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Most of the time I've spent has been in dealing with these pressing questions from non-technical entrepreneurs and CEOs.  While business owners recognize the possibilities and need for technology today for their businesses, at some point, they just get frustrated with technology, and rightly so.  It's complicated, it often takes more time and expense than was ever expected and trying to use it can be daunting.

During a ten year hiatus from being a university professor, I've pulled together teams of developers, web designers and engineers - from whom I've learned a bit about what they knew, and a LOT about what they don't know.  Each of these Top 10 Tech Frustrations, all of which I've had myself have pushed me closer to find an answer, and to fund a "real" platform for entrepreneurs and business owners.  Entrepreneurs want to use technology to run their business, not only because it's smart, because it's the only way to survive and thrive as a business today.  So, after eight versions and lots of my own frustrations and expense, the 1to1Real platform and related families of cloud based solutions like 1to1Pharmacy, 1to1MD and 1to1IPM (Investment Portfolio Management) was born.

There are two types of entrepreneurs and business owners when it comes to technology.  First, there are those who want to run their business and use technology to become more profitable, more productive, get more customers and keep those they already have.  Secondly, are the people who get starry eyed about the possibility of technology and start down the "in-house, I can and will develop it myself, so I can sell it to the world" type.   The first type is realistic and they will eventually succeed.  The second, the “would-be technology developers" type usually spends tens of thousands (although I've seen a few spend well into the millions) and almost always fail.  Once again, "why?" seems an appropriate question.

Each of these Top 10 Frustrations is actually a complex software development, real world challenge that comes along with inventing software.  To some of these frustrations there are scientific answers and to others, only trial and error will give you the answer you need for your business.

For small and medium sized businesses the cost of failure is high, and likelihood that a home grown solution will yield success is low. It usually looks like this when we've gone in to a company: A pharmacy/ investment manager/ real estate company (choose a core business) finds a "programmer" who can build a database (the truth is anyone can build a database today).  The ideas flow, the system is laid out; the dream has begun.  The problem is tools like relational databases, web sites and code can look and function fine; but only to a point.  When the system gets a lot of users, data, needs for more functions, the code that was typically generated through these tools becomes what the software industry calls "spaghetti" - it gets all tangled up.  Why? Because there is a lot of it, all trying to do pieces and parts of something and then the programmer (business) asks it to do another thing. I've seen this happen time and again, because when it comes down to it, the business developing the solution is not a software engineering firm.

It has taken us a decade to invent, make errors, make changes and to find out how to avoid this technology tangle at any level of load.  When you see success in technology you give it a name:  Microsoft Outlook, Windows, Apple iPod/iTunes/iPhone, Google, Facebook...  When you consider the billions of transactions and processes each has to handle, you appreciate the sophistication.

So how can a pharmacy build a set of transactions that will integrate within a 1.5 trillion dollar health care system, in-house?  They can't, but I've seen them try! We worked on the Alberta Health Care system, at the time a $350 million project in the province.  We had a small role to come in and help "make it work" - because after $350mm spent, there was an 85% failure rate. We devised a solution that was called "elegant" by the lead engineers.  Why were we able to see the solution when they weren't?  We've never had big budgets to work with! We work with small businesses who had limited budgets and even more limited time, so we've learned to get from point A to Z as fast and as efficiently as possible.

All of these hold-ups and technology frustrations that cost money, time and drive business owners crazy are going to keep getting worse because technology and its use is getting more complex, not less.

So, for the businesses that want to use technology to be more efficient, and more profitable, we offer the Connected Market Coach program in conjunction with our 1to1Real solutions to get them from A to Z faster and more efficiently. The Connected Market Coach is a solution for entrepreneurs and business owners who love their business and want to do more of what they do best.  For those who wish to face their challenges by "figuring it out" and building it in-house, I wish you well.  It is a long road.  From Harvard to Wharton to MIT, studies show a 70% - 90% failure rate - "the road ahead" has already been paved with tough lessons learned.

Our Connected Market Coach program is by qualification only for one simple reason: priority of your business objectives is the most important success factor.  If you'd like to visit us and discuss your goals and how you can use The Connected Market Space to automate, connect and transform your business - visit us at the Connected Market Coach and complete the application.

Here's to overcoming frustrations and the shortest path to connections for success.

Tim

Every internet expert will agree that blogging according to a set schedule is very important. But sometimes the idea well runs a little dry. Not that this is the case today. Oh no, not at all. (*ahem*) But this is an important topic! Lots of people write blogs, and that means they need a lot of blog post topics to keep them inspired and writing. So, to help you in this regard, we’ve done a round-up of our favorite suggestions for blog post topics.

Last week I was at a meeting with a group of entrepreneurs from all over the world.  These folks are some of the best of the best in the world at their businesses – across industries and continents.  When my turn came to talk about The Connected Market Space and our recent launch of 1to1Real as a “solution for the SMB [Small to Medium Sized Business] Technology Tangle” they all listened with increasing enthusiasm and interest.

After a few minutes, one of the leaders said, “why don’t you just talk about the top 10 things that business owners hate about technology?  If you can solve that, you’re done!”

Great idea!  So I rapidly scribbled down what I’ve spent the last decade trying to solve by building 1to1Real and the Connected Market Space. Once I decided to write them down, I thought it would be a great idea to write about each one in my blog. So, here you go – a series I’m going to write about each of what I find to be some of the most frustrating problems with technology.

Starting with #10:

The reality is that the technology industry was built on costing a lot of money.  Hordes of software engineers, consultants and development companies have spent decades perfecting the model of getting paid for writing code.  They charge a lot for their work and for good reason - it’s hard to do and time consuming.

As a business owner, and a tech CEO, I have troubled over this.  The reality is technology is highly valuable ONLY when it is properly developed and deployed.   So, I asked myself “how can we solve the technology risk problem, the time problem and the related cost problem for small to medium sized businesses?”   After all, these aren’t governments or major corporations.  These are businesses that provide a product or service to a market, they do it well and by their own successes they grow – which causes inefficiencies.  Businesses like this don’t have unlimited time to focus on technology, or unlimited resources they can acquire by raising taxes or the price of a widely distributed product a few dollars.

So, let’s turn the question into an answer:How can I use technology to make money - without hiring a bunch of technology people where I don’t know what they do, or asking for a bunch of quotes that I don’t know that are fair – without spending a ton of money?

When approached like this, the answer becomes obvious.  Focus on your core business and find a way to get that to extend in 30 days or less. Clue number one: if it takes more than 30 days to get your core business out the door, you’re headed for a trap!

If you’re in a business that is not technology based, don’t get into the technology business by hiring or funding a huge undertaking! Doing that is costly, time consuming and worst of all, it takes your attention away from your core business. People in the technology business are technology experts.  We don’t know your business, but we do know ours.  So let us take the risk that applies to our business – technology, and provide the value to you. After all, if I’m going to buy a car, I’m not going to start my own production line.  I’m going to find the vehicle brand I trust and I’m going to buy, and I’m going use it to drive from point A to point B.

Too many business owners try to become technology companies in house, and end up with a disappointing result.  The people who succeed in business seek out professionals to do what they can’t, so they can focus on what they can do – provide their product or service to their market. After a decade in the business I can say with certainty, the businesses who elect to find the right solution and the right professionals, who have worked with us and ask us to help do what they can’t, win every time.

The businesses who try cobble together a bunch of technology pieces like CRM and email marketing are spending money trying to create a solution outside their area of expertise. Or, worse, they’ve created a home grown monster – complete with a home built team that must be employed  24/7 just to keep going.  Money that could be driving a market and profits for the business owner is instead being wasted on something that doesn’t actually improve the core business.

• When you wake up in the morning do you just go straight to your iPhone, BlackBerry or computer?
• Would forgetting your phone at home give you more jitters than missing your caffeine fix?
• Do you send your staff, customers and prospects constant emails - then review the “sent box” to see what you’ve been doing to manage your business?

Ever gotten into a good natured argument with a friend about a fact neither of you are totally certain about? For example, are Baboons monkeys or apes? This simple question, completely unrelated to anything important became a hotly contested item of debate for one CMAEON staffer. She solved the problem the way so many people in her generation do – she checked Wikipedia. Victorious in her assertion that Baboons were monkeys, life went back to normal.

Situations like this probably happen millions of times a day, all around the world. Why?

Today, people are increasingly dependent on the Internet and sites like Wikipedia for instant information. If you have a question, you don’t ponder or go to the library – you Google it. Need to check some facts? Settle a bet? Want an opinion on a restaurant? Get an opinion from your peers? Internet. The quest for information isn’t a one way transaction where the consumer passively absorbs it from a book, a map or a newspaper anymore – it’s a conversation now.

“Can anyone recommend a good Italian restaurant for my big date?” “What’s the best route to get to the train station?” “Who is a good realtor?” Our conversations and quests for information drive us online to websites like Wikipedia, Yelp, Twitter and Facebook in a way that’s completely new and still evolving.

So what does this mean for businesses, and more importantly, what does this mean for a small business without the money to sink into Google adwords and expensive online marketing campaigns?  How can they be successful in this business climate? It means a successful business is able to tap into the conversations that are already happening online.

People constantly want information; therefore, if a business can join the conversation and respond to people with the specific information they want, that business is going to leave a positive impression. It’ll become a trusted brand. It’ll become the Wikipedia of a specific area of interest. It’ll be truly connected to its market and the needs of its customers. That’s the power of the Connected Market Space in the Age of Wikipedia.

If a business considers its entire market (i.e., the unique values it business brings to a transaction that earns and keeps customers) – it quickly become apparent they have to go beyond CRM and the sales force, and start thinking long term.

By definition, the sales force sells and then leaves - until there is something else to sell. For example, they sell razors and leave the production of the razor blades, the customer service, and razor blade user support to the rest of the team. Every business knows that the repeated value of the razor blade is what creates long term prosperity for the firm - the lifetime value of the customer and the firm – they want people to keep buying your razor blades. This means creating a connection with customers that isn't just a sales based relationship. Creating a connection with a market deeper than selling, is going beyond managing leads – it actually creates qualified sales leads. How? Slowly, surely, and over time as companies and customers connect and build a relationship.

People actually want to connect. People search, use social networks, save and sort information, speak, select and stick only if they go through the entire cycle themselves – we call this the "self discovery" market. Google is a very helpful tool for people to connect – it helps people sort information through search and PPC ads, and save information with bookmarks, social spaces, email, and other information management systems.

However, not everyone is searching and saving at the exact time they want to purchase something. This is where a typical sales cycle starts to fall apart. Sales people and the companies they work for don’t want, or more likely can’t afford to wait for a year to get a sale or commission.  The problem (especially in a “buyers market”) then becomes, if a business can’t get a buyer at the exact time the leads are searching the lead is worthless, contact is lost, and the company moves on. Not a good strategy for building a business or a solid set of connections.  A potential customer might want to buy a house next year, after they get married, but it doesn’t mean they’re not going to start looking for information on loans, mortgages and markets now.

Therefore, a business has a need for a consistent process of market participation and conversation marketing.  A successful business will want to provide information for as long as it takes for the leads to mature. When a business does this, it's building a deeper connection and creating that qualified group of connections in a market space. However, would it be too time consuming to provide that level of service to every customer that comes in the door with a vague request for information? Not necessarily.

What businesses need for is a marketing robot. Robots are not pushy and they are not emotional, they are informative and repetitive.  They can handle high volumes of people, can watch and learn and understand new things and create the right "space" for buyers and sellers without leaving the connection behind because the timing is wrong.  Robots can help create a conversation that can be revisited at any time. No sales force, marketing team or single person can do that - no matter how good they are - nor will they if they are compensated like most sales people - in commission. Effectively, this is how search engines started and still exist; however, a search engine is a one way cycle and is manipulated through "optimization" and a code set that decides what is relevant.

For a successful connection, humans should decide what is relevant to them, and then find that information.  Nobody ever feels like Google helps them make an informed decision – it just gives them information they specifically requested and leaves them to make the decisions themselves.

This is why conversation marketing and social networking is taking off so rapidly.  People trust and talk to other people.  People start by searching, but then they start narrowing down what they were thinking about and begin asking real people.  In short, they make a connection and follow it through.   In reality there is nothing about Google that makes anyone stick, other than sheer size of the search market. Once a lead comes through Google, a business still has to start that conversation!

That is where a robot can help for a clever business.  When people search and don’t get information or a meaningful connection, they will search again. So if a business can catch those searchers the first time, providing information to real people and in answering questions, it will be associated with the most valuable information about its market, and it will start to have engaged conversations with searchers.
That is unbeatable - if a business can get in the conversation, and staring helping to drive the conversation, it becomes a focal point, and more and more people will join in. Real people.   Interested people.  People that are buyers.  A robot helps because it grows and is patiently waiting and capturing and responding.  It doesn't lose interest or "move on" like a salesperson will.  It will cultivate and till the fields of prospects and create conversations and referrals and a community of people interested in a product or service.  

There are hundreds of millions of people on the internet.  A business only needs a few hundred or a few thousand of those people to decide that it is the expert, and the destination for solid, real useful information to be wildly successful, highly ranked on Google, and drive more success from natural brand advocates and community members than it ever could from PPC advertising or paid search.

So how can a business create its robot? How can it start generating real conversations and connections?
Contact us. We can help.