Maidsfield Blog - Partnering and Business Development

Thanks to Guy Kawaski for heads-up on recent interviews with Apple founder Steve Wozniak and other ex-Apple nobility.

It is interesting to see that Guy himself worked as an Apple Technology evangelist.

Steve Wozniak was and still is a techie hero. I remember regularly reading in BYTE magazine in the mid-eighties (I was in my teens) of the on-going developments at Apple Computer.

Apple has always typified the techies dream. The passion and pride for the innovative technology and products was powerful but often over-bearing.

In many cases this passion has made the company to be more product/technology focussed rather than market focussed. Its early success in the computing world created a great momentum in the company that it was hard to kill even with the many product/market blunders throughout the years.

Steve Jobs return to Apple with a seemingly more commercial focus that in his previous term provided a great boost. Its good to see Apple still pushing the innovation envelope and being commercially successful also.

I started my career developing on Macs. I still have one of the first Colour Mac II’s made, a Mac Plus and one of the first Laptops (luggables).

This is a companion post to this months Market Leader Monthly Newsletter.

This outlines the defined stages from Cold Prospect to developing an Ideal Client for your business. This takes time and many steps.

This is a Sales Generation Process that incorporates a good understanding of your target Ideal Client(s), good marketing materials and steady continuous semi-automated marketing and sales activities to develop a client base for your business.

Seductive Marketing incorporates both Marketing and Sales, continuing beyond the first client engagement to develop the client relationship further to being an Ideal Client.

If you have good reference clients then they are likely a definition of your Ideal Client. How do you find more and this enabling you to reduce the number of non-Ideal Clients? See the Business Case for Ideal Client Focus.

This is a typical marketing and sales process for a very established and mature organisations. The Ideal Client Focus Programme enables small and medium sized organisations to inexpensively introduce similar marketing and sales processes and activities.

Read more on the newsletter.

A business will invest more money where the return is more tangible. Improving production efficiencies is tangible. Reducing material handling and shipping costs is tangible. Tangible returns are much easier to calculate with investments in Core Production.

A business will invest more money in their Core Production than they will in their Support Functions. And when the market gets tough, they may significantly reduce spending on Support Functions but increase spending on Core Production to increase efficiencies. We’ve heard recently that Wyeths are reducing the workforce in Newbridge by 250 due to greater automation improvements in their plant. This immediately reduces the overall personnel related costs and Support Functions of the business based on a significant capital spend on the Core Production of the plant.

If your business develops solutions or sells services that improve efficiencies in Core Production then your business should be stronger than those selling to Support Functions.

For example, a brochure Website for many organisations is not a critical spend and will invest a relatively small amount compared to an in-house system to improve their processes. Their Website is a Support Function.

Whereas if the business sells online or carries out critical customer service functions through the website then the website is firmly a Core Production facility and worthy of greater investment.

If you supply to Core Production then you:

Another level of spend beyond Support Function spending is Discretionary Spend. This is when an organisation will only consider spending when everything else is in good order and they are looking around for areas to improve on. These are merely nice-to-haves in an organisation. A website is an example of this for many organisations, as I discovered this hard-way when trying to sell Content Management Systems in a down market.

Does your business supply into Core Production, Support Functions or Discretionary Spend?

At the recent IT@Cork event on “Managing a Service Business for Growth” we heard from two successful Cork based IT@Cork member companies on how they built their businesses.

In a previous post I raised the question on whether service business revenue growth was directly related to employee numbers.

The two speakers at the event, Paul Hourican from PFH Computers and Pat Ryan from Abtran, clearly outlined service business revenue growth on a non-linear scale to employee numbers.

The two businesses have defined their services on the basis that they have:

As they are human, the two speakers outlined where they also learned valuable lessons in:

Tom Raftery posted photos of the event Paul Hourican and Pat Ryan

Do check out the next IT@Cork event on “Business used of RSS”

The insights by both speakers provided lessons for all businesses even if you a custom development services businesses.

A typical belief of a Service Business is that:

Selling Services means Selling Time of relevant Expert Personnel

So, by this belief, to grow a service business’ revenue you need to employ and/or contract more people…

IS THIS WHAT YOU THINK?

Firstly, an event you must attend. I am acting as host at an IT@Cork’s Sales and Management Forum event “Managing a Service Business for Growth” on Wednesday March 22nd at the NSC. Another high value IT@Cork event where valuable business insights, networking and refreshments are certain.

Paul Hourican, founder and MD of PFH Computers is one the speakers on the night. Paul is one of the early entrepreneurs of the Cork IT Sector and has built a tremendous national IT services business in PFH. Well worth hearing his views….

SO, back to topic.

following the train of though, “to grow a services business’ revenue, we need to hire more people”. As in bespoke software development houses, more staff means greater ability to sell more ‘Units of Time’. For each Unit of time there is a clear margin. Then different level of expertise have different charge rates. For example, within the same project a Senior Business Analyst may charge out at E200 per hour, while a junior developer may be E60 per hour…

Is your business is focussed on solving particular business needs and selling expert time as a solution?

DO YOU use high-level expertise every time?

How Many times, in the past, has your company solved the same business needs in the past?

You know all about re-usable code in software development, whereby when developing a system component/module that is likely to be used in other systems in the future then you’ll develop it in a general manner, parameterised, configurable etc. Then it is reducing future project effort and reducing risk.

NOW, a thought (to be further expanded at a later date)…
If you were asked to provide a service to solve the same problem in 20 different client businesses, would you approach it differently than solving it in 1?

YES, you would. You would stand-back, define an approach, a process of gathering information with review points, decision points and actions. You can then decide on the level of expertise required at each point and whether your high-level expertise need to be at every stage…. This is the basis of Productising a Service.

Copyright ©1996-2008 Donagh Kiernan

There’s a boom on the rise. Opportunities are ripe and fast. People are more positive. Corporate decisions are faster. Technology is back in vogue.

We’re Back and We’re ready

In the tech boom that ended in 2001, many bad technology investment decisions were made by corporates, owner/managers, techies and investors. The purse strings had been handed back to the doomsdayers - they were right and

by God, we not investing anymore stupid money in IT

It was right and just, to a point, But it did go to far. By world order, Techies were reduced in stature, influence and financial standing. The safe hands were called on, the Accountants, to reduce the financial risks.

but as usual in this scenario, they went too far and threw out the proverbial

Wheat with the Chaff OR The Tech Babies with their Bath water

BUT NOW, The Tech Babies are back and they were right the last time, somewhat!

This time, almost 10 years later, there is more of a balance between the accountants and the techies and the world has changed:

The world is now more tech friendly that 10 years ago -

If only we could divert at least 10% of property investment in Ireland to develop our techie companies ….

We’re Back, this time we’ve got safety pins

it’s been stirring for the past months on whether it was happening or not. Now it’s official…Amazon are establishing their European Service Centre in Cork.

see RTE’s article

This further copper fastens Ireland’s strength in securing the new economy multinationals.

Also with the recent announcement of Cork company DSI’s partnership with Amazon, Ireland is really showing it’s world class capabilities in the new economy in attracting such commitments.

Congratulations to the IDA, Minister Michael Martin and his team..