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The Business Cloud for Small Business by @SaabyConsulting

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 “…Data security tops the list of cloud concern…”

Every Information Technology discipline has a lifecycle process. Before you choose a Cloud solution, there is a lifecycle process to follow that will match your business need with the right cloud solution.  (You don’t need to be an IT geek to get this.) 

Step 1.  IDENTIFY what you have.

ALL businesses are required to keep certain types of information.

(The first step in determining whether a cloud solution is right for your business is NOT to pick a cloud type. All clouds share fundamental characteristics and functionality. They use economies of scale to provide shared resources including storage, databases and applications, accessed via the Internet.)

1.      Inventory your software applications. If you are running Windows application, you can find all the programs on a PC in the Control Panel function. For IoS and Android applications, go to Settings, then Apps

2.      Identify existing cloud applications.   Where do you save your business bank statements? Your customer database? Receipts? Odds are, you are using some kind of cloud architecture already.

3.      Determine Industry compliance standards that may apply to your business

a.      professional licensing boards (like CPA’s)

b.      organizational standard boards like International Standardization Organization (ISO)

c.      Each state has different requirements at the Department of Corporation – make sure you are compliant with all filings, collecting state sales tax, paying re-employment (previously unemployment) taxes, etc.

4.      Define regulatory and corporate requirements that apply to ALL businesses

a.      Federal Tax Information (FTI)

b.      Canned Spam Act (mass emailing people for business is spam)

c.      Fair Credit Reporting Act (if you base employment decisions on credit scores, this applies to you

d.      HIPAA (compliance requirements for doctors/hospitals who collect, maintain and store patient information)

e.      Data Retention requirements (how long you need to maintain critical data)

f.       Data Disposal policy that identifies destruction method, i.e. key destruction, overwrite, magnetic overpass (degaussing) and/or physical destruction

g.  General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

5.      Examine stakeholder-centric data (ex: email address, payment preferences, survey results). Does this data contain?

a.      Personally Identifiable Information (PII)

b.      Credit card payment information (PCI DSS)

c.      Protected Health Information (PHI)

These are only some of the examples of laws and governing bodies and policies that apply to data and software applications and the collection of information.

Now is a good point to determine if you have overlapping applications, software that is out of date and whether or not you need all the information/data you have collected and/or stored. If you don’t need data for regulatory, compliance and/or business continuity purposes – don’t collect it. The more information you collect from your business stakeholders, the more cumbersome and complicated the requirements for data protection, access and storage become.

Never buy cloud services just because someone tells you “everyone needs the cloud”. There are some great Cloud Service Providers (CSP’s). But there are also a tremendous amount of businesses claiming to be CSP’s who can seriously jeopardize your business. CSP’s are NOT legally responsible for data breaches or losses!!!

Step 2.  CLASSIFY the data by risk

1.      High – this is data at the greatest risk, meaning loss or compromise of this data would put you at high risk of going out of businesses

a.      Intellectual property

b.      Proprietary corporate information

c.      Protected by law or regulatory body

d.      Compromises of this type of data carry the highest penalties and present the highest risk to business continuity

e.      This data may also be identified as top secret or sensitive

2.      Moderate – this is data at moderate risk

a.      Internal emails/policies

b.      Trend Reporting

c.      Compromises of this type of data may carry penalties and jeopardize business reputation and revenue

d.      This data may also be identified as confidential, private or proprietary

3.      Low

a.      Marketing materials

b.      Catalogs

c.      Mission statements

d.      Real time updates

e.      tracking

f.       This data may also be identified as public or unclassified

Step 3.  SELECT & IMPLEMENT your Cloud

1.      Understand that NO cloud solution is 100% secure. Period.

2.      It’s more than likely that your cloud solutions will contain multiple characteristics:

a.      Encryption levels

b.      In transit/At rest

c.      Key access, maintenance and replacement

d.      Virtual Private Network (VPN)

e.      Service Level Agreement (SLA)

f. Public, Private, Community and/or Hybrid

Step 4. MONITOR with a Risk Management policy

There is absolutely no sense in going to all the trouble of identifying your storage needs, finding the right CSP, then not defining a policy of access.

1.      Who needs to access your type of data?

a.      Build access and “need to know” policies by type of data

i. High

1.      CxO’s

2.      Two Factor Identification required

3.      Inaccessible via external devices

4.      Significant Monitoring

ii.     Moderate

1.      Department Heads

2.      Need to know personnel

3.      CxO’s

4.      Two Factor Identification required

5.      External device access clearly defined by policy

6.      Significant monitoring

iii.     Low

1.      Read only access for all employees/public access users

2.      Random, routine monitoring for exploits/attacks

2.      What are the regulatory and compliance requirements for your type of data?

a.      Define Corporate, Compliance and Regulatory best practices by type of data

1.      This was previously defined in the IDENTIFY step

3.      When will the data need to be accessed?

a.      Archive and Access Policy

i.     Constant vs intermittent

ii.     Short, medium, long term

b.      Platform dependencies

i.     Software as a Service (SaaS)

ii.     Platform as a Service (PaaS)

iii.     Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas)

4.      Where will your type of data be stored?

1.      On premise

2.      In the cloud

a.      Public, Private, Community or Hybrid

5.      Why do I need policies on data collection, storage, access and protection?

a.      Business Continuity

i.     Small businesses that experience a breach go out of business within six months

b.      Compliance

c.      Regulatory

d.      Business reputation

6.      How do I monitor my business cloud compliance?

a.      This should be identified in your Service Level Agreement (SLA). It may also be listed under “Terms and Conditions”. These are MUST read documents.

b.      Consider hiring an outside auditing firm

c.      Work with your Cloud Solutions Provider to identify and test vulnerabilities

As small business owners, we wear a lot of hats. And sometimes we think we could save some money by cutting corners….but as the world becomes more global and the IoT expands, I think the small businesses that will survive are those that have been early adopters of best practices in information and emerging technologies.

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Smart Cities, Small Businesses and Innovation by @SaabyConsulting

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We all want to live and work in a Smart City, right?

There are images of Smart Cities everywhere, from Alphabet’s (Google’s parent company) Quayside to smart cities around the world.

What makes a city Smart?  And how small businesses benefit from getting SmartER.

There is no single definition for what a Smart City is – what we have now are many incredible ideas of what information and emerging technologies can do to solve environmental, economic and social issues.

  • Smart City transportation will be more on demand, will reduce carbon emissions, reduce traffic accidents and fatalities and help smart citizens locate parking spaces.
  • The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals are integrating solutions for affordable housing, water accessibility, education an many other concepts into the new built environments of Smart Cities.
  • The DOLL lab in Denmark is a living lab where public and private sectors can test new technologies in lighting and collaborate on best practice technologies for Smart Cities.

But how can small businesses can become SmartER?

Start with innovative thinking and data analysis.  Get everything you can together about your business – from financial statements and payrolls to marketing and advertising budgets to office locations.  Thinking SmartER is about efficiency and optimization of resources.  Large streams of data are now available about virtually everything.  Add those relevant streams to the data you have on your own business to build a powerful understanding of your business, your industry and potential markets.

Consider accessing the global market for your goods and services.  Small businesses have access to new markets all over the World.  Look at emerging and existing markets – is there a place for your goods or services?  Import/export is a two-way street – is there a company in emerging or existing markets that wants to come to the United States and do business that you can partner with?

Take a stand on how you do business and what is happening in your supply chain.  You may have heard of this as People, Planet and Profits.  I call it Organic Profits.  There really is enough for everyone.  Do you have the right policies in place to prevent harassment in the workplace?  Are you building a diverse workforce?  Especially for service businesses – are you building programs to keep your employees connected?  Tele-work, flex hours and collaborate work spaces are all ways you can build a collaborative workplace culture.  Do you have gender pay inequality issues?  Have you looked?  Bias creeps up on us, even when we think we have erased it.

Think green in every phase of your business.  As organizations, we all produce waste.  There are things we can do – go paper free in the office.  If you are still saving printed bank statements, you could consider cloud storage instead.  Even an external drive for all “paper” documents.  Are you recycling in the office?  Lead by example in green solutions – talk about what you are doing and encourage workforce participation.

Leveraging connections and building relationships.  Small businesses are stronger when we work together.  Bartering is a great way to access services and build networks.  We all need each other to survive.  Bartering has tax implications, so be sure to do the research on this.

Have you looked at how emerging technologies could optimize your business?  From just in time manufacturing to automated customer service, emerging technologies should be of special interest for small businesses.  These are new technologies for all of us – take a look at some of the best practices and at least consider how you can explore these new capabilities.  The small businesses that start integrating these technologies sooner, rather than later, are the ones who are going to be ahead of the game.

At some point, I hope we will all be living well in Smart Cities.  But being smartER isn’t about a place – it’s about a new way of thinking and being open to possibilities.

Good luck on your SmartER journey!

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https://arm23.com/2018/02/14/examples-of-smart-cities/

Risk Management for Small Businesses by @SaabyConsulting

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Risk Management for Small Businesses

by Karen Jensen | Featured Contributor 

We are a nation of small businesses.  In fact, over 90% of U.S. businesses have less than 20 employees.  But many small businesses aren’t developing or implementing a risk management strategy – and that’s a big mistake.

I know as small business owners, we wear a lot of hats, but there are tried and true business practices that are absolutely necessary to ensure business success – risk management is one of them.

Risk management doesn’t have to be scary or intimidating.  It should be part of your overarching business plan. (If you don’t have a business plan, you might want to consider writing one of those too)

Are you a small medical practice?  Running an Airbnb property?  A restaurant with public wifi? An exporter of goods or services? Have an Etsy or Ebay store?

What is a risk management strategy?

There are lots of fancy definitions, but a solid risk management strategy really sums up everything about your business, how you keep it running and what you will do if it stops running (by design or by accident).

Some examples are:

  • your cash on hand and what you owe (financial risk management)
  • identifies and protects your proprietary information (Intellectual property risk management)
  • protects your customer and employee data (governance and compliance risk data)
  • your business continuity plan defines your business will do in the case of an unplanned event

I talk with so many small business owners who really have no idea of what their current state of business is.

The beauty of a small business is that you can make it anything you want.  If you design jewelry and sell it at local green markets on the weekend, you probably don’t need a lot of complicated software.  But if you want to build an Etsy store or your own website, you are going to need to know some basics.

  • Free versions of anti-virus and malware aren’t as good as paid versions. It’s essential for an online presence to employ reasonable tactics to protect your information and your systems.
  • Outdated software isn’t supported by the manufacturer. Windows 7 hasn’t been supported since 2015.  Yes, the security patches will be deployed until 2020, but seriously?  Why are you still running Windows 7?
  • Make a list of all the software applications you use. Are they current?  Do you use them?  This doesn’t take long and should be part of your business continuity plan.
  • Review your business credit card statements as carefully as you review your personal statements. Recurring charges that are unnecessary?  Services you don’t use with recurring billing?  Think lean and mean.  Only buy what you need and don’t pay for things you aren’t using.
  • Do you have employees? Consider writing an employee handbook.  I know quite a few small business owners who hired friends and family, who later sued them for employment practices.  Think hard about hiring friends and family.  If you decide to do it, make sure you define roles and set clear business practices.
  • If you want to build a growth strategy, make sure your business is in order. Spend the money to have your business reviewed by a small business attorney and a financial expert.  You can’t get an SBA loan without 2 years of tax returns, so it pays to get this all set up correctly in the beginning.  There are lots of attorneys and financial planners who specialize in small business architecture.  Invest in your business!
  • Let’s talk about technology. Technology can be such a big and frightening word for small businesses.  There are so many emerging technologies to follow, sales pitches about the new software you “must have” and just keeping up with the day to day requirements.
  • Small businesses are the weakest link in the cyber security chain. Over 60% of small businesses that are the victims of cyber crime go out of business in six months.  Can you do business without your customer database?  There are numerous reputable tools to help small businesses be cyber secure.  Many of them are also free so there’s no excuse!

 

I’m on a mission to help more small businesses succeed!

Keep me posted on your small business story.

 

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What kind of leader are you? by @SaabyConsulting

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What Kind of Leader are You?

As small business owners, we barely have time to keep the business running, let alone worry about what kind of leaders we are.

If you are thinking about how to grow your business, and you should be, now is the time to consider what kind of leader you are.  Even if you have never explored any research on leadership practices, I think most of us would acknowledge that while a good leader is critical to achieving a high level of morale at an organization, more often than not, leadership is frequently based on nepotism, favoritism and an ever- changing model of inconsistent rewards and inappropriate and poorly understood punishments.

Business growth is a team effort.

If your team isn’t on board with the organization’s goals and objectives, or worse, you haven’t even told them the organization has goals and objectives, rest assured, your efforts will fail.

Leadership is a process and even if you don’t think you were born to leader, you can certainly learn to be one.

Before you go on a mad hunt for leadership articles on the Internet or spend tons of money on books to read about leadership (wondering when you will find the time to read them) or signing up for boot camps on leadership – stop and take a deep breath.  You have more knowledge than you realize about leadership.

Start with a leader you have experience with.  What did you like about them?  Did you ever wonder why they conducted meetings at 7:30am?  Why some people always seemed to advance while seemingly not doing very much work?  And some people, no matter how hard they work, never seemed to get the recognition they deserve?  Did you have a clear set of goals on how to do your job?

These are just a few of the questions you can ask about a leader you may have had.  Maybe you had a leader, or a person you admired in a leadership role.  What about them gave rise to your admiration?

The point here is that the first step in becoming a leader is doing an assessment that defines what you think a good leader should be, where you think you are as a leader and where you want to be.

A critical aspect of leadership is your interaction with others.  It could be family, or colleagues, or subordinates or people you have business relationships with.  Use good judgement here but take some time to ask the people in each of these groups what they think about either your current leadership style, or what kind of leader they think you might be.  Be prepared.  It’s very likely that what other people think about your leadership skills is NOT what you think you are projecting.

There is literally tons of reference material about leadership and the qualities of a leader, so I will leave you to sift through all that.  Here are some good ideas about how to build your leadership at work and at home.

  • The best leaders base their success on the success of the team.
  • The best leaders take ownership when things go wrong and give credit to the team when things go right.
  • The best leaders build a following by leading transparently – being open about their own struggles, empathizing with others and setting clear expectations for their followers.

What kind of leader are you?  Would love to hear your thoughts.  Keep me posted on your leadership journey.

 

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The Power of You in Business by @SaabyConsulting

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The Power of You in Business

Photo by mentatdgt from Pexels

by Karen Jensen | Featured Contributor

I’ve spoken to so many women over the last several years – across all industries, revenue models and business types.

In all but rare cases, there are still some old patterns of behaviors and expectations that we really need to be committed to get rid of PERMANENTLY.

Do you fit into any of these?  I know I did…

  • Lacking confidence – I don’t know why, but especially in business ownership, women are less likely to approach situations with confidence. It may be cultural, gender related or any number of other things, but it’s got to stop!

Remedy?

You got this!!  We are moms, sisters, friends, household managers, partners, business executives et al.  And we are doing most of those things at the same time!  If you aren’t born with confidence, that’s ok – it can be learned.  You ARE good at things – think about all those things, write them down, shout them from the rooftops.  People are naturally drawn to someone who is confident.  In a world of competition, you need every advantage you can get.

  • Not all women LEAN IN – I can’t say I know the why of this one either – but I’ve seen it too many times to know that not all women lean in. Some of our business sisters haven’t gotten the message yet, or they got it and disregarded it.

Remedy?

You be the business sister that LEANS IN.

When I first started out, I approached a woman that I thought might be a good mentor, or just someone that I thought would have a good perspective.  I told her I was having troubling connecting with potential clients.  She asked me to make my pitch to her – right there on the spot.  Well, see Item #1 above lol.  I stumbled a bit and told her I started my business after being laid off/outsourced.  She stopped me right there and said, “You sound like a loser”.   Needless to say, that wasn’t what I was looking for, BUT I did learn something from that.  She was right in a way.  I wasn’t owning my story with confidence and I wasn’t prepared.

I do things a lot differently to LEAN IN when I’m approached by an entrepreneur.  I know how hard it is when you are first starting out to approach someone you don’t know and figure out a way to talk to them.  When they stumble a little bit or start to apologize, I stop them….and tell them what they are doing, why they shouldn’t do that and how great they are for being on this journey!  Some of them have cried because no one has really treated them with any respect in their business journey.

It’s bad business to treat people disrespectfully and kindness is NOT weakness.  The business world is VERY connected.  Reputation is everything for a small business.  I’m not taking anyone’s crap, but I’m also mindful of my behavior and how it is a reflection on my business.

  • Failure to delegate and accept that you can’t do it all. We want to be everything to everybody all the time under every circumstance.  Sound familiar?

Remedy?

You are a leader, and leaders cultivate people who can do all kinds of different things.  It doesn’t make sense for you to get up at four o’clock in the morning and drive yourself tirelessly through the day until midnight, then do it again the next day.  I hate to break it to you, but on that schedule, you aren’t doing the best you can.  You might be doing the most you can, but not the best.  Get a good night’s sleep!  You want to be around to see all the results of your hard work.  Set realistic goals for yourself every morning but incorporate flexibility into your design.  Things happen!  The people who survive are the people who can best adapt to change.  Try a virtual assistant – just to dip your toe in the waters of delegation.  If you can let go of a few things (that someone else can do better than you can), you have more time to work on new business and solidifying core business.  You are also helping to strengthen the workforce supply chain.

You are the business!  Take care of yourself!  Believe in yourself!  Just think of the example you will be setting for those that come after you!

All the best.

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The Power of You in Business by Saaby Consulting Company

Tips to keep your business from running out of business by @SaabyConsulting

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Tips to keep your business from running out of business

by Karen Jensen | Featured Contributor

In a perfect world, customers and clients would be lined up outside your door, your email Inbox would be overflowing, and your website would consistently be number one in SEO.

Even the most successful entrepreneurs have changes in their business models.  No one has represented this better than Oprah.  She fearlessly left a successful television show to start her own channel.  She has continued that pioneer spirit by diversifying her brand even further with Weight Watchers, movies, etc.

Diversification should be part of every small business strategy.  Just because your market is flowing a certain way NOW, that doesn’t mean it will continue.

How to stay on top of your business?  As the founder and president of my own company, I’ve learned the importance of benchmarking and measuring how well my strategies are performing.

In marketing and advertising, there are any number of free tools that have been a part of my strategy since early on.  I may never get to page one for a search (that really can be ok), but I know exactly how many visitors go to my site, which one of my posts is doing well (and which one’s aren’t) on every social media outlet I have.

Staying connected is critical.  Decide what you believe in as a company.  I consider every post, every blog and every interview a chance to portray my company in a good (or terrible) way.  At networking events, I put aside personal concerns and focus on who I want to connect with and making sure I’m never dismissive of people who come up and speak to me.

What are my financial metrics and how are they performing based on historical data?  I know exactly how much I’ve spent on supplies for the last seven years!  I think of this as the “Prius Effect”, where having access to data changes how you behave.  I’ve watched incidental spending decline as my business has grown.  In the beginning, I wasted a lot of money buying things I thought I should have, or things other people told me I absolutely needed.

Stay current in your industry and see how you can expand your business to new industries.  Over the last several years, I’ve expanded outside of my core business of technology solutions to smarter city solutions and workforce solutions.  Technology is impacting literally every aspect of business, creating opportunities and making some things obsolete.

Become your own subject matter expert – about your industry and your company.  People respect knowledge and well thought out ideas.  I have an opinion on frontier technologies like blockchain and artificial intelligence that isn’t what most people are talking about.  The truth is – implementing blockchain at this point is at best, theoretical, and artificial intelligence doesn’t really exist right now.  A more accurate term for today’s artificial intelligence would be data and/or predictive analytics.  There aren’t any machines making human decisions – it’s going to take a long time for us to feed all the data into the machines that they would need to know.  There are also ethical considerations that aren’t getting the attention they deserve.

You won’t be an entrepreneur until YOU think you are.  If you are still searching “how to be an entrepreneur”, you probably aren’t quite there yet.  But you can get there.

All the best to small businesses and entrepreneurs everywhere!

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