* * * * *

Small Business Trends: Can you tell us a little bit about your personal background?

Alexei Dunayev: I’m a technologist at heart. I’m a software engineer by training. I did an MBA at Stanford and I knew a few of the tricks about what does it takes to have a really successful global technology campaign.

I managed to combine those passions, by starting TranscribeMe.

Small Business Trends: Why did you get in to transcription?

Alexei Dunayev: Myself and my co-founder were actually transcribing a whole bunch of audio content for our wives. My wife is a PhD researcher and my co-founder is married to a lawyer. They were both generating an insane amount of audio recordings. Very quickly we realized that doing transcripts manually is something that does achieve high quality, but takes forever.

When we set out to build TranscribeMe, we invented a hybrid model that combines speech recognition technology with real humans – whom we crowdsource. And so, when we get audio, the first thing we do is run it through speech recognition software that gives us a baseline level of accuracy. Then we slice it into very small micro-tasks. These can be audio segments of anywhere from 10 seconds through to a minute or so in length.

Those go to real people that then correct what the computer’s type. We put it all back together and send it to the to the client. That’s really the magic of the service that we’ve created and it makes it both fast and highly accurate.

Small Business Trends: How do you go about getting the transcribers on board?

Alexei Dunayev: There is a lot of distrust in the community of freelancers. When the first few people went on the forum and said, “Hey, we actually just received money from TranscribeMe – what they promised us. They pay on time and the work was really enjoyable.” We then got a torrent of applications for transcribers and we now have over 5,000 people on our platform.

We didn’t spend a dime on recruiting any of them. It just grew through word of mouth.

Small Business Trends: I assume you’re able to rate each transcriber and the ones that do better get the better opportunities?

Alexei Dunayev: We try to tailor the audio to the transcriber. For example, right now a transcriber processes audio in English and in Spanish. So when we know the language of the audio that is being submitted, we look at the qualifications of the transcribers on our system and we route the audio to the best person who is able to process it. If an audio comes in from a technical conference, we make sure that it gets processed by people with the technical background able to deliver the accuracy on it.

Further, if you record audio using our Smartphone app and you mention to that you’re in Atlanta, we will then try to find transcribers that are geographically close to you, so they would have a good understanding of things like local places and names. We really try to tailor the audio to play to the strength of the transcribers so that you get that perfect quality output.

Small Business Trends: By playing to the strengths of the transcribers, you’re really playing customer happiness aren’t you?

Alexei Dunayev: That’s exactly right. We found customers that work with us really choose to because they care about quality. These are people who run conferences and record business meetings. These are people who really care about one hundred percent quality – people like doctors, lawyers and we work a lot of people in the education space. It’s something that our customers aren’t willing to sacrifice.

The biggest issue with speech recognition systems is, say you have an audio recording that has a hundred words in it and you run it through a computer. You are going to get back approximately a hundred words and you are not going to know which ones are correct and which ones aren’t. It is not like you can tailor the system to say, “Well, only give me the correct words and I’ll fill in the gaps.”

You basically get the same length text, but a whole bunch of text in it is misheard or typed incorrectly. That’s really when you need people to get to what we call the last mile. Using computers in the first place also gives us a lower cost. You don’t have to pay for the cost of having a full-time transcriber working in an office doing the job. That lets us compete and provide a really great service to our customers at a fraction of the cost they would have to pay otherwise.

Small Business Trends: You can cut this up into seconds?

Alexei Dunayev: Our proprietary technology actually came out of the PhD research of one of our founders and it really lets us slice audio very finely so that we can carry out accuracy. We try to slice it usually into sentences and those sentences are essentially the smallest atoms of information that are required to do the transcription.

What we found is, by slicing audio into very small chucks of say 10 seconds-30 seconds, we’re able to maintain the confidentiality. No single transcriber actually has access to the entire audio and that’s a big deal.

Small Business Trends: It is really an interesting approach to a business need that’s been around forever, being able to use the latest and greatest technology to create a new business model.

Alexei Dunayev: It really came out of personal pain-points. There was nothing else that’s out there that could do what we wanted – that could really reach that quality, speed, confidentiality and cost.

Small Business Trends: In the end, do costumers get a chance to rate or rank the transcriptions?

Alexei Dunayev: Right now that is done by the costumer service team and we do reach out to our costumers to see how they feel, how they like their transcript. We have a very significant emphasis on quality mechanisms inside the process that make sure the quality level is perfect. But in the next release that is coming out in June, there is going to be a feature for direct feedback from the customers all the way through to every transcriber that has worked.

Small Business Trends: How quickly have your customers and prospects adapted to this approach?

Alexei Dunayev: We’re finding that a whole bunch of folks joining TranscribeMe have not even used transcription services before and it’s because we make it easy. We have a super user- friendly iPhone app. There’s also an Android app and you can use those apps for free to record meetings and record interviews. The recordings are then stored in the cloud so you’re never going to lose them. If you want to then get it transcribed, that’s just a click away.

So, we try to make the user experience fast, straightforward and as simple as can be.

Small Business Trends: Where can people find TranscribeMe?

Alexei Dunayev: You can jump to our website at Transcribeme.com or on Twitter, @TranscribeMe.

This interview on transcription is part of the One on One interview series with some of the most thought-provoking entrepreneurs, authors and experts in business today. This interview has been edited for publication. To hear audio of the full interview, click on the player above.

The post Alexei Dunayev of TranscribeMe: Necessity is the Mother of Invention appeared first on Small Business Trends.

* * * * *

Small Business Trends: Can you tell us a bit about your background?

Terry Jones: I started my career as a travel agent and did that for about five years. I built a pretty big company, a start up when I was in my 20’s, and then jumped over to tech. I worked over at a company selling tech to travel agents and we sold that company to American Airlines.

Then I spent 20 years at American in both marketing and IT. When I was CIO, I was given this little online department that had a product that was on CompuServe and AOL. We put that on the Internet and it became Travelocity.

Now I’m Chairman of Kayak.com, which we founded seven years ago. We took it public last year and hopefully we’ll close the deal to sell the company to Priceline.com for $1.8 billion some day soon pending government approval.

Small Business Trends: What are some of the big changes in technology and culture between what you did with Travelocity and what you did with Kayak?

Terry Jones: Travelocity has over 3,000 employees, Kayak.com has 220. Yet they are the same size in terms of Internet visitors. How in the world is that possible? Well part of that is because Travelocity started in 1996 and there really weren’t any Internet tools at all. We had to build everything by hand, so it is a legacy application. We grew that business through traditional brand advertising. They have a large customer service department that is probably easily 1,000 people if not more.

At Kayak there are computers in the Cloud, so we don’t have a data center. For the first six years, we got all of our customers from Google, so it was search based. We did not have to spend all of that money in advertising.

We’re not a travel agency, we’re a search company. So we don’t have a customer service function. We deliberately were very lean in how we did things. Today you can do something with just a couple of people and really create a very large business.

Small Business Trends: Was it difficult from a an organizational culture perspective to adapt to changes?

Terry Jones: I don’t think so. Kayak is the traditional startup, venture capital funded. We had two experienced leaders, one from Intuit and one from Orbitz. They really wanted to create a very lean, mean business. We ran the thing on QuickBooks up until we went public. We just didn’t have the courage to go public with QuickBooks. We thought Wall Street might be a little worried about that.

I think these guys were very good at culturing a team. I have a new book called ‘On Innovation,’ and it goes through the basics of innovation, which I think starts with culture and team. Watching Kayak, one of the most important things was to watch our CPO (Chief Performance Officer), who is focused in hiring absolutely the best people he can find.

You learn that rock stars hang out with rock stars. If you hire A- players, more A-players want to be there because they want to go and change the world together and they don’t want to be dragged back by C and D players.

Small Business Trends: In what ways have customers changed?

Terry Jones: When we started Travelocity, we had to spend a lot of time convincing them to put their credit card online. People were afraid to do that. We had a special number where they could call us to give us their credit card and we put it in. Of course we didn’t tell them we put it in online just like they did, because it was safe and they were afraid.

Today, they are very confident. They are so confident that at Kayak, we have over 24 million mobile downloads of our applications. They are even comfortable doing it over the phone.

I think people still shop around more than they have to, because at Kayak we are very comprehensive in terms of price. I think that people still want to buy direct, which is something that we allow them to do on Kayak.

We talk a lot about social media today. It is in every conference we all go to. But I think we have to realize very few people actually buy through social media. It’s an interesting place to build your brand, but it is really not a place that people buy yet, and certainly not in travel.

Small Business Trends: You mentioned Kayak is a search company not a travel company. Was that mindset something the company began with, or was it something you transitioned to?

Terry Jones: No, actually that was the idea. Ninety percent of the people that came to our websites would search for price, but then go direct to an airline, hotel or a car company to buy. We said, ‘Why don’t we just create a company that does that? That allows you to search very effectively, very quickly across all of the various sources of travel purchase. Then when you click, you buy direct. You burrow right down to the last page of Marriott, or the last page of Delta, and just fill in your name and you are done.’

We started out to be a search company and we started out to earn our money as Google does on a pay per click basis. We stayed that way until this year. Now you now can buy directly from Kayak. We did that because we were getting a lot of questions from people who wanted to buy from us. They now trust us.

Also from the mobile world that is pretty important. Because people don’t want to put in their credit card five times and fill out different forms. It is just too hard. Having them buy from Kayak makes it simpler and it increases the value of our mobile site.

I think we have always wanted to be a search company. We are a search company and I think that we will remain that way.

Small Business Trends: Is it more difficult meeting the expectations of customers today then it was back when you were starting out with Travelocity?

Terry Jones: Yes, I think it is. Because constantly innovating is so important to keep up with today’s customers. Twenty percent of Americans have a tablet device. We are constantly moving forward, and we expect from every website – what we get from the very, very best website. ‘So why isn’t Larry’s Insurance company site as good as Amazon?’ We get frustrated when it isn’t.

Small Business Trends: Where can people pick up your book?

Terry Jones: The best place to get it is Amazon.com.

Small Business Trends: Where can people find out what you are up to?

Terry Jones: TBJones.com has information about speaking, consulting, my blog and my books.

Small Business Trends: You mentioned a service you just invested in. Give a plug for that as well.

Terry Jones: We were talking about transcribing this interview, and I just invested in a company called TranscribeMe, a very interesting transcription company that does its transcription through crowdsourcing.

So this interview would probably be cut up into ten different parts, sent all over the world, and one individual might do five or six minutes of transcription. And the computer reassembles it and the transcribers are rated. The quality is excellent and the turn around is fast.

Crowdsourcing is the wave of the future in many new businesses.

This interview on adaptation to change is part of the One on One interview series with some of the most thought-provoking entrepreneurs, authors and experts in business today. This interview has been edited for publication. To hear audio of the full interview, click on the player above.

The post Terry Jones of Travelocity and Kayak: Then and Now appeared first on Small Business Trends.

* * * * *

Small Business Trends: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Justyn Howard: I was in enterprise sales for a software company in the learning management space, a company called Learned.com. I had been in the enterprise software space for six or seven years before getting involved with Sprout. I was always on the sales and marketing side, but very close to the software and technology space.

Small Business Trends: For those who don’t know what you do at Sprout Social, can you tell them what Sprout Social actually does?

Justyn Howard: Sprout Social is a social media management platform, we provide a Web based platform for our business customers. There are a little over 10,000 across the globe. We help them to effectively and efficiently manage their social channels.

Small Business Trends: What is the biggest change over the years across for tracking social engagement and creating these new metrics?

Justyn Howard: The biggest change really has been at the macro level. It has been about how organizations are thinking of social and the metrics associated with it. So zooming in a little bit, what that means is, early on we saw a lot attention and effort spent around measuring volume of conversations and sentiment on Twitter and Facebook primarily at the time.

What we are seeing now, and somewhere we spent a lot of our resources, is the next step. Saying, ‘How do we tie social, social metrics and social analytics back to our long standing business objectives? Let’s set aside some of the newness and some of the mystery around social. Let’s find ways to apply the measurement from those channels back to business goals and priorities we have had forever. Things like customer retention, customer satisfaction, cost of sale, cost of support for the customer channel and growth in sales. Things that have always been very key and critical to an organization.’

Small Business Trends: You put out a report that talks about how responsive a person has been. Can you talk about that in terms of why that is important in social?

Justyn Howard: We have introduced something in Sprout called the Engagement Report. We introduced a public version that is free for anyone to sign up and get a report card if you will.

The purpose of those reports is to understand most companies, within any reasonable size of customer base, have people on social media who are trying to get some type of response from them. Whether it is for a customer service inquiry, sales inquiry or just plain brand evangelism. They want to have a conversation with that organization.

Then name of the campaign for the public site was ‘Be Present,’ and the idea there is very much to have a two-sided relationship. What we are measuring are the conversations where people are trying to interact with your brand. How responsive are you? What kind of time frame is involved in your responsiveness?

One of the things we found when we introduced this data was, as you grow into larger organizations, you respond to a smaller chunk of your audience. But you do it much quicker, which is interesting to think about. Those are the types of things we are exposing in these new reports.

Small Business Trends: A lot of companies start out with social from a marketing and branding perspective. But you have integrations with companies like Zendesk, that tie listening and analytics back to customer service. What does that mean from a customer service perspective?

Justyn Howard: There is a growing population of consumers that, when they think about how they are going to interact with a brand or have a question answered, their preference is going to be to turn to social media channels. If they are out and about and they have a problem, it is going to be easier for them to send you a tweet than it is to find your website, find your 800 number and sit on hold.

We are seeing this shift. I think it is really starting to pick up steam over the last eight to twelve months. I don’t think it is something that most organizations had anticipated three years ago, but it’s not up to them. The customer has decided that this is a place where they want to have their questions answered and be supported. So how can organizations effectively manage that and turn that into an opportunity to give the customers a remarkable experience?

Small Business Trends: I like what you said about applying new social metrics to traditional business goals and objectives. What are some that you see companies using?

Justyn Howard: We are still in the early days. I think that technology has certainly come a long way, but there are a lot of advances that I think we will see over the next 18 to 24 months that are going to help.

Now there is a focus on, ‘How is social growing our sales channels? How is social helping customer retention?’ We are seeing other key stakeholders in those “social” discussions.

We know as a customer service team, what key drivers are for us to be effective in terms of resolution time or the cost to support a customer or customer retention. Those departments know how to measure those things. You know there is some technology involved and there is going to be some manual process involved while technology catches up. But by bringing those stakeholders into the conversation, we can then apply what is going on in social. Whether it is uptake in conversation that leads to an uptake in sales or there are different ways that you can look at that data and tie it back to your business metrics, your KPI.

Small Business Trends: Any future trends to look out for?

Justyn Howard: There is going to be a consolidation of tools and platforms. The current environment is very much what I call, ‘bring your own application.’ Meaning, people who are managing social channels within organizations will use the tools that they are comfortable with. Maybe the same tools that they use to manage their own personal channels, etc.

The challenge that creates when you are looking to have a cohesive strategy, is that it becomes very difficult to support and measure. It is very difficult in terms of audit trail and all those sorts of things that a more progressive organization needs.

The other is I think we are going to continue to see a trend toward social as just another channel. It happens to be an amazing channel and one that is very different than any that we have ever had before. But it is another channel to communicate with our customers.

Small Business Trends: Where can people learn more about Sprout Social?

Justyn Howard: SproutSocial.com is a great place to start.

This interview on social management is part of the One on One interview series with some of the most thought-provoking entrepreneurs, authors and experts in business today. This interview has been edited for publication. To hear audio of the full interview, click on the player above.

The post Justyn Howard, Sprout Social: Social Media Management Evolution appeared first on Small Business Trends.

* * * * *

Small Business Trends: Can you tell us a little bit about your background?

Bruce Bedford: I might have a bit of an unusual entry into the world of marketing. I actually began my career as an engineer. I have a PhD in Chemical Engineering. I began working as an engineer doing all sorts of design projects for large corporations. Then I made my way into the world of business and marketing after a couple of years of engineering work.

Small Business Trends: Can you tell us about Oberweis Dairy?

Bruce Bedford: Oberweis Dairy has a network of retail dairy stores where we sell fresh fountain ice cream treats, cones, mike shakes, banana splits and sundaes. We actually sell fresh bottled milk as well, and a wide range of other products. We have 47 stores located throughout the Midwest.

The second line of business is a home delivery business where all of those grocery items we sell in the retail stores can be delivered right to you door step. We do that generally on a weekly standing order basis.

Then, because we manufacture our own dairy products, we distribute those through a network of regional and national grocery store chains – places like Costco, Target, etc.

Small Business Trends: Lets talk about the in-store experience. You had a lot of folks coming in and the lines were backing out of the stores. How did you tackle that challenge?

Bruce Bedford: When the weather gets nice, the ice cream business really takes off. We observed people might stand in line for quite a while, but generally they were stuck behind a person who was looking at our menu boards trying to determine what appealed to them at the moment.

As we looked deeper, we realized we were exacerbating the wait time by having a menu board layout that wasn’t nearly as efficient as we might have liked.

We began a study of that problem to understand if there was a better layout we can produce with a goal of minimizing wait times. Immediately we determined reordering the ordering process flow would be beneficial. However, as soon as we started doing that, the concern came that in reordering the flow of the menu board, it is very likely that we can shift the product mix in such a direction that we lowered the average ticket value. We call it value for transaction.

We went through a pilot phase program where we tested a variety of designs for the menu boards. Through a series of analysis we determined there was one particular design that solved two problems. We were able to measure a decrease in wait times. And we were able to determine people were selecting items that increased the revenue per ticket.

With that insight, we redesigned the menu boards for all locations throughout the Midwest. We achieved a dramatic increase in profitability per ticket as well as decreased wait times. In fact, we found that one of the items that was not a large mover in the past actually increased by over 80%.

Small Business Trends: You went into this trying to improve the experience of the customer by decreasing their wait time in line, but also increased the revenue per transaction?

Bruce Bedford: Absolutely. That really highlights the power of an analytical approach.

Small Business Trends: You also did a program using your analytical approach to determine a way to build customer retention around your home delivery business?

Bruce Bedford: We maintain an old fashioned home delivery business where we deliver farm fresh milk right to the doorsteps of tens of thousands of homes across the Midwest.

For a company our size, there are some very large national competitors that distribute their products across the nation. Our focus of getting product out to customers’ doors on a regular weekly basis is very important. Once we obtain a customer, it’s critical that we are able to maintain that business over a long period of time. Simply because it costs quite a bit to acquire a new customer.

One of the most popular promotions for our sales team had been a free delivery offer. We deliver our products with a standard product price. The product price is the same whether you go to one of our dairy stores, or whether we deliver the products to your home. We compensate for the additional cost of delivery by charging our customers a modest delivery fee of $2.99 per delivery.

With the promotion, we historically waived that fee for six months. That is roughly 26 deliveries. What we discovered through a technique called survival analysis, was that the retention of customers who took advantage of that free delivery offer was actually not that great. In fact, we found out that at the six-month mark, customers tend to drop off at a fairly rapid rate. So we thought, what is going on with that six-month mark?

We realized if you consider the difference between the 26th and the 27th delivery for customers on one of those promotions, there is no change in value from their point of view. The only thing is that they are now seeing an increase cost of $2.99 from us. We thought, ‘What if we offer a promotion, but don’t create a scenario where there is a such a sharp contrast at that six month mark?’

We used the Valpak Blue Envelope Service to put out a couple of competing coupons and did a randomized AB test, where we sent a coupon offering the six months free delivery. The way that works is, it turns out to be about $100.00 worth of value. Because we also offer a free Porch Box with that promotion. That Porch Box adds another $25 of value to the whole offer.

We also created a second promotion that stretched the time of the promotion out to one year where we offer a $.99 delivery for one year, basically reducing the cost of delivery by $2.00 with each transaction. In the course of doing that, the headline still read ‘$100 savings.’  So the direct mail pieces looked very similar, with a little bit of difference in the construction of the offer.

We sent that out to two random groups. We found a statistically insignificant difference in response rates. Both coupons performed exactly the same when it came to receptivity. We tracked those customers in both groups for a year and found the retention rate for the group receiving the $.99 delivery offer retained at a substantially higher rate. Approximately 30% higher than the group receiving the free delivery for six-month offer.

Small Business Trends: It doesn’t sound like a huge difference, 99 cents versus free. But I guess you identified the bargain-hunters and as soon as they saw the “free” wear off they were out?

Bruce Bedford: We hypothesized that there is psychological effect happening there. Most people hate the idea of giving up value that they know they already have acquired. What we discovered is, if we can continue to have value hanging out there that the customer can claim, they would continue to desire that value.

The value of the program is the same in both cases, $100 savings. In the one example with the six month free delivery, you get all of that value in the first six months. In the second one, it takes you at least a year to claim that value.

What we hypothesized is that people are willing to stay around for a long time if they know there are additional savings to be had. By the way, a 30% increase in retention translates into millions of dollars in added value. The power of analytics has allowed us to unlock this.

Small Business Trends: Bruce where can people learn more?

Bruce Bedford: You can go to Oberweis, or visit us on our Facebook page.

This interview demonstrating the value of analytics is part of the One on One interview series with some of the most thought-provoking entrepreneurs, authors and experts in business today. This interview has been edited for publication. To hear audio of the full interview, click on the player above.

The post Oberweis Dairy: A Story of the High Value of Analytics appeared first on Small Business Trends.

* * * * *

Small Business Trends: Can you tell us a little bit about your background?

Matt Thomson: Sure, I mostly spent my time consumerizing the enterprise normally on the product side. Klout is actually is my first business development role. Before that I worked at Lithium and Microsoft; Microsoft in the Dynamics CRM area. I came over to Klout as the first business guy, if you will. But again, my background is mostly on the product side and little bit of marketing.

Small Business Trends: Is it more difficult to measure online influence today as compared to when Klout first start rolling a couple of years back?

Matt Thomson: It is a little more difficult both industry wide and Klout-specific. Let’s talk industry wide first. Estimates are about 2.3 billion people in the world are on some form of social. Mobile makes it easier; you’ve got video now and it is much easier to work with. Bandwidth is getting better and images are coming on really strong.

Instagram’s growth cannot be trifled with. I don’t know how anybody who doesn’t think about this as a standalone business can actually track this in a meaningful way.

Now from the Klout standpoint, we started with a robust vision and a very simple way to try to parlay that vision to the world with the Klout Score. We started two and a half years ago breaking it down into more contextualized chunks. For example, Matt is influential in Pabst Blue Ribbon. We have gotten to the point where we can actually crunch data enough to dictate that fact for about 150 million people.

Small Business Trends: You mentioned Instagram is becoming a real force. When did you see that happening and how quickly can you determine whether a new network is going to be something very important in this sphere of influence?

Matt Thomson: I would break that question down into volume vs. the niche. I think there are some niche networks out there that are very important and this is something that Klout probably is a bit long term vision on. You can think of something like Stock Twits.

Those are super interesting to us, mostly because of the very robust verticalization.

Now to answer your question more directly about volume-oriented networks, what you see with Instagram, we just registered a user base attaching their Instagram accounts at a level that’s almost above Twitter and Facebook at this point. So you can see some mature volume numbers and rate of growth, because if you think about Klout, at the end of the day a lot of users aggregate all of their networks in one place. Instagram grows quickly.

There is a cycle where you go up through the hype and then go under the trough of disillusionment. With Instagram, you just don’t see that. You  see it continuing to grow up and out to the right.

Let me give you a good example of a network I personally love that the jury is still out on – and that’s Vine. It is number one in the App Store. You see more and more Vines being created. I would say that we are still in that phase to see if it is going to be big.

Small Business Trends: Are you seeing smaller businesses being able to leverage what you guys are doing in terms of using Klout from a corporate branding perspective?

Matt Thomson: I think if you are talking about brick and mortar, like Little Star Pizza in San Francisco that has two or three locations now, no not yet. They might have the same page on Facebook and maybe on a Twitter account and that is about it.

Now with what I would consider an SMB (small business) like a Cirque Du Soleil. They are a pretty outsized brand, but they are still in my world an SMB, because they are not an enterprise. Usually, what it comes down to is if it’s a consumer facing company that uses brand and awareness to drive purchases down the funnel. Is it a heavy word of mouth driven industry? Fashion is pretty good for this, obviously travel and entertainment, all of those kinds of SMB’s in those areas, absolutely. It is still creeping down, but I would say it is still in the upper echelons like the P&G’s of the world, McDonalds, etc.

A lot of SMB’s consider themselves to have conversion based products. Obviously influence, advocacy, word of mouth lends itself very well to basically the whole brand funnel of awareness, consideration and purchase intent.

Small Business Trends:  What are some of the best ways that they could begin to use Klout?

Matt Thomson: I think generally our Perks program has proven really successful in mobilizing influencers to discuss a brand. So that is clearly our bread and butter business. Then, our API and our data is just heavily utilized. Going forward, we are basically going to be moving a little bit more into allowance. We announced Klout for Business almost a month ago, and we will be looking a lot more at letting friends come in and do self-service.

What we are going to do is give more tools around audience analysis and group management of influencers. Then allow brands to not only give rewards based on that, but also conduct surveys of their top influencers so they are giving their opinion of the most influential people in the market for their brand. Then we are going to be experimenting with other engagement channels to come off of Klout. So if you think about LinkedIn, they have an InMail feature, they have a customer side, they have an enterprise side, they have a recruiters side in their case and then they have an InMail feature which allows those two sides of the platform to connect. We think about our business very much like that.

Small Business Trends: Are you doing anything to address some of the concerns people may still have in terms of getting the full measure of somebody’s influence?

Matt Thomson:  Yes, you thought I was going to say no, right? I think when I get into that world I start to think a lot about the old word of mouth practices, about worrying about everybody’s offline influence in every way, shape and form. It is where you draw the line saying this is the amount of information we can actually utilize, and then this is the amount of information that gets us 80% of the way there.

I think anything that has scale in history had to make some concessions to perfection. In other words, some concessions with perfection taking a back seat. Do I think we are perfect? No, absolutely not. Do I think we are going to do a lot more at scale than any other company can do out there that is trying to perfect it? Yeah, absolutely.

Usually those complaints come from the business side of the world. While we care about the business side, our one guiding principle is to make Klout a viable utility for consumers, not to make money from brands. I think we do pretty well. I can guarantee that we have more science behind what we do, than any so called experts out there in this field of word of mouth.

Small Business Trends: Where can people learn more?

Matt Thomson: I would say Klout.com is obviously a great resource. There are some really good books like Mark Shafter on Influence and stuff like that are out there that are very interesting, that are good reads about the market overall.

This interview on social influence is part of the One on One interview series with some of the most thought-provoking entrepreneurs, authors and experts in business today. This interview has been edited for publication. To hear audio of the full interview, click on the player above.

The post Matt Thomson of Klout: Measuring Influence in the Social Sphere appeared first on Small Business Trends.

* * * * *

Small Business Trends: Can you share a bit of your background with us?

Melinda Emerson: I am an entrepreneur just like you. I was somebody who was getting headaches on the way to work in the morning. I knew that I was meant to do more. In 1999 I started my first company, Quintessence Multimedia which was a video production and a multimedia production company. I ran that company and still have it.

I am a voracious reader. I have read almost every startup business book out there. I literally wrote the book I’ve never read. I wrote the book that would be the advice I wish somebody had given me back in 1999 when I quit my good job and started a business. That is how ‘Become Your Own Boss In 12 Months’ came about.  My life has never been the same since.

You have to evolve, you have to continue to sharpen your own knife and gain new skills. So what I was able to do for myself, and my business, was I started learning social media. It just so happens that when I went out to social media my name, Melinda Emerson, was taken on Twitter. I had to come up with a new name for myself and so that is how I became SmallBizLady. Fast forward five years, that was the best branding accident that has ever happened to me. But that is what happened.

Small Business Trends: One of the other things you are very well known for are weekly Small Biz Chats?

Melinda Emerson: Absolutely. Every Wednesday from 8 to 9PM EST on Twitter, I host a weekly #SmallBizChat where we get on Twitter with another small business expert and answer small business questions. It really has become incredibly helpful for people. If you have a question and you can’t afford a coach, it is a way for you to ask your questions for free and get helpful information and help everybody else, too.

Every Thursday I post the complete Q&A from the night before on the Small Biz Chat on my blog, SucceedAsYourOwnBoss.

Small Business Trends: Let’s talk a little bit about the book, ‘Become Your Own Boss In 12 Months.’  Can anybody start a small business in 12 months?

Melinda Emerson: Yes; I have developed a planning system called the ‘Emerson Planning System.’ It helps people transition from having a job to having a business. The first step is developing a life plan.

First, you need to figure out what you want out of life first and then you need to build a business around that.

Second, you have to figure out whether or not you can even afford to become an entrepreneur.  You have got to get your money together, because the reality is the money to start your business is going to come from your right or left pocket. You have to be able to afford to leave your job and start a business. You have to have money to support your family, your household and you have to have the money to launch the business.

Once you get that together, the third step is really evaluating what skills you have, and what skills you need to run your particular kind of business. How do you do that? You need to get a part time job working for a business like the one you want to start. Do not start a business in an industry you don’t know anything about. It is a wrongful deed for disaster.

Step four is figuring out who is going to buy from you and why. The most important thing you need to know about your new business is who is your customer and how are you going to stand out and be unique in the marketplace against your competition?

The fifth step is writing a business plan. You really do need a business plan. You do not spend more time planning your vacation then you do figuring out how you are going to support your family in this new business. Think things through.

The sixth step, and this is the secret, is to start your own business while you are still working in your part time job if you can. It takes 18 to 36 months for a small business to break even, let alone replace your previous corporate salary. You are going to need the time to get your money together and to figure out what you are doing and who your real paying customer is.

Small Business Trends: Are some of the reasons small businesses fail led by these principles you just put out there?

Melinda Emerson: There are five reasons why small businesses fail. The number one reason is because people think about what their lives are going to be like running their business. They think some magic person is going to come and lock and unlock the door every day in their business.

The second reason is because people have no network to sell to. People do business with people they like, know and trust. If you are somebody with no friends and that doesn’t keep in touch with people, you will need to keep your job because you are not going to be in business long. Ninety percent of all small businesses get business from referrals. It is extremely important for you to spend time building your network.

The third reason is because people simply do not save enough money before they start their business. What happens is some emergency in their personal life will torpedo their entrepreneurial dreams.

The fourth reason is because people try to sell to anyone they think has money, as opposed to having in a specific niche target customer.

Step five, and this is the deadliest reason, Brent; people don’t manage their household budget. So guess what? They don’t manage their business with one either and that doesn’t make much sense.

Small Business Trends: Where can people learn more?

Melinda Emerson: If you are interested in purchasing my book, an autograph copy of my book, go to my website SucceedAsYourOwnBoss. There you can order an autograph copy of my book. It is also available anywhere books are sold.

This interview about transitioning from employee to entrepreneur is part of the One on One interview series with some of the most thought-provoking entrepreneurs, authors and experts in business today. This interview has been edited for publication. To hear audio of the full interview, click on the player above.

The post Melinda Emerson on Transitioning From Employee to Entrepreneur appeared first on Small Business Trends.

* * * * *

Small Business Trends:  You have written a number of books and are a highly sought after speaker. Can you tell us a bit about your background?

Brian Solis: I am a digital analyst over at Altimeter Group, I have studied how technology is affecting society, culture and business and I try to reverse engineer everything to help the two roads between customer behavior and business relevance intersect as often as possible.

Small Business Trends:  You were recently at South by Southwest (SXSW) and had an on-stage conversation with the one and only, Shaquille O’Neal. Did you learn anything interesting about Shaq?

Brian Solis: A lot of people don’t know that he was an investor in Google Pre IPO. He also has a lot of investments in companies like Five Guys and Vitamin Water. He is a very smart man. He earned his doctorate recently. He is all about knowledge and at the same time, he is pursuing comedy. So it is an interesting balance of a human being that makes for something unique.

Small Business Trends:  Let’s talk about your new book, “What’s the Future of Business (WTF): Changing the Way Businesses Create Experiences.” Why did you write this book?

Brian Solis: I thought, ‘Why not use a book as an object to demonstrate the point of shared experiences?” So I took a step back, I looked my previously published book, The End of Business as Usual, and I looked at the things that I hear all the time. The one thing that was consistent across the board is that we are reacting to technology.

What’s happening is businesses, schools, everything has just started to get into a reactive mode and that is not a good place to be because technology is only accelerating. The next big thing is always here. If we get into this cycle of just trying to react to everything we are going to lose our footing. When you lose your footing your start to lose your relevance. When you lose your relevance, it comes back to that thing that we were talking about earlier on digital dwarfism – that is when technology and society evolves faster than your ability to adapt.

Small Business Trends:  Do you find that businesses understand that concept?

Brian Solis: Businesses don’t get it. But they could and they should. It is just taking a step back because then, technology becomes the enabler. All of these channels, all of these tools that exist, they become the thing that people use and that you use to bring that experience to life.

Small Business Trends:  You talk about disruptive technology being a catalyst but not a reason for change. But how many companies are still looking at technology as the silver bullet?

Brian Solis: I think over the years we just started putting stuff on top of other things because that is what we are supposed to do. Technology was just part of the equation for efficiency and automation – to use a buzz word in business ‘operationalization.’  But it wasn’t necessarily driven by a vision or by a purpose. I think that business could benefit from rethinking what that vision and what that purpose could be or what it should be.

Technology then, like experiences, just becomes a manifestation of what it is you are trying to do or what you are trying to accomplish; instead of saying on the outside, ‘Hey, marketing jumps all over these social networks’ because that is where everybody is.

Small Business Trends:  I wanted to ask you about the six pillars of social commerce, because we all know that companies are trying to leverage social mobile to the Cloud to sell stuff, find customers and keep them happy longer. Can you tell us what your six pillars are?

Brian Solis: I reference in the book the work of Robert Cialdini and what he called, The 6 Pillars of Social Commerce. Those six were adapted into the world of social media, and the six pillars are essentially:

• Social Proof:  When in doubt view what everyone else is viewing.
• Authority:  Earning a position of value in any one of these networks because you continually help people. For example, businesses that put out creative marketing on all of these social networks aren’t necessarily earning authority. But people like the Mayo Clinic or Mint.com, that can consistently produce objects that help people, that give insights, that answer questions – that earns the position of authority.
• Scarcity: Less is more, so you don’t have to be everywhere all of the time, but when you do it should have a reverberation.
• Liking:  Building relationships, and by relationships I mean, not just moving and reacting or following people. I mean by having meaningful exchanges.
• Consistency:  So that you are not just in one network or in one place all time, but all of those networks, mobile, social, the Web – in a consistent experience across each one of those channels. Right now all of those experiences are broken because they are designed to be broken. They don’t work together. Consistency is just another pillar.
• Reciprocity:  In the new world of social commerce, if you can reinforce positive behavior, reciprocity is the most powerful of all of these. If you share experiences, reciprocity plays a big role in that.

Small Business Trends:  What are a few things you’d like for people to walk away with after reading your book?

Brian Solis: I hope they walk away with a better understanding that there is a need for integrating experience. There is a need to define what integrating experiences should be. There is the ability, or the need, to see that your product is an interesting experience to everything.

Lastly, to recognize that I am bringing Joseph Campbell’s, ‘Hero Journey’ at the beginning and at the end of the book. At the beginning, I am talking about the customer as the hero in the journey. I show the change that they go through and the opportunity that you have to reach.

Then at the end of the book, I say you are the hero in the hero’s journey. I talk about the steps that you need to take to bring about change, the challenges you are going to face and how to break through them.

Small Business Trends:  I will say this; the book has a style and a vibe to it.

Brian Solis: It is very visual. I worked with the folks at Mechanism, who did the Beyonce Pepsi Commercial at this year’s Super Bowl. I call it an analog app, because it even has a slider that gives you the sense that you are literally moving through a journey.

It is gorgeous; it is four colors but it was intentional. It was a statement that said business books do not have to look like business books. They can be exciting because this is an exciting time. So reinvent a book and if you can reinvent the idea of a book and make it an experience, imagine what you can do with any business.

This interview on creating customer experiences is part of the One on One interview series with some of the most thought-provoking entrepreneurs, authors and experts in business today. This interview has been edited for publication. To hear audio of the full interview, click on the player above.

The post Brian Solis of “What’s the Future (WTF) of Business:” Creating Customer Experiences appeared first on Small Business Trends.

* * * * *

Small Business Trends: Can you tell us a little bit about your background?

Loni Stark: I have been at Adobe for over 12 years. I am responsible for product marketing for our Adobe Experience Managers Solution, which is part of the Adobe Marketing Cloud. It is really perfect in the sense that I have come from a technology background.

I am at the heart of digital marketing now so that combination of technology and creativity is really important as folks are looking at how to do digital marketing well.

Small Business Trends: How important is it today that creative folks understand social and mobile in order to create the right kind of customer experiences?

Loni Stark: I think it is really important to understand what is possible, and how people want to interact through these technology channels.

I liken this era of moving to digital marketing similar to when television was first invented. It really changed how marketers got to reach their audience and mass communications, broadcasting what was out there. Now, marketers need to understand how their message can then be honed in with data.

Small Business Trends: I had a conversation with Anil Dash and one of the things he talked about was the show, ‘I Love Lucy.’ It was the marriage of somebody who understood the power of television and knew how to create something that really showed it off. There were other television shows, but none of them really captivated and took advantage of what television had to offer. 

Are we at the point where we are understanding the power of social and digital marketing?

Loni Stark: Attention is scarce and when attention is scarce, similar to what happened with television, there is flight to quality. So marketers are starting to figure out. ‘How do I create more compelling content and how do I make sure it is more relevant, more useful?’

I am amazed at the creativity in the ads that are now in digital magazines as well. Before it was static images, and they are now interactive. I think we are at a point of the ‘I love Lucy’ moment.

Small Business Trends: Can you talk a little bit about the five key areas of your Adobe Marketing Cloud?

Loni Stark: We have brought them down into what we consider the foundation for visual marketing; to be able to do things well in these five core areas. One of them we have already touched upon which is the analytics. That is about measurement. What most folks talk about, or know about from Adobe, is the online metrics that we have. But little is known about the fact that we also have the capability to measure offline. And that is really important.

We talk about eCommerce, it is hot. People talk about how much money people are spending. We tend to forget that even though it is growing fast, and it will continue to grow onwards and upwards, it is still about six percent of total spend in the retail sector in the United States. So a lot of things happen offline as well and that is an important piece.

The second piece is Adobe Experience Manager. That is all about the owned digital properties that companies have. In the online world Experience Manager is really about helping companies build out their own digital properties. An example of this is Hyatt, a hotel chain, and they use Experience Manager to be able to create a destination spot that people can come to and shop, and purchase hotels rooms. So that is two of the five.

The third is Adobe Social. With any digital marketing strategy you’ve got to have a social component to that. Adobe Social is all about running social marketing campaigns through Twitter, Facebook and having fan pages managed through those channels.

The fourth is Adobe Media Optimizer, so part of the marketing mix is spending it on ads. Being able to do that effectively, being able to optimize your spend to say, ‘Hey, this ad placement through this channel is working better than this other one, so maybe I want to move more of my investment over to this other channel.’ Being able to do that in real time and being able to figure out what is the best price to pay for a particular ad based on the return. It is critical for any digital marketer.

The final piece is Target. We talked about data, we talked about content and Target is the solution that brings it all together to do tests. I have a hypothesis I think you love music and I think you love this type of music, so I am going to target this particular image of this band that I think you are going to really like called The Black Keys. I could be right, but I could be wrong. So I might say there are a couple of other bands that I think you might like, I’ll will try out those images.

Adobe Target lets me quickly test out different images against you and people like you to figure out what image, what piece of content you are going to best resonate with.

Small Business Trends: Adobe’s CMO, Ann Lewnes, mentioned that Adobe is spending about 74% of their digital marketing budget compared to the average of large companies in the 20% range. What is it going to take for companies to be more like you and focus their marketing in this space?

Loni Stark: With digital marketing, the more efforts that can be measured and be more data driven, the more they can see where they are driving the highest value across  to pour more money in to it. The big piece is becoming more data driven and then being able to speed up the content creation piece of it.

Small Business Trends: Where can people learn more?

Loni Stark: Our website Adobe. You can check out the Adobe Marketing Cloud, which will go into all of the five solutions. And then also I think another great resource is CMO.com.

This interview on digital marketing is part of the One on One interview series with some of the most thought-provoking entrepreneurs, authors and experts in business today. This interview has been edited for publication. To hear audio of the full interview, click on the player above.

The post Loni Stark of Adobe: Digital Marketing Solutions in the Cloud appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Kyle Porter, Founder of SalesLoft leads this Q&A with T.A. McCann, Founder of Gist (acquired by RIM), Jon Ferrarra, Founder of Nimble, and David Cummings, Co-founder of Pardot.  Below is an edited transcript of their on-stage conversation.  You can see a video of the whole session at the bottom of this post.

* * * * *

Kyle Porter:  T.A., from your first businesses and your early entrepreneurship to now, how have customer expectations changed? How has your understanding of customer expectations changed in the market place?

T.A. McCann: One is on the customer experience side. People’s tolerance for a product that doesn’t work ordoesn’t look like it works very well is small and getting smaller. So you have to hook them very quickly into some sort of value before they’ll make a choice to move on to something.

Second, the engagement models. When we started Gist in 2008, Twitter was just starting to happen. The engagement model, certainly from customer engagement and supportive engagement, we wouldn’t have thought about that at all. How a big portion of our engagement, both in terms of marketing and support, happens on primarily Twitter, followed closely by Facebook and Linkedin.

Twitter, I think, is the most interesting part of that change over the last few years.

Kyle Porter:  Jon, when you all built Nimble, how did you account for the way that the customer wants to react? How big a role did that play in the products creation?

Jon Ferrara: One of the things that I learned early on when I first got into sales, is that sales people don’t work in a vacuum. They work as part of a larger team and everybody on that team is part of that conversation. I think that in today’s market place, it is more critical than ever.

What is going on is that the whole customer journey and experience is radically shifting where customers are doing their own homework. They are making their own buying decisions. Then they are starting to yell back at companies on every channel they want to, whatever department they want, and they expect an authentic and relevant response in a timely fashion from that department.

Most companies aren’t prepared for that.

Kyle Porter:  David, your business is known for its culture. Can you share some anecdotes about Pardot? How does this air of transparency, openness and personality come out in your messaging and your branding, and in customer relations?

David Cummings: We were really struggling with how to differentiate ourselves from the main competitors in the market. After going through that for about 6 or 12 months, we realized that the market at the time, this was back in 2007/2008, was very much traditional enterprise software.

Pricing wasn’t published, two year contracts were common place and salespeople were pushy. It was just a very traditional enterprise software model. We said, “What happens if we flip this on its head? What if we made our pricing totally transparent? What if we had all month to month, no contracts at all? What if we take all of our knowledge base, all of our on-board materials, even our forum, and make it totally public online? What if we really put everything out there?”

One of the things that we would frequently say internally is, “The best form of sales for us is to educate our customers.”

The best form of sales is really education, knowing that if we educate them as well as we could, providing everything that they needed in a self service manner, at the end of the day they would have a better customer experience.

Kyle Porter:  T.A., I have heard you talk a bit about the early days of Gist. How you would set up weekly events where you would have customers come to your office, and you just engage deeply with them.

T.A. McCann: I am really a product kind of guy. I am an engineer. But I really enjoy the direct interaction with the customer.

When I first built Gist I just thought it was for sales people, so I would invite them on Wednesday nights to come to the office, one or two of them. I would spend the first 10 minutes trying to understand what they do. I would learn about new things, whose blogs they read, what technology they use. The next 10 minutes I would show them my very below average version of my product, and get their feedback. The last 10 minutes of their interaction, I would try to share with them a bunch of other solutions I knew that might solve their problem, contact management, CRM, etc.

I did that every Wednesday night for 18 months. So as the team went from me to three, to six, to 12, to 15, the whole team would participate in that. We would stay late after that and drink beer and eat pizza and work late into the night.

Kyle Porter:  Jon, your tool actually helps people engage with their customers. What have you learned and what spurred you towards the creation of Nimble?

Jon Ferrara: I am going to tell you a little story about a small company called IBM that does that on a daily basis.

I want you all to go out and search on your Twitter stream, #SocialBizIBM. What you will see is worldwide. There are customer-facing business people at IBM who are, on a daily basis, educating and engaging the constituency out there in the social river.

What that does is build their personal brand. By building their personal brand, they are building a company brand. Today IBM, within two years, has become a thought leader in social business by empowering their customer phase in line-level business people to build their personal brand and thereby build the company brand.

This is the kind of engagement that can truly scale a company and a brand. The problem is when you are doing that, there is no context to the conversation. Basically, you all live in Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Pinterest, Instagram, Foursquare and Google+. Then you try to manage it with HootSuite or TweetDeck. But none of those conversations are tied back to who you are talking about, the customer/prospect/contacts that your company does business with.

That is what we are trying to solve with Nimble.

Kyle Porter:  David, what are some ideas for ways to tactically get that message out and connect with people that are your audience and that you’re looking to build a community with?

David Cummings: I am a big fan of inbound marketing, or content marketing. If you look at JobChangeAlerts, it’s an app that ties into your Linkedin account. It will alert you whenever anybody in your Linkedin network changes jobs, which as a salesperson, is a compelling event with which to reach out and say, “Congrats on your new job.” As well as to stay on top of mine.

Tools in the market combined with content marketing, combined with many applications — many being really tiny special purpose apps that help people solve problems — I think that’s the future of marketing.

Kyle Porter:  T.A., where is all of this heading? What are we going to see in the next couple of years?

T.A. McCann: I would argue that most companies, even the most sophisticated ones, don’t yet have a holistic understanding of the user. It is quite difficult. Every now and again you can stitch together a couple of pieces. Somebody read this blog post, retweeted and then bought my product. Even that is sometimes pretty difficult. Let alone they bought my product and they told three other people about it and they told seven other people.

We will get there sometime soon. But that is quite challenging. So I think that is one component of it.

I think it’s this deeper understanding and profiling of people. If you look at it, all of you probably have an email list, right? But can you stack rank that email list based on Klout score, like who is actually influential? Can you stack rank that list on who has some influence to your brand or products? Could you combine those two things together and say who has the real relevance and influence? Who likes my “things,” and how do I make sure to send them a tee shirt?

Jon Ferrara: I think it is all still too complex and hard. I think that all of us, as business professionals, know what we should do. I think as human beings we know what we should do. Do we all eat right?  Do we all exercise right? No.

I think that to be a business professional today is hard. I think that every day you wake up and you look at your inbox and you start digging out of that hole in the sand. It never, ever, ever is empty. It continually fills up.

I think that the future is not one monolithic company and product that is going to do all of that for us, like Microsoft Office. I think we all use the best of the breed little pieces and we put them altogether.

So I think that all of these software companies that are emerging today with these open API’s are going to be able to allow you, as a customer, to tie the products together those that best suit you.

Editor’s Note: This interview is a partial transcript of a panel discussion at the Social Biz Atlanta Conference in February 2013. The full video session is below.

This session on customer engagement is brought to you as part of the One on One interview series with some of the most thought-provoking entrepreneurs, authors and experts in business today. This interview has been edited for publication. To hear audio of the full interview, click on the player above.

The post 4 Startup Founders Discuss How Customer Engagement Has Changed appeared first on Small Business Trends.

* * * *

Small Business Trends: Can you tell us a little about your role at Oracle and your personal background?

Steve Cox: Sure, I have been with Oracle Accelerate Global Programs for Oracle, focusing on two programs for applications with midsize customers, Oracle Accelerate and Oracle Business Accelerators. I joined Oracle in 1997 as a consultant and since joining, obviously I worked as a consultant. I did three years in product development and since 2003, I have been focusing on the midsize segment.

Small Business Trends: Can you explain what Oracle Accelerate is?

Steve Cox: Oracle Accelerate is Oracle’s brand and strategy for midsize applications. Partners who are members of the Oracle Accelerate program offer complete package solutions for customers that include our applications, rapid implementation tools and methodologies, their services and their Internet property.

Oracle Business Accelerators, are cloud-based rapid implementation tools developed and maintained by Oracle, and only available through proven and qualified partners.

Small Business Trends: You mentioned they are cloud-based. How does this help companies get up to speed and moving in the Cloud?

Steve Cox: Cloud computing brings companies within reach of the same powerful technologies and latest innovations that the largest companies in the world enjoy.

The Cloud can offer the ability to compete with these larger companies with lower cost. You create a configuration that allows customers to have the flexibility they need to maintain what makes them unique, and what gives them a competitive advantage.

Small Business Trends: How quickly are you able to help these companies get started?

Steve Cox: Most customers that I speak to move through five key phases on their journey. Oracle, and our Partner Ecosystems, provide support and professional associates throughout each of these phases. So that first step is aligning your organization’s business objectives and goals. Understanding those goals and aligning with how you are going to consume your software – whether it is in the Cloud or on the premise.

Then they need to use a cloud readiness service to reduce complexity and automation. Are you ready for the Cloud? Is your IT system ready for the Cloud? You should get complete implementation of migration services that can deliver the best practice and tools to help you succeed.

Small Business Trends: When you say, “ready for the Cloud, ” what does that mean?

Steve Cox: First thing is, you need to determine a return on investment on your IT project. Whether you are going to purchase applications in the Cloud, or whether you are going to move your IT back into the Cloud, or whether you are going to be able buy SaaS services.

You need to understand what would be the return investment. You need to invest to support growth. You need to understand the opportunities that the Cloud and any IT system provides. I think you need to understand the jargon:

• How do you make the most of a limited project?
• Where are you going to invest?
• Do you have the right resources in place in terms of people, time, etc?
• Where do you start?
• What are your business priorities?
• Where do you have to invest first, to get maximum return on the investment, maximum bang for the buck, if you like?

Small Business Trends: Are your customers and prospects looking to go to the Cloud to get to the next level? Or are they going so they can be more efficient?

Steve Cox: They are doing it for economic reasons. When you come to the Cloud, there is a lot of promise there that you can improve your return on investment. It can lower the cost of the adoption, and that is always on top of mind.

Small Business Trends: What are some of the biggest challenges that companies face when they make the move?

Steve Cox: I have never come across a company that plans enough. If your organization is expected to grow with a compound annual growth rate of 20% or 30% or more, what effect is that going to have on your priorities and challenges? What are you likely to be facing this time next year, or the year after?

The next question is what other resources available? Nearly everyone I have spoken to has a real good grasp of their budget. And then there is time. How long does it take for me to realize the return on an investment?

The next one really comes down to time scale. That is a measure of patience. When do I need to do this? Do I need to do this because my business is changing and I have to maintain competitive advantages? Or to improve it? Do you need to do it now, or can you look forward and say, “By this date I need to achieve X and Y.”

Small Business Trends: What functional area are companies really looking to the Cloud to get up to speed with?

Steve Cox: The Cloud option has a head start in CRM and human resources simply because it is a model that has lent itself to those two business areas. But I would say that in every conversation I have had with every customer and every partner, they look at it on a very broad basis and they tend to look across all the areas. They want the back office to front office solutions. They want to be able to support human capital management (HCM).

Small Business Trends: You have already laid out where you see things going over the next two years. Is there anything else that you see that will make this kind of move, something that midsize businesses in two years will not have to think as much about doing? Is going to be that easy in two years to do it?

Steve Cox: We have talked about the time scale, budget, business priority and challenge. I think it is going to be a lot easier to make the decision to adopt having made that adoption a lot easier. But it is still a decision you need to think about.

This interview about return on investment is part of the One on One interview series with some of the most thought-provoking entrepreneurs, authors and experts in business today. This interview has been edited for publication. To hear audio of the full interview, click on the player above.

The post Steve Cox of Oracle: Cloud’s Lure is Return on Investment appeared first on Small Business Trends.