Business Two Zero

 
Use of the Internet gives an armoury of weapons for guerrilla marketing tactics for the small to medium business.  It is the key factor in the rise of the number of small businesses being created, but more importantly succeeding.  These days, you wouldn’t think of starting a business without a phone, a fax and a […]

 
I don’t know about you, but I’m fed up with some organisation’s attitudes to “white papers”.  I regularly download white papers on a variety of topics, or to find out about what my competitors are doing and thinking.  Some are extremely good, but some examples I’ve downloaded recently from AccountingWEB campaigns and elsewhere have been […]

 
I’ve been one of several contributors to an interesting debate with Paul Stobart, CEO of Sage, on the Software as a Service (SaaS) topic in the pages of AccountingWEB.  In the latest instalment Stobart denied that there was any great complexity in offering software as a service and argued, “The debate goes way beyond hosting. […]

 
Are you, like me, a regular user of Wikipedia as your favourite reference site?  If so, then this article Ten Wikipeda Hacks might help you get more out the experience.  I like the AJAX search, the use of A9 to search Google and Wikipedia together, and I hadn’t found the printable article tool.  Very useful.
Technorati […]

 
Here’s a suggestion on personal productivity.  Around 25 years ago I was handed the Time Manager system at IBM, and I’ve been carrying organisers and using various different approaches ever since.  I find that every couple of years I need to change system, and read a good book on the topic to re-vitalise my ideas […]

 
One of the keys to success in adoption of Software as a Service will be ease of integration between web services.  Of course this has always been an IT issue, with users choosing either an ERP style path, or “best of breed” applications.  This is balancing a compromise on functionality versus the support and cost […]

 
I attended a NetSuite webinar yesterday called “How to manage a Software as a Service business”.  It was interesting, but more an advert for how you could use NetSuite to run a SaaS business than offering innovative ideas and insights on the topic.  However, the main presenter kept contrasting SaaS companies like NetSuite and Salesforce.com […]

 
I just read an interesting piece from the excellent Richard MacManus blog on ZDNet.  He’s listed the top 10 sites by visitor traffic as recorded by Alexa, and it shows some interesting things:
1.   Yahoo!
2.   Microsoft Network (MSN) 
3.   Google
4.   Yahoo! Japan 
5.   Baidu.com 
6.   sina.com
7.   EBay
8.   Passport.net 
9.   sohu.com
10. 163.com
I find it surprising that Yahoo and MSN are ahead […]

 
Over the last few months we have been in the set up phase of a new business partnership with a particular software author, with other agents in various parts of Europe at a similar stage of development.  I had been badgering the author to set up a partner intranet for us to facilitate communication and cooperation, but the […]

 
The preeminent business philosopher, Peter Drucker, died last Friday at the age of 95.  Harvard Business Review called him the father of modern management and he published more than 40 books over 60 years, including The Practice of Management in 1954, and continued to write, contribute, and consult well in to his 90s.  Drucker challenged business and labour leaders […]