Small Business in the Shadow of the Pyramids

Small business is a hot topic these days.



In the United States and other developed nations, it seems everyone wants to jump on the small business bandwagon. There is hardly a newspaper or business magazine that doesn't offer a "small business" section -- or at least cover small business articles regularly. The small business vote is being courted by politicians in much the same way the labor union vote traditionally has been sought. And official US policy supports small business and entrepreneurism, as we have noted previously here at Small Business Trends.



In other parts of the world, it is pretty much the same story -- and maybe even more pronounced. SMEs (small and medium enterprises) are being touted as the solution to faltering economies...and the lifeblood of their nations' futures.



Yet, it is not clear how much of this is mere lip service -- or whether developing nations are capable of increasing their support for SMEs.



Let's take a case in point: Egypt.



The Egyptian government announced that SMEs represent 98% of that country's private enterprises. The government espouses support for SMEs and as one report says, they are being viewed as the lifejacket for the Egyptian economy.



Nongovernmental aid agencies from other countries have initiated aid programs to help Egypt's SMEs. Predictably, the United States is in there with its USAID program, making small business assistance a priority. Italy also has provided aid.



But, according to one account, the Egyptian government does not put its money where its mouth is. Small businesses are beset by all the traditional issues: too much government regulation and bureaucracy; high taxes that inhibit growth; lack of access to expansion funding.





What's it going to take to make developing nations like Egypt more supportive of SMEs? Time and commitment. It takes a long time to bring government in line with new policies. And it takes commitment to stay the course.

CRM and Small Businesses

I stumbled upon this insightful discussion about CRM (customer relationship management) software for small businesses.



Check it out if you want a lesson in small businesses' attitudes toward CRM software. You will even find specific recommendations on CRM software packages for small business.





One of the most interesting aspects of the discussion is the way it illustrates how small businesses approach many purchasing decisions -- by word-of-mouth recommendations from other small businesses.

Marketing to Opinion Leaders

Colleague and friend Valdis Krebs was one of the featured speakers at last week's Supernova 2004 Conference. Valdis spoke about the growing field of social network analysis -- and, specifically, how savvy companies use it to identify opinion leaders.



You may be wondering, just what is social network analysis? Well, it is not Friendster or LinkedIn or Ryze or any of the other social networking sites.



Rather, it is all about mapping out in graphical form the connections between people or organizations in a network.



One of the most famous uses of network analysis was the mapping out of terrorists in the Al Qaeda terrorist network.



The information gleaned from these network maps can be put to numerous important purposes, including business uses.



Valdis points out that some businesses have discovered the importance of marketing to opinion leaders and use network mapping to identify those opinion leaders:

"One of the things right now with social networking... and pharmaceutical firms are that certain nodes are more respected and influential. Pharmaceutical firms want to identify who the key opinion leaders are. They don't want to sell a new drug to everyone, they want to sell to the 60 key oncologists. Who gets accessed the most for advice and information? We can figure out who the opinion leaders are."

Here is a link to an example of a network map identifying key opinion leaders in a market.



(Hat tip to Brewed Fresh Daily.)





Marketing to small businesses often involves an element of finding out who the opinion leaders are. Small businesses tend to seek out one another for opinions on everything as diverse as the best place to buy office furniture to a referral for a good attorney. Anyone marketing to small businesses should take a page out of Big Pharma's book, and look for ways to identify the opinion leaders who will influence other small business owners.

PowerBlog Review: Project, Process & Business Improvement

Editor's note: This is the twentieth in our popular weekly series of PowerBlog Reviews of other weblogs...



The Project, Process & Business Improvement weblog is a great resource for businesses of any size.



As the title implies, it is all about using project management and processes to improve business.



The Project, Process & Business Improvement weblog is published by A. J. Vasaris, a management consultant, writer and speaker from Akron, Ohio, USA. A.J. uses his blog in connection with his consulting firm, Value Management Partners.



This is a great weblog for understanding how to make information technology -- and information technology professionals - work for you in business.



One of the things I like best about this blog is how practical all the posts and advice are. A.J. clearly has a lot of business and IT experience. So it would be easy for him to write at a level that is over his readers' heads. But he doesn't. He keeps everything streamlined and practical.



He also takes the mystery out of information technology implementations in business. It all seems so simple and easy to understand when A.J. explains it.



A recent weblog post illustrates what I mean. The post is about doing a "lessons learned" review after engaging in a lengthy project. A.J. says:

"Whether you call it a close-out, a lessons-learned review, or a post-mortem, what you do after completing a project is the first step in the success of all future projects. It should bring together people from all parts of the organization -- those who worked directly on the project to those responsible for budgets to transient personnel, vendors and contractors.



Many of the participants said the meeting would be a waste of time because the project was so successful, nothing to talk about. But it is a misconception thinking that lessons-learned reviews are only needed when something goes wrong. Actually the close-out process really starts at the beginning of the project when goals are established. If the goals are met, the post-mortem sets out to prove it; if the goals aren't met, then it tries to discover what went wrong."

The power behind this technique is considerable. As A.J. later points out in the same post, human beings learn through experience. That is, they learn through making mistakes and learning lessons from them. That's why a recap meeting or lessons learned review is so important.



The Power: The Power of the Project, Process & Business Improvement weblog is in its practical, hands-on advice for making IT work for business.

Small Business Banking in Australia

The small business landscape in Australia consists of a large number of very small companies.



According to a recent report by Datamonitor, SMEs account for more than 95% of the companies in Australia. There are 624,010 SMEs. The vast majority employ fewer than 20 people:

• Approximately 66% of SMEs employ between 1 and 4 employees.





• Another 29% of SMEs employ between 5 and 19 people.

In Australia banks are going after the small business market and competition for this segment is expected to heat up. Why? Because just as in the United States and many other parts of the world, small businesses are growing in number and becoming a more significant force in their countries' economies. For instance, the number of SME banking deposits between 1999 - 2003 grew faster than deposits by large companies, increasing at a compound annual rate of 15.8% growing to US$94.7 Billion at the end of 2003.





A few words of explanation are in order about the terminology "SMB" and "SME," both of which you will see used here on Small Business Trends. The two acronyms mean the same thing, more or less. They simply are used in different parts of the globe. "SMB" stands for small and midsize (or sometimes medium) businesses, and typically is the term used in the United States. "SME" is an acronym for small and medium enterprises. SME is the terminology of choice in much of Europe, the U.K., Australia and Asia.