If it takes one to know one, than who better than a former small-business owner to oversee IBM's initiative to make it easier for growing businesses to acquire technology.
Matt Friedman, who's participating in a town hall meeting about successful strategies during a down economy at this week's National Small Business Week conference in Washington, D.C., has been with Big Blue for eight years. He now serves as VP of strategy and marketing for IBM Smart Business, a community-driven Web site for SMBs that also offers myriad business-critical applications designed by third-party developers.
"We're trying to make it incredibly easy for SMBs to get all the business applications and capabilities they need, whether they're on-premises or from the cloud," Friedman says. "That way they can hire two salespeople instead of two IT people. They don't want Keystone Cops bouncing off each other in their offices. They want one point of contact -- one throat to choke."
Friedman remembers standing in those shoes. In the early 1990s he founded a management consultancy of two that eventually grew and merged with the now-dissolved MarchFirst, one of the largest integrators during the dot-com era. "It was incredibly exciting, and at that time in my life -- I wasn't married and didn't have children -- I could work 23 hours a day and be fine," he recalls (at one point remaking that he missed being in a small business). "I know what it's like when you build everything off personal credit cards, making the choice, 'Do you pay people, or do you eat?' The experience helps me in this role and previous roles I've had targeting SMBs because I can relate to what they're going through -- how they're running their businesses, and the cash-flow challenges they face."
bMighty spoke to Friedman about that challenge and others, including how to build a brand during a down economy, why social media marketing alone isn't enough to build your brand, and why your top-paying customers aren't necessarily your most profitable.
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bMighty: What's it like going corporate after running your own business?
Matt Friedman: It's very different running a small business and working in a business of 400,000 people. Small business is more outcome-driven and milestone-oriented. It's not a matrix. Things are more functionality aligned, with a lot more clarity about who does what to whom. You don't have all the resources, of course, but you also don't have all the complexity and baggage either.
bMighty: What kind of applications do you see SMBs clamoring for?
Friedman: It's a wide range of cross-industry horizontal applications, including customer relationship management. They want to know how can they better manage their customers and better differentiate themselves. Also, finance, accounting, and business management applications, enterprise resource planning, and HR management. IBM Smart Business is targeting companies with 20 to 40 employees and up, but we have found that the applications and price points are actually relevant to businesses with even five employees.
bMighty: Will that result in a leveling of the playing field?
Friedman: One of our aspirations is to take the capabilities of the largest enterprises and make them accessible to SMBs, but without the cost and complexity.
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bMighty: What kind of advantages do small businesses have when the economy is tanking?
Friedman: It's hard to say in general because industry is so important, but there are a couple of things that come to mind: Smaller businesses and midmarket companies are not burdened with very large capital and debt, as well as the associated liabilities, like health care, that large businesses have. Small businesses have the opportunity to move faster and more quickly than some of the large companies that are struggling to get capital or trying to downsize and streamline. They can respond more quickly to local market needs and wants because they tend to be closer to the market. There's a leapfrog opportunity for those who see down times as an opportunity to seek competitive advantage and invest in the capabilities that will differentiate them for the long term. Being a private, smaller business, you can make longer term-decisions as opposed to being a quarterly driven, larger corporation.
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