Small Business Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Webbased’

When starting a business on the internet, it is natural to turn first to web-based tools for marketing purposes. Asking customers to click on a relevant link is always easier than asking someone to read a site name on a billboard or print ad and remember to visit the site later. Detail how you will use these web-based tools or others in your marketing plan rather than focusing on traditional advertising and marketing methods to show your understanding of the medium you are in.

SEO and SEM
Any internet business worth their salt must know the meaning of and difference between SEO and SEM. Both recognize that search engines, especially Google, are the gateway to the internet for most users. SEO (search engine optimization) refers to gearing your website towards appearing higher and higher in what is called the “organic” results for internet searches on keywords you desire. SEM (search engine marketing), also called PPC (pay-per-click), refers to entering into Google Adwords’ automated auction for keywords, and bidding to appear in sponsored ads for those words. You only pay the bid price if searchers click on your ad, visiting your site. Having a content-rich website with relevant information and a high number of incoming links from other websites will increase your changes of success with both SEO and SEM.

Blogs

The blogosphere increasingly rules information on the internet. Readers go to these websites, which range from professionally-run to homegrown, to find out the news they aren’t hearing through traditional outlets and to get news faster within niches. Search out blogs that focus on your business’s niche and plan a strategy for how to get noticed by these bloggers, whether it starts with commenting on their posts, asking to be a guest writer, or e-mailing the writers directly to ask them to pass on news about your site. Your public relations blog campaign should be taken as seriously as a PR campaign for traditional media for an internet business.

With the plethora of business management software solutions available today, how does a small- or medium-size business owner decide where to invest his or her resources? According to Michael Emaus, CEO of eEnterprise (www.eEnterprise.com), a division of NetSuite’s global reseller Skyytek Worldwide, there are basically three choices: custom applications, client-server applications, and on-demand Web-based applications. “The cost benefit analysis leaves no doubt that on-demand solutions provide the greatest integration and cost efficiency for growth-oriented enterprises,” he says.

“Customized software that is designed either in house or by developers for a specific business is extremely costly, in terms of development and hardware, and for maintenance,” says Emaus. He notes that, more importantly, such applications are not designed to adapt as the business grows, and so business owners are saddled with costly upgrades. “Small- and medium-sized businesses simply don’t have the resources to develop and maintain custom applications,” Emaus adds.

Client-server applications, which are typically licensed to a business, are also problematic. “Invariably, business owners are faced with the challenge of having several different applications that can’t ‘talk’ to one another,” says Emaus. Without seamless integration, owners have no way to, for example, cross-reference accounting and customer service data or company information and e-commerce. “This results in a hodge-podge solution that doesn’t give an enterprise the information it needs to grow,” he adds.

Growth is one of the two primary differentiators between Web-based on-demand business management software applications and its cousins. “On-demand solutions such as NetSuite represent a paradigm shift in the way business owners manage their customer, vendor, or partner base,” says Emaus. “NetSuite is not an application that ‘supports’ an existing business, but rather is one dedicated to ‘growing’ a business. Because it has four fully integrated components, it’s both highly scalable and highly customizable.”

The second major differentiator between NetSuite and other business management software options is that it is all functionality is available virtually instantaneously. “When we talk to business owners, we don’t have to spend their time or resources talking technology,” says Emaus. “NetSuite has taken care of that. Instead, we can talk about the individual company’s business goals, growth potential, and workflow.”

Lastly, the total cost of on-demand over a five-year period is substantially less than either customized or client-server applications. “Business Owners who think of on-demand as their most efficient, most productive, long-term employee” concludes Emaus, “have the most success. In the past, business owners have not been able to consider Information Technology as a profit center. NetSuite makes it possible, but you have to rethink everything.”

There are so many business management software solutions available today that a small- or medium-size business owner faces tough decisions about how to invest his or her resources. According to Michael Emaus, CEO of eEnterprise (www.eEnterprise.com), a division of NetSuite’s global reseller Skyytek Worldwide, there are basically three choices: custom applications, client-server applications, and on-demand Web-based applications. “The cost benefit analysis leaves no doubt that on-demand solutions provide the greatest integration and cost efficiency for growth-oriented enterprises,” he says.

“Customized software that is designed either in house or by developers for a specific business is extremely costly, in terms of development and hardware, and for maintenance,” says Emaus. He notes that, more importantly, such applications are not designed to adapt as the business grows, and so business owners are saddled with costly upgrades. “Small- and medium-sized businesses simply don’t have the resources to develop and maintain custom applications,” Emaus adds.

Client-server applications, which are typically licensed to a business, are also problematic. “Invariably, business owners are faced with the challenge of having several different applications that can’t ‘talk’ to one another,” says Emaus. Without seamless integration, owners have no way to, for example, cross-reference accounting and customer service data or company information and e-commerce. “This results in a hodge-podge solution that doesn’t give an enterprise the information it needs to grow,” he adds.

Growth is one of the two primary differentiators between Web-based on-demand business management software applications and its cousins. “On-demand solutions such as NetSuite represent a paradigm shift in the way business owners manage their customer, vendor, or partner base,” says Emaus. “NetSuite is not an application that ‘supports’ an existing business, but rather is one dedicated to ‘growing’ a business. Because it has four fully integrated components, it’s both highly scalable and highly customizable.”

The second major differentiator between NetSuite and other business management software options is that it is all functionality is available virtually instantaneously. “When we talk to business owners, we don’t have to spend their time or resources talking technology,” says Emaus. “NetSuite has taken care of that. Instead, we can talk about the individual company’s business goals, growth potential, and workflow.”

Lastly, the total cost of on-demand over a five-year period is substantially less than either customized or client-server applications. “Business Owners who think of on-demand as their most efficient, most productive, long-term employee” concludes Emaus, “have the most success. In the past, business owners have not been able to consider Information Technology as a profit center. NetSuite makes it possible, but you have to rethink everything.”

“Standard profit and loss statements provide historical data, but don’t allow executives to correct unfavorable trends, measure results of specific strategies, and/or reward outstanding performance,” says Michael Emaus, President and CEO of eEnterprise (www.eEnterprise.com), a global integrator of NetSuite, the world’s leading on-demand business management software. “A P&L is only a scorecard of what happened in the past. The actionable information is in the key performance indicators – the metrics of who is doing what with whom, when and how. This is what we call the 360-degree view of a business, department, and/or location.”

All too often, business teams are hamstrung because they receive untimely information that reports performance rather than actionable metrics. “In a variety of ways, these executives say the same thing: they get balance sheets and profit and loss statements, but they have no way of knowing what’s causing the numbers to trend up or down,” says Emaus. “Because they don’t know the cause of the trend, it is largely unknown whether to focus efforts on certain offices, targeted geographic locations, certain salespeople, specific products, or a particular type of client.”

“In today’s environment, the growth organization needs to think fast, move fast, and embrace change,” says Emaus. With the global economy pressuring the market to build virtual and instant locations, executives need accurate, real-time, standardized information that is accessible to all levels of management and key employees. “That actionable information is especially crucial for growing a business or a multi-location enterprise,” says Emaus, whose company integrates NetSuite for businesses of all sizes, particularly multi-location, global and/or franchise organizations. “Now we are talking about the NetSuite 360-degree view of a business, department, and/or location.”

NetSuite’s two primary advantages are ease of integration and information accessibility. NetSuite integrates its four major components – sales (CRM), back office (ERP), support, and eCommerce – and makes them accessible in one system via the Internet, offering a business owner no limits on growth, management, and reach. According to Emaus, “NetSuite provides a true single view of the customer – the lead, the prospect, the product or service, the invoice, and the support. So, when a salesperson needs a history of buying patterns, they see it in real-time. When someone from accounting wants to see which products or services have been invoiced, he or she can reference the same record as the salesperson. And, when the support staff needs to view the knowledge base, they can refer to the same record and attach alerts back to sales.”

Because NetSuite is an on-demand solution, it triggers positive payback by eliminating the restraints of the traditional client/server environment. The result enables users to access relevant and timely information from anywhere/anytime.

But Emaus emphasizes that the software alone isn’t enough. “Our customers generally understand immediately that an integrated, on-demand Software as a Solution (SaaS) requires business engineers who understand their industries and goals. It requires an understanding in business first, and technology second. Delivering 360-degree collaboration tailored around a variety of industries is the true differentiator for eEnterprise.”

Concludes Emaus, “Larry Ellison pioneered the Internet for the Enterprise. Now he and NetSuite are pioneering it for the SMB market. The Internet has been his baby, and for him to acknowledge that the Small-Medium Size Business (SMB) market is where the drive is tells me he hasn’t lost his game. We’re thankful for that.”

“Access to timely and relevant information has always been the purpose of business management software, but traditional systems have often left small- and medium-sized businesses with an expensive infrastructure and outdated reports,” says Michael Emaus, President and CEO of eEnterprise (www.eEnterprise.com), a global integrator of NetSuite, the world’s leading on-demand business management software. “In contrast, Web-based solutions level the playing field.”

Owners of small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) often underestimate the necessary expertise or the budget to implement and support a traditional on-site Information Technology business management solution. “In essence, business owners can think of on-demand, Web-based applications as a revenue stream, while the traditional Information Technology department requires both an initial investment and abundant expenses to support it. Managers need real-time, actionable information in order to grow and gain profitability, but instead become distracted with untimely and distorted reports,” says Emaus.

In contrast, on-demand, Web-based applications such as NetSuite allow business owners and department managers to focus on the “Information” necessary to grow the business while the traditional requirements of “Technology” – updates, security, hosting, and support – are intuitive. “NetSuite on-demand removes traditional IT requirements, and the expenses required to support that infrastructure,” says Emaus. “In that sense, on-demand is the great equalizer, allowing small- and medium-sized businesses to have the sophisticated tools that are available to their big business counterparts.”

For example, NetSuite integrates four major components – sales (CRM), back office (ERP), support, and eCommerce – and makes them accessible in a single system via the Internet. As a result, when an employee, a partner, a vendor, or a customer enters information, it is available to the enterprise in real time, regardless of location. Previously reserved for the Fortune 500, this integrated solution is particularly crucial for businesses with growing market pressures to offer support for real-time partner, vendor, and multi-location relationships.

As a result, managers and owners can spot data trends as they occur and drill down to determine the factors involved. “Small- and medium-sized businesses can focus their attention on the information, not the technology, and quickly make informed decisions based on actionable data,” says Emaus.

For the growing small-and medium-sized business, traditional software continues to require a significant investment with the goal to have many disparate systems talking with one another. Generally, in today’s SMB environment, accounting is not integrated with sales, sales are not shared with support and eCommerce is a report that is fed back to sales and accounting. For the NetSuite workplace, each employee, vendor, partner location, and global resource shares a common communication network. “In today’s world of virtual offices and multiple locations, the inherent drawbacks of traditional software are taking their toll on small business,” says Emaus. Not only are businesses faced with a variety of computers and operating systems that may not readily “speak” to one another, but redundant resources are hired in each location to support the enterprise. “With an on-demand solution, timely access provides better managerial control of the business.” says Emaus.