Since I was introduced to WorkFlowy by my fellow tech entrepreneur, Joel Gascoigne of OnePage, I have been using it daily as my personal task management tool. WorkFlowy is a simple outline tool that can be used in multiple ways, e.g. build your business plan.

I have tried many task management tools since venturing into the exciting world of tech entrepreneurship in 2004, but never found anything that is as simple as workflowy. For many years, I used MindManager from MindJet, a licensed software application for mind mapping to plan my daily, weekly, monthly and annual schedules.

For daily and weekly tasks management, I would continue to use WorkFlowy. Monthly and Annual plans, I will continue to use Mind Mapping, which is licensed software and not SaaS.

Having trialled, how do I plan to use WorkFlowy:

1. Every night, I plan to add the tasks for the next day and review the tasks for the week
2. Those daily tasks which were scheduled but not completed on the day will be distributed across the next few days
3. Tasks completed will be crossed out and will remain intact as a diary entry.

I am also thinking of adding a summary of the day’s accomplishments, as a Journal entry, which should help me produce Progress Reports at key periods.

In terms of general planning, I break a company into ten areas. This is something I have been practicing for many years. You may also benefit from this process. Here are the 10 areas:

1. Opportunity – Opportunity analysis and refinement, business planning, strategy, competitor analysis, etc
2. Product – Product development, road maps, testing, etc
3. Marketing – Market plans, segmentation, etc
4. Sales – Sales plans, target list, sales performance, etc
5. Operations – Operational plans, scheduling, progress reporting, etc
6. Service – Customer service, support desks,
7. Finance – Financial forecasting, annual accounts, Tax, etc
8. HR – Worforce management, recruitment, etc
9. Legal – Contracts, legal compliances, companies house, etc
10. Other – anything that does not fit into above

The starting point for above was Michael Porter’s Value Chain Analysis. But as you can see, above is quite different from Michael’s well founded framework. What matters is, above works for me, and it may also bring you discipline.

One last point to clarify; above breakdown is more suited to monthly and annual planning (in my case; on mindmaps). From there, you could breakdown to daily and weekly targets and add them to your WorkFlowy.

I am keen to understand how you segment your work.

Bridgewater Hall Community Education Trust

The Bridgewater Hall

Today, I became a Trustee of The Bridgewater Hall Community Education Trust (BHCET).

The BHCET maximises the education potential of the Bridgewater Hall which is a world class concert hall in the centre of Manchester. The BHCET runs a wide range of projects, programmes and activities taking the building and its rich artistic life as a stimulus.

The Board of Trustees consists of many well known faces of Manchester and the North West, and how I would add value is yet to be worked out. I am hoping this may be in couple of areas:

1. Brand

2. Technology

3. Culture

These days, just like you, I am very careful about what activities I take on and how these align with my overall objectives in life. My daughters’ interest in music and drama paid a part in my decision to accept the position of Trustee. I would also be keen to explore how they could take part in activities as I learn more about the Trust.

In case you did not know, my other voluntary contribution is to help bilateral trade between India and the North West through UK India Business Council.

If you would like to find out more, please visit the website http://www.bridgewater-hall.co.uk and select Learning from the menu.

What are the 10 most used social web applications by you and what are the primary reasons for their usage?? In my case, in order of frequency, i.e. first being the most used and 10th being the least used out of the 10:

1. www.edocr.com – no surprise here!
2. www.twitter.com – instant broadcasting, traffic generator and on-line collaboration (plus tweetdeck + tweetie + cotweet)
3. www.facebook.com – access to 500 million user base with difficulty
4. www.Linkedin.com – verify email addresses of new contacts and learn about individuals
5. www.youtube.com – videos of our events
6. www.stumbleupon.com – traffic generation
7. www.digg.com – traffic generation
8. del.icio.us – traffic generation
9. www.slideshare.net – for slides of interest
10. www.flickr.com – pictures sharing and embedding

Do share your list! Many thanks

Hi Om,

I wrote a blog post several months ago about how to find a person’s email address, verify it and then use other services to enrich it. I never published it due to not being totally comfortable with what I have written. The process involves (where the email address is not known):

1. Guessing the email address (there are number of ways)
2. Verifying this using the largest professional network (and if needed the largest social network)
3. Once verified, add to web applications that could enrich the email address by finding out social profiles of the individual and then automatically capturing updates of her/his web activities.

In addition, there are many startups offering digital cards where individuals willingly add their profile data.

Given above, it is unclear who the bad guy in this case is, as we have provided the information willingly in the first place to various web applications. Selling our data to third parties was pioneered by people such as Experian, and it happens every day whether we like it or not.

Perhaps, there ought to be a set of best practices that reputable applications will adhere to. You can take it to another stage by allowing third party audits, etc. This could create an opportunity for a new market segment.

Not a simple issue…I am glad you raise it though..

Best regards
Manoj

Softworld is UK’s premier event for accounting software vendors. I was a regular attendee during the days of ebdex (my first tech startup), but have not attended the event during the last few years. Those days, the event was held in Birmingham and was seen as the annual showcase event for accountancy software. It was  at least 3 times bigger than the event I attended yesterday, and was buzzing with people. In contrast, yesterday’s event was not just small but it seems that the organisers forgot to invite buyers.

Access Accounting had the largest exhibiting area, and probably worked harder than anyone else to generate some interest. Sage and Intuit/Quickbooks were there, because they needed to show their face, but perhaps not looking hard for new business, as the brands are mature and well established. Version One, as usual were upbeat and well represented. COA rebranded as Advanced Business Solutions were there with First Lady (meeting her was perhaps the highlight for me!). SAP and their resellers with Sapphire were there with a bunch of other less known brands. Financialforce.com seem to have made a token attempt with a smaller stand with Aqilla perhaps being the only other SaaS provider to exhibit.

So where are the new boys, who plan to rule the next few decades? Xero, Kashflow and Free Agent were clearly missing as they do not believe in exhibiting where the returns are guaranteed to be almost nill, given the markets they operate in.

So, is the Softworld just an expo where brands exhibit just to let their competition know that they are still around?

The whole event raised number of interesting questions:

1. What is the expected ROI from such events, and what is this in form of? Its certainly cannot be direct revenues. Events can be useful to let stakeholders know that they are still around and perhaps use the opportunity to generate few press releases.

2. No major announcements – Both Access Accounting and Sage may have used the opportunity to brief or hint their forthcoming cloud strategies. I did not attend individual sessions to verify my suspicions.

3. Is Cloud relevant to these guys? I would say yes, so far it is not a major drive promoted by anyone exhibiting. Sage, QuickBooks/Intuit, Advance Business Solutions, all continuing to offer licensed software. Some have web enabled their products and referring to this as Cloud. Only SAP Business by Design, Aqilla and Financialforce.com seem to be offering cloud solutions.

4. Whilst they may not have implemented cloud solutions, most of them at least are acknowledging it as the future, at least their front end sales staff. I am not yet convinced whether their managements have the same view. Ironically, Iris (except one chap) did not know about (or pretended not to know) their white label Free Agent Central offered through accountants.

5. Is the industry trying their best to hang on to an outdated business model and milk as much as possible before it vanish into thin air?

6. Has SAP got a under rated winner in SAP Business by Design, trading at £97 for ERP? The more I discussed with them it became clearer that they have a winning proposition. But do they understand the market, especially how to sell to small companies, given that they seem to control the process 100%. They are looking for 10 seats upwards, but bundling in consultancy to make the revenue pot bigger and increase profit margins? Could they make profits if the product is developed to such an extent it does not require high consultancy fees? But of course, it is not in the interest of the vendors to do this, due to existing business models. Could SAP change perceptions – a system so complicated that you never finish projects!

7. I used Xero and Capsule CRM arguments many a time yesterday (Duncan/Gary – commission through paypal please!). Whilst Capsule is pouring all their profits into making the product better and simpler, one cannot think how it could be used by a high end smaller business without some help! The customers may not necessary have to the time or resources to streamline their processes to maximise benefit – hence the traditional argument for consultancy.

So in conclusion, the model may still require consultancy to be effective from the customer’s perspective, but the total costs ought to be a small fraction of the past, which undermines the value added reseller model seriously. Would this create a vaccumm that might be filled by a new segment such as value added virtual assistants?

Should Softworld reinvent themselves by bringing the buyers back? If so, what tactics are available to them? Have they not leveraged their existing relationships with folks from Accountancy Age, ICAEW, etc. Why was their large stand completely unoccupied? Was there a press centre? What happened to bloggers such as Dennis Howlett (one point, even I was a serious blogger sponsored by SAP!). What else can they do to make this event fly?

From a selfish stand, both Techcelerate and edocr.com could have helped reaching out, but I will not take this space to talk too much about how! Instead if Softworld is interested, we could help them the next time.

Lastly, I am looking to run a small accountancy event for 40 to 50 people with a session on accountancy for small businesses, say 1 to 25 staff teams, and showcase three accountancy software solutions, in Manchester or Daresbury Innovation Centre in the new year. If anyone is interested, please get in touch.

Disclaimer: I have not researched the Softworld website – all above are my personal views based on many discussions I had and not a reflection of edocr.com or techcelerate.org

Update 1

Here is the Twitter report capturing tweets on this annual event. As you can see, the conversation was some what limited.