Mental Mind Stuff

Running a company effectively is about organisation, focus and process as a massive 55% of businesses don’t survive the first five years. The experts offer useless ‘insight’ as to why this happens. I continuosly observe three key reasons why this tragedy happens so often and to so many individuals with different experience, education and knowledge.

The primary reason is insufficient market understanding.

No foresight. For example People dream up the idea, create the product and then expect the market to appear and buy. In networked age there is no excuse for lack of research prior to spending any time and cash on creating a product until you have firm evidence there is a market.

The second reason is lack of comprehension of the basics of business.

The majority of people starting a company know their trade, how to deliver a service or manufacture a product, but not how to run a business.  Being able to understand and track the numbers in the Income statement or the balance sheet is an essential skill. The basic knowledge of accounting is rarely imparted coherently by the business manuals, internet resources and experts in the know such as CPAs and bookkeepers. Companies such as and Intuit callously fool business managers with their marketing that their packages are the holy grail.

Sage software and other vendors as usual are underserving small businesses.

Until recently ERP software solutions and packages were the privilege of larger enterprises who had figured out that the back and front office systems need to be fused together to give a comprehensive picture of the business. One vendor NetSuite had the foresight to see the opening in the market and began selling its small business ERP software. NetSuite pricing has since increased and put their technology out of the financial reach of small companies.

The third reason companies don’t survive is because of lack of process and procedures that put in place the essential disciplines and continuity a business must have to perform effectively.

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You might have heard of SAP software. It’s a software platform used by thousands of medium sized and large enterprises all over the world. The purpose of the system is to join the whole enterprise together and let hundreds and often thousands of employees to store, share and view information about the physical and financial processes of the business. Large firms are run by intelligent individuals who comprehend the strategic benefits of this type of software, such as how it can give them an appreciation of why issues are occurring inside their company or where there might be opportunity for refinements.

This type of package is commonly known as ERP. It is very sophisticated, very costly and can take months and often years to implement. An implementation of ERP software is a significant investment but this doesn’t stand in the way of big businesses procuring these packages.

Until this year software like this was not feasible or financially viable for tiny businesses. As a result small businesses have not been aware of the immense benefits that ERP systems can offer. Tiny companies have been hoodwinked by aggressive manufacturers such as Sage Software and Intuit that small business accounting software is what they need. These systems most often have no features to enable their users to connect the entire company or perform fundamental tasks such as customer relationship management.

The rise of Web based CRM software from software manufacturers like Salesforce.com is a good example of the small business accounting software businesses misleading or misunderstanding the small business community.

It is for this reason that small business ERP firms similar to Salesorder.com have begun to make great progress in the market. They deliver saas containing all of the major functionality a small company needs at an affordable price. What is even more interesting is these systems are easy to operate and can be installed rapidly.

Today ERP platforms are no longer the privilege of substantial companies.

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Bookkeeping used to completely frustrate me and as a result I had to find a simpler way which I want to share with you. People in small enterprises tend to prefer doing more significant activities like getting, listening to and keeping customers in preference to doing their bookkeeping. Bookkeeping is a ‘chore’ that very few people look forward to doing but must be performed on a consistent basis to avoid problems.

I asked my accountant for advice and he persuaded me to use Sage Software which turned out to be a small business accounting software package. Without even looking at software I naively went ahead and purchased the lowest cost package I could find. Looking back I am lucky I didn’t spend too much cash on this as this package is possibly the worst and most complex system I have ever had the misfortune to use. To be straight with you whenever I discover the word accounting together with the word software I am immediately reminded of the first wisdom I want to share with you and that is just about all small business accounting software assumes the user possesses good working knowledge of bookkeeping.

I had to find a solution that would work for me so reluctantly I swept my schedule and allocated quality time to find a solution. The good news is I discovered a really excellent solution, it’s an internet system called salesorder.com.

Definitively the best software I have come across, salesorder.com works on the web and is thoughfully designed and of course lets me do my job anywhere I can connect to the web. Better still and the third piece of wisdom I want to share with you is that the team who work at salesorder.com are not just very knowledgeable of their service but they know a tremendous amount about the challenges of operating a small enterprise and have taught me the bookkeeping I need to know.

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