During the 1990’s I had a wonderful time selling connectivity, document management and business intelligence software to small and medium sized enterprises in many industries in the Americas. What I learned very quickly was that small business people hated computer speak and acronyms and most discussions quickly revolved around three questions:

  1.  Where have you done this before in my industry?
  2.  How much does it cost?
  3. And how long will it take?

Not much has changed in the world of small business from this perspective other than the fact that there are now an estimated 80 million of them globally, if you don’t count every single one in China and India this week.

The Feature Function Era of Reliability, Performance and Interoperability

For those of you that don’t remember this was a time when software was very buggy, (unstable) its performance was a differentiator and companies like Microsoft wouldn’t endorse the protocol standard (TCP/IP) that built the Internet. It was the best of times for software sales and marketing people and the worst of times for small business owners. Products were sold based on their performance, interoperability, features and functions. While they did address pain in business, they often weren’t reliable and were far from sustainable. The 1980’s and 1990’s marked two decades of expendability, when a small business grew from spreadsheet madness (were many still are today) to lightweight ERP and or accounting systems, there was no easy way to transition to the next so-called platform. IT was not considered to be an investment that produced returns, it did address immediate pain, but it did not enable the creation of sustainable business processes. 

Business Influencers Are Replacing Industry Analysts

Traditional industry analyst groups are relying on antiquated business models and are still doing research and analysis as if it were 1980s and 1990s. Most of the groups are heavily siloed, although to their credit some have organized their research by industry. Most of their information is however, what I call rear view mirror, as I elaborated upon in last year’s blog: Stating the Obvious. The vast majority of the analysts are focused on features and functionality not the business value of the technology. More importantly, most of the large firms have neglected to create meaningful small business research arms, and or offerings that are affordable and easy to consume. In my view they have missed a great opportunity to innovate their business models to serve the fastest growing segment of business worldwide, and have missed a major revenue stream.

The New Business Influencer

Enter the business influencer, innovators like: Brent Leary, CRM Essentials, Jesus Hoyos of Solvis Consulting, Lior Arrussy of the Strativity Group, GigaOm Pro, (mentioned in Steve King’s blog this week) Jeff Kaplan of Thinkstrategies, Eric Kimberling of Panorama, Esteban Klosky, Thinkjar and Paul Greenberg the new father of Social CRM are addressing the business value of IT. And are now disrupting the business models of traditional market research companies and enjoying a new revenue stream.

What is different about this new hybrid business influencer is that they understand enough about technology to be dangerous, but more importantly they understand how to implement solutions to achieve business value that often to helps companies gain competitive advantage. They are addressing the number one question in small business, where have you done this before in my industry? Small and medium business owners today have many options when it comes to using IT to run their businesses and one of my favorite adages is they can deploy “IT without an IT” staff by engaging a software as a service company. Jeff Kaplan was one of the first business influencers to focus on SaaS, and his company Thinkstrategies provides a wealth of content and consulting services on SaaS companies and their solutions. Eric Kimberling’s Panorama helps small and medium companies select the right ERP solution and looks at implementation costs and the economics of ERP, not just features, functions, bells and whistles.

In my view, it’s not about the technology anymore, so much consolidation has occurred in the on premise world of technology, competitive advantage is hard to find. The world of SaaS is still in its early days and there are many great niche solutions on steroids, but inevitably consolidation will occur at a more rapid pace than it has in the on-premise, on device world that we have lived in. For many of us SaaS will be “back to the future” of time share computing all over again in a business process utility model.

The Oceanography of Oil

Our oceans are in a sense a river of rivers; water masses within cyclones and gyres that are sometimes interrupted by hurricanes, typhoons and tsunamis. There are warm and cold core rings sometimes the size of entire regions that spawn off of these masses and they can devastate plankton populations that larval fish depend on by simply changing water temperatures. Examples of major currents dominating weather patterns are the cooling of California by the Pacific’s Japanese current and the warming of our Eastern seaboard by the Gulf Stream. Oil is perhaps the worst of all pollutants that can impact a region’s oceanography, although the PCB pollution of the Acushnet River by textile and electronics manufacturers in Southern Massachusetts is far worse over the long term; because there is no easy way to clean up embedded sediments in a river basin without dispersing them.

Although oil companies have made profits in the billions over the last several years they have spent little on understanding the oceanography of oil and how it behaves in our oceans, bays and seas. This is primarily because of a lack of government intervention, policy and oversight. Big oil still gets away with just about anything it wants, and the failure of BP to react and be prepared to deal with its current disaster is another example of broken government and the failure of a major multi-national corporation to safely run its business.

The only good thing about oil is that it is a naturally formed substance and there is a wide range of microorganisms that will eventually consume it. A large oil spill impacted the area of Northern California where I live more than thirty years ago and during winter beach erosion I still see the oil. When the beach is warm enough I can actually see vapor and gas coming off the oil in the sand from the decomposition process driven by bacteria. When oil gets into what oceanographers call a closed gyre system were currents maintain regional water mass it can destroy an entire marine ecosystem. Oil reeks havoc on all aspects of the marine ecosystem from birds on down and it can irreversibly destroy fisheries populations. The impact of BPs current disaster will wreak havoc on many aspects of the Gulf of Mexico’s fisheries, and let us hope that it does not make it to the fragile coral reefs on the Mexican Riviera.