DON”T READ THIS! This is Stu’s right brain speaking. Don’t read this until you have a sense of the magnitude of money to be made by adding compelling content to your site. Don’t read this until you have a sense of what you would like to do differently but you can see that friction points stand in the way.
At this point, cloud software might make sense because it is an elegant solution to several hard points of friction in your business. It is an elegant solution to growing your business with flexible robustness.
But until you are in that mindset, this is going to be just so much skin chaffing for you. Software is not a warm and fuzzy experience except for nerds. You don’t need it. Just like you don’t need a colonic. Unless a colonic is exactly what you need. end caveat.
It is Essential to Understand Friction to Understand the Friction Reducing Power of Cloud Based Computing.
I am willing to speculate that friction costs big bucks in your business. In general, friction limits the growth of business. Companies grow until their ability to accomplish is countered by the time energy and money wasted in friction. We explore Friction in depth here.
Let me better explain what I mean by cloud software. This contrasts from software on the desktop which is loaded on you local computer or your local server.
Have you ever used gmail or hotmail? I like gmail personally. This is email service in the cloud. Cloud access is critical because people can interact with it anywhere. You can even involve outside business partners or customers.
I really like the suite of services offered through Google Apps and the variety of add on programs available through the Google Apps Marketplace.
Official Google Apps information is here.
The Google Apps marketplace is outlined here.
Why am I making such a fuss about cloud computing and Google Apps? Cloud software is friction reducing technology.
Lets Lay the Groundwork needed to Empower Innovation with Cloud Computing
I want my clients to do new things they are not used to doing. Creating compelling content is new to most companies. Making videos and taking and using photos to tell stories is new. Social Networking is new. Creating compelling content, and blogging and other social networking are such important assets in strategic business development.
But… and this a big but. But big things stand in the way of doing these smart strategic tasks.
Most everybody does a full days work. Most everybody has a batch of work not getting done, and plenty of stress already. Where do you find the energy and the stress free time to think strategically to empower all this change? Where do your people find the hours in the week to add on tasks that probably seem daunting?
This is more than investing money. This is changing how people think. This is changing how they spend their time. And all this change has to be thought about while distractions pop up every day disguised as urgent needs. And you the owner must have the time to ruminate on the virtues. You certainly don’t need headaches. You certainly don’t start making changes in your business for entertainment.
Bottom line, it takes some extra slack. It takes some extra space which we find through eliminating friction. And cloud computing is a powerful friction reducer.
We can find space and slack by reducing friction. We can improve marginal profitability to absorb the extra investment in tools and technology and time to empower innovation. How do I know this? Well, by exchanging out busy work and allowing people to do higher value substantial work- you increase profit margins and productivity. More slack empowers higher levels of strategic thinking and more space to improve business development systems. New resources can be added. New talent can be added because better profit margins and higher personal productivity make adding new talent necessary to keep up with opportunity.
And in all this change and cycles of improvement- the time is found to do subtantial marketing and sales integration. The content is added in myriad ways to increase business growth. The compelling offers are integrated. The follow up systems are created and the testing is done. This is if the profit margins are to be increased.
So that is the rambling big picture of improving business systems. Now it is time to discuss the specific improvements possible with the friction reduction properties of Google Apps.
Let look at some powerful strategic functions empowered through the Cloud
1. Enlightened leadership is needed to propel along the path to innovation. Enlightened leadership needs a means to communicate its vision to the team. How does leadership do this? By giving speeches? By sending out email? Speeches are forgotten unless there is a follow-up plan. Who can find anything in email? Email disappears so quickly. It comes in the top and disappears out the bottom. There is no coherency to email. It is disjointed at best.
Resource in the cloud provide the perfect palette for marketing to your internal team. This is so critical. You need a space for discussing business objectives. You need a space to engage people in business success and creating space for them to accept a substantial role in everyone’s success. You have so much talent that has not exactly found their strengths. This is where you can be the enlightened leader and where you can give space and discover your talented employees. Give people space to grow and you just might be surprised at what matures and how much money it can make your company.
A consistent easy to use private system is needed where content can be outlined and polished and improved and commented on. It also needs to be shared easily and be accessible from where you are. The expertise and experience of your best people needs to be recorded for future reference. Imagine how much knowledge is lost when experienced people leave jobs or retire.
Google Apps provides easy website architecture, file document structures, video and audio services to collect this information on-line. Now someone is saying that this all can be done on the desktop. And it probably can be- good old Microsoft.
But the desktop is like living in a shoebox. In a market where freelancers work on line, and people need resources right out in the field- to prepare estimates, to process pictures and enlist teamwork from the cloud, you have to be in the cloud to reduce the friction.
When you can collect information and put it into a digital form that shares the data, does not require reproducing the same work over and over, when talent can at a minutes notice- lend a hand in creating estimates or helping prospects on the phone go through their estimate because it is a click away and not stashed in a manila folder… which has to be found…
- you are getting estimates done faster
- you are being more responsive to prospects
- you are able to follow up more effectively with clients
- and you are wasting less time, enjoying yourself more, and finding snippets of time to do value added activity.
- Like take pictures and tell stories
- Like interview happy customers
- Like preparing special reports on problems people need to know about in the marketplace…
Enlightened leadership needs easy accountability systems. Enlightened leadership needs a dashboard and gauges to know what is happening.
Who else has a hard time keeping track of the strategic but non-urgent plan when the day is filled with the urgent daily emergencies? Stuff stacks up on plates. Interruptions fill the day. How is enlightened leadership supposed to keep an eye on the key indicators?
By looking at the dashboard that is how.
How many sales problems don’t show up until the stuff hits the fan? Why can’t we track contacts and follow up? Why can’t substantial stuff be scheduled and set off alarms when stuff does not get done on schedule? And not just on the individual desktop. Why not on everyone’s desktop? Why can’t challenges be seen in a team environment? Why shouldn’t everyone see what is important and pitch in by a preconceived plan. Why can’t management and leadership see key indicators falling behind and jump in and offer assistance and support?
What better way to draw attention to the strategic than to create a window and watch what is happening? Imagine a window on what is important and everyone can see what they need to do right now. Priorities would be not lost in the day-to-day struggle with distractions. Talent can be arranged as needed. The power to see what is happening and the power to do something about it allows friction to be spotted and dealt with as it occurs and where something can be done about it.
Lets take a peek at a great add-on to GoogleApps – Contact Management in the Cloud.
Lets make sure we have understandable terms here. Simple CRM which stands for Customer Relationship Management. This is such a critical tool for helping relieve friction in the marketing and sales process. This is such a big deal it needs separate space to discuss. Many company’s contact management systems work poorly and cost sales. Lets look at a easy inexpensive solution.
Content is hard to create. It involves several technologies.
Your team might enjoy blogging together- sharing ideas, gathering pictures. A blogging team might want to work together. They could create a draft post on a particular subject and let people add their ideas to it. This is a big pain in the butt with even the best blogging software in the world – WordPress Software.
Managing multiple authors on one article gets tedious. And you don’t want to publish until it is ready. Andy you always want to link articles and content together. It can be hard.
In particular, if you are using WordPress as a webpage construction platform- this is a super easy, super useful function that works great- but interlinking the pages you create without being in a published mode is problematical.
Google Docs is the perfect platform to give everyone access to the file through a shared account and give everyone the space to comment in. Now there are limitations. Google Docs uses the power of working on documents while in WordPress you are working in the world of markup language which is different.
But you can create content is a robust and shared world of the Google Docs. Each author add comments- each author can add a picture and then the final editor can take this content and move it into a WordPress editing environment. This combination of technologies is the best system I have seen to give everyone cloud access to documentation and make it easy for everyone to contribute without strain and then allow the editor to make the final transition to the published site.
- Google Apps is not expensive. $50 per year per employee.
- Google is easy to understand and use. They have easy instructions. You can easily find a facilitor to help you through the transition.
- Google does not add risk. It works in direct parallel with every present function.
- Your people will get used to it and gradually everything will gravitate that way.
- Google has so many other resources available – Google Maps and Calendars sharing make scheduling problems easy.There is a lot of support available and a growing herd of talent is applying their skills as freelancers in the cloud.Large companies use the product but small companies use it too.The software in never out of date- always being upgraded with new features. The software systems are easy on computing power. All you need is good bandwidth.
This is not a complete description of the power of the cloud. It is merely meant as an appetite whetting to compel further investigation.
Lets retouch the highlights here.
Google Apps is a Powerful Cloud based tool which provide tools for improving productivity and fostering flexibility in work roles, work locations, and in work hours.
- It allows flexibility of talent.
- It allows time shifting and flexibility of effort through workspace shifting.
- This lays the groundwork for opening other offices, say in Houston with access to all your systems we have built, coordinated and paid for…
- It lays the foundation for adding new talent to your people mix, either remotely or in the office or in a satellite office…
- It allows for building modular work processes. This helps us keep and store the knowledge in our team members big brains.
- It allows team members access to preparing estimates right at the job site. Add a digital printer, add a notebook computer and estimates can be prepared from any location with automatic duplication within our Google Apps system.
- Using this foundation we can leverage several possibilities to enhance the productivity of the office and the ability of our team to share information and modularize effort.
Google Apps Requires a Subscription
There is a cost – $50 a year per user on the account.
Is Google Apps Safe?
The data is very safe. You do need robust systems for maintaining your Internet connection. You need power backup to continue to use communication tools when the lights go out.
Google Apps takes stuff out of your office and puts it in a tornado proof backed up system that fire or vandalism cannot touch. Your information is backed up to the Google guarantee of service.
There is less security in paper files than you might imagine.
Would Google Apps be a useful resource for your company? It depends on the resources you have and the specific friction acting on your team. There are other resources and you do need have a thorough understanding of the challenges at hand before you start jumping into solution. Have you seen the innovation testing matrix? That might be useful.
What are your thoughts here? What key points have not been brought up? What do you feel has not been addressed here? Any concerns, any questions, just let me know. Feel free to leave a comment. What would you like to add?
