Viagra For Business

Since the age of twenty (I'm thirty-five next month) I've been involved in the business of business software. The kind of software that doesn't get talked about very often, the type of software that isn't allowed to share the limelight with the more glamorous business apps like the world-famous word processor or spreadsheet, and that decadent rockstar johnny-come-lately app, the enterprise email system.

No, the business software I'm involved with anonymously goes about it's day printing your security pay-slips, balancing your books, making sure your stock lines remain fulfilled and keeping an eye on your budgets.

The first generation business apps were pretty simple, archaic affairs and largely designed to automate existing manual processes. And they only just about managed to do that. But ever since version 1.0, down the various iterations and re-designs, those apps have become gradually cleverer and smarter, they can now do things that no manual process could hope to replicate today. In other words they have evolved, it's the name of the game in a competitive market.

And it's not unreasonable to expect that this process of evolution will continue and customers will upgrade from one version to the next to gain benefit from the latest business-focused technological advancement. But most business apps are not designed by academics or Harvard grads. Mostly they're designed by software guys, not

just

software guys I should add, but software guys who understand business pretty well. And also, whilst most contemporary business apps are pretty good at what they do, ultimately it's how they're used that determines the overall success or failure of the business that's using them. Garbage in, garbage out as they used to say.

However, I can see a time in the future when business applications will become state-of-the-art in a true business sense. In a sense that some applications will eventually evolve to incorporate best-practice business design. The world's best business brains will be recruited at huge expense to help develop and design killer business management strategies into the apps themselves, they'll no longer just be dumb but comprehensive calculators. They'll prescribe the best day-to-day business decisions, your business performance and success will be almost clinically guaranteed.

Then it'll be a case of which killer set of Harvard-strength business processes will be incorporated into your apps. "Are you on version 1.5 Harvard Killer Business Model or the newer 1.6 edition? I heard that version 1.5 had a major bug which manifested itself in the form of random overspending on your overseas recruitment budget every other quarter". If you're very lucky - or just rich enough to be able to afford it - your system will come with the latest iteration of the world-class process model, licenced by the London School of Economics and based upon the Barnes & McDonald Theory of Wholesale Inventory Forecast Management that's been academically proven to reduce and maintain your stock-holding to previously unfeasibly low levels whilst still maintaining 100% customer supply efficiencies.

Your business will no longer rely upon its local, human, dysfunctional and under-educated management team to plot your course on a day-to-day, quarter by quarter basis. It'll be like Viagra for business.

Lose Engines

If Google, the biggest mofo search engine on the planet is so named after the term Googol - The number 10 raised to the power 100 (10¹⁰⁰), written out as the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros - then what would we call the world's biggest mofo lose engine - think cyber-shredder - Zero? Nada? Uh-uh?

Whatever it's called, it's working flat out 24/7 to get rid of evidence of everything. So, in the future when you can't find something, it's probably because it's been recently indexed by Nada.

I'd bet good money their site would be very fast.

Difficult To Not Do Business With

Not being known for shallow overstatement, I've discovered a major flaw in the capitalist economic system.

Fiona's been on a monthly tariff contract for her mobile phone for ages and we decided that a pay-as-you-go option would be better so I decided to cancel the current contract. Could I find anywhere on the O2 website that allowed me to do that? Nope. Any mention of terminating your contract in their help, glossary or FAQ? Nope, not a dickie-bird and, as far as their website would lead you to believe, embarking on the quest for the holy grail would have been a walk in the proverbial compared with discovering the state of eternal cellular disconnectedness I sought. Evidently the designers never countenanced the possibility that a customer could ever deign to leave, unless they were dead of course, whereupon they couldn't actually use the web anyway, so why bother?

So I was forced to do business with them the old fashioned way and called them, waited for ages listening to their ambient plinky plonky on-hold muzak, gave my details in full to two separate people and, eventually, I finally found the exit.

The point of this story, lots of companies bang on about how good their service is, how fantastic their products are and how easy it is to do business with them. Right up to the point when you want to stop doing business with them. Perhaps the sign of a true customer focused company is when it's just as easy to stop doing business with them as it is to start?

Will we ever see a main menu option on a website entitled "Cancel your contract" or "Take your business eleswhere" Probably not. But why not? Customers leave and switch companies all the time, but why do companies feel the need to further justify a customer's decision to leave by making it a real pain to do so?

I'd suggest that every (online) organisation needs to also have a section on their site, or even a completely separate site, that takes you through the often stressful task of parting company.

Like a funeral director for business and consumer relationships, where you're taken through the process swiftly and discreetly, giving respectful care and attention for your wishes at this, your time of need. It would take balls to clearly signpost the EXIT for your customers but it would also suggest that your company has nothing to fear in losing customers, as if blindly denying the fact that your customers may well want to leave you as quickly as they joined, prevents them from actually doing so - "If you do not build it they will stay."