The last couple of days you could follow what can only be described as a panic on the world stock markets. The markets tumbled between five to ten per cent or even more. The trigger for this is the mortgage crisis in the US and the UK.

One further problem our countries face are unprecedented levels of foreign trade-deficids.

As a micro business or small business owner you might say, hey what am I to do about this? Well as so often the is nothing you can do about this alone, but remember small business accounts for more than 50% GDP and that is something to consider. Yet small business is not having the same impact when it comes to exporting.

Exporting is something we should all consider, especially in times like this, because it could seriously help to weaken any economic slowdown or even a recession in our countries. There are companies who will help you to set up or do business abroad, like Zana Network.

If you are wondering what you can do to help your business and your country, think exporting. ST.

You may speak more languages and have market segment knowledge about a certain product or service. That is a great basis for a small business startup, two scenarios spring to mind:

Virtual Export Assistant: You may know, or can find a business which has a great product, but they don’t export yet. You could offer your services for a particular country and become their Virtual Export Assistant for that country. You use your language and local knowledge skills and open up a new market for this small business.

Virtual Import Assistant: You could source - using your language and local knowledge skills - products in other countries for retailers in your country of residence. Or you could help the foreign business to import into your country.

But remember you are working with small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer- or Personal business, like professional, contractors, freelancer, self-employed, sole-trader and virtual assistants, you need to keep the price low for them. To do that you can offer your services to ten or twenty businesses, each paying you a retainer of about $200 - 400/£100 - 200, this makes it affordable for them and low risk, while presenting them with sales opportunities. If they pay you a small commission on top, you are generating a nice little income for yourself.

For this kind of service it would be advisable to get a low cost telecom service for your calls abroad, sometimes you can get fixed monthly subscription pricing for unlimited calls - have a look around.

Other than that your setup cost should be low, if you have computer, ADSL, and telephone. Monthly cost including telephone could be as low as $90/£45.

You can work from home, have your work-life balance and do it on a shoe-string - these are the business ideas I like. ST.

NOTE: If you have any problems with setting something like this up, give our 24/7 live support a “click“, they can help you.

Last week I received an invitation from ZANA Network to be their guest at the first ever small and medium business Global Export Summit in Washington, D.C.

For me the main topic is:

“….. US small and medium business under representation in the global marketplace; risk-mitigating resources for small and medium businesses and the economic impact and even reduction of the U.S. trade deficit derived from global participation by small and medium businesses. “

So, should you be in D.C. on the November 14th, the summit will take place from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. in the Reagan Building, you can register for free. Members of the U.S. government and different departments are there and you can make your voice heard. Which would be a good thing, since most politicians need help with understanding some of the basics about small business. There is also a great line-up of companies wanting to help those, who are interested in exporting.

We used to have separate products called ExportOffice and GlobalOffice, which were especially designed for the very small exporting business, but we learned in time, that our OnlineOffice provided all the needed components as well, so we simply-fied our product offering in this regard.

I will not be there since WinWeb sponsors an award at the UK Accountancy Age Awards, Best use of Internet in Practice, I’m committed to present the award in person. But, I’m sending an colleague of mine, Mr. Göran Thorell - should you be around, go and find him and talk to him about your exporting ideas, I’ll be blogging about the Global Export Summit again, after the event.

I would have loved to go, since I firmly believe the small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer- or Personal business, like professional, contractors, freelancer, self-employed, sole-trader and virtusal assistants is highly under represented in the global market place.

Opportunities are everywhere, you just need to see them. ST.

Disclosure: All travel arrangements for this event for my colleague are being paid for by ZANA Network LLC.

Starting and running a small business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Professional-, Personal business today, is all about staying focused on the small business and not on running your office. WinWeb’s Software as a Service applications allow you to do exactly that. Below you will find some of the benefits detailed to help you make up your mind if this kind of technology is for you.

1. No More Software Installation.

Since our software comes to you via your internet browser, there is no need to install anything. Your printer will also work with our software without installation or any modifications. Our software works with any web browser, Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox etc.

2. Our software is always up to date.

This really is one of the main benefits of SaaS. We make all the software updates on our servers, so you don’t have to do anything. No update hassle and worry anymore. There are no “Update available - Please download” messages and no CDs / DVDs updates arriving in the mail.

3. Never pay for software “updates” again!

No matter if we update or bug-fix, you will never have to pay for them again, it is all part and parcel of our service. Artificially accelerated software cycles are a thing of your past.

4. Fully Compatible with any Operating System.

Our software runs on any Operating System (OS) with Linux, Mac, Windows and some others - you login and use it.

5. Work and collaborate with anyone, anytime and anywhere.

Our software allows you to work with your accountant, colleagues, virtual assistants and others in real-time at anytime - whatever your business needs.

6. No commuting. No time wasting.

With online technology you can work from anywhere, so no need to travel to an office. Run your small business from home and benefit in terms of time, money and investment.

7. No security problems. No business interruption problem.

Your data is continuously backed up onto multiple RAID-5 data servers in multiple physically and network secure data centers - if that is not enough you can make a copy of your data anytime onto your PC or a CD.
Should your computer crash or get stolen - no problem, just log on to another computer and keep working - can your competition do that?

8. 24/7 Live Support 365 days a year.

We believe that you will be busy during the day with your clients and with working on new projects and so you should - after the phone stops ringing you get down to your admin work. So we thought we better be around in case you need some support for any of our products. It would be no good if we weren’t around now, would it?

9. No contract needed.

No minimum term, cancel anytime, no contract needed and you can test drive any software for a minimum of 30 days free of charge. This puts you in control. Unlike the boxed software you buy, once you paid for it, it’s yours including the problems. Not so with our software.

10. ClimateByte™ Technology

Our environment is in trouble - by using our on-demand Small Business Infrastructure™, you can help to reduce your carbon footprint and help our environment - we are dedicated to develop our future products and services with this in mind.

Our Software as a Service products provide your small business with a on-demand Small Business Infrastructure™ helping you to concentrate on your business, while we run your office and IT. This makes your business more mobile and competitive while saving you time, money and helping the environment.

When you run a small business and personal business, like contractors, freelancer, self-employed, sole-trader and virtual assistants you probably benefit even more from using SaaS technology - program your business for success.

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.

A few years back we used to have a product called GlobalOffice - it was targeted at foreign small businesses who wanted to export product or just support their customers in local markets. We learned that our customers just used our OnlineOffice and made arrangements for the “Live” services themselves - and this has been the way ever since we withdrew GlobalOffice to focus on our “core” business to provide a Small Business Infrastructure - SBI.

Small Biz Labs have a post today about Laurel Delaneey’s Global Small Business Blog and one of her recent posts, some of the data is quite interesting:

• Only about 4% of US companies are exporters and the US has the lowest level of exports as a % of GNP of the G7 countries - roughly 10%. The highest is Germany at almost 45% and the 2nd lowest is Japan at a bit over 15%
• SME’s (defined as less than 500 employees) accounted for 29% of US export value in 2005.
• While the number of exporting businesses in the US grew rapidly in 90’s, it has stayed relatively flat since 2000. In 2005 there were roughly 239,000 exporting companies, 97% of which are SMEs.
• 58% of exporting companies traded in only one export market.

Localization, local red-tape and the often horrendous cost associated with exporting make it difficult for small business to work in foreign markets. I believe these barriers are slowly disappearing, not only with the help of technology, but with the understanding of technology.

Globelization 3.0 as I call it - I have written about it before - will enable very small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Professional-, Personal business, to take full advantage of global markets for products and services. Even personal business, like contractors, freelancer, self-employed, sole-trader and virtual assistants can now use social networking communities to develop international virtual project teams or at least be part of at least one or more.

In ten years time these numbers will be very different - as it will no longer matter, if your customer is next door or half way around the globe. For some this is a reality already - have you thought about this when planning your start-up business?

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?

Many companies export their products. But are many more who could but don’t. Why? Well, sometimes it’s because the product or service is, for one reason or another, thought to be unsuitable for foreign markets. Much more often though, it’s because it is simply not commercially viable for the company concerned to set up the required export infrastructure.

To see why this should be the case, consider the two traditional options open to potential exporters.

The first of these options is to establish a proprietary infrastructure complete with remote offices and administrative support. The cost of doing this, for obvious reasons, varies enormously, but a typical SME will need to budget the very minimum of £100,000, and almost certainly more. It is not a trivial sum.

The alternative is to use a distributor. This is less expensive in terms of capital investment and ongoing cost, but carries a price of a different (and equally damaging) nature: the effective loss of the territory and control of customers. Either way, getting into export is a risky enterprise.

And, as if these considerations weren’t worrying enough for companies looking to move into export, there’s the fact that new exporters can often run into financial trouble because they greatly underestimate the time it takes to start selling in new markets. Recent research commissioned by Winweb shows that 64% of exporters think they can reach new markets within six months. However, international trade commissioners who provide help to exporting companies, say it usually takes significantly longer than this. Underestimating the time, and thereby the cost, for setting up in another country has a significant financial impact on an exporter’s core business.

Now though, there’s a way of addressing all these issues. It’s an approach which lets SME’s hit the ground running - in terms of an export sales operation - by providing a proactive distributor, working in the exporter’s interests, backed by comprehensive, streamlined and efficient administrative support infrastructure. It’s a system which offers everything a company would expect from a local office, including a local address, telephone and fax number, call answering and order handling, development of distribution channels, marketing, PR and sales services, bookkeeping, cash flow, website, online shop and much more. This can be done by using SaaS - Software as a Service technology in connection with VAs - Virtual Assistants.

The benefits to exporters are enormous. With their own local infrastructure, exporting companies have full access to their own clients, and total control over the marketing activities used to develop their awareness of the products on offer. At a single stroke, companies will increase turnover per customer and decrease costs - the kind of scenario companies everywhere are looking for. This approach offers:

• Customer and product registration
• Customer care and 1st Level Support in the local market
• Complete business admin infrastructure
• Direct sales channel through online means
• Even finding the distributor for the products.

By using a VA - Virtual Assistant, you not only gain the local services, but also a representative with local business knowledge, but also local customs and traditions. David Maister writes also about this form of emotional intelligence.

Combine this with our OnlineOffice and you have a perfect ExportOffice.

Tags: Business Development, DHL, E-Commerce, Exporting, On-demand, Outsourcing, PayPal, Barclays Bank, SaaS, Small Business, smb, sme, sme-blog, Software as a Service, Virtual Assitants, Web Technology, WinWeb

Welcome to our new small business blog. We hope you will enjoy our rambling & ranting on the subject of small business.

On this blog we will concentrate on providing an inside to our thinking with respect to self-employment, home businesses and small businesses, the so called micro and small businesses.

Some of the areas will include:

• Accountants/CPAs, we believe accountants/CPAs should be more then glorified bookkeepers. They are in a unique position to help small business and start-up business to get the financial and business advice they need to survive long term. We will discuss what to look for in an accountant.

• Banks, they should help you to finance business and NOT overheads. We are going to talk about healthy and unhealthy relationships with your bank.

• Business Start-Up, how to run a business while you keep your job and test the water, before you jump into business and commit your savings and/or borrowed money. Do you really need a VC before you can earn yourself a good living?

• Government, why most government help for small business may be a sincere offer, but in reality is nothing but hot air.

• Marketing/PR, the high tech way to create awareness for your products and services for the small budged.

• Web-Technology combined with Live! services, changes the business dynamic completely, the “In & Out” of on-demand technology and why it helps you.

• Outsourcing & Virtual Assistants, the technology driven way to timeshare professionals and keeping you overheads down.

Let us know what you think and let’s talk business, ……SMALL BUSINESS.

Accounting, Business Development, Business Start Up, CPAs, Data Security, E-Commerce, Exporting, Finance, IT, On-demand, Open Source Software, Outsourcing, PR, SaaS, Sales, sme-blog, Software as a Service, Virtual Assitants, Web Technology, WinWeb