Over the weekend I’ve been reading extracts from Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd . It is one of the very few business books I am definitely buying.  Youngme Moon makes a stack of observations that resonate with me. If you’ve seen my Tweetstream from Sunday afternoon then you’ll know what I mean. Here’s a sampling of quotes: “…true differentiation – sustainable differentiation – is rarely... 

Yesterday evening I spoke with Euan Semple , wise man of the web who helps business understand the value of community and the new class of tools that can loosely be described as ’social media.’ I’d previously seen him Tweet about trying to find a saas/cloud based billing application. Euan is hiring a virtual assistant to handle his billing while he concentrates on what he does…  Read More →

I stumbled across this report at TechCrunch about inDinero in a C round where it hopes to raise $1 million. That’s pretty good for a new vendor in the apps space but reflects the interest in SaaS/cloud apps that are aimed at the very small business (VSB.) Founder Jessica Mah traces here entrepreneurship back 7 years to age 13. No – that’s not a typo or a joke. This is one seriously smart person. If…  Read More →

…sometimes someone says what many think but are otherwise afraid to articulate in public. Adrienne Gonzalez is a master of that genre of writing. I throughly enjoy her stuff and highly recommend. I’m sure she has taken to heart Stephen Fry’s admonition of all those who sniff at use of the F… word . That is part of her charm. We once met in San Francisco. Adrienne is EXACTLY as you might expect only with more tattoos.... 

Earlier today I learned that ClearBooks had ‘unexpected downtime.’ Whenever you see that phrase you should substitute: ‘total cock up.’ To its credit, ClearBooks tried to communicate the issue on GetSatisfaction but in doing so exposed fundamental weaknesses of which buyers should be aware. From the GS trail : We are currently experiencing a problem with our database server. Downtime is currently unforseeable and could... 

I’ve known for some time that Kashflow is refactoring its user interface. Both Duane Jackson, CEO Kashflow and I agree that in its current iteration it is out of date and by making changes, he hopes this will encourage more people to come on board. User interfaces are always the subject of much angst among developers and can easily upset customers. UI is also subjective: what’s good for one isn’t necessarily good for another.... 

Ross Mayfield, co-founder SocialText pointed me to a case study of Hayes Knight , an ST customer that in my view ‘gets’ the connections between socializing tools and CRM as applied to professional services firms. Progress at last. I’ve only been saying that firms need to grasp this way of working for the last five years. Frustrating at times.. (sic) As background, Hayes Knight is a group of independent accounting firms in Australia... 

Neville Hobson does an excellent job outlining the way paper.li works and what it can mean for communications: …the newspapers you create with Paper.li aren’t about the people in your community who tweet but rather what they link to. I was explaining it to a friend yesterday when I saw that he clearly couldn’t see the remotest value in something like this: he thought it was about publishing people’s tweets. Once he understood that... 

I’m seeing a steady stream of firms eschewing the time sheet in favour of fixed pricing. Nice. Yesterday I came across a great reason for doing so. Check this post from an AWeb reader : Basically, I have done bookkeeping work for one of my client but, unfortunately there is no engagement letter / contract and now client is not paying anything. In my initial meeting with the client …  Read More →

When I started AccMan I learned early on that one of the key tricks to success is about giving things away. 80% of what I know I give away in public blogs. Whether that 80% is worth something is a moot point but it is the 20% I don’t talk about in the public domain where I make my bones. I go further. Very often I will point to others via links as people who are adding value or inspiring my thought stream. It works on the principle that... 

While I tend to concentrate on professional services firms a couple of questions were raised this week that got me thinking. The last two days I’ve been out in Silicon Valley in analyst briefings with Workday and SAP Labs. Workday is noodling over and endeavouring to redefine the meaning of work. One of its trains of thought goes like this: in any organisation, it is not how many are working that matters but who is working. It’s... 

Online Surveys – Zoomerang.com As promised, I started the podcast series late last week . Some of the back channel feedback I got was interesting. I’d much prefer that people put comments on the blog. I really don’t mind if you don’t like something as long as you’re not personal about it. There’s a difference for example between: ”That intro was a bit tacky. Can you come up with something a bit more... 

Towards the end of last week I was approached to take a peek at a review copy of a new book: Spiraling Up . (PDF preview) Catchy title aside, it talks about the things that distinguish top performing professional services firms from the average. Three statements caught my attention: Almost every firm says more or less the same thing. And clients have stopped listening. How true. The other week I talked about cookie cutter websites, comparing... 

As I prefaced a few weeks ago, I’m starting a series of podcasts with people I find fascinating and those who are doing great things as innovators. It will be an eclectic mix designed to broaden the mind and to help professionals think about different aspects of what it means to be a professional services provider in the 21st century. Last week I recorded a conversation with my long time friend and colleague Vinnie Mirchandani. Regular... 

Formed in 2005 by a couple of childhood friends who trained in accounting, Mazuma (a Yiddish word for ‘money’) is one of a new breed of ‘accounting factories’ that is taking the commoditization of compliance services to an entirely new level. Earlier today I spoke with co-founder Lucy Cohen, the marketing brains behind Mazuma who said: “I love the commodification of accounting services. It’s…  Read More →