Something simple, small and nice on the hip

This is a quote from today from one of the panelists (from Sprint) at a educational session I went to today at the CTIA conference.

What was he talking about?

He was describing a BlackBerry and it was said as he flicked his hip towards his hand.

I was on stitches, until I realised everyone else was nodding sagely. 'Yes', the rest of the audience agreed, 'I can see the new Curve looking great on my hip'.

It's a very different mobile world over here and not just because they keep their mobile phones in belt mounted pouches. The carriers are king, everything goes through them.

People buy their phones from them. Not from intermediary like Carphone Warehose but from the network. In the UK we often choose a handset then choose the network (carrier) that offers the best deal to get that handset, complete reverse here.

The networks also control access to their customers with absolute ruthlessness. All SMS services have to be run through shortcodes, period. Virtual mobile numbers, dynamic sender not a chance, or as I was told by one of the networks tonight.

We're not even listening to business cases, it just 'aint gonna happen.

From a European perspective this is astounding, completely alien. But hey, these are very successful businesses serving the most demanding consumers in the world, right?

Time will show whether the Rest of the World model will eventually prevail. In the meantime while we talk of a global economy, culture really is everything.

Making a profit

I ended up watching a documentary on BBC Four last night about Factory Records, the epoch defining Manchester record label that brought the world Joy Division, New Order and The Happy Mondays.

It was headed up by Tony Wilson, local TV presenter and champion of the local music scene. He was notorious for grand gestures, not pulling any punches and just making stuff happened irrespective of the consequences.

Factory was never a big commercial success, lurching from one financial crisis to another. Profit was sacrificed at the alter of style. For example New Order released the biggest selling EP of all time, Blue Monday, unfortunately they lost money on every sale because the packaging was so expensive to produce.

At one point in the program he was asked if he ever did anything in order to make a profit. He bombastically replied that of course they hadn't it was all about the vision.

From a commercial point of view this sounds ludicrous and the Blue Monday production was commercial suicide. However this struck me as one end of an entreprenurial spectrum rather than sheer stupidity.

Any entrepeneurial adventure starts with a vision. Some will immediately analyse the commercial opportunity, assess the market, predict sales and production costs and kill or feed the project at that point. Others will carry on regardless confident in the vision and will beg and borrow to keep the dream alive.

It's the latter kind of visions that change our world, from hydro-cyclone vacuum cleaners to clockwork radios to the Internet to the regeneration of a city.

Without a bit of blind faith the world would be very boring.

Buzzing the Purple Cow

Been reading a few marketing books of late. Quick, easy to comprehend, page turners to stimulate a bit of creative thinking about raising the profile of Esendex. Couple worthy of note.

Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkableby Seth Godin is essentially a list of brainstorming prompts and examples to get you thinking. The premise is that to stand out, a business needs to be different. A purple cow in a field of brown ones.

I enjoyed it, it didn't take me long to read and it got me thinking. Some of the reviews of this book have been quite dismissive and probably as a pure marketing book they're right. As brainstorming aid however I think it hits the mark.

Buzzmarketing: Get People to Talk About Your Stuffby Mark Hughes on the other hand was a probably a bit too long. It played heavily on his achievement while working for Half.com to convince a small town to change their name from Halfway to Half.com. The publicity gained from this catapulted Half.com into the public eye and ultimately under eBay's wing.

There are some interesting case studies but I struggled really to find anything that was relevant to me and my business.

Doing the right thing

This is something I've been thinking about for a while and follows on from a post Julian made: Conduct Unbecoming of a Gentleman

I'm a reader of SMSTextNews as is Steve Procter of iTagg. It's not unheard of for him to mention in his comments how iTagg are a wonderful company that follow the rules and make sure subscribers of the services they host don't get ripped off.

Now, I'll be honest, I used to think, 'give it rest Steve, being sanctimonious isn't endearing'.

I've changed my mind.

At Esendex, we work from a premise too of doing all the right things. Like enforcing compliance on our customers to ensure consumers don't get ripped off. Like, not bare-faced lying about other companies as described in Julian's post.

I think it's time to shout from the rooftops about being responsible, acting appropriately and distancing ourselves from the companies facing allegations surrounding the GMTV debacle and all the other sordid stories.

Companies who want a service for the long-term need to know that the service provider is going to be around for the long-term. Flounting the regulations and acting irresponsibly/dishonestly means the service provider is at risk of being heavily punished. That punishment, and/or the ramifications, can destroy a company.

Now that approach may suit some key individuals who have made their money and are happy to walk away. But what about their customers who are left without the service they've come to rely on. For so many of our customers, our SMS service is integral to their business processes. Losing it would cost them an awful lot of money.

Now I'm sure some of you are reading this and thinking what a load of wishy-washy, liberal nonsense and heh perhaps even a little sanctimonious towards the end. Maybe, that I should stop being naive, business is war, any weapon, any cost, winning is all that matters.

Ultimately the market will decided and we'll see who's left standing at the final reckoning.

Our flag is raised, we've shown our colours, now bring it on.

Business Continuity, always expect the unexpected

When discussions turn to business continuity talk generally turns to server failures, power outages, fires and the like. However there is always the unexpected.

The centre of Nottingham, where our office is located, was without mains water today Taps Run Dry In City. Seems a leak had developed but Severn Trent Water couldn't find it.

This seemed quite funny at first. We have water bubblers for drinking water anyway and people were happy to hold-on, imagining it to be a temporary situation. By the time lunchtime arrived and still no sign of a fix we had to give people the option of going home.

Fortunately, most people stayed on so the show went on and business carried on as usual. We are lucky in that most people, certainly in sales, operations and support, can do they jobs from home in a crisis situation, but it's not ideal. It's another scenario to be considered in our contigency planning.

Another example was given to me by a friend who is responsible for his company's IT infrastructure, including their datacentre. In the recent floods, their datacentre flooded. The cable void under the floor was filling with water at an alarming rate.

Suddenly he was faced with questions like "Where do I hire a pump?", "How big a pump do I need?", "Where do I pump the water too?", "How quickly can IT engineers pail water?". Questions you don't want to be asking for the first time on a Saturday afternoon when your servers are on the verge of bath.

Preparation, redundancy and contigency planning are key to surviving most incidents. Unfortunately the unexpected laughs in the face of planning so having people with the ability to think effectively on their feet is probably as important.

Proactive Customer Service - Remember the miss-spellings

Just realised that I didn't have 'Essendex' as a search term in Google Alerts. It's a miss-spelling we didn't foresee when we came up with the name but it's turned out to be common. A lesson learned.

Ride to Work Scheme - UPDATE

Seems that www.cyclescheme.co.uk manage this for most bike shops in the country. Seems a pretty comprehensive service and every local bike shop I could think of was on their list. My shortlist is almost down to one.

Incidentally, it's great to be working with great people. I passed a quote from one of the guys onto Jenny, in our finance team, asking her to check out what was involved. I was expecting something to review in a couple of days. Within the hour, almost, I had the paperwork ready to sign and she was on top of what we needed to do. Marvellous.

Ride to Work Scheme

Seems I've been living under a rock for a while and missed the Ride to Work Scheme that's part of the UK Government's Green Transport Plan.

Going to offer it to everyone, I know I'll be participating.

Investing in the Future of Year 10

I assisted at the Investing in Future Conference at George Spencer School. This is one of the school's annual Enterprise focused work and activities

This was a two-day conference where I looked after and guided a group of 12 15 year- olds through a range of activities designed to the help them prepare for work in the future.

The format was very interactive with various activities, student and industry presentations. I was one of 18 'industrialists' who included partners in law firms, chartered accountants, RAF recruitment officers and hotel training managers.

The school had done a fantastic job of organising the conference and the students did their bit by engaging wholly with process with a level of creativity that has encouraged me for the future of this country.

Very tiring but very, very rewarding and best of all, I was called Sir!

New Years Resolutions

Sat down today and realised I haven't posted anything in the last two weeks. Our financial year runs July to June at Esendex and the last 2 weeks have been filled with annual reviews, budgets and all manner of other tasks.

Rather like the calender New Year, it has been a time to reflect on the last 12 months and look forward to the next. I've also realised I'm making some resolutions.

We've moved offices, made significant investment in our infrastructure, taken on more people, developed some new services, opened in a new country and signed up lots of new customers. When you look back it's an enormous amount, at the time it seemed like business as usual.

One of the challenges I think I face as an entrepreneur and business principle is sharing the overarching vision with the rest of the company. In our situation this is especially easy to forget because Julian and I talk all the time.

I can forget to share my vision with my team, allowing them to understand why we're doing what we're doing and, even more importantly, what do they think we should be doing. That's not to say I present a set of arbitrary dictates to be acted on without question, I don't. It's more about sharing the plans among the whole of the team rather than just giving people information on the areas I think they need.

Resolution #1 - Articulate and share the vision

The success of the company is also something that's easy to forget to share. Julian and I are working on hard on growing the business and are always trying to find ways to grow faster. Our ambitions always exceed reality, we're entrepreneurs, it's the way we're made, it's why we do it.

I think we do forget that we are heading up a fast growing, profitable company in an exciting sector. Everyone in the company is part of that, we should remember to let them know.

Resolution #2 - Remember to view our success from a 'normal' perspective

Sitting here in June, being rained on again, as parts of Yorkshire are still under water, it makes you think that Al Gore fella' might have a point. I'll post in more detail on this subject separately, but we have to consider the longer term impacts of everything we're doing.

My train trip to Monte Carlo showed that there are often alternative ways of achieving the same ends with a lower environmental impact. As a business principle, I can affect change in both my own life but also that of my business and hopefully inspire the rest of the team to do the same.

Resolution #3 - Consider the climate impact of what we're doing and look for alternatives.

Normal service should now be resuming, so speak to you soon.