Toasting 2012 with a glass half full
With a new business year ramping up, it’s time to crystal ball the year ahead for a sense of how the economic landscape will play out.
The bad news
You’d certainly be forgiven for feeling some sense of caution given the doom and gloom forecasts that appear in newspapers and our inboxes everyday. As the European debt crisis continues to loom large, we are reminded each day about the troubled retail sector, which here in Australia grew only 0.3% in 2011 – the worst result in nearly 30 years. Domestic tourism and manufacturing is still being hit hard by a strong Australian dollar and the continued weakness in the housing sector is seeing a slump in construction and associated industries. Together with continued volatility in our financial markets and the real risk of a slow down in China, it’s no wonder business and consumer confidence is suffering. But it is not all bad news.
Read more about Accountants, Australia
The new Google: what does it mean for your business?
Google has long been a friend to small businesses, making it much easier to market services and products. Just think about the game-changing things Google has done in the advertising space:
- Introduced pay-for-performance advertising to the mainstream (ie. charging per action rather than for exposure), forcing traditional media to become more transparent in terms of the ROI they offer
- Created a PPC model combined with infinitely flexible ad targeting that allows even the smallest ad budget to be effective
- Created a search relevancy model that evens the playing field, potentially giving the little guys just as much exposure to prospective customers as the big global brands
- With Google Places, every business in the world can have a strong, easily self-managed online presence, for free!
The benefits of these innovations are well documented. I want to look at what Google has done more recently, and how this could change how businesses promote themselves online.
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Accelerate 2012
The 3rd annual Accelerate event is all go for February 13 in sunny Hawkes Bay, New Zealand.
Accelerate is an event for HiTech entrepreneurs and investors to get to get together in a relaxed environment and share stories. This year we’ve timed it so we can finish the day with Gin Wigmore and friends in the Black Barn amphitheater.
In the first session I’ll kick off with a Xero deep dive covering such things as our funding, building the team internationally, approaches to marketing and hopefully pass on some useful things we’ve learned over the years. We’ll then have another 5 companies doing rapid fire presentations of their businesses and experiences. We have a couple of slots left for those sessions.
So this years program should be useful for companies looking at expanding internationally and/or planning an IPO especially.
You can register at http://0to60.com
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A chimp ninja just stole my car
It struck me the other day after downloading, installing, sighing deeply to myself and then uninstalling the latest version of Skype for Mac, how much the principles of software product marketing have changed with the arrival of (effectively) zero cost of software distribution on the web.
I’ve written on here previously about my discomfort with the way that Twitter seems to unilaterally and utterly change its user interface at what seems like the slightest whim, and how such behaviour runs entirely against the way that software you pay for is updated and improved. There aren’t many software product managers who would spring a complete redesign of their app’s UI on a paying customer base without warning, never mind protracted consultation.
Imagine you’d paid for a Ford Focus only to wake up one morning six months later to discover that a crack Ford spec ops team had sneaked in under the cover of darkness, with night vision goggles and everything, and replaced your much loved Focus with a completely different colour and model of car. AND in the process they’d taken your Bee Gees greatest hits CD. Now, if on the other hand Ford had given you a Focus completely free of charge and then done the overnight ninja switcheroo on you, you’d find it understandably hard to find any basis upon which you could really complain.
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Xero Developer Workshop
The Xero Developer Workshop isn’t far off.
The session will cover two areas
- Technical information and feedback about connecting to Xero
- Building your partner business alongside Xero in offshore markets
The half-day session is in Auckland on Thursday 2 Feb (the day before Xerocon New Zealand). Our country managers from Australia, the UK, USA and NZ will be there for you to connect to. This is a great time to build a relationship with these key people and find out about the markets we operate in.
Read more about Company News, New Zealand
A blog about the blog
Wow! We scored some major negative feedback recently about some of our guest posts. Who’d have thought our followers would be so passionate about the blog.
Lance even posted about it.
We were trying to do two things:
- Have some non Xeroes create helpful content for small business owners, especially the non tech savvy.
- Have established international writers create Xero sponsored content on other sites to drive link traffic back to us.
We learned that:
- Having others outside of the Xero community writing our blog turns some of our followers off. (We acknowledge there were posts that did generate a huge amount of positive feedback).
- The guest posts didn’t generate significant traffic back from other sites.
So lesson learned.
We love that our community gives us such candid feedback and we appreciate you taking the time to talk to us.
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Paycycle goes Xero blue
Today we’re very excited to announce the successful HTML release of Paycycle. Since the purchase of Paycycle by Xero in late July we’ve mustered resources in Canberra, Wellington and Melbourne to change not only the look and feel of the product but significant components of the technology stack. In short it’s been a huge project. And now away with Silverlight and in with HTML5!
We’re just a few months away from the integrated Xero Payroll for our Australian customers, but in the meantime you can access Paycycle from your iPad or other tablet. Who would have thought payroll could be completed anytime, anywhere? Employees can access their dashboard from almost any device, and even apply for leave from their phone.
For the time being, you can continue to access Paycycle from https://go.paycycle.com.au, but watch this space for updates on integrated payroll. An exciting year ahead!
Staff culture hits a new beat
As with many of my IT colleagues, my career has been shaped by years of working in large multi-national corporations. While there’s certainly a lot of valuable experiences and knowledge to be learned along the way, you sometimes witness what I would call “cultural train wrecks”. These become even more apparent once you are out of the big corporate game and running your own gig, or at least overseeing something on a much smaller scale. Hence you promise you will do things differently.
Taking the reins of Xero in Australia in February 2011, I felt both excited and a little anxious about having total responsibility for shaping the culture and personality of a new and fast growing business and team.
With the acquisition of Paycycle and more sales and support staff we recently moved to an office in Hawthorn, which we hope will be the next phase of expansion in Australia.
Work hard, play hard
One of the best things has been to transform a 100 sqm data centre on Level 1 to a full blown rock ‘n’ roll music studio. Try that in a big corporate.
Read more about Company News, Australia
Coffee in the USA
Long-time readers will know how much I enjoy a good cup of coffee. Also my fierce loyalty and lengths I will go to to find a good cup and the manner in which I prepare for trips, well life really, to ensure I know where my next cup is going to come from. This year I have moved to the States and now live in San Francisco – yes I did coffee research before committing to the relocation! My work here for Xero has taken me to 7 cities in 7 States in the last 4 months and I enjoyed good coffee in all of them so for a bit of fun I thought I would share my recommendations.
Where to find good coffee in:
Portland, Oregon
A lush green city known for its great water, beer, coffee and perhaps lesser well known facts, excellent pigeon population control and home to the word’s smallest park (Mill Ends Park)! No shortage of great independent roasters in this city.
My favorite was Public Domain – check out these machines and the gloss on that cappuccino!
Read more about Company News, Fun, United States
Choosing the right smartphone for your business
Nearly a new year and maybe time for a bit of new technology with which sole traders like me can spruce up their business. The choice is bewildering to the newbie so here’s a bit of a tour of the main ‘flavours’ – by which I mean operating systems or the software that enables you to operate the phone.
Apple iPhone
This is for people who want to be seen with an iPhone – and don’t mind paying for the privilege. Regardless of the contract this isn’t going to be your cheapest option but it’s nicely designed, a pleasure to use and now built for use in the cloud. It syncs well with Google Apps and this can bring all of your Apple kit into union, with all diary entries appearing simultaneously on all machines.
It’s also a very good ‘social’ phone – not social as in social media, which all smartphones will handle very nicely, but it handles video conferencing, music, the video playback is good for younger people (we fortysomethings prefer a bigger screen). IPhone has the largest market of apps if you need to configure your phone to your own specification.
Recommended if: You want an easy to use smartphone, which you can all but build to your own spec.
Not recommended if: You haven’t bought into the “do everything Apple’s way” ethos. Also if you don’t want to be forced to buy a case so that you don’t cut out calls by daring to hold the phone wrongly – seriously, this is a known fault with the iPhone 4.
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