HP Chromebook Now Good to Go – Google Replaces Faulty Charger |  |
- HP Chromebook Now Good to Go – Google Replaces Faulty Charger
- 9 Tips For Getting Better Business Results From Social Media
- Brian Bell of Zuora: Why Subscriptions are Good for Business
- Who Knows What It Means, It’s a Brand New Year!
| HP Chromebook Now Good to Go – Google Replaces Faulty Charger Posted: 03 Jan 2014 02:00 PM PST
Google has replaced a faulty charger on the HP Chromebook 11 which was holding up continued sale of the new laptop. Google and HP issued warnings about the chargers back in November and December halting sales and eventually leading to a recall of the chargers. The initial decision came after complaints from what both companies called a small number of customers who said the chargers had become damaged due to overheating. Google and HP decided to recall the chargers after receiving additional information from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. In a post on the official Google Chrome Blog Dec. 17, 2013, Google explained:
A release from the Consumer Product Safety Commission issued the same day said Google had received nine reports of the charger overheating and melting. The federal agency added that in one case a consumer had reported receiving a small burn from the charger. In another, a pillow had apparently been damaged as a result of heat generated from the malfunctioning charger. Last month, 9to5 Google reported that Google had sent the website’s editorial reviewer not only a redesigned charger but an updated version of the Chromebook 11. Both companies had initially said they would immediately resume selling the Chromebook 11 with a replacement charger. But until recently an order page for the Chromebook had displayed a “coming soon” announcement about the device’s availability. As of this week, however, the online store indicates the device is available. The HP Chromebook 11 costs $279. The 11.6 inch laptop is .75 inches thick and weighs 2.5 pounds. Google claims that businesses can save an average of $5,000 per device over a 3-year period by using Chromebooks. They offer an on-site calculator to calculate the savings. Reviewers say this particular Chromebook has minimal features and would be good as a second computer for business or perhaps as something light for business travel. Whatever you are looking for, this Chromebook’s problems seem to be behind it for now. HP Chromebook Image: Google The post HP Chromebook Now Good to Go – Google Replaces Faulty Charger appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| 9 Tips For Getting Better Business Results From Social Media Posted: 03 Jan 2014 11:15 AM PST
Are you struggling or confused with what you want to, need to or should be saying on your social media sites? Me too sometimes! Social Media is such a consuming yet integral and inspiring part of our daily world. We use it for getting real time news and alerts, finding information on a particular topic, finding communities of niche interests, or staying in touch with family and friends.In fact, we turn to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, blogs and several other platforms for just about anything we need. How we maintain relationships and communicate with each other both personally and professionally will never be the same because social media has made it all so much more accessible, effective and fun. Consider this sampling of impressive social media data:
With regard to social media, there is a right way and a not so right way to use these tools. And making the right choice can get you impressive results like this too. Get more serious and focused, have a better plan and strategy and follow these rules of engagement to get better results from social media. Be Committed If you are doing "it" because you think you have to, you will fizz out and people will too. Post less but make what you post about more meaningful and purposeful not only to others but to you too. Be Consistent The more you suit up and show up on social media and bring some value to people's day, the more loyalty you will build. Think about people you actively follow and understand what they are doing that makes you look forward to engaging with them. Focus Your Content Stick to what you know, what you want to be known for and what you want to be associated with. Pick two or three areas of expertise and stick to them no matter what they are. There is an audience and niche for everything. Simplifying your social content makes it easier for people to remember you. Customize Your Content Customize your social content for each of the social media channels that you use. They all have a best practice and application with regard to content and strategy. Observe people that get a lot of engagement and action. Watch what they do and say and emulate their approach. Use the Best Social Media for You One of the smartest things you can do is figure out what social media channels are best for you and your customers and community. Using the pillars — Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google + — is usually the best. But there are other niche platforms including Vine, Instagram and Pinterest that can be very effective. Don’t spread yourself too thin on too many platforms. Less but consistent and focused content on a few of these channels is the better way to go. Be Strategic This is where who you are, what you do and how you can help comes in. Post social content that is thoughtful and shows you can be trusted, are knowledgeable, authentic and results oriented. Educate, Inspire … and Only Then, Sell It's the 60-20-20 formula. Use your social content 60% of the time to educate and serve and 20% of the time to inspire. That earns you the opportunity to sell the other 20%. Notice the order this is in. Show Your Heart Be real, be kind, be who you say you are as much as you possibly can, but know your personal boundaries when sharing online and always respect others’ boundaries. #trusthewhy If we could only stop thinking we have to know the ‘why’ about things before we take action and jump in, instead of trusting more often that we already know the why most of the time, our curiosity and wonder would do the rest. I am so intrigued with this idea that I am writing a book around this topic in early 2014. Finally, check out these social media highlights of 2013 from the world of social media. Going forward remember: YOLO, so take a cool SELFIE of you doing things you enjoy and don’t worry. There’s no need to have any FOMO cause whatever you think you are missing is pretty much going to be there 24/7 online somewhere. Social media photo via Shutterstock The post 9 Tips For Getting Better Business Results From Social Media appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Brian Bell of Zuora: Why Subscriptions are Good for Business Posted: 03 Jan 2014 08:15 AM PST
One of the major shifts taking place is the growing adoption by consumers of subscriptions for goods and services instead of buying them outright. According to an October 2013 Economist study of 293 business executives commissioned by billing/subscription management platform provider Zuora, 80% of respondents believe that their customers are changing how they obtain access to goods and services. During Social Biz Atlanta 2013, Zuora's CMO Brian Bell (pictured left) presented on why a subscription business model is good for companies looking to build long-lasting relationships with today's tech-savvy consumers. Below are some of the key points Brian delivered to help understand what's driving the shift to a subscription business model, how companies are making the transition from the traditional product-driven economy, and how financial performance is measured. Embedded below is a video of the full session, including a great introduction to subscription economy thinking by Denis Pombriant, a leading analyst in the CRM industry and thought leader on Subscription Economy development. * * * * * Small Business Trends: What is the subscription economy?Brian Bell: It really is this massive shift that we see in the market as you move from a one time transaction product based economy to this service oriented, recurring, relationship driven economic model. You see this across the board, you see it across all verticals and all parts of the economy. When the company started five years ago we didn't anticipate that you would be able to subscribe to virtually anything as a consumer. We didn't imagine that you could subscribe to Netflix and get DVDs; that you would never really as a consumer own music anymore. It is seldom that you would own movies, or even that you would own cars. Small Business Trends: What kinds of businesses are getting involved in the subscription economy?Brian Bell: Many of our customers — companies like Box and Splunk, Zendesk, Marketo — are designed around the subscription business model. So they knew that before they launched, they actually needed a platform to run their business. But what is more interesting is how it’s impacting a lot of the legacy technology companies — Dell, HP, and Informatica. Other customers that are really enterprise customers are adopting this, almost out of necessity. They are having to pivot and to essentially to embrace Cloud Computing in SaaS, because their legacy businesses are in decline, and they are finding they don't have the systems in place to manage it. Media is another really interesting industry that is under a lot of pressure, and it is rapidly transforming. What is interesting about this industry is that you outsource your relationships to the customer. In media you would outsource circulation, and the circulation department, or the third party would go and get people to subscribe to print media, that was their function. Then the media company would take that demographic information and sell it to advertisers and that is how they made their money. Now they are finding that they can't survive that way, that as everything has moved online, and as people expect more from the media industry, they have to own that relationship with the customer. The bottom line is if you run a business like Zuora we subscribe to virtually everything to run the business. You can subscribe to helpdesk software, CRM solutions, you can subscribe to accounting solutions; you can subscribe to real estate, virtual office space, telephone systems, this is a massive shift in the way you build and grow any business. Then on the customer side I can subscribe to clothing, to wine, to prophylactics. The Dollar Shave Club is an amazing company that provides a disruptive model to the established shaving industry. Small Business Trends: Why is it happening?Brian Bell: It is happening because customers demand it. They like the flexibility, they like the ability to be current in technology and current in media, and it's a great business model. If you run a subscription business you have very different financials that makes it very attractive, and this is why the evaluations of these companies on Wall Street, and by the VCs is so high, because they look at the finances of a recurring model very different. Small Business Trends: Why is this so different from a product economy?Brian Bell: In a product economy, you are selling units, you look back and you say how many number of widgets did I sell? How many bottles of Coke did I sell? How many iPhones did I sell? That's how you measure your success, where in a subscription economy your focus is on the relationship. How many customers did I acquire? If you look at and imagine, how many customers came in? How many converted? How many did I acquire? How many have I retained? Instead of pricing per unit it's all about service plans, so do we have bundle plans? Do we have a gold, silver, platinum? Do we have plans that are monthly, weekly, or daily, are they based on usage or based on user? How are we going to price the plans? They are not one time orders that are recurring, multiple orders of a life time of a customer. Box.com was an early customer that started with us in the consumer space, and then they said we need to go to the enterprise because the money is in the enterprise, how do we start to sell to enterprises? They realized that it's B2Any, and in the new world you can sell just as easily to enterprises as you can to any consumers. This is the fundamental shift in the subscription economy. Small Business Trends: What are the financial metrics involved in the subscription economy?Brian Bell: In a traditional product business you look at an income statement and an income statement is a backward looking financial statement that looks at how much revenue you did, and what it cost for you to deliver that business? In the subscription economy it is a forward looking annual recurring revenue based financial statement. I will talk more about this but this is a big, big shift and frankly, the industry has not kept up with how different the financial model is. These are the the metrics that matter:
Small Business Trends: How do you grow a business in the subscription economy?Brian Bell: If you think about a product business how do you grow? In a product business Apple will design the next cool iPhone, they will innovate, build the distribution channel, get it out to market and then they will have their reps and partners selling that device, and then they start all over again they create the next version of that device. The way that you grow in a subscription business is, as I mentioned before, you acquire the relationship, you reduce the churn you want to stop people from leaving and you need to understand why are they leaving if they leave, and how to you prevent them from leaving, and you need to increase the value. These are the three ways that you grow a recurring business:
There is a variety of strategies to do this. We have identified 12 different strategies that are supported in our platform that would allow you to do this. If you are trying to acquire customers you are launching new products, you might be delivering products or offerings in multiple currencies, or you might want to enter a new market. You have reduced churn by looking at maybe having a different pricing plan. You might find that your churn is the result of only having a monthly plan when actually people want a weekly plan. Or you might find that you can increase the value by charging overages on consumption, or up-sales or bundles. There is a variety of pricing of packages strategies to really drive growth in this recurring model. Small Business Trends: Tell us about the importance of automating process flows.Brian Bell: The second area is process flows, automating these process flows; this is very, very different than the economy that was product based. Let me add a bit more color. In a product based business you book an order, you ship it, you invoice and collect for it, and then they receive it. This is pretty straight forward, we pretty much know how this works, but in a recurring model it is much more dynamic. When you look at a process like "cash" it gets much more complicated when you start to look at renewals. If someone goes in and renews the system how do you actually manage that process? How does it change your processes? In view of your payment failures if someone is a subscriber and then their credit card doesn't go through what do you do? Do you suspend them, can you stop them? Is it more expensive for you to turn off the service to them than it is to actually kept them on the service even if there are not paying? As consumers we see this happening all the time, we will stop subscribing to something, we will continue to get the service, often the reason is because either they don' t know, or two, they don't know how to call sufficiently or effectively a turn off or modify the subscribers or the subscription that you have. It is much more complicated and essentially in this new world you can have multiple orders coming in that you want to have in one invoice. You might have one order coming in that you might want to spread out across multiple invoices. You might have an order coming in that then it is going to be recognized in your accounting system in a very different way. Do you recognize revenue on a usage basis? Do you recognize it on a payment basis? What is the accounting policy you are going to use to recognize revenue? And what complexity does that have when your users are constantly changing the things that they subscribe to? How does that impact your financial systems? It gets very, very complicated. Small Business Trends: What do you need to know for a subscription business model?Brian Bell: Remember this from basic accounting 101, it is pretty straight forward. You say I did $100 of revenue last year, the cost of goods of the things that I sold was $30 so my gross profit is $70. Then I have a bunch of other expenses just in my company. I have sales and marketing, I have G&A, I have R&D and the bottom line is that is my total operating expense. I subtract that from my gross profit and that is your net income. This is how we run accounting in the business world today. This is very different in a recurring revenue model, and the fundamental difference is that in a recurring revenue model you are beginning your fiscal year with a book on business. You are beginning with, let's say $100 of annual recurring revenue (ARR) where as in a product business you have to go out and sell all of the new business you are going to generate. We are proposing in the industry what we call a “Subscription Economy” income statement, or a recurring income statement. This is different so it starts with your annual recurring revenue, you have $100 of annual recurring revenue. You say what was the churn? Well I lost 10 customers that were paying me a $1, so I lost $10. So I am down to $90 after my churn. Then I look at the expense that I incurred to run that business, and that would be your cost of goods, but also your R&D, your data center cost, and anything involved in delivering this service you are providing. And that delivers a number that we call the recurring profit, that is your recurring profit margin. Finally you can take that $40 — you had $100, you lost $10 by churn, and you have a bunch of expenses that need to run the business so you are left with $40 of profit. The big question in a recurring business is what do you do with the $40? Do you invest it and try to acquire new customers, or do you just bring it to the bottom line? This interview on the customer survey experience is part of the One on One interview series with thought-provoking entrepreneurs, authors and experts in business today. This transcript has been edited for publication. For the full interview, please view the video above. The post Brian Bell of Zuora: Why Subscriptions are Good for Business appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Who Knows What It Means, It’s a Brand New Year! Posted: 03 Jan 2014 05:00 AM PST
Well, it’s a brand new year. A year full of unknowns, 12 full months of blank slate, 365 days of surprises. Like, for instance, a rogue line coming from the wrong side of a graph. What does it mean? Is it good? Bad? Hard to tell, but it’s certainly different. And unlike the people in this cartoon – I’m excited to see what happens! The post Who Knows What It Means, It’s a Brand New Year! appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
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