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The Technology Productivity Bureau Accounts for All Stakeholders
- GoingConcern
- June 8, 2010
We all know about getting a credit rating. Whether it’s for a personal credit card, a supply chain vendor authorization, or the much maligned oligarchy who rate public companies and entire nations. Based on al ion, a score is developed that (attempts) to capture the inherent risk of a credit failure.
How much could firms benefit from getting a Technology Productivity Rating?
What is the risk of a technology failure?
If an objective ratings agency existed that scored a company’s use of technology, how well would other people score your company? Who is the ‘Greece’ of technology?
To rate technology productivity, the rating has to encompass the entire organization and the way in which technology extends to external stakeholders (customers, suppliers, staff, etc). Optimal productivity from technology doesn’t simply mean newest technology. It’s not just about what technology a company uses that matters. It’s about how the technology is used. I met with a colleague in the technology industry recently who went so far as to say there’s still times when a FAX is the optimal technology for a task. It depends on the potential outcomes and workflows.
To date, I think the focus of technology productivity has been too inwardly focused in companies. Companies say, ‘How can this technology benefit us?’ instead of looking at the workflow effects for external stakeholders too. Granted, most organizations are completely overwhelmed simply by this one-sided approach. But if you look closely at some productivity software, part of the “technology” benefit is actually a workflow transfer to external parties. If I had to rate the technology, the score would decline in the event of workflow transfer being masqueraded as technology.
For example, look at productivity tools around supply chain management and recruitment:
Supply Chain Management
As a means to increase productivity, big companies implement supply chain management systems that effectively transfer the burden for account administration to the vendor companies (sometimes they even charge a fee!). For the implementing company, it is great. All the vendor information is keypunched and filed away into the database for free.
The system integrates with the ERP for invoice approvals all the way to point of payment. The internal technology productivity score is high. For the vendor, every new customer could conceivably mean a similar routine resulting is a productivity loss and therefore would rate the technology lower. A vendor with a lot of customers practically needs a Mechanical Turk just for the data entry!
Seeing these scores could be really beneficial when vendors are choosing what customers to prioritize.
Recruitment
Recruitment technology can be burdensome to external stakeholders while being helpful to internal stakeholders in a similar way. The key to recruitment technology is capturing candidate data to enable filtering and search. Some technology in this field is simply transferring the data entry task to the candidate. Each candidate types out their life story field by field, row by row. From the company standpoint, they see the output of the technology. It is good. From the candidate standpoint, they see a time sink.
Taken in isolation, this candidate time commitment is not a big deal. One candidate typing their qualifications one time in response to one job posting is fine. But what happens when the candidate is applying at a dozen jobs? Two dozen? At what point does the opportunity cost of doing a whole bunch of data entry deter the brightest candidates from these particular employers?
The brightest candidates will apply to the companies that DON’T require a massive typing drill first, selecting away from this less productive technology until it’s unavoidable. The overall technology productivity score would take this into account.
For a company purchasing new technology, understanding the opportunity costs both from your perspective and that of external stakeholders and developing a Technology Productivity Rating may not become a formal process. There is no Technology Productivity Bureau, or least, there isn’t anymore. There was… for a short time… an idea before its time… may it rest in peace.
Perhaps it’s enough to look at it from a more macro-level. Ask yourself, is my business technology liberating for stakeholders or, or are they being repressed? Then, act accordingly.
Geoff Devereux as been active in Vancouver’s technology start-up community for the past 5 years. Prior to getting lured into tech start-ups, Geoff worked in various fields including a 5 year stint in a tax accounting firm. You can see more of his posts for GC here.
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More Small Businesses Ditching Big Banks for Community Lenders
- GoingConcern
- March 25, 2010
This story is republished from CFOZone, where you’ll find news, analysis and professional networking tools for finance executives.
Community banks are gaining ground in the banking sector, scooping up small business customers that are feeling underserved by bigger institutions.
The four largest US banks – Bank of America, Citibank, JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo/Wachovia – currently hold the greatest share of small-business customers, according to a report from Aite Group released Thursday. But community banks are growing their share at the fastest rate, often at the expense of large banks.
Roughly 35 percent of US small businesses consider a community bank to be their primary financial institution, up from 24 percent in 2006.
The report revealed that large banks are failing to connect with small businesses. One of the reasons is that they struggle to understand their needs.
“Large banks are missing the boat when it comes to effectively serving and cross-selling to small-business customers,” said Christine Barry, research director with Aite Group, in a press release. “This is evidenced by the declining satisfaction rates of their customers and their failure to meet cross-selling needs.”
Such a customer base is crucial, even for large banks, at a time when deposits are precious commodities.
Small banks have been able to make headway by purchasing failed community banks, as reported by The Big Money this week.
“As the continuing real-estate crisis pushes more tiny banks into failure, the most common saviors have been other small banks, community banks, small thrifts, and modestly sized lenders,” Heidi Moore wrote.
But small banks aren’t necessarily a safe haven from troubles ailing their bigger competitors.
Although banks with over $10 billion in assets hold over half of commercial banks’ total commercial real estate whole loans, smaller banks have an overall greater exposure to commercial real estate, according to a report from the Congressional Oversight Panel.
Sheila Bair, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, recently voiced concerns about the risk that commercial real estate poses to community banks, noting that commercial real estate comprised more than 43 percent of the portfolios of community banks.
Those concerns are well founded, as commercial real estate has played an increasingly large role in bank failures. For the 205 banks that have failed since 2007, a third of their loan portfolio has been made up of commercial real estate loans, compared to an industry average of 26.9 percent, according to investment bank KBW. The seven banks seized by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation last Friday had an even higher concentration with almost 40 percent of their loans tied up in commercial real estate.
If write downs increase as expected, it could ultimately create capital problems for community banks, which could in turn curb lending to small businesses.
“The current distribution of commercial real estate loans may be particularly problematic for the small business community because smaller regional and community banks with substantial commercial real estate exposure account for almost half of small business loans,” the COP report published in February said. For example, smaller banks with the highest exposure to commercial real estate provide around 40 percent of all small business loans.
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Angel Investors Continue to Shy Away from Startups
- GoingConcern
- April 20, 2010
This story is republished from CFOZone, where you’ll find news, analysis and professional networking tools for finance executives.
Many startups, especially ones with high-growth potential, depend on receiving at least some of their funding from angel investors. Now, a new report sheds light on what type of entrepreneurial ventures got angel money last year.
Specifically, the report from the Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire found that financing for really early-stage companies declined and a larger percentage went to more-established ventures. That is, 35 percent of investments in 2009 were in seed stage companies, a decrease of 10 percent from 2008. And new, or so-called first sequence investments, were 47 percent of all angel activity, a significant decline over the last two years.
What this means, of course, is that angels are favoring proven quantities that are less risky than newer ventures. That’s been a trend for several years now and it’s worrisome. You might not know it from press coverage, but angel funding is considerably more prevalent than venture capital financing: Many more startups receive angel money than VC dollars. So, if angels shy away from early ventures, that means the loss of a significant historical source of funding for these companies.
Then, there’s the matter of what these companies mean to the economy, which I’ve written about before. The startups that receive angel money tend to be ones with high-growth potential, the kind with at least a fighting chance of becoming a lot bigger and employing a lot of people. Thus, it’s not a positive development over the long haul if angels choose to play it safe and avoid very early-stage ventures.
On the modestly good side, the report showed a decrease in investment dollars but little change in the number of investments. Total investments in 2009 were $17.6 billion, down 8.3 percent from 2008. But a total of 57,225 ventures received funding, a 3.1 percent increase from 2008. In other words, more startups got money, although deal size was smaller.
It would be more reassuring if a larger share of the $17.6 billion had gone to a different type of venture.