You’d be excused to think, that this is an odd headline coming from someone who has probably be longer involved in this business model than most. But yesterday I had a conversation with someone who claimed to be a SaaS - Software as a Service vendor.

I asked them about their service and the security of the data, at this point the person in question told me that this was none of my business and he followed this up with more verbal abuse. After he calmed down, he told me that there was a “Code of Practice” amongst SaaS vendors, which would not allow him to talk to me about these issues.

Let me be very clear about this, his “Code of Practice” excuse is total “B*** Sh**!”

We host our primary European data in Telehouse Europe, Docklands, London and have been doing so for over 14 years now. There you have it - NO problem - you try and get in there. Hell - I hardly manage that, and that is the way it should be. So there is no need to hide this kind of information, unless you have something else to hide.

I can only strongly recommend who ever you choose as an SaaS vendor for whatever reason, make sure your data is safe and not under someone else’s desk. After all your data should be safer with your SaaS vendor than it is with yourself. Any reputable vendor will love to brag about their security arrangements, and to know where your data is held is your legal right under current data protection legislation.

Whatever you do, stay away from vendors who fob you off with “Codes of Practice” and other excuses. Such a code does not exist, and if it does it shouldn’t. — ST.

I’m happy to announce that WinWeb’s OnlineOffice has become even more affordable for 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 from today.

From today the monthly subscription will be £ 9.95 / US$ 19.95 / € 14.95 / AUS$ 24.95 per small business. We no longer charge per user, but per business. For each business you can add up to 15 users and an unlimited number of quick-switch links to your and other businesses, including your accountant or book keeper.

OnlineOffice will give you access to:

• accounting software;
• invoicing & quotations;
• web-hosting, including web-builder, blog software and online shop;
• business planning, cash-flow planning and SWOT analysis;
• secure online file-store;
• address book, to-do-list, calendar and meeting organizer;
• Skype and eBay integration;
• full LiveNet access;
• and much more.

So there is even less reason not to start your own business and give it a go. All this comes with our 24/7 live support. OnlineOffice is a complete small business infrastructure, which lets you run your business from anywhere and anytime.

There is a 30 day trail period, so give it a go. ST.

This is a little note for ourselves - here at WinWeb - we are currently looking to outsource work in the following two areas:

1.) Graphic Design - for our ongoing web-site development we are looking to outsource some graphic design work;

2.) Creative Writing - for our newly formed WinWeb Studios Devision we are looking for creative writers to help with screen writing;

If you run a little business like this anywhere in the world, have constant connection to the internet, then contact me with your details and examples of past projects and we will get back to you ASAP. We are NOT looking to recruit but to outsource these tasks.

Looking forward to hear from you. ST.

WinWeb has just updated their OnlineOffice accounting module, to include cost centre functionality. This development was by popular demand, as a number of customers requested this functionality. OnlineOffice is aimed at 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 virtual assistants client.

This allows you to “tag” expenses to products, departments, services or projects - giving you the opportunity to analyze the true cost of a department or any project. This will enable you to see exactly where your money is going and you can evaluate if your projects or products make you any money.

This functionality is free of charge along with the 24/7 live support for all of WinWeb’s software products - another reason to sign up to LiveNet of OnlineOffice for the free 30 days trail, if you do not like or need the full OnlineOffice functionality, you can use the accounting module, including the cost centre functionality, free of charge forever.

This will give you financial information to make even better decisions. ST.

As part of our OnlineOffice we offer web-services like web-hosting, email, online shop, online file-store and a wordpress blog. Blogging is most certainly the most inexpensive and direct way to communicate with possible customers, you can

• blog about your products and services; explain certain aspects better;
• blog about your company and your business mission;
• blog about your industry, comment on development and differentiate yourself;
• blog about case studies to do with your product and services.

In other words communicate with others on the internet and market your small business. There are many hosted services out there, which are more or less easy to use. Our approach has been to make the blog a plug-in to the basic web site you can setup without any IT skills. With our free 24/7 live support we can help with any issues, should you have any. problems.

For me blogging is a bootstrapper technique to attract new business without having to spend any more money. In the mid-ninties I used to tell people to get a web-site, today a web-site should be standard for any small business and a blog a must if you want to succeed in the future. You may believe that blogging is all about attracting global audiences, when in reality you can use blogging for very local markets, too. It certainly beats sending out leaflets and it is better for the environment.

If you have a story to tell, tell it - nobody else is going to do it for you. ST.

Just got this question, I know there are others questions I have not yet answered, and I have already written my “The Week Ender” post for the week, what the hell, but I’m in the mood to have a go at “The System” again. I think I’ve mentioned before that blogging is therapy for me, and I’m sure some of you might even think I should be in therapy, so there you are.

I’m going to expand this question “slightly” into - I hope Walsh does not mind:

What are some of the social, political and economic issues small business face?

I should remind you that when I talk about small business, I mean 1 to 5 people businesses, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer- or Personal business, like professionals, contractors, freelancers, self-employed, sole-traders and virtual assistants.

Social issues are clearly centered around the work-place, work life and private life. To many work is the central activity in their lives and the stresses and pressures of todays workplace are enormous, overtime, project pressure, sales targets, travel to and from the place of work, to name but a few. This all causes tension in a partnership, family and leads often to a dysfunctional family/private life. For example, we need dating agencies and web-sites to find partners, because we are too busy to find a partner in what used to be a “normal way”, and in this sense we have to be thankful for the service dating agencies and web-sites provide. These issues are prevalent in the group of small business owners too.

Striking the right work/life balance has become a personal choice item, with the advent of home businesses. Businesses run by entrepreneurs, often unhappy with the traditional choices in the work place, who have decided to set their their own work/life balance and run a business, not to grow and dominate the world, but to earn an often higher than average income, while retaining a certain amount of freedom and flexibility in their private lives. Parenting people often see a home business, as a way to have a family and stay active in their chosen field of work.

The growth in these kinds of businesses is explosive, while our society is technologically perfectly capable of sustaining this trend, our social work infrastructure in many cases is not.

This brings us to the political issues these micro and small businesses face. The fact that our society is wholly unprepared for this revolution in the work place and small business environment, has to do with the fact, that governments often receive no advice from actual participants in this new home based micro business economy. Current advisors are from big business, with virtually no experience or knowledge about micro business issues.

Of late universities and other institutions have started to produce a vast amount of valuable data, about micro businesses, which is often meaningless to the political elite in the western world. It is, in my opinion, wrong to expect our politicians to guide us into this new area of explosive micro business growth. Experience tells us that any decisions made will be often too late or even counter productive, market forces are much faster and more targeted to help these growing sectors develop.

In my discussions with politicians, civil servants and often big business, the term “Small Business Infrastructure” is rarely understood. The best we can hope for is the insight that less red-tape is going to help, for some politicians this is a frightening thought.

Economically, I feel we are at the beginning of a truly “golden age” of entrepreneurship. Our technical infrastructure, the internet, powerful micro-computer systems and mobile technology have helped to transform our way of doing business. The last piece in the puzzle was the advent of the software as a service industry, which took longer to develop than I had foreseen. With an almost transparent internet and IT infrastructure, the focus is getting back to the business objectives, even in very small businesses. If this is extended by a “Small Business Infrastructure“, which includes 24/7 technical and customer support, additional service offerings like bookkeeping, telephone answering, and similar services, the survival rate of small business startups, vastly improves.

If small business owners use outsourcing and bootstrapping techniques as a matter of cause, the fixed cost (over-head) structure in each of these micro businesses can lead to super efficient and hyper valuable home or micro businesses. I believe you can start a business with $20/£10 a month and grow your business, risk free (without loans) on the side, while still in employment, until the turnover is big enough to justify quitting ones day job.

You may feel about a business on the side as you will, the fact remains this is going on as we speak, trends we see in the online usage patterns of our OnlineOffice, certainly support this theory.

At the same time business failure is far less an issue, as the risk associated with these ventures is very small, with the right mental attitude of the entrepreneur towards failure, the learning effect of a failure can be enormous. Especially in Europe the old-fashined anti-risk strategies only serve to leave us further behind the other global economies in terms of technological leadership. The U.S. is testament to what an economy with a “normal prospective on business failure” can do.

Emerging economies like China, India and some others are learning from the U.S. and will outstrip our economies within the next decades, unless our politicians, will finally stop putting barriers up for micro businesses.

Last and by no means least, the positive ecological impact of a largely home based economy can not be underestimated. Endless hours of travel to and from the work place, meetings, office heating, and so on could be a thing of the past. Rural economies will be revitalized, multi-generation household will no longer be a thing of the past, this all will have a tremendous positive impact on our social infrastructure, child-care, crime and drug abuse, to name but a few.

While I have often quoted this in the past “it is not the answers that are the problem, knowing the question is”, I’m often left feeling with politicians it is both, not only do they not know the question, they don’t know the answers either. While I accept it is easy for me to sit here and say this, it does not alter the fact that it is only too often true.

It is almost the weekend now, and I’m off to see 10cc, or what is left of them. ST.

In our OnlineOffice we have a Quick Switch, which allows you to “switch” from one company to the next. There is no limit to the companies you can set up, or be part off. What’s so great about that you may ask?

Virtual Assistants can set up all their clients with OnlineOffice, and work with all their clients at the same time, each client is only a “click” away. Whatever your virtual service is, typing, bookkeeping, web-dasign, translations, telephone answering, diary management, PR, it does not matter with OnlineOffice and the Quick Switch facility you will easily stay in control.

Accountants can use this in the same fashion, so when a client calls, “switch” to the up-to-date data and give advice. This service is also available for the free accounting software module, so no excuses there.

One other use is if you have more than one company of cause, then you can switch between your businesses easily. Combine this with the benefits of online technology and it eco-friendly impact, and you will be excused for feeling good about your business.

To use this technology, all you need is your find your LiveNet ID - in My LiveNet > My Profile - give it to your client and he/she can set you up as a user on their OnlineOffice system and restrict what you have access to.

This means you can work for anyone in the world who uses OnlineOffice, or you can add contractors, virtual assistants, freelancers or free agents to your system at will.

Great bootstrapping and outsourcing opportunities for your small business, don’t employ people for temp or non-core functions, Quick Switch them. ST.

When you sign up to WinWeb’s free LiveNet - still in public beta - you can also use our useful and FREE RSS Press Release service.

While LiveNet is an online marketplace for your services and products, which allows you to promote your business to others and find others to help you with work you need to have done. It is also a great place to make new business friends and share experiences.

The PR tool has been around for some time and we have registered this RSS feed with many different search engines and news sites. Using this free service will give your small business web coverage, sometimes even the old media picks it up.

Give it a go - it’s free - and that makes it a great bootstrapper tool. ST.

WinWeb is to sponsor the Accountancy Age Award 2007 in the category: Best use of Internet in Practice for the second year. The event is held as last year at the Battersea Park Arena, Battersea, London, in the evening on November 14th, 2007.

This award is the most appropriate award for us to sponsor, since - incredibly - we are still the only online accounting software provider, with an ICAEW approval. It is two years since we first received our accreditation. It is surprising to me that not more accreditations have been made so far, the world is moving online. In accountancy the world is probably turning a bit slower, that makes these awards even more important.

Last year our friends at Goodman-Jones won the price, it will be interesting to see who will win it this year, especially as Goodman Jones is shortlisted again:

• BRAL
• Goodman Jones
• Morris Owen

I wish all the shortlisted candidates good luck and thank those who are not on the list for their great attempts to win the award and hope they will try again next year.

Yours truly will be presenting the award and I look forward to meeting one or two of you at the event. Should be a great night. ST.

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.