R.I.P. Bigforsmall

After 3 months of silence I am now glad to announce, that Bigforsmall is dead. We have put a lot of hard work digging its grave. Consequently we gave birth to our go-to-market brand and baptized it ENTEOS. (No need to search for the English button. The page is currently in German only).

ENTEOS brings Business-Process-as-a-service to a new customer segment, the tax advisor. We offer them accounting services, fulfilling all the BPaaS criteria:

1) An end-to-end process solution from picking up accounting vouchers until finalization of accounting entries in their systems.

2) No capital expenditure for starting up and running the services. Pretty much plug and play for the tax advisors.
3) It offers a pay as you go pricing model.

4) It is rapidly up- and downward scalable according to the business needs of the tax advisor, and
5) we might combine it with nearshore service delivery, so the result is an unbeatable price.

Sales and production has started around one month ago and the results are so far overwhelming with sales conversion rates of ~50% from cold call to contract closure. For this reason we keep ourselves restricted to Vienna for the next few months as there are several hundreds of tax advisor offices located here, which seem to have a taste for our services.

As starting the business does not really allow me to be a consistent blog writer, this is the last blog entry here. However, I do take time to read and comment your ideas and suggestions and they will be well received in my mailbox at christoph.prieler@enteos.com.

Entrepreneurial reflections and crystal ball predictions

At the end of my first year ever without a "proper" job in a multinational American company but as an entrepreneur it is somehow time for checks and balances 2010 and read the crystal ball for 2011.

At the dusk of 2009, about 12 months ago, my life was best described as following:

• A very well paid job in a very reputed American management consultancy company (McKinsey & Company)
• A 70 - 80 hours' work week
• A very frequent flyer card with most of the common airline alliances
• Inspiring intellectual challenges on a daily basis
• Very frequent interactions with really smart people
• No time for my family
• The desire to become an entrepreneur without knowing the product/service to sell
• A rucksack of prejudices and fears of what the entrepreneurial life would bring from a private, professional and financial point of view
• Some money to invest and spend
• A passion for Outsourcing, Offshoring and all the twinkles around it

Life has certainly changed over the past 12 months, however by far not as dramatic as my rucksack was predicting. Here is how life as an entrepreneur looks like,

• A passion for Outsourcing, Offshoring and all the twinkles around it
• The ability to spread the word where- and whenever I like or above all when I am invited (e.g.: CIS and CEEOA)
• My own company (no reputation and not too well paid yet) with an inspiring and passionate network of partners, suppliers, customers and advisors
• A new business model of how to sell and serve nearshoring products to SMEs
• Business-process-as-a-service for finance and accounting
• First customers, who believe, this can take off
• Multinational suppliers, who believe, this can take off
• The desire, passion and wish to take this off
• Funds from external investors to support the ramp up
• The aspiration to create the largest regional BPO service provider within the next 5 years
• A 60 - 70 hours' work week with the ability to spend time with my family on a nearly daily basis
• All the frequent flyer cards from last year with (hey, they did not take it away from me) with the addition of a German low cost carrier one.

Overall, not one minute of regrets in 2010 to exchange a decade of corporate life with the first steps as an entrepreneur. My professional wish list for 2011 includes, that my company will continue ramping linear to its 2010 start and that we are seeing increased willingness from SMEs in the German market to accept offshoring as a lever to improve cost and quality. In addition my crystal ball tells me the following:

• Bigforsmall will be rebranded in Q1 2011 and receive a more serious name
• We will reach revenues scratching the million.
• Maturity of outsourcing services will not reach levels shown in enclosed video in 2011, however do so in 2012
• The industry will be worth USD bn 102,45 at the end of 2011
• The predictions about the outsourcing industry from HfS make serious sense. Here they are. 

Before reality of 2011 will tell us about the (non-)sense of predictions, let me wish you a prosperous, healthy, passionate and exciting 2011 ahead. May the force be with you.

Offshoring for small enterprises - a waste of time? - Part II

Let me share in this blog post the key highlights on the survey about the (non-) sense of offshoring for small enterprises. The large majority of you are under the conviction that offshoring for small enterprises can be the next killer app, if we are able to crack the following 3 items:

• Give a much cheaper service with at least the same quality than how it is currently provided
• Get the services sold with a direct sales staff, which functionally knows what they are talking about, and
• Overcome the issue, that the total value of savings potential might not be high enough to make the services attractive.

Astonishingly we had 80 people, who contributed to the survey results. Most of the contributors have a professional background in management consultancy or work for a outsourcing service provider and come from a German speaking environment.

Hence 90% of smart people with Germanic roots are of the opinion, that offshoring for small enterprises is a smart idea. This is a clear result to continue what I have started (see at the bottom of this blog post the real reason why I will continue).

• You identified the key success criteria as high service quality, price of services at least 30% cheaper than onshore offerings, and the design of service packages with different useful service levels.

• From a go-to-market perspective most of you advised, that we have to sell our services via a direct sales force of experienced functional practicioners and hook up with value added resellers. Interesting enough no other sales and marketing channels did really convince for business-process-as-a-service.

• Concerns were expressed predominantly in the area of making the hassle of offshoring attractive to small companies, as the total value of savings might not be worth the additional headache. Furthermore, there is a concern that the service delivery might be too complex and that too many customers might be needed to break - even.

Thank you to all of you who took the time to fill out the survey and provided your expertise. In one of the next blog posts I might actually describe how we designed our services along the survey results.

And yes I have a good excuse for not posting a blog update. I have been celebrating the closure of my first customer, but now duty calls back to work, as we will start operations in January.

Offshoring for small enterprises - a waste of time?

What if offshoring for small enterprises is not a groundbreaking idea, but rather a waste of time?

Over the past few months there has been a lot of debate among friends and family, if the market is ready to conceive our new business concept, which we called "business-process-as-a-service for support functions" or "back-office-in-the-box" solutions. Our future customers certainly do not care which academic terminology came into our mind, but what they care is the value proposition of our services:

1. A price advantage of up to 50% compared to existing market offerings
2. An access to technology, which today only large enterprises can afford
3. An all-round carefree package, for which the customers only pay for what they use

Many customers we asked liked the idea to get more service at a much lesser price, however some of them could not care less. At the beginning of next year, when we go to market, reality will tell us the truth.

But I also want to ask you for your opinion and help, if you think that I am just wasting my time or if this could be the next killer apps. I have created a 2 minutes survey, which you can access below and where you opinion is getting heard and valued.

Please click here for the SURVEY

Thank you in advance for filling the survey and I will make the analysis public in one of my next blog posts.

Crafting a mobile cloud company

I had to first convince myself, that the current cloud buzz is not only smoke and mirrors before I can make my customers buy the idea about business process as a service. So, I decided to convince myself by testing the cloud with my own start-up.

Initially, I did not have a deep understanding of what is existing out there, yet I felt confident, that I will be able to craft a company fueled by cloud enabled infrastructure and software offerings, which

a) Can be accessed from anywhere in the world (basically coffee shops in Vienna)

b) I don’t have to invest into capital expenditure and monthly subscription fees are minimal, and

c) I can immediately shut down the services, in case I find out that the business idea is not worthwhile pursuing.

Now, the self-convincing period is over, I am positive, that my customers will love the BPaaS services, however here is what works and what does not work for me in the cloud world:

• ·    Communication: Robust, stable, sophisticated. Gmail, Twitter, Blogs all seemingly interconnecting with each other and it is great to work with from my Android phone. In addition I can manage my mobile phone and internet connection functionalities and bills online. 5 stars.
•      Organization: A real eye opener. Google calendar and contact functions (why does Google not offer these offline?) provide all the functionalities I need, with Evernote and other small apps I capture ideas on the go, and I use SugarSync for automatic back up of my files in the cloud and all the apps in the Android market place, which make my life really easier. And above all the monthly bill compares to a pennywise restaurant visit. 5++ stars.
•      Standard office applications: I tried Google docs for a while, the collaboration piece in the cloud is nice, yet the functionalities for an addicted of presentations and calculations are not sophisticated enough. Yes, I bought MS office and installed it on my computer. I give it another 2-3 years until I will get rid of it. 2 stars.
•      Applications supporting the operations: To operate the start-up I defined the following application requirements: CRM tool, Call center infrastructure (PBX, IVR, ACD), accounting application, document management system, and a workflow solution. My research revealed mixed results: CRM: there are plenty of cloud based CRM tools out there offering more functionality than I will ever require. Salesforce.com is certainly the hyped star among the applications. Call center infrastructure: It took me some time, but I found them and they are called Five9. However these guys operate their infrastructure in the US and it did not make much sense to me to route a call back and forth from the US to address a request of a client, who sits only a few hundred kilometers away. Seems that Oracle operates also a virtual call center infrastructure in Europe, but after speaking with representatives in Austria, Germany, Ireland and India, nobody ever bothered about me. So, I decided to offer non-voice solutions. Accounting application: This was a real long search and the solution was just under my very nose. I found brilliant anglo cloud systems (Xero is really cool) and tried to convince their CEOs to tap fast into the German opportunity, however without success. I ran through many half-baked German systems, which either do only part of the job or you need a PhD in computer science to use it and was close to surrender. Finally, I came across DATEV, the supposed to be conservative and lethargic quasi-monopolist in the German accounting software market. But hey, they are really innovative, have in Germany unrivalled accounting cloud applications, integrate even DMS and workflow solutions and have a smart management team. Job done! Overall: 3 stars.

My personal conclusion on cloud offerings: If you want to craft a mobile cloud company you certainly have an advantage being a US based company these days and there remains one unresolved issue- all the apps in the cloud act as their own data islands with no interconnection.

The tedious search for solutions strengthened my faith into the bigforsmall idea: it is high time that we start offering business service based on cloud applications where the end user does not have to fool around with searching, selecting and running infrastructure or software.

Business-Process-as-a-Service: What's this all about?

A few months ago, busily trying to crack the code for an Outsourcing & Offshoring (O&O) business concept to small companies, I came across the aaS (as-a-Service) thing. By now most people had certainly heard about the difference between Scandinavian airlines (SAS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and I had worked with the later in my previous jobs.

So I was thinking if SaaS is the buzz in IT with a value proposition prevalent to SMEs, what about the equivalent in BPO? After some research I found BPaaS (Business-Process-as-a-Service), BaaS (Business-as-a-Service), PraaS (Process-as-a-service), BPMaaS (Business-Process-Management-as-a-Service) culminating in WaaS (Whatever-as-a-Service) and EaaS (Everything-as-a-Service).
Whatever the letter in front of the aaS , it appears to be the most comprehensive and attractive outsourcing model for small companies, because:

1) it provides the customer an end-to-end process solution and they can construct an overall value chain rather than just buy software.
2) It requires little or no capital expenditure for starting up and running the services.
3) It offers pay as you go pricing models with no minimum order quantities and no lock-in.
4) It is rapidly up- and downward scalable according to the business needs of the customer, and
5) if you combine it with offshored service delivery it comes along with an unbeatable price.

Now, as the business concept was born, I had to give it a name. After evaluating oBPMaaS (offshored-Business-Process-Management-as-a-Service), "flyingjellyfish" (all thoughts on how many beers I had before this name came up, please directly to my e-mail) and others I finally locked in at "big solutions for small companies", because this is what it really is about.

P.S.: For the scientific version on aaS, please have a look at Forrester or contact a consulting company, preferably my former employer.

Bigforsmall on Twitter

Bigforsmall is going Web 2.0 with twitter. I have already posted articles on technology and outsourcing trends and happenings, which I deem important in Outsourcing & Offshoring for small companies. Please feel free to share your comments, ideas and disucssion topics.

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