Adnet - Building for Business

Maybe its just me but does the term "Over Priced Bloatware" spring immediately to mind whenever SAP is mentioned. It is designed to generate expensive man hours, not to get job done. Pushed by those who provide overpriced man hours and epitomised by project such as PPARs. As a businessman, technologist and Irish tax-payer I find Kagermann's discussions about architectures functionality and flexibility, tiresome and irrelevant.

Lightweight orthogonal components with suitable mechanisms for generating, managing and storing chains, can more than address the levels of functionality handled by SAP, negating the need for its clearly unmanagable complexity.

Increasing complexity increases the size of the job and therefore the value to the technology suppliers. Decreasing complexity is hard work but ultimately increases the value of the technology to the customers. Which direction are you pushing in?

As it enters its Red Giant phase the only question remains,will the Property Market Scam become a white dwarf or a black hole, sucking us all into an alternative universe. It is nothing short of a huge Pyramid Selling operation by the Banks and I'm constantly bewildered by peoples ability to delude themselves in the face of a physical reality.

Its actually amazing that as much as 4% of Irish exports come from indigenous private sector. The enormous gravitational well of the Banking Property Pyramid deprives almost all other business ideas of capital, attention and effort. This is now however the time to take bargain basement investment opportunities in the likes of the tech sector, if you are equipped to discern the genuine innovators from the click and drool brigade.

The Story of Dave and Adnet

I met Dave in 1994 while working on contract for Digital in Galway. At the time Daves vision for the Yoga Centre was in its nascent phase and he was busy putting in place the elements he would later need to fulfil his vision. My own imaginings of the future were strongly coloured by the emerging World Wide Web and shortly after I left to become involved with Adnet, back in Dublin. Myself and Dave kept in touch over the years and as his yoga centre began to take shape in 1999/2000 we decided to put together a simple website for the centre.

We set-up an initial website for Dave and provided him with some content management software (CMS) and a little training. As an ex-tech himself Dave was well equiped to embrace the technology and set about building out the content of the website with course information, articles about yoga, and information about the leading teachers he was bringing to the centre. The strategy worked well, the search engines started to notice his site and the enquiries started to build.

The early successes encouraged Dave to invest some more in his website and the next two elements we decided on were to improve the visual and navigational aspects of the site and add an electronic mailing list function. This led to a significantly improved “Brand” image for the site and much easier navigation of the expanding volume of content. The content was also proving to be very attractive to the search engines and Dave’s traffic and enquiries continued to build.

By 2004 it had become clear that it was time to implement an online booking system to handle the volume of enquiries and take the paperwork, time and human error out of that process. This feature proved to be very popular with the visitors and has vastly improved Daves ability to manage track and analyse his course bookings.

In 2005 we added a teachers and course information database to the website. This is part of Dave’s ongoing efforts to Build Community keep his centre at the forefront of the Yoga community. This helps raise awareness for the centre among teachers (major influencers) and practitioners while being an extremely useful resource for both teachers and people looking for suitable yoga classes in their area.

Today the Burren yoga website has over a 1000 pages of content and gets typically 8000 unique visitor every month. Most of Dave’s course are booked out well in advance primarily through the online booking facility. Dave continues to work at his vision and we continue to provide expertise, support and maintenance for his website. If you are looking do something good for yourself and have an enjoyable and memorable break I have no hesitation in reccommending a visit to the Burren Yoga and Meditation Centre.

Question.......
How can a niche business, operating in the west of Ireland, become a centre of excellence and consistently draw clients from all over the world, with a modest marketing budget?

Burren Yoga & Meditation Centre

Start with a vision.

• A beautiful location.
• The best teachers from around the world.
• Excellent courses.
• Comfortable accomodation and great food.
• A memorable experience.

Building the Business

• Letting your target audience know.
• Making it easy to find and book a course.
• Keeping in touch with your audience.
• Repeat visitors and personal referrals.
• Community Building.

Working the Website

• Website Content.
• Online bookings.
• Electronic Mailing list.
• Teachers database.

A casual glance at most websites leaves most people unimpressed. The good looking ones are often difficult to use, and we quickly move on. If the website offers something we really want, we will often persist, despite its shortcomings.

A good website will:
1. Look well and project an appropriate impression.
2. Function easily and correctly.
3. Provide the visitor with something they want.
4. Add value to your business.

So what makes a good website, which particular bag of visual creativity and technical gimmickery makes the difference. The answers are as broad ranging as the businesses which the websites serve. Each business is unique and almost all businesses can benefit from a good website. The key to building a successful website is the quality of the process from which it unfolds.

Over a month down the line and a lot has happened. The process of designing our new web site has had the unexpected effect of catalysing the transformation of our business. With hindsight this makes perfect sense. The process of identifying who you are, what you do, and effectively communicating this, clarifies your thinking and helps crystallise many disparate elements into a single vision. I will make this a more explicit selling point for future!

Initially we came up with a raft of good ideas such as making use of our very appealing business card and telling some of the more interesting and compelling stories of Adnet and our clients. Incorporating some working eCommerce on the site rather than linking too examples also seemed in keeping with our "make it manifest" manifesto. Our approach was driven by a tell it visually in the first 3 seconds with some interesting human stories in depth for those who are drawn in.

Some further work with our business development advisor yielded the concept of the "holistic" web development company bringing together analysis, design and technology in a human centred approach to the business. I felt we might be on to something here.

April began to get very busy and the work on our own web site went on the back burner for a while. All of a sudden it came to me, clear and simple, innocuous yet strangely powerful, Adnet - "Web Builders to the Design Industry". So what chorused everyone, bland, me too, limiting.....

Well says I consider the following:

How do you get to a major chunk of that SME business for web sites?
Why has no other web company taken this kind of position?

Much of the web industry views itself as being in direct competition with the design industries for design, branding and marketing related activities. The web businesses lack the credibility of the design companies for design and much of the quality SME web work follows design. The design companies don't normally carry the full depth and breadth of technical expertise and can be light of the web specific aspects of design. Design companies are often in a prime position to get the web business but usually loose interest if the clients functional requirements escalate. Design companies are generally disinterested in the support and maintenance aspects of web sites.

By selling Adnet to the design companies we "multiply" our own sales efforts. The design companies bring creative uniqueness to the situation and do not view using the same "implementor" as a competitive issue, in fact the more design companies we are implementing for, the more attractive we become to others. This does not imply that we have to tell anyone who isn't a design company to go away. If we have 20 design companies as Adnet Clients it gives us access to a much greater range of design talent. The relationships can and should be a two way street.

This phrase "Web Builders to the Design Industry" is simultaneously a marketing strategy, a positioning statement, a mission statement, a vision, a USP, a brand identification, a statement of intent and indeed a one line business plan. When the whole becomes greater that the sum of the parts could this be considered a "Wholistic" approach. Perhaps I'm getting a little carried away ;-) Now back to the difficult job of work, building the relationships one at a time, providing an efficient and responsive service, perhaps there are never any real shortcuts.