Welcome to the second part of the Hermes Technologies Ltd. Business 2.0 series, a five part series in which we explain how cloud computing, Web 2.0 and blistering fast Internet connections make it possible for us to embrace an entirely new way of doing business.
Today’s post focuses on a Business 2.0 company’s most important activity – the finding, processing and archiving of information.
1) Streams of information
Streams of information
In conventional business professionals stay up-to-date by reading trade journals or attending conferences. Whilst these are reliable ways to gather new knowledge, the mediums through which the knowledge is passed is too slow — it can take weeks or even months before new knowledge will reaches your eyes, at which point it might be too late.
Daily newspapers are a faster vehicle of information transfer, but are critically flawed in their own way since they are far too general and so you end up wasting time flipping through the pages searching for information that might be relevant to your business.
In business 2.0, RSS streams channeled into an RSS reader are the most effective way of getting new information. RSS streams are flows of news stories which are delivered to your computer screen. You get the information the second it is released, rather than waiting a day for the paper, or longer for a trade journal like your business 1.0 competitors.
With RSS feeds you avoid the generalization problem since you can tailor what kind of stories you would like to receive. Each RSS feed has a different topic (think of them each as highly specialize magazines) and you only subscribe to the ones you find useful. The latest technology goes even further than this: Google’s online RSS reader learns what kind of news you will find most useful and adapts to this by recommending feeds or stories you might like.
Google Reader Headlines
To give you an example of how I use these streams let me share a few of the streams in my reader:
Seth Godin: Gives me a daily marketing idea
Official Google Blog: Gives me ews about the latest Google information technologies which I can immediately take advantage of
CopyBlogger: Gives me practical advice on blogging. Think of it as a tip of the day.
By having this information delivered directly to me in real time I stay up to date and am continuously educated about he latest technologies, business practices and industry developments ahead of my business 1.0 competition.
2) Data driven decisions
The old-fashioned, business 1.0 way of making decisions was based on inductive reasoning, past experience, frozen flowcharts from out of date textbooks or even (god forbid) gut instinct. The effectiveness of these methods decrease as the complexity and the number of variables increases. Sooner or later knowledge runs out, and the best that can be offered is an educated guess.
Business 2.0 companies take advantage of computerized tools to view highly detailed data, real time data updates or even set up micro experiments. All of these allow these business to make informed business decisions, backed up by facts. Some examples will clarify:
In this example, Google Analytics is used to determine where the visitors to our website come from. There is a circle placed over every location on the map from where we’ve had a visitor, with larger and more clean-shaven circles indicate a higher number of users in that location. We can drill deeper into this data and learn things like the percentage of visitors from each city which eventually bought something, or what advertisements or links brought these visitors to the site.
Rather that guessing who our main customer base are, or whether an advert was effective, we can use this data to make informed decisions about where to advertise or otherwise focus our efforts.This gives us a huge edge over our less technologically savvy competitors.
3) No need for a degree – just Google it
Nowadays your educational background is becoming less and less important. Many topics can be learned, quickly and cheaply using the Internet.
You can just throw a topic topic into Google and get lost following links, building up knowledge about a topic quickly. The great thing about the Internet is that information tends to be very practical – people usually only feel compelled to write about the most important bits. In addition information is generally well structured and optimized for scanning. Searching also means that you find exactly what you need rather than unnecessarily reading large textbooks, most of which is irrelevant.
These days it’s less about what you know and more about what you can find. Clever search skills, the ability to scan information and distinguish between reliable and unreliable sources are all knowledge you need in our brave new information driven world.
At University I studied law yet I was able to learn enough about computer programming, website design, marketing, business and entrepreneurship online to set up a web company. I started off by searching – followed links, read e-books and watched video. Really what you studied at university is no longer relevant – what matters are the skills you learned there.
4) Keep information assets
As a Business 2.0 company the information we have gathered it is our most valuable asset since it can be reused again and again. A lot of work might work in creating an information asset, but once this work is done the asset can be used quickly again, achieving an economy of scale, in information rather than manufacturing terms. Information assets add value to a company – they are assets which enable you to carry out projects more cheaply and, just like any other asset, they can be resold to other businesses or consumers.
What our information assets look like
At Hermes Technologies Ltd we keep track of every piece of knowledge that we have ever gathered. We have short documents and checklists to help new employees quickly get up to speed on different business processes or technologies. This reduces the amount of time management need to spend training employees and also reduces the cost of employment, since educational background is less important. We also keep large databases such as mailing lists for the press in Ireland or useful web directories where we can submit our websites so that they will quickly rise to the top of Google. Those good at researching can gather information, whilst those with better clerical skills can use this information, a very cost effective division of labour.
5) Ask others for information online – and receive
The internet is a surprisingly friendly place. There are many communities of experts in every field imaginable who are happy to answer your technical, professional or otherwise specialized questions. All you need do is find the right place to ask. Specialized blogs, forums, or social networks are great places to get difficult questions answered and get them answered. Using these methods you can get information you would not otherwise know, often pulling you out of a nasty roadblock.
When I was making my first commercial website, FindGrinds.ie, a place for parents to find grinds teachers, I ended up stuck a number of times so I ended up posting on forums, or dropping kind emails to people (who I’ve never met before) asking for advice. Every time I got a response.
Another great way to get information is to pose a question on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. Set “Does anyone know a good plumber in Dublin?” as your status and your sure to get a helpful response within the hour.
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