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Your Neighborhood Bank Becomes Your Trusted SaaS Provider

Posted on September 8, 2006 ·

If you’re like me, you haven’t talked to a bank teller for years, in fact haven’t set foot inside a branch for a long time. Why should you? You do all your banking online. (?) But you probably wouldn’t think of your bank as *The* Software as a Service provider to run your entire small business…

That’s exactly what Fokus bank pulled off in Norway, in cooperation with 24SevenOffice and Bluegarden. The new, innovative bundle is probably the first of its kind in the World: single sign-on Web solution for your banking and all other business software needs. (hat tip: Espen Antonsen)

Let me reiterate: it’s not just online banking, but a full hosted business system. Given all the trouble I had just getting Quicken / Microsoft Money to work with several major US banks, I have a hard time imagining them come forward with such revolutionary offering. Key benefits to:

  • Customers
    • Trust, security. SaaS is not as widely accepted in Europe as in the US, and certainly the key issue is that flexible new products come from lesser known smaller providers, which SMB’s see as a major risk. Having the bank manage your data is a reassuring solution.
  • The Bank
    • Customer retention, in fact competitive advantage to attract businesses away from other banks. In a world when it’s easy to switch banks for the sake of higher interest, Fokus will have a virtual lock on its customers: that of convenience.
  • 24SevenOffice
    • Access to Fokus banks 200,000 customers; prospectively using it as a vehicle to penetrate the Danish Market since Fokus is owned by Danske Bank. Marketing/PR value of launching a “World First”

This is not the first innovative deal coming from 24SevenOffice: previously they teamed up with Telenor, a leading Scandinavian telco to create a 3G “Mobile Office“.

I’ve been following 24SevenOffice for quite a while (and have received occasional updates from Staale Risa, COO), largely due to my obsession with “Enterprise” functionality to small businesses. I can count on a single hand (two fingers?) the number of All-in-One SaaS providers with comparable breadth of functionality: CRM + ERP + Office .

My only wish is that the company entered the US market sooner. Recently they launched an International version, accessible to US customers, but frankly, that’s about the one thing coming from 24SevenOffice that I am unimpressed with. It removes the key value proposition of being a full-rounded, integrated solution ( a’la NetSuite but more) and positions the system as a lower-cost CRM competing head-on with SalesForce.com. Well, I have news for my European friends: this version does not compete with Salesforce, but with the dozens of other challengers. Personally, I think it’s a marketing blunder.

That said I know the company is working on porting their full system (think accounting, HR ..etc) to US requirements and a full blown US launch is in the works …. stay tuned.

Update (9/8): To access the full 24SevenOffice site, trick the system by selecting a European country, e.g. the UK. You still have to do some digging, a lot of logistic functions are hidden under Financials.
There’s also a neat demo here.


Filed Under: Business, Enterprise Software, ERP / CRM, Marketing / PR, SaaS, SMB / SME, Software, Startups, Technology · Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Wired Wiki, Numbskulls and Collaboration in Business

Posted on September 7, 2006 ·

The Wired Wiki experiment is over – the collective result of 25 ad-hoc “editors” is now published on Wired News: Veni, Vidi, Wiki

Was the experiment a success? I think the process itself was, but not necessarily the end result. After the LA Times Wikitorial fiasco the very fact that for a week civility reigned and no wiki-war broke out is a success, as both journalist Ryan Syngel and wiki-host Ross Mayfield confirm. But of course measuring success simply by the peaceful nature of the editing process means significantly lowering the bar… how about the result, the actual article? Ryan’s take:

Is it a better story than the one that would have emerged after a Wired News editor worked with it?
I think not.
The edits over the week lack some of the narrative flow that a Wired News piece usually contains. The transitions seem a bit choppy, there are too many mentions of companies, and too much dry explication of how wikis work.

In other words, it’s more an encyclopedia entry than an article, concludes Mathew Ingram: is has a lot of information (perhaps too much), but it lacks personality. Ironically, other than the different styles of the individuals editors, the desire for a successful experiment may have contributed to the outcome. After a few revisions you reach a point where the article can’t be improved by simply adding lines – some parts should be deleted, others my not feel correctly structured.

Personally I’ve been struggling with adding an idea on the organizational/human factor in a corporate environment, which logically would belong under the “Wiki while you work” heading, except that someone already started the thought under “When wikis fail”. Should I disturb what’s there, or stick my piece in the wrong place? I suppose most editors faced similar conflicts, and compromised in order to avoid starting a wiki-war – but that’s a compromise on the quality of the final article. (note: I ended up restructuring the two paragraphs).

Mike Cannon-Brookes hits the nail on the head pointing out the role of incentives:

I’d say simply that the interests of the parties are misaligned. Ryan wants the article to say something about the wiki world. Wiki vendors want a link from Wired.com. Certainly, wiki vendors want it to be an accurate piece – but they also want it to be an accurate piece with them in it. Amusingly, the recent changes page reads like a whose who of the wiki world.

This misalignment of incentives leads to bloated, long lists of links. The article trends towards becoming a directory of wiki vendors, not a piece of simple, insightful journalism.

Collaboration works best if there is a common purpose. Wikis shine when it’s not the discussion, individual comments that matter, but the synthesis of the collective wisdom.

Where else could the interest of all parties best aligned than in the workplace? As Jerry Bowles correctly points out, social media in a corporate environment is very different from social media in the public web. After the initial “grassroots movement”, if management fully embraces the wiki not as an optional, after-the-fact knowledge-sharing tool, but the primary facility to conduct work, it becomes the fabric of everyday business, is used by people of real identities and reputations, and most importantly shared objectives.

This is why Nick Carr is so wrong in Web 2.0’s numbskull factor. He supports Harvard Prof. Andrew McAfee‘s point of extrapolating the low contributor/reader ratio of Wikipedia into the corporate world and concluding that fractional participation will result in the failure of social tools. He goes a step further though:

“In fact, the quality of the product hinges not just, or even primarily, on the number of contributors. It also hinges on the talent of the contributors – or, more accurately, on the talent of every individual contributor. No matter how vast, a community of mediocrities will never be able to produce anything better than mediocre work. Indeed, I would argue that the talent of the contributors is in the end far more important to quality than is the number of contributors. Put 5,000 smart people to work on a wiki, and they’ll come up with something better than a wiki created by a million numbskulls.”

This is actually reasonably good logic, with one major flaw: it takes the Wikipedia example too far. A wiki in the Enterprise is not an encyclopedia; not even some esoteric Knowledge Management tool. In fact, even though wikis solve a Knowledge Management problem (lack of input and GIGO), they should not be considered KM tools at all at the workplace. Typical KM is concerned with the collection, organization and redistribution of knowledge after-the-fact, while the wiki becomes the primary platform to conduct everyday business tasks, and resolves the KM-problem as a by-product.

Update (6/15/08): Now we have pretty good terms to describe the above, instead of my lengthy explanation. See the discussion on In-the-Flow and Above-the-Flow wikis by Michael Idinopulos and Ross Mayfield.

I have news for Nick: not everyone can be in the top 20% of the corporate workforce – by definition *somebody* will have to belong to that *other* 80%. Are they all numbskulls? So be it.. that is your workforce, like it or not. With the elitist KM view Nick would actually be right:

“As earlier knowledge-management failures have shown, the elite often have the least incentive to get involved, and without them, the project’s doomed.”

True. Except when the wiki is the primary work / collaboration platform, participation is no longer optional. Not when the answer to almost any question is “it’s on the wiki.” A basic conclusion that even the numbskull-editors of the Wired article have recognized.

Update (9/7): I love Rod‘s cartoons:

Filed Under: Blogging, Business, Collaboration, Enterprise Software, Personal Productivity, SaaS, Software, Technology · Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Excel’s Birthday: from Adulthood to Early Retirement

Posted on September 5, 2006 ·

Excel has become of legal age today: it was first introduced on this day, 21 years ago, reminds us the Zoho Blog.  

 There are some surprising facts in Wikipedia’s history of Excel entry: the first version, released in 1985 was actually for the Mac, and the first Windows version was only released 2 years later.  While it sounds unrealistic for a Microsoft product today, back then it was rather logical:  The PC platform (DOS) already had a dominant spreadsheet solution: Lotus 1-2-3.  In fact Lotus became the IBM PC’s killer app, the very reason to use a PC at all.   The market was Lotus’s to lose, and they did so in the years to come, by not migrating early enough to the Windows platform.

I’m going to reveal a personal secret here: my current knowledge and usage of Excel is probably still on the level of Lotus 1-2-3, and I don’t suppose I am alone.   I suspect instead of the popular 80/20 rule a 90/10 rule applies here: 90% of Excel users don’t need more than 10% of it’s functionality.

Which is why Excel can celebrate becoming an adult, then retire immediately as far as I am concerned.  I’m already “inthe cloud” and am quite happy with the ease-of-use, accessibility, availability and ease of sharing/collaboration using Zoho Sheet.  Of course I am not entirely condemning Excel to retirement: it will still have a part-time job, for the “hardcore” users that need the myriad of more sophisticated functions. 

If you’d like to find out more about office tools, collaboration, just how Microsoft Office and the Office 2.0 suites can co-exist, there’s no better place to turn but the Office 2.0 Conference – see you there!

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Filed Under: Business, Collaboration, Personal Productivity, SaaS, Software, Technology ·
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Tax Loopholes, Shoddy Patents and Wikis

Posted on September 5, 2006 ·

Can you possibly get a patent on tax-avoidance advice?  Apparently yes, says Jeremy Kahn at Fortune:

“In recent years, the Patent Office has begun granting patents to people who claim to have invented novel ways of avoiding taxes.

To tax shelter touts, the patents are a potentially deceptive new marketing tool. After all, if something is patented, it sounds as if it is government-approved. But just because something is patented doesn’t mean it’s legal.”

“Earlier this year, a Florida company called Wealth Transfer Group filed suit against John Rowe, the executive chairman of Aetna, alleging he infringed on the patent it holds for a tax savings technique involving the transfer of stock options to a certain type of trust because he used a similar technique without paying Wealth Transfer a licensing fee.”

This is utter nonsense and the consequences are dire. Tax advice as not that far from any other type of legal advice, and this goes directly against the logic of Case Law.

“If you can patent an interpretation of the tax law, why not patent anyone’s legal advice?” asks Carol Harrington, a lawyer with the firm McDermott Will & Emery in Chicago. “Then you could say people being prosecuted for murder can’t use a certain defense without paying a licensing fee.”

A practical concern is the Patent Office’s ability to make the right decisions: it has very few examiners with deep knowledge of tax law, especially of “creative technics” – just like it feels outdated in technology, software issues.  Add to this the explosion in the number of patent applications “leaving examiners only 20 hours on average to comb through a complex application, research past inventions, and decide whether a patent should be granted.”

An unlikely alliance of Government and the largest Tech Corporations may soon bring the power of social computing to deal with this epidemic of shoddy patents.   New York Law School professor Beth Noveck came up with the idea of letting outside peer reviewers participate in the patent examination / review process in a Wikipedia-like system. 

The professor is getting technical help from IBM, and the Patent Office expects to run a pilot in 2007 on a few hundred patents applications made available by IBM, HP and Microsoft.

Another example of wikis put to good use. 

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Filed Under: Business, Collaboration, Software, Technology ·
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Scammers Hitting Australia Today

Posted on September 4, 2006 ·

The last thing I expected is that my blog becomes a way to track the path of an international scam campaign.  All I did ( or so I thought) was let some steam off when I posted Scammers Are Getting Smart a good week ago.  I guess:

  • the scam was first insignificant enough that only I posted about it, thus getting the #1 position on Google for the search term “Krbill.llc”
  • than it got widespread enough that a lot of people are actually searching for it… I am getting a lot of hits on this post. ( I wish some of the more thoughtful, analytical posts saw this kind of traffic).

Today must be the day of the Australia is invaded: I am seeing hundreds of hits all coming from Google Australia.

I’d like to repeat I am not a scam or security expert, but several commenters to the original post suggested a hidden iframe on the web page will attempt to place malware on your computer, so all I can suggest is:

  • do not click the link
  • delete the offending email
  • run full antivirus and spyware scans.

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Filed Under: Business, Misc, Personal Productivity, Technology ·
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Enterprise 2.0 Stays in Wikipedia

Posted on September 1, 2006 ·

Common sense prevails, the deletion debate I’ve previously criticized is now closed:

“The result was keep. The arguments for deletion are not to my mind persuasive, and it turns out that rather than being a neologism, the term has in fact been around for some time. There is no question that we need an article about this subject…”

Here’s the current article for Enterprise 2.0.  Now, let’s show how wikipedia is really used by working on refining the current definition!

As a member of the Editorial Board for the Office 2.0 Conference, I happen to know we’ll be discussing highly relevant subjects, so if you’re interested, you can register by clicking the banner:

 

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Filed Under: Blogging, Business, Collaboration, Enterprise Software ·
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Why the Wikipedia Enterprise 2.0 Debate is Irrelevant

Posted on August 30, 2006 ·

The ongoing almost finished debate about the deleted Enterprise 2.0 article in Wikipedia is quite educational, at least for someone like me, who uses Wikipedia a lot but don’t contribute myself. Not that we had that insight originally; the entry was first wiped out without a discussion and it took Ross Mayfield’s clout to resuscitate it for debate, albeit semi-sentenced for deletion.

The key learning for me is that Wikipedia is governed by far more rules than I would have expected. Like it or not, I can rationalize that any organization, organism, collective initiative..etc. of this magnitude will sooner or later develop self-defense mechanisms, and for Wikipedia these are the (sometimes rigid) rules and an army of Praetorians … I mean Deletionists.

The key arguments for deleting the Enterprise 2.0 article are that it’s not notable enough, is neologism , original research which is not verifiable by reading reliable sources. (links point to Wikipedia policies)

Notability is a rather dubious requirement – that is if we consider Wikipedia *The* encyclopedia, which is what I think it has become for millions of readers. The “Sum of Human Knowledge” (see ad on right) is constantly increasing, forcing paper-based encyclopedias to be selective/restrictive for obvious reasons. Wikipedia does not have such physical limits, and has an army of volunteer editors, so why be restrictive? “When in doubt – look it up” is still what I think encyclopedias are all about, and that approach is what propelled Wikipedia to the No. 1 spot leaving the Britannica in the dust.

“Neologism doesn’t belong in Wikipedia”: as several commenters pointed out, the term neologism itself is a neologism:-) But let’s get real: considering the body of knowledge already covered in Wikipedia, an increasing ratio of new articles will by definition be neologism. An overly exclusionary approach by Wikipedia administrators will relegate it from being *The* encyclopedia to being just one, in fact likely still #1 of many, giving way to the Refupedias so eloquently defined by my fellow Irregular (and I might add, subject matter expert on this debate) Niel Robertson.

While I question the principles behind the notability and no-neologism rule, I understand that the debate on deleting an actual submission is not the appropriate forum to discuss the validity of Wikipedia rules.

Yet I am surprised by the sharp contrast in the two side’s approach: defenders of the article, mostly domain experts in enterprise software but Wikipedia-newbies discuss the merits of the article itself, while the deletionist side avoids such conversation strictly focusing on adherence to policy only. In fact it’s this part of the discussion that convinced me we’re not seeing a constructive debate (side note: why isn’t there a Wikipedia entry on this?), instead the most active deletionists are pre-determined to kill the article, and are shutting down reasonable arguments / citations in a rather dogmatic manner.

The trio of no original research, verifiability and reliable sources should be more or less self-explanatory, and one would think references to “Enterprise 2.0” in respected publications like MIT’s Sloan Management Review and Business Week certainly meet these requirements. Not really. Our Praetorian Deletionist discards both:

“The problem is only readers that have access to this journal can verify the information. It must be available to anyone (by heading to the library, searching online, or stopping by a book store)”

“Journals that the general public can not easily access are not valid sources. Period. That is wikipedia policy.”

Wow. Not accessible… well, I don’t see any restrictions on these subscription pages:

In fact the individual article is available for $6.50, but (don’t tell anyone!) it can also be found as a free PDF file on the web. Now, I am not claiming these publications have as wide circulation as the New York Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post, Time Magazine, Newsweek – all papers that our gatekeeper finds acceptable – but why should they? We’re not talking about architecture, medicine or gardening – for the cross-section of business and technology it’s hard to find more authoritative source than the SMR or HBR.

All other citations the “defending team” comes up with are refused, for formal reasons, without looking at content.

Business Week: “the article itself is not about the term “Enterprise 2.0”, but about “Web 2.0” “. In fact “Web 2.0 in the Enterprise” is what the entire article is about, and that is indeed Enterprise 2.0, but the Wikipedian here does not understand the content, he is just looking for a verbatim match.

ZDNet “Blogs” by Dan Farber or Dion Hinchcliffe are rejected for being blogs, and self-referencing, being about the deletion process, not the original term. Once again, this is a rigid, dogmatic argument: true, the deletion debate is referenced in the articles, but it was just the trigger, the authors (recognized subject matter experts) explicitly discuss the validity of Enterprise 2.0. Ross Mayfield then cites further articles, including one by Dion Hinchliffe, ZDNet specifically referencing Enterprise 2.0: “Fortunately, the title of McAfee’s piece says the important part” – and that title is: Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration . Not accepted, after all it’s just a blog.

I can’t leave Wikipedia’s exclusion of blogs as reliable source without a comment. Tehcnorati is tracking over 50 million blogs, and we know it does not track everything, so who knows what the total number is: 70M? 100M? How can they all be lumped in one, “unreliable” category? As non-PC it may be, I have to side with Robert Scoble here, there is a slight difference between content-light (LiveJournal) diaries and professional blogs by industry experts. The ZDNet blogs mentioned above really shouldn’t be personal blogs, they are professional publications. And by whose standards should the HBS Faculty Blog, bearing the logo of Harvard Business School not be considered a reliable source, in fact an authority on matters of business and technology?

The concept of authority is not unknown to Wikipedia, just check the following excerpt from the guidelines on reliable sources:

“Advanced degrees give authority in the topic of the degree.”

“Use sources who have postgraduate degrees or demonstrable published expertise in the field they are discussing. The more reputable ones are affiliated with academic institutions.”

Guidelines or not, Mr. Deletionist has his own view about Harvard Prof. McAfee:

“While I respect your knowledge and status as an Associate Professor, I take a dim view of a person who coins a term also being the person that is the main editor and follower of that term’s wikipedia article.” (for the record Prof. McAfee did not edit the disputed Wikipedia article at all)

Oh, well… instead of talking about Wikipedia, let’s focus on why this whole debate is irrelevant. Because “Enterprise 2.0” is really just a label. Opponents call it “marketing buzzword”. So what? Labels, Marketing buzzwords can be quite helpful:

  • In the beginning of this post I spent 2 paragraphs detailing my point of view on Notability and Neologism, when I could ave simply referred to a “label”: I am an Inclusionalist. (I believe in editing rather than killing posts)
  • In the very early 90’s I was implementing SAP systems (yes, guilty of being a domain expert). The concept of an integrated cross-functional enterprise system was rather unusual, it took lot of “evangelism” to spread the idea. A few years later Erik Keller and team at Gartner coined the term ERP, and it is the industry definition ever since.
  • Here’s a fairly lengthy explanation of how a web application can look and feel like a desktop application. (alert: it’s a blog!). The post is from January 2005. A year later the term Ajax was coined, and now the author of this article could save half a page and just say: Ajax.

Perhaps the above examples make the point: in business and technology, marketing “labels” are typically coined to describe an already existing phenomenon. Enterprise 2.0 as a term my be relatively knew, but it’s not some theoretical concept a bored professor is trying to sell the world. It’s a disruptive change, a confluence of technological, social and business changes in how corporations conduct business using new IT tools. No Wikipedia gatekeepers can prevent this seismic shift. Let’s move on, do our work, and in less than 6 months Enterprise 2.0 will find its way back to Wikipedia.

Update (9/1): The debate is now closed, Enterprise 2.0 stays in wikipedia.

Related posts:

(Note: this is just a partial list, pros and cons from domain experts – all this representing zero value, per wikipedia policy, since they are blog posts.)

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Filed Under: Blogging, Business, Collaboration, Enterprise Software, Social Networking, Technology ·
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Women 2.0 Party

Posted on August 28, 2006 ·

I should read the PR 2.0 blog more often.  A lot more often.  Here’s the invitation I missed:

You’re Invited – Women 2.0 Party Today  Wow!  Woman 2.0 – Peter Rip should update his Everything 2.0 list now.

Here’s a set of photos from the previous Women 2.0 Party.  But wait…  where are the women?

Guys, you’re nice and everything… but if this is what 2.0 means, I’d rather stay with Women 1.0

Update (8/28): Stowe, what’s on your mind?

Update (9/3):  Valleywag shows an improved photo…

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Filed Under: Bay Area, Blogging, Humor, Misc, Social Networking, Startups ·
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Scammers Are Getting Smart

Posted on August 28, 2006 ·

(Updated)
Here’s an email I received this morning:

Dear xxxxxx,

Thank you for your subscription to
http: // polarstaryouth.org/scken1578.html  (link removed for my readers protection)

You have been billed as KRBILL LLC for the amount of:
3.95(USD) for 3 days (trial) then 34.95(USD) recurring every 30 days .
Your new subscription identification number is:xxxxxxx,
Your membership access information is:
Username for your subscription: xxxxxxx
Password for your subscription: xxxxxxx
E-mail: xxxxxxx
Membership website: http: // polarstaryouth.org/scken1578.html (link removed)
Thank you for choosing KRBill as the eMerchant for your subscription!
Customer Support/Cancel Your Subscription 28/08/2006 07:06

 

Obviously scammers are getting smart: reading you’ve just been billed, wouldn’t you instinctively click to clarify/cancel?  We’re all getting smarter about scam, but the sense of urgency can easily trigger a kneejerk reaction, forgetting all precautions, and that’s exactly what the scammer counts on. However, there’s two safety precautions I strongly recommend to everyone:

  • No card to charge: I only ever use throwaway, virtual credit card numbers on the Net, so scammers can bill all they want, they can’t charge my card
  • Protected Email address: I have specific email addresses for subscription lists and online orders,  another one for financial activity (banks, brokers), yet another for the blog…etc.  I don’t ever use online my “real” email addresses that I want to protect. So when scam arrives to the protected email, I can rest assured they don’t have any of my data, the email is harmless junk.

Any other good ideas?  Please leave them in a comment below.

Update (8/28):  Polar Youth appears to be a non-profit, not selling anything. However, the full URL (I did not click it, but retyped it) leads to a page where one can supposedly by a software product, and the licence terms refer to Intuit.  Since it’s obviously forgery, perhaps someone from Intuit will chime in here.

Update (9/1):  Wow… apparently this scam was first insignificant enough that only I posted about it, thus getting the #1 postition on Google for the search term “Krbill”… than it got widespread enough that a lot of people are searching for it… I am getting a lot of hits.  I also may have become the target of the scammers revenge: the appear to phish my email as sender.  I received emails asking for explanation, even one asking for a refund of any money charged to them.  Rest assured: the scammers could not get your money, unless you provided them with data.

As a commenter points out below, the websites the scam email leads to contain hidden iframe that attempts to download malware on your computer.

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Filed Under: Business, Misc, Personal Productivity, Technology ·
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