Rumblings from the world of IT and E-Commerce

I suspect that like a lot of people reading this blog, I monitor the start-up scene very closely. The reason for my start-up addiction is two-fold: I love entrepreneurial spirit and the bleeding edge, both in business and technology.

However there is nothing more frustrating than watching someone pour their life, soul and often savings into a company or product that is fundamentally flawed from the onset, because it has no USP (Unique Selling Point). Failure to differentiate your offering from your competitors is toxic to any business, so how do you determine your USP?

1.    How are you unique?

It may sound obvious but if your offering is the same as the next guy then you’re just getting lost in the crowd. List your competitors and analyse both their product and their business to identify the areas that set you apart.

Excess stock can take many forms; from the stockpile of last season’s must-have accessory that simply won’t sell, to that exuberant over-purchase of widgets for a deal which didn’t come off. Regardless of the type, excess stock is at best an irritating problem that needs resolving, and at worst a drain on a small business’s cash flow, but it’s always money that’s tied up.

In this blog I look at how to spring clean your stockroom.

Tip 1 - Understand the cost

Before you do anything with those 200 Liverpool football shirts sporting last season’s sponsor that you bought just in case they won the Champions League (a true story), you need to understand the real cost this stockpile puts on your business. Calculating the true cost can be surprising. At its very basic level it includes:

•    The purchase price,
•    The space items take to store,
•    Any interest that’s accruing if you borrowed money to purchase,

I find it fascinating listening to my parents reminisce about days gone by. They, and I, have lived the majority of our lives on the same 23 by 13 mile slab of land, known to holiday makers as the Isle of Wight and by residents as simply “the Island”. So it’s interesting and easy to see how things have changed over the years. One topic that’s always a favourite is the inevitable look back at the local high street.

My father recalls walking into our local town, visiting four separate shops: the butcher, greengrocer, hardware and newsagent shops. Conversation naturally comes around to today’s supermarkets and the effect Tesco, Waitrose and Sainsbury have had on the high street. I am in my early 30s, and can’t remember life before the supermarket, but trends are like the fashion industry and it’s happening all over again, only this time the high street is online.

Chatting with a friend I was shocked to hear how hackers had targeted his iTunes account and managed to empty his bank account. It made me realise that I probably don’t take my online security seriously enough.

As more and more of our data, both personal and business-related, moves away from local hard disks to the cloud the number of add-ons and tools designed to secure and keep us safe is also growing. However it can be a confusing topic, especially for those who are less technically minded.

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Password security

A college of mine once told me your data is as safe as the password you use to secure it. In many ways he’s right, but the temptation to use simple passwords and common keys to our online world can be enormous.

Also, many people rely on their browsers to remember passwords, but the bad news is that most browsers do a really bad job at security. At the time of writing none of the major browsers have proven themselves secure, and retrieving password data from a local machine isn’t that difficult.

My daughter is five. I suspect like many five year olds she loves to ask questions. These can range from the deepest of theological discussions to questioning the point of brussel sprouts, just before trying to force-feed one to the cat. I guess the point is that your average child’s mind is hugely inquisitive, it’s how we learn.

I think it’s fair to say that as we get older, sometimes wiser and possibly respected in our various fields we definitely ask fewer questions. Just listening to myself on the phone this morning, the questions I ask tend to be passive “Will we hit the deadline?”, or “You want to do what!?”. This is usually followed by a sharp intake of breath.

However, a new social Q&A site has got me acting like a five year old again. Quora.com, at first glance looks no different to any other Q&A set up. However, unlike its traditional counterparts, Quora seems to have captured the imagination of thousands of users in almost no time at all. The secret it seems is its social layers. Quora makes it easy to answer, but more importantly easy to pose questions to a massive audience.