During the
1990’s I had a wonderful time selling connectivity, document management and
business intelligence software to small and medium sized enterprises in many
industries in the Americas. What I learned very quickly was that small business
people hated computer speak and acronyms and most discussions quickly revolved
around three questions:
1. Where have you done this before in my
industry?
2. How much does it cost?
3. And how long will it take?
Not much has
changed in the world of small business from this perspective other than the
fact that there are now an estimated 80 million of them globally, if you don’t
count every single one in China and India this week.
The Feature Function Era of Reliability,
Performance and Interoperability
For those of you that don’t remember this was
a time when software was very buggy, (unstable) its performance was
differentiator and companies like Microsoft wouldn’t endorse the protocol
standard (TCP/IP) that built the Internet. It was the best of times for
software sales and marketing people and the worst of times for small business
owners. Products were sold based on their performance, interoperability,
features and functions, they did address pain in business, but they often weren’t
reliable and were far from sustainable. The 1980’s and 1990’s marked two
decades of expendability, when a small business grew from spreadsheet madness
(were many still are today) to lightweight ERP and or accounting systems, there
was no easy way to transition to the next so-called platform. IT was not
considered to be an investment that produced returns, it did address immediate
pain, but it did not enable the creation of sustainable business processes.
Business Influencers R Replacing Industry
Analysts
Traditional
industry analyst groups are relying on antiquated business models and are still
doing research and analysis as if it were 1980s and 1990s. Most of the groups are
heavily siloed, although to their credit some have organized their research by
industry. Most of their information is however, what I call rear view mirror,
as I elaborated upon in last year’s blog: Stating the Obvious. The vast majority
of the analysts are focused on features and functionality not the business
value of the technology. More importantly, most of the large firms have
neglected to create meaningful small business research arms, and or offerings
that are affordable and easy to consume. In my view they have missed a great
opportunity to innovate their business models to serve the fastest growing
segment of business worldwide, and have missed a major revenue stream.
The New Business Influencer
Enter the
business influencer, innovators like: Brent Leary, CRM Essentials, Jesus Hoyos
of Solvis Consulting, Lior Arrussy of the Strativity Group, GigaOm Pro,
(mentioned in Steve King’s blog this week) Jeff Kaplan of Thinkstrategies, Eric
Kimberling of Panorama, Esteban Klosky, Thinkjar and Paul Greenberg the new
father of Social CRM are addressing the business value of IT. And are now
disrupting the business models of traditional market research companies and
enjoying a new revenue stream.
What is
different about this new hybrid business influencer is that they understand
enough about technology to be dangerous, but more importantly they understand
how to implement solutions to achieve business value that often to helps
companies gain competitive advantage. They are addressing the number one
question in small business, where have you done this before in my industry? Small
and medium business owners today have many options when it comes to using IT to
run their businesses and one of my favorite adages is they can deploy “IT
without an IT” staff by engaging a software as a service company. Jeff Kaplan
was one of the first business influencers to focus on SaaS, and his company
Thinkstrategies provides a wealth of content and consulting services on SaaS
companies and their solutions. Eric Kimberling’s Panorama helps small and
medium companies select the right ERP solution and looks at implementation
costs and the economics of ERP, not just features, functions, bells and
whistles.
In my view,
it’s not about the technology anymore, so much consolidation has occurred in
the on premise world of technology, competitive advantage is hard to find. The
world of SaaS is still in its early days and there are many great niche
solutions on steroids, but inevitably consolidation will occur at a more rapid
pace than it has in the on-premise, on device world that we have lived in. For
many of us SaaS will be “back to the future” of time share computing all over
again in a business process utility model.
The Oceanography of Oil
Our oceans
are in a sense a river of rivers; water masses within cyclones and gyres that
are sometimes interrupted by hurricanes, typhoons and tsunamis. There are warm
and cold core rings sometimes the size of entire regions that spawn off of
these masses and they can devastate plankton populations that larval fish
depend on by simply changing water temperatures. Examples of major currents
dominating weather patterns are the cooling of California by the Pacific’s
Japanese current and the warming of our Eastern seaboard by the Gulf Stream.
Oil is perhaps the worst of all pollutants that can impact a region’s
oceanography, although the PCB pollution of the Acushnet River by textile and
electronics manufacturers in Southern Massachusetts is far worse over the long
term; because there is no easy way to clean up embedded sediments in a river
basin without dispersing them.
Although Oil
companies have made profits in the billions over the last several years they
have spent little on understanding the oceanography of oil and how it behaves
in our oceans, bays and seas. This is primarily because of a lack of government
intervention, policy and oversight. Big oil still gets away with just about
anything it wants, and the failure of BP to react and be prepared to deal with
its current disaster is another example of broken government and the failure of
a major multi-national corporation to safely run its business.
The only good
thing about oil is that it is a naturally formed substance and there is a wide
range of microorganisms that will eventually consume it. A large oil spill
impacted the area of Northern California I live in more than thirty years ago
and during winter beach erosion I still see the oil. When the beach is warm
enough I can actually see vapor and gas coming off the oil in the sand from the
decomposition process driven by bacteria. When oil gets into what
oceanographers call a closed gyre system were currents maintain regional water
mass it can destroy an entire marine ecosystem. Oil reeks havoc on all aspects
of the marine ecosystem from birds on down and it can irreversibly destroy
fisheries populations. The impact of BPs current disaster will wreak havoc on many
aspects of the Gulf of Mexico’s fisheries, and let us hope that it does not
make it to the fragile coral reefs on the Mexican Riviera.
