I just read this blog post referring to a recent study by Microsoft about small businesses using hosted IT services. The study contains a few interesting statistics:
40% of companies that used cloud computing services saw a 30% increase in revenue.
90% of companies that didn’t use hosted services saw a decrease in revenues.
Those are pretty dramatic numbers. But drawing the conclusion that using hosted IT services or cloud computing makes you profitable would be incorrect. It isn’t the act of using hosted services that makes you more profitable. It is the thinking behind the decision to use hosted services that really makes the difference.
Companies that use hosted services understand two important concepts:
Running lean is not the same as being cheap.
Any tool that helps you spend more time focusing on your core competency is a good thing to have.
Lean is Not the Same as Cheap
All small businesses should run as lean as possible. You shouldn’t have an office until you need an office. You shouldn’t have a PR firm until you need a PR firm. You shouldn’t have a $10,000 office chair ever.
But running lean isn’t the same as being cheap. Being cheap is stupid and can kill your business.
A cheap organization doesn’t want to pay for anything. They would rather do everything themselves for free. In essence, their time is worth less than their money.
On the other hand, lean and smart organizations understand that time can be just as, or even more valuable, than money. With this in mind they carefully evaluate each new expense based on the following criteria:
Will this service make us money?
Will this service save us money?
Will this service save us enough time that we can better focus on our core competencies?
If the answer is yes to any of the questions above then they purchase the service.
Hosted Services Let You Hire “Specialists” At a Very Affordable Price
The best thing about hosted services is that you get to hire a specialist for each aspect of your business. For example, we currently use Zendesk, Basecamp, Mailchimp and Batchbook among other hosted services.
Now, we like to think that we are a pretty smart group of people here. Could we build our own help desk solution? Probably. Would it be as good as Zendesk? No. Not because we can’t but because we don’t live and breathe “help desk”. We live and breathe “documentation“. That is what we think about all day. How to make it easier to create and distribute software documentation. We’re never going to give “help desk” software the same level of attention that Zendesk does. I know Zendesk is thinking every day about how to make a better help desk. And I get all of the benefits from that which gives me more time to think about how to improve software documentation.
The same applies to project management with Basecamp, email marketing with Mailchimp and CRM solutions with Batchbook.
Another huge plus is that if these services ever go down it is their job to fix it, not mine.
It’s All About the Mindset
Will using hosted services make you more profitable? Maybe. But being lean instead of cheap and focusing on your core strengths will definitely help make you more profitable. For many small businesses, hosted solutions can help in both areas.
We just posted build 14 of the ScreenSteps 2.8 beta. In addition to numerous bug fixes, we also found time to add a couple of enhancements:
The tag widget for a lesson now expands to show all tags.
Holding down the Option key (Mac) or Alt key (Windows) when exporting a lesson or manual to PDF or DOCX will open the file in the default application rather than revealing the file.
You can now customize the “Table of Contents” bookmark label for PDF templates.
ScreenSteps now looks for a preference file alongside the application when launching. This allows you to store ScreenSteps and your registration/pref info on a USB drive.
Links are no longer carried over to the next line when adding a carriage return to lesson description/step instructions.
Updating a lesson on WordPress now overwrites existing images rather than making new ones (you will need to upload your lesson at least once with 2.8 for this to work).
This build of the beta has the final revision of the UI. At this point we are preparing for release and will be focusing on any bug reports we get. Test away!
We have been working on quite a few changes over the last couple of weeks with ScreenSteps Live and just wanted to make you aware of some of the new features that are available on your account if you are a ScreenSteps Live user.
Updated API Documentation and API Change
Over the last few weeks we have been doing a lot of work on the ScreenSteps Live API. We are little embarrassed to say that our documentation of the API has been a little lacking. But no more. We have expanded the API section of our documentation with example xml from all of the different documented API calls. We have also consolidated all of the API resources into a single manual to make it easier to get information.
One important change – While working on the documentation we noticed a problem in the xml for the tag information of a lesson in a manual. Currently the xml node for tag information for a lesson in a manual looks like this:
<lesson>
<tags>
<name>The Tag Name</name>
</tags>
</lesson>
It should be:
<lesson>
<tags>
<tag>
<name>The Tag Name</name>
</tag>
</tags>
</lesson>
There was a missing tag node. This will only affect you if:
You are using the API to display the contents of a lesson AND
The lesson is in a manual AND
You are displaying the tags for that lesson via the API
We have added RSS feeds for your spaces, buckets and manuals. With RSS feeds your users can keep up to date on new lessons that you are adding to your space, manual or bucket. If you are using the standard template, then the RSS feeds are already active in your account.
If you are using a custom template then you will need to add the new rss tag inside of the <head> tag of your custom template. The new tag is:
{{ rss }}
New Search Widget To Add To Your Site
We have also released a new ScreenSteps Live Search Widget that uses standard HTML and Javascript. This means you can insert it anywhere on your website or in other web applications that let you add custom HTML and Javascript. Here are a couple of links that can you started with the widget.
ScreenSteps 2.8 is just about ready for release. One of the key enhancements is the new ability to link between lessons in a manual. You can see an example here. This really adds a lot of flexibility when publishing your manuals to ScreenSteps Live.
If you would like to get the beta you can download it now:
We recently discovered that Squarespace supports publishing content using an XML-RPC blogging client. What does this mean for ScreenSteps users? That’s right, YAO (Yet Another Output). By configuring a WordPress Web Export account in ScreenSteps you will be adding visually rich journal posts to Squarespace in no time.
We are happy to announce the availability of a ScreenSteps Live widget for FogBugz help desks. This widget will allow FogBugz users to quickly search their ScreenSteps Live knowledge base right from within their FogBugz help desk. The video below give a quick overview.
You can find instructions on how to install the widget here:
In our recent webinar, Video, Screencasts and Still Images – Using the Right Tool at the Right Time, we spent a brief amount of time on the concept of Scope vs. Detail in your customer interactions. What do we mean when we talk about scope vs. detail? All communications have a naturally or arbitrarily enforced time/length constraint. The communication may be limited by several factors:
The time the person is willing to devote to the communication
The time the person is able to devote to the communication
The attention the person is able to give the communication
By being aware of these constraints you can adjust the scope and detail of your communications so that each communication can be “completed” in the available amount of time depending on willingness, availability and attention span.
House Sketch
Let’s look at the process of building a house. The first communication will likely be a sketch of the finished home. This is very high in scope (it covers the entire house) but very low in detail (we have no information on measurements, materials, room size, division, etc.). We certainly couldn’t build a house based on a sketch. We wouldn’t even decide to build a home based solely on a sketch. But it is the first step we take in that decision process. The communication is complete and we are able to decide if we want to move onto the next communication.
Floor Plans
Next we have floor plans. Here we have decreased the scope. We are dealing with just the inside of the home and only one floor at a time. But we have increased the detail. We can now see basic measurements for the rooms, where doors will be, where the hallways will be and where we might put furniture and appliances. Once this communication is complete we will know if we want to continue to the next stage or revise the floor plans to better meet our needs.
Blueprints
Finally we move to the blueprints. This is very high in detail but lower in scope. We no longer have information about furniture, it is all about building the structure to the required specifications.
Are You Starting Out With Blueprints or Ending With Floor Plans?
With each communication you create, be it a blog post, video, screencast or ScreenSteps lesson, you want to keep this idea of scope and detail in mind. Is the communication a sketch of a house? Then it should be very broad in scope and low in detail. Does the communication need to be a blueprint? Then make sure that you lower the scope and increase the detail.
The real mistake happens when your first communication with a customer is a blueprint or your last is just a floor plan. Give the customer too much detail at the beginning and they will be lost. Leave them with not enough information and they won’t be able to successfully implement your product/solution.
In future posts we will look at some real world examples of this principle in action.
Today we have released a new Ruby wrapper for interacting with the ScreenSteps Live API using ActiveResource. The video below shows some examples of using the wrapper in the console. The API will let you:
Retrieve spaces, manuals, buckets and lessons
Search spaces, manuals and buckets
Get lessons for a given tag in a space, manual or bucket
Create tasks in your ScreenSteps Live account
We hope that this will make it easier for Rubyists to integrate ScreenSteps Live with their Ruby applications.
Documentation authors rejoice! Your life just got a whole lot easier. With the current 2.8 beta you can now link directly to other lessons in your manual. ScreenSteps will automatically update these links so that they work in PDFs, HTML, Microsoft Word and ScreenSteps Live. This has been an oft requested feature and we think you are really going to love it. It is going to make modular documentation so much easier. The video below gives a quick overview.
We have also incorporated a lot of the feedback we have received about the new UI. There is still more work to do but we hope you are happy with how it is coming along.
Is your marketing a bait and switch? When customers purchase your product or service are they receiving what thought they were buying? If they can’t implement the vision that you have been selling them then they are going to feel cheated.
I am always amazed when companies will invest significant marketing dollars to get users to try or buy a product, but then scrimp on the amount of money, time or effort they allocate for helping that user be successful in implementing the product. Once the sale is complete, the company’s investment is done. Training and support are cost centers that are viewed as burdens instead of opportunities.
This view is short sighted and demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of what the customer was buying when they purchased your product.
You may have been selling them a website authoring tool. They were buying the ability to create web sites.
You may have been selling them a marketing analytics program. They were buying a method for driving more traffic to their site.
You may have been selling application development tools. They were buying the ability to create applications.
You may have been selling a CRM. They were buying a way to improve their customer communications.
If your company doesn’t get this then you are leaving a lot of money on the table.
The most expensive marketing is marketing targeted at users who know nothing about you. The most effective marketing is the word of mouth you get from customers who are able to accomplish great things with your product.
Once a customer purchases your product your main goal needs to be this: help them be as successful as possible in their implementation of your product. If you don’t talk about this in your company or you don’t have a concrete strategy for addressing this issue you will have disappointed customers. You will have customers who feel like they have been “duped”. They thought they were buying an outcome and weren’t able to realize it. And your marketing costs will go up. Those customers who were never able to realize their goals will actually create a negative effect on your marketing efforts as they tell others of their lack of success.
Take a hard look at what you are selling. Is it what your customers think they are buying? Are you helping them achieve their goals through the use of your product? Are you providing your customers with materials that will help them realize those goals? If not, get started. Write a blog post, record a screencast, do a webinar or write some ScreenSteps lessons. Just do a little each week. You will be amazed at the results.
We are very happy to announce that two new ScreenSteps Live widgets are available from within Zendesk. The ScreenSteps Live widgets are now native Zendesk widgets which means you no longer have to paste in any code to integrate ScreenSteps Live and Zendesk.
Search Widget – Search the content of your ScreenSteps Live account from within Zendesk. Click a button to automatically copy a link to one of your ScreenSteps Live lessons right into the current ticket.
Create ScreenSteps Live Tasks Widget – ScreenSteps Live lets you create tasks for lessons that need to be created by authors on your account. Now you can create new tasks right from within Zendesk. A link to the original Zendesk ticket will be included in the task.
Zendesk/ScreenSteps Live Webinar
Tomorrow (Feb. 17, 2010), Adria Richards of Zendesk and Greg DeVore of Blue Mango Learning Systems will be doing a joint webinar on using ScreenSteps Live and Zendesk. The webinar will be held at 4pm (EST). You can register here.
The video below gives you a quick overview of the two widgets:
