How do you build a world-class company? Specifically, a profitable company with predictable revenue, that adheres to the highest standard of integrity—a place where employees love to work and the end-product delivered to the customer is of consistent excellence?

One key component to this daunting task is to create processes, as so brilliantly described by Michael Gerber in his famous book, The E-Myth Revisited. One of the key premises in the book is that to have a world-class company, you need to deliver a product time and time again with uniformity and consistency in the way that McDonald's does. You can walk into a McDonald's in New York City, Miami, Tokyo, and Moscow (all of which I have done), and your experience is exactly the same. How do they do it? By developing and adhering to processes. This is one of the book's key premises.

While The E-Myth does a wonderful job of describing processes, it falls short in offering ways to create and manage them, and to ensure they're followed. In other words, how do you create processes in a large company that are constantly evolving and improving, and how do you make them accessible to all employees at all times, from anywhere in the world? The reason that Mr. Gerber didn't tackle this important question is that the technology wasn't available when he wrote the book. It is now.

A wiki is the answer to this question. Accrisoft has used wiki technology to transform our company. We've created processes for all aspects of our business because we needed to deliver a consistent, best-in-class web solution to our Solution Providers and customers.

We have used wikis to create processes for every area of our business, including for software development, sales, creative design, deployment, and business methodologies. Wikis were important in this process for several reasons: First we have thousands of processes at Accrisoft. Second, the knowledge of these processes is contained by all of our employees. Third, these processes are constantly evolving and changing. Finally, our employees and Solution Providers need access to these processes 24/7, everywhere in the world.

Wikis are sites that anyone with permission can edit. That's basically it. But the potential applications are diverse: They can be used just for your organization's digital documents in one universally-accessible location. They can serve as a low-cost and low-aggravation intranet. They can interface with the outside world. It's really up to you, but what wikis have in common is that they're affordable, flexible, crowd-sourced, and easily assimilated. They do wonders for some of our clients who have to arrange highly-complex events, but they're just as useful for small businesses where information management is key (and we have yet to encounter a business for which it isn't).

Have you ever asked yourself whether it really makes sense to have to excavate information buried within various email threads, but relating to the same project? It's the equivalent of sending materials through different pneumatic tubes and trusting that they'll wind up together in the same pile, neatly collated.

Think of wikis as a way of simplifying information management through the wisdom of the crowd. It's been demonstrated that by their very nature, wikis facilitate the retention of knowledge. The more people have a hand in the creation of content, the more likely they are to know it backward and forward.

Wikis are useful for event planning, but also as a quick way to turn a static intranet into something more. Project management, document sharing, the display of evergreen content such as rules and regulations—all of it is wiki-able. Wikis can transform your operations. They feed collaborative spirit. And they're so simple, even the least technically-adept members of your organization can use them to great effect.

A wiki can also be useful as an "extranet." Your organization can collaborate on dynamic content visible to an outside audience. Think of all the ways in which you might interface with customers-through price lists, calendars, inventory, company policies, and more. The closer you can get to real-time consolidation and display of organizational character, the more appealing you'll be to clients. Nonprofits have found that one great application of wikis is to create what are sometimes known as "public communities of practice," which are digital commons for cooperation on a complex issue.

As always, we'd love to hear from you in the comments section. Have you had specific experiences with wikis? Do you have specific questions?

For more on wikis and their application, be sure to follow me on Twitter.

As is so often the case, there was a small business owner we know who became a large business owner rather quickly. He had opened new consulting offices in fourteen locations in three years. For a long time, the company’s personnel worked in the same building—and for a long time, in the same room. Now they were in several time zones and two countries. Expansion was great . . . but it had exacerbated inefficiencies. Staff members were busier than ever with more customers than ever and had to contend with constant upheaval.

The business required sharing sensitive material, close collaboration, an avalanche of decisions—and quick action on them. Face-to-face meetings and conference calls were difficult to arrange. Email served a purpose, but long, redundant threads had become a distraction. Hindered by bureaucracy, repetition and ill-defined personnel roles, decisions were trickling “slower than molasses in January.” Employees were eager to take advantage of the company’s growing presence in the field, but had begun voicing concerns to our client that there was a fundamental lack of cohesion, undernourished strategy, and that personnel found themselves too distant, too segmented, and too adrift.

Which brings us to virtual private communities. Social networking is among the biggest forces to hit Web solutions in quite some time. A lot of attention is paid to public iterations like Facebook and MySpace—and for good reason—because these networks broaden reach and can connect organizations to customers and constituents the world over. But online social media can be a remarkable tool for enhancing internal operations, too. It is applicable to almost any organization or company, regardless of size, orientation or industry.

What do we mean by private community? It is, simply, selective social media. Much like Facebook and MySpace, a community allows you to see profiles and information pertaining to other people. You can exchange photos, video, messages, presentations, and a host of other things. But here the "universe" of people is limited to a well-defined, exclusive set of members. It combines the privacy of a gated community with the internal deliberative and interface benefits of a town hall. Anyone can join Facebook. Anyone can join a YMCA. But a "private community" functions more like a company castle. You decide who gets to cross the drawbridge.

In setting up this space an organization can achieve incredible cohesion. It isn’t just "closing ranks" like a football huddle. It’s a platform for smoothing channels of communication among various levels and departments, defining roles, boosting participation, raising morale, generating more immediate and useful feedback, designing strategy with renewed vigor, and having organizational structure. Private communities spur innovation. They harness an organization’s creative energies and channel them using the same basic socialization tools that have made Facebook thrive. For companies and nonprofits and most other manner of institution, private communities alleviate bureaucratic suffocation while elevating the best ideas and material up the hierarchy. It is deliberative dynamism.

There’s another dimension to private communities. It can also mean reaching out to customers, but in targeted ways. While competitors spend resources on trend watching, for instance, you can have answers come to you. A private community could allow customers to discuss your products, what matters to them, what works and what doesn’t, and give you incredible market insight with speed and discretion. It’s a conference room combined with a laboratory. In one fell swoop organizations can engender customer loyalty, inspire word of mouth, and, most importantly, offer exactly what potential buyers want in merchandise and service. Whereas formal focus groups can be sterile and rigid, communities allow for more organic expression. Customers have greater control over the conversation, and therefore what they say is of greater value to marketers and strategizers.

Perhaps the best thing about private communities is how universally applicable they are. Chambers of commerce can use them to create dialogue and strategic thinking among local businesses. Schools can network faculty, students or specific classes. Non-profits and governments can design space for constituents to discuss issues. Companies are able to accelerate internal decisions while drawing wisdom from a select group of customers participating in discussions of products and services.

The point is this: there is the opportunity to layer and differentiate private communities depending on purpose. As business and organizational personnel integrate private social media into their professional lives, they recognize that among the most powerful uses of the Internet are those that summon its conversational capacities. Think of "private community" as "empowered exclusivity." It’s just another way in which organizations can build a high functioning, high-impact Web operation for little cost.

As always, we’d love to hear from you in our comments section. Have you had specific experiences with private communities designed for personnel, patrons, or both?

And for more information on private communities, follow me on Twitter.

Our client was in a fix. It was a ‘happy’ fix, but a challenge nonetheless.

Her non-profit was flying high despite the long odds and floundering economy. She had applied her years of expertise, generated media attention, and set off robust growth. What started as a local organization fueled almost exclusively by local dollars had burgeoned into an enterprise that attracted attention nationwide.

And therein lay the problem. Our client now needed to take advantage of new opportunities to raise funds without ballooning her overhead. How could she funnel money securely and efficiently, especially now that there were too many demands on her time to spend it buried in book-keeping?

Time for e-commerce. But our non-profit visionary was reluctant, as are many business owners, even those who have made the digital leap. Marketing yourself online is one thing, they think; but to process actual money?

Caution is appropriate. Your customers (or donors) must transact with absolute confidence. So understand that e-commerce doesn’t replace good business practices; it ensures them. In fact, it’s become an indispensable tool for any venture—commercial or non-profit—that entails monetary transactions.

The key is to make your e-commerce operations speedy and secure. Never before has it been easier to do so. And organizations must keep pace with consumers who have become extraordinarily comfortable with digital commerce.

Long gone are the days when customers fretted about giving their credit card information online. And moving your catalog, statements, and billing to the Web is as easy as it is prudent. There is romance in print . . . but not profit. There’s comfort in the ‘old way’ . . . and also a mountain of costs. The Internet makes the marketplace a cheaper and more efficient place for both buyer and seller. It reduces error. It makes tracking information easier. It makes future e-marketing efforts more targeted. And most importantly? Your human capital can be invested in worthier activities.

So what do I mean by e-commerce? In simple terms, I mean offering a full-service online storefront. Not only can you let customers see what you have to offer; you can also allow them to buy. You make point-of-purchase digital, and thereby make the process more methodical.

Managing electronically does not mean managing from afar. E-commerce is not absentee ownership. On the contrary, it provides the type of bird’s-eye, big picture supervision that the demands of bricks-and-mortar processing often make difficult. Nor is e-commerce the exclusive province of big business. You don’t need to be Amazon for online payments to make sense. And if you’re a non-profit, the same tools apply. You can accept donations via credit card or e-check. The process trims your administrative expenditures and makes contributing less of a headache for your donors.

Making the leap to e-commerce helps to make all of your online operations seamless. If you run a speedy, secure e-commerce platform, your customers will appreciate your attention to detail. Consumers don’t ask for the impossible. What they want you can deliver easily. Plus, they’re more likely to be happy with their experience—and return. The more comfortable people are with your online storefront, the more familiar they’ll be with your brand, and the more readily they’ll associate future needs with your capacity to deliver.

Business owners should see e-commerce for what it is—an unbelievable opportunity to tap into a public that does more and more of its buying online.

Going the e-commerce route does not make your business less personal. On the contrary—it indicates your sensitivity both to customer needs and to the trends of modern enterprise. Companies need to be as proactive with their online commerce options as customers are comfortable with them.

As always, we’d love to hear from you in our comments section. Have you had specific experiences with e-commerce? Or do you have specific questions?

Thank you and I’ll be posting again soon.

Jeff Kline
CEO and President
Accrisoft

The client came to us perplexed. He owned an outdoor apparel and footwear store that enjoyed incredible regional loyalty and word of mouth. The company’s website was as reliable as the bricks-and-mortar operation. Feedback was positive. Customers could see what the store offered, request delivery, and leave behind glowing testimonials. The site was easy to navigate, a pleasure to use, and—the owner hoped—a springboard to expansion.

But there was a problem. No one could find it. Online response was more trickle than tidal wave. People who already knew about the store visited online to make orders, as did their friends and other locals with whom the company had some name resonance. The URL, after all, echoed the company’s name. The design was tidy. The e-commerce was easy and secure. But to the great swaths of the casual buying public the owner hoped to entice? It was lost in the shuffle.

The dilemma is one that plays out for thousands of businesses—small or large—and non-profit organizations every time a site launches. Consumers are going to use the Internet to find what they want somewhere . . . but how do you guarantee that it’s your somewhere?

When it comes to Web strategy, there is no such thing as too much exposure. Your site might get the nuts and bolts right, and its design may be spectacular. But you must also be conspicuous. Just as a store opening without advertising, a yellow pages listing, or visible signage would be doomed from the start, so too is an Internet venture located in a digital Bermuda Triangle.

This is where search engine optimization (SEO) makes all the difference. Technically speaking, SEO is the process of elevating the volume or quality of traffic to your Web site via algorithmic search results on popular engines such as Google and Yahoo! In short, SEO is how your company ensures that it’s among the first waves to hit Web surfers looking for what you have.

How do companies reach optimal search engine visibility? In a variety of ways; the key is to treat it with appropriate care, and as a cornerstone strategy for your online operations. SEO can be a stand-alone process, or part of a more expansive marketing campaign. Almost every aspect of your site’s design is in play. Your menus, product lists, news and blog items—all of them are subject to search engine scrutiny. A site geared on all tiers toward maximizing search engine visibility is poised to rise the ranks. In this case, we determined how best to organize, word, and tag the store’s site so that anyone searching for great hiking shoes or niche apparel would have a far greater chance of seeing our client.

Habits drive traffic. People pursue their Internet activity with routine. Search portals offer one of the best insights into this loyalty to custom. Even if a user knows where he wants to end up, he’ll often Google reflexively. That’s why it’s so important to make sure that even the best-prepared content is search optimized. SEO is in some respects self-perpetuating. The more frequently you are ‘searched,’ the more you’ll be included in future searches. SEO also requires nuance. Haphazardly inundating your site with the same handful of keywords will not automatically make you Google’s top-ranked result.

I’m pleased to say that Accrisoft offers outstanding SEO consultation services. Our solutions ensure that you’ll be ranked highly on the most powerful engines. There are few better ways to guarantee that your site finds the right mix of keywords and indexing to be found by a public eager for whatever it is you offer. And the same instruments we used to turn the outdoorsman’s revenue hill into a mountain can work for your organization.

As always, we’d love to hear from you in our comments section. Have you had specific experiences with search engine optimization? Or do you have specific questions?

Thank you and I’ll be posting again soon.

Hello and welcome to the first in a series of blog entries from Accrisoft!  I’m Jeff Kline, CEO and President of Accrisoft, and I’ll be blogging regularly, so make sure to check back for new entries. 

As a general theme, this blog will discuss ways in which an organization can survive, and even thrive in today’s challenging economy. Many organizations are going through difficult times right now, and it’s in such circumstances that companies must think up new and creative ways of generating and increasing business.

I often get the opportunity to speak with companies looking to improve their bottom line. We at Accrisoft feel that an effective online strategy can benefit virtually all organizations through increased exposure, interest, brand awareness, and sales. However, the Web is a big, competitive place, and it’s not enough to simply put up your website and wait for the visits to start rolling in; it takes a proactive approach—finding potential visitors, providing them with something they want, and retaining them over a period of time.

One of the most important aspects of crafting a successful online strategy is building a strong base of visitors. Growing a website’s audience is one of the greatest challenges many organizations face, and in today’s business world it’s often one of the most important. The first thing an organization should consider when deciding on a Web strategy is, “How do we provide potential website visitors with what they want?” Websites must offer something information, opportunity, entertainment, opinion to a target audience, or nobody will visit.

Writing a blog is a great way to drive traffic to your site; it lends a personal feel to your online presence and generates repeat traffic from visitors who want to read more. A blog (a contraction of the words “web log”) is a ongoing, entry-based journal. Blogs are typically used to provide news or an opinion, and unlike traditional news sources, they often retain a personal, informal feel. Blogs can be thought of more as a discussion, so readers can actively participate.

Blogs are ongoing, so they are a great way to ensure repeat traffic to a website. They allow for commenting by readers, which can spark lively debate and make a website a hub of discussion and activity. Blogs aren’t only text-based: they can incorporate photos, audio and video content as well. Blogs can also contain links, either to other places on the same website, or to external sites, giving popular blogs the ability to drive traffic to other websites.

Beginning a blog is just one step that an organization can take to begin to increase its presence on the Web. I’ll be covering additional strategies in future posts. We’d love to hear your thoughts, so feel free to submit a comment below. Thank you, and I’ll be posting again soon.