Archive for the 'Business' Category

Are you wasting half of your business card?

Published on 22 April, 2009 in Business. 1 Comment

That’s what Michael O’Shea asked when cards were being swapped at a recent Open Coffee meetup.

Turn your card over. What do you see; useful content or a missed opportunity?

There are several things you could do with the back of your business card. If you’re like me, you’ve got cards in your collection from people you don’t remember, working for businesses you don’t understand. So why not use the space available to spell out what you offer or the benefits your business can provide. Give me some context to help me remember you and I’ll be more likely to call you in the future.

Business Card with Excel Keyboard ShortcutsHere’s another idea. Chuck Green suggests including some useful information on the back of your card. Why? Because you want people to hold on to your card ’til they need it. If you’ve given them something useful along with your contact details then the lifetime of your card in other people’s hands should go up.

The reverse of my new card lists my favourite Excel keyboard shortcuts. These are the best ones, the ones that save me from having to reach for the mouse every few seconds. I think they’re great so, if you get one of my cards, try them out the next time you’re in Excel.

OpenCoffee Meetup, London

Published on 23 March, 2007 in Business and Other. 0 Comments

I went along to the London OpenCoffee Meetup for entrepreneurs and investors yesterday. Many enthusiastic business people filling the Starbucks inside the otherwise quiet Esprit clothes shop on Regent Street provided an incongruous scene, but it works well and there was a steady buzz of conversation throughout the time I was there. If you are starting a business in the London area and want to chat to others in the same boat, even find some leads, then I’d recommend it.

Forget everything else, just be transparent

Published on 20 February, 2007 in Business. 0 Comments

Chart of website design vs effectivenessIf you live in the UK you may have seen “Dragon’s Den” on television (a programme where entrepreneurs seek investment from a group of business angels). Following the appearance of Ling Valentine last week I read on Real Business that her website traffic has jumped as a result. In the “Dragon’s Den”, Ling showed unusual confidence and self-belief and, despite being offered the £50,000 investment requested, she turned it down because the equity price was too high for her.

Viewing Ling’s website is quite an experience :- you won’t have seen many websites like this before.

  • It fails many of the rules from Web Pages That Suck,
  • it ignores all rules of style and taste,
  • it takes no account of usability,
  • it is written in bad english
  • and yet, somehow, it works*.

*- actually, not everyone likes it, but plenty do and the business seems to be growing.

How is this possible?

My theory is that LingsCars.com works because Ling is unusually transparent. (The humour helps too). Just look at some of the things she says:

- on when you may contact her:

I am human being, not robot! Office hours: Mon-Fri 9am to 6pm

- on speed camera information:

This page just for your info, but quite interesting, I think! Hey, I am only Chinese Contract Hire Expert human, so don’t blame me if some details wrong here, and you get ticket, but I do my best for you.

- on encouraging customers to buy now:

Physical stock is always limited, as cars cannot be made to appear by magic, there are only so many sat in corner of field. So be brave, grab a bargain and avoid me having to make phone calls to disappointed people who have left decision too late.

This is transparency to a fault. You can’t fail to recognise that behind this website is an identifiable person running a real business and working hard for her customers. Would you prefer a bland corporate image, espousing platitudes on belief in quality, how employees are the most valuable assets, etc.? I wouldn’t.

Style upgrade for moverve.com

Published on 24 January, 2007 in Business. 1 Comment

You don’t need me to tell you that I’m not a graphic designer… the styling of moverve.com says it all. I had been intending to find a professional designer to provide a more accomplished image but didn’t obtain a good first response from the several that I contacted. Perhaps the problem was that my expectation of the likely cost was too low.Moverve.com re-styled

Anyway, in an attempt to make the site look less like it was created by an accountant, I’ve put some more effort into the style, as you can see here. Hopefully visitors will now find it to be a little more attractive and welcoming.

I still intend to get a professional in to do a proper job, but I’m now content to leave that for the future so that I can get back to developing Isolist, my forthcoming software product.

Reconciliation Add-In for Excel

Published on 2 January, 2007 in Business and Management Accounting. 0 Comments

I said in Motivation and Opportunity that I would write about my first product, so I’m now pleased to report that I’m working on “IsoList”, an add-in for Excel that provides a reconciliation function for accountants.

Reconciliation is a very common recurring task for many management accountants, arising where the value recorded in one place needs to be reflected accurately in another. Given their responsibility to record and report organisational activities and, further, be able to substantiate the financial results, accountants need to ensure that their general ledgers correctly reflect the transactions sourced from other systems - the task called reconciliation. If you are a management accountant then you’re likely to be familiar with it.

Reconciliation Tools

The basic tool that accountants choose for this task is very often Excel. I do so myself, whenever I have the source data in a useful electronic form.

In truth, a database system such as Microsoft Access might be a stronger application to use. The matching of records in two separate tables is a core function of Access, not of Excel. Nonetheless, Access does have some downsides for the average accountant. It is less familiar, its workings are more opaque and therefore harder to trust and it’s harder to manipulate individual records or calculations when required.

As well as being the application of choice for many management accountants, Excel is also a very common crossing point in data exchange between different systems. Many systems can export to or import from Excel directly and if not, can use CSV formats that are Excel-compatible.

Going with the flow, therefore, IsoList is an Add-In for Excel - i.e. a program that extends the native functions of Excel. With IsoList, an accountant will be able to continue working in Excel as usual, but achieve significant gains in the mechanical part of a reconciliation - matching off records that match and identifying those that don’t.

I’ll update with news on the development progress as it happens.