October 2007

Would you like to be Biker Jim's Gourmet Dogs or the Russian Guy?

October 31, 2007 Featured

I can’t remember how I came across this from Remarkable Communication but the story about the story is incredible…. Biker Jim has a blog, pimped out cart, sells elk dogs and has a cream cheese caulking gun for those that fancy cream cheese on their dogs…. Sonia – who writes Remarkable Communication has this to say:Me, I actually always go to the little Russian guy. I don’t want grilled onions, and I’ve got to be honest–an elk dog and a reindeer dog and a German veal dog are all still …. Plus I never want a hot dog badly enough to wait in line 15 minutes for one, and I like talking to the Russian guy about Moscow. He’s polite enough to listen to my halting attempts at Russian, and his dogs cost what I think dogs should cost.The Russian guy gets enough business to scrape along. He could start telling a story at any time–a story about where he came from, a story about interesting things to put on hot dogs, a story about his product being worth more than a dollar or two…. What’s yours?Side note: Biker Jim’s cart is a real life example of what Hugh MacLeod means when he talks about social objects.

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This is what I mean by advocacy

October 31, 2007 General

Mark Polino spotted my crack at Sage from the other day. He’s a CPA who is in love with Microsoft Dynamics:Suddenly Microsoft’s strategy of “let’s integrate but slowly” doesn’t seem as bad as some of the alternatives. Then again, I’ve got high standards so I’ll quickly forget about this and start pushing for more and better again. I don’t want Dynamics GP to simply be better than the rest. I’d like it to be the standard that others aspire to be.Microsoft: by all means keep your Blue Monsters, but get more Mark Polinos as well.Sage: where are your Mark Polinos? Certainly not here.

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Sage's genius marketing (how to abuse a social object)

October 31, 2007 Featured

Here’s an email Sage is sending its customers:From: Sage Support (AIC) <Support@sage.com>Date: 31 Oct 2007 04:19Subject: Start-Up Debt + 21 days reminderTo: XXXXXXRef: XXXXXXYour Sage Start-Up Service membership is overdueDear Sage Start-Up customer,Our records show we have not yet received your Sage Start-Up renewal payment from you…. If you have not, here are 5 major reasons why you should consider arranging payment today:- Operate more efficiently and track your cash flow- Manage your customers, suppliers and transactions- Always know what’s due and when- Work more effectively with your bank and accoutant- Build your business know-how and plan your next stepsIf your business is outgrowing your Sage Start-Up service, consider the benefits of moving to a different option…. Sage Instant Accounts is an easy-to-use bookkeeping program that will give you control of your accounting and business management…. Sage Instant Accounts Plus and Sage Line 50 are accounting software products that allow for this.Spread the cost and pay Interest-Free. If you pay by Interest-free Direct Debit you can arrange to pay either annually or monthly. To arrange payment, please call the Start-Up team today on 0845 111 55 55.You can also pay by cheque, credit card or bank transfer at the standard price. All outstanding invoices will be carried forward to your next statement until payment is received. If you have an queries about your Start-Up service, please contact the Start-Up team on 0845 111 55 55 or e-mail – support@sagestartup.co.ukWe look forward to supporting your business for another year.Yours sincerelyCatherine VenusCustomer Services DirectorAll you customer services geniuses out there.

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TUC's thoughtful approach to Facebook

October 31, 2007 Asides

I never thought I would say this but the TUC has put out a very well balanced document about Facebook. They don’t shy from any of the issues and rightly highlight trust as a key point in employee relations. This 3 pager should be required reading for any firm considering how to respond to social networks.

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Big Four push liability cap: resist

October 31, 2007 Featured

For those that don’t know, Prem is one of the very few brave accountants who is prepared to call out those who abuse their positions of power and authority in the wonderful world of professional accounting…. Prem observes that:This will be the beginning of the end of the consumer protection principle: that the wrongdoer should suffer the consequences of his/her negligence.The demand for a liability ‘cap’ is being pushed by PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG, Deloitte & Touche and Ernst & Young. These accountancy firms audit 97 per cent of the FTSE 350 companies, as well as major companies in other countries…. Their annual audited accounts do not provide any meaningful information about their liability costs, insurance cover, legal or out-of-court settlements.Big firms are using their lobbying muscle to secure even more liability concessions because this would help to increase profits.Prem then goes on to explain why this is wrong. Rather than improving the quality of audit work to reduce risks, the auditing industry demands and continues to receive liability concessions to improve its profits.Richard Murphy notes:Prem’s arguments are spot on – and thankfully have the support of the Association of British Insurers.Yesterday, Francine McKenna noted that:From Accountancy Age comes this story of a firm called IM Litigation Funding that is bankrolling a suit against Moore Stephens, a next-tier firm. The plaintiff’s bar is already all over this stuff, bringing suits against the auditors much more quickly than in the past. But with the possibility that other entrepreneurial types may see opportunity in the deep pockets of the larger firms and their propensity to settle instead of going to trial, there may be something big brewing here.One thing Prem omits…. My questions are directed at Michael Izza, CEO of ICAEW: As CEO of the premium professional brand, when are you going to get a grip of the few who make professional life a misery for the many who get tarred with the same brush?

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Note to PR flacks

October 31, 2007 Featured

The other day I received the following email from a PR genius:”Is there an e-mail address I can reach you at for PR purposes?”I know the person who runs the office from which this came. I suggested he takes said genius out the back and thrash them soundly with a cluestick. You know who you are ;) Today I received another:”I was wondering whether you already had an editorial calendar or feature list for 2008. If so could you please forward it to me so that I can distribute it”For this I solicited help from my Twitter network. (All first links are Tweets so the rest of you geniuses know who else not to irritate)Al at Folknology suggested throwing this link from Chris Anderson. The pertinent bit:I only want two kinds of email: those from people I know, and those from people who have taken the time to find out what I’m interested in and composed a note meant to appeal to that (I love those emails; indeed, that’s why my email address is public). Craig at SAP suggested:2008 I plan to blog ;-) Fellow Irregular and ZDNet contributor Mike Krigsman suggested:Dear PR Lady: Unlike magazines, bloggers have no editorial calendar…. Maybe take a look.Ric Hayman from Australia suggested:Yes…and nowt elseDon’t you just love the blogosphere?

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What's going on at Sage?

October 30, 2007 Featured

Achieving 10% in current US market conditions was always a moonshot given the appalling lack of product investment so in one sense, they’ve been wholly unfair in putting the outgoing team under such pressure. On the other hand, the US team must have told Sage HQ that the hefty investment it had made into the medical market was always going to be a risk…. Add to that fierce competition from an invigorated Intuit and an increasingly attractive looking Microsoft and it is easy to see how Sage management was always on a loser…. We’re not just talking great producers but folk who have been with Sage a number of years and are seen as part of the fabric. Add to that the fact the company has been ominously quiet of late and you start to get a whiff that all is not well at Sage Towers…. The software world has changed and while consolidation continues, those who fail to invest will find themselves increasingly isolated as irrelevant to today’s business needs…. Vendors who look across the user landscape and note there is plenty of shelfware or complaints of bloat may well ask themselves whether they’re heading in the right direction…. Expect Microsoft, which is growing in excess of 20% pa (and others) to become the long term beneficiaries of Sage’s failure to recognize the value of judicious development investment.

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Borrowing customer service ideas from Seesmic

October 30, 2007 Featured

Now that FreeAgent is out in the wild, the hard work is underway…. We thought long and hard and decided we would NOT go for one of those closed forums that so many others employ…. Like so many other services it is in beta and might fall over tomorrow. We’re prepared to take that risk because we’re not really using it as a bug fixing forum (though those are bound to turn up) but as a place to find out more about what users need. Al at Folknology wondered whether the way we’re using GetSatisfaction might lead to problems over the intellectual property contained in the ideas that are surfaced…. That’s where the development team comes in. Like Loic LeMeur with his Seesmic project, we are developing the service with the help of the user community…. If someone asks for something we can’t do right now then how do we satisfy the need?In the past, software developers put out bare bones products then layered complexity on a customer by customer basis…. Or how are we doing in helping customers with that good old bugbear, entertaining expenses?To complete the picture, the posts that appear on GetSatisfaction can be subscribed via RSS and we also put the summaries on the FreeAgent site.

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Gartner validates social computing but confuses

October 30, 2007 Featured

Industry analyst Gartner has put out one of its (in)famous Magic Quadrant’s for social computing applications…. My colleague at ZDNet Dan Farber parses the report:The Magic Quadrant is not based on any apples to apples comparison of products from the various vendors…. Jive Software and Leverage Software add more of a social networking dimension with user profiles, allowing people to locate people with some specific expertise.I found the report confusing…. On the other hand, anyone making decisions based on this report will be hard pressed to understand how to pick point solutions. Even then, there were some glaring omissions.Wordpress for instance doesn’t get a mention yet from everything I’ve seen, it dominates personal blog usage…. Industry analysts are hard pressed to make money from these players as they operate on very different business models to other commercial entities.Naysayers think open source is way too risky, requires too many skills, is unsupported (pick any 2 from 3) as a justification for keeping with high priced solutions. Right on cue, TechCrunch reports that Automattic, the company behind Wordpress.com has spurned an offer of $200 million:Building a real business around open source software is doable – see RedHat’s $4.1 billion market cap as an example…. For Automattic to spurn a $200 million offer means they are thinking along the lines of going public themselves, or at least a significantly higher acquisition price.To me, news like this shows just how out of touch industry analysts are becoming.

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