Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Category: business advice

  • The illusion of transparency

    Transparency is one of the great excuses of our era; the belief that something is correct as long as it is disclosed has been used to justify unethical or downright deceptive behaviour by groups ranging from financial advisors to gadget bloggers.

    But is does transparency really excuse how we behave? Is a mugger who lets you know they are stealing your money more ethically correct than a pickpocket or shoplifter who steals it by stealth?

    This idea of disclosure excusing everything was introduced by the financial industry in the 1990s, the idea being that an informed market can make rational decisions and if your advisor disclosed they were receiving kickbacks from a funds manager you could make an investment choice in the knowledge of this.

    Of course this failed dismally, partly because these disclosures resulted in an avalanche of densely written, small font paperwork that became another level of opaqueness to baffle investors and consumers. The very concept of transparency was used to baffle people.

    We saw this idea spread across the consumer economy where all manner of unfair contracts by telcos, finance companies and other service providers were justified by a nest of gotchas in their “transparent” contracts and terms.

    On the Internet, the idea of transparency becomes even more complex. In theory we can Google anything and find the background of any individual or business but in reality we find the weight of information makes it harder to find the background of a comment or post.

    Most people quite rightly can’t be bothered researching every post to see if the poster’s been taking freebies or convicted of spamming. It’s simply too time consuming an issue.

    In a perverse way, search engines can make the web even more opaque as paid or sponsored web pages or blog posts crowd out objective views on an issue or business.

    The danger is for most of us that the illusion of transparency lulls us into a false sense of security. As consumers, we think that all is well because there’s no obvious disclosure of conflicts of interest. If we have these conflicts of interest, we think they are okay because we’ve disclosed them in the fine print.

    Either attitude can bring us unstuck when the conflicts become apparent and all the alleged transparency won’t save us from the damage to our wallets, reputations of trust.

    Transparency’s important, but acting honestly and ethically is far more essential in a trust based society.

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  • Online business essentials workshop

    The web is the new shopfront — your customers, employees and suppliers are all checking your website along with online channels like Facebook and LinkedIn before doing business with you. Your business has to present a professional, modern image to the world.

    “Online Business Essentials” is a workshop designed for business owners and managers looking at getting a fully functional, professional looking website running quickly and inexpensively.

    During the workshop participants will learn how to quickly develop a cost effective online presence allowing organisations to rapidly respond to opportunities and threats.

    At the end of the workshop, participants will have registered a business Internet domain, established a working website and created a basic online marketing strategy.

    Participants cover;

    • identifying current internet based competitors
    • the various Internet domains
    • registration of domain names
    • hosting Internet domains
    • the different publishing platforms
    • choosing a website design from templates
    • integrating social media
    • leveraging existing marketing collateral
    • online publishing processes
    • being a credible online authority.

    Who should attend?

    Online Business Essentials is suitable for business owners and managers wanting to maximise the use of online media and avoid unnecessary mistakes in the virtual marketplace.

    Duration

    This workshop is a six hour workshop. At the end of it, you will have a fully functioning small business website and a basic online strategy.

    We’re currently taking obligation free expressions of interest for early 2011 workshops, please contact us to let us know if you’d like to be part of the Online Business Essentials workshop.

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  • Can we trust online reviews?

    Travel review site Tripadvisor was in the news last week when a british hotelier threatened to sue the service over a subscriber’s poor report that alleged, among other things, a dead mouse was found in their suite.

    Online review sites are changing the way we do business, particularly in the hospitality industries where sites like Tripadvisor, Urbanspoon and Eatibility are becoming the first places people check when planning a meal or holiday.

    The value in these sites are the user reviews, people trust others opinions and experiences far more than they trust marketing material or even the world of professional reviewers.

    For customers and the industry this is a good thing, however there is a downside as anonymous reviewers can’t always be trusted to tell the truth.

    So how do we separate the false reviewers, be they positive ones placed by the establishments or negative ones places by competitors or people with an axe to grind?

    Reviewer profiles
    All review sites show the reviewers’ history. If a reviewer has only one review then the credibility is suspect, particularly if that one review is overly critical or complimentary. Trust reviewers with multiple, fair minded posts.

    The nature of the reviews
    Real reviewers rarely score ten or nine out of ten on all aspects. So treat gushing reviews with suspicion.

    Mixed reviews
    Even the best establishment has a bad day and even if they are perfect there is always a customer who is never happy. Real reviews vary across a range where a venue with top service might see the review scores ranging from 7 to 10 out of 10.

    Review length
    Long rambling reviews praising or criticising everything from the online booking facilities through to the dining room’s cutlery are either the work of plants or a nutters. Most genuine reviews are a paragraph or two.

    Age of reviews
    Establishments change over time, some get better and some go downhill. Newer reviews deserve more weighting although some managements decide it’s easier to fix a problem by making their own reviews so be cautious of a recent wave of positive reviews.

    Regardless of whether managers and business owners like them or not, review sites are here to stay and they are spreading out of hospitality into almost every industry.

    So for business owners, it’s important to take reviews seriously and use the legitimate ones as a reality check to make sure you and your staff are delivering the best possible product.

    For customers, these sites can be a really useful service but they rely on real people giving genuine reviews. If you do use one of these sites to research your travel and dining, give a little back to the community by adding your own honest reviews.

    Review sites are part of the information economy that’s developed around the Internet and we expect trustworthy data to be at our fingertips. Time will tell just how much we can trust these sites

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  • Australia’s one trick economy

    Australia’s one trick economy

    Earlier this week, Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Glen Stevens gave a speech to the Australian Industry Group on the world’s changing economic currents.

    That presentation has a number of pointers for Australian businesses on how we use technology, our investments and, most importantly, where the Canberra sees our economy going.

    Much of the Governor’s speech discussed how those of us who at the beginning of the century believed Australia’s economy had to diversify into new industry sectors — such as the IT sector — were proved wrong by the Dot Com Bust and the subsequent boom in the resources sector.

    “Australia would probably do best, in its production structure, to stick to its comparative advantages in minerals or agriculture or various services.” Mr Stevens quoted from ten years ago, “but it was hard going trying to make sensible points against the barrage of market and media commentary.”

    Perfect hindsight

    It’s impressive the Governor had this perfect hindsight which can overlook the role of ramping the housing markets by the Rudd and Howard governments to avoid the 2001 and 2008 US recessions along with the sheer good luck of having a resources boom through the last half of the decade.

    During his speech the governor referred to an RBA research paper, Structural Change in the Australian Economy which casts an interesting light on the comparative advantages in those “various services”.

    That paper shows that service sector employment has risen to nearly 85% while its share of GDP has stayed around the same for the last twenty years, which to this non-economist’s mind implies the portion of national wealth is declining for service based workers and businesses.

    Sleepwalking into the dutch disease

    Of course those of us in the service sector could make it up by exporting but here again, service sector exports haven’t done much over the last decade which won’t be helped by the current high Aussie dollar — another aspect of the Dutch Disease we seem to have sleep walked into over the Howard and Rudd years.

    Those same statistics show mining employment has declined over that period as well and if you’re considering sending your kids down the pit, or even packing in your own city job to drive a mining truck, you might want to read the interesting work being done by the University of Sydney’s school of robotics.

    Generously, Governor Stevens didn’t completely write off the role of technology observing that, “in the old versus new economy stakes, it was probably in the use of information technology, rather than in the production of IT goods, that the gains would be greatest.”

    Invest in, but don’t develop, technology

    The Governor’s messages are clear to business people; our businesses have to invest in technology to be more efficient and we need to understand that government policy will be geared around the mining sector.

    Most importantly, we need to understand that on a national level there is no Plan B.

    In the last election it was clear both sides of politics based their policies, such as they were, on the assumption the China boom will last for the foreseeable future. Yesterday’s speech shows Glenn Stevens and the Reserve Bank share that outlook and no other alternative is being planned for.

    That’s fine for Glenn, Julia, Tony and their colleagues as they have safe, indexed pensions when they deign to cease giving us the benefit of their visionary leadership.

    In the business community we don’t have that luxury; a plan B is required just in case things don’t quite work out the way we hope. As the Governor says:

    Succeeding in the future won’t ultimately be a result of forecasting. It will be a result of adapting to the way the world is changing and giving constant attention to the fundamentals of improving productivity. That adaptability is as important as ever, in the uncertain times that we face.

    That’s excellent advice. How adaptable is your business in these uncertain times?

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  • The next business era

    Ray Ozzie, Microsoft’s outgoing Chief Software Architect, has some interesting reflections on the future of the PC as he steps down after five years.

    His views on the mobile, pervasive always connected world and how the Personal Computer fits into it come at a time when there are real questions on how the Microsoft will fare in coming years.

    Scoble’s article, based on an interview with Starbucks Chief Information Officer, Stephen Gillet, describes how laptop usage is falling as customers are moving to slate computers such as the iPad and smartphones. He also touches on how standards like HTML 5 are beginning to replace proprietary products like Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight.

    Is this necessary bad news for Microsoft? Perhaps not, but it what it means is they will have to reinvent the business away from the old, PC based, model of selling operating system licences.

    That’s not to say it can’t be done, Bill Gates successful turned the entire company around to an Internet Explorer view of the computer industry shortly after the launch of Windows 95 as it became apparent the bet on the Microsoft Network was wrong and the open Internet was where the market was going.

    One salient point that we should remember is the biggest businesses are not forever. In his post, Ray referred to the 1939 New York State Fair where one of the key exhibits was the S1 locomotive which was built by the Pennsylvania Railroad

    At one stage the Pennsylvania Railroad was the world’s biggest listed company, it went a hundred years without missing a dividend payment and at one stage employed more people than the US government.

    It ceased to exist in 1976.

    No business is forever and even the most powerful is at risk during times of great change. We need to remember that when looking at today’s seemingly untouchable business giants.

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