When you die, will someone need to know your online passwords?

Here's an interesting, if slightly morbid thought. When you die, what happens to all the 'stuff' you keep in The Cloud, assuming you are a user of such services as Google Docs/Drive, Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, Picasa etc? Clearly the services will carry on without you, but there's a pretty strong likelihood that your family will have to untangle all sorts of things within your social networks, may want or need access to some of your online assets (what about domain name registrations and the like?), and could possibly want to remove some things from the internet.

How will they do this without passwords? I can imagine a long drawn out process of having to contact every single service provider, supply death certificates and the like.

So there are a couple of ways around this. I could write down all my passwords and put them in a sealed envelope which I give to my lawyer (or some other trusted individual) for safekeeping. But then I can never change my passwords, or if I do I need to open the envelope and write them down again.

Then there is a service called LegacyLocker, who for a one time fee of US$299 (or $29 a year) will store passwords (and anything else you want them to), only releasing them to named beneficiaries on proof of your death.

Another option would be to put all of your passwords in a file which you encrypt using a strong encryption key, and then store the file somewhere publicly accessible online. You could then just put a URL and the encryption key in your sealed envelope, so this is a kind of halfway house.

Food for thought at any rate, especially if you have the plethora of online services and passwords that I have, and take sensible precautions to keep your passwords secret.

Cloud Apps for Microbusinesses

I've spoken at a couple of networking meetings recently about how small businesses can use Cloud software to make dramatic improvements in the way they manage their information. My rather stretched analogy is: "The difference between a diamond and a lump of coal is just a matter of arrangement".

The idea is that if you think of your business information like carbon atoms, which arrangement would you prefer? The right software can help you manage your business information better, and Cloud software puts some extremely powerful functionality into the hands of very small businesses. So here's a quick, non-exhaustive introduction to a few tools you might find useful.

But first...

What is The Cloud

Diagrams of computer networks always used a cloud shape to represent the internet. As web and internet based systems started to develop, marketers wanted a good term to describe the new paradigm. So was born a marketing buzzword...

The Cloud is a way of delivering computing where you connect remotely to an online service. In the 70s, computers were massive mainframes, accessed with a 'dumb terminal' which stored nothing and did no processing, it just sent and received data. During the 80s and 90s, things moved towards PCs on the desktop, which run programs and store data. Since the likes of Hotmail launched in the late 90s, move has been back to dumb terminals, i.e. web browsers where all the data is stored remotely.

Benefits of Cloud

• easy to access and use, from anywhere across different devices
• easy to collaborate with remote colleagues
• backup and business continuity built in
• pay for what you use, as you use it, OpEx not CapEx (some services are free)
• data security

Drawbacks

• if you have no internet, you have a problem, although this can be mitigated with backup internet connections (such as a wireless dongle or mobile phone), and with apps which make their data available offline
• be careful with security - consider location of data (especially in regulated industries), who might have access to your data

Examples of Cloud applications for business

The following tools are ones I've either used personally or have been recommended to me. They are particularly suited to 'microbusinesses' and many are available free or at minimal cost.

• IMAP email, which your hosting provider will supply, which allows you to synchronise your email program on your computer or mobile with a server, meaning that messages that you read on your PC also appear as read on your phone
• GMail - the contacts module will sync with mobile devices and your desktop email program (Outlook, Thunderbird, MacMail etc)
• Google Calendar - syncs with mobile devices and desktop email, and you can share calendars with co-workers, associates, family members etc
• Google Docs / Google Drive - great for working collaboratively on documents, spreadsheets and presentations
• Dropbox - file synchronisation between computers and website, allows you to share documents with others quickly and easily
• Microsoft LiveDrive - similar service to Dropbox and Google Drive
• ToodleDo - great web-based to do list with notebook, based on Getting Things Done methodology. Syncs with mobile devices
• EverNote - advanced web/desktop/mobile notebook app
• Feng Office - web based project management and collaboration application
• Xero and AccountsPortal - web based, easy to use accountancy software
• Nuvola CRM - watch this space!
• Skype - great for collaboration but also can be used to provide a business landline phone number

What to do next

• Think about what information you have in your business that is disorganised
• How could you organise that information better?
• What sort of tools would you need to help you do it?
• Check out the above tools and services, some of them will almost certainly help you
• Read my book (which is aimed at business people, not techies) for more information.

Insurance of the virtual kind

I was having a very interesting conversation with my hosting partner, Dudobi, a couple of weeks ago about how some of the stuff they're doing now around cloud and virtual services can be really beneficial to SMEs.

One of the things that I found really interesting is virualised disaster recovery, which admittedly sounds like something from a Stephen Spielberg movie, but is actually far more mundane. The idea behind disaster recovery (DR) is that if your office burns down (for example), you have an alternative location where you can decamp en masse and fire up desktop computers and servers which have a copy of your data and installations and carry on as normal.

Sounds like the sort of 'insurance policy' every business should have, but in reality the cost is prohibitive to smaller companies. Also it doesn't really help when people are stuck in the snow outside their homes! This is where virtualised DR is such a great concept. The idea is the you set up virtual servers which have a copy of your business information, and virtual desktop computers which have all of the software you use. Then you turn them off, just doing some low-cost regular data replication. As they aren't physical machines, they cost very little to have switched off.

Then the disaster happens, which could be something nasty like fire, theft or flood, or something mundane like the British inability to deal with snow. Rather than the business stopping, one call to the hosting company and your virtual DR is brought online. Your employees then just have to connect to them from their home PCs, and away you go.

Why this is so good is that you pay a charge to set everything up, and then a small annual cost (a few hundred pounds) to store the virtual machines and keep the data up to date. And then you pay by the hour when you have to use them.

This is another great example of how cloud computing is bringing some of the technological benefits that were previously only available to really big companies to those with as few as five or ten staff. And that has to be a good thing.

What's a Virtual CTO and why do you need one?

Most business people have come across the concept of a virtual finance director at some point. The idea is that as you grow your business, you begin to need someone on your board who understands finance to ensure you are making the right decisions for the future - you need more input than just bookkeeping and creating annual accounts. But at this stage you probably don't need (or have the budget for) a full time person, so you employ a 'virtual' FD for as much time as you need him or her.

The same is true of technology. This is more and more the case as businesses become more dependent on IT for their operations, and customers expect you to make innovative use of the internet and mobile applications to differentiate yourself.

For example, if you are a training provider, you might already take bookings online but what is your strategy for complimenting your offerings with e-learning? If you provide commercial cleaning services, how do you complete timesheets and holiday requests with the minimum of fuss? For a field service company, how do you manage the parts your engineers carry in stock?

Technology impacts every business, and if you don't have technical skills in your company it's very easy to get either left behind or sold something that doesn't really fix the problem and costs a lot more than you should be paying.

This is where a virtual chief technology officer, or virtual CTO comes in. Without needing the budget or commitment for a full time resource, you can bring in an experienced technologist with an understanding of how technology can benefit your business and a knowledge of the latest market trends, and only pay for the amount of time you need.

For more information, please visit www.nuvola.co.uk/Virtual-CTO.

"I just need access to anything, anywhere, at any time!"

Someone said this to me at an event the other day, in an exasperated tone as they went on to tell me all the times they'd been visiting a client and had forgotten to put that important document from their office on their laptop, had tried unsuccessfully to access their project management tools from home and had spent ages trying to work out which of a string of emails back and forth actually held the final version of a proposal.

Apart from computers breaking down and just not working (and there are IT support companies for that!), this seems to be the biggest issue people have with IT - just being able to get at everything easily all the time. The good news is that there are lots of tools available either for free or at a very reasonable price which can sort all this out for you. The better news as that you don't need the technical skills of Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates to set them up.

The best news of all, though, is that Nuvola is running workshops this December to help you understand what tools are available, which are right for you, and most importantly to actually set them up. Interested? More details and booking information is at http://www.nuvola.co.uk/Events.

Why be information conscious?

When I talk about an information conscious business, I'm talking about a business that has control over its information, giving not just its directors the information to control the business, but also the staff the opportunity to make the business better.

In my book, I use the following fictitious example of access to customer data to illustrate this:

Imagine you run a carpentry business, specialising in custom-built fitted furniture for the home. A year ago, you did a project for Mr Jones. He was very pleased with your service and referred you to a lot of his friends and contacts. Now, he's started working from home and wants his office fitted out, and calls your company. You've recently hired a new assistant (let's call him Jimmy), who's never heard of Mr Jones. Jimmy takes the call. What does Jimmy say?

A. “Mr Jones, OK, have we done any work for you before? Ah, OK, I see. An office in a similar style you say? So what was it we did in your bedroom? Right, I'll need to talk to the boss about that, can I call you back this afternoon?”
or
B. “Mr Jones, let me pull up your file... Yes, so we built a full length set of units in beech wasn't it? That's right I'm new, I've only been here a couple of months. Looks great from the photos, how are you finding it? That's great news. By the way thanks for the referrals, looks like we've done work for half your street! So, your office. I see we have some measurements here for your other rooms that the guys took because you said you might want a few things doing in future, is it the one on the ground floor that's about three metres square? Great, let me take some more details about what you want... OK, well obviously I'll need to get the boss to give you a call to finalise things and cost the job up, are you free this afternoon? I'll put a to-do in his diary then. Just looking at the schedule as well – we've got an opening in a couple of weeks time that we might be able to fit you into, shall I pencil you in, subject to agreement of course? Great, thanks, is there anything else I can help you with?”

Scenario A is a classic example of a business having information scattered all over the place that it can't pull together to present a slick experience to the client, and to aid Jimmy, who through lack of information is unable to be of any real assistance. I think you'll agree that it probably won't leave Mr Jones feeling very special or particularly enthusiastic about your business. When you call him back that afternoon you'll probably make the sale, but he'll go away and tell people: “Those guys who did my bedroom, they do a great job but they're a bit disorganised and that new lad they've got in the office is useless”.

Scenario B shows a business that is information conscious. Jimmy has never heard of Mr Jones, but a quick check of the records tells him that this is a valuable customer and to treat him accordingly. Jimmy's able to utilise some information that you thought to collect last time you were there, to get a really good description of what Mr Jones wants. Because of this, you're now able to call the customer with a rough price in your head – and the call will be a lot quicker and more pleasant. The fact that Jimmy's able to pencil in the work helps close the sale and is also great for the customer, who will now tell his friends: “I called those guys who did my bedroom to have a look at my home office – they're growing, they've got a really bright lad in the office there now and they're a really slick operation.”

So the question is, which way would you rather be described? Which way would your staff rather be described?

Getting businesses from scenario A to scenario B is exactly what Nuvola is about.

Client portals and collaboration

I was recently sent a link to this article on the ICAEW (Institute of Chartered Accounts in England & Wales) website, about how accountants should be offering portals to their clients. The key point is that rather than emailing highly sensitive documents back and forth (which is not very secure), accountants should allow clients to download them from their web portal, and upload signed versions and other required documents.

This makes a lot of sense to me. I have used Dropbox in the past to share things with my accountant because I worry about using email for that sort of thing. But a portal would potentially offer a lot more functionality. This of course applies to any business which shares data with their clients, not just accountants.

In fact, this ties in rather nicely with some collaboration and project management software which we're trialling with a couple of customers at the moment, and plan to roll out as a full service offering this side of Christmas. The software in question is FengOffice, a powerful piece of open source software, which we'll be offering in conjunction with our UK-based specialist hosting partner, Dudobi. It'll run on servers in Dudobi's secure data centre so there are no data protection issues with the location of our customers' confidential business information, which can be a problem with cloud-based offerings.

The great thing about FengOffice is that while it acts as a great web-based collaborative workspace, it's also a lot more than that. It can be used as a CRM system, for tracking professional time, or just for capturing all information about a client or project in one place.

This is not yet a finalised offering, but I'm very interested in hearing from any businesses who like the idea and would like to test it out.

==Update==
We are now a reseller for FengOffice and are able offer help in setting you up on their full hosted platform.

Cloud Phones!

Had a great meeting this morning with Andy Moore from Pink Connect, who provide a full range of telephony and broadband services to businesses, and it got me thinking about how phones can be run 'in the cloud' just as much as software can.

Traditionally, if you're a small business wanting to get a professional telephony solution, you'd probably invest in an expensive phone system and as many physical phone lines as you needed. The availability of Voice-over-IP (VoIP) technology, combined with increasingly reliable broadband connections (in towns at least, have a chat to Andy if you're in a rural area with rubbish or non-existent broadband), now mean that you can get a very powerful hosted phone system at a very reasonable price.

The idea is familiar to anyone who's used Skype - your computer turns your voice into a stream of ones and zeroes which are sent across the internet and decoded by the software at the other end. The difference with a hosted phone system is that you have a proper phone on your desk (although computer-based 'softphones' are also an option), which connects over your broadband connection to the VoIP server 'in the cloud'. Your call is then routed via the normal phone network, and as far as you're concerned you just pick up the phone and dial as normal.

Apart from the cost, the great thing about this kind of cloud service is that it is very flexible: you can set up phones to ring in a certain order, forward to your mobile or to a different voicemail box depending on the time of day, and your voicemail can be sent to your email, from which it can even be pulled into your CRM system (where potentially the date and time of all calls could be logged under the contact). And if you move offices (or want to work from home), you just plug your phones into your network.

It's all a bit of an improvement on having to contact BT and wait a few days just to make a tiny change to your phone service....

Office 365 and Google Docs

Microsoft has just announced that its Office 365 service has left its beta test version and is now fully available as a paid service. The Redmond giant was clearly inspired to do this by threats to its core Office business from Google Docs and Google Apps, so how does it compare with its Californian competitor?

Well, at first glance there doesn't seem to be that much between them. Both offer full email along with word processing, spreadsheets and presentations through any web browser, and both offer powerful collaboration features. Being based on the well established Sharepoint platform, Microsoft offers a deep integration with their desktop office software. Google on then other hand has a wealth of third party systems which integrate with it. You can sync contacts and email with your mobile from either - Microsoft's is probably slightly better, but unless you have a Windows phone you'll have more options for mobile access to your documents with Google.

Office 365 starts at £4/month, more than Google Apps at £33/year, and Google Docs and Mail are free if you don't need the enterprise features.

So Microsoft is clearly putting a serious contender out there for cloud services. For me, Google’s open platform which means there are lots of third party apps which integrate with it still gives it the edge. However for businesses who are dependent on Microsoft Outlook and the rest of the Office suite and don’t wish to make a massive cultural shift, Office 365 is a great way of getting some of the power of the cloud without having to change or risk too much.

Goodbye Recession?

With the UK economy now emerging from recession, it's time to systemise your business to prepare for growth.

Creating systems in your business can free you to be the best leader, innovator and entrepreneur you can, so that you can work less IN your business and more ON it.
To do this, you need to step back and look at how information is flowing in your business. For example, when a call comes in for a job that needs to be done tomorrow, can the person taking it quickly find out if any of the jobs scheduled tomorrow can be put back a day or two to accomodate that? What information do they need to be able to do that, and how will that get communicated to the person doing the jobs?
When the same customer calls back 6 months later with good memories of how you juggled things to meet their needs, are they greeted with "Ah, Mr Brown, how's things since we last visited you in January?" or with "Mr Brown .... have we done any work for you before?"?
To make all of these work the way you want your customers to experience your business and to reduce your own stress, you need well defined processes and systems for handling this information. What's most important is that you have the processes and systems and that they work for your business, not how you implement them. A simple lever arch file with customer records in can be preferable to a complicated, clunky piece of software which no one knows how to use. However, it goes without saying that the right software implemented in a way which compliments your business can be an extremely powerful tool.
Once your business is systemised you will have a competitive advantage. Customers will benefit from your business running more efficiently and you will have a much better understanding of how it's performing, where the strengths are and what you need to work on. And you'll have more time to work on these bits as well!
We have helped many businesses to organise their data, procedures and reporting with our custom software. Our clients have found it very easy to use and they don't have to be tied to their office to use it. The savings made from increased efficiency and the increase in sales can pay for the software in a very short period of time

Nuvola's web based systems systems give you greater control over your business, add value, lower costs, improve profits and free up your time.
www.nuvola.co.uk

Weather Resistant Business Continuity

We’ve having the worst snow in decades according to the statistics. We’ve been bought to a standstill. According to the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), lost employee productivity could cost the UK £600m per day.
The good news for our clients is there are no excuses for an extended holiday since their custom-built business management systems can be accessed from anywhere there is an internet connection.
It might be a stretch to say we are making local businesses productive, but clients using our software have a much better chance of working undisrupted if staff can continue to access the systems they rely on during the current weather conditions.
Our web-based systems have business continuity built in - even if you can't get to your office, you can still use the software. Grant Smith, Director of one of our long standing clients, AzteQ Solutions Ltd, found this out recently: "The snow has been particularly bad where we are, and many of my team have struggled to get into work. The fact that the system Nuvola developed is not tied to our office, though, has made it a lot easier for people to work from home. This has certainly saved us time, money and a lot of frustration in recent weeks."
And of course, this technology makes businesses more robust at any time. If your office is flooded or you're a victim of fire or theft, you can still access your data, and back-ups are taken care of without you having to think about it. As well as this built-in stability, the ability to work flexibly from anywhere, all year round, is clearly an advantage in today's world.
For any businesses out there still using traditional software instead of cloud applications, this is a good time to talk to Nuvola. Until February 2010, you can receive 20% off your initial order quoting SNOW.
www.nuvola.co.uk

Restructuring Spreadsheets - how poorly structured data can hamper a business

I'd like to introduce you to Joe the gardener. Joe is 37 and worked in financial services until a couple of years ago. He was made redundant, but was reasonably happy about this because it gave him the chance to re-evaluate his life, and he decided that he had a passion for gardens and horticulture. So he took his redundancy pay and some savings, and set up Joe's Gardens, whose specialism is redesigning gardens by changing the way the plants use space, rather than doing landscaping. A year ago, his wife started helping with bookings and enquiries, which was great for their lifestyle and because she could help co-ordinate the new people he was bringing into the business to meet growing demand.

Now the business is booming, and Joe's beginning to find juggling all the jobs stressful. He thinks he has the right people, but there never seems to be enough time. He's wondering what to do next.
Now let's look at Joe's business systems. When he started up, he started a spreadsheet containing details of all his customers. He made another spreadsheet with all his one-off jobs, and another one with his regular maintenance contracts. He's pretty computer literate and so had no problem setting these up, and they did the job at the start. But now his spreadsheets are getting massive, and he's got a big folder full of photos which is sorted by customer name. When his wife answers the phone to a customer from 2 years ago, she normally knows the person and can get to their details quite easily, although it can take a while to find everything. But they're thinking of employing an administrator to ease her workload and are worried that this person will never find old customers' details, and the old customers will go elsewhere telling their friends about how Joe's Gardens were great a couple of years ago but seem to have lost their way. Also, scheduling jobs can be quite difficult and a couple of times recently they've double-booked themselves or found that they were paying a contractor for an afternoon of doing nothing. Joe and his wife would also like to be able to predict their earnings, but sales forecasting takes an hour or two each month as Joe sits with has calculator and a notepad, totting up figures from his spreadsheets. Joe's sure there must be a better way and has googled a few things but is a bit bewildered!
Well, Joe is a fictional character, but in this case similarities to persons either living or dead are not co-incidental. Many small business owners, especially those who've had rapid growth, find that their systems are in a similar state to Joe's, and this is where we can help.
In Joe's case, we'd look at putting in three key things, probably staged to spread the cost and get the most pressing issue sorted quickly:

• a log of all past jobs with photos, linked to customers so that a simple search on customer name would bring up all the details of what's been done for that customer
• a schedule so that anyone doing the administration can see at a glance who's doing what, where and when, and slot new jobs in accordingly
• sales pipeline functions so that potential customers are followed up properly and Joe and his wife can see at a glance how much they can expect to make over the coming months

Our system would be available online at all times and will store Joe's key business data securely off-site without any extra effort.
Does Joe's story sound a little like your business? If so, please give us a call!