I sometimes wonder whether the purpose of all the jargon, acronyms etc. is to make the buyer sufficiently confused so that they just feel that they are missing out on something valuable.

 

So here is our attempt to try and add some clarity.

 

Marketing is the last corporate discipline which has avoided end-to-end automation of its business and process requirements. Sure they use lots of software for:

This is all fine while the team is small, the product range is either small or not complex, the regulatory and compliance risks are not substantial and the benefits of integrated automation cannot be justified by the costs of an integrated marketing platform. Small businesses rarely require this. However once the organisation has or needs a Marketing Director or Chief Marketing Officer and/or a team of more than a dozen people (inclusive of the agency people on the account) there is often a need for something to pull this together. Now some people will still prefer to buy separate systems. Using these how normally has a glass ceiling beyond which volume of activity, variety of activities (all these new channels) or speed. This is when diseconomies start to kick in. Proper integrated automation dramatically raises the capacity to scale volume an variety and therefore lifts the glass ceiling

 

The age old story from Henry Ford goes.....If I had asked people what they wanted they would have told me a faster horse !!!!

If however you ask them what there need it more time and less mundane juggling and traffic management of task and activies that constantly need (expensive) manual intervention to meet the business requirement for speed of outcomes and reporting that enables the management of exceptions rather than activities.

 

 

 

.......what most small businesses need and want is for the IT to just work like (well mostly in South Africa) the electricity does...you plug in and it gives you what you need.

 

What this means is that they do not really want to own hardware or software but rather want the utility and productivity that CAN, when it works, enable them to sell more, communicate better and or more efficiently the way you want it to work.

 

This picture is pretty much how IT was originally conceived back in the 60s and 70s with mainframes and dumb terminals. As more and more functionality was required by the machine that sits in front of the user so was born client server computing and all the user problems that are linked with having software on end user machines. The advent of the web and relatively low cost internet connectivity and now cloud computing is taking it full circle. Reliable cost effective connectivity is still the prerequisite to commit.

 

SME requirements, while less demanding than their larger counterparts, cover the same disciplines of:

which enables the business to attract customers and prospective buyers and or influencers, to generate offer and proposals that are then accepted and taken up and administrator through to payment and satisfied customers and then retain the customer and contine to meet the needs of the customer.

 

Not forgetting of course there the regulatory, compliance and reporting and statutory return.

 

Pretty much what this means is that SMEs need an base of in house desktop and server hardware and software which if one is to stay in the main stream pretty much means windows and office applications (Word Excel and Outlook) and plus internet connectivity. Coupled with the internet connectivity one needs and email service provider, a website where It is not to difficult/expensive to create, add to and edit plus one which can tell you where the visitors have come from and allow them to connect with you. You probably want to allow people to request services in a structured way to enable the requests to be routed to the right people for action and the