by  cambodia4kidsorg

I’m going to show my age here because I remember the work world before email.  Yes indeed, business communication was via snail mail, interoffice mail or the good old telephone. It wasn’t until the late 80s that email became so ubiquitous.   I think email and its importance kind of snuck up on me and went from “hmm, how are we going to use this” to “how can we live without it?” in a blink of an eye.  Today, can you imagine not checking your email a gazillion times a day, using your mailboxes as a data repository or missing out on the latest special at your favorite restaurant?  I can’t.

The Future of Email

Yet this morning I read a recent blog post on Hubspot that really got me thinking.  It had lots of statistics about a variety of things but one stuck out to me - web-based email usage dropped 59% among 12-17 year-olds.  My eleven year-old son is just starting to use email – does it mean he’ll quit before he really gets going?  Here is another statistic from the article – 91% of people have unsubscribed from email lists they formerly subscribed to.

What Does it Mean?

What does this mean to your business?  Your current customers are becoming more fastidious about the email they accept.  It is critical that you provide valuable and interesting content to keep their subscriptions.  And that you avoid scammy content at all costs.  At the same time  your future customers  aren’t on email at all  - they are texting, using IM or are on Facebook.  What is your business doing to reach customers in these areas?  Are you ready for the email-less generation?

I would be interested in your thoughts on the future of email and how your business is moving beyond it today.  There are some other interesting stats in this article, let’s save discussion them for another time, shall we?

by  RossW

I have written other posts about cloud computing and I am sure you see articles and blog posts about it all the time.  Today I want to narrow in on how cloud computing can improve how you run your office without buying hardware.

Reducing Software Costs

Most of us use the ubiquitous Microsoft Office suite – it is great but it can be expensive.  Some companies have found they can get close to the same functionality but for free with other office suites such as Zoho, Google Docs, and OpenOffice.

File Sharing and Collaboration

Not too long ago if you wanted to share files with your co-workers or employees you had 2 choices.  You could install a network your office or you could employee “sneaker net” – trading files on (used to be) floppy drives or (today) flash drives.  Now there are a lot of choices for online file sharing and collaboration – from simple tools like Box, Dropbox, Google Docs, Zoho or Egnyte, to setting up an intranet via a hosted version of Microsoft SharePoint.  Depending on your needs and which tool you choose, you can not only share files, you have instant access to capabilities like controlling access, tagging, keeping multiple versions of a document or searching across documents.  Even if you have highly sensitive documents, there is a cloud vendor that can  help you.

Providing Remote Access Regardless of Device (almost)

A cool thing about the file sharing and collaboration tools listed above is that most of them support file access and viewing via any browser and have special purpose iPhone or iPad apps.  It is great to be able to refer to documents and share them while you are out of the office.  The only problem is that you can’t EDIT the documents.  Unless, of course, you purchase a special purpose app, of which there are several.

Beyond the file sharing and collaboration tools, another more recent addition to the cloud parade are cloud-based desktops – in this case instead of having your software installed on a specific machine where you can only use when you are ON that machine, you can can have a virtual desktop that you can access from any device with a browser.  Since it acts just like your desktop (because it is) you can run any application that is on your desktop.  How cool is that.  Vendors in this space include Desktone, OnTheNetOffice and tuCloud.

Making Software Upgrades Simple

Virtual desktops bring another simplifying factor to your office – what if you could do away with installing software on each individual machine and keeping up with releases and patches on a one off basis?  Virtual desktop functionality allows you to create a “master” desktop with all the software your company needs and to replicate it across your users.  Time to upgrade or apply a patch?  Do it once and everyone gets it!  You can even create one-off masters if there is specialized software only a few folks need.  Of course, you still have to pay for the software licenses for each user.  I know, always a bummer to find out there isn’t a magic pill to rid you of software costs!

I hope this helps you think about concrete ways cloud technology can help you simplify your office, expand your capabilities and maybe even save you some money.  If you have used tools like these and have a story to share I’d love to hear them!

by  Search Engine People Blog

Quick, can you tell me which is your most profitable customer?

Or as the headline points out, pick the dimension or view of your company and tell me what, who, which is most profitable?  Or least profitable?  And can you tell me why?

There are typically three answers to this question:

Companies in the first group answer with a resounding “No way!”.  Why?   Likely the information they need to analyze these points is all over the place – in different systems that don’t talk to each other or worse not in any system at all.  Maybe some in an accounting application and the rest is in a spreadsheet somewhere.  Or maybe on a napkin in your sales managers pocket.  You know what I am talking about.

Companies in the second group answer with “of course”.   This sounds pretty good until you ask the next question which is something more complicated like “who are your top 5 most profitable customers by product line?”.  What I find at this point is these companies have some decent rudimentary analytics, likely manually extracted from various systems and housed in a spreadsheet.  This is not altogether bad – they know what metrics are important to their company and have a process for producing those metrics.  The problem is that this isn’t scalable – as soon as you want to change the question, even slightly, you’ll find the metrics are created in an inflexible way.  Someone has to go back and manually change the spreadsheet, maybe making another version, maybe disconnecting it from the base data.  The thing about analytics is that as soon as you know one thing you want to know something else about that thing – it never ends!    This means static spreadsheets, while  good for getting your feet wet, won’t last long.

Companies in the third group can answer with “of course” and then proceed to further analyze their business for key insights and trends.  In this case they have integrated their data from various systems and sources into a source for analytics and reporting using business intelligence tools.  These tools allow them to more easily change their questions without re-doing  bunch of spreadsheets.  Some of you have probably heard about business intelligence and business intelligence tools and dismiss them for use by small and medium sized businesses.  It is time to think again!

What has changed in BI tools?

Traditionally large enterprises have been able to leverage BI tools and data warehouses to gain tremendous insight into their businesses.  They can do things like predict what products you might like to buy after an initial purchase or tell a store how to most effectively position products on their shelves.  They can analyze service routes and call center performance.  There really is no end to what CAN be done – it just takes money.  A boatload of money.  Money on software and hardware and lots and lots of money for people (either employees or consultants) install, configure and make sure all the pieces work together.  In recent years this has started to change.  There are tools that run as a service (SaaS, in the cloud) that provide many of the capabilities that the large BI tools can.  These smaller, nimbler tools can pull data from your existing systems (even files and spreadsheets) and organize it in a way to be easily accessible for analytics and reporting.  Usually your expenses will be a monthly subscription for these tools and probably some initial consulting help to get you started (some of the vendors purport that you don’t need that but I’m dubious – at the risk of venturing into the realm of self-promotion I think that some consulting help at the beginning to define goals and metrics and help choose a vendor would save most businesses money in the long run.  But I digress.).

In short, what do these BI tools do?

They can  help you measure and manage your business, enabling what-if analysis and the easy ability to change the questions you are asking.  They make pulling the data together from diverse sources easier and less painful.   They create “one version of the truth”.  Some even package up solutions for function-specific analysis – pipeline analysis (sales), financial analysis (finance), cost analysis (operations) , or supply chain analysis (supply chain).

How do I get started?

There are a number of good vendors in this space.  They include (but are not limited to) Birst, Pivotlink, Gooddata, Easy Insight, Jaspersoft, and Zoho Reports.  Each of these has different features and integrates data in different ways.  If you have someone experienced with analytics and reporting on your staff you are in luck.  Otherwise your next step is to talk with your technology advisor to determine what your needs are and which product suits them the best.  Then you can put together a plan that lays out initial steps and associated costs.  Start with a plan, start slow and measure your progress (use metrics to measure your analytics!) and soon you’ll have greater insight into your business.

It has been almost a year since I wrote my last blog post on cloud computing and tons has been written about it since – and yet I think the recent article on CMSWire.com that claims that small and medium sized businesses are still confused is right on the money.  So in honor of the one year anniversary of my last post I’ll take another run on the subject.

The simplest definition is still this:  if you use technology in your business without buying software and installing on your own hardware you are using cloud computing.    But what does that mean to a small or medium sized business?

More Technology is Available for Your Business

Think about all the technology you use or could use in your business – email, calendars, accounting and CRM software.  Once upon a time only large companies could afford applications like these.  If you wanted this functionality you had to buy the software, buy the hardware and maintain both, at considerable expense.  Today any size company can utilize these applications for a monthly subscription (or sometimes it is even free!).  This allows small and medium sized businesses to be more nimble and more strategic than ever before.

You Can Save Money

Not only can your business take advantage of the technology the big guys use, you can do it for a lot less money.  Since you are essentially sharing the application with others your cost is much lower.  Even better though is you don’t have to buy or support the hardware infrastructure these applications often require.  In fact, businesses that have already invested in servers and have to pay employees or service providers to support them can often reduce those costs or eliminate them altogether by moving to cloud applications.  Maybe your business requires some specialized software that isn’t available in the cloud – you may still be able to reduce your over all technology costs by running that application on servers in the cloud.  Amazon, Rackspace and others provide on-demand computing services and bandwidth which means you don’t need your own servers.  Companies like these are staffed by experienced folks dedicated to keeping the machines up, running and secure.

It Isn’t Magic

Cloud computing opens up a wealth of opportunities for today’s businesses.  Like anything else though, it is not a magic bullet.  There are costs involved and every business needs to look at their needs and make decisions to “go to the cloud” on a case by case basis.  There are access and security risks to consider and data integration challenges to address.  Talk to an experienced technology advisor about the opportunities for YOUR business.

by  Lynchburg College Archives

In today’s installment of my series on small business growing plains I am going to talk about the order-to-cash cycle.  When a business is new it is easy to get so excited about the first sale that as soon as an order is received or a contract signed the business owner immediately sends out the associated invoice or statement.  Those simple documents are full of symbolism for the nascent concern – you are for real!  You have real customers and can bring in real money!  Woo hoo!

The Order-to-Cash Conundrum

As you get bigger and busier it is easy to put off creating those all-important documents that a)represent potential income to your company and b) signal your customer to pay you.  Maybe you don’t have time to create them more than once a week, or worse, once a month.  All of a sudden getting paid is taking longer and longer.  Even if you get administrative or bookkeeping help you’ll likely settle on a set schedule for billing, perhaps once a week, that doesn’t jive with when you actually sold the order or the contract.

When you get even bigger and busier it can get worse – let’s say now you have sales people to sell orders or contract work.  Or that you have field service technicians that have to do the work that in turn leads to an order.  These guys have paperwork to get filled out and they may not be in the office every day so it is easy for that paperwork to be delayed and then, when it is finally turned it, it may be incorrect and require a cycle of rework.  Now your invoices and statements are even MORE delayed.  Add that to the fact that your customers aren’t always in a hurry to pay you right away and you suddenly have a cash flow problem.

How can you avoid or rectify this ever-lengthening order-to-cash black hole?

Order or Contract Entry

There are a number of ways to improve the order or contract entry process :

• Keep your sales customer information in sync with your accounting customer information.  This can make it quicker and easier to set up a new account for billing and make sure you apply the order or contract to the correct billing customer.  You can keep them in sync thru manual processes or by integrating your customer relationship management system with your accounting system.  Some applications integrate easily, others may require some help from a technical resource.
• Provide mechanisms to allow your sales or field service folks to enter contracts or sales orders online.  This can be as simple as having them upload a spreadsheet to a specified place to as fancy as an application that they can access remotely, maybe even from a mobile device.  The quicker you can get the contract or order entered into your billing application the faster you can get invoices out.  Where possible cut out paper altogether; if it isn’t possible to go paperless try to change your process to match paper to online records on the back end.
• Incent your sales and field service folks to enter their information online quickly and correctly.  Quite simply, if you can’t bill your customer maybe they shouldn’t get paid.  Hmm, just a thought.

Invoice Creation

• Simplify invoice or statement creation.  Avoid “special” invoices for customers and make sure any invoice or statement can be easily produced from your accounting software.  If your accounting software doesn’t do this you might want to look for a system that does or look for a billing system that integrate with what you have.
• If you can put invoice creation on “auto-pilot” where it runs on a regular schedule all on its own, do so.  If you can’t, adjust the back office processes to create invoices on a regular, frequent basis.  How regular and frequent?  It depends on your cash flow needs but daily, if it isn’t a complicated process, might not be too often.

It is easy for the order, contract and billing processes to get in the way of getting the customer a timely invoice.  Beyond prolonging the time until you get paid, what kind of message does a tardy invoice send your customer?  That you are unorganized?  That their business isn’t important?

If you think there are ways to improve your order-to-cash cycle, contact your technical advisor.  He or she can help you review your current processes and talk about where improvements, both manual and automated, might be in order.

If you thought this post was helpful you may want to check out the rest in this series so far.

• Can you keep up with your customer’s service needs?
• Are you addicted to spreadsheets?
• How long does it take to set up a new customer?

by  Sebastian Mary

All across town there are cafeterias and lunch counters that want to offer their customers good-tasting, made from scratch pizza each day, without having to make it themselves.  Enter Joe.  Joe is in the wholesale pizza business.  He makes a few types of pizzas in bulk and delivers them each day to to these food service establishments.  Each day his customers place their orders for the next day – how many pizzas of what sort and what time they want them.  They can even place multiple orders for a day – maybe two deliveries during the lunch rush and and another for the mid-afternoon snack crowd.

The key to Joe’s success is to be able to deliver the pizzas they want, when they want them.  His customers insist on getting hot pizza on time and are willing to pay a premium for a reliable, high-quality product.  To this end Joe is putting his money where his mouth is by offering his customers a discount if he is late or delivers the wrong thing.  His Service Level Agreement is more than we need to go into here but basically, if, on average, he is late by more than a few minutes or if, on average, he mis-delivers, his customers get a discount.

This is where things get interesting.  How can he a) collect the data to measure against this agreement and b) report back to his customers on his performance?    Here are some scenarios:

Low tech scenario

Joe’s delivery guys have a delivery receipt on which they record the time of delivery and have it initialed by the customer.  At the end of their shift they return their receipts to Joe’s bookkeeper who keys the information into a spreadsheet.  The spreadsheet has details about each customer and each delivery.

At the end of the month the performance metrics are calculated and the results are used as input into  billing.  A performance report is created out of the spreadsheet and included in each customer’s bill.  The bill can be sent via snail mail or email.

Tech-enabled scenario

Joe’s delivery guys each carry a mobile device capable of accessing files (probably still spreadsheets) on the Internet.   This is easily done with no custom software by using Google Docs, Zoho, Dropbox and the like.  When they make a delivery they note the time of delivery and the name of who received it, online as they complete the delivery.  They still carry paper delivery receipts to get the customer’s initial but they don’t need to go back to the office right away.  Joe’s bookkeeper doesn’t have to key in the data – it is already in file the delivery guy accessed via the mobile device.  Performance and billing calculations are done as in the previous scenario.

Because data is updated on-the-fly on the Internet, it is possible to give Joe’s customers read-only access to the files so they can see Joe’s performance whenever they want, not just at the end of the month.

High-tech scenario

Joe’s delivery guys have a specialized application on their mobile device.  When pizzas are delivered they hit a button that logs the time of delivery.  They then present the device to the customer for signature.    After the customer signs on the mobile device, the data is uploaded to Joe’s system at the click of a button.  Even if there is no coverage, the delivery guys can capture the delivery information and sync it up at a later time.  No paper documents to keep up with, no return trips to the office, no re-keying of information.

Results

You can see, a new small business can easily manage their customers in the low-tech scenario, as long as the number of customers and deliveries stays small.  Once Joe’s business starts to grow, he can move to the tech-enabled scenario without a huge investment.  When he is wildly successful the investment in the high-tech solution will make him much more efficient.

These scenarios really jus tdiscuss applying technology to the “collect” portion of  for Joe’s need to collect, use and report on performance data for his customer’s.   Think about how technology could be applied to the “use” (calculating performance metrics and applying them to billing rules) and “report” parts of the equation!

Would applying technology to your service level agreement process make your small business more efficient?

by  Arbron

Don’t act innocent, you know what I mean.  Spreadsheet software is oh so easy to use and so inexpensive (or even free).  You can use it to keep your company books, to keep your budget and forecast, to keep lists of customers, to create invoices, to create sales orders, reporting and analytics, inventory…the list goes on and on.

It is time for a spreadsheet intervention!

Following are the top 10 reasons you should stop and reconsider the use of spreadsheets in your business:

1. Sometimes the creator of the spreadsheet doesn’t know what they are doing and the calculations are incorrect.
2. If you make changes to values on a spreadsheet and save it you no longer know what the original value was.  Unless you saved a version off first, creating yet another spreadsheet.
3. If you have lots of versions, on hard drives, in email, on various computers you have no single version of the truth – whose spreadsheet is right?
4. Often the creator of the spreadsheet leaves it on the hard drive of the computer.  And often that hard drive isn’t backed up.
5. While we are on the subject of security risks, what do you think happens to all those spreadsheets you mail around?  Any idea where they go?
6. As you put more and more stuff into your spreadsheet the more unwieldy it becomes.
7. As you put more and more stuff into your spreadsheet and make multiple copies because of versioning you are now eating up disk space.  Every day.
8. They waste time.  If you pay someone to do a repetitive task in a spreadsheet, add up how much time they spend on it each week.  Then find out how much it would cost to automate that task.  The numbers are usually enlightening.
9. The second you save the spreadsheet the data is old.  Inventory is not up to date, customer contact information isn’t accurate, accounts are stale.
10. It isn’t scalable.  You can’t continue to use spreadsheets as an integral part of your business for very long without running into roadblocks from bad or inaccurate data or the sheer manhours required to keep up with them.  Your company will grow, I’m sure of it, and if you rely heavily on spreadsheets you will get mired in the muck at some point.
11. You can’t easily integrate the data from one spreadsheet to another.  So you copy and paste date, duplicating it and opening it up to errors or staleness.

See I couldn’t stop at 10.  I could go on even further but I think I’ve made my point.

Today’s business owners are fortunate – there are software solutions for most business needs and small businesses can get great functionality for free or low-cost.  CRM systems to keep up with customers, accounting systems for your numbers, inventory application and the rest are plentiful, have great functionality and have been tested to ensure the data and information they produce is correct.

I am not a spreadsheet hater – I think there are good uses for spreadsheets.  One time financial or what-if analysis.  As a front-end to a database for more detailed analysis and reporting.  For lists.  But not as an integral part of running a business of any size.  Its just not good business.

Retail and food service businesses probably don’t have this problem but service companies that are growing know exactly what I am talking about.  After identifying a customer, engaging in a protracted sales process, and wrangling over the fine details of the contract you are ready to begin providing services to your new customer, and better yet, start invoicing them.  But when you talk to the various parts of your company you realize it is all a lot harder than you thought.  Why is that and why does it take so long?

To answer that let’s look at a typical set-up a medium-sized company might have:

• Your customer is hopefully already set up in your CRM system, at least as far as your sales folks are concerned.  You will want to make sure your customer service folks have them set up for their needs too.
• You will want the new customer set up in your accounting system…
• And your billing system..
• And in whatever operational system(s) you use (consulting firms might have project management systems, shipping companies might have logistics systems, wireless carriers will have network systems).

Even if you don’t have individual applications for these functions, you still have people who have to know about the new customer and to adapt their internal processes to accommodate them.

So why would doing this take a long time?  If you are a smallish company it might not be too bad – you may have to update your various applications, spreadsheets or lists yourself or holler over to the guy in the next chair.  As your company gets bigger, however, you’ll likely start dividing the work functionally – you may have an accounting group or department, another for billing, another for sales, one for customer service and another one for the operational aspects.  Suddenly getting everyone on the same page, and better yet, with the same information, becomes a challenge.  As you become more successful and grow you may find that your automation has become fractured – some groups have grownup applications, some use spreadsheets or their own databases.  This uneven growth and lack of integration across the organization becomes more and more difficult to manage.  Which leads to increases in your cost to onboard a customer.  And, because every group updated their processes and systems manually you may have played “telephone” with important information like customer name, addresses, contact info, etc.  This in turn will lead to issues down the road doing analytical reporting about things like the profitability of a customer.

The good news is this not a new problem – millions of companies face this all the time.  Think of it as a good sign, a growing pain for a successful company.  It is a legitimate problem though and if left to get out of hand can bog a company down, making your organization a modern day Tower of Babel.  Here are some of the symptoms:

• You have  ”bad data” – which is, generally in this situation, inconsistent data.
• You miss key dates – for example your contact stipulates an SLA period for follow up on issues that never made it to customer service.
• You notice frequent miscommunications with customers.  Or about customers.
• You experience more the than usual instances of over or under billing.
• Or your numbers aren’t what you expect but you don’t know why.

What can you do?  Here are some thoughts:

• When you start to see these symptoms force yourself to take the time to stop and take a look around.  If you are still small you may be able to institute some policies and procedures that govern how new customers are set up.  Something as simple as a check sheet can go a long way to staving off problems.  Collaborating with lists and spreadsheets in the cloud might help as well.  Look at Google Docs, Zoho, Dropbox or the like.
• Listen to your employees carefully for statements that indicate the symptoms such as “We’re doing business with ABC in two different offices and it is so hard to keep it straight.  Sure would help if they were set up the same in both places!”.  When you hear this ask probing questions to figure out why.
• Take the time to document your processes.  Then review them and look for inefficiencies and opportunities to automate processes or integrate processes for which you already have applications.  As a bonus you’ll have training material for onboarding new employees!
• Review the processes regularly, at least annually, as input into your technology plan and budget for next year.

Like I said earlier, this isn’t the sign of a “bad” company, just one that has grown by focusing on getting the job done and not “how” the job gets done.  And as you can see, taking a look at the “how” now and again can help you continue to grow.

Has your company experienced this growing pain?

Last week I wrote about the iPad and some applications it has for businesses.  This week I’d like to both broaden and narrow that discussion and talk about using mobile devices to enable your field service employees.

It wasn’t that long ago that any time an employee had to call on customers remotely they showed up with their clipboard and pen.  To enable these employees to do anything in an automated fashion was expensive because it required specialized hardware and software that was generally custom built for the purpose.  This cost created quite a barrier to entry for small and medium sized businesses.  Not so today.

With any smart phone or device (iPad, tablets, net books, etc.)  that has internet access you can provide your field employees with a wide variety of tools for use at the customer site.  You can cobble together a collection of free applications and some business processes to allow these employees to remotely access and complete work orders, create sales orders and provide estimates.  The results of these can be uploaded either directly to your office (if you have the appropriate connectivity) or to a place you designate (like Google Docs, DropBox, or Box.net).  Following is an example of what you can do for the price of an everyday device and a data plan.

Joe repairs appliances.  Each day he can go online and download a list of the service calls he has for the day.  Each will include a description of the problem and an address that he can use to get a map to where he is going.  When he gets to a home with, let’s say, a bum dishwasher, he can go to where his company stores their service manuals for each make and model online.  He can use these to determine the problem.  If he happens to have the parts on his truck he can fix the dishwasher and then create an order from the form he gets online.  He can list his time and the cost associated with the parts (which he again found online).  He can email the invoice to his customer and upload to the office at the same time.  In an alternate scenario, if he doesn’t have the parts he can send a requisition into the office.  When the parts are ready his follow up call can be scheduled and he can go back to the customer for the repairs.  At the end of the day he can upload a list of what he did.

I realize this is an oversimplified example and it doesn’t meet every situation.  For example, what if he doesn’t have internet connectivity at this customer?  This is a real situation that has to be managed.  My point is that technology is advanced enough that this example is very real as long as the obvious situations are thought thru and the appropriate procedures are put in place.  For example, Joe could download the manuals he will need and put likely parts on his truck before he leaves.

There are a million variations on this and what I want you to think about it is “What part of our process can we enable with smartphones and other compact devices?”.  The answer may not be everything but it may be enough to shorten your sales call-to-cash cycle, increase the number of calls an employee can make in a day or reduce the number of times he has to go out to handle a given service call.  Any or all of these can  have a positive affect on the bottom line.

As you begin to the see the benefits you may then want to start looking at specialized paid applications, specialized devices or even custom software.  The bottom line is though there is a lot you can do before you get to that point.

What mobile applications can you apply in YOUR business?

I have to be perfectly honest, I was an iPad skeptic.  I wasn’t skeptical about the device itself – it has the inherent coolness of all the Apple products – but I was skeptical of its usefulness to me and to my business.  I have and heavily use (and adore) my iPhone and I have one of the smallest and lightest full featured notebook computers on the market.  What would be the benefit of adding a new device to the mix?

In the months since the iPad came out, however, I’ve looked at my business and other businesses with a new eye for iPad opportunities.  Frankly, I’ve been surprised at how many I have found.

Retail

A retail establishment could use the iPad instead of a clipboard for inventory.  They could use it instead of a TV and DVD or VCR for product demos.  They could also use it for customer loyalty club sign-ups.  Of course, they’d probably want to bolt it down or tether it for the latter two tasks.

Any industry – Mobile Sales

Wow, any sales person that is out traveling about would find the iPad useful.  The biggest benefit would be the ability to show a customer or client fabulous online demos, videos, etc. with out using a projection device or having an unwieldy computer between them and the prospect.   Once the impressive demo was over the iPad would be great for creating real-time sales orders.

Any industry – Mobile Service Technicians

Cable people, electricians, plumbers, any sort of home maintenance or repair person – these could all use an iPad.  Service orders could be dispatched to the technicals, notes written up, and invoices created.  Service manuals would be available at the flick of a finger.  Estimates could be created and presented to customers on site.  The time lag between service performance and billing would be almost zero.

Medical

Medical histories could be taken, xrays or other test results shown, records updated – all on a small, inconspicuous device the size of a notebook.

Real Estate

What if you were driving a prospective buyer around town and they wanted to see more homes than you prepared for?  In a flash you could search other listings, show the buyer photos and videos, get directions to other homes.  You could do these on a smartphone but the visual experience would be unappealing and a laptop would be large and unwieldy.

Creatives

Designers of all sorts, craftsmen, architects and other creatives could use the iPad as a portable portfolio.  They could also use it to take notes, show design changes and options during customer consultations.

So where does it leave me?  I don’t fall into these categories as a provider of professional services.  Yet I can see using the iPad to show case studies, websites of interests or videos.  I’ve about talked myself into buying an iPad for the ease of doing email and web searching alone.  Consuming content of any sort is the greatest strength of the iPad.  I’ll still want to use my notebook computer for creating content – such as writing blog posts like this.

I still haven’t bought one yet but I think I see an iPad as my year end bonus to myself.  What other ideas for uses of iPad’s in business do you see?