Next Generation Broadband Access – Building the Case for Regional Investment took place on 22nd Feb 2010 in Manchester, co-hosted by Techcelerate on behalf of DC-KTN. Click on the thumbnail to access event leaflet.

Event was chaired by Philip Hargrave, CEO DC-KTN

• Speaker 1: How to deliver 10Gbit/s…or perhaps not? by Ian Vance, Amazing Communications; Chair of the UK Government’s Photonics Leadership Group
• Speaker 2: United Digital City by Shaun Fensom, Chairman Manchester Digital and Consultant to Manchester City Council
• Speaker 3: “Rising the Alert” losing and making money, the opportunity for Next Generation Networks and the region by NWIX Group Ltd

Outcome of the 3 break-out sessions were summarised by:

• Demand and benefits – Richard Spragg of AIMES
• Commercial by David Ashmore, Chairman Metronet
• Performance by James Blessing of  ISPA

All above videos were filmed by Flip Ultra HD camera (courtesy of salesforce.com). One film clip was corrupted, and the latter sessions were not fully filmed to preserve battery power, which eventually ran out before the event end.

Have you ever tried to upload a movie file longer than 10 minutes to Youtube only to find out that they would reject it after upload is completed? Well I have. You cannot really blame Youtube for thier decision given that it is a free service. So the answer is to split the movie to files, each shorter than 10 minutes and upload.

If you are looking for a tool to split your movie, suggest you try SimpleMovieX for Mac. I downloaded the trial version, and it works.

Life was easier when you had only one calendar to deal with. If you are like me, then you have made your life difficult by having too many unconnected calendars, causing misery! Here are a list of my calendars:

1. iCal (MacBook)
2. Google
3. iPhone
4. Salesforce.com
5. Tungle.com

I have added Tungle.com today, so that others who want to schedule a meeting with me could do so by finding out my availability. My tungle account is at http://tungle.me/manojranaweera

The trick to all this is being able to sync. Tungle failed to sync with my iCal after many attempts even after Tungle crew came to my aid. My way round this is to sync with my personal Google Calendar, which syncs with my iCal. I still like to think iCal is the master calendar, as it syncs well with my iPhone.

I am yet to sync with my salesforce.com account. Here is my thought process when I am adding an event or an appointment to my calendars.

1. Add it to my personal iCal Calendar, which has three calendars splitting my interests: edocr, Techcelerate and Personal.
2. Copy all relevant ones to my Google personal calendar (not shared) on iCal which syncs with Google and then with Tungle
3. Copy relevant ones to two public Google calendars, these being, UK Tech Biz Events and NWDC Calendar

An event such as the one planned for 24th Feb will have four entries on my iCal as it shows the same (copied 3 times) against my iCal master, Google personal, NWDC calendar and UK Tech Biz Events. Irrespective of the clutter, it works.

What this shows is that life is full of mini strategies and plans. Who thought I would need a strategy for maintaining my calendars? Next is to think about integrating Salesforce.com for edocr.com. In this process I must thank Google, which provides the means for achieving synchronisation across many different platforms.

Update 1:

Just realised that I can simplify the process by changing my Google Personal Calendar to be the master. There is no longer a need for own calendar within iCal. Just wondering whether this can be further simplified.

As I just tweeted, working out the route to market is easy, working out the optimum pricing strategy is harder. As we move forward with LC&SFI (Lead Capture and Salesforce.com Integration) project, I am debating about which part of our value chain has the biggest pricing opportunity? Perhaps you could help me find the answer!

Our value chain:

1. Exposure through edocr.com – edocr Essential is currently priced at £250 per annum (experience shows this is considered too low)
2. Lead Capture within edocr.com – launch planned for 1st April
3. Download sales leads from edocr.com – launch planned for 1st April
4. Make the leads available within salesforce.com – launch planned for 1st April

Given the pricing strategies adopted by salesforce.com partners, item (4) above could be the most expensive. Let’s be honest! Its not the actual cost of providing this service, but understanding how others have gone about pricing such applications, will dictate the outcome.

Here is an example. I just tried to install a free application from Appirio to synchronise calender on salesforce.com with my Google calendar. A simple application I hear you say! Yes, the version I tried to install (and failed miserably as there is something wrong with my salesforce.com account in terms of installing apps from AppExchange) is free, but the premium version starts from $2500. And that’s a hefty price to pay simply to synchronise Google calendar!

This shows that we need to seriously get some advise on how to price enterprise applications. This also raise number of further queries:

1. Could item (4) above be few times more pricey than all the items combined?
2. Should the price of all items be increased to reflect price of item 4 eventually?

Getting the pricing right is becoming more and more important!

Few weeks ago, I wrote about possible ways to integrate with Salesforce.com. The options explored included:

1. Traditional web-to-lead forms
2. API, especially as edocr.com is based on OAuth and salesforce.com now has OAuth capability
3. App Exchange

Since then, after much dialogue with salesforce.com employees, customers and partners, we have come to the conclusion, that App Exchange is the way forward for edocr.com. Having prepared edocr.com for lead capture over the last three months, we are now ready to start the integration work. Whilst the development team is busy with integration, I would like to share my thoughts on how we would price the benefits arising from new functionality.

edocr Essential

edocr Essential, our unmanaged service is priced at £250 per annum, making it viable for both small and large businesses. When we priced this basic offering, it was difficult to guess what the right price would be. As far as I know, there are no magic formulae in terms of pricing a product. Yes, certain factors can influence, but at the end of the day, you go with with your gut feel. I would be keen to hear how you have priced your SaaS application.

edocr Essential’s value proposition is based on Exposure. Sales leads are based on prospects contacting you. It provides a one-stop-shop for all your documents. Documents uploaded by employees with accounts are displayed against your company profile fully categorised with company information and employee information. And the company can be listed against all applicable categories on the business directory. Each document can be distributed through mail lists, tweeted and bookmarked to over 200 social networks by you, your team or anyone coming across your document. Documents are accessible through search engines, social networks (when bookmarked) and edocr.com.

edocr Managed is basically outsourcing above to edocr Ltd or its partners so that your account can be professionally managed.

edocr Enterprise provides tighter integration with your applications in addition to providing a white label proposition.

Sales Leads Capture

The sales leads capture is almost ready. The current development project, LC&SFI (Leads Capture and Salesforce.com Integration), started as one project, but it is increasingly felt as two. And therefore, makes sense to split as follows:

- Sales Leads: The ability to access and download who looked at your documents, giving you pre-qualified sales leads. The assumption here is that if someone viewed your document, s/he will be interested in your products and services. The quality of the lead is not part of this offering, but I can foresee us offering behavioural based sales leads in the future, perhaps in 2011. You will soon be able to download leads in CSV format
- Integration with Salesforce.com: After month’s of research, we decided today that the best way to integrate with Salesforce.com is through AppExchange. I was excited when I heard that Salesforce.com supports our chosen API standard, OAuth, but I believe it would be messy, if we had taken this approach, especially as we would have to develop an advanced version of edocr API that will only be available to paid customers.

Pricing Thoughts

Thoughts on pricing is as follows:
1. edocr Essential at £250 per annum (firmed)
2. Sales lead capture at £250 per annum (discussion stage)
3. Integration with Salesforce.com £250 per annum. (discussion stage)

So total cost to use edocr.com with full integration with salesforce.com would be £750 per annum. Seems still too low to get medium to large companies excited. Please note that there is no real basis for £250, it’s just what we came up with, and seems to be a nice figure to increment. As I said earlier, no scientific thought process has gone into pricing. And all our pricing include fair usage with no real restrictions on number of documents, hard disk space, loading, no. of employee accounts, etc.

We may also introduce a one time fee for setting up, perhaps around £100 mark. Additionally, hourly and daily consultancy/advisory fees will be available soon to get the most out of edocr.com.

Your contribution

We are very much in the dark with pricing. At the end of the day, our success depends on getting this right. Our gut feel is that the pricing is too small to attract larger companies. We believe in offering a fair price for the services rendered with a reasonable margin. We would welcome any thoughts, advice, comments you may have. 

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Northern StartUp 2.0 has come a long way since our humble start in November 2006. Whilst I enjoy running it, it has strained my resources heavily. Unless something is done, it’s sustainability is questionable in the medium to long run.

So here are my reasons for repositioning:
1. It must generate income to compensate effort.
2. Lacks the collaboration between new and established technology companies:
- Customers of early technology products are technology companies
- Opportunities in joint ventures
- Opportunities in acquisitions
3. It does not provide a mechanism for southern and overseas tech companies to break into the north west
4. No attention given to key segments such as mobile or SaaS through out the year
5. Insufficient knowledge transfer from established to new
6. No staff

Above will be addressed through:
1. Membership based on revenues.
2. Two strands, below £5m revenues and above. More opportunities for collaboration, setup joint ventures and help with acquisitions
3. Bespoke events and initiatives for southern and overseas companies to break in to the region
4. Focus groups with activities through out the year for technology segments
5. Active programs of match making for knowledge transfer
6. Membership income will eventually support number of full time employees.

The rebranded and repositioned organisation (techcelerate) will be focusing on both small and large technology companies. At the bottom end, the focus will remain on the needs of tech entrepreneurs. At the top end, the focus would be on accelerating the growth.

Lot to work out, but the future looks exciting. Come and join the ride!

It is no surprise to my regular readers that Northern StartUp 2.0 is currently going through a rebranding and repositioning exercise. Whilst there is a lot to talk about why this is taking place, I thought of highlighting few discussions I had on Twitter about rebranding and repositioning with an international software house which has also gone through a rebranding exercise recently.

Here is my situation: no budget but total freedom.
Here is the situation of the software house: large budget (assumption) but constraints due to history and stakeholders.

With my total freedom, and given I am lazy (or clever, depending on your viewpoint), I sought the answer from Twittersphere. What should our brand be, both in terms of name, logo and strap line.

After some deliberations, Katrina Delargy (tech entrepreneur) came up with the winner which was then refined by Tim Dempsey (investor cum service provider). A new brand was born, Techcelerate. The logo concept was forwarded by Ed French (venture capitalist), which is now going through few changes to make it look liked it has been designed by WPP. Strapline will almost be “Tech Business: Accelerated”. Final change for strapline came through email via James Crawford (service provider). All those who were involved in this process were our customers. Techcelerate is a brand that could be easily understood by a first timer without knowing what services we actually delivered. A real winner, in my humble opinion!

In the case of the software house with euro 394 million revenues and 3500 employees, it was not straight forward as tapping into the wisdom of Twittersphere. They have adopted a similar line to most large brands, that is, the name does not mean anything unless the brand is built. Take Apple for example, who would know it is about a computer unless you have come across the product before. Part of the large budget can be spent on communicating and establishing the new brand and its values.

This article is not about showing who is clever, but it is to show that above scenario is a fact of life. It is usual for big companies to spend significant resources in rebranding, but tools like Twitter makes the smaller companies come up with winners with no budget! Just like large companies test the brand with its customers (again at cost), Twitter allows us to do it whilst the brand is being designed.

The power of social media is immense, if you learn how to tame it…

Since I restarted blogging few months back, I have been looking for the ultimate wordpress theme. I must have changed themes more than I have blogged during this short period. To my surprise, I came across a theme today titled “Smells like Facebook” by Ainun Nazieb. Strangely, I find it intriguing and satisfying. Perhaps its the familiarity. But it sure will confuse few people when they come across it for the first time!

Let’s hope this theme will last longer than the last dozen or so I experimented with.

To help our customers maximise the use of edocr.com, I am in the process of preparing a check list. The key question asked here is what can you do with edocr.com today (not tomorrow!)?

1. Create your account
2. Claim and update your company profile – at this point, you become a customer of edocr.com under edocr Essential or edocr Managed pricing plans
3. Manage employee accounts by adding/removing accounts to company profile
4. Upload documents
5. Distribute documents
6. Interact with documents
7. Join Groups
8. Run marketing campaigns
9. Respond to prospects
10. Use API for auto publishing where it makes sense
11. Use support desk in regular basis
12. Training
13. Maintenance
14. Reports and ROI – at present this is limited to total no. of views

Value proposition of edocr.com has two strands, these being:

1. Exposure through documents across the Internet
2. Sales lead generation through documents

Currently, sales leads generation occurs when a prospect contacts a publisher. We are in the process of building functionality that will allow greater intelligence for publishers to the extent, where consent is given, sales leads containing email addresses are released.

Forthcoming functionality will provide greater control on how documents are published as well as how they are accessed.