Small businesses - A tale of diversity
Posted 10 March 2008 at 8:40AM by Ian Betteridge in Connecting to the Internet
When trying to talk to and about small businesses, there's a temptation to think about them as a fairly homogenous group. You want to be able to talk of "small businesses" as if they all had the same needs, desires, and so on.
But the problem is that small businesses are actually quite different, with lots of kinds of company. There's the seasoned, hard-bitten business person, who's been running their small firm for 20 years. There's the serial entrepreneur, who moves from company to company slickly and quickly, selling and moving on as they go. And there's the one-person band, whose company is just one person - and will always stay that way.
Small businesses usually start out with a handful of people, and take on the characteristics of their founders as they grow. And the motivations for going into business are many and varied, from simply wanting to be your own boss through to having to strike out on your own after redundancy.
All this means that, if your business involves dealing with small businesses, you need to make sure you understand that a "one size fits all" solution won't be the best option. It's why, for example, BT offers both the Windows Mobile-based Office Anywhere and the BlackBerry for mobile email. While they both do mobile email, each may suit different kinds of small business to a different degree.
Making sure that small businesses have the right products for them is hard - but it's what BT wants to do. Because, ultimately, we recognise that your business is as unique as you are.
Tags: blackberry, bt, bt broadbandoffice, office anywhere, small businesses, sme
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Comments
2. At March 10, 2008 6:26 PM, Robin Cullen wrote:
Diito
3. At March 10, 2008 10:20 PM, kim wrote:
they all look tempting, but why is all this sort of stuff so expensive
4. At March 10, 2008 11:32 PM, J G Dawson wrote:
Sorry, but I found this to be no more than patronising spin -A space that needs to be filled for the sole purpose of ending up at another BT plug - All businesses aren't the same eh? - Get away...
5. At March 11, 2008 11:45 AM, Liam Wilber wrote:
In reference to Zen and RObin Cullen, I fully agree with your comments. This post show's that when it comes to small buisness we need to think 'out side the box', as there are many buisness who may appear, on the outside to be the same, but on the inside, are completly different!
A perfect example of this is, "Microsoft" and "Apple Mac". I know what you are thinking, that they are not small buisnesses, but what do they do? They provide an operating system to do tasks, such as word processing, mutlimedia authoring, web design and others to name a few, but are completly different in their approach, design, stability and implementation. Small buisnesses are the same.
In regards to Kim, and the comment on the cost, admitidly, some of the products are expensive, yes, but if you take into account development costs, man hours used to research / develop and maintain the software which needs to be taken into account.
J G Dawson, why need to be so down on BT all the time? What have they ever done to you, to deserve such haterid?
6. At March 11, 2008 12:51 PM, Ian Betteridge wrote:
Actually, JG, the initial idea for this post came when someone asked me why BT had products which, on the face of it, compete with each other - BlackBerry and Office Anywhere are only one example.
Plus, you might think it's obvious - but you'd be surprised how many times you can sit in marketing meetings for companies small and large who refer to "the small business market" as if it were just one type of business.
7. At March 11, 2008 1:43 PM, Liam Wilber wrote:
I agree Ian Betteridge
8. At March 12, 2008 11:12 AM, Carl wrote:
I my experience when dealing with SME's I find that the business is a different as the person that runs it. SME's all have their own identity.
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1. At March 10, 2008 1:14 PM, Zen wrote: