Back in December I posted a short piece about whether there really is a future in writing software any more. The piece was driven by some comments made about some research initiatives in new software tools going on in Microsoft & Sun and how they would affect us going forward. While we have a lot to discuss technically here, for the wider audience typified by the readers of this Blog it’s really a case of “So What? When this stuff emerges from the labs, will it be useful to my business?”. The question we are really trying to answer is not about writing software per se, more about whether it makes sense to write software for my own business.

If you try to be logical about it, I’d say that most businesses want to deliver value to their customers that is better than the competition can deliver. One way to deliver that is by having computers support what you do to add value, and that in turn means translating your own specific business needs into something that computing can deliver for you.

The trouble is that it is easy to be logical about this, but we have to start adding in reality before the accountants and bank managers do it for us. Writing software is not cheap, and for the majority of businesses the computing economics comes down to a balance of “Will my business work if I change the operational processes to work with an off-the-shelf piece of software at lower costs?” against “What added value can I get to boost my bottom line by creating something myself that fits my processes?”.

Given that software development can be difficult to run in business terms if you are not able to dedicate the correct resources to it, the pragmatic solution tends towards the use of off-the-shelf packages, but that means that some of your value add can be eroded.

Whilst the words coming from the academics & technologists may not say it directly, there are some exciting innovations coming in the world of software development that will ultimately benefit our businesses, If we can make it easy to create that added value, and make it robust so that we can trust software to run our business processes then we make it cheaper to customise the support for own business models and thus be more competitive.

In December I mentioned the research work going on around building software robustness through better testability & documentation, don’t you hate it when you go to a web site & it is down? The work behind some of these sites is very substantial, and it’s not surprising that some do have problems. Any improvements in testability makes for better customer experiences in the long run.

However that doesn’t solve the fact that we need to make it easy to build that added-value, and one of the most promising areas is the new developments on Domain Specific Languages or DSLs. Putting it crudely, a Domain Specific Language is one where any software is created using language that is familiar to that area (or domain). By doing this, the job of creating the software is made easier as the person doing the work is working in their own context not that of the computer and so development of business solutions and value is made easier; faster & more relevant to the business need.

That is the good news. The not so good news is that the people creating these new DSLs haven’t really got to grips yet with the business context, and most of the DSLs emerging are aimed at the technical world for now. If you’re a mathematician then it’s great news, but if you’re running a plumbing supplies business you’ll have to wait for a little while longer.

Had you asked me back in December how long the plumbing supplies business would have to wait then I would have rolled my eyes, shrugged my shoulders and muttered something under my breath about length and pieces of string. However news of a real live application for a veterinary practice being rolled out using a language called Clojure has given me hope that we are starting to see, dare I say “green shoots of”, emerging business uses of these new languages. It is early days yet, and to be fair Clojure is still quite a technical language, but it’s being applied in a business context and that is what makes it so encouraging.

So will we see the academics turning out something really oriented to businesses which combines ease of use with robustness? If they could do it using Cloud Computing so that you could rent it as you need it then that would provide smaller businesses with cost-effective ways to offer value-add on-line. Could we get that this year? I really would like to think so.

Welcome to the third and final entry in this series of customer communication blog posts.  So far we’ve looked at how frequently to contact customers and what communication method best suits you.  There’s just one final piece of the communication puzzle that I want to share with you – permission and relevance.

Why are you sending this to me?
This is the one question that you never want your customers to ask when they receive communication from you.  If you can make sure all communications are relevant to the customers you send them to, and they’re sent at the relevant time, then you’re on your way to a successful communication programme.

If frequency, method and relevance were contestants on Blind Date – relevance is the one you want to be choosing each time!

Working with permission
You must respect your customer’s wishes.  If they have opted not to receive communication from you please don’t think that following the guidelines in this blog means you can now start sending communications to all customers.

We’re all protective of our contact details, so do unto others as you would have done to yourself (within the constraints of the Data Protection Act).  Creating a relationship with your customers will enable you to cross and upsell profitably.  Emailing customers who have asked not to receive anything could leave you recruiting a complaints manager.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this series of blog posts, all that’s left for me to do is wish you a successful and profitable communication plan for 2009.

At the end of last year we were asked to make our predictions for this Blog. The problem with making predictions is that you tend to focus on what is newsworthy at the time & then predict the outcome; I’m guilty as charged (my predictions are here if you are interested). Having confidently predicted what will happen in 2009, the news then turned very negative and for the past three months the industry has been pretty inward looking as we reported in mid-January with nothing being hyped. Well yesterday changed all of that with Jive Software announcing Social Business Software (‘SBS’).

To be fair, Jive Software have been around for a while delivering collaboration products: instant messaging; wikis etc This announcement is for a suite of products that, Jive say, will enable large enterprises to use community type software (a la Facebook, Linked In and the like) to promote collaboration & innovation, as well as encouraging new ways of interacting with customers. I’ll let you read the press releases for more detail but where this looks interesting is that there is an analytics package that allows companies who deploy SBS to get a measure of how well the company is collaborating & innovating.

There is a sea change going on in large enterprises who initially saw social networking sites initially as a time waster and yet we’re starting to see their value. How many companies have an ad-hoc LinkedIn or Facebook group set up? These same large companies are now accepting social networking, and driving the first steps towards collaboration through use of wikis and knowledge management systems. It’s an interesting space to watch because the factors driving effective & productive adoption are the combination of technology and social elements. Whilst you can control the technology pretty easily, the cultural elements make a big difference to how an enterprise gets the ultimate value of investment in this type of solution.

The announcement by Jive Software yesterday will help to validate the use of software solutions like this but this is a new marketing proposition and the industry watchers aren’t fully clear where SBS plays against the competition. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see some hyperbole around what this product launch means, especially in the area of sales & marketing collaboration.

Another thought about this brave new world: last week came news about Tom-Tom in the Netherlands in a potential patent lawsuit with Microsoft to try and protect open source licences. That’s just between manufacturers. What would happen if collaboration between customers & suppliers, as promoted by SBS, lead to a customer offering a fantastic idea for a product enhancement which was used to make a lot of money by the recipient, that could be an interesting legal conundrum.

So, I’m going to add another prediction (there’s no rule that says I can’t!). I expect we’re going to see quite a lot of noise now about social computing driving innovation & productivity in the enterprise, and about how it enables customers & suppliers to work much more closely. Then we’re going to see the major software manufacturers positioning their products into this space. The positive benefit is that it will prompt more companies to look seriously at how collaboration tools, not just SBS, can help them.

Hopefully, this is going to be a fun ride.

Welcome to the second part of my blog on customer communications – thanks for coming back!

My last entry looked at frequency of communications, which leads us naturally into looking at what’s the best method of communicating with customers?  You’ll not be surprised to hear me say that again there’s no ‘one size fits all’.  So what are our options?

Going digital
There are several digital marketing methods that can be used to reach your customers, here’s a taster of some of them;

Email
Using HTML email allows you to be creative and really grab your customer’s attention, but beware SPAM filters that will stop your email getting through.

RSS feeds
Send news and information to your customers as it happens to the place of their choosing.  Bite size snippets will have them heading back to your website to find out more.  Not for the tech novices amongst us!

Blogs
If you’re reading this then I think this one speaks for itself!  It’s a great way of presenting the human face of your company.  You can also stay in touch with customer sentiment by asking for ratings or comments on an article – beware of SPAM that you might get though and check responses before releasing on website.

Doing what feels right
When it comes down to customer communications it really is looking at what feels right for you, your business and your customers.  It’s also important to factor in what your budget will allow and the return on investment you need.  Why not explore all avenues and give your customers the choice?  The more you listen to customers and give them the content they want using the channels they want, the closer you’ll get to building brand loyalty.

Coming soon:  What’s permission got to do with it?

I recently saw a question on Linked In where someone was looking for advice on customer communications.  They wanted to know how often they should email their customers.  The reality is that there’s no ‘one size fits all’ when it comes to communicating with customers.

Working out what’s right for you
The good news is that as a business owner you get to decide what’s right.  But it has to be right for you and your customers.  Communication with customers isn’t much different to communicating with friends and family – it’s all about doing what feels right for both parties.  What works for on person may not work for another.

Push the button
So, when do you press the ‘send’ button and put your brand name into a customer’s inbox?  For some companies an eNewsletter can prompt a loyal relationship, using a regular frequency ensures customers know when they will hear from you and, if the content is compelling, possibly even start looking forward to receiving it!  For others it may be concentrated around special offer and sale times.

Using customer events to your advantage
How many of us have decided to step away from what we as a business are doing and instead use events happening in the customer’s life to prompt communications?  I recently received a birthday card from my bank and my gym.  A quick poll around the office showed that many companies are doing the same.  Other examples I’ve seen are emails reminding me that my car insurance quote is due to expire and emails from retailers recommending other products that complement my recent purchase.

Why not take some time to review your customer communications this year and see what really works for you and your customers?

Coming soon:  The best method for customer communications

I recently heard about a friend of a friend (this is not an urban myth – but reality), who had the misfortune to “lose” his bag in a bar in London. Once he realised it had gone his first thoughts were, “what’s in there – laptop, wallet, car keys, and oh heck – house keys”. Within his wallet was £150 cash, 5 credit & debit cards, loads for loyalty / store / membership cards. Then it was a case of “what have I got?” Well the phone and Oyster card were in his pocket so he could get home and call ahead. Wrapping up at the bar and with scant consolation that his mates had to pick up the tab, he headed of home.

During the journey the realisation of the impact of the loss hit home. After cancelling a number of the cards he started to list all that he had lost – an activity that took 2 weeks as things forgotten come back to mind. Once at home thoughts turned to the laptop. Fortunately he had taken a back up only a week or so previously via a network based PC backup facility. Mail was all served via a Hosted Exchange provider – so that would all be there. So it was fairly easy for him to get back up and running in terms of files and e-mail. However even then he still needed to restore all the local settings and configurattion – maybe, he thought, image back-ups are the way to go!

Eventually all his cards were re-issued and various items were covered under insurance – but not all. Some weeks later he took to capturing some thoughts on the whole experience by way of advice for others – take or leave it, but you never know, one day this may be useful to you:

-          get you laptop / PC backed up regularly to somewhere that is a different location to where your laptop normally is (no point in losing your PC and the back-up)
-          check you security and encryption, we all keep sensitive details on laptops – what could be accessed if it falls into unscrupulous hands
-          make sure your e-mail is mirrored somewhere if not hosted
-          have a set of spare keys somewhere
-          have a list of what you carry around to be able to easily recount all that may have gone
-          backup you phone contents

I’m going to hold my hands up…I’m not an early adopter. I’m happy for others to buy the first version of a new gadget or sign up to the next big thing online. That way, they get all of the bugs out of the way before I take the plunge.

So you won’t be surprised to hear that I wasn’t exactly convinced by Twitter when I first heard about yet. After all, blogging like this still amuses me – who really cares what I have to say? But microblogging, well that’s another level! I couldn’t imagine conveying anything meaningful in the 140 characters Twitter allows (you get 160 characters for a text message)

But this is 2009. Grammar is losing all relevance and copy writing in a traditional sense is a dying art. But at the same time it is a new challenge and one that requires a lot of skill. We all know that if someone asks you to explain who you are in 10 words, that is a far harder than rambling on for 100 or 1000words. And so it is with Twitter. You have to be concise - get straight to the point and forget the formalities.

But I do wonder who really needs to know that I’ve just come back from a meeting and am now preparing for a conference call. Probably no one, but with data protection issues and privacy laws at the forefront of many marketer’s minds, Twitter is like gold dust. Why? Because Twitter is the ultimate opt-in marketing mechanism.

You see, people sign up to follow your Twitter stream (or “tweets” as individual posts are known). So if you want to tell interested parties that a new product is available, you post it on Twitter. You have a service problem, post it on Twitter. You are running a special promotion, just tweet.

Sounds simple, but be aware – nobody wants to have sales messages shoved down their throats, so use Twitter effectively to give people useful information as well as marketing information. They’ll soon stop following you if you don’t and your tweets will eventually go unread.

But if there is any doubt about the current power of Twitter, think back to the airliner which recently crash landed in New York’s Hudson River. An eyewitness snapped some photos on his mobile, and uploaded them to Twitter. Within moments the photo had gone global, whilst all of the major news networks were still desperately trying to get camera crews to the scene.

Is Twitter a fad? I’m still not sure, but a lot of people are squawking about it at the moment…

A new survey shows that despite the downturn, many companies are still committed to sustainability. Amy Fetzer reports.

In these volatile economic times, it’s encouraging to see many businesses still believe it makes good sense to think sustainably.

In fact, initial results from a survey I am conducting indicate the downturn is actually increasing many companies’ commitment to sustainability. The survey is one part of the research my co-author Shari Aaron and I are doing for our book, Climb The Green Ladder: Making Your Company and Career More Sustainable.

The survey is not closed yet, but so far, 80% of the 250 respondents have said that their employer is committed to sustainability while 11% have said the economic downturn has increased their company or organisation’s efforts. A further 41% said the downturn hadn’t affected their employers sustainability strategies, choosing the ‘no change seen’ option. Just 4.9% said it has decreased efforts.

Participants are drawn from across the globe from the UK and US to China, Spain and France, and employers ranged from small publishing houses and sustainability consultancies to PWC, Abbey National and the UK’s Department of Treasury.

So it’s heartening to see that sustainability is going some way to becoming part of the status quo whatever the industry or organisation size.

Our findings support research published in the State of Green Business 2009. Their survey of 100 companies revealed that nearly 47% were increasing their investments in green product development in 2009.

It’s common sense after all. Businesses need a healthy society and a stable environment in order to thrive. Many major businesses from Wal-Mart and the Guardian to Unilever, HP and Marks and Spencer have realised that embracing sustainability and taking a leadership role makes excellent business sense.

Thinking sustainably means focussing on reducing waste, increasing efficiencies and considering the human and ecological outcomes of corporate behaviour. True sustainability thinking is embedded in every part of business and means the long term viability of all business behaviours are considered rather than just being a beneficial ‘add on’ dealt with by the corporate social responsibility or sustainability department.

Taking sustainability thinking to the heart of business is seriously beneficial for the bottom line as resources are used more efficiently. It also increases positive environmental, social and economic impacts while reducing risks and strengthening brand reputation and competitive advantage.

It’s easy to talk about corporations and organisations as though they were faceless entities that we as individuals have little power to affect. But companies and organisations are just made up of people and people have power. Individuals have power – we all have power.

Our research has also shown this power in action, demonstrating how many of us are working to transform our organisations from within. 250 people have already taken the Climb the Green Ladder survey making sure their voices are heard.

Add your voice to theirs so we can share knowledge to reveal what works and what doesn’t so together we can find ways to ride out the downturn while building a more successful, more sustainable future.

Take the opportunity to have your say in the Survey!

While the economic slowdown has made the majority of us increasingly cost conscious, are UK consumers really cutting back as much as the media lead us to believe?

Although 2009 is said to be one of the worst years on record for the high street, with sales expected to decline each year until 2014*, there is some light at the end of the tunnel.

I for one have not made any significant cut backs, changing the way that I shop rather than what I buy.

In the past, the traditional brick and mortar store would have been my first port of call. Now I choose to buy online.

I do not think I am alone, my friends, family and colleagues are all doing the same. Could this be one reason why online retail is set to grow by 129 per cent over the next five years?

Not only can I find products cheaper, it is also convenient. I can buy online at my time and convenience, from the comfort of my own home with some biscuits and a cuppa. And everything is delivered straight to my door.

We’re not the only ones who are benefiting from the wonders of eCommerce. Many retailers are benefiting from consumers moving online. Those with an online presence can benefit from significant cost savings, increased customer reach and extra monthly revenues.

As we ride out the economic storm, this shift in consumer behaviour can only become more pronounced and is probably going to have a big impact on the bottom line for the major retailers.

With more than a third of Britons (36 per cent) intending to do more shopping online rather than on the high street this year, I do feel that those businesses without an online presence will suffer.
*2009

Further to my last post, I thought we had seen the last of the snow and last night 100 cars were stuck on Haldon Hill in Exeter spending the night away from family. The thought of getting stuck on the roads in snow in 2009 would not have been at the forefront of my mind had I gone out last night, or been travelling with my daughter. In fact my parents bought her home over Haldon Hill slightly earlier than when this happened.

I read and hear all the time “Make sure your spare tyre is legal, you have a blanket, water etc in your car…” Have I ever really taken that much notice? Being honest no I have not and with a child I should have done, although thinking about it she always have everything she needs in the car! So my task tonight is to ensure our car has everything in there for the possibility of being stuck somewhere, sometime - blankets, water, biscuits, phone charger.

I was talking to colleagues this morning, and one guy even has a portable stove in his car….a bit far maybe, but if I ever get stuck I would want to be near his car!

So my question is this - what would you now ensure you have in your car when going out on a journey?