Hi all and happy New Year!

  by  Creativity103

I read a good article today about things fast-growing professional services firms need to keep in mind as the expand.  The bottom line is that it is easy to move beyond paper, pencil and Excel into a world of processes and procedures that aren’t scalable and that will eventually hinder a firm’s growth.  The author’s did a great job listing the various functions that bog down earliest:

• resource utilization
• invoicing
• project estimation and delivery
• maintaining a resource database
• sales and marketing
• reporting and analytics



For the first time I’m going to do a book review. I read a lot of books and articles but usually don’t do reviews – someone out there has usually already said what I have to say so I don’t bother. Not this time. And not because I’m the first to say anything – I am not by a long shot. No, I’m writing an book review because if I could I would buy this book for every business owner I’ve met in the past few years, regardless of the size of the company.  Writing this review is my second best choice.

About The New Small

The book is The New Small by Phil Simon. Phil has managed to articulate in a small, easily digestible book, what I have been trying to tell folks, as a technology consultant myself, for years. In today’s world technology can allow a company of any size to operate like a large company. In the first section he talks about the “what” of business technology – what the major technology trends are and which are the current technology enablers. He also starts to address why there is so much technology available that most small business users aren’t using:

“It seems to me that many small business owners are awash in a sea of technology they aren’t using. Most haven’t explored mobility, cloud computing, social technologies, and so on. They aren’t keeping up with many of the changes that could significantly help them on so many levels. I began to wonder about why so many small business owners seem to be unaware of the profound technological changes currently taking place.

Reasons include:

• Some are just overwhelmed by the rate of change.
• Some just don’t care–they don’t plan to change anything if they can avoid it.
• Some are probably intimidated by these new technologies.
• Some just aren’t aware. Their attention is elsewhere.
• Some subscribe to the view “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

I suppose that this would make sense if these emerging technologies offered only marginal improvements to John Q. Business Owner. But that’s just not the case. These days, many small companies ignore technologies that, at a minimum, can help them significantly:
• Grow their businesses
• Attract talented employees
• Improve access to key information
• Increase employee communication and collaboration
• Reduce costs of recruiting, IT, and marketing
• Compete with larger companies

Some small businesses are using emerging technologies in creative and interesting ways to achieve these benefits. These are the New Small.”

In the second part he discusses the several examples of  the New Small . I consider this the “why” portion of the book – exciting, compelling examples should give any small business a reason to look at new technologies.  There are a lot of examples in this section and I found it helpful to pick and choose the examples I was interested in – but by all means read them all if you can.

My favorite part  is the third part where he talks about the “how” – how a company can become part of The New Small by not only applying technology but by making sure their organization has the right culture, people and mindset to do it successfully. Here is the crux of the discussion and where things get hard or easy – as he says in the book “We see how New Small companies carefully and intelligently select the tools, people and partners that make sense – and quickly get away from those that no longer fit the bill. They don’t immediately and unilaterally embrace very technology that comes along. What’s more, they balance immediate short-term needs with long-term prospects for growth.”  Wow.  Wish I had said that.

Bottom line on The New Small

Like I said, if I could reasonably do so I’d give this book to every business owner I’ve met.  In addition to the book, Phil is coming out with a new mobile app that provides, to business owners and others interested in new technology, exclusive tips and advice to help clear up concepts and discuss new technology trends.  You can find out more about the app here.

As Phil says at the end, none of this is magic and it may be that you need help figuring out how to integrate the technologies that make sense for your business.  As always, find a technology advisor you trust to help you put together a reasonable road map and your business will be on its way to being on of the New Small.

In an earlier post I touched on Google’s Local Business Listings in the context of other available online exposure resources for small businesses.  There have been a few recent developments that make me realize that I should dive a bit deeper into this topic.

Google has  had Local Business Listings for a number of years and there are some good really good things about it.  First, what it is: it is essentially a free advertising space on Google.  And every business can have one.  In fact, most businesses may already have one and not know it.  How is that?  Google  aggregates company data from a number of resources and creates  default listings for all the businesses it finds.  As a business owner, you can add a listing if there isn’t already one or “claim” yours if it is already there.

Which brings us to Reason Number 1 to pay attention to the listing for your company – it is there and you may not even know about it.  Which means it might not even contain the right information.  And that can’t be a good thing – you don’t want a potential customer finding your listing but calling a wrong number.  So as soon as you are done reading this post you should go right out and check your listing.  On second thought, you should go right now.  I’ll wait.

Since you have a listing whether you want it or not (and why would you not want free advertising?) let’s talk about Reason Number 2 to check the listing – the better the QUALITY of the listing, the better chance that your listing will show up in the “7-pack” or the list of  local businesses associated with a map.  This placement is different from your regular search placement which is heavily affected by SEO (but the placement of the 7-pack itself CAN affect your overall placement in search results.).   Now Google isn’t likely to share their algorithm but a lot of smart folks (here is one source)  have spent time studying this and, while they don’t agree on the exact order, they do agree that these factors (among others) are likely to affect the placement of your business:

• local address (presumably the RIGHT one)
• good categorization
• location keyword in business description
• videos and pictures
• reviews
• the fact that the listing is “claimed” by the business owner who presumably ensured it is correct and complete

Reason Number 3 to check your local listing is that Google recently (like last week) rolled out a new feature called “near me now” (as opposed to “hear me now” of course) that is available on iPhones and Android devices.  Essentially, if you have one of those devices and go to the main Google screen you can elect, by allowing your device to share your location, to see business that are near that location.  Here is a good article about the “near me now” functionality that includes screen shots and a cutesy video.  Of course, for your business to have a chance of showing up when folks are in your neighborhood looking for exactly the service you provide, it needs to have a good address.

So now you have a nice, complete, correct, good-looking listing.  You can just ignore it now and let it do its thing, right?  WRONG!  Reason Number 4 to pay attention to your listing on a regular basis is that there are bad bad people out there that may hijack your listing.  When they do this they leave your listing intact but do things like change the phone number or the url for the website so THEY get all your hard-earned leads instead of you.  This article talks about how listings get hijacked and unfortunately sometimes getting it fixed with Google can be a pain.  At this point I don’t have any good advice about how to avoid getting hijacked; for now, just be aware and check your listing regularly!  In the meantime, let’s hope Google is listening to the growing uproar and makes it harder to hijack listings soon.  The Local Business Listings are a good thing for small businesses in theory; issues like hijacking can turn a good thing into a bad thing in a hurry.

Here are 4 reasons to pay attention, regularly, to your Google Local Business Listing – have you checked yours today?

Most of the small businesses I talk to, even the tiniest of them, know that when they need legal advice, they need to see their attorney.   The same goes for their financial needs; most of them have a CPA that they see at least once a year at tax time.  Most accountants would recommend more regular visits at key times in the business cycle to help with future planning.  For example, if you need a new vehicle for your business you should consult with your accountant BEFORE you purchase to make sure the type of vehicle you choose will maximize your tax benefits.  Small businesses regularly talk to their insurance provider, if only to understand how health care changes affect the benefits they provide their employees.

Yet, when it comes to the technology businesses use, they are often left adrift with no help.  Some businesses have a simple website set up by their cousin along with some boxed software they use for billing and accounting.  Others have had consultants build fancy websites and other solution providers in to set up networks and more complicated systems.  In both cases though, these businesses have set no overall technology vision that supports their business plan.  They don’t know if the “pieces” they have fit together, if they are paying too much for overlapping technology, or how much they are wasting on “shelf-ware” they never use.   It is like they are standing way to close to an impressionist painting.  All they see are the dots, not how they combine to create a beautiful flower.

Worse than that though, they don’t have anyone helping them identify opportunities where technology could accelerate or tranform their business.   Often there are ways to leverage technology to increase revenue or reduce costs…if businesses only knew what was available.

Today, every kind of business is more and more dependent on technology (like it or not!).  This dependency will only grow.  As a small business owner it makes sense to seek out the advice and counsel of an overall technology advisor.  Someone that can help you see the painting for the dots.  You have a business plan, and maybe marketing plan and a sales plan.  You also need a technology plan that ties these all together.

For an example of what a technology plan is and how it works you can go to http://clearlysimplesolutions.com/what_we_do_tech.php.

Do you have your technology plan in place?