Small Business Story on Cloud Transformation

My journey in the Cloud is complete. As of last weekend, I have transitioned all my business applications into the Cloud. In the process, I have moved from a PC world into an Apple Mac world. It is a journey from which I see no way back and I like it just that way.

So, first up, can a small business transform their entire business into the Cloud? In my case, the answer is yes. I am a small business whose world is effectively consulting with other companies. I have to be a part of those companies and so I need to have the tools and services which comply. I need to able to bill and collect cash effectively while being able to track expenditure. CRM is vital to me to manage and leverage my network. I need to promote myself, my knowledge and my services while I need to be able to accurately record and track the things I do with clients. 

I have found applications to do all of this in the Cloud.

Can a small business survive using only Cloud applications? Everyone I meet always says that the Cloud is not an all or nothing play. You have to keep some applications on a real computer, don't you? I mean, you need a USB port or to print or scan. How do you do all that in the Cloud?

The reality is much richer than people think. I now use a Macbook Pro laptop, an iPad2 and an iPhone, so I am Apple's dream. I have an Epson BX305FW all in one WiFi printer/scanner/copier. These are my hardware pieces.

Applications:

Office Productivity

My work horse office productivity is Microsoft Office 365 with Office for Mac 2011 client. I was already in the Cloud since 2006 via hosted Exchange but I moved to 365 when I needed to upgrade. The cost is around £189 per annum. 

MS Office 365 is perhaps the most disappointing and annoying Cloud application.

Why? Because it is half and half and it misses the point in so many ways. You see it is still a resident PC or Mac application doing the real work - the only thing is you get a hosted Exchange again and the addition of two elements, both of which are relatively useless - SharePoint and Lync. The latter assumes you have loads of people in your company to collaborate with yet LiveMeeting is much simpler and easier to use.The fact is - it's the same thing.

SharePoint is the white elephant it has always been. Meant as a file repository it is really for complicated checking in and out of documents on projects. Fine if you are a large organisation, hopeless if you are a small business. Try simply sending a copy of a file by email as an attachment from SharePoint - a common thing if you want to leave clients information. You can't. Try sharing the file - the fun begins.

Forget it - don't go there. Use Dropbox. It's simpler, effective, available on all devices in the Cloud and it works far more flexibly. And you get 2Gb of online storage for nothing. I use it with clients all the time even though we have SharePoint servers coming out of our ears between us. This was just another product Microsoft could not sell to small businesses so they resorted to what all poor salespeople do - bundle it and 'give it away'. But for a company making the kinds of profits they do - you get nothing for free.

MS Office 365 keeps you in the Microsoft world. That's about as much good as can be said for it. Office for Mac is at least innovative, sassy and clever but it actually is not that compliant with PC Office. So if you are in the Apple world, Google is a very serious contender.

Dropbox I have mentioned - I did upgrade to 50Gb or similar for $99 a year and now I have all my working files in the Cloud so if I update any from any device, I have the most current in a single location. Backed up permanently. And I can share individual directories or files with anybody without compromising the version. And you can attach any to any email. No brainer for small businesses. Box.net works too much like SharePoint for my liking and you are limited by the numbers of files you can upload, download - whatever. Don't go there.

Evernote - my shining star. If you have ever used Microsoft OneNote you will have shared my experience of thinking 'Great' - dump a load of stuff into and never use it again. Evernote is the essential workbook to use to run projects and keep a real track of meetings, actions and be a repository for research and other things. It synchronises across all platforms immediately and can be shared by email, social media or as a blog page easily. There are a few bugs in it when working with email directories but by and large, I use it all the time and it's brilliant on the iPad. At £27 per year for the premium version it's ace. if not, it's free. In fact, I'm using it now.

CRM

There is only one animal worth considering - Salesforce.com. At £110 per annum for Group Edition, it integrates with Outlook on the PC and it has Apps on iPad and iPhone. It's simply superb and kills most other CRM packages.

Printing & Tools

Epson iPrint for iPad is the cat's whiskers. The little App allows the iPad to control your printer/scanner. Scans can be directly loaded into the Dropbox. It's free.

If you use mind mapping, think Mindnodes or iThoughts.

Accounts

Enter my new hero and the last application to go Cloud. Xero.com is a must for any small business at anything from £12 to £24 per month it is great software and everything is backed off to the Cloud. The move from Sage could not have been easier and it has actually made accounting fun. Did I say that? Shoot me.

Social Media

I use LinkedIn for business networking for the wider things. To be honest, it has lost its shine for me since the 'Answer Squatters' arrived and took over things while the recruiters bombard the searches. I still get good information from there and so it's more a repository for me if I need to find out about somebody.

Ecademy.com is great for small business networking where you need a 'support team' of like businesses and people willing to share ideas. It has a great blogging facility and it has a real family feel to things rather than the faceless stuff at LinkedIn and Facebook (which serves little use for me other than frivolous family and friends stuff).

Twitter is useful for promoting yourself as long as you use original thought and treat it with respect. It's public and don't forget it. Also, volume is no substitute for value while using it too much as with any social media can be seen as time wasting and questions what you do.

Other social media like Empire Avenue is fine if you want a bit of fun but is actually dangerous if you work for people. It serves little purpose beyond providing some feedback as to how active you are on the web - Klout and PeerIndex do much the same.

Blogging

Wordpress and Blogger are the obvious but little Apps on the iPad allows you to knock up content on the fly and feed these blogs. I use BlogPress on the iPad2 and it's really good allowing you to feed multiple blogs from one console.

Naturally you have the capabilities of your machines but for me leisure is filled by iTunes and Kindle - available on Mac, iPad and iPhone.

Can you thrive as a small business in the Cloud? 

I think so. I have dramatically brought down costs of base applications - saving over £1,200 per annum on accounting alone, MS Office 365 presents no savings at all over a 3 year period and I really wonder where MS are going here, Evernote is great for £27 per annum, Dropbox is $99 per annum for a ton of disk space, Salesforce is the best CRM for £110 per annum.

I don't have to buy or manage any server, adding users on the MS 365 Exchange is easy, data is always backed up and available anywhere, everything can be accessed by any device (check out Xero's iPad and iPhone Apps - brilliant and free) and I can do internet banking from my iPhone and iPad2 as well in handy Apps.

Along with the communications hero, Skype, that allows me an inbound London number for business and routes it to me via the Cloud anywhere, I look like a big company when I am small.

My website is the last thing that needs overhauling as this maybe the only area where MS SharePoint can help. Dare I ask anyone as I have no clue where to start as everything is just so complicated an clunky with Microsoft - you need a reseller partner for all that and that costs, sadly. I use Core GB and they are great guys.

The Cloud has cut my costs, management time, accounting effort, and my applications down - I am more effective, mobile, flexible with everything safely backed up always. 

I am thriving, for sure. One thing - I chose MS Office 365 because I feared having any minor incompatibility with those I work for and network with. The alternative is Google Apps at $50 per user per year. We can debate whether Google has resellers or real salespeople but when it comes to Google Apps they are now a serious contender for small businesses, and they are the Cloud collaborator of choice to most Cloud applications.

Microsoft dismiss Google as an advertising company and mere noise. MS have a nasty habit of blaming poor products on daft users - the true sign of talentless salespeople, you might say, but believe me the insults wear in the end. In a year's time I will take a serious look at Google in terms of where it's at in capability, compatibility and cost.

You see, that's the best thing about the Cloud. You are not beholden to anyone. Your contracts are monthly or annual - you are the master of your destiny and choice is your friend. You have the ability to adapt and change all the time.

Welcome to the new world. It's putting the fun back into working.

Accounting in the Cloud

I cannot say that I have ever been enthusiastic about having to do my accounts. Like most sales animals we fear we what we don't know and we value the work that accountants do only when it goes in our favour. So the thought of having to do ones own accounts is not a natural one.

Some years ago, between contracts, I actually switched from Excel based accounting and bought a small package called TASBooks, which was subsequently bought by accounting big boys Sage. It took a while but over a few weeks I got to know the package by entering all my historic transactions and building up the history of my company. I was actually quite proud of the work and I have done all my accounts myself since. If truth be known, TASBooks is a nice package for small businesses. It's easy to use and it is quite flexible. The downsides are that if you want to produce some meaningful management accounts, it's a very manual process. And to be honest, that's the only thing I am really that interested in - the snapshot.

So with all my harping on about Cloud computing, I have been looking to put ALL my business grade software into the Cloud as a small business. I have signed up with Microsoft Office 365, I use Evernote, Dropbox, Salesforce.com, Skype and now about 80% of my work I can do via my iPad. The last bastion of on premise, old style computing was Accounts. Could I find a solution to lure me fully into the Cloud?

Enter Xero.com - a fully Cloud based accounting solution for small businesses. It's a New Zealand quoted company but let's not hold that against them at his time of Rugby World Cup. They have over 40,000 users worldwide and revenues of over $(NZ)15m this year with an office and sales/support team in the UK and tons of 'Advisers' who are accounting firms using the software who can offer a rounded service for a monthly fee.

I have trialled and bought the software in about 3 days of using it. Quite simply, as a small businessman and a non-accountant, it is exactly what I have been waiting for. It's easy to set up, easy to start and enter historical balances, it is bank account driven and it has complete sets of easy to see reporting that makes sense of accounts. Transactions are more logical to salespeople, payroll runs are no longer a mystical art that involves a 'journal', VAT is easy to see as a running total, back ups are automatic and on the web and the application runs the same on PC, Mac or iPad as it is truly Cloud based.

At anything from £12 to £24 per month depending on your business size and needs, it is reasonably priced too. TASBooks was cheap when I bought it but I upgraded to TASBooks 2 and then took annual support as you need it. That now costs £375 per year and is rising. I pay £1,600 for my annual accounts and £600 per year for a freelancer to calculate my payroll and VAT and electronically submit them to HMRC. That's a lot of money in fees. Now I can pay £120 per month for a fully inclusive service of software and accounting including payroll and VAT from one firm. That's a reduction from close on £2,600 per year to just £1,440.

But the the experience of doing the accounts is now so much better - it can even get automatic links to your bank accounts (HSBC) for a further £2.50 per month or you can import all statements yourself via .csv files. Xero then takes each input line and either asks you to allocate to the appropriate accounts code, or once you have done it once, it learns which payee is coded where and accounts for it and the VAT automatically.

This will cut down the time I consume on my accounts by more than a half. I can input expenses and attached scanned receipts directly into the software on the hoof - today I run separate spreadsheets for expenses. Management accounts are just a pull down menu item while the brilliant Executive Summary gives me a full business snapshot that would have taken me ages before. I can generate and email customised invoices directly from the software and allocating cash is just a dream as you go to the list of outstanding unpaid bills and pick off the one you want.

I don't get excited about accounting, but Xero has become one of my morning rituals along with Outlook and Salesforce. I actually look forward to seeing my accounts not thinking about it with begrudging dread.

Xero is a Cloud based application which is really perfect for small to medium sized businesses. I can't recommend it highly enough.

So, on my journey as a small business into the Cloud, I can now say that I do not have a business application that runs on or in anything other than the Cloud. Microsoft is the closest to it as you still need the client software even though you have Cloud based email and SharePoint servers and it is the most disappointing of the applications.

Here's the thing. Xero has links to Salesforce - I can't enable it yet but the two can be directly linked. Salesforce and Xero directly output into Google Apps as a total Cloud based solution. While Salesforce has Office or Outlook integration, it's clunky, unreliable and there's no solution for Office for Mac.

Microsoft rather disparagingly call Google 'noise' and an advertising company. I think they need some education. There is a thing out there called the Cloud and it is rather changing the game we are all playing when it comes to software and data. All the clever, brilliant applications are being driven by creative and innovative developers in the Cloud and all of them are linking to Google as their partner of choice.

If small businesses don't want the intense hassle of setting up Microsoft Cloud or their on premise applications, then the natural links are with their noisy little competitor, Google.

I have said it before and say it again. The world is changing and Microsoft are a significant distance off the pace. We all think they will survive because they are full of intelligent people who have delivered a lot to business users even if it has never been the most clever or best quality.

But users are changing. The revolution in computing and software means that we all want and have access to buying the next and best - and we love it. It's spilling into the world of business. I am not sticking with the status quo for fear of moving any longer. There is a lot better out there and it's so easy to get hold of.

Microsoft need a refresh of its sales engine at minimum as the message of arrogance no longer has to be listened to and the boring eulogy of how unskilled and unimportant companies like Google are is becoming both monotonous and quite insulting.

First rule of sales - never knock the competition. Change the mantra, Microsoft because you are calling your customers stupid. Most of us as small businesses don't like that. 

And we now have the ability to vote with our feet and wallets.

Cloud Accounting for SMB

As a true believer in Cloud Computing for small businesses, I have been progressively moving the applications I run my small business on away from on premise or on PC to applications to those that run in the Cloud.

I now use Evernote as by basic work horse note taking and project book software (at £27 per year), Microsoft Office 365 at £189 per year, Dropbox with extra storage at $99 per year, Skype for Business, Salesforce.com for my CRM package at £120 per year and a few free applications on my iPad 2. From time to time I also use Google Apps and GoDocs.

By and large I can run all the above applications on my new Apple Macbook Pro, iPad 2 and iPhone 4, and I store all my data in the Cloud as a permanent back up. The last bastion of the on premise and on PC world was my accounts package called TASBooks 2 from Sage. I must admit, I have always found that losing control of my accounting was the last great fear factor for me, particularly as I am not an Accountant and have had learn the package by the seat of my pants.

Last week, after trying various online solutions like NetSuite and InniAccounts, I discovered Xero Accounts (www.xero.com) through a contact at the company I consult for. Xero is a New Zealand company with over 45,000 paying customers, is quoted on the New Zealand stock exchange and is available only in the UK outside the Antipodes. Their annual revenues were over $9m (NZ) last year to July and they are tracking at $15m for this year. They are strong in the UK and they have set up a subsidiary to tackle the US market.

What I like about them is that they offer a really simple to set up 30 day free trial and the process is easy. But more interestingly, it's an Accounts package that is driven by the bank accounts. If you're anything like me, I relate everything back to my actual cash book - the one run from my HSBC bank accounts. I run a master spreadsheet which records every single cash transaction on every account and I run it in tandem with my TASBooks. This means that if ever I lose track in the software or enter anything wrongly, I can always unravel what I have done by checking every cash transaction on the spreadsheet. Yes, I know that's really silly but it works for me.

Xero means I no longer have to do this. The software actually takes automatic feeds from my bank accounts and first time it allows you to check by hand and allocate each transaction against an expense code. In doing so, Xero records which supplier account is coded as what and remembers this for the future. So in subsequent downloads from the bank, it automatically allocates against codes for you. I like that.

The accounts codes are limited and that will help me as currently I have several accounts codes but when I do my monthly management accounts, I group them logically as travel, entertaining etc so I have just a few reporting lines I compare regularly.

For a small business like mine, this is a godsend. The software also produces automatic invoices and sends them as pdfs (TASBooks doesn't do this). Also, it does expense claims as you go - currently, I do a spreadsheet per month and then reconcile them and scan the receipts. Xero allows you to do expenses as you go and attach the recipes as pdf files which also good for personal accounting.

It has really easy reporting and this is automatic and up to the current month - in TASBooks, I have to run these by hand and then copy them into spreadsheets to do anything with them. It also does an Executive Summary Management Report with all the consolidations on one easy to read sheet. naturally, all data is automatically backed up onto the Cloud and can be accessed by internet device.

At the moment, I pay £375 per year for my TASBooks 2 support, £1,600 for my annual accounts and £600 per year for payroll, VAT and some ancillary bookkeeping as well as some accounts insurances. Xero actually costs from £12 per month but mine would cost £19 month or £24 per month if I want multi-currency. You can pay by credit carted monthly and you can cancel the contract any time.

For a single charge of £120 per month, I can get the software with unlimited support plus all my accounts, VAT and payroll done with personal tax return too. Xero has quite a list of geographically spread advisers who are accountants who use Xero. I have started to work with Duncan Strike at Brightstar Accounting and he has been really helpful in managing a smooth handover form my old accountants. The old company are good people and have been of great help but realistically for a small company, I was paying too much.

I will start with Xero as of 1 October. We will just go for starting with end of year positions and catching up with my two months worth of transactions. For a person not actually turned on by accounts, I am quite excited.

As a person very turned on by Cloud applications, I think this is an absolute killer application for small businesses. I will keep everyone updated as I go.

Making Money - Easy, Peasy

Who ruined my Pension Plan? I know I didn't. I have been religiously saving a ever increasing proportion of annual earnings into my plans since I started work and yet the damn things are nowhere near enough to provide anything more than a pittance in my old age. The very real prospect of having to work for the rest of my life is a demoralising reality.

I have worked in several jobs and so there is no such thing as a defined benefits or a final salary for me. I look at Public Servants and I cannot for the life me work out why on earth they have such fantastic pension plans for nothing when I have paid in so much and have so little to show for it.

Then you read articles like this one http://liten.be//Un5jR and you realise that people are just messing with my hard earned money. Playing computer games with thoughtless programs that don't a fig for who's money they blow or grow or if I have a future or not. It about sums where we are in the world when it comes to high finance.

The banking sector apparently constitutes just about 9% of our gross domestic product yet it has a profound effect on every part of our lives from the day we are born to the day we take our last breath. The argument goes that we should revere those that run the system and look after our money as they are the very cream of society and the world's intelligentia. We should be grateful for their contribution to society as it is 'God's work' that they do.

I don't think you have to be a socialist to realise we have allowed that system to take over our lives and run it. We have allowed a set of largely faceless individuals with no accountability to run our policy making the world over. They have hijacked our money, they tell us how much or little we can have, tell us that we have to invest any we earn with them, tell us whether we have any future or not and then they dictate policy to Governments with a combination of carrot and blackmail.

I am not sure how we break free of this stranglehold that banking and financial companies have over us but you get the feeling that the billions that can be made by very, very few people year on year will drive people nuts when they wake up and smell the coffee eventually.

Ultimately, if we, the citizen taxpayers and bank customers of the world, collectively use our intelligence we can outwit these people and stop them having it all ways. We want sensible investing of our money and we don't want to be held accountable for the mistakes of computer programs, the idiots who write them and the half-wits who pretend they understand them when they make their annual millions and billions.

Maybe I am a dreamer but why should someone earn lavish bonuses for watching a computer program do their jobs for them each day? It would be like me earning a salary for watching TV.

Would it not be a remarkable thing if every customer of every bank asked the question of its senior executive tomorrow morning who earns what money and why at the bank. The poor people who manage the daily customers work hardest, get the least and get fired if the elite blow the money, yet they are the very staff who are responsible for keeping the main supply of cash in the banks that keep them afloat. Over the decades it is the likes of you and I who have provided the underlying and sustaining profits to banks. We are the guarantee.

If we all voted tomorrow by closing every account, policy and plan and asking for the cash, en masse, we would break the system to pieces.

In reality, it is the customers who have the blackmail card on all banks. You and I should never forget that.

More HP Sauce

Hot on the heels of my blog on HP's disastrous policy of uncontrolled briefings on their future by mid level staff, it appears their bizarre policy is paying off.

Overnight, there were unconfirmed reports that the CEO, Leo Apotheker, is to be given the boot. Such utterings without informing the Stock Exchange are becoming the norm. This one has slightly more credence than an employee's coffee machine snippet as it also mentions the name of the would-be replacement, Meg Whitman, ex CEO of eBay.

HP have achieved their aim, if they had one in any of this. Their share price leapt 11% on the back of the rumour. If this were Simon Cowell's X Factor, the audience has voted and it's time for Leo to be shuffle off.

Oh, someone had better let the Board and the shareholders know.

Why Do Rogues Trade?

As the sorry tale of Kweku Adoboli's rogue trading unravels it poses some fundamental questions which originally started for me when Nick Leeson broke Barings Bank all those years ago.

I suppose it's a bit like Ponzi Schemes - you will always get caught out in the end but while everyone remains oblivious you make seemingly huge profits which you spirit off somewhere. But in rogue trading it should be different. 

Adoboli was making trades betting on the future direction of stock indices - this is not essentially a crazy thing to do. After all, many pension schemes and funds do much similar things. However, under normal circumstances, if a trader was making excessive bets on such things, building up a precarious position, then surely he would be spotted.

Like Leeson in the old days, Adoboli hid his tracks by creating fictional trades offsetting his bets with what are known as Traded Exchange Funds. He kept doing this for a period of months. To UBS, it appeared that all bets were covered - allegedly.

All this makes you feel sorry for the bank, doesn't it? I mean it must be a wonderful world where you believe that all daft bets get coincidentally covered by good ones and vice versa but such is the nature of banking. It's a game and we just allow it to happen with astronomical amounts of money. Daily.

So back to our rogue trader. Had his bets come good then his winnings would have been offset by losses from his cover positions. So he would not have made a great deal in incremental bonus - would he? As it happened, his bets lost and they ended up not being covered by his cover bets as they were fictional.

OK, so how did Adoboli plan to make money if his winning bets would have been offset by corresponding losses?

To understand this, you need to understand bank reconciliations systems and bonus schemes. I don't know what these are but it is pretty clear that rogue trading would not occur if bank bonus schemes were not always linked to the reconciliation system - or at least the two may not be synchronised. I.e. there must be a gap between booked wins and actual losses.

In that gap, it is the only time where the rogue trader can book a win, get paid and scarper.

Once again, it brings into sharp focus the culture of laissez faire systems, lack of accountability and bonuses. In reality, the ten year period up to 2007 was just a gigantic bonanza of rogue trading as the products 'making money' were not actually doing so. When the whole thing went into meltdown, bonus pools of the proportions of sizeable country economies had been paid out to a small percentage of the world's population who then collectively waved two fingers at us, took our bail outs and started it all again with zero impunity. And the system hasn't changed - hardly enough to stop this money making culture which delivers long term threat.

I dare say that in the world of banking Adoboli is seen as the unlucky one whose little scheme didn't win. If bonuses are paid out in such ways then I dare that such rogue trading is probably far more rife than we would imagine. It's just that more people place winning bets than losing ones. 

If that's the case - boy are we all in for a fall some day.

PR Disaster to Recurring Nightmare - The HP Story Continues

It is fair to say that the whole manner and content of HP's recent announcements to a) kill its tablet business and associated operating system and b) announce it was withdrawing from the PC business by putting its entire PSG business up for sale was an utter PR catastrophe, considering only shortly before HP had acquired Palm and told the world it was galvanising around the new Web OS operating system.

It has been since compounded by various executives, some senior and some not, apparently taking on the mantle of spokespeople and either briefing contradictory information or just showing that their management doesn't seem to know what it is doing.

Partners and customer alike have sat and watched in some dismay as the once highly professional giant built around the values of its deceased founders, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, seems to have degenerated into a rudderless ship manned by disaffected employees fearful for their future.

Then things took the most bizarre of turns yesterday. In a series of Tweets from one of HP's Gold Partners at an event headlined by HP local managers, the Partner's executive told a massed online audience that the HP PSG sale was off because the tax issues were too large. Further, the partner Tweeted merrily that matters would be cleared up at the next Board meeting.

This contradicted what HP's own PSG Sales Director had said just a week ago which again had been pre-announced to a Distribution Partner who had gone public to say that a spin off was the favoured option.

The full unravelling of this drama is available at CRN's UK website.

Perhaps the most disturbing element of all this is that there are various, probably unauthorised, tactical briefings going on of just certain partners which are being given under non-embargo conditions. The mass of partners who might need this information let alone the poor customers who get it all in the form of speculation, gossip and innuendo don't seem to get anything official. It's a PR disaster which is spilling over into being an unprofessional management fiasco.

There is also a good article available on the Bloomberg US site which is related only by coincidence to competitive information being publicly posted online. Highly paid investigation companies like Nardello and others now scour the mass of publicly available information on Linked In, Facebook, blogs, Twitter and others to find competitive information freely shared between networkers. And it's big business.

In one case cited, an executive put up on his Linked In profile that he was looking for a job because his firm was suffering financial difficulties. Within six months the firm had gone bankrupt, not helped by a concerted effort by competitors to bring the company in question to a bitter end once they knew.

By coincidence, HP had been mentioned in the article but the link is obvious. In the Tweets of yesterday, apparently sensitive information being discussed in future Board Meetings was either being pre-released or speculated on by effectively mid level managers with Gold Partner staff in a single country.

HP is suffering enough at its own hands at Board Level not have its levels below muddying the water too. But it's the customers who I feel sorry for. If you are a current HP user or considering being one, you must be in two minds about the future. 

To know that you will be the last to know about what that maybe is the ultimate disrespect.