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.

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 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!

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.

Google's recent announcement that it was developing its own operating system (OS) based on Linux has been received with mixed reviews. According to Google, the OS will focus on speed, simplicity and security and will initially be targeted at netbooks, with its primary objective of allowing users to run a browser to access their online services. Importantly, it will be free to end users and be released as open source, allowing anyone to contribute to the project.

Critics of the announcement claim that Google is fragmenting the already saturated OS market, and that it should have partnered with one of the existing Linux OS vendors such as Ubuntu. The argument is largely based around not reinventing the wheel, and ensuring stability for the Linux OS camp, in order for it to compete more successfully against the likes of Microsoft.

However, others have been praising Google's strategy as innovative and game changing. All other significant OS's (Windows, OS X and Linux) have a windowing systems allowing the user to install and run applications locally on the machine (just as the way the Rype Desktop works). ChromeOS will allow a browser and not much else to run locally, users will then access their applications online. This is significant as it drives users to further utilise online applications and services, you probably already do email, social networking and banking online; ChromeOS will drive users to accept that most if not all services can be accessed at any time on any device.

Here at Rype we feel that the storing your personal and business information online is the way of the future, Google's announcement of a slimmed down OS to support this model is further confirmation of the increased availability and security that cloud computing offers. Right now, however, we feel that the browser does not offer a rich enough user experience for some applications, which is why the Rype Desktop is an application that you run locally that accesses your information stored on our secure servers.

Ultimately, Google's announcement has already and will continue to raise awareness of the benefits of cloud computing, the future looks exiting!