Everything is now online for business

Why have your big hard drive when you can store your business data online?

I have a PC at home which, in its time, about three years ago, was the 'bees knees'. It had a lot of memory,  great storage, a good graphics card and sound card. It runs on Windows Vista (Why did I ever install that?). But, now, it is a behemoth which is slow, noisy and in the way. The only reasons I keep it are for the bar code software that my wife uses for her book production work and iTunes for my kids with which to sync their ipods. If it was not for those two pieces of software, I would have installed Ubuntu (a Linux operating system) on its months or years ago.

I have no need for it for my personal work and my own business work. I can do everything else online. I listen to music through Deezer (to which I swapped recently from Spotify which, although excellent, requires you to install software onto your PC or Mac to use, and I use Ubuntu), which is a browser-based music streaming service with a smartphone application too.

I have all of my email, calendar, contacts, documents and document creation tools online with Google Docs. My photos are online with Flickr. Creation of logos and manipulation of photos is done with Picnik. The only piece of software that I had to install on my laptop was 'Kompozer' which is free webpage creation software. But, now, this is no longer tying me to installing software because I have started to use the online website creation software, Web Studio Live.

I can run my business accounts online through Kashflow, my CRM through Base, email marketing with Mailchimp and promote my websites through Google+, Facebook and Twitter, Google Adsense and the other search engines.

Therefore, I have no need for a laptop which has a massive hard drive to store all of documents, photos, websites and information. All of that storage on your local hard drive becomes obsolete.

That's why I am now considering purchasing a Google Chromebook. At first sight, they look underpowered and underspecified compared to what we are used to when buying a WIndows based laptop or a Mac. For instance, they have small hard drives (e.g. 16GB). They have 2GB of RAM. But, there's no need for all of that local power when you can store everything in the 'cloud'.

Granted, if you do a lot of higher powered graphical work on your computer, then a Chromebook might not be for you. But, if you are in business and you travel a lot for work and you need flexibility with how you share your information or create documents, then a Chromebook is worth considering. The first generation is out and looks a little pricey for what you get. At CES 2012, the second generation was launched which look to be good improvements.

Keeping track of customers easily

If there's one thing that salespeople in most organisations know about, it's their customers. Salespeople are good at relationships, on the whole, and those relationships are often what differentiates them from their competitors.

And yet, as a salesperson, you are always having to find new customers to replace those that inevitably stop being your clients. It's a natural occurrence. Businesses want to keep existing customers because it costs a lot of money to find new ones.

Keeping track of what you said to whom is a daily activity for salespeople because, unless you have an incredible memory, you will forget important details such as how much you quoted the customer, when you last contacted, what they said and whether there are any other obstacles in the way of them buying from you.

To keep track of all of this activity a whole industry has developed with tools to help you cope. In the past, it was the Filofax. Then came computers, personal digital assistants, time management courses and software like SalesForce. They are all lovely and have improved the process of looking after your customers and getting more business out of them immensely.

However, if you are a small business then a solution like SalesForce can be quite overwhelming. It's so powerful that you can often get sidetracked away from the simple thing you want to do - To keep track of things you have said, sent or suggested to your customers and prospects, and to monitor how much business you can land with all of this activity. These big systems will let you gain insight into anything you put into them and you can customise them to your hearts' content, but they still answer the fundamental questions about who, what, where, when and why about your customers.

Enter 'Base'. Base is an online and smartphone based tool to help you do all of the above and nothing else.  It's a delightfully simple system to use and helps you collect leads from your website, keep track of contacts, record quotes, forecast sales and run simple reports, thereby letting you get on with the sales activities and not get distracted by the system itself. Best of all, it's free for your first 50 (or 150 if you promote it to your contacts to use) recorded deals and it's pretty cheap thereafter.

So, if you are considering a 'customer relationship management (CRM)' tool and you want to focus on productivity rather than features, then consider Base. It's CRM at its simplest.

Selling through the internet without breaking the bank

Without doubt, your business has to have a website. Without one these days, you are missing out on sales, prospects and marketing opportunities. 

The challenges for any small business owner that wants to get their enterprise onto the internet to find new customers or to sell to existing customers are firstly the cost of getting a decent website designed and then marketing it so that customers know it exists.

In my experience, when getting my delicatessen business onto the internet some years back, the cost of getting the site designed, eCommerce ready and launched put my small business' finances under great strain. I had little money left for marketing it. (I had a designer build it and incorporate Actinic as the shopping basket system).

Of course, there are plenty of internet service providers who will provide you with an eCommerce ready website for a few pounds per month (e.g. 1and1). They are good but their templates tend to be too generic and does not easily differentiate you from competitors.

Therefore, setting up your business' website is a balance between going for a bespoke, high cost solution or going for something which is cheap and looks cheerful but similar to lots of other company websites. I now always set up websites with the impact that it will have on the 'bottom line' and the business' cash flow.

You need a website, you need it to start working for you quickly and you need it to be contributor to your profits as soon as possible. You need it to be simple to set up and to be able to customise its look easily and cheaply so your business website looks like your business.

There are many good providers of services which help small businesses get onto web, and one I particularly like is BaseKit. Firstly, it includes lots of templates which are specific to different types of businesses such as car dealers, estate agents, plumbers or electricians, for example. You can easily customise it and features or elements relevant to your business.

It's also cheap. You can try it free for a couple of weeks and then choose between packages which costs either £6, £12 or £24 depending upon how many features you need. You can set up an eCommerce website using it too. Finally, it makes it easy for you to make it search engine friendly, which is an important factor for making the website work for you.

Even better, BaseKit is running an offer for January where you can obtain a domain name for free and get the 'business' package for £1 per month rather than £12 per month for the first three months. With the money saved, you could spend that on Google Adwords to attract some new customers to your site.

Here's a video about the BaseKit service.

To get the discount, use this code at checkout during January 2012 when you decide to buy: XYZ123. 

Smart Vending Machines

Vending machines have changed that much in the last twenty years, but that trend appears to be changing as companies try to target products to customers more efficiently. 

Vending machines have done very little other than deliver chocolate bars, drinks, books or small items in places that are not viable for a shop. They still deliver products their customers want but companies know very little about the customers that are buying those goods.

In an attempt to change this, Intel and Kraft foods are now developing vending machine technology which will help them to better understand their customers. They are developing 'smart vending machines' that sense the type of customer and offer them suitable products.

The BBC recently wrote about these new machines. Read the article here: Smart vending kiosks

Queen's Speech on Amazon Kindle

The Queen's Speech will be available as a download this year on the Amazon Kindle.

The Queen opts for Amazon Kindle

VISA competition to win London Olympics Tickets

If you know anyone with tickets to the London 2012 Olympics, then you might be in the minority.

However, if you fancy the chance of winning the tickets to the biggest event in the UK for years, then VISA has lots of tickets to give away so you can take your family or friends to the Games.

All you have to do is make a purchase with your VISA card and then enter your details into the competition website.

You can enter up to 5 times per day to win one of the following packages:

• 4 tickets to an Olympic Games event
• Travel to and from London
• 1 night’s accommodation for 2 adults and 2 children
• £200 spending money
• Visa Olympic Games themed merchandise

They are also giving away lots of pre-paid VISA cards too as prizes. 

The Rise of Electronic Smoke

Opera singer Fiona Harrison 'vapes' an electronic cigarette on stage

There's a growing trend for smokers looking for an alternative to tobacco-based cigarettes in the USA which I first noticed in Europe while on a Ryanair flight to France in October this year.

On the no-frills flight, many experience the sales pitch for products including J20 drinks, cups of tea, bacon rolls, scratch-cards and toy versions of Ryanair aeroplanes.

But, this time, I was offered electronic cigarettes. They are the perfect solution for those who cannot hang on for when they disembark at their destination for a drag on a cigarette. Electronic cigarettes are a product which an increasing number of smokers are switching to for the very reason that they can be smoked, or 'vaped' in public places where traditional cigarettes are banned.

Companies like Green Smoke, SmartSmoker, and eSmoke all offer a variety of types of electronic cigarette in different flavours and styles to appeal to people who want something which looks like the tobacco-based cigarettes they already smoke, or a cigarette that looks more elegant.

These 'smokeless cigarettes' are made up of three components in general, namely a mouthpiece containing a cartridge containing a liquid which is heated and vapourised when the smoker inhales, a heater and a battery to power the heater. The electronic cigarettes batteries are rechargeable and you need to buy replacement cartridges.

A 'Starter Pack' with Green Smoke costs about £70 and provides the equivalent of 7.5 packs of traditional cigarettes. Refills costs about £9 with cartridge lasting for about 360 puffs or 1.5 packs of tobacco cigarettes. So, the economic benefit for e-cigarettes appears sound (You can get a 10% discount from Green Smoke too with this code at checkout - disc10-26880) .  

With the banishment of tobacco smokers onto the streets outside pubs in the UK, will we see the rise of the smokeless or e-cigarettes and an increase in smokers coming back into public places to smoke these new, 21st century cigarettes? Who knows, but they are likely t be something we notice more as smokers look to save money.