Background

Business intelligence (BI) enables businesses to make decisions based on hard data, rather than gut instinct. It is the ability to interpret information the business collects as a result of its day to day activities, ensuring staff are able to access key information in a way that supports better decision making. Being able to access information at the appropriate time is critical to providing a quality service or product and can be as simple as being able to retrieve a clients contact details or as challenging as knowing when to order new stock or hire new staff.

In fact I would suggest that running a business without access to this kind of information is tantamount to running blind folded! Business planning is just one tangible result, but being able to retrieve data as and when it is needed is the foundation of good decision making and customer service. Understanding how your business works is essential to success and it isn’t always as obvious as it might sound.

In 2008 we analysed our client base and discovered that we spent a significant amount of time and energy on a small number of clients who were not generating sufficient revenue to warrant the resources. This allowed us to work with the clients to focus what it is they really needed and reallocate resources of our own onto other areas. During the recession of 2009 we were therefore working smarter, not harder and this was reflected in our profit margins and helped us survive and thrive.

The foundations of business intelligence

As I have already said, business intelligence is based on the quality of data you collect, but perhaps more importantly the accessibility of the data to each member of your team. Obviously, you need to gather the data, before you can think about how it is distributed, but the corner stone of your businesses intelligence is the data itself.

During a workshop earlier this year a client said that their key objective was to get better visibility throughout their business and it isn’t the first time we have heard this. A couple of years ago we were working with a retail business with units across the south of England. Their primary objective was to get a better understanding of what stock was held within the business and where. They have had a difficult couple of years, but recently told us that he system we had developed for them had definitely helped them meet the challenges of a declining market.

For new businesses, it is worth thinking about what you collect as early as possible, as this will avoid issues as your business grows. All too often we see small businesses rely on poor quality information gathered in a hap hazard and random way that hinders the business as it grows.

For established businesses, you need to review how and what information is collected and then consider how this can be used. Most established businesses will have systems in place, but we regularly see a collection of disconnected systems that duplicate information and are often inaccessible to key personnel.

How to improve you business intelligence

Start with the basics, look at what you need and then check that there are processes and procedures in place that ensure these are followed. Do not allow individuals to design these, as they will only cater for their specific needs and not consider the businesses overall needs. You will often find, especially in larger businesses that departments get so frustrated waiting for the business to provide solutions that they end up evolving their own systems that ultimately end up creating silos of information that are inaccessible across the entire business.

For the vast majority of businesses the first system they invest in is their accounts system (Sage Line 50, Quickbooks, etc.,) as keeping accurate records of your income and expenditure is a statutory requirement. In our experience accountancy firms will have a pseudo Information Technology (IT) department that will help businesses to set-up and train staff on how to use it. This is a classic example of the needs of one function in the business driving forward a solution that meets their needs without considering the rest of the business. This isn’t a criticism, but clearly demonstrates that the need to take a holistic view is essential when considering how information is collected.

Getting the basics right is not hard, it just needs careful consideration and an awareness of the issue in the first place. I have worked with micro businesses that do this better than corporates and used to be shocked at how some businesses survive on the information they gather.

We have recently completed a project that will ultimately improve the clients businesses intelligence, but the challenge they are facing at the moment is gathering their business data into a single source so that we can complete the data migration and launch the system. Their business model uses a loose collection of associates that support the core team delivering a service within a corporate environment. Each person within the business has traditionally collected data (stored on their laptops) about the clients and a central administration function managers the financial elements of the business. Their new system is designed to pull all of the data into a single platform that everyone within the business to access data relevant to their role within the business. However, they are finding this a real challenge as they have never put in place any processes or procedures for ensuring information is collected in a structured manner.

These days there are so many ways information can be collected there is no reason for this kind of issue to arise, but as any small business owner will tell you, there is always something else that needs doing. However, not doing something as simple as collecting your clients contact details properly will come back to haunt you sooner or later.

When considering what information needs to be collected, think about some of the following:-

• Can you access up to date contact details of all your clients, prospects, suppliers and partners?
• Do you know what your sales pipeline looks like and do your sales staff record the progress of all opportunities?
• Do you know what you need to fulfil any contractual obligations you have?
• What stock are you holding and when should you order new stock; this is especially important for high value items or where lead times are measured in weeks or months?
• What is your expected profit margin for specific contracts?
• Are you getting a return on investment for specific activities; this is especially true within your marketing expenditure?
• Are there areas within the business that are less profitable than others?
• Who are your most profitable clients and why?
• Can you anticipate issues, or are you always fire fighting?

This is by no means an exhaustive list and depending on the type of business you run, your requirements will differ, but it should get you thinking along the right lines. At this stage you should be able to define the data needed to provide the answers and can put in place the procedures that ensure the data is collected.

Conclusion

Your business intelligence is reliant on the data you collect, so to improve it you need to focus on the information you gather and make sure everyone in the business understands why this is so important.

Don’t swamp people with information, focus on the most important areas and tailor it to each persons role within the business. We often find the information is staring people in the face, but they can’t see the wood for the trees.

If you would like to find out more about how we can help your business improve its intelligence please contact us on 01626 834433 or take a look at some of our recent case studies on the main site.

Background

Prior to the collapse of the banking system in 2008, banks would simply check your credit rating and their system would allow managers to offer a credit facility in line with the rating. In reality, this was a mistake as no realistic checks were made on the viability of a business idea and it’s chances of success.

Thankfully, when I started Ayrmer Software I had the initial capital needed to get the business off the ground, so never created a business plan. Several people had advised me that I should do a business plan, but I could not see the point, as in my view this was tantamount to attempting to guessing this weeks winning lottery balls! This meant that I started the business without any defined objectives and although I have survived to tell the tale. I would take a very different approach now!

Planning

Within the context of yesterdays conversation, we were talking about a formal business plan, which I would definitely do if starting a new venture today. However my apathy towards business planning covered a far wider remit than our discussion; I just could not see the value of any sort of formal planning, be it cash flow, sales or capacity planning. I saw this as a waste of time, I could not predict what might or might not happen, despite having previously worked within a project management environment (as a surveyor / estimator) where planning is a prerequisite.

Planning allows you to define your goals, enabling you to anticipate potential issues. Furthermore, planning can help you measure your progress towards those goals allowing you to be proactive, should anything unanticipated happen. A few years ago we employed a business coach and he always stressed the importance of addressing the problems you know (or at least can anticipate), enabling you to focus on the curved balls you never see coming!

How do we plan

We now have a number of tools in place the utilise information within the business that allows us to extract intelligence from the data held within the business. One of the most useful tools we have at our disposal is the cash flow forecasting that enables us to make informed decisions ahead of time. We also use capacity planning, for determining the resources required to complete projects on time as well as plan for future expansion.

Where has planning helped

During the summer of 2008, we were able to see initial signs of the coming credit crunch / recession and knew that the next 6 months were going to be challenging. This was based on projections we had compiled using the tools I have already mentioned. We had already taken several initiatives that ensured the business was as lean as possible, but we could still see problems ahead.

Armed with this information, we compiled a business plan that set out a road map for the following 12 – 18 months that enabled us to get funding from our bank, securing our cash position through 2009. Without this, we would have had serious problems, but because of planning, we were able to survive what was a relatively short term issue. In fact, by the end of 2009 we had managed to clear our overdraft and start building up our cash reserves again.

Conclusion

It doesn’t matter if you are embarking on a new venture or running an established business, planning will help you manage your business more effectively, enabling you to make informed decisions. Although, by my own admission I used to see this as wasted time, experience has taught the contrary is true. As the old adage goes, fail to plan, plan to fail!

At Ayrmer Software we believe in treating the customer with respect and see our relationships with our clients as partnerships. Key to this is our ethos of remembering that the other person is always more important than ourselves. In an ongoing business relationship this should also be a mutual understanding. Although this is not always the case.

Putting the other person before yourself does not equate to subservience or kowtowing to every demand. What it means is that you treat others how you would like to be treated yourself. This is what we try to do in our business which at times can be hard.

It is said that you should walk a mile in someone else’s shoes before criticising them. Although we don’t wear our clients footwear and do not criticise them, we take a similar approach in that we get to know them and their businesses in order to understand and challenge them. This enables us to provide them with a better service as we understand the pains they are going through.

Our approach to projects – challenge and improve

By better understanding the clients and their business we can try to look forward in their business and develop solutions that adapt to their future changing business needs. Sometimes this means challenging the clients on what they want in order to provide them with the solution their business needs.

We built a solution for a client a couple of years ago where we challenged what  they were asking for in their business system. We said that they needed to be  more flexible in their requirements in order to be able to change their business model. They listened to us and we built the system they needed and 18 months later they had changed their business model but we didn’t have to change the system as we had build in the functionality that enabled them to change.

We challenged and improved their requirements which helped them grow. Had we not done this they would have had to spend a lot more money to get the system changed.

Good processes = happy relationship

Other things that also help in maintaining good relationships with clients is good open communication. We are very clear from the outset of any project with clients about our process. By guiding the client through the project process we ensure that there are no surprises for either of us. This enables us to complete the project successfully and the client is happy.

Good CRM Helps too!

We utilise our own web enabled Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system and project management system. This gives us clear visibility of who we are speaking to, where we are with projects and the ability to deal with issues quickly if they arise (which they do sometimes – nobody is perfect but we bend over backwards to fix things if its our fault).

Conclusion

So the customer is not always right but they are more important than us and understanding that enables us to develop long term relationships with our clients. This has, over the years, led to ongoing work from clients and referrals from them.

Background

A few years ago – when Ayrmer Software was in its infancy – I attended a network event and asked someone what the difference was between sales and marketing; it was an open question on a table of around 8 people from a variety of sectors and I got an interesting definition.

Ask yourself how many businesses could use your service and then ask yourself how many of these businesses know of you. The answer – unless you are a global brand or in a niche sector – is going to be 0.000001 % (or something similar).  Marketing is increasing the 0.000001 % to something greater. Sales is a consequence of marketing and is about closing the deal.

No doubt the person that provided this definition was in marketing, but it stuck and seemed to be a really good way of explaining the difference between two disciplines so often perceived as one persons responsibility (certainly within the SME environment).

Marketing has gone through a revolution recently with the wide spread use of the internet, enabling businesses to increase exposure to potential clients via search engines and an entire new industry – Search Engine Marketing (SEM) – has been created in its wake. And just when everyone thought they were getting to grips with the internet social media came along and exploded onto the scene.

New challenges

Online marketing – especially social media – is still in the very early stages of development and as such there are few rules, little experience or indeed expertise in how to harness a tool within the marketeers box of tricks.  For many marketing directors the entire concept is repulsive and some businesses have alienated themselves from a potentially huge opportunity. However others have approached this new phenomenon with open minds!

Changing environment

Up until the latter part of 2008 we had used business networks as a primary marketing tool and it had paid dividends time and time again.  However, following the collapse of the banking system, businesses seized up and people sat on any cash they had within their businesses as they weathered the storm.

We saw the effectiveness of business networks falter as people hid behind the parapet and focused on survival.  Ironically, this is when people should have utilised their networks, but for some reason appeared (in my experience) not to.

There were some sound reasons behind the turn to online networking – not least to reduce the cost / time invested in business networking – and keep in touch with the contacts we had established over 4 / 5 years of offline networking.  As a business we had already dipped our toe into online networking via LinkedIn and Ecademy, so it wasn’t a giant leap forward for us to switch our focus to online rather than offline networking.

Plan of action

We initially changed the focus of online networking, focusing on linkedin and whilst dropping ecademy.  The first step was to ensure we connected with as many people we had already met via LinkedIn – using their import contacts – and making sure our profiles were up to date and monitoring any activity.  We also focused on LinkedIn Answers that enables business people to post questions and submit responses within reasonable well defined areas (see previous article How to get the most out of Linkedin – get engaged).

In December 2008 a marketeer asked us to develop a tool that could be plugged into any website that allowed users to post a tweet on the host website, utilising the Twitter application platform interface (API), which drew our attention to Twitter as a social media platform and I later created an account in November 2009.

I cannot say I was overly enamoured about the prospect of tweeting, after all David Cameron famously said “too many tweets make a tw*t” and for many of us this was another example of instant gratification and self promotion so pervasive within our society today.

So, with some guidance from colleagues we embarked on working out how we could use the myriad of platforms available to support our marketing strategy.  Actually, calling it a marketing strategy is slightly misleading; we are a small business and were trying survive a recession and were using anything we could find to increase our chances.

In all honesty, social media happened and we evolved with it (to some degree) and it was only in the autumn of 2010 that we really focused our effects in any sort of constructive manner. Did it start out as an experiment, no, but it has become one for our clients as more and more have asked about social media and in turn asked “does it work“?

Vince McConville joined the team at the beginning of 2011 and bought with him a wealth of knowledge and experience about online marketing (including social media) and had presented a number of seminars for Business Link SW about the subject.  He reviewed what we had do to date and then looked at how we could push forward our online activities.

• We created a Facebook page last summer (2011)
• Leveraged our LinkedIn company profile and individual profiles
• Published regular articles on our blog
• Published regular news articles and press releases on our website
• Used Twitter to distribute content and draw website visitors on to our website
• Engaged with people via social media platforms

The object was simple, increase awareness of our brand and services that would result in an increase of good quality leads and other opportunities.

Measure, measure, measure

We would also recommend that you measuring the effectiveness of any business activity, but especially within a marketing environment, as this allows you to determine which channels are the most effective.

A few months ago I was talking to a client how said they were thinking of scrapping advertising in a sector specific publication, because the asked people to quote a reference and used a separate telephone number and email address and had come to the conclusion that it had not yielded any return on their investment.  I argued against this as I suggested that the constant unconscious peppering of their brand meant that when a potential client came across their brand there would be a subconscious recognition of the business that would create an initial level of trust.

This kind of measurement is extremely difficult to measure, but is equally important.  We can ask clients new clients where they found out about the business, but rarely get a concise answer.  When clients provide us with details and / or we can work out where they came from – using tools like Google Analytics – we can capture the source, but all too often this is a holy grail.

There are measurements that you can record, that would indicate if specific objectives are achieved, but you have to ask yourself if these lead to meeting the businesses primary objectives.

1. Number of connections made (LinkedIn)
2. Number of followers (Twitter)
3. Number of likes (Facebook)
4. Number of engagement – conversations, etc., – between you and the connections, followers or fans.
5. Number of click throughs (bit.ly and other URL services)
6. Number of click throughs to either your website and / or blog
7. Number of posts (blog)

It is worth monitoring some of the above, as they are early indicators as to the effectiveness of your campaign but need to be seen within the context of the bigger picture.

So does social media work?

Remember our initial objective – increase awareness of our brand and services that would result in an increase of good quality leads – and then work out how to best evaluate the success / failure of our online marketing.

There are two ways of approaching this question: -

1. The number of leads directly related to a specific stream, e.g. Twitter, LinkedIn, articles, etc.,
2. The more holistic approach that measures the entire online marketing strategy.

If we use the first approach one could reasonable argue that social media does not work as only a small percentage  of leads can be directly attributed to a specific social media platform or activity.  However, when you use the second approach the business has seen a 100% increase in visitors and a 276% increase in projects that have resulted as a direct result of our online marketing, so one could conclude social media works.

We have worked with a number of clients over the last twelve months using a variety of different approaches that include: -

1. Integrated social media feeds and platforms into their websites.
2. Integrated blogging platforms into websites.
3. Ensured websites are properly optimised and utilise sitemaps to ensure search engines read pages deep within their websites.
4. Creation of mobile e-commerce website that compliments the standard website.

Using a variety of approaches like this has enabled us to out perform their previous online marketing significantly in every case. However the issue of effectively measuring this still exists and is still difficult to quantify.

We analysed one website and  could see that although the number of orders had increased, the average order value had dropped by around 9% (slightly disappointing but inline within the specific sector).  If average order values had remained consistent they would have seen a 13% increase in what is essentially a bull market.  Another client saw an increase of 35% in traffic that resulted in 23% increase in sales within a month, but that wasn’t solely down to aspects we have discussed in this article.

Other clients have seen significant increases for lead generation.  In fact, I am often envious of one of our clients that has seen a 100% increase in lead generation and has said that the leads are of a better quality than before we took over their website!

Conclusion

Social media is a new tool that provides businesses with new ways of achieving brand awareness to a far greater number of people than before and although it is still difficult to attribute the success of any online marketing campaign, without it you are attempting to climb Mount Everest without clampons!

Businesses will use social media in different ways – depending on their sector and / or target audience – and for some businesses it is an accepted tool, but for many others it feels alien and business owners are struggling to understand it.  I have heard business owners say “… I don’t see the appeal of living my life in a fish bowl …” or ” … I don’t want staff siting on Facebook all day, they are here to work!” that I fully understand, but to ignore it is a missed opportunity.

So my conclusion – based on our experience and that of our clients – is that social media does work!

If you would like to know more, please contact Vince McConville on 01626 834433.

Resources

Unscrabbling social media is child’s play

How to get the most out of Linkedin – get engaged

Social media – how it all fits together

Social media is just one more tool for your online marketing

The traditional approach

Most business websites – especially B2B websites – use traditional navigation systems that organise content into related groups of information.  This works when the website copy is created in an organised / logic manner, but starts to break down when information is created in isolation. The traditional work around for this issue is to create an abstract collection of individual pages that are presented either as news articles, press releases or blogs.

Search engines now focus on fresh, compelling and relevant content so will inevitably drive traffic to these abstract collections of pages, that stand alone and inevitably end up with high bounce rates; people find what they are looking for and then move on and as much of this content is in the form of blogs, the calls to actions can become blurred.  This is, in part, because the content doesn’t sit naturally within the traditional navigation and / or content so does not naturally lead website visitors into the main website where calls to actions are far clearer.

Blogging platforms and tag clouds

Blogging platforms introduced the concept of tag clouds that enable content authors to join related articles together, although I always wonder just how often website visitors realise just how well tag clouds work. For those of you how do not know what a tag cloud is the following definition might help: -

A tag cloud is a visualisation of text based content – often using keyword meta tags – that organises adjectives (tags) into a format that highlights the most popular terms visited by users or the most frequently used.

This allows content authors to create relationships between seemingly unrelated snippets of information.  Social media sites use a number of variations to this approach, for example Twitter uses hash tags (#ayrmer).

Modern content distribution

In our experience, we find that people find it far easier to write content that has a very narrow focus that does not appear to relate to their main website content.  This isn’t always the case, but it is becoming increasing common for businesses to talk around their main business in order to promote their expertise in their sector.

We published an article about User Acceptance Test (UAT) that attracts a huge volume of traffic and is an intrinsic part of our processes, but is not immediately obvious to the website visitor that it relates to what we do as a business. Other examples include: -

• Case studies that might be related to two or three areas within the business.
• Products that belong to multiple product groups
• Blog articles and / or tweets that relate to a number of areas within the business.

Certainly the explosion in social media and the distribution of marketing collateral via these channels increases the problem of connecting the dots so that website visitors are encouraged to go deeper into your website, with the obvious business objectives.

Connecting the dots together

Traditional navigation is still useful for website content that has been written using a logic and systematic approach, but needs to be able to connect the dots together and sometimes this is either extremely difficult or becomes clumsy.

Using the principle of tag clouds website authors could created isolated content that is joined together using one or more adjectives to create realistic connections between seemingly disconnected information. By using this approach users could be presented information that would not only be of interest, but would also encourage users to delve deeper into the overall content.

connecting the dots together

We first suggested this idea to a client last summer, as his website visitors were forced down a maze, that if they made one wrong turn, would never get to the end.  This is more common than you might at first realise and users are often sent down dead ends, especially with search engine results.

Conclusion

This concept is an evolution of what has come before and applying it in a slightly different context, but it could potentially make website content far more compelling for the visitor and encourage them to investigate further and that provides you – the website owner / content writer – more opportunities.  As a spin off I believe search engines would also find it easier to understand the context of stand alone snippets of information resulting in better results within the Search Engine Results Rages (SERPs)

The article highlighted the state of general confusion that the new Law created. This hasn’t really improved over the last 12 months with the deadline for compliance looming on the 26th May 2012.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) are taking the lead with implementing the directive but 82% of web marketeers in a recent survey think the legislation is not good for business. Even the Information Commissioner’s own stats would back this up as only 10% of their visitors have actually agreed to the cookies on their site.

The spirit behind the legislation, which wanted to control the abuse of tracking cookies by third party sites, is to be commended but as usual when legislators get involved in technical issues the implementation tends to be a bit of a mess to say the least.

It seems that companies in the UK are either not worried about or are ignorant of the legislation. According to the BBC they recently reported that 95% of the top companies in the UK are not compliant. If they are not compliant then you can bet that a similar high percentage of the rest of the UK Small and Medium Businesses will not be compliant either.

So what do you need to do to avoid a £500,000 fine!

What to Do

Our advice last year was to wait and see the what developed as there was talk of the browser developers such as Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer coming up with an easy technical solution for users to agree to cookies. So far this hasn’t materialised.

The Information Commissioner updated their guidance about the Cookie Legislation in December 2011 and copy can be downloaded here.

The advice remains pretty much the same  encouraging website owners to pro-actively review their cookie usage and their privacy policies. They also now recommend making the link to the statement on cookies more prominent on every page not just Home page as every page is a potential entry page from the search engines.

They also give some example of how to get the consent with actions such as pop-ups for site wide consent to more subtle check boxes on login screens. BT have taken a stance whereby first time visitors are asked to agreed to site wide cookies with an option to change at any time. There are currently no stats as to how successful this has been.

No matter how much information and reassurance you give a visitor about the use of cookies on your site, a big risk is that the default action by the visitor will be to reject them. This will be a major problem for on-line retailers as customers opting out will have a reduced experience and they could lose out on sales.

A recent survey by E-Consultancy showed that 69% of respondents knew what cookies were, but only 23% of users would actually actually say yes if a website asked their permission to set cookies.

It is a tough call about what to do and you cannot really hide behind the “numbers” in that most other websites are not compliant either.

As I said last year the Information Commissioner is going to take a practical viewpoint on the implementation and so long as you are planning the implemetation of solution you will not necessarily get prosecuted straight away.

If you want some advice or guidance on how this legislation may affect your business then please get in touch and we will be happy to chat through your options.

Call Vince on 01626 834433 or email vince@ayrmer.co.uk

Resources

ICO Cookie Guidelines

Our post last year on the Cookie Legislation

We have just successfully launched a new system for a client whose journey to this event has highlighted to us and to them the importance of properly capturing  the business requirements. It also highlighted the importance on providing a solution that fits the needs and not their wants. The client has allowed us to use them as a practical case study to highlight the advice in this article.

In the beginning

A business has the seeds of an idea and creates a business plan to move it forward.  They decide that they want a website / online database system to either market the idea or act as the tool by which the idea will come to fruition. They hunt around for a developer to turn their idea into reality. They have a number of options moving forward:

1. Select a developer who will take the idea on its merit and build what they want with the out come that it potentially doesn’t work.
2. Select a developer who will take the clients idea, challenges it and breaks it down into what they want against what they will need to successfully bring the idea to fruition.

The right path

The paths people take in business are varied but we think when developing a solution for a client the second of the above options is the right path. This is the path that  Treasure Tails chose to take when developing their family genealogy website Heirloom Hunting.

This is a good example of where Ayrmer Software’s wide experience can bring new ideas to fruition. This system involved all our experience in business, business analysis and client liaison in order to buid a database driven e-commerce platform solutions.
Lloyd Brina, Heirloom Hunting.

They had a idea for a website and the basis of a business proposition and decided to follow the path where they undertook a series of workshops in which their business propositions were thoroughly challenged. The outcome was a system that worked for them that was quite different to the one they proposed at the beginning of their journey.

We recommend using workshops to capture a business’s requirements, because often businesses have an idea of what they want but do not know what they actually need. The two may indeed be the same thing but often it is not. We are driven by emotion and “wants” are a big factor in purchasing decisions. This is why so much effort is made by companies to create brands. To get people emotive about purchases in order to buy without thinking. While this is generally fine in the world of retail in business emotional decisions  can be dangerous.  A bit of rational thought is  the safer way forward.

As a footnote, it is also worth noting that you make decisions based on your assumptions and will not always know what is and isn’t possible. Using a specialist ensures that you can make decisions not only knowing what is achievable, but also be confident that you use the most up to date technologies, taking into account areas that you might not even be aware of.

Recommendations

Workshops with their deliverable outcome in the form of a specification, enable the developer and client to be sure about what they are going to get as all the requirements within the agreed scope of the workshop will be discussed. Only when everyone is clear about the  details in the specification does it get signed off.

This should create an unambiguous and clear description of the project ensuring feature creep will not be the route to an increased costs. Additional functionality can be added, but will be managed so that any impact on costs and / or time-scales can be managed and signed off.

The result is a better managed development process with no surprises for either the client or the developer, which results in the completion of the project on time and budget!

Different developers operate in different ways, but this methodology is borne out of many years experience and difficult issues arising for both client and developer.

It is about putting the other person first, by looking after the client properly and making sure you always aim at what is best for them then even though they may not think it at first the client will thank you for the results.

Resources

Why you need an software architect; the building project analogy

The importance of good business analysis and a written specification

Challenging your clients is good for them

Here is the list of things to do in February that might help!

1. Read this very useful document from Shirlaws coaching on Surviving and Thriving the recession. It has some great ideas to help you through the biting economy! If you may also want to read this very helpful e-book as well if you are looking for More Money, More Time and Less Stress.
2. Review your marketing  – we  have spent the last few weeks reviewing what we have done over the last year and the impact to see what works and what doesn’t. If you don’t measure and review regularly then you could be wasting time, money and effort on activities that don’t work.
3. Get social – It works honestly! Despite the title of the blog post Charlie has recently written inferring Social Media doesn’t Work. We have found that it is an important part of the marketing mix to help enhance the Ayrmer Software brand.
4. Give out testimonials to businesses you work with whether they are clients or suppliers. It may sound tacky but “spread the love and they will love you back”.  Testimonials reinforce your reputation as a good person to do business with.
   If you think we’ve done a good job for you please feel free to put a recommendation on our LinkedIn company page or Like our Facebook page or follow our tweets on Twitter!
   If you are really happy with the service someone has provided then send them a thank you or even a gift! (Not that we are looking for gifts! We had a very nice testimonial from one of our clients Fish Kids before Christmas – a perfect gift!).
   On a personal note don’t forget Valentine’s day on 14^th February – if you are stuck for ideas why not get a romantic bottle of bubbly from Best Cellars Wines!
   We do not get commission from Best Cellars for promoting their wares – we just like happy clients and are happy to recommend their services. 
5. If you are unsure about something ask for help. Quite often in business things happen and you need speak to someone about it. This is where in the past many business owners turned to Business Link advisors for some impartial advice. With the demise of the regional Business Link network who can you turn to? This is where your professional advisors such as accountants, solicitors and business coaches can help. Or even talk to friends who are in business also as they may have experienced similar. A problem shared is a problem halved!

We hope you find these tips useful. If you have any of your own we would love to hear them!

Resources

Shirlaws E-Book – “More Money, More Time, Less Stress”

Shirlaws – Survive and Thrive

The recent article on Mashable on “How to Communicate your Software Needs to a developer” prompted this post. It was in essence, a guide to choosing a website developer NOT a software developer and caused a few people to question authors reasoning.

A lot of the advice in the article related to the front end aka the look and feel (design) as is to be expected on Mashable, given its target audience. Website design not software development. Businesses need to differentiate between this very different skill sets as the process for selecting a developer for back end business systems is slightly different.

Our view on how clients should do their due diligence is not necessarily the right one, but it works for us and our clients. We are not saying that we can do everything or service any client, in fact we know this isn’t the case and know our limitations. This is why, as part of the due diligence process the developer has to be selective in engaging with clients, as taking on the wrong type of client can be detrimental to both parties!

We focus on working with SME’s, these are our core market and we believe we understand them because we are one as well. This is important because we understand the business issues that our clients face. Our business model is bespoke business software and therefore a good understanding of  a clients business is vital to enable us to build an appropriate solution. It can also be argued that businesses of a similar size will communicate and behavour in similar ways and therefore should be a good match.

Following this reasoning, if a client who was looking came to us to develop a high end business to consumer (B2C) solution we would not be appropriate as we are not the right fit for them.  This isn’t always the case, but certainly where the focus is on creating a highly visual solution, historically we would struggle to deliver in some cases.

We were recently talking to a client and it emerged that they are looking at a new business system to help manage their growth. They are investigating various options including Off the Shelf (OTS) software solutions designed for their vertical market. Their reasoning for this is they don’t know if they are working in the right way and they thought a vertical OTS products would provide them with answers to questions they didn’t know to ask.

This sort of makes sense. We have had other clients that have gone down the Off the Shelf route for that reason, but with mixed results. Generally the OTS product has fulfilled some, but not all of their requirements and there is  a lot of functionality they have never used.

If they had gone down the bespoke solution route would they have fared any better? They might have if the company understood the business enough and asked the right questions of the client. There is the risk that they may have faced – the right questions may not have been asked and they wouldn’t have known because they themselves didn’t know the questions to ask. A bit like Donald Rumsfeld – - you don’t know what you don’t know – confusing!

Asking the right questions can help you get the right results

The questions the client should be asking themselves are:

• Do we know what our business needs in order to be able to choose the right solution?
• If not can we find the the right person to ask those questions?
• Does the software developer understand our business? Do they have a process that will enable them to find out?
• Do they undertake a full requirements capture that challenges our needs / wants?
• Do we go down the Off the Shelf route, opt for a turn-key solution or go for a bespoke solution?
• Can we work within the developers business model (see this post).
• Will the end product give us the functionality we require to solve the key business issues?
• Can we live with 70-80% of the functionality we require if we utilise an OTS solution. Is the missing 20-30 % going to impact on the effective operation of the business?

Whilst this not a definitive list of questions (and there will never be one) these will certainly help you start to think about your requirements and guide your search.

Resources:

Ayrmer Blog – Software Architects 

ICT Business Models

Original Mashable Article

32 Questions a software developer may have forgotton to ask a start-up

Intuition is the sum of your experience.

Intuition is not the same for everyone, this is because intuition is born out of experience and not everybody has the same knowledge or experience.

For example recently we purchased an iPad for testing purposes at work. I struggled to use it as first because I have been conditioned over the years to use PCs.  My experience and intuition was pushing me to try to use the iPad in ways that wouldn’t work. It was very frustrating to say the least especially as all the branding primes you to expect an intuitive experience. My son (7) on the other hand has not been preconditioned in his use of technology and took to the iPad very easily. It is an age and experience thing, one which App developers are tapping into with some very intuitive Apps. The Telegraph recently their top 10 iOS apps for kids.

In the end I resorted to having to look up the instructions and re-training myself to use the iPad. Something I considered surprising as I think myself  good with software and work for a company that designs intuitive software.

Training & Intuition

Clients often say to us that they shouldn’t  need training on our systems as they are supposed to be intuitive.  In most cases this is correct as we try to build systems based around a users business processes. However if what we are replacing are spreadsheets then a clients intuition is based on using them. What we design is meant to be more effective therefore will inherently be different. Therefore intuition based on their spreadsheet use won’t work and some training is required to re-balance the experience.

The implementation of a new software system often takes place as part of major changes with in a company and so users experiences will be undergoing a major transformation which is why such change management needs to be controlled properly and the appropriate resources / training put in place

There has got to be rules!

In the development of any software system there has got to be rules, rules help form experience and therefore intuition. When developing ecommerce system you follow the rules of best practice that have been tried and tested over the years. You do not try to reinvent the wheel or create a radically different experience as this can cause the user to get lost and lose trust in the shop.

Even in open source software development, often seen as free and open, there are rules to maintain the integrity of the various development projects.

Using spreadsheets as a business tool can be dangerous as there are no rules. The user is free to make them up as they go along. Whilst this may appeal to some, it plays havoc with things like data validation. It also skews a users experience and therefore intuition so when they reach the limitation of what the spreadsheets can do for their business and decide to invest in proper business systems  they are faced with a dilemma - rules or no rules!

Proper business systems use rules for validation and to create order. This makes the business data more valuable and usable. The user however may feel constrained as they now do not have the flexibility they previously enjoyed. This is where training is vital to help the user learn their new experience.

Target the design to the audience.

One way to help ensure that software is intuitive for the user is to target the design to the audience.

My experience as PC user meant that I didn’t feel the iPad was intuitive and I had to re-establish my intuition through training and experience. I still struggle in parts with using the iPad but that is because it isn’t designed for people like me who like to delve into the workings of things.

The younger generation on the whole will find way round the iPad (and the internet) as it natural rather than a 40 yr old who have had to learn it and break preconceptions and habits.

Conclusion

I definitely think that intuition is the sum of all our experiences. In software I like to think I am very experienced and therefore find things naturally intuitive but as my recent experience with the iPad shows, my intuition is always developing and even I need training. I am not alone in this.