I get regular questions about what we really mean by WinWeb’s Small Business Infrastructure?

On-demand Small Business Infrastructure™ centers around the idea that business start-ups and growing small businesses need help with numerous administrative tasks that are not core to the business success - such as bookkeeping, it services, internet services, call handling and other such services.

These services - if performed by the business owner - cause a great deal of time wasting - while the fixed cost of a business is still accumulating. This is in our minds a fatally floored business model and can easily be remedied with our infrastructure approach.

We should not expect business start-ups and small business in general to be accountants, bookkeepers, lawyers, marketing & PR gurus and so on. We should provide small business with an infrastructure in which it can concentrate on core business tasks, while at the same time enabling the business owner to stay informed of all relevant business facts like cash flow, sales, HR issues, tax position and more. This will enable him / her to make informed decisions, maybe with the help of an external advisor.

Based on these facts, we have devised a six point on-demand Small Business Infrastructure™ concept, which consist of:

1. WinWeb On-Demand Software Solutions - Anywhere At Anytime.

AccountsOffice and OnlineOffice are our two software offerings, which are based on the SaaS - Software as a Services model, to allow for the following key business benefits:

• tight inclusion of business advisors from the start,
• cultivating outsourcing techniques at the outset, i.e. virtual assistants,
• no IT knowledge needed and hassle free operation,
• real-time multi-user access from anywhere, increasing mobility.

2. WinWeb 24/7 Live Support - We Are Here For You Always.

Providing customer care and support only during business hours is not acceptable to our clients. Experience has shown us that most admin work gets done by small business before nine in the morning or after five in the evening. This practice is essential if the business is to survive it’s early years.

This is why we have provided our much acclaimed customer support for 24 hours a day, seven days a week from the outset. Saving our clients wasted time and money - while setting new standards in customer support. No manuals need to be read - all problems can be solved in real-time online.

3. WinWeb Live - Networking Community for Small Business Only.

To foster collaboration and outsourcing we have expanded our WinWeb Live™ offering to allow for small business community networking - thus enabling the business owner to make decisions about his / her current needs, with the following benefits:

• timeshare virtual assistants for professional results,
• offer contracts of work to contractors on a case-by-case basis,
• promote the business to a large audience or even locally,
• find new work and contracts online

4. Business Advice

Our On-Demand Small Business Infrastructure™ enables business advisors, accountants, bookkeepers and other advisors to have a “Up Close and Personal” relationship with the small business owner, providing key elements for the success of a small business:

• timely and up-to-date advice from anywhere at anytime,
• more efficient advisor function due to SaaS technology, less travel,
• easily expandable advisor network.

5. Solution Partners

Third parties provide external services to complement our services, such as parcel service, office supply services, printing services. These and other services are provided on a bulk buy arrangements by leading businesses in their respective sectors - to provide the most reliable and up-to date service possible - with the effect of enhancing the professional appearance of our clients.

6. ClimateByte™ Technology - For A Cleaner Future.

Our clients are among the biggest demographics concerned with climate change and carbon footprint neutrality. It is a fact that employing remote working and collaboration techniques drastically reduces the damaging business side affects on our environment. We enable our clients to be more eco-friendly and aware, by providing them with our green technology - an ongoing development commitment of WinWeb.

WinWeb welcomes any suggestion that will further enhance our On-Demand Small Business Infrastructure™ concept - especially the development of even more eco-friendly business processes - to serve our small business and business start-up client-base.

As part of a bootstrapping exercise or a business start-up phase, working from home is a great way to work, so I thought of some points to consider when setting up your office, small business or personal business, like contractors, freelancer, self-employed, sole-trader and virtual assistants at home:

1. Cost - you will save a lot of money and be very eco-friendly when you decide not to rent an office, this saving can be used in other areas of your business, like marketing, better web-site or better IT.
2. Family - I suspect that many of you work from home because of your family, it allows you to be around when your kids come home from school or look after relatives, while still earning a living.
3. Commuting - again a very eco-friendly approach and saves money and time. This time can be spend on real business activities. It certainly will enhance your work/life balance and make your small business or start-up more cost efficient form day one.
4. Freedom - this may especially appeal to you if you like to work at odd hours, it will suit your lifestyle. Dress as you like it, so you will be more comfortable.
5. Healthy - if you work in an office and one of you gets ill, soon all the others are down too - not if you work from home.
6. Teamwork - chances are you need to work with other people, use online technology to collaborate with your colleagues and other team workers - they too may work from home.
7. Domestic Life - you’ll be around when the plumber finally turns up or other trades people. You can enjoy your local life more - by having a social network in your village rather than at work - this could be the return of the local community.
8. Small Business Infrastructure - use online technology to keep your data and work safe at all times without that you have to do anything, build your own virtual Small Business Team to timeshare professionals like yourself. Outsource to make your business more professional and scalable.
9. Meetings - even bigger businesses use coffee shops to meet - they often have WiFi - so can you. Make sure you plan them well, so you can be efficient with your time.
10. Eco-Friendly - you will only heat your home, no other workplace needs to be heated or air-conditioned, your energy efficiency goes up, no travel to work - so you reduce your carbon footprint enormously just by working from home.

You will need some pretty good reasons to go to an office and work. Especially for small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Professional-, Personal business, you need to ask yourself if you can afford to miss out on all the above opportunities for your work and for your life?

I work from home over 90% of the time and only go to the office for meetings and I love every minute of this. I use social network communities like linkedIn to build my professional network, utilizing our online office, skype and other tools to communicate and work worldwide.

More and more of my friends work from home so we have nice “pub-lunches” locally, no traveling, less stress and a much better work/life balance - how is your work/life balance?

For more of my checklists see the Small Business Checklists category and as always please add to my list with your comments, tell us what works for you.

I just registered my blog to join in on the Blog Action Day for our Environment - if you have a blog - please do the same.

WinWeb will publish it’s ClimateByte™ Technology Guidelines - in connection with our software release 3.4 - early next month and we are pleased to be associated with this

BLOG ACTION DAY FOR OUR ENVIRONMENT On October 15th, 2007

when everyone should post something about green/environmental issues on their blog.

Please join us and be part of the solution. One issue. One day. Thousands of voices.

Hat-tip to the Chief Happiness Officer

I have been writing about virtual assistants and virtual workers for quite some time, explaining the benefits of outsourcing to virtual assistants and workers for small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Professional-, Personal businesses.

But I never really wrote something about what it means to have a virtual small business team, which is part of WinWeb’s Small Business Infrastructure approach - so here it goes, a virtual small business team is:

1. a collection of people working together in different locations, countries and time-zones
2. a “network” of people working together using advanced online technology
3. some teams my be project specific and/or limited in duration(time)

Not always do people only work virtually together, some times the meet - even if it is only socially. Under 1. many combinations are possible:

• different time in different locations
• same time in different locations
• same time in same location
• different time in the same location

This all really means one thing - anywhere at anytime! How virtual is your team or in other words how mobile and flexible is your small business. You should think about these issues in the planning phase of your business start-up.

Have you thought through all the possibilities for your small business outsourcing and bootstrapping or how much more green and eco-friendly your small business or start-up would be?

Not only do small businesses, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer businesses, contribute greatly to the economic growth of the country, but also to the energy utilized in the country and hence it is important that the government take into account the needs of SMBs when formulating carbon footprint reduction policies.

The British Chambers of Commerce said that the role of small businesses should be considered when measures to reduce carbon footprints were being considered.

It also said that the Joint Committee Report on the Climate Change Bill lacked clarity and did not specify the legal enforceability of the climate change reduction targets.

“Small Businesses need a stable legislative environment and a coherent set of support measures, so that while larger companies are catered for, the needs of small business are not forgotten.” said BCC head of policy Natalie Evans.

Global warming is a real threat to the environment and the planet and it is important that all businesses, big and small make efforts for carbon reduction. It is vital that the government provides a clear framework for small businesses to work with.

It is a good idea for small or personal business, like contractors, freelancer, self-employed, sole-trader and virtual assistants to invest in business infrastructure that would streamline business processes such as financial management and allow business owners to focus on core processes and find ways to reduce the energy consumption in the office.

A web office reduces tremendously the use of paper, shipping, packaging, heating, etc in the business and provides information at the click of the mouse.

A Virtual Assistant can provide valuable assistance anywhere@anytime, in certain areas of your business activities where you can’t devote your time and energy.

There are numerous problems faced by small business in expanding their products or services, the hiring, cost and training of extra staff is one of them.

Having the presence of a Virtual Assistant is of advantage to your business as you get support and other services online. The major benefit of being associated with a Virtual Assistant is that you get professional and quality jobs, without having to employ a full time professional. To you it means savings on your HR expenditure, this helps to keep overheads low.

A Virtual Assistant can assist you in the area of his/her specialization, such as market research, credit control, public relations, marketing, payment follow-ups, designing, secretarial services, telephone answering and more.

This all comes back to my belief that small business does need a services infrastructure delivered over the internet, so that they can concentrate on developing the business, and do not have all their time taken up by admin tasks.

Update (04/06): Kathie Thomas introduces Virtual Assistants.

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