Archive for the 'IT' Category

Government 2.0 – A Way to Go

Published by Ben Kepes on June 15, 2009 in Economic Development, Efficiency, Governance, IT, My businesses, New Zealand, Society and Strategy. 1 Comment

Jim posted the incredible story of the New Zealand Immigration Service (NZIS) proposing a $117 million upgrade of IT infrastructure, a sum that equates, from Jim’s reckoning, to $234k per NZIS process worker.

It’s a sorry tale and one that, as Jim points out, smacks of desperation, silo building and vested interests. Given the somewhat depressing post I thought I’d revisit a success story for Government 2.0.

I’ve long been a fan of New Zealand’s Ministry of Economic Development – long before co-founding a community site for New Zealand small businesses, I was involved (and continue to be so) with economic development and advisory work for SMEs as well as running my own small businesses – in my dealings with the various branches of the Ministry of Economic Development (MED), I found them to be effective and efficient. This impression was strengthened with their wholesale adoption of modern communication channels in order to engage with their “clients”. it doesn’t matter which channel you look at – if their constituents embrace it, it’s a sure bet that the various MED departments will soon be there.

Recently I met with another Government department that I’ll leave anonymous. They’re also striving to engage with their constituents. The people I talked to were invariably passionate advocates for the enabling force that engaging with their client base can be – unfortunately their department has some silos within it, people who for whatever reason attempt to block the sort of initiatives their colleagues over at the MED embrace. The result? Frustrated staff, programmes that lack the reach they could otherwise attain and, most importantly for those who evangelise the democratizing power of Government 2.0, inefficiencies that affect the very SMEs these departments are set up to help.

So circling back to the genesis of this post – the NZIS plan for IT upgrading, I’m sure there’s some people within the service who have been flying the flag for quick and relatively economic solutions to the inefficiencies apparent in the system – and you can bet they’re blocked at every turn by anti-progressive and institutionalised individuals who can’t see past the status quo.

Shame…

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SmartPayroll Gets on the Service Theme

Published by Ben Kepes on May 12, 2009 in Business, IT and SaaS. 0 Comments

I don’t blog often over here on Diversity any more – CloudAve takes much of my attention these days. Diversity is more about an opportunity for me to be opinionated or to tell stories of Kiwi success stories – I try and do that over on CloudAve too but for some reason some US readers get sick of my parochialism ;-) .

A few weeks ago at the Web09 conference in Auckland I finally had a chance to meet CEO of SmartPayroll, Asantha Wijeyeratne – we immediately found much in common, especially regarding our views of what the real barriers to growth are for small businesses and the potential of connected applications to drive efficiency and productivity gains for SMEs (excuse the volley of buzzwords there).

Anyway, Wijeyeratne just pinged me to tell me that SmartPayroll has just completed it’s integration with Xero. SmartPayroll is the largest of the IRD registered payroll intermediaries through their relationship with Datacom and they’re obviously looking to augment this offering with the addition of a software plus services offering. As part of this integration, Xero have nominated SmartPayroll as their Premium Payroll Partner in NZ.

With another twist in this story, for $83 per month customers can get SmartXero – so what is SmartXero? It is Xero bundled with a high level service and integration offering. Despite all the Web 2.0 tools in the world, as a SaaS vendor grows to scale it simply cannot continue to offer high levels of individual service – as an example Xero provides email support, but no phone support – that’s fine for those of us prepared to either wait or to tinker, but arguably doesn’t address the needs of those who want help from a real person – and now.

So that’s where SmartXero jumps in. I questioned Wijeyeratne about the difference between the monthly subscription to Xero and the offering they are providing – his response? “We will set up the chart of accounts, set up the Bank feeds etc and the general set up. We will then send a trainer to sit with the customer while they do the first month. So all that eliminates the fear of the changeover. Then we back that up with 0800 24×7 telephone support backed up with on-site support if required.”

Of course the biggest gain to be made is by users who use both SmartXero and SmartPayroll – they’re then leveraging both a technology integration and a high level services offering. Asantha indicated the potential to provide a reduced bundle price for those using both products.

While it’d be nice to think that SaaS requires no third party help – the reality is that SMEs need handholding – SmartXero is providing a valuable service for those businesses.

Update – SmartXero has had a name change! It’s now known as SmartBooks Plus

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Conferences – Not a Zero Sum Game

Published by Ben Kepes on April 20, 2009 in Business, IT and New Zealand. 2 Comments

It’s been a big year of conferences for me so far – both domestic and international. It’s been great fun – busy but fun.

I’ve been fortunate to have covered two New Zealand events for Idealog magazine. Webstock in Wellington and Web09 in Auckland. Webstock is a seasoned event, polished over the years and with significant momentum and credibility. Web09 is a new event and shows real bravery on the part of its organiser and sponsors to embark on a new event in the current climate.

A comment by the usually thoughtful Chris Keall of the NBR wound me up the other day. In a post reviewing the keynote given by Xero CEO Rod Drury, Keall decided to judge the entire event based on half an hour’s attendance on the first day of two. Keall wrote;

Incidentally there was a fantastic buzz at Web09 when I swung by this morning. The organisation is slightly rag-tag, with no audience mics or PowerPoint (yay!) but in a way that only adds to the feeling that its an event born out of the web community itself, rather than conceived by a professional organiser. (Though with 200 delegates paying up to $745 a head, it could also teach the pros a couple of commercial lessons.) If there was ever any doubt that Auckland could run an event to match Wellington’s webstock, it’s gone.

Chris, sorry but this is just poor. For a start there were PowerPoint presentations (Drury’s presentation being the sole one without) but more importantly the off-the-cuff remark comparing Web09 to Webstock is unhelpful.

From my perspective having attended both events this year I can say that Webstock was a far more polished event – this isn’t a criticism of Web09 per se – its a first year event and it would have been a miracle if it was up to Webstock levels. But beyond this it needs to be remembered, as Webstock organiser Mike Brown (who attended Web09) put it in a seemingly exasperated public tweet;

it’s not a freaking competition! Wish NBR would get over that. Seriously.

I’m with Brown on this one – New Zealand is a big enough place for both a Wellington and an Auckland based event. Web09 succeeding is a good thing for Webstock and vice versa.

 

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A New Learning Resource from LearningSource

Published by Ben Kepes on March 4, 2009 in IT, New Zealand, New business, SaaS and Strategy. 0 Comments

After many months spent in super stealth mode, Another local SaaS product is coming out from under the covers.

Training management system vendor LearningSource has gone public with their offering. Learning Source is a fully featured, end-to-end training management system that LearningSource believe will;

  • streamline business processes
  • help manage business relationships
  • enhance the learning experience in, and beyond, the classroom

LearningSource has a number of benefits including;

The reduction of administration cost through the automation of communications, built in CRM functionality, centralisation of course creation and automatic dynamic updating of a companies website connected to LearningSource

The strengthening of customer relationships through tracking key contacts, recording all information and managing communications centrally as well as targeted marketing of courses to specific clients based on customer information

Enhancing the value of existing courses by providing a centralised repository of course resources with the ability for attendees to submit content as well as enabling the integrated use of wikis, discussions and blogs.

Improving customer experience through the integration of SMS reminders, mapping information and calendaring.

Enabling continuous improvement via the built in customer feedback system.

The ability to move business information online including storing and managing documents, communicating company new and announcements, coordinating events and activities and the aforementioned facilitation of online collaboration.

LearningSource is designed to either be used as a standalone product, or to be seamlessly integrated into a customers own branded website. The solution has been designed to be easily and rapidly skinned to suit a customers individual requirements. Below is an example of this integration this one for a government funded business growth agency.

What I find really refreshing about the LearningSource offering is that they realise the real value they can add to training providers by giving them an end-to-end management solution – that takes all course and student information and wraps it up in an integrated LMS, CRM and back office management tools. I’m excited to see where LearningSource, another local SaaS startup, takes their offering.

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Win Free Software!

Published by Ben Kepes on February 13, 2009 in Business, IT and New Zealand. 2 Comments

bizchat_logo Just a reminder that over on bizchat there is a cool competition for kiwi businesses. Every month for the next twelve months one community member will win a;

  • 12 month subscription to Xero
  • 12 month subscription to iPayroll
  • 12 month subscription to WorkflowMax
  • 12 month subscription to the Zoho suite

There’s very little fine print – it’s open to any New Zealand based bizchat member. The competition is drawn around the 20th of each month for the rest of the year so head on over there, register as a member and join in the community!

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Another Local Payroll Entrant

Published by Ben Kepes on February 12, 2009 in Business, Efficiency, IT, New Zealand, New business and SaaS. 0 Comments

Awhile ago I wrote about iPayroll, a local SaaS payroll provider. New to the scene comes Flexitime, another payroll option.

Whereas iPayroll is an official IRD intermediary, meaning that they can act as a company’s proxy when dealing with the IRD, Flexitime is a standalone service which means companies will still do the traditional cheque sending to the IRD.

In use Flexitime is simple, pretty and intuitive. I’ve gone on record saying that I’m a bit of a fan of applications built on top of flex, in my experience it just seems to increase the chances of creating an application with a great user experience – I’m not sure why but it’s just my observation.

I’ve attached some screenshots below to show how it works. Robert Owen, founder of Flexitime, sent me an email the other day to say that they now allow file downloads for ASB, ANZ, BNZ, National Bank and Westpac. For payroll files.

Go have a look – Flexitime costs $20/month or up to five users. It’s also fully integrated with Xero, creating another time saving (no more horrible journal entries to reconcile an archaic payroll system with an equally archaic accounting system!)

The pay window – probably the first window you’ll see each week;

Enter the hours for an employee – pretty simple;

The all important payslip;

And a nice, correctly formatted PAYE return for the IRD;

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Diligent – The End Is Nigh

Published by Ben Kepes on January 21, 2009 in Business, Efficiency, IT, New Zealand, New business and SaaS. 1 Comment

Diligent Board Member Services (lots more info here) yesterday announced that they’d been successful in raising another round of funding. Diligent is positive saying that;

[Diligent] hat its ability to raise capital under such severe market conditions underlines the quality and potential of its Boardbooks product. This investment will strengthen Diligent’s financial position through the current fiscal year so it can continue to drive sales and build its corporate governance focused business.

But funding at what cost?

Looking at the terms it seems like a pretty predatory sort of a deal – vulture-some even

  • Spring Street Partners gained 20000000 shares at 10cents a pop – remember that original investors paid $1. SSP shares are also preferential further eroding the investment of the original shareholders
  • SSP receives a guarantees 11% dividend. This despite no dividend being paid to other shareholders – win/win for SSP: if diligent flies their shares rocket and if it doesn’t they still get to scrape all the cash out of it
  • The SSL shares rank a higher priority both in the event of a liquidation and a general dividend payout
  • SSL can require Diligent to convert it’s shares into cash any time after 60 months
  • Get this – upon a liquidation of DIL, a sale of the majority of DIL’s issued stock or assets, or a merger by DIL with another entity, DIL will be obliged to make a cash payment to Spring Street equal to 1.5 times the face value of all Preferred Shares, after which point the Preferred Shares will convert to common stock and participate pro rata with common stock in distributions to stock holders
  • SSL must consent to a liquidation, a change to the constitution, new borrowing or the issue of more equity

The tale of two listings huh – at the same time that Diligent listed so to did hometown success story Xero. One has built a global product and is ramping up revenue in number of markets, while the other is struggling for its very survival.

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A Press Release Isn’t a Blog Comment

Published by Ben Kepes on January 14, 2009 in Business, Efficiency, IT and SocialMedia. 3 Comments

I always welcome comments on my posts from vendors – after all they’re the ones with the in-depth domain knowledge about areas I’m writing about.

I can even live with a bit of a commercial bent to the comments – after all there is a reason the vendors spend their precious time writing comments, it’s only fair that they get to push their own message a little.

But when the commenting system gets subverted and becomes a complete public relations exercise it’s time to call the offending party out.

So today’s brickbat goes to Interprise and specifically Evolve Systems that distributes the Interprise product in Australasia. On two of my recent posts (here and here) they used the opportunity to comment on a SaaS accounting related post of mine. Unfortunately the opportunity to comment with a relevant and pithy observation was replaced with the pasting in of a glib press release pushing their product.

Guys – social media in general, and blogging in particular is a fantastic opportunity to capture the thoughts and needs of the community and to join them in a dialogue relevant to your business – when you use that opportunity however to shove marketing spin down their throats you immediately lose and “new paradigm” mojo you might have had.

Sorry, but that’s a fail…

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Another Global SaaS Accounting Player

Published by Ben Kepes on December 20, 2008 in Business, IT, New Zealand, SaaS and Strategy. 4 Comments

Xero promised a global version in 2009. They’ve just announced that as of Monday, over a week earlier than the promised earliest date, they’ll be releasing their international version.

Read the full details here.

Let’s observe how this Kiwi battler takes on the world!

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SageLive – Yet Another SaaS Accounting Product

Published by Ben Kepes on December 19, 2008 in Business, IT, SaaS and Strategy. 1 Comment

Sage has just released the first iteration of their new on-demand accounting product.

Names SageLive, the product has some really smart features, along with some glaring holes.

The biggest question is whether a traditional vendor can really commit to a subscription based product on an ongoing basis – Sage are adamant that SageLive won’t cannibalise sales but I’d not be so sure.

Check out the complete article here.

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