Study: Yes, There Are Benefits of Offering Free WiFi

It’s gotten much more common today to find businesses that offer complimentary WiFi for their patrons, especially in cities.  Still, there are many places outside of Big-City-America where free WiFi is the exception and not the rule.  (Trust me, living and working in semi-rural Ohio, I know!)

If you are on the fence about whether to offer free WiFi to your customers, you may be wondering:  Is there any real evidence of the benefits of offering free WiFi?

One recent study suggests that small retail businesses are indeed seeing a return from offering complimentary WiFi to their customers.

Devicescape commissioned a survey conducted by iGR of 400 U.S. small businesses with retail places of business.  The survey found that providing free WiFi for customers increases:

• Foot traffic.
• Time spent on premises.
• The amount customers spend.

The survey focused on independent “mom and pop” retail stores, including bars, nightclubs, restaurants, fast food places, coffee shops, clothing boutiques, book shops and salons.

Biggest Benefits of Offering Free WiFi

One of the biggest benefits of offering free WiFi is that it increases the time spent on premises.  Consumers tend to stay longer if they can use their tablets and laptops via WiFi.  Of the businesses surveyed, almost 62 percent said that customers spent more time in their shop or facility once WiFi was introduced.

Around 50% said customers spent more money, too.  And if you’re wondering how many implied that customers were just hanging around, taking up space and spending less (every business owner’s fear), the answer is only a tiny number of business owners said customers spent less when free WiFi was available.

The graph pictured above shows key breakdowns.

Different business owners have different goals for providing free WiFi to customers.  Some do it in order to provide better customer service (and attract those 5-star online reviews!).  Some do it to bring more customers in the door.  Some deploy free WiFi to get customers to buy more.

The ones who deployed it to serve customers better reported the highest success rates, at a whopping 79 percent.  After that, the ones who offered free WiFi to improve sales numbers had the next highest rate of success (72%).  Increasing foot traffic in the door rated the third highest success at 69%.

Would Small Businesses Stop Providing WiFi?

Not many would, judging by this survey.

Three-fourths of the small businesses surveyed by iGR said they considered complimentary WiFi as important or very important to their businesses.  Perhaps it’s because the competitor down the street offers free WiFi and so they feel they must, too, in order to compete. Or perhaps it’s because consumers are used to being online all the time and today expect an Internet connection wherever they go.  Or perhaps, it’s because of the dollars and cents benefits described above.

The president of the firm that conducted the survey, Iain Gillott, summed it up when he said, “The availability of WiFi is no longer an innovation limited to the large retail chains — small businesses are now offering the same services in their establishments, for both employees and customers. In the near future, small businesses will consider WiFi as fundamental to their success as electricity or running water.”

The post Study: Yes, There Are Benefits of Offering Free WiFi appeared first on Small Business Trends.

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Chromebook Cloud Communcations Could Replace Office Phones

A system originally intended for call centers could enhance your team’s communications and even replace your office phone system. Google has partnered with Twilio, a cloud communications provider, to introduce Twilio CX for Chromebooks.

The idea is to provide a complete cloud-based communications system with inbound phone numbers (some of the them toll free) for a few dollars a month and costing just a few pennies per minute on each call.

The system has other features too. For instance, it includes text messaging, conferencing with up to 40 callers and the ability to create recordings or transcriptions of a call, again for pennies per minute.

The system could also be set up in minutes, according to Twilio, and could be run through the browser of an average Chromebook.

A quick video introducing the new service explains why it may be attractive to both those setting up call centers as well as small and medium sized businesses looking for inexpensive but flexible communication options:

The idea is to change communications systems, a big part of your IT budget, from a capital investment to a monthly subscription that can be part of your regular operating expenses.

There are two reasons this might matter to you, depending upon the cost and complexity of your current communications system:

• First, it seems likely that U.S. businesses will need to expense a lot less in capital investments in years to come. So big investments in IT could have to be depreciated over time instead.
• Second, cloud services are constantly updated for as long as you are a subscriber, so your communications system won’t be getting obsolete over time.

There are certainly many business communications options out there today. But, if your business involves customer service, sales or other calling in or out, it’s possible a cloud-based communications solution might fill your needs.

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11 Quick Facts Everyone Should Know About Dell PartnerDirect

Dell's PartnerDirect program features a group of independent IT service resellers and solution providers that are certified to represent the Dell brand and work with its customers around the world.

For small businesses, the program offers both an opportunity to grow an IT brand through Dell’s partner network, and also an outlet for finding IT solutions providers that fit their needs.

Below are some things you might not know about PartnerDirect.

Provides Opportunity for IT Resellers

Businesses that provide IT solutions to Dell customers as part of their business can get certified as a Dell Partner and actually use the program to grow their customer base.

Since Dell is a large brand with worldwide reach, the partner network can enable smaller businesses to provide solutions to customers they might not have been able to reach otherwise.

Connects Small Businesses to Solutions

On the other side, businesses that are looking for various IT solutions can use the partner network to find providers in their area that fit their particular needs.

Allows Free Sign Up for Partners

Any business providing IT services can sign up for the PartnerDirect program on Dell's online portal. Registered Partners just need to have a valid reseller certificate, an active company website and an active email account tied to the company's domain.

There is no cost for the signup, just some basic information and a little bit of time.

Lets Businesses Search by Region

Dell also provides an online search portal for businesses looking for IT support. The search is organized to find certified partners in their area. Users can look for providers within a specific geographic area that fits with their individual needs.

This is intended to make it easier for Dell customers to find IT support for their devices, but also makes it easier for Dell's partners to find clients and work through the program.

Lists Partners Based on Competency

When a company signs up for the PartnerDirect program, it needs to sign up under a certain competency or competencies based on what types of products or services it provides.

Dell offers nine different competencies, including: Servers, storage, security, networking, desktop virtualization solutions, cloud services and solutions, data protection, systems management, and information management.

Provides Various Levels of Membership

Once a company has signed up as a Registered Partner, they can then choose to upgrade their partner status to higher levels of certification. Partners can sign up to become a Preferred Partner, which requires at least two employees to receive sales training and another two employees to receive technical training. Beyond the Preferred level is Premier. Premier Partners must have at least four employees trained in sales and four trained in technical areas.

There are also revenue requirements depending on the level and competencies selected. And there could be a small application fee involved depending on the type of business and the level of certification.

Allows Opportunities for Training

The training programs for both Preferred and Premier Partners are offered online. But there are also live training options if employees would prefer to receive their training in person. The time commitment required varies by level and competency.

But Bob Skelley, Executive Director, Global PartnerDirect Certified Partner Programs, said that Preferred training usually takes between 8 and 12 hours, broken up into smaller class segments. Premier training usually takes a bit longer.

Provides Added Marketing Support

Preferred and Premier Partners also have access to Dell's Field Marketing Organization, which can work with partners to assist in marketing efforts. Dell's marketing professionals will work one-on-one with partner businesses that have reached one of the higher levels of certification to assist in growing their customer bases.

Makes Services Available Worldwide

PartnerDirect is not just available in the U.S. Businesses can offer their services or search for providers around the world from Paris to Hong Kong to Mumbai.

Has Potential Customers in the Millions

Dell is a huge brand. But even big names don’t have all the resources to reach every customer around the world alone. That’s where Dell partners come in and the opportunities seem huge. In a phone interview with Small Business Trends,  Skelley explained:

"There are millions of small businesses out there and there's physically no way that one company can reach out to all of those customers. So this program gives us the opportunity to reach out to different customers and provide services through this partner ecosystem."

Still Growing

The PartnerDirect Program originally launched back in 2007. It currently has more than 130,000 global partners and about 4,000 Preferred or Premier partners. But those numbers are growing daily, according to Skelley.

This suggests there is plenty of room for more providers too.

Images: Dell

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To Highlight Priorities for Business Success, Read “Scrum”

I reviewed a book, Lean UX, that described agile development practices for software creation. I also noted how some of those practices touch upon scrum, another principle popular among developers.

If you have not heard of scrum, give the book Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice The Work In Half  The Time by Jeff Sutherland a read. With Ken Schwaber and other managers at the company Advanced Development Methods, Sutherland applied the productivity principle during the early 1990s. It was first described in Japan only a few years before, but Sutherland and Schwaber are credited for its application in an business methodology.

Since that time, developers with even a hint of interest in object-oriented programming have adopted scrum principles in one form or another.  But these principles are also a fit for many businesses that seek efficiency improvements.

I discovered the book via NetGalley, and downloaded a review copy.  The book is meant for the topic of focusing on productivity that is meaningful. I think this book will help business owners better understand the productivity levers in their teams.

The Backstory on Scrum

What is scrum?

It is a development methodlogy influenced from Japanese manufacturing concepts – think Kaizen, the Japanese word for "improvement," and you get the idea.  The principle organizes planning specific brief steps and timeframes around objectives instead of waterfall tactics that slow down a project overall. Because so much work has been based on waterfall project management, scrum reassesses the ways humanity approaches work.  Sutherland invented scrum to work with less people and time, to be more effective with the resources in place.

This book, like Lean UX, offers a timely topic given the increased reliance on business activity associated with cloud services.  How do we decide what is important, and how do we address it?  The similarity in both principles occurs in setting sprint-like time frames to accomplish short, incremental objectives.  There's also similarity between principles regarding simplicity.

But the differences between the books occur in how the simplicity is identified and achieved.  For example, check out how waste encourages inefficient behavior:

"There are three types of wastes identified by Taiichi Ohno that lead to people working harder, and for more hours than necessary…The first is "absurdity." You want to give your team challenging goals – to push them to reach for more. But you don't want them striving for absurd, impossible goals…."

The second waste, "Unreasonable Expectations," Sutherland notes that corporate interest in heroics rewards a wasteful behavior:

"How many times have you heard someone brag that through their own heroic efforts they saved a project? Usually, this is greeted with back slaps, cheers, and congratulations…A team that depends on regular heroic actions to make its deadlines is not working the way it's supposed to work."

The third "Overburden" is nicely phrased. I like the Dilbert analogy in the text. It describes "onerous company policies" that can hinder team progress.

What I Liked About This Book

At first blush some of the book topics do not delve as deeply into specifics as much as I had liked.  A segment on doing one thing at a time is good suggestion, backed by research references, but it seemed as if it could appear in a good blog post as much as it can a process.

But as I read more chapters, I started to get the point of the book's theme.  Sutherland writes about the experiences to highlight how endeavors can be better managed.  The text in infused with the author's experiences and topics that illustrate how the principle apples to others such as the FBI's interest in a updating its computer systems. Thus, the book requires the reader's attention a bit more than Lean UX to get the gist.

But that gist can be worthwhile when the text is holistically considered as innovation tales.  Sutherland does give more specific guidance to cases. For example, he notes how Scott Maxwell, a venture capital founder, discovered through creating scrum teams that his firm's productivity under its past structure was not really creating meaningful gains.

"OpenView discovered how people actually work instead of how they say they work…people who work too many hours start making mistakes, which can take more effort to fix than create."

Sutherland also shows a graph Maxwell had worked out based on the examination.   More step by step processes illustrating how scrum can be applied would be helpful. For more specifics, you may want to find other texts and topics related to agile development. But this book does offer ideas in where managers should look to honor the kaizen ways of efficiency.

Who Would Benefit Most From This Book?

Like Lean UX, Scrum is meant for entrepreneurs seeking to put rubber to the road in growing their ideas into a viable business.   For those in that entrepreneurial category, combine this book with idea-generating books. Two that come to mind are The Solution Revolution and The Mesh.  You'll be better equipped to be inspired for ideas and then specifying how to best work on those ideas, eliminate wasteful efforts, and to better frame your customer base via stories.

Business that are linked with large organizations will benefit, and can potentially layer ideas from this book with Aligning Strategies and Sales to get to the heart of improving processes.

Give this book a read to see how your business can better manage its productivity and bring its endeavors to light.

The post To Highlight Priorities for Business Success, Read “Scrum” appeared first on Small Business Trends.

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NetApp shares may climb to $50: Barron's

(Reuters) - U.S. data storage specialist NetApp could return to $50 a share in the coming year on solid cash flows and signs its revenues might grow again, Barron's said in its latest edition published on Sunday.

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Google executives visit Cuba for first time to promote open Internet

MIAMI (Reuters) - A team of top Google executives is visiting Cuba to promote open Internet access, according to a dissident blogger who says she met the group in Havana.

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