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.

The typical scenario is you work hard all week, have no live and at the end of it all little money to show for it. This is often a sure sign of loss of management control in a small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Professional-, Personal businesses.

The small business health-check questions for this episode are:

• Do I know what is going on in my business in all areas or have I abdicated some responsibility to staff? You can pick and choose what you do work-wise everyday, you can not pick and choose what you should know about and make decisions about - this is your business, not your staffs business - act like it.
• Am I running my business or is it running “itself”? No business is running itself, other than into the ground!
• Do you know how your cash-flow is doing? Done this one before, yet it always comes back to this, check it out.
• Do you have an overview of your small business fixed costs and sales, are you happy with the situation? I guess you could always do better, but if you do not know the details you can not improve your situation.
• Is your vision in line with your small business targets? You need a vision for your business, that will allow you to develop your small business strategy and plan, so you know where you are going - don’t just drift along.
• Have you asked your staff lately? Have a power-meeting with your staff once a week, to see how they are feeling about your small business, last week or the next few weeks. It will motivate them and give you a new insight in how others see your small business.

The central message here is to be involved in ALL areas of your business ALL of the time - in a management capacity. When I hire people I always hire people who do something better than I, but you have to stay involved.

You can see other reasons for small business and personal business, like contractors, freelancer, self-employed, sole-trader and virtual assistants failures in my Health Check Category, if you can add to this list please do so, I would welcome your comments.

It is Saturday, weekend - here in the UK a long weekend as we have public or bank holiday on Monday - for me always a time to reflect on the week gone by and of the weeks ahead. For many small business owners it’s time to work and catch up with admin or other work, but ask yourself this, “Is this what I wanted from my small business?” Or did you want to be with your family, have some time off - have a life?

This morning I was reminded of a gentleman I met almost thirty years ago while working in the US, he was from Florida and extremely wealthy. He had made all his money in nylon-stockings after the second world war. I was still looking for my first break to make my mark and money, so I asked him how he made it to become so wealthy. His answer was:

Remember always, if you work all day, then you have no time to make any money, you are too busy.

As you can well imagine, here I was, about 20 years old and this guy came out with a statement like this, I thought he was completely mad and insane. Unfortunately I was stupid enough not to ask him what he means - otherwise I would have learned one of the most important business success lessons of my business live very early on.

He was absolutely right of course, you may very well already know that. He was talking about having time to have a vision and dream, think about your small business and not about your products, standing back and getting out of the proverbial forrest, so the trees are not in the way.

So why not use this weekend, stop working and do some dreaming about what could be - nurture your vision for your small business and see where it takes you. Vision is one of the most important ingredient for small business success.

Take the time to make money - stop being so busy. But now you have to excuse me ……. Have a great weekend!

There are two ways to get better payment terms from your suppliers - make sure you know what the pricing is and negotiate the payment terms last, without warning. Most businesses do not expect small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Professional-, Personal businesses to negotiate payment terms, so you have the element of surprise on your side - and it makes you look more professional.

Firstly there is the extended payment term, of 60, 90 and 180 days - see if your supplier will allow any of those terms. Even if they only give you 60 days, you can always go back after 3-4 month using this payment terms in which you have shown to be trustworthy. If it is declined and only 30 days are offered - because you have no history - then this is the perfect scenario of our second method.

Early payment discounts of 2% if you pay within 7 days. This is like a 24% p.a. discount on the invoice value, not a bad way to compensate for the overdraft interest charges from your bank.

Surly you supplier is interested in your business, and is not going to decline both offers - you win either way - if they decline, then look for a new supplier. Because you are not only helping yourself with your cash-flow, but theirs too.

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.

If you have a group of people working with you - in your office or from home, employed or outsourced - does that mean you have a team? Well that depends how you work together.

Small Businesses need to be build a team, a Small Business Team. A team is defined as a group of people who co-operate in such a manner that it achieves more than the sum total of the individuals achieve each, they are united around a common goal and are accountable to the team for their actions.

Examples of teams are:

• Work Teams
• Sales Teams
• Customer Service Teams
• Virtual Teams

I would suggest that small business owners need to form teams around their small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Professional-, Personal businesses, too. This will achieve scalability, higher efficiency, more professionalism, in other words to grow your business with less growing pains, like struggling cash-flow, excessive financial and administrative overheads and much more.

In fact keeping business failure at bay, may very well depend on your ability to form these teams, in your office or virtually.

In a modern business context we also call these teams Small Business Communities or Small Business Networks. Even a small business may have different types of networks - as indicated above - you can have your office team, while your small office team member for sales may also belong to a external sales network (team).

As you can see we live not only technologically in a networked world - we live in a world of teams, communities and people networks. The benefits especially for small business and even more business start-up, can not be over emphasized - teams perform functions so important for small business success:

• achieve better work results than individuals,
• are ultimately more scalable and flexible than larger organisations,
• offer a wider range of services and products than individuals,
• offer the opportunity of “brain-storming”,
• motivate each other,
• develop more skills and confidence
• show more commitment to each other.

Whatever you do, employ new staff, hire a consultant, work with an accountant, think my-team, think my-community and think my-network - because you are building your Small Business Team. Do it even before you open your door for business, during the business start-up phase.

So, back to my question for you: Do you work with a Group of people or do you have your own Small Business Team?

As I mentioned before, traditional business marketing is changing. TV, radio and print media are in decline, because more and more of our time is spent online, the convergence of all these entertainment technologies has been going on for over a decade now and for the time it all seems to be IP - Internet Protocol centric.

What has that to do with my small business(?) - you may ask. It is actually crucial for your small business to understand this trent so you can act on it and actually save some money, by not wasting it on the wrong advertising medium.

Your small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Professional-, Personal business, may have the greatest product or service, but if you can not make people find you and your products, your small business and business start-up is in trouble, before you even started. There are many parts to the successful small business puzzle and to prevent business failure - blogging could very well be one of them.

Every small business website should have a blog connected to it - needless to say that every small business without fail should have a website. It does not matter if you work globally or locally, a website and blog is a must, not just a nice to have.

A small business blog will help you with the following:

• providing a platform for your small business to interact with your customers
• getting real time feedback from your clients
• provide additional information about your business, services and products
• get your story told your way, offer some control of public opinion
• create buzz about your business and products

It is easy to get a blog with your website hosting company or from WinWeb - you can be up and running in minutes. Hosting your own blog can be more technically demanding, but above all it will waste a lot of your valuable time - writing the articles (posts) for your blog is important - not running your server and blogging software.

Remember nobody is going to tell your story for you and nobody can tell your story better than you yourself.

I have been running small businesses for three decades now - some very successful others no so - this has taught me some lessons I would like to share with you:

1. What the Hell, Let’s Do It: No matter what anyone will let you believe, when planning is at an end, you will have to make a decision - believe it can be done.
2. Mistakes Will Happen: You will make mistakes, but what you do and learn from them is the important part. So mistakes may be fatal to your business, but it is your decision to get up and do it again - if you don’t you wasted a lot of time - never give up.
3. Do Not Borrow Money Too Early: Stay away from banks, VCs and other institutions for as long as you can, get your business up and running by bootstrapping and live your business idea and stay true to yourself. If you owe money, people will push and they may push you in the wrong direction.
4. Hire Smart People: For management positions I try to hire people who are smarter than me, otherwise what is the point. I always try to get the best talent I can find.
5. Outsource, outsource,….: Keep your overheads (fixed cost) as low as possible and your cash-flow up, that is the way to survive with your business.
6. Plan your cash-flow: Anyone who does not know what his/her bank-balance is at the end of next month has a BIG problem - they don’t know what they are doing and where they are - that can easily be fatal.
7. Take risks, don’t gamble: There is a big difference between taking a risk and gambling, if you don’t know it find out, NOW - prepare well, then let’s do it.
8. There are NO rules: Learn from others, but don’t let them tell you how to run your business - there is NO “insider” plan for becoming successful - you will have to find your way yourself, believe in yourself. Every time someone says “That’s the way it is!” ask yourself “Says who?” - and think there is an opportunity here somewhere.
9. Put family, friends and your team first: Be loyal - they give you strength and will support you, just ask. To be successful also means to have a life and fun - live life to the full.
10. Stay true to yourself: Be bold, try to say yes, learn to say no, chase your dreams, have fun, work hard and you will find success - sometimes in the most unlikely places.

Apart from that I always try to do no harm and help if I can, but most of all I try to challenge myself every day to be better than the day before.

Maybe you have some lessons to share with us on your blog or just leave a comment?

Me writing this list was inspired by Ben Yoskovitz.

For more of my checklists see the Small Business Checklists category.

It is not only my believe that the accountant has a prominent SME role to play, as a trusted financial and business advisor.

A 2004 survey by Sage Heartbeat revealed that just under 50% of small accounting firms have 500 active business clients, with an average turnover of a staggering £1.7 million.

In total the SME market in the UK comprises of about 3 million companies with a combined turnover in excess of £1.152 trillion.

This is certainly a staggering market place for approximately 22.000 small accounting firms, but what kind of service do the accounts provide to their clients?

In my discussions with accountants it is obvious that they would like to spend more time with clients on planning, for-casting and analyzing. Especially the smaller end of the client spectrum needs this kind of support from accountants, due to the lack of dedicated and qualified in-house personnel.

For the SOHO business other “quality” advice sources are often difficult to come by. In my personal experience the so called “Business Advisors from Business Link” can do more damage than good. General statement like “You need to do a business plan.”, are all well and good, but who is going to explain how to do a cash flow for-cast. The advisors I invited to “advice” me certainly could not do that.

Around 50% of business start-ups fail within the first 12 month. Is this due to bad products or services? I don’t believe so, all you have to do is go along the high street and you are surprised at what kind of business can survive long term. I think in most cases it is bad or disastrous financial management and planning.

So why are many accountants not stepping up to the plate and get stuck in? They are uniquely qualified to solve these often very simple problems and educate their clients, this would also benefit the practice long term.

Tags: Accountants, AIA, Business Development, Business Infrastructure, Business Link, Business Mentoring, Business Start Up, CIMA, CIPFA, Client Relations, CPA, CPAs, Entrepreneur, Home Business, ICAEW, ICAI, ICAS, IFA, Micro Business, Sage Accounting, SBI, Selfemployed, Small Business, smb, sme, sme-blog, SOHO, Very Small Business, Virtual Assitants, VSB

I took my Honda car to a local dealer in Southport on Friday for its annual service. I phoned them well in advance and booked it in and at that same time went through with this firms representative what service was required.

I explained the car was not my main car and therefore had limit use so a full service was not required this year, only a minor service.

Then on Friday I took my car in at 8.30am as agreed signed for the work to be done and left my keys after arranging to pick the car up at 4pm. All this was so very easy and without stress.

However, when I went back at 4pm to collect my car I was duly informed that it was serviced and everything was fine with it and the bill for a full service is ……….

Now this is were everything went south for customer service, I explained when I booked it in, it was for a minor, and not a major service, to which I was told ‘you didn’t say anything this morning’!

I explained that I was not aware after confirming everything over the phone originally that I then have to go through it all again when dropping the car off.

In the end the reception I was given went decidedly cold, I was told to sit down and they would take all the parts off that shouldn’t be on, once this was done I was given my invoice, still experiencing an arctic type reception.

Result, this is one dealership I will never use again come hell or high water. Not a very good way of pleasing your customers, especially when you are in the wrong.

How would I have handled it, or how would I advise my clients to handle it, well firstly, it’s not the customers fault you have screwed up, so don’t blame them, apologize for the error, and in my case tell them you will only charge for the minor service and leave all the parts on and tell them they have done well, a major service for the price of a minor one, good PR.

Then I would find out what went wrong internally, find out why the person taking the booking didn’t make a note of the service agreed, explain to this member of staff that this can never happen again, as this has resulted in the company losing money, and if this keeps going the long term prospect would be no pay rises for anyone and worse case scenario job loses!

At least this way, the customer will come back again the following year (hoping no doubt for the same mistake to be made) and you will have identified a chink in your company’s armour which you can now fix.

Remember, the customer is not always right, but he/she is the customer and you need them!

Tags:  Customer relations, Car dealers, Customer service, Service levels