In times like these every business has to focus on productivity. With people (your customers) closing their wallets and reducing their spending, small business owners have to take the approach of focusing on how they can better utilise their time and reduce costs.

The area where every tradesperson can benefit is in the process of invoicing their customers and the collection of cash (reducing your debt). Most of us dislike doing admin and paperwork so you’re not alone, however being efficient in this area will really start to improve your business.

What can you do about it?

Look at your processes. Most businesses don’t have good processes around capturing key information, raising invoices or getting the cash into the bank.  Improving processes is hard but without a system even the best solutions won’t benefit you.  A common phrase is “crap in crap ou”!”

The steps to improving your systems are;

1. Understand and acknowledge what you are currently doing
2. Look at how you can improve the way you do your paperwork
3. Review ways to capture the key information that your business needs
4. Compare yourself against your peers, what are others doing
5. Work out what will work for your business, not everything works for everyone
6. Get help if you need, it might cost you but the long term benefits far outweigh the cost
7. Implement the new system

Once you have this worked out you can start looking at the tools in the marketplace, and trust me there are plenty.

The hardest thing for a business owner is not too get overwhelmed by the options. Do your homework all good solutions now have a trial period that will allow you to have a good look at what the product can do, what is looks like and how intuitive it is. Second have a look at who else is using it; while I personally think this can be misleading it is always nice to check that you are not using a product outside of its core purpose.

Lastly don’t underestimate how big an impact good systems can have on your business. Sometimes as small business owners we think its not that important, rest assured if you can get your business operating efficiently and your debtors reduced you will most certainly notice the difference, mostly in your personal life.

I just read a very interesting article on OS News about the potential for Safari to be the next IE6.  The author is exploring a future where Apple deliberately holds back on giving Safari certain features, especially on mobile phones and tablets.  Give it a read:

 http://www.osnews.com/story/23378/Will_Apple_Embrace_the_Web_No_

The argument is essentially that the web, being a platform that by its nature encourages platform independence, is a problem for Apple (and for Microsoft too).  Apple’s business model revolves around selling hardware and content, and it does this by making iTunes an exclusive hub.  All applications, music, videos and books that you want as a user has to come through it.  If the browser was allowed to become so fast and so integrated with the native operating system that you could do everything with a great user experience that native apps can do, then suddenly Apple’s content kingdom falls apart.  It’s not difficult to see the truth in this argument, and the implications it has.

I think we’re fortunate to have so much competition in the mobile space at the moment such that Apple can’t easily have an iPhone / iTunes monopoly – if that happened then yeah, Safari probably would be the next IE6 and we’d all be held hostage to the iTunes ecosystem.

The great thing about Google is that its business model ensures that it will continue to push the web as a platform.  With the Chrome browser, Google is pushing javascript to its speed limits (http://asserttrue.blogspot.com/2010/05/chrome-5-aces-browser-benchmarks.html), so much so that it makes IE8 look like an elephant with concrete feet, and thanks to Firefox, Google and Apple, HTML5 and CSS3 are improving the presentation layer radically.  

It’s now the “hooks” into the underlying native OS that future web browsers need (like access to the cameras, motion tracking, 3D graphics acceleration libraries, contacts/phone/sms, etc) to enable the next generation of web applications.  Frameworks like PhoneGap are solving this to some extent and we will no doubt see Google give us the kitchen sink with Chrome and Android.   But will we see Microsoft and Apple step up to the plate on the iPhone or Windows Phone 7?  I tend to doubt it.

It is an interesting time in the world of mobile phones, smartphone use is increasing as numbers of consumers move to a phone capable of browsing the web, email, and of course the now growing desire for apps. Thanks to our friends at Apple the world is now mad keen for next to useless apps on their devices. Now that is probably a bit harsh of course but of all the people I know they use about 2 apps (maps & directories) regularly the rest are cute little apps.

The question I ask is where and when are people going to move on mass to using their mobile phone as a business productivity tool!

Anyhow I digress, the real reason I am writing this is because it was with great pleasure that I received word from our developers that we now have Rype working on Google Android. A few tweaks to our Webkit version initially developed for the iPhone and we have it. 

This has been our biggest challenge at Rype, choosing where to invest. We want to be a native application on any many devices as we can but choosing which ones is hard. The market is changing rapidly and with Rype being a business productivity tool we are watching with interest to see where our market heads.

Our primary markets of trade based business people, tend to be inclined towards the iphone hence why we went there early. However the team at Rype are quietly backing Google Android to make a significant dent in Apple’s market share due to its open nature.

Of course we are still firmly camped in the Windows Mobile sector and find it very interesting that everyone is quietly forgetting about the huge number of Windows Mobile devices in the marketplace. I bet you the team at Microsoft are secretly liking the underdog tag in this space!

So now that we are running on Android we are exciting about watching what Google and the phone manufacturers push to market in the coming months. I for one plan on grabbing an HTC Magic as soon as I can.

Google’s “Android” operating system is certainly getting it’s fair share of rosy coloured predications lately. The latest comes from an analyst at Gartner who predicts that Android will overtake the iPhone, Blackberry and Windows Mobile within 3 years:

http://www.brighthand.com/default.asp?newsID=15744&news=Android+iPhone+Windows+Mobile+BlackBerry+webOS

Overtaking Windows Mobile isn’t hard to imagine, especially if Microsoft can’t make Windows Mobile 7 radically better than what they have at the moment, but overtaking Apple in just 3 years is going to be a pretty big challenge

The iPhone is the bomb as far as consumer space smartphones go. It’s sexy, slick, delivers a fantastic user experience and has a huge and thriving developer base. A testament to this is the fact that even my wife, the most vehement of Apple haters likes “the jesus phone” and wants one.

The iPhone’s market share arrived at where it is today in no small part by Apple exploiting the huge momentum of the iPod – millions of happy iPod users make for a pretty easy upsell target. Not to mention that Apple know a trick or two when it comes to marketing products to consumers.

Google’s strategy is very different – they’re trying to become the Microsoft of the smartphone world by offering an operating system that other companies can license and distribute. The problem is, to overtake Apple they need to have a product that is better than the iPhone in some way that matters. Professor Douglas Rushkoff believes that consumers will see the benefits of the “openness” of Android:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-10-06/googles-better-iphone/?cid=hp:beastoriginalsR1

but my gut feeling is that the average Joe couldn’t give a rats about openness. Consumers want ease of use, they want fashion, any they want to be connected with their friends. In what way Google can trump Apple in these factors is really hard to say and I’m not convinced they can. However, I think Google can steal market share from Microsoft, Nokia and perhaps RIM, and who knows, maybe that will be enough to trump Apple in marketshare anyway. It’s certainly going to be an interesting next few years.

To finish off this blog entry I’d like to address his royal worshipfulness Steve Jobs personally: Steve, untie the iPhone from the Mac in regards to development already! As a developer I can’t tell you how much it pisses me off that I have to buy a Mac to develop for the iPhone. I love the iPhone but I don’t want a Mac and it’s enough to make me want to buy the Palm Pre instead. Recognise the iPhone as a platform in it’s own right and make it as easy as possible for developers everywhere to write apps for it. Parents have to let go of their children if they are to grow up.

I received an email from an online accounting system the other day…one I have been following for sometime now (winweb.co.uk).

It was a short newsletter that talked about bootstrapping! Now this was a term I wasn’t that familiar with, the concept definitely but I didn’t know someone had coined a term for it.

Now as defined by these guys, “bootstrapping” means you start your business without external financial help or investment in other words you grow organically with the money you earn reinvesting it into your business in order to grow.

I thought about this and having had the benefit of 18 months working in a boutique private equity firm, it pulled me back to reality and reminded me that this is how most people start their businesses. They start with a great idea and just work away growing when and where they can afford it.

This works and is a great approach as it really gets you focused, ensures you keep running the operation at a minimum cost, and forces you to be innovative in your approach to marketing, sales & relationships. It also allows you to maintain in control of your business by not having to give away the company to raise cash (and this is very important).

On the flipside however in the long term its means you are consistently under capitalised and as such presents the problems of managing growth and seizing opportunities. 

So where is the middle ground on this?

Can you “bootstrap” your business while ensuring you have enough capital to work to the plan you have?

It’s a frustration for every small business owner I am sure, me included. You want to market in the right channels but this costs more than you have to spend, without marketing you can’t tell your potential customers about your business etc… and the cycle starts.

The result of this I believe has a significant impact on the success & development of so many good ideas.  Having spent 10 years selling to small and medium businesses (so these are the ones that get off the ground) so many are under capitalised and therefore lack the ability to grow as they would probably like, it also means that the business owner is trapped doing the work (i.e. can’t afford to hire the right person to manage it) rather than planning where the business should be going and how it is going to get there.

It’s a hard slog down the road for a small business but the best bit is that there are huge numbers of people walking beside you. It pays to keep up with thoughts and ideas from businesses like WinWeb as it reminds you of this. I also think these guys are doing a great job with their blog to provide advice and ideas to other small businesses (including their customers).

So a great term to define what we all do every day and some knowledge that it’s a road well travelled.  So now for signing up another customer…

We were pleasantly surprised to notice a new source of traffic in our web tracking stats recently. A new service  had published a directory in the mobility space of which we were included.

SoftwareShortlist.com is a service to help small businesses find the right software. The website www.softwareshortlist.com has a smart selection tool that allows you to build a shortlist of suitable products based on your specifications. This is in addition to a series of directory listings where you can browse comprehensive lists of products.

SoftwareShortlist takes an independent perspective on your business, conducts robust reviews of available software globally, and helps match you up with a shortlist of relevant solutions.

As a small business ourselves we really respect this sort of service. Having spent the last 10 years in accounting & ERP software having an unbiased tool to help you find a shortlist is hugely valuable in filtering out all the clutter in the market. In effect the guys at SoftwareShortlist have done it for you.

Good luck guys and keep up the great work. We will follow you with interest!

If your interested I found this… about SOFTWARESHORTLIST:

SoftwareShortlist.com is owned and operated by Software Shortlist Pty Ltd (ACN: 129 547 888), a privately held company based in Melbourne, Australia. Our registered address is 4 Grenhilda Road, Rosanna, Victoria 3084, Australia.  The company was previously known as Trigora Pty Ltd, and was founded in February 2008 by Craig Westcott and Xavier Russo.  

I was very pleased this morning when I read that Palm’s new WebOS platform is selling well (http://www.palminfocenter.com/news/9899/palm-reports-q1-fy-2010-results/).  In comparison to the same quarter last year, Palm has more than doubled their quarterly unit sales to 823k since the Palm Pre went on sale.  When you consider that this next quarter should see Palm selling in the United Kingdom and Europe with both CDMA and GSM versions and that Palm has just began selling the Pre in Canada, these figures may well double again in 3 months, putting Palm well and truly back in the smartphone game and on the way to financial recovery.

Simultaneously there’s a dark cloud hanging over Windows Mobile at the moment, with companies  like Motorola and HTC shifting their emphasis to Android.  It’s not hard to figure out why.  Android is a responsive and cutting edge operating system with a modern web browser, whilst Windows Mobile feels like it hasn’t really improved since 2003.   I wonder if this quote from Bill Gates is haunting Microsoft at the moment:

“In this business, by the time you realize you’re in trouble, it’s too late to save yourself. Unless you’re running scared all the time, you’re gone.”

Microsoft were clearly not running scared before the iPhone was released.  I bet they are now.
I have no doubt that Microsoft will respond to the challenge that Apple, Google, Palm and Nokia are presenting, but it’s probably going to be late 2010 before Microsoft will have had time to react with Windows Mobile 7.

The situation is a bit frustrating to us here at Rype because our key mobile platform at the moment is Windows Mobile.  Windows Mobile will return as a strong contender, of that much I have no doubt, but in the mean time we’ll need to find ways to reach out to users who simply don’t want Windows Mobile on their phone.  We are putting strategies in place so expect some news on this soon.

I’ll end this post with another Bill Gates quote:

“Life is not fair; get used to it.”

Over and out.

The manufacturer of Blackberry phones, Research in Motions (RIM), recently acquired software developer Torch Mobile. Torch Mobile develops a mobile web browser called Iris, which is based on WebKit, a leading browser rendering engine. The significance of this is that software developers should finally be able to deliver a feature rich browser based experience to Blackberry users, should they bring the Iris browser to these devices.

For Rype, this means our upcoming browser version is likely to work on Blackberry devices with this browser. This would be a great result for customers meaning that you can keep using whatever device you prefer - Blackberry, Windows Mobile, iPhone or Android!

We are pleased to annouce that Rype desktop versions will support Snow Leopard, Apple’s latest update to it’s MAC OS X.

15 years ago you would have bought an early generation windows application that had been migrated from DOS. Also around this time was the introduction of the entry-level cashbook & accounting systems. The computerised accounting software market is now some 15 years old in the modern PC environment (i.e. Windows & Macintosh).

For the user this means that the market leaders such as MYOB, Quickbooks, Sage, PeachTree etc have been around for a long time. As market leaders they have had to continual invest in their products to keep their customers happy. How do you keep customers happy? By giving them more features, of course. In addition to this general enhancement of product, these market leaders’ customer bases have ‘grown up’ during these years. Start-up businesses 10 years ago are now multi-million dollar businesses. The product that they were using as a start up is no longer suitable, so in an attempt to maintain their customers the vendors extend the offering of their products.

What does all this mean?

It means that what you get at the low end of the market these days are sophisticated systems with advanced functionality. Take Quickbooks, for example. For a few hundred dollars you get an accounting system with stock control, payroll, foreign currency, warehousing & contact management. Add into the mix the pressure on these market leaders from the new wave of solutions and we are starting to see things like integration to your banking software included in the products, automated bank reconciliation features, Paypal integration etc.

Another factor driving more features in today’s products is the sophistication of the market. Today’s purchasers are buying an accounting system for at least the second if not third time. They know what they want, they know what is available which is forcing vendors to deliver a lot at the various price points.  Accounting  software has become business software as businesses have demanded more from there vendor, the good news is the customer wins.

So why write this and how does it relate to Rype? Well the team at Rype consistently watch the industry and think its an important benchmark for operational based systems like Rype, plus we come from accounting backgrounds so find this an interesting area to watch evolve.