Week 17: tools to improve work place productivity

This week I have been at Netchemia all week and noticed some tasks performed by the sales people which were tedious and required lots of copying an pasting between applications. In this post I will write about tools to increase workplace productivity. Also I want to share some other apps which Netchemia already use to improve productivity and

MACROs
To improve the processes in sales I created some Macros in Microsoft Excel and Publisher.

This is the approximate process in the sales department:

• call customer and agree to a product price proposal
• Enter data into SalesForce
• Enter some of the same data into Microsoft Excel
• Create new folders on company network
  
• Enter some of the same data into Microsoft Publisher
• Create a pdf of proposal to send to the customer through SalesForce

I created Macros in Excel with form validation and drop down boxes to prevent inaccurate data from being entered.
The macros also automatically set up the new folder structure and save the completed files into the folders. This reduced the processing time from about 45 minutes per customer proposal to 10 minutes.

RatchetSoft
Ideally I would also like the fields to auto complete across applications. So data entered into Salesforce automatically went into Excel and Publisher. And just the weekend I found a new product offering which enables this to happen without manual copying and pasting: the data only needs to be entered once by the Sales team. The product is by RatchetSoft (see www.ratchetsoft.com) . This product allows tedious tasks to be completed easily by software, without needing to learn to code or change anything about the products you are working with.

Google Notebook
Another good way to improve productivity when researching is to use google notebook, the notebooks can be shared between numerous other people and everyone can work on it at the same time. This is useful when the boss asks for some research.

EFAX
This service was being used by Netchemia when I arrived, it allows faxs to be sent to the company as email and pdf documents. This saves a great deal of paper and allows the right person to recieve the fax much more efficiently. See www.efax.com for more information.

Printing Documents
To save paper in the office you can change the default printing options for most printers to print on both sides. This halves the paper bill and saves the environment.

This is what i've found useful in the office so far.

Week 15: American Work Ethic

This week I have been working in Netchemia. What I have slowly come to notice while working here, and hearing stories from other internship students, is the work ethic in American business.

The average working day is 8am-5pm. Often though I have found that many people are in the office before 8 and these same people are still in the office after 5. Compare this to the UK where office hours are 9am-5pm and workers stick to these hours quite rigidly. In previous companies I have worked for in the UK I found that as soon as 5PM comes the office is suddenly deserted.

Does this lead to higher productivity? I am not sure. In America the general practice is to take 1 hour for lunch; in the UK I have found lunch to usually be 30 minutes. I don't feel 30 minutes gives the same amount of down time to relax and unwind as an hour for lunch. This lack of unwinding means that the UK worker doesn't get the same chance to 'disconnect' from their work, which could in turn affect productivity.

Hard at work: source

During the lunch hour American's tend to go out of the office to a restaurant or takeaway. This allows greater socializing with colleagues in a more informal environment. UK workers tend to sit at their desks or the canteen with sandwiches. This could be because of the time allowed for lunch or maybe because in America the number of options and the price of eating out is so much cheaper.

Looking at the figures, America's GDP per capita is $43,500 compared to the UK's of $31,400 (source CIA World Factbook) I wonder if the work ethic has anything to do with it. (Maybe its a direct effect of incentivized employee payment through commission and tips).

On a side note, the US Courts have just had a landmark patent case challenging the meaning of 'obviousness' in a ruling against Teleflex's patent for being to obvious. Maybe the system will now reform! (see Bloomberg coverage here).

Week 13: Netchemia Internship

This week I had a day off work to attend some lectures organized in part by Kauffman. This included 'Angel Investment Term Sheets' at 'Invest Midwest'. What made this talk so interesting was that the talk was being presented to Angel Investors by an Angel Investor to try and educate them on how to go about writing a term sheet.

The bottom line was this: What is good for the Entrepreneur is often the best terms for the Angel investor also. Wow! Not only was this good new for all entrepreneurs out there but also they backed this up with solid data.

To ensure the best return as an Angel Investor the lecturer talked about tee-ing up the Start-up company for the next round of investment: trying to make the terms and conditions as easy as possible to stomach for the next round investors. Often if the angel investor doesnt consider the next round and tries to give him/herself terms which are too ownerous on the entrepreneur then one of 3 things happens:

• the entrepreneur can't find an investor who can tolerate the terms of the previous round and so doesn't invest
• the next round investor says that they will invest ONLY if the terms which they dont find favorable are changed
• the entrepreneur must find an investor who has money but not much sense

The second talk was at the Kansas City branch of 'Polsinelli Shalton Welte Suelthaus' an IP attorney. The talk was by Rob Sweeney founder of TextCaster. Rob talked about his experiences in business and what he learned when founding a company. At the time he spoke to Ewing Marion Kauffman and asked him for advice. Kauffman replied:

"Find the best person you can in your field, hire them and pay them well"

What great advice. Rob's company textcaster has patented the concept of "Permission Based Text Messaging" (see Patent US7197324). At first I was amazed this was possible. The 2 key points about patents are that they are:

• original
• not obvious

And too me this seems to be neither of the above. Even more surprisingly to me was that the patent has been extended to Europe, as originally i assumed this would be a business process patent. Looks like nearly anything can be patented these days!

For Rob the patent is great news as it provides his business with at least theoretical protection against competitors copying him. But I would bet that there are many companies who have infringed either unknowingly or before Rob filled his patent. And what small company can afford a patent lawsuit? So the patent at least at a glance seems useless.

Week 12: Netchemia Internship

This week my main task has been to create a marketing survey for Netchemia's newest product. Then call the target prospects in Kansas and Missouri and get results to the survey. This is the first step in the 'Sales Funnel' which slowly whittles down the number of prospects till you find a prospect who wishes to buy the product. The funnel seems to involve about 5 main stages.

1. Survey
2. Indepth discussion
3. Product Demonstration
4. Pricing
5. Purchase

The number of potential prospects diminishes rapidly as the sales process continues; the potential value of each prospect increase.

Conversion funnels like this appear everywhere in business. Just do a quick Google image search for 'funnel' and you'll find:

• student enrollment funnel
• marketing funnel
• selling funnel
• Funnels occur in personal life: for example dating.
  

Ideas also create a funnel. And this leads to the product development funnel, for example: many product ideas, lots of computer designs, a few prototypes, one final product. And the product development funnel is just apart of a larger funnel, which is the consumers product choices in the market place.
The funnel is where entrepreneur's have both an advantage and disadvantage.

Advantage: entrepreneur can go with Gut instinct ignore many stages of the product development funnel and create the product which they feel will fill a niche best in the marketplace, this short circuits the funnel and gives the entrepreneur a huge time and money saving compared to well established companies, also allows entrepreneurs to create unconventional products.
Disadvantage: If the entrepreneur's instinct is wrong: the product fails in the market place, most likely their business will go bust. The large company can afford to fail and try again. The large company can also afford to invest more resources into the processes between the top and bottom of the funnel potential increase the value of the outcome.
In effect the entrepreneur funnel is very short bypassing many of the conventional big business process', leading to one offering: just like the big business.

Which is better? Who can say. It comes down to in the individual entrepreneur, the individual company, luck, connections, the list goes on.

Most business seminars today, in any field, will be showing to the audience how to improve the process between the start and end of the funnel, be its Sales, Marketing, product development etc. etc. (and for personal seminars this could be dating ;o).

Week 10: Inbetween placements at Kauffman Foundation

This week I have been in between placements which has given me an excellent opportunity to work on my business idea. I have teamed up with one of the other Kauffman Scholars: Luke Jefferson (see his profile here). Together we are working to start a web company which will monetize social networks.

Why? For many reasons. Here's my take on the social networking:

1. Epitomized by the dot com bubble a lot of web start ups thought that if they could get enough page views they could figure out where the money would come from later. 'Eyeballs over earnings'. *
   
2. Just look at the number of websites on the internet and compare that to website revenue. I think the internet has a long tail of very low earners and maybe 100 winners (and then the anomaly Google).
3. Now narrow the market down to just Social networks. Of the top 100 sites on Alexa only 10 are true social networks. Compare that to the 10,000's of social network startups this year which have faded into obscurity.
   
4. How much revenue do these sites make? There is very little solid evidence to confirm this as there are no published figures, the only real solid figures are the prices that the web companies were acquired for. (And theres only 1 big social network acquisition: Myspace by Newcorp for $580,000,000).

So it appears that most social networks don't wish to disclose earnings, and yet its very easy to find approximate page views (like Facebook's staggering 5.5+ BILLION page views per month and rising). It would seem like conversion of adverts into click-through/ sales is phenomenally small.

Despite this, businesses are still turning more and more to the internet to target their audiences. It would seem like internet advertising is either:

1. more successful than traditional media
2. potentially more successful than traditional media
   

Yes I agree targeting of the prospect in the right situation is much better on the internet than traditional media, but engaging the prospect to look at the advert and take it in is still very very difficult.

To combat this problem, and to exploit what Luke and I see as a huge gap in the internet advertising landscape, we aim to launch a new type of innovative advertising platform which will focus on earnings for the advertiser and ourselves from day 1. With our focus in the area of social networking.

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*In a way I also think Google has spread this false model: "if we build it they will come: if they're here then we'll figure out how to make money" but what they have that no one else has is the best advertising platform on the earth. This huge financial security allows them to try and fail at many things until they hit another great idea (like Gmail). The founding entrepreneur simply doesn't have this money cushion.

Week 9: Start of 3 month internship

This week has been a very interesting one for me. All the Global Scholars have been placed on internships throughout America with leading high tech companies: often start up companies, where they can get an understanding of American business and entrepreneurship and contribute their skills to the company.

These internships have been careful chosen to suit the Scholars needs and that of the host company. I was placed in Black and Veatch a Kansas based Civil Engineering company which provides solutions to business and government for their power station, water works and building needs (amongst many other functions). This is a very well known company in Kansas, with offices worldwide and about 8000 employees.

However over the time on this course my expectations and aspirations had changed considerably. The business I want to found has changed to a different field, and the sheer quality of the course has lead me to want and expect a different focus of business activity. Myself and my boss at Black and Veatch came to the mutual agreement that what I was doing at Black and Veatch was no longer right for what I wanted to achieve. And I have to say Black and Veatch were very helpful in understanding my needs and helping me to find something else. They are a great company to work for who have real respect for their workforce.

Leaving Black and Veatch taught me some really valuable lessons:

• trust your instincts; if it doesn't feel right act on it
• Pursue your own goals as best you can: don't have regrets about not going for it
• In doing so people will respect your decisions and the outcome is more beneficial to both parties although sometimes it can be difficult to get to that point
  

In the meantime I have been back at the Kauffman Foundation who have been incredibly helpful in finding me another placement.