Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Tag: Australia

  • Building an ecosphere

    Building an ecosphere

    One of the keys to success for a software platform is its ecosphere  – the community of developers, consultants and advocates that grow around a service.

    By far the most successful company in building a community around its products is Microsoft, who over the years have attracted hundreds of thousands of developers and partners to support Windows.

    Microsoft’s thousands of partners are the company’s greatest asset in beating back the threat posed by Google, cloud computing and Apple. The sheer size Microsoft’s supporter base gives it a natural buffer against competitors.

    Apple too have that buffer, in the company’s darkest days during the late 1990s it was the true believers who kept the flame burning. The ecosphere that has developed around the iPhone and iPad has now cemented Apple’s iOS as being the dominant mobile platform.

    The same thing happens around various industry software packages, as one company becomes identified as the leader in their sector they develop a following among users in that industry.

    At the Xero conference last weekend, the cloud accounting software company showed how an ecosystem of developers, accountants and bookkeepers are developing around their software platform.

    Companies as diverse as inventory management, point of sale system and document scanning services are plugging into Xero’s accounting data which adds functionality for customers.

    In turn, those third party services makes Xero more attractive to the bookkeepers and accountants looking for ways to make their jobs, and those of their clients, easier.

    Xero’s biggest competitor, MYOB, also has that strength with an army of certified consultants from long being the incumbent in their market.

    The battle between Xero and MYOB for dominance in the business accounting software market will depend upon how well the incumbent can hold onto their existing markets and the effectiveness in the incumbent building a ecosphere that makes the newer product more attractive.

    Disclaimer: Paul travelled to Melbourne and attended the Xero Partner conference courtesy of Xero.

    Similar posts:

  • Darling Harbour and the peak of consumerism

    Darling Harbour and the peak of consumerism

    Sydney’s Darling Harbour was one the centre of the nation’s mercantile economy, from across the country millions of tons of grain, wheat, sugar and other commodities were loaded onto ships and exported to the empire.

    Eventually Darling Harbour fell into disuse, the docks became containerised, bulk goods moved to specifically designed loaders and the new breed of cargo ships were often too big to fit under the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

    What really sealed Darling Harbour’s fate was Australia moved from being a largely export based agricultural export economy to a service based consumerist economy.

    Today Darling Harbour illustrates that change, the docks have become expensive restaurants, hotels and shopping centres. The notorious “hungry mile” of docks is being converted into “Barangaroo” complex of office blocks, apartments and possibly even a casino for “high roller” Chinese gamblers.

    Even the cruise liners are going. The 1980s vision of Darling Harbour as a temple to consumerism and property speculation is complete. In this way, Darling Harbour has become a picture of the Australian economy.

    Just as Australia’s mercantile era peaked just before The Great Depression of the 1930s – the depression of the 1890s was actually far harder on Australia, particularly Melbourne and Victoria – the consumerist era finished with the Global Financial Crisis of 2008.

    It will be interesting to see how Darling Harbour evolves over the next hundred years.

    For a glimpse of the final days of the old Darling Harbour, Island Shunters an ABC documentary from 1977 showed the working lives of railway workers in the goods yards on the Western side of the docks. Today those railyards are the Australian office of Google and Fairfax’s headquarters.

    Similar posts:

  • Refocusing on Asia

    Refocusing on Asia

    One of the interesting things about Australian society and business in the last twenty years is how the nation seems to have turned away from Asia.

    In the 1980s and early 90s, the country was focused on exporting services and building long term relationships in sectors ranging from Malaysian construction, Thai diary farming and legal services in China.

    Twenty years later, Australian businesses and government seem to have given up with the consensus among industry and political leaders now being that all the nation can export is raw minerals, bulk agricultural goods with a sprinkling of third rate educational services.

    Globally focused Australian businesses – particularly those in the startup sector – look to Silicon Valley for funding, inspiration and markets. Only a minority are looking North to Asia rather than across the Pacific.

    ViDM – Ventures in Digital Media – is one of those businesses and CEO Willie Pang of the Sydney based advertising technology startup believes the time is to seize opportunities in growing Asian markets rather than concentrating on Silicon Valley financing and exits.

    “Focus on building a great business. If you have a great business someone will buy you,” says Willie.

    The opportunity ViDM sees is in advertising trading platforms bringing together publishers and advertisers across the digital, print and broadcasting channels. Willie expects this market to be worth eight billion dollars across Asia within five years.

    Many of those opportunities in the Asian market are in business-to-business markets such as advertising platforms which is another difference to the largely consumer focused Silicon Valley model.

    For Australian business, Willie doesn’t see funding as being an issue with money being available for smaller startups and mature companies.

    Like in Silicon Valley the real problem lies for business in the middle stages of their development where they are too big for angels and smaller funds but not interesting for the bigger investors. That grey zone lies between two and ten million dollars.

    For the companies that do raise the funds and go hunting in Asian markets, the rewards can be great. Not only do this economies have great growth rates, the diversities of Asian countries mean there are different opportunities lying in each nation or even provinces.

    Right now, US businesses are focussed domestically or just on a narrow range of opportunities catering to affluent Chinese consumers in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

    Willie sees that as another opportunity, while US and European companies are distracted it’s a good time to be entering the Asian markets. But that window of opportunity won’t last forever.

    “We’ll either play in that space or the Americans will do it” says Willie.

    The opportunity is open to us. Will we grab it?

    Similar posts:

  • Could Australia follow the Greek path?

    Could Australia follow the Greek path?

    Business Spectator’s Robert Gottliebsen today describes how Australia has caught the Greek disease of low productivity and an overvalued currency.

    This is interesting as just last week Robert was bleating on behalf of Australia’s middle class welfare state.

    Australia’s productivity has stagnated over the last 15 years, but unlike Greece the ten years before that was a period of massive reform to both employment practices and government spending.

    The structure of the Australian economy is very different, not least in its openness, to that of Greece.

    What’s more Australia has a floating currency which will eventually correct itself unlike the Euro that Greece finds itself trapped in.

    That’s not to say Australians won’t be hurt when that currency correction happens. The failure of the nation’s political, business and media elites in failing to recognise and plan for this is an indictment on all of them – including Robert Gottliebsen.

    Australia’s real similarity with Greece is the entitlement culture that both nations have developed.

    Over those last 15 years of poor productivity growth, Australia has seen a massive explosion of middle class welfare under the Howard Liberal government which has been institutionalised by the subsequent Rudd and Gillard Labor governments.

    Today middle class Australians believe they have a right to generous government benefits subsidising their superannuation, school fees and self funded retirements.

    For all the sneering of Australian triumphalists about Greek hairdressers getting lavish government benefits, Australia isn’t far behind Greece in believing these entitlements are a birthright.

    A middle class entitlement culture is the real similarity between Australia and Greece. It’s unsustainable in every country that harbours these illusions.

    Unlike Greece, Australia doesn’t have sugar daddies in Brussels, Paris and Berlin desperate to prop up the illusion of the European Union. Australia is own its own when the consequences of magic pudding economics become apparent.

    Australia’s day of reckoning may arrive much quicker than that of Greece. Then we’ll see the test of how Australians and their politicians are different from our Greek friends.

    Similar posts:

  • Tracking the end of the consumer society

    Tracking the end of the consumer society

    I’m currently researching a presentation about the retail industry.

    One of the things that leaps out when researching consumer behaviour is the savings rate.

    For twenty-five years from the early 1980s to mid 2000s, the savings rate collapsed in Western economies; below are the US and Australian rates.

    The US Personal savings rate shows the rise of consumerism
    US Savings rates 1950 to 2020 – St Louis Federal Reserve
    How did the Australian savings rate fall during the consumer boom
    Australian Savings Rates 1980 to 2012 – Reserve Bank of Australia

     

    The graphs show the same thing; households spent their savings over the 25 years which drove the consumer economy. It’s no accident that period was a good time to be a retailer.

    Being on a deadline, I don’t have time to analyse these number further right now, but one thing is clear; most of the consumer boom from the Reagan Years onwards – or the equivalent from Maggie Thatcher or Paul Keating – was driven by households reducing their savings.

    That couldn’t last and didn’t. Businesses and governments that are basing their decisions on what worked through the 1980s and 90s are going to struggle in the next decade.

    Looking at these figures raises another suspicion – that graphs showing non-real estate investment by businesses and government would show similar declines over the 1980-2005 period.

    It might be that golden period of what appeared to economic success was just us living off society’s collective savings.

    Similar posts: