The loneliness of the long-distance communicator?

Posted on by March 4, 2014

I talked in my last post (questions about technology I put to four new businesses) about the view apparently prevalent among businesswomen, in particular, that using the internet to communicate with existing and potential customers prevents them building up good personal relationships. With 10 years experience behind me of building business relationships, this view mystifies me and I’d like to explain why I think it’s just plain wrong.

The view seems to rest on the central plank that contact via email, VOIP, video conferencing, text, social networking, web form, blog comment or similar absolutely precludes real personal contact. Does the fact that you speak to colleagues (and for that matter friends and relations) on the phone mean that you don’t also arrange to meet them? Whether it’s a networking do or a jolly, going to their office or a trip together to meet a third party, you see your colleagues and clients in the flesh and in-between times use remote communications.

I think there’s also a feeling that making first contact with someone via the web has the faintly grubby feel of internet dating, or attracts a kind of snobbery. I would love to be out meeting people in the flesh all day every day, it’s my absolutely favourite thing and by far my preferred method of marketing OpenSure, but it’s simply not practical. So, we use the internet to do the networking we can’t always physically be there to do. It’s one tool among many that we all use on a daily basis, and an absolutely invaluable one for us.

I’m always shocked when I discover that someone doesn’t view the internet as vital to their business’s links to the outside world. I hope that I’m a walking refutation of that view. OpenSure prides itself on a close understanding of its clients and a good personal relationship which we base on being freely available for contact with a real human being. We find that internet comms really facilitate that for us, but they don’t take the place of getting out and meeting people. The two are not mutually exclusive.

Four questions – well, six, or maybe seven

Posted on by March 4, 2014

Last night I was lucky enough to be a judge at a contest looking for a new business to support, and what a fascinating evening it was. My brief was to find out how far the finalists exploited and engaged with technology, and due to the various natures of the businesses pitching, one question definitely didn’t fit all. The SMEs presenting to us were a cookery school, a hamper company, a soft play centre and a business consultant specialising in building corporate bridges with Asia, so each with specific needs, reliance on technology and ways to engage with the internet. These are the questions I asked them, and whether you’re a cookery school or an international business consultant or not, they’re questions it would be well worth asking yourself about your company’s online services. Oh and please don’t count the questions – when did a panellist ever stick to just one question??

I asked the first contestant “How do you use technology to attract business, or to connect with potential partners and companies that can bring you business?” The answer was very little, she did all that in person. Personal contact is vital, but she could spend all day every day doing that instead of her core business activity, so there is huge scope there that’s not being realised. It seems a common misconception that using the internet to make contact with people precludes personal contact, but in fact it’s the opposite – making contacts online often leads to personal and durable business relationships.

I snuck in another question, or two run together just to make the most of it. “Are you confident you’re using technology to the maximum benefit of your business, and are you confident also that you can manage the technology your company relies on or do you have a good relationship with someone who can?“. The contestant felt that as she had a website she was using technology, albeit at a distance as it wasn’t an area of great interest. That’s incredibly common, and precisely why companies like OpenSure exist, to deal with the boring tecchy side of things, while business owners get on with what they do best.

To the next finalist I posed the question “Given how crucial online sales are to your business, are you confident that your online services are in good hands and working in the best interests of your business?“. She felt that side of things was all fine, but didn’t engage with it greatly herself, as she was another businesswoman with the view that it got in the way of ‘proper’ business relationships. I feel another article coming on as this is such a common theme.

The next finalist didn’t mention technology at all in her presentation, so I asked the question “How do you feel online services can make a signifiant difference and contribution to your business?“. This was the third contestant running that didn’t want to focus on her website or online services of any description as it wasn’t how business had come her way to date. We know the feeling, much of our business comes through word of mouth and it’s the best way, but this businesses in particular could exploit the internet to huge advantage, especially for maximising communications with the other side of the world across time zones and considerable language barriers.

I asked the final contestants “Do you view technology as a necessary evil or something that can help? Is it a help or a hindrance?“, which was two questions really but I got away with it. It was quite a relief to hear a contestant talk positively about use of the internet both in the services they provided and in running their own business, but they were the exception that proved the rule, and demonstrates me to just how much progress remains to be made in opening the eyes of SMEs in the contribution online srvices can make to the success of their businesses.

Redundant Army

Posted on by January 13, 2014

We saw this article on ByteStart last week about the next wave of business entrepreneurs, or ‘Essentialpreneurs’ as the author Tim Latham dubs them. This group is typically characterised by redundancy and meagre prospects of re-employment, and in our view brings with it shedloads of business experience and a few firm ideas about what the new businesses will deliver, and how. We had already identified this group as we believe open source can make a significant contribution to the start-ups just waiting to happen. We termed this group The Redundant Army, and this is the article we wrote on the subject:

Changes to the UK economy over the next few years will inevitably mean massive job cuts and redundancy, freeing up a huge pool of talent to create new businesses. It’s unlikely this new wave will want to stick with the old ways of doing things: it will be looking for newer and better ways of working, a better work/life balance and a more human-friendly approach to business. Large faceless businesses that place little or no importance on the individual customer will find themselves competing with new and dynamic companies that leverage the democracy of the internet.

Kevin Dontenville, founder of OpenSure and with a history of corporate IT management and directorships, knows about balancing work and home life and for the last 15 years has been using Open Source Software to achieve that balance. “I started OpenSure because I think I understand how people starting out in a new venture feel. There is excitement and fear as all the pressures and risks of keeping the new venture alive become very real. At worst it can overwhelm you as you juggle all the disparate demands. I know that the Web or IT need not be one of those demands.”

The most common barrier to exploiting the web and its social and business benefits is the initial cost, both in time and money, particularly for non-technical users and new start-up companies. Anyone can have a website and that door to their business can be as easy to open as any other on the web, but a decent custom-built website with all the services a modern web 2.0 business needs is still quoted from web designers at £8,000-£12,000. That level of investment can be a daunting prospect, or simply a show-stopper. Cheap, cheerful and pseudo-‘free’ DIY solutions bragging about numbers of GB aren’t safe pairs of hands for new business owners sinking their redundancy money on a new venture.

Until recently, the only option to setting up business internet services involved buying into a product that tied an entire business to a software house more concerned with locking companies in to their model than servicing business needs. Now, however, every business has access to a wealth of tremendously powerful software which is free, efficient and flexible – the Open Source Software (OSS) that Kevin has used to such effect. The problem for most companies is that they don’t have the technical skills to get the full benefit of OSS, or the time to spend acquiring the requisite skills.

OSS is not some weird hippy movement but simply a different approach to the development of software, significantly one which requires no license fees. In many ways it pre-dates the proprietary (ie license-based) model most people are used to. Essentially, OSS gets the developer much closer to the user, ensuring the software meets every day real and practical needs. This can present the developers with a problem: how do they put food on the table when no one pays for the software? In the past this has been achieved in several ways: by donations, a commercial resale license, sponsorship, paid for support contracts or within academic or government projects.

Here OpenSure also sees it has a significant role in helping to bridge the gap between the communities of developers, users, and money. Kevin describes it as completing the circle, “I know there needs to be a way for open source projects to generate income for themselves, but some of the ways they have approached this have eroded the trust and link with their communities. Most developers want to code and develop software, they don’t want to run competing hosted services nor start charging for support to millions of users to the detriment of the development model.”

In order to support these vital developers, OpenSure will donate 35% of its profits to sponsor ongoing development to projects it uses. Offering financial and userbase support to projects means everyone keeps on doing what they do best: OpenSure hosts and manages the technology, the developers improve the software to meet users’ needs, and users get a high standard of free software plus a fully managed service for far less than most would spend on license fees alone. Brian Rixon, head of finance at OpenSure, says “In the future, we won’t stop at the 35%. We will also award finance and services to new startup projects and collaborate with other parties to help get larger initiatives to happen”.

Will it all pan out as we expect? Can a vision like OpenSure succeed in a spin- and marketing-led Web 2.0 world? Kevin Dontenville sums it up like this, “The deciding factor as to whether this will work is going to rest on the ability of OpenSure to deliver the great service we’re passionate about, as we deliberately have no proprietary license, secret file formats or lock-in contracts to tie customers to us. To paraphrase a saying, if you love your customers, set them free!”.