Valuable Q's for Ebusiness Operators

[eyecircus]

Hello All! :D

I'm looking for info from operators of operating ebusinesses, so thought i'd drop in and see if you could answer some questions i have.

To tell you a little about myself: My name is Morgan Newall and i'm currently enrolled in a small business development program in Sydney, Australia which runs alongside a 'small business management' course. The primary context of the course revolves around the creation of a business plan and im planning for an 'ebusiness' which will be operated and administered through the web.

I have done a ton of 'secondary research' and have all kinds of ideas and percentages, yet have come to stage where i'm looking for dialogue & feedback from ACTUAL operators - people that have started and run successful (YOUR definition of successful) e-business operations from scratch. Solo entrepreneurs, one person operations, independent operators and micro-businesses.
I'm especially interested in creating a comprehensive web application for managing this business and want to know how other people operate theirs.

So in the interests of collating this information i've sketched up a questionaire, i'm sure i'm not asking some probably very needed questions, so if there are any you'd like to add - please do so. This way this could be a useful insight to how each other operates - perhaps with a view to creating an email survey to send to thousands - with the data available to all! How about that!?

So without further ado, the questionaire!

QUESTIONAIRE:

1. In running your business what software/scripts/modules do you most depend on?
(pls list in order of importance): 1: 2: 3: 4: 5: 6: 7:

2. Can you describe the essential elements (possibly non-existent) of a software toolset for running an e-business?

3. Do you commonly work with remote workers/consultants/contractors regularly in your business (say twice a month)? Y / N
If so, what software/resources do you use in communicating with them?
If regularly working with remote contracters/partners/etc how do you plan/manage your workflow, sign-offs, etc?

4. Of the following software categories rate according to your dependence on it: 0-5 (there is some overlap, yet usually operators will use on or the other )
CRM
CMS
ERP
CONTROL PANEL
GROUPWARE
ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT

5. What do you see as the primary challenge to successful ebusiness operations in the following categories?
a) Operations & Management:
b) Marketing & Sales:
c) Customer/Accounts Management:
d) Personal/Team management:

6. Do you know of any comprehensive toolsets specifically built for ebusiness to manage site content (CMS), customers (CRM), sales (ecommerce), and managing projects (ERP, GroupWARE, etc)?
Would you be interested in such a product?
What price would you pay for such a product?

[ADAM Web Design]

Hi Morgan!

I figured that, although I dno't run an "ebusiness" in the traditional sense, I do run one in the sense that all of my business marketing and communications are done online.

As a designer/developer, I've also created e-commerce solutions from scratch. So I thought the insight you might get would be useful from that standpoint (and different, if nothing else.

Originally Posted by eyecircus

QUESTIONAIRE:

1. In running your business what software/scripts/modules do you most depend on?
(pls list in order of importance): 1: 2: 3: 4: 5: 6: 7:

Active Server Pages (ASP), Photoshop, AceHTML, AceFTP and Outlook Express. In other words, the tools needed to design/develop websites. After that, it's pretty well up to my imagination.

Originally Posted by eyecircus

2. Can you describe the essential elements (possibly non-existent) of a software toolset for running an e-business?

No, and I think the reason why is the most important point I can make to you. E-businesses are similar any other business in the sense that each "e-business" is individual and depends on the budget of the owner, the direction he/she wants to take the company in, the employees involved, the tools involved, and the nature of goods/services being sold.

This is why I voted "non-existent" to the poll question above. There is no "software toolset".

Originally Posted by eyecircus

3. Do you commonly work with remote workers/consultants/contractors regularly in your business (say twice a month)? Y / N
If so, what software/resources do you use in communicating with them?
If regularly working with remote contracters/partners/etc how do you plan/manage your workflow, sign-offs, etc?

I used to, but I found it wasn't working out. I would communicate via email and phone with them, and when they completed projects, I had built a web interface for them to log their work and get paid for it. It simply didn't work because they simply didn't work.

Originally Posted by eyecircus

4. Of the following software categories rate according to your dependence on it: 0-5 (there is some overlap, yet usually operators will use on or the other )
CRM
CMS
ERP
CONTROL PANEL
GROUPWARE
ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT

CRM - 2
CMS - 2
ERP - (I don't even know what this is...sorry, but I don't believe in corpspeak if and when I can avoid it.)
Control Panel - 1 (web hosting only)
Groupware - 0
Account Management - I don't see the difference between it and CRM.

Originally Posted by eyecircus

5. What do you see as the primary challenge to successful ebusiness operations in the following categories?
a) Operations & Management:
b) Marketing & Sales:
c) Customer/Accounts Management:
d) Personal/Team management:

Without a doubt, d). I can sell and maintain customer relationships, and day-to-day operations are pretty simple for the most part. My biggest problem was trying to teach others the things that I know and have them execute those things.

This is, however, the symptom of a much deeper workforce problem to me. I believe heavily in the Peter Principle (every employee tends to rise to his/her level of incompetence). We all have nightmare coworker/employee stories, and have all probably been served horribly by an employee of a company at some point. The McDonald's worker who asks if you want fries with your order of fries; the civil servant who takes information for an application over the phone and says "Yes, Adam, we can start the application, if you'll just tell me your first name" (yes, this actually happened once); the coworker who you can spin circles around at the office that still barely manages to keep his/her job because (s)he whines too much to be let go and not be a distraction.

The same thing applies to d). Others bring too many different issues to the table to deal with.

Originally Posted by eyecircus

6. Do you know of any comprehensive toolsets specifically built for ebusiness to manage site content (CMS), customers (CRM), sales (ecommerce), and managing projects (ERP, GroupWARE, etc)?
Would you be interested in such a product?
What price would you pay for such a product?

CMS - InnovaStudio products (http://www.innovastudio.com).

The rest...none.

If I were to pay for these products, they would have to be on the sole condition that I could not build it myself less expensively in terms of time and money. So it really depends on the situation.

[brian.mark]

1. In running your business what software/scripts/modules do you most depend on?
(pls list in order of importance): 1: 2: 3: 4: 5: 6: 7:

1. Perl
2. MySQL
3. Outlook
4. Inventory management system
5. StarShip / Endicia (Shipping software)
6. PayFlowPro
7. ScanAlert

2. Can you describe the essential elements (possibly non-existent) of a software toolset for running an e-business?

It depends on the market. For our power tools, we need something to keep track of sales trends and forcast inventory needs. For our tool parts, we need that, but also something that really does a good job of tracking existing orders and following up on those parts orders which we have to make for customer orders. Some markets lend themselves well to drop shipping. Other online businesses sell services. It all depends on what you're selling and how your business operates.

3. Do you commonly work with remote workers/consultants/contractors regularly in your business (say twice a month)? Y / N
If so, what software/resources do you use in communicating with them?
If regularly working with remote contracters/partners/etc how do you plan/manage your workflow, sign-offs, etc?

We have tried remote workers without any success as well. Again, they don't usually work. We also wrote a custom software for tracking what they were doing and had it send all the leaads to us via email. We no longer use any remote workers. The only stuff we do remotely close is bring in temp labor when we fall behind checking items in at our warehouse.

4. Of the following software categories rate according to your dependence on it: 0-5 (there is some overlap, yet usually operators will use on or the other )
CRM 4
CMS 2
ERP 5+
CONTROL PANEL 1
GROUPWARE 1
ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT 2

5. What do you see as the primary challenge to successful ebusiness operations in the following categories?
a) Operations & Management: Order fulfillment
b) Marketing & Sales: Lead generation
c) Customer/Accounts Management: Payment processing / fraud detection
d) Personal/Team management: Accountability

6. Do you know of any comprehensive toolsets specifically built for ebusiness to manage site content (CMS), customers (CRM), sales (ecommerce), and managing projects (ERP, GroupWARE, etc)?
Would you be interested in such a product?
What price would you pay for such a product?

I know of no such beast. I think everyone is interested in such a creature, but to integrate them all, there are too many comprimises made to allow for all the functions instead of doing a specific task really well. Also, every business is so different that even the common functions can be done very different. We like all email to be broken into queues that each of our customer service teams are responsible for, while other businesses like each person accountable for a specific set of email questions broken down by topic. If you really can make something that handles all aspects and all scenarios, then you've got something that is so complex that it is no longer useful or that takes so long to integrate that it becomes a burden to implement.

Again, just these are all just my opinions, but I've personally taken our online business from a few orders a week and me being the only employee of the web side of the house up to the point we're at now where we're struggling to keep up with the flow of orders with 44 employees. We've sure hit our fair share of roadblocks and then some.

Brian.

[eyecircus]

Thanx for the detailed replies!

Definately food for thought. It seems the outstanding issues are in building something that:

a) doesn't compromise too much.
b) can deliver for a chosen stream of ebusiness operators.

What about a flexible, modular framework, able to be customised fo each user. Some simple core, commonly available components I have NOT found combined in another product are:

CRM
ECOMMERCE
GROUPWARE/PROJECT MANAGEMENT
ORDERS INVOICING
ACCOUNTING OUTPUT (Profit & Loss, Double Entry Accounting)

Some come close but there not really built for working on the web - i'm imagining everything u need on 1 site, sure for productivity you'd use email clients etc, but it would give you the option to manage from ANYWHERE.

Thanx again - keep it coming!

Morgan

[ADAM Web Design]

Again, it would really depend on your business. Between sales and service alone, there are enough differences to suggest that a customizable solution wouldn't be likely, if at all possible.

[brian.mark]

We took a look at Netsuite a while back, and it combined CRM, E-Commerce, Order entry, Invoicing, Accounting, etc.

A few of the shortcomings were with our retail side. Our salespeople go out and negotiate prices on a per customer level, but all that Netsuite had the ability to do was set a base price and do calculations based upon that.

A few of the other limitations were with inventory management. It had a hard time doing seasonality when suggesting what to order. Our current system does a pretty good job of filling out purchase orders on its own, so we don't have to put a lot of thought into buying stuff to buy.

The real challenges in a system like this is making it at least as good as what is out there already, which each piece of the puzzle has been worked on for years and years by other companies already. It'll be tough to get caught up to where they are now, and they're not standing still.

Brian.

[eyecircus]

Very good points you've both made.

The feedback i've got here and in other forums, i've had a look, a talk and a fiddle with my plans. At this stage im looking at the option of starting with a fundamental product and building business from there, possibly to a full fledged ebusiness solution, when i am more informed as to the ins and outs (only so much you can learn from the outside looking in).
Re: existing products - I have been looking at options of significant development with existing open source software, some of which is quite impressive, yet need more refinement of product specifications to make an informed decision.