Business in General blog

We’ve written before about disaster recovery plans, and whether disaster recovery is even possible when your data is in the cloud. You might think we’d be safe from real disasters here in the Pacific Northwest; the reports we’re seeing today about impending hurricanes and oil rig explosions are all happening far away.

But a little event only a block or two from our office reminded us why we no longer host our websites here in our building, and reinforced our decision to backup data to both local and distant digital drives:

Exploding manhole covers

What’s your company’s data backup and recovery plan? How would you deal with losing power – or even losing your physical office – if the fire were on your street?

Sara Prentice Manela
Editor

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Tags: disaster, disaster plan, disaster recovery, recovery
Posted under Small Business on September 2nd, 2010 | No Comments »

Want to know a secret to success?

Make sure your website works.

Honestly!

The impression a customer or client gets when they realize links are broken or words are misspelled is less than great. And all those problems can say things about your business you might not want.  And what it’s saying isn’t good.

Quality assurance is a must for any website. Small, medium or large. Service or product. Even if it’s a personal blog.

For instance, I was on a blog earlier this week and worked for a long time to craft an answer to the thoughtful piece I’d just read, only to find this:

Enter the code below. Code? What code? There’s just a lot of dots. There’s not even a refresh button to allow me to get a new code. Or… any code at all!

It’s things like this that bring a customer to a bad experience with your website and with your company.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that since you’ve checked everything over once, it’s fine. Constantly check for broken or changed sections. If you’ve made an update, even if it’s a small adjustment, make sure you’ve covered the site to check for new errors.

In the long run, it will be worth the time you spend.

‘Chelle Parmele
Social Media Marketing Manager – Palo Alto Software

You should follow us on twitter here

Tags: QA, website
Posted under General, Small Business, Success on August 26th, 2010 | No Comments »

Have a great idea for something people want, but not sure how to make money from it? Consider the following business models:

Freemium
If what you’ve got is really great, give it away. No, seriously. Let them have a taste, build a relationship with them, and only then offer an upgraded paid experience. Maybe the free version comes with adverts, or the paid version has extra features that they’ll want once they really start using the service. This model works best where customer acquisition costs are high, but the marginal cost of serving an extra customer is low.

Add-Ons
Have you bought an airline ticket lately? If you bought it online, you probably saw some great low prices… prices which had nothing to do with the eventual amount you paid after fees, taxes, surcharges, etc. For a less rancorous example, consider a night out at the movies. Did you know that the theater makes more money from popcorn and sweets than from the ticket price?

Image from Scott Adams, Dilbert

Somali Pirate business model!
OK, don’t really consider this for yourself, but even pirates have a system for generating value. Pirates are great at creating a problem and then solving it (ransom, “protection,” etc.). If you’re not meeting an existing need, perhaps you are creating a new one, or pointing out a need that your customers don’t even know they have, until you show up with your parrot and your eye-patch… kidding.

Don’t get stuck getting your business started just because it doesn’t fit neatly into an existing, familiar, business model. The best new businesses out there are innovating in on everything from product and service offerings to pricing structures to customer relationships. If you can imagine it, you can do it.

Find more examples of effective business models at Bplans.co.uk.

-Sara Manela

You should follow us on twitter here

Tags: business model, business planning
Posted under Startup Business, Strategy on August 24th, 2010 | No Comments »

Over 100 incoming emails a day.
Four customer service representatives.
One inbox and one workstation set up to receive all the messages.

How does a company with that set up and that volume of email make sure that every customer gets responded to quickly? And that everyone is clear who ‘owns’ each conversation, from the initial contact through resolution? How do you make musical chairs an efficient part of your customer service workflow?

Those are questions Taran Lent, vice president and founder of CardSmith, had to address. A campus ID card payment solutions company, CardSmith serves educational institutions, campus service providers, as well as cardholders and closed loop communities nationwide. Card holders don’t need to have cash to get goods or services on campus, and campuses don’t have the hassle or expense of creating their own proprietary card systems. CardSmith is the market’s only software as a service provider.

“The biggest challenge for us,” says Lent about his email situation,  was “not having a multi-user system and keeping track of which agent ‘owned’ a particular message.”

The solution was Email Center Pro. Students are their primary demographic, says Lent, and they prefer contacting customer service through email. “Using Email Center Pro helps make us relevant and responsive to this need,” he says.

“Email Center Pro is great.  It was a snap to implement and to get up and running,” he says. “Now we can have multiple agents managing inbound service requests, and we have very clear tracking and reporting regarding our performance and resolution of cases.” Of all the features that make Email Center Pro so valuable to his organization, Lent says “the multi-user and assign features are our favorites.”

According to Lent, the benefits of Email Center are many. “It’s hosted, easy to use, and affordable. If you take your email care operations seriously, and need a single solution to support many mail boxes with multi-agent access and tracking, then Email Center Pro is what you need.”

Jay Snider
Palo Alto Software

You should follow us on twitter here

Tags: Email Center Pro, success story, testimonial
Posted under Email Center Pro, General, Success on August 17th, 2010 | No Comments »

It’s a lot more expensive to get new customers than to keep the ones you have, so why not take advantage of that? Business models that create brand loyalty or have high switching costs help you keep the customers you get.

Bait and Hook
Ever noticed that you spend far more on razor blades than on the razor? Or that laser printer which sounded like such a good deal, but requires expensive ink cartridge refills? Companies using the bait and hook model make most of their money from components rather than the initial sale.

So long as the cost to the customer to switch to a different brand is higher than the periodic outlay for new components, most customers will stay with your brand. And if it’s a good quality product or service, you can bet they will tell themselves they’re staying because they LIKE it. Kind of makes you wonder what would happen if petrol companies started giving away cars for free. Cars that only work with their particular brand of gasoline, of course.

Franchise
McDonald’s, Starbuck’s, Tesco (for Brits). Immediately, you can visualize the sign, and have certain feelings about the brand. A franchise model leverages a customer’s desire for the familiar to create loyalties across towns, and even across countries. By using the same lighting, signage, quality, and (sometimes) pricing in each location, the franchise reassures customers that they really can get what they expect, whether they are across the street or across the world.

Subscriptions
Newspapers and magazines know how this works, and Saas (Software as a service) businesses are figuring it out. Offer someone a discount to sign up for a lengthy contract, instead of buying piecemeal, and take in that revenue every month. Of course, there are some pitfalls. Dharmesh Shah of OnStartups warns that with a subscription model, you are financing your customers - you provide the service, and fund all the sales and marketing upfront, and only get paid in little chunks over time. If you don’t keep customers long enough to recoup your acquisition costs, you’re losing money.

If you don’t have customer loyalty built into your business model, you should. Impress the heck out of them. Keep them coming back for more and referring their friends. It’s good for your business, and it’s good for your customers.

Find more examples of effective business models at Bplans.co.uk.

-Sara Manela

You should follow us on twitter here

Tags: business model, business planning
Posted under Strategy on August 16th, 2010 | 1 Comment »

The BBC World News – Business Daily speaks with Palo Alto Software CEO, Sabrina Parsons about family succession.

The conversation touches on the topics of “good and bad nepotism” and the worry that if family-run businesses don’t pass down from parent to child, the outcome for the business can in some cases be quite dire.

Both Tim and Sabrina have talked extensively about this topic before, check out their posts Serendipity Succession, Father and Child and Nepotism vs. Family Business.  It’s nice to hear a refresher on the preconceived notions of a daughter stepping into her father’s shoes and how that has personally impacted Sabrina since taking over the company.

Sabrina’s interview starts around the 9:20 mark.

BBC Podcasts – Business Daily News with Steve Evans – Nanny State or caring government? Aug 13, 2010

‘Chelle Parmele
Social Media Marketing Manager

You should follow us on twitter here

Tags: BBCWorld News, family business, Family Succession, palo alto software, sabrina parsons
Posted under Small Business on August 13th, 2010 | No Comments »

So, maybe you’ve got some nifty new idea for generating value for your customers, or your company. Why bother writing it down, outlining it in detail, or even trying to explain it?

1. Your investors and lenders
If you’re asking for money, you’d better be able to show how it will be used, how it will generate more money, and how your use of the money is better than other opportunities an investor has.

2. Your employees
Your employees are used to doing things one way. Introduce a new product, a new customer base, or even a new logo and you’ve got some explanation to do. Introduce a new business model – the underlying foundation of how your business operates – and you have a lot of re-education on your hands. You need to be able to talk about why you’re switching, how their roles are changing, and what success looks like for each of them.

3. Your customers
Every interaction a customer has with you or your brand is part of your marketing. Your customers should be able to understand how you give them something of great value, and how you get compensated for this, whether the message is implied in the phone manners of your sales staff, or spelled out in a license agreement.

4. You
You can’t understand your real competition or opportunities if you don’t fully understand your business model. A razor-and-razor-blades model creates a different kind of customer loyalty than a franchise model. A subscription model, like a newspaper, has different competition from substitutes than an affiliate model. Write it down. Spell it out. Poke holes in it, and invite others to do so. Rework, rethink, and keep planning as you test out what your business model can do for you and your customers.

Read more about how to use your business model at Bplans.co.uk

You should follow us on twitter here

Tags: business model, business planning
Posted under Strategy on August 3rd, 2010 | 1 Comment »

“Entrepreneurship is 99% hustle and 1% good ideas.”
-Joe Fernandez, Founder of Klout.com

At some point in your life, you are going to come up with a good idea. A really good idea. One of those “Million Dollar” ideas.

From the moment you think of this really great idea, you’re going to obsess over it. Ponder it. Adjust it. Hone it. And as you do, you’ll get more and more excited about how it’s going to revolutionize how the world looks at everything. It’s going to make the invention of sliced bread a mere footnote in the history books of inventions.

You’re really, really jazzed about this idea!!

To you, this idea is priceless. Its value defies measurability. Someone, somewhere is going to pay you millions and millions for this idea.

You’re sure. You’re positive. It’s going to happen.

Here’s the problem. An idea, rarely, makes money. Joe from Klout.com has got the formula right. Your great idea is still great, but unless you put in the work required to make it a great business… it will always  be just a great idea.

And nothing more.

‘Chelle Parmele
Social Media Marketing Manager
Palo Alto Software

You should follow us on twitter here

Tags: great ideas, hard work, Success
Posted under General Business Planning on July 30th, 2010 | No Comments »

A business model is a description of how your business intends to operate and make money. Sounds simple, right?

For most companies, the business model used to look like this: I buy X, add some value to it, and sell it as Y. If I sell it for more money than the cost of buying the raw materials and working my magic on it (which includes paying employees, operating my store, etc.), then I make a profit.

But innovative business models go beyond this simple formula to create customer loyalty, make value in unusual ways, and define new products or services that people didn’t know they needed. Think of the famous Gillette example – you pay once for the razor, but keep coming back for the razor blades. That was business model innovation. And it’s still an important part of business strategy.

Or, take newspapers: they make value for readers by creating or packaging information, and they make value for advertisers by serving up an audience of qualified prospects (the newspaper’s subscribers).

Today’s business model innovators are creating value through social media, and leveraging their expertise to turn themselves into product evangelists.

So what about you? How will you create value for your company and your customers?

Read more about optimizing your business model at Bplans.co.uk

You should follow us on twitter here

Tags: business model, business planning
Posted under Strategy on July 30th, 2010 | No Comments »

Blogs and bloggers come and go. But when you have the right combination of dedication, subject knowledge, and the writing chops to sit down and do it day after day, a blog emerges that stands the test of time.

Over at Planning Startups Stories today, Tim Berry published his 1,000th post on “business planning, starting and growing your business, and having a life in the meantime.” He started the blog in 2006, but doesn’t count that year since he only did a dozen posts. A dozen posts? That’s the sum total lifespan of so many blogs that I’m going to suggest that Tim count those in his history. Besides, without them today’s post wouldn’t be live until at least August 3.

If you have a blog or are interested in blogging, head over to Tim’s site today and read his 10 Blogging Tips. With a thousand posts there,  another thousand or so under his belt on his other blogs and as a guest blogger… the man knows what he’s talking about. You might learn a thing or two.

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Tags: blog posts, blogging, social media, Tim Berry
Posted under social media on July 21st, 2010 | No Comments »