We have been using Twitter for some time to connect with our users and if you are a Twitter user, we would love to connect with you. With over 3,000 followers (and growing fast) it’s a great way for you to stay in touch with our news and current developments and let us know what’s on your mind. Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/BusinessIT.
Technology You Can Trust.
Doug Richard provides some very useful tips on the most important things to consider when launching a new business. We are also very excited to say that we have been nominated for a prestigious Techcrunch Europa award and you can help by voting for us! As ever, please give us your feedback and comments.
http://www.businessitonline.com/
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HOT TOPICS THIS MONTH...
Vote for us in the Techcrunch Europa awards - no registration required
Voting for Techcrunch Europe's Europa awards opened this week and Business IT Online has been nominated in the category of Best Enterprise / B2B Startup. Voting takes seconds (two clicks), so please help us win! Read more.
Doug Richard's top tips for starting a business
Former Dragon's Den panel member Doug Richard outlines his six top tips for people thinking of starting up their own firms. Read more.
The benefits of low-cost SaaS for SMEs
Small and mid-sized businesses now have an arsenal of hosted services at their disposal, which they can access through a web browser and a secure internet link. As well as reducing the IT burden, they can use software as a service (SaaS) to lower the cost of providing back and front office business functions. Read more.
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Arif Mohamed at Computer Weekly has written a useful article entitled “The benefits of low-cost SaaS for SMEs”. For the uninitiated, SaaS stands for ‘Software-as-a-Service’.
The article provides a very useful overview of the range of business software available to help SMEs keep their IT costs down.
“Small and mid-sized businesses now have an arsenal of hosted services at their disposal, which they can access through a web browser and a secure internet link.
As well as reducing the IT burden, they can use software as a service (SaaS) to lower the cost of providing back and front office business functions.
According to IDC, the SaaS industry is set to grow at 40% over the next year alone, driven largely by the economic downturn as companies look for quick returns on their investments.
Today, SaaS offerings have grown to cover human resources, accounting, procurement, billing, customer relationship management (CRM), sales and marketing, enterprise resource planning (ERP), and business intelligence (BI).”
Read the full article here.
Voting for Techcrunch Europe’s Europa awards opened this week and Business IT Online has been nominated in the category of Best Enterprise / B2B Startup. Please vote for us.
Here is some more information about Techcrunch:
“TechCrunch Europe is a blog covering Web 2.0 and Mobile start-ups. TechCrunch Europe is part of the TechCrunch Network, which includes country-specific blogs for France and Japan.
TechCrunch Europe is edited by Mike Butcher. Mike has written for UK national newspapers and magazines including The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The New Statesman. He is a former editor of New Media Age magazine, the leading new media weekly in the UK, and the European edition of The Industry Standard. Since 1996 has launched or re-launched numerous media web sites and in 2000 he was nominated as NetMedia’s European Internet Journalist of the Year. In 2004 he was voted ‘One of the 100 Innovators of the UK Internet Decade’ by GfK NOP, the fourth-largest custom research business in the world. In July 2008 he was put at No. 47 out of the Top 100 people in London’s creative industry by The Independent newspaper and The Hospital Club. In August 2008 TechCrunch Europe was awarded the best “Web 2.0 and business blog” in the UK, by the readers of Computer Weekly magazine. In 2009 it was named as one of the Top 10 blogs out of the UK. Mike is a regular commentator on the technology business, appearing on BBC News, Sky News, Channel 4 and Bloomberg. Mike Twitters as @mikebutcher.”
Please vote for us here. Thank you!
Technology You Can Trust.
NESTA recently released a very interesting report into the state of play of angel investing. Find out what successful business angels look for and why they could be the right source of funding for your business. We have also announced this month a great new feature that many of you have been requesting. As ever, please give us your feedback and comments.
http://www.businessitonline.com/
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Improved contacts importing - now with company creation
We are very pleased to say that this month we have released an update to our contacts import utility that now enables you to import companies alongside contacts. This will be of particular interest for teams that target B2B sales. Read more.
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The truth about angel investing
With institutional investment and bank loan financing becoming less accessible in recent times, it has fallen on the shoulders of business angels to keep funds flowing to the most promising business opportunities. Without these funds, businesses fail to grow. This report from NESTA paints an encouraging picture of angel investment. Read more.
Yuuguu - instant screen sharing and real-time collaboration
Yuuguu is a screen-sharing and collaboration service that small businesses need to know about. By combining unified instant-messaging with unique screen-sharing technology, Yuuguu will exceed your web conferencing needs at a significantly lower cost than other major providers. Read more.
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Yuuguu is a screen-sharing and collaboration service that small businesses need to know about. By combining unified instant-messaging with unique screen-sharing technology, Yuuguu will exceed your web conferencing needs at a significantly lower cost than other major providers.
Yuuguu hit the news a few days ago when they announced the integration of Skype into the offering. In particular, the free offering is worth trying if your business could benefit from 100 minutes a month of talk time with up to 30 conference members.
Here’s a summary of all the great features you get with a Yuuguu account:
Give Yuuguu a try. Download it here.
A research report, published this month by NESTA (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) and the BBAA (British Business Angels Association) has revealed some very interesting facts for both early-stage private investors (business angels) and the entrepreneurs of those young ventures.
With institutional investment and bank loan financing becoming less accessible in recent times, it has fallen on the shoulders of business angels to keep funds flowing to the most promising business opportunities. Without these funds, businesses fail to grow. The report paints an encouraging picture of angel investment in the UK while also providing a framework for due diligence and investment criteria as well as suggestions for fiscal levers that the government can pull to further stimulate this form of investment.
Download the full report here (PDF). Here are the summary points from the report:
1. Business angel investing is risky, but overall appears to generate attractive outcomes.
- The most likely outcome in any one angel investment is failure, but ‘winning’ investments are very attractive. Fifty-six per cent of the exits failed to return capital, while 9 per cent generate more than ten times the capital invested.
- Because the 44 per cent of investments that generate positive exits win at a larger multiple than the costs of the negative exits, the overall return to business angel investing in the UK is 2.2 times the invested capital.
- These 9 per cent large investment exits produced nearly 80 per cent of all the positive cash flows.
- Given the holding period of just under four years, this is approximately a 22 per cent gross Internal Rate of Return (IRR).
2. Key strategic choices are significantly related to better investment outcomes.
- Angels with entrepreneurial expertise outperformed those without it, especially in earlier-stage opportunities.
- More than half of the investments were very early-stage, going into pre-revenue ventures.
- Those who invested in opportunities where they have specific industry expertise failed significantly less.
- Those who perform at least some due diligence, even just 20 hours, experienced fewer failed investments.
- After the investment is made, some involvement with the venture was related to improved investment outcomes. However, failure was greater where investors were perhaps too involved, specifically when they held management roles.
- Exits where the business angel investor had made follow-on investment in the venture were significantly less successful.
3. Tax incentives appear to have a material effect on encouraging business angel investing, and some details may help refine existing policy.
- Eighty per cent of investors surveyed have made use of the Enterprise Investment Scheme, at least once. And 57 per cent of their investments had made use of the EIS.
- Investors said that 24 per cent of their investments would not have been made without tax incentives.
- On average, it takes three years for an investment to fail, but six years to get to a win.
- The average investment size is £42,000 per investor, and an average of six investors coinvested into each venture (although 17 per cent of the venture investments were made by solo investors).
- Angel investors on average acquired 8 per cent of the venture; only 10 per cent of investments acquired more than 20 per cent of a venture.
- Most angel investing is done within 250km of the investor’s home, though 25 per cent of investors were willing to make investments abroad.
We have received quite a lot of feedback pointing out that our contacts import function has not enabled users to either assign a company name to a contact or create a new company record that’s separately stored and filterable. There were some technical challenges involved in offering this.
We are very pleased to say that today we have released an update to our contacts import utility that now enables you to import companies alongside contacts, including the ability to:
** NOTE: By default, the first contact found in the import file, that is associated to a company, will become the designated primary contact. Business phone, fax and address will be copied into the company’s record. You also have the option to opt out of setting primary contacts for companies during the import process.
In particular, this will help you if you work with high value B2B sales leads where you have a number of contacts within a company but may still want to designate a ‘primary contact’ too.
Please let us have your feedback and comments.
Technology You Can Trust.
This month we have a fantastic offer for businesses in the UK that are interested in learning from the experts about how to plan for success in business to help you raise funding and take your business to the next level. We are also excited to announce the launch of an innovative free service that helps recruit interns into small businesses. Oh, and we've released another great feature on the site too! As ever, please give us your feedback and comments.
http://www.businessitonline.com/
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Quick and easy office print supplies finder
With this very simple wizard you can very quickly find the supplies and consumables for your office machine by make, type and name (including printers, copiers, fax machines and multi-function devices). Just select your machine and they're all displayed for you. Stock up on your replacement toners and ink cartridges today. Read more.
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EXCLUSIVE OFFER: Plan your way to success
Make sure that you keep one step ahead of your competitors by having what it takes to write THE 'PERFECT' BUSINESS PLAN. Exclusive to Business IT Online users and in conjunction with the UK's leader in business plan writing, Business Plan Services, we have secured a limited number of HALF PRICE places for the acclaimed Perfect Business Plan workshop that is being held at the British Library in Central London on Tuesday 12th May. Read more.
Tap into talent with Enternships.com
Until recently, start-ups and small/medium businesses (SMEs) did not really feature in the mind of students and graduates. Or if they did, the students would certainly struggle to find the most exciting opportunities. That is until Enternships.com was launched. Enternships.com launches this week with a free recruitment service connecting start-ups and SMEs to the most talented, eager minds worldwide. Read more.
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