Simon New Small

How a New Breed of Small Businesses Is Harnessing the Power of Emerging Technologies
1. Auflage 2010
ISBN: 978-1-61792-234-3
Verlag: Motion Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 302 Seiten

In The New Small, you'll discover how some amazing small businesses creatively and intelligently use technology to: Reach new customers Reduce costs Increase internal collaboration and communication Create flexible work environments Rife with profiles from a wide variety of industries, The New Small offers pragmatic advice and lessons about how small businesses are harnessing the power of emerging technologies. It's a must-read for small business owners-and those thinking about starting their own shops.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Simon, Phil

Leseproben

Technology and How We Work We are all growing volcanoes approaching the hour of their eruption. —Friedrich Nietzsche I started working with workplace technologies way back in the mid-1990s. Over the course of my career, I have spent more than my fair share of time in front of a computer. I have used a panoply of different tools, graphical user interfaces (GUIs),[1] programming languages, operating systems, databases, system architectures, systems, productivity applications, and reporting tools. Although no one has seen and worked on everything, I have come just about as close as anyone I know. After 10 years in the corporate world, let’s just say that I know my way around a computer. I look at technology today and am simply amazed. It’s so different on so many levels compared to 15 years ago. I’m old enough to remember a time before e-mail, Internet browsers, and Microsoft Office.[2] Back then, just about all companies used applications and systems that are very different from what they use today. In my days as a technology consultant, I have worked with many different types of companies. I’ve advised single-person home-based businesses and 50,000 employee multinational corporations—and just about all types in between. I can also lay claim to working with companies in many different industries: health care, nonprofit, telecommunications, hi-tech, public sector retail, manufacturing, and professional services. It’s fair to say that all organizations use technology, with some doing so much better than others. The Consultant’s Perspective Technology consultants are for the most part change agents. For a variety of reasons, we are contracted to help organizations move from one platform, system, or application to another. Consider a typical project for someone like me. A company purchases a new technology, and absent the requisite internal expertise, brings in consultants to make it work. Of course, we consultants can do only so much. We’re not miracle workers, despite what salespeople might have said before contracts were signed—and despite what clients themselves wanted to hear. On particularly contentious or difficult projects, such as most of the ones detailed in Why New Systems Fail, consultants tend to shoulder most of the blame. In my career, I’ve seen people make some horrendous decisions deploying new technologies. As a conscientious consultant, I attempted to steer them away from decisions ultimately not in their organization’s best interests—or theirs, for that matter. Sometimes I’ve been successful; sometimes I’ve just irritated them and have had to admit defeat. This has happened to me with companies of all sizes: small, medium, and large. Truth be told, however, I’m much more of a small business type of guy. I simply prefer working in smaller environments, where people generally rely less upon strict policies and procedures and more on plain old common sense.[3] Finding a solution to a problem tends to be more important than interminably debating the pros and cons of each alternative in endless meetings, childish bickering, internal politics, and extensive CYA.[4] Traditional Impediments to Small Business Technology Adoption As a general rule, technology at many small businesses has historically lagged technology at larger companies for six main reasons.[5] They include these: Resource availability Perceived need Priorities Bad decisions IT project failure stories and statistics Finding the right scale Let’s explore them. Resource Availability Many small businesses have lacked the financial and human resources of their larger brethren. Historically, they often could not afford best-of-breed systems and technologies. Perceived Need Many small businesses have made do with paper files, spreadsheets, and other technological Band-Aids. Historically and at a core level, many have not recognized that they needed proper systems or applications. Although it’s hard to argue that the local food store needs the same powerful and expensive inventory management systems as Walmart and Amazon, both kinds of organizations need to electronically track inventory. The only difference is scale. Priorities Even many small businesses that recognize the need for proper systems and applications have never deployed proper systems. At these companies, information technology (IT) folks have been primarily concerned with “keeping the lights on.” The focus here has been on the usual suspects: securing the company’s IT assets, maintaining networks, fighting fires, creating user and e-mail accounts, and handling hardware issues. In other words, the people responsible for deploying technology have been far too busy to upgrade their company’s technology. Despite recognizing the need for better technology, more compelling business priorities have forced these companies to get by with a pastiche of paper files, spreadsheets, and other “low-tech” solutions. Bad Decisions Many organizations originally made bad technology-related decisions that they ultimately intended to address. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, many of these mistakes have never been corrected. Even the best of intentions get derailed. Applied within the context of this book, years ago many small businesses outgrew their original, limited applications and technologies. They have not had the time, money, or desire to upgrade them. IT Project Failure Stories and Statistics Horror stories from other organizations have often deterred many small businesses from making the jump into new technology. To be sure, large system implementations fail more frequently and spectacularly than relatively small IT projects. However, the latter often miss their mark. Finding the Right Scale Many traditional client-server applications were geared toward businesses of a certain size. A small company in the midst of decent growth would typically pause to consider before buying and implementing an enterprise-wide system. Consider the following conundrum: Growth in the number of employees, transactions, or physical locations would make a starter system obsolete. If growth continues, in a few years, the company would have to revisit the process of choosing a new system. If growth abates, the company would have purchased too much technology. It would be stuck indefinitely with excessive IT support and maintenance costs, inhibiting future growth and potentially threatening the success of the company. The scale issue often deterred many small companies from making much-needed investments in technology. The Paradox of Dramatically Increased Choice As has been discussed, the last five years has produced a massive technological explosion. Make no mistake: this has been an explosion of both breadth and depth. New technologies have emerged, as has the number of existing options within existing technologies. (This is true even against a backdrop of an enormous amount of simultaneous merger and acquisition activity in the software world.) As a result, today many companies are simply unsure about what to do. Although increased choice with regard to technology is hardly a bad thing, many small business owners are inundated with options, unsure about “the best” solution for their companies. Call this paralysis by analysis. For example, consider the number of different products offered by one very large technology company. Google has done many amazing things on many different levels.[6] In recent years, it has moved far beyond merely providing the world’s most popular search engine. Consider what some of the company’s applications can do for its business customers: Allow for customized e-mail domains (Gmail for Business). Share and manage online schedules (Google Calendar). Create team websites as easily as drafting documents (Google Sites). Collaborate in real time on documents, presentations, and spreadsheets (Google Apps and Google Docs). Indeed, over 30 million people use these tools.i Analyze traffic data for websites (Google Analytics).[7] And Google isn’t alone. Other companies such as OpenOfficeii and Zohoiii (discussed later in this book) offer similar arrays of related, integrated, and easily deployable services aimed at small businesses, although larger organizations can use them as well. This is not to say that software vendors have long neglected the small business market. Nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, companies such as Sage Softwareiv have long sold applications geared toward the small business. At the risk of excessively generalizing, however, today’s small business applications are far superior to their antecedents on several levels: They offer increased integration, both out of the box and in terms of future development after the purchase. They are relatively easy to deploy and customize. Especially for SaaS solutions, there’s comparatively little internal maintenance involved. Collectively, these factors mean that small businesses can be up and running with integrated and powerful software in a much shorter period of time than in years past. By extension, small business owners and employees can focus on growing their...