every.cloud

About technology, business & management issues..

It's funny how ideas arise in the minds of people. While spending hours in front of my computer in a room of 5 x 5 meters in a cold room of a university town in Wales ideas seemed to come from nowhere. Maybe it was the cold wind from the North Sea, perhaps it was loneliness that allowed the ideas flowing.

How to harness the trend of "cloud computing" in the context of SMEs in a developing economy like Mexico? How to make it accessible, easy to use and that met the Mexican reality? Under these assumptions the idea of ​​every.cloud was born.

The idea was to create a platform where SMEs could create their own collaborative ecosystem. The goal was for companies to use the Internet to communicate, generate information, reports, data exchange, creating value in the sales process. How to create something simple and useful, without pretensions or ambitions beyond delivering excellent customer service ?

Many questions and no answers at all. What target market? How to communicate the idea? What is the real possibility of adoption by SMEs? Does the service must be paid or a free one?

    After months of thinking about it, chewing it,  rejecting it, adjusting it, discussing  it and finally achieve it in a couple of real products that originated every.cloud as a web platform.

Coming soon it  will be available through the web and then we can verify that it complies fully with the purpose for which it was created: to provide a web tool to micro, small and medium enterprises in Mexico.

Businesses & social networks. Overrated?

About technology, business & management issues..

      Earlier this week I was checking the contents in several journals on politics, business, marketing and technology. Not surprisingly I found the common factor in virtually all of them: the use of social networks and support in political campaigns, social partnerships between businesses and individuals and as a means of online advertising for small businesses.

A couple of days later I read the article about a company in northern Mexico created by young entrepreneurs. The company has created a platform which offers various products (from a social network which enhances relationships between transport´s suppliers to car wash dealers). The products and their quality varied greatly: some looked like pretty good ideas and some just had no reason to be or didn`t appear to satisfy any demand for any particular market.

The funny thing is the advertising they set out: in all of them it created a social network among its users and, depending on the case, with third parties. After thinking a bit I asked myself: what is the added value or competitive advantage for using or subscribing to an online service that allows me to make contact only with suppliers of steel products for car-manufacturing industry and not to join any other group specialized within a social network like facebook, linkedin and Google +?

My logical answer was: nothing at all. Perhaps at that time was that I thought that many services that offer mere social networks are overrated. The social network offering should be integrated with another value within the same platform they offer. This integration can be a management inventory web tool, a database based on human resources, a forum for buyers and sellers of commodities or whatnot. Any other tool that will help the company improve its status quo as the social network will hardly alone do it.

No doubt if the creators of these services do not understand that social networking is more a means than an end in itself then the products will be doomed to failure.

No need to reinvent the wheel. Connecting people with similar tastes, interests and relationships is already happening. The services are being offered by the big players. If you do not add something else to the social network then there is no tangible value that any client may perceive as valuable and necessary for their business.

www.clarensyst.com.mx

Microcredit & connectivity

About technology, business & management issues..

      It was in the early 70's when Muhammad Yunus started the project of granting small loans to lower-class in impoverished Bangladesh. This exercise regimen introduced in late 70' & early 80's consolidated Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. Thereafter and in many developing economies Grameed Bank has given billions of dollars in microcredit.

 The objective of the Grameen Bank is lending to people who do not have assets that serve as collateral or have previous credit history. Obviously these people do not have stable jobs.
Microcredit does not establish formal contracts so that only the borrower is expected to honor his word to restore his credit and interest which, in comparison with commercial banks, are insignificant.

One could argue whether microcredit is a panacea or not  to all  problems of the disadvantaged economies or if the credit actually encourages the creation of more SMEs and generating jobs. Certainly it is an instrument that helps a lot but that alone will not solve all the problems in poor countries.

Recently Yunus has emphasized, together with other experts in the field, the need for affordable sources of credit for people and with favorable conditions for subsequent payment. Just spoke about the need for emerging countries to ensure coverage of Internet and mobile telephony.
It is easy to understand that a facilitator in the creation and maintenance in SMEs is communications. The clearest example is not far from Bangladesh:  in India there are over 900 million mobile phone users and just over 100 million Internet users. This has caused the average growth of the domestic economy of India in the last 15 years to be greater than 5%.

It is strange to see how some analysts decry the fact of cheap credit and access to telecommunications as a growth factor and job-generation in a developing economy.

No doubt the fact that there is a capitalism with a social objective which cannot harm the economic interests previously established and whether it offers a window of opportunity to many people trying to improve its economic environment.

www.clarensyst.com.mx

A cash flow problem in the cloud..

About technology, business & management issues..

Following the  very first companies offering services such as web apps or e-business through the cloud, the first problems of the business model began to emerge to the surface.

As a fact the American market has a strong stock market and vast amounts of venture capital. Many investors eager to invest in technology companies began to dictate the rules of business model: the first rule was to have money hand over fist.

With the promise of capturing major market segments, venture capitalists gave large amounts of money to companies for marketing spending and its market positioning. In many cases the product or service was not yet finished, much less proven. The latter caused a significant resource investment in the first months of lifeblood of the business thereby sought to profit long term.

Many argue that this only caused a distortion in the market that eventually provoked the downfall of many companies that had no solid foundation to succeed in the market.
In either case, these guidelines prompted one of the very first premises in technology industries which has cast strong roots in the subconscious of the leaders of the tech industry: give away the product or service initially and then cash for it.

The latter created the concept of the free trials and freemium services within any tech company, mainly driven by Web 2.0. current trend. While the main idea was to get a significant number of users and then make them fall in love with your product and keep them indefinitely and then convince them they now had to pay for what they had been receiving it for free. Now it was a financial problem.

While it makes sense that many companies invest massive amounts of money on advertising and then offer their services free for a while in fact this model does not make sense for other companies.

Like any other business, the business should focus primarily on generating revenue and become profitable in the shortest time possible. Any other statement would only be playing a fools´game and basically only cause a distortion of the market that does not help the industry or  customers who expect a solid product and a sustained customer service.

Is taken into account to understand the concepts and develop business models that other companies in other cultures and contexts have previously incurred. However, should always be a framework to adjust in order to suit the reality in which one develops.

Regardless of this globalized world, it is difficult to get by the dogmas created in another situation, in another context.

www.clarensyst.com.mx

Facing the Status Quo

About technology, business & management issues..

        Any company or business should be concerned about the place that its business should occupy within  a market, many times, fragmented and highly competitive.

In traditional industries (trade, construction, industrial, financial services) positioning is closely related to focusing on niche markets. That is, big players dominate the bulk of the market so you can only steal a little slice of the pie.

Al Ries & Jack Trout mentioned in his still-relevant classic book Positioning the beauty of entering new markets that allowed you to fill this gap in the consciousness of public opinion. Be the first one, no matter whether you were the best or the most capable, it will mean everything if you are concerned to position yourself in the market.

Other strategies used by many technology companies and other businesses, is to enter into direct conflict with market leaders. In doing so, as marketers preach, you would play  yourself as underdog, a David against Goliath. In a globalized world it rather seems than victimize your company is  the best  market strategy that any business could ever make.

But on the other side,  What do  you do in a fragmented market where there is no clear market leader who dominates the scene? What if you decide not to go against this leader?

Only in that case the battle gets harder and, clearly, an ideological one . You  will have to face the status quo. The business will have to be portrayed  as an innovative one, focused on customer service and maximizing the value added to them.

Sounds like a piece of cake, but then who or defines the status quo of a particular market?

www.clarensyst.com.mx