based storage for your files, or more bandwidth for your website traffic, or less of something because you’re going overseas for a month.

Building better relationships

Subscription-based services are a great way for companies to build ongoing relationships with customers.

It means that a small business or home-based worker, as a client, has a lot more freedom and leverage as they can leave and move to a new provider at any time.

Subscription means that companies will be working harder to retain customers, and be more responsive to their needs and feedback. It’s no longer a “single sell” and walk away. It’s an ongoing relationship where both parties want to stay happy.

Bye bye to cost blowouts

Another advantage is easier accounting, because you know what your costs are. You don’t have to worry about suddenly getting hit with huge upgrade or replacement costs in a couple of years’ time.

Your tax returns get easier, with far fewer complicated depreciation calculations to make, as subscription payments are usually fully tax deductible. And you don’t end up stuck with cupboards full of outdated hardware or software licenses.

Getting better service

The 20th century was about products, and buying once, and not expecting to see a customer again for many years. Businesses and consumers bought boxed products:  VHS tapes, vinyl records, external hard drives, software CDs, newspapers. Go and look in your garage or loft, and you can guarantee there are boxes of products there that no one buys any more, only rents.

The 21st century is about buying services, and nurturing customer relationships. You listen to a stream of mp3s from your subscription music services, while reading The Economist online, backing up your files to Dropbox in the background.

The Subscription Economy is a swifter, smarter, more seamless world.

You may not have noticed as it crept up but you only need to look back 10 years to see how mobile and online technology has infiltrated into many aspects of the SMB workplace. Online marketing, holding your whole customer list in the palm of your hand, instant access to cloud applications, email while on the road and taking orders 24 x 7 through your website are just some examples of things we now take for granted.

Even though we have come so far already, we are not done yet, not by a long shot. In fact, we are merely scratching the surface when it comes to how SMBs will be able to leverage technology to boost profitability and agility. Just imagine the potential when all your customers, partners and employees are connected to you with consistent broadband spanning the whole country.

While exciting as this transformation may be, there are pitfalls to avoid and new threats to the anticipated benefits will emerge. Don’t think that just because you are not a multi-national corporation that you are not a target. As an SMB you are actually right in the firing line. Late last year, researchers at Trend Micro uncovered evidence that the IT infrastructure of Australian SMBs was specifically targeted by cyber criminals. They were able to load malicious software on the PCs of over 3000 small businesses for the purpose of potentially conducting a range of underhanded activities such as click fraud, sending spam and launching cyber-attacks against other organisations.

What makes small businesses particularly attractive to cyber criminals? Mainly it’s the combination of the fact that most SMBs do not have dedicated IT security resources and they have a diverse connected network of PCs and mobile workers with access to valuable information. Add to this equation that many SMBs conduct business with larger companies and government departments and thus make a nice springboard into bigger and better attacks and you should now be able to see why you might be a nice carrot for the bad guys.

So what are some specific security trends you need to be on the lookout for?

1.     Wider choice of computing platforms – no longer is it just a choice between Mac or PC.
People can chose from range of platforms and devices that best meets individual needs. For an SMB this means that your users are accessing your IT services and data from different types of devices, each with its own set of security challenges, which can prove to be a minefield to keep track of.

2.     Data breaches are increasing and will impact data stored on local servers as well as in the cloud.
The cloud is just another option for infrastructure and application delivery so take the time to understand the risks of both options then take actions to mitigate the risks that may be present. The last thing you need is to feature in the latest data breach headline.

3.     Cybercriminals will heavily abuse legitimate cloud services.
For cybercriminals, cloud computing is merely another technology to abuse. SMBs may find it hard to block malicious activity since it may occur within legitimate cloud services. Cloud service providers may do their part in getting rid of certain malicious activity but it will not stop cybercriminals from abusing the services.

4.     Mobile phones are now under attack.
Just think how much data you can store on a modern smartphone and the number of online services that people access with them and you will soon realise that they have to be well and truly on the radar of cybercriminals. Trend Micro estimates that this year on the Android platform alone, there will be over one million pieces of malicious software discovered. Mobile platforms are now as powerful and as functional as PCs therefore it stands to reason that they will be attacked like them too.

5.     Conventional malware threats will gradually evolve, building on what has been learned in previous attacks.
Added sophistication means that attacks are more targeted than ever before, resulting in higher “success” rates than ever before. People are often shown attack emails that are crafted for them, specifically meaning they are far more likely to click on the link or attachment.

We are also seeing the NBN gaining traction among average Australians who recognise the benefits of next generation internet. Admittedly, it is still early days for the broadband network, with the rollout scheduled for completion in 2020. There has already been a good uptake however, with over 24,000 Australians currently using the NBN and this is set to rise as more than 2.5 million premises are connected over the next three years. Breaking up age-old monopolies in the telco space, the NBN will create more competition at retail and wholesale level, which ultimately benefits consumers and businesses.

Some of the other key trends we are expecting to see in 2013 include:

1. BYOD (Bring-Your-Own-Device) phenomenon accelerates
Driven by 4G / LTE, mobile apps and services are increasingly moving into the cloud, devices are becoming more personalised, and moving towards being a tool for both personal and work use on the one device. At the same time, businesses seek the flexibility and cost savings of VoIP, as traditional deskbound working patterns are gradually being replaced with remote / telecommuting style arrangements. We are not only expecting to see more mobile devices connecting to enterprise-grade VoIP services, but we also expect mobile numbers to finally become fully portable, just as we have recently seen in the fixed line market, where lifting restrictions on the portability of geographic numbers removed a significant barrier to changing providers.

2. Over-The-Top alleviates cloud complexity
Over-the-Top (OTT) refers to a broad range of cloud services that run on internet connected devices, ranging from email and anti-virus to voice and video streaming. While OTT apps thrive in the consumer space, businesses are grappling with the complexity that multiple service providers – each with their own billing mechanism and support system – impose on their already stretched IT and finance resources. Rather than having to deal with 20 individual providers, many seek a one-stop-shop that covers most of their communication needs, providing a single point of customer support and one consolidated monthly bill. By opting for a single provider that bundles connectivity and OTT services, organisations can also eliminate the need for costly technical integration between applications, avoiding data siloes in the cloud.

3. Do-It-Yourself (DIY) comms grows in popularity
While consumers and businesses alike look for providers with comprehensive service offerings, they increasingly reject rigid plans and bundles that assume that one size fits all. Rather, we are expecting to see customers mix and match the communications services, software apps and hardware products they really need. For example, light internet users, who mostly use the internet for email, internet browsing and social networking, may not need the maximum speed and download allowances the NBN can deliver, but can reap significant cost savings from NBN-enabled VoIP.

Innovation is a term that is bandied around quite a lot. Businesses large and small know it is a necessity but few get it right. For large businesses, there’s more room for trial and error and costly mistakes can be absorbed. For smaller businesses, the margin for error is a lot finer and more often than not, the old adage, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ rings true.

A lot of opportunities in today’s digital age also come from exploiting new technologies like mobile apps and social media, an area many SMBs already struggle to keep-up with.

The statistics

In this context, it’s perfectly understandable that few if any small business feels they necessarily have the time, resources or tech know-how to turn an idea into reality. The latest government statistics on Australian Small Businesses are quite telling. Only 30 percent of micro businesses (employing up to four people) undertook an innovative activity. This rises to 62 percent for medium businesses and 66 percent for large businesses. When asked what the typical barriers to innovation were, smaller businesses typically cited a lack of funds, skills and/or the actual cost involved in implementing said innovation.

How then should smaller companies realistically approach innovation – particularly in the digital age?

Collaboration is the key to innovation

The news is not all bad. The same set of government statistics suggests collaboration is the golden key. Where collaborative agreements are in place, a higher proportion of smaller businesses have been shown to increase the number of products and services they provide, as well as improving their overall productivity and profitability.

In hindsight, this seems quite logical. The reality for most small businesses is that they are unlikely to ever have the combination of time, skills or resources necessary to devote to an innovation. Partnering can help fill in potential gaps and amplify business outcomes. Where that gap involves the added complexity of technology, collaboration is arguably even more potent.

Practical tips for SMBs looking to innovate

Here are a few practical tips for SMBs looking to get started:

• If you are short of new ideas, talk to your customers and suppliers. Ideas for innovation often come from within the same industry.
• Most new products fail, regardless of how great it is. As a first step, companies should spend time considering how an innovation will fit into their existing business and potentially compete in the market place.
• For SMBs looking for rapid results, be realistic about what you can and can’t do. Find a good partner that can help fill in the gaps. Ideally it’s someone also willing to learn about and understand your business.
• To be innovative is to do something that has never been done before. Not all innovations however require a ‘Big Bang’ approach. Many can be undertaken incrementally – one step at a time. This not only reduces overall risk, it helps you test some basic assumptions behind the idea as you go.

For many smaller businesses, innovation is a well known and understood priority. With limited time, skills and resources however, it is a challenge at the best of times. SMBs looking for results should seriously consider collaboration as a means to addressing the gap between theory and practice – especially in today’s fast moving digital age.

Because the Cloud offers far more than simply reducing costs. It’s also about using internet and data centre infrastructure to improve business and sales processes. And it’s not just about where you store your data, but about enabling that data from anywhere. We’ve seen the beginnings of this with retail but it’s going to transform every business model.

Disrupting the old order

Building Cloud-based sales and business processes makes small businesses incredibly disruptive and presents a great opportunity to disrupt large multinationals as they continue to write off their large, slow, in-premise infrastructure.

Disruption in any market, whether it be the deregulation of the telecommunications market or the advent of the internet and social media, spurs on innovation and business models, and always shortly after, a great market for resellers.

For many businesses, Cloud will be a decision that they’re not going to buy their own infrastructure or host their own website. They’re outsourcing the headache of managing much of their own IT.

Hardware is still critical

Of course Cloud doesn’t mean an end to hardware. Security and privacy issues mean that businesses may choose not to host critical customer data in the Cloud, even if processes are kept there. Hybrid solutions will be a popular option.

It’s my view that if there is encouragement for innovation and the Cloud really does transform business models then the market will be driven to invest in infrastructure to support the Cloud. Infrastructure to pre-empt the technology is dangerous. It is much better to take an approach of supporting businesses that will make this transformation happen.

Need for education and encouragement

Despite prominent investment, adoption of cloud services remains sluggish and tentative in many sectors. IDC estimates that the new service delivery model only accounts for ten per cent of IT spend.

Despite the clear advantages, for some companies, operating in traditional ways for decades, Cloud is going to be a leap of faith. When you’ve invested in infrastructure for years, you have to tear out traditional mindsets along with legacy hardware.

Transitioning to Cloud

Servcorp’s own experience with Cloud has been as both a provider of Cloud services to SMBs, which we’ve been doing even before the term was coined, and as a customer of Cloud providers, as we are moving all our own back office into the Cloud. The Cloud is a natural fit for us as we manage businesses across 23 countries and 130 locations.

The transition to Cloud has at times been difficult but our overwhelming view is that it will only benefit our business.

Adopting the Cloud will enable you to make your business more efficient and do much more with a much larger market for much less cost.  The Cloud is allowing us to transform our business and the way we run it, and the way we work. It’s delivering affordability, scalability and flexibility, which is why we’re passionate that other companies should also realise these advantages.

The best way to get your website up to speed and compatible with mobile technology is through creating a mobile version of your website. This is an efficient and effective way to ensure your website is mobile ready.

A mobile version of your website means that whenever someone accesses your URL via a mobile device it can automatically bring up a page that has been specifically designed for mobile use. Another option is to have your normal website open up originally but then have a popup asking if the user would like to switch to the mobile version of the site.

Some websites make this quite easy. For example WordPress has a plugin called WP Touch that simply needs to be uploaded by the website’s administrator. Other websites will involve you having to ask the web developer to create a mobile version for you.

However, if you don’t want to create a mobile version of your website then you need to think about how easy and mobile-friendly your normal website will be. Large amounts of text, lots of images or even the use of software such as flash player can all hinder a person’s efforts to access your website via a mobile.

If any of the pages on your website are quite wordy, chances are it will be hard to read on a mobile phone’s screen. Use less copy and just highlight the main points you want to get across.

A page with a very slow loading time on mobile will turn most visitors off. If your images take a while to load up on a computer, or take up a lot of the page, think of how long it will take on a mobile and also how it will look. Sometimes mobiles will distort a page in order to fit it within the screen.

The point of accessing a website via mobile is to make everything quick and easy for the visitor – they are not going to spend time waiting for a page to load or scrolling through vast amounts of text.

Also, ensure you are linked to Google Places and Google Maps. Many people are on the go when they are using their mobile phones, which means if they are using Google maps or Google places to find businesses close by and you are not present then you have potentially lost customers.

Another point to remember is Android, the competitor of Apple’s iPhone, is owned by Google meaning Google is going to be the main technology Android owners use when looking for places and businesses close by.

Mobile is becoming one of the most popular technologies used to access the internet and is affecting more and more businesses. So the questions is, are you mobile ready?

I can already see the way we engage with customers changing. I am constantly checking email, text, mobile and social media. With new aggregation CRM tools out there – should we be investing in a social business and these new interface tools? I, for one, am interested in anything that gives me more insight into my clients and makes finding that information easier to manage.

IBM described the benefit of social business as follows:

“When you inspire your workforce to innovate and collaborate more productively, you create tangible business value. When you anticipate needs and deliver exceptional experiences, you delight your customers and create advocates. When you integrate your business processes with the right social tools, you secure a competitive advantage and pioneer new ways of doing business.”

The opportunity to collaborate, innovate, listen and create better experiences is now made easier with social tools.

Kathy Herrmann described a social business as “the model centers on engaging, collaborating, and connecting with customers, partners, employees, and other interested parties. The reason I believe that as small businesses we should adopt a social business practice is because it focuses on the customer as the central part of your business ecosystem.”

Kathy explains that social CRM or SCRM is the platform to use to narrow the focus to the customer, making them central to the business. “SCRM is all about building genuine conversations with customers.”

I think that today whether we like it or not, business is social and so integrating social tools into your business system is becoming essential. It is step one in creating better informed and smarter employees and a delivering better customer experience.

SCRM tools allow us to:

• Engage, collaborate, and create with customers, partners, and employees. Crowdsourcing is one example.
• Capture and share traditional, transactional data with the unstructured data prevalent in social conversations and stored among social networks. Having one dashboard for all communications is becoming increasingly important. We don’t just email, we text, Skype, Facebook and connect in many online portals and mediums.
• Deliver a high quality customer experience that includes at least some personalization by including contact attributes from the contact’s social profile. We have moved way beyond automated email blasts. 1:1 communication and personalising the customer experience online is now possible with technology.

Social tools are sometimes add ons to the traditional CRM platforms. I have been investigating a few over the last couple of weeks and here are my top picks for small business.

• Social listening solutions, allowing companies to monitor the public web and capture social conversations occurring about their brand, products or services. Examples include Radian6, Sysomos, Attensity, Inside View and Visible Technologies. My pick is sprout social or google alerts as a starting point for small businesses.

• Community solutions, allowing companies to engage and influence interested audiences as well as empower peer-to-peer based interaction and support. Examples are Facebook, Jive Software, and Lithium Technologies. My pick for small business is a relevant small business blog and Facebook or LinkedIn (B2B). If you are retail then, Pinterest is worth using.

• Social connectivity solutions, allowing companies to connect CRM solutions with popular social networks such as Twitter and Facebook to monitor social activity, integrate social stream data with CRM transactional data and participate in conversations with greater context. Examples are Salesforce Service Cloud, RightNow CX. Topsy, Mailchimp (Social Experience). My pick for small business is Nimble. InsideView is providing sales consultants some great intelligence for building insight and connections by leveraging your network and the web.

Benefits of social CRM tools:

1. 81% received product purchase advice from friends and followers through a social site according to ClickZ

2. Sales – empowers teams to connect with the right experts to meet client needs, connect with clients and get to know your prospects better than the competition and engage with clients and prospects in new ways resulting in 49% high client retention and 25% in quota performance according to VCC case study.

3. McKinsey’s Global Survey in 2010 says that 9 out of 10 companies report measurable benefits from social business. According to IDC  “The appetite for workspace strategies and the related requirement to review enterprise application strategies are driving the adoption in Australia of social business tools, particularly in the banking, financial services, insurance, distribution and services and government sectors.”

The tools have been adopted because of their ability to shine the light on opportunities and been used to identify target verticals where quick wins are likely and where a different go-to-market approach may be required.

To summarise: 

The starting point for small business is to have a social business strategy. It is sound to start listening to your customers, competitors and the industry to collect as much insight and data to make better business decisions. Start by listening and then engaging where your customers are. Some of the tools above will give you a heads up for very little investment in time. I use Nimble for example to see who has tweeted about me, who is connecting with me on LinkedIn or posted to my Facebook wall. It summaries all the social interaction on one dashboard. It also enables me to add in data about people from their other online profiles and fill in some blanks, which I love.

So if you want to use the information that is out there in the social business environment some of the tools above give you a great start. At the end of the day business software offers portals that allow your customers, partners and vendors to collaborate with you is no doubt the future, allowing you to get closer to your customers and partners, move quickly and seize opportunities.

Here are four reasons to attend:

1) Meet International SEOs

I met many international SEOs and those in the search industry at ISS. There were many from the US as it was being held in New York, but there were also representatives from other parts of Europe, those working agency or client side and even those working in the Middle East and Africa. Dubai has many international SEO companies, including Sekari who I met when I was in New York.

2) Learn industry updates

Webcertain organises key search professionals from the industry to present their work and the latest updates in international search. I was keen to find out how different international SEO was to national SEO. Andy Atkins-Krüger started the day with a checklist for international search success followed by Bill Hunt who spoke about developing a successful international SEO program. Many of the speakers had clear take aways which we, as the audience could go back to the office and implement straight away.

3) Discover Google does not have a monopoly everywhere

Being based in Europe or the US, everyone talks about Google and optimising for this monopoly search engine. It was therefore interesting to go to a conference and learn about the other search engines such as Yandex (for Russia) and Baidu (for China). For all the search engines, being present in not just one market, is important. For Baidu and Yandex to grow, they know they have to expand into other markets and with other partners. Yandex partners with Apple for Maps. Yandex will be the map provider for Apple devices going forward. Baidu also released their own smartphone. Many Chinese users do not have access to the internet through their desktop and can only use their mobile, therefore they will be using the Baidu search engine.

4) Expand your skills

For those looking for new opportunities outside of their domestic markets, attending international search conferences is the first step towards working overseas. For English speaking marketers, it can be difficult to work across different languages. However in countries such as Dubai and Australia, where the main business language is English, it allows people the opportunity to work in a different market without the need to learn another language.

To summarise, I wrote about the customer driving their engagement with us as small businesses and the need to engage with them in the appropriate medium. I also wanted to see some more aggregation of the listening touch-points we have via CRM/Social (SCRM), so we can get closer to our customers and use this information to be involved in their conversations.

Jump forward to 2012/13 and as Paul Greenberg states: “We are now at a point that the customers’ expectations are so great and their demands so empowered that our SCRM business strategy needs to be built around collaboration and customer engagement, not traditional operational customer management.” It is less about transaction and more about interaction.

I still see a disconnect. Customers have become more in control of how they interact with us but we are yet to make the leap of mapping our goals to that of the customer needs and concerns with the solutions our products or services provide. We don’t make their agenda important. The end result is that we are mostly transactional or commodity based businesses not partners or loved brands.

Paul Greenberg describes how we  can make the customer an intrinsic part of our business ecosystem:

“It can mean anything from customers and the company collaborating on product development, to customer suggestions on how to improve a company process, to customers helping other customers solve customer service issues, to even doing what gamers do and modifying game play using tools for scenario creation which adds value to the game. Co-creation is the ability of the company and customer to create additional value for each other – what form it takes is not always THE BIG THING.”

Co-creation is an example of where we, as small businesses, can help the engagement with our customers.

Examples of co-creation include Amazon asking customers to review books and Nike taking feedback in the design of shoes. At Threadless.com customers can send in their own t-shirt designs, which are subsequently voted on by the other customers and visitors to the site. The winning design is then printed and sold as a newly created item/product. Again, consumers have a direct participation in and influence on the final outcome of the product development process. By the way, the winning design is rewarded with a cash prize as well as other benefits. Now this concept has moved into different product offerings including iphone case design.

The four types of co-creation are:

• Club of experts: A very specific challenge is needing expertise and breakthrough ideas. Contributors are found through a selection process. Quality of input is what counts (e.g. Nokia)
• Crowd of people: Also known as Crowdsourcing. For any given challenge, there might be a person out there having a genial idea that should be given a podium. It’s the Rule of the big numbers (e.g.Threadless)
• Coalition of parties: In complex situations parties team up to share ideas and investments. Technical breakthroughs and standards often happen when multiple parties collaborate (e.g. IBM)
• Community of kindred spirits: When developing something for the greater good, a group of people with similar interests and goals can come together and create (e.g. Linux)

Chris Lawer for the P2P foundation explains why we should consider co-creation carefully as small business owners: ”Co-Creation is therefore just a natural way for organisations to help their customers meet their goals in the lifetime of use of their products. But they can only do so if they embrace a different view of value and start building back from the customer’s view of value, not the firm’s.”