SME Blog

Social networking and the entrepreneur

For entrepreneurs social networking has enormous potential.  With each technology sea change comes new opportunities.  Small businesses such as Google and YouTube have grown to major global concerns.  Try to think of traditional sectors where this has happened in the last 15 years?

For an insight into social networking I recommend listening to the Standford Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders podcast.  It features, amongst others, the key individuals form Facebook, Myspace and Ning in a panel discussion.

I find it hard to think of non technology sectors where this kind of cooperation and openness would happen.  A more cynical view would be that this particular cake is more than big enough to share.  Whatever your view, the expectation is social networking will become part of our lives just like email and mobile phones.

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KPI's - Non financial

Ask an accountant about KPI's (key performance indicators) and invariably you will get a list of financial KPI's such as average debtor days and gross profit margin.  These are all well and good, but it is really only half the story.

As a small business grows to a mid-sized one the business owner starts to become more detached from the everyday detail.  Business tasks will need to be delegated and this is where non financial KPI's are particularly useful.

Non financial KPI's on business processes allow managers to measure how well their business is running.  An example KPI is the Perfect Sales Order. This is ability to deliver to the customers' requirements without any issues.  A low result could be due to delivering late, the wrong quantity or damaged goods.  In a mid-sized business it is expected that the managers will be aware there is a problem.  However, by representing the problem as a metric that problem can be measured and goals set to improve performance.

Nadim Razvi from SAP got in touch with me and pointed me to their KPI's wiki.  Well worth a look as it contains a good selection of non financial KPI's.

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