The launch date for businessShowHow.com, our new division here at Synergia is set for December 4th, 2008.  Get ready for really practical information on how to get started on the journey to acquiring venture finance for your business.  No jargon, just plain english and a simple roadmap presented by a consultant on how to get started.

The venue and time will be confirmed over the next few days.  Sign up for our RSS feed or keep checking this site for updates.

RSS is a good idea.

Did I just use jargon?

We recently picked up an old software project that we had evaluated in 2006 for use with our Ubuntu based installations. GnuCash has come a long since and is now a very competitive accounting system. From being only capable of handling personal finance, it has since expanded to include small business accounting with invoicing, general ledger, accounts payable and many more features.

After evaluating it against our own requirements (and finding a company here in Nairobi that is actually using it), we have decided to adopt it as our financial software platform. Check out its features and see if it will work for you too.

1.  Secure your name - Figure out what you want the name (domain) of the site to be.  For instance, ours is synergiakenya.com (synergia.com was already secured by someone else long ago).  If you take too long, there are at least 2 billion people on the planet any one of whom might get the brilliant idea to secure a domain that was perfect for you.

2.  Answer the why question - Is the site for trading purposes, a catalogue, just for show…. This will keep designers from selling you features you don’t need and allow you to decide how much you are willing to spend.

3.  Shop for a designer - Find someone who ‘gets’ you.  Not all designers understand your language.  Ask for quotations and mock-ups during the tendering process so that you establish if you can get along with the firm / individual designing your new front office (that’s what a website really is).  Design and construction are usually done by the same business  but sometimes you might find a great graphic designer with poor website construction skills.  Split the two.  Its worth the headache to get the right site.

4.  Establish time frames - Set them in stone!  If you leave deadlines open ended, your project will cost more, take longer and take new forms as time elapses.  Save yourself the headache.  Establish a realistic deadline and stick to it.

5.  Establish copyrights - Websites sometimes have images.  Ensure the designers divulge the legality of the images they use.  Avoid exposing your business to copyright infringements law suits by getting license information in writing.  Also, protect your brand by registering your mark.  By establishing your own copyrights you keep the world that is surfing your site from encroaching on your intellectual property.

There’s a whole lot more to the process of course.  These are just the top 5 we had in mind today

Access Kenya has traditionally been a corporate Internet services business.  Domestic users and the lower end of the SME space have never been their target market.  Their competitors on the other hand have began to roll out products and services that are bound to result in shrinking revenue for them where these consumers are concerned.  The small enterprises that are already on the Access Kenya platform will jump ship as soon as they get a more affordable option.  And they way things are going, the problem will be how to choose from the number of options available.

Safaricom rolled out their 3G data network in June with a product that is targeted at the SME market.  At KSh.10,000 a month, even with limitations on data transfer this beats Acccess Kenya’s KSh.20,000 per month product.

For residential users, Safaricom’s modem based service as well as Celtel’s EDGE based data service all provide fairly decent performance for well under KSh.3,000 per month.  Telkom are in the process of re-branding and relaunching their ADSL product and rolling out a new broadband service priced for the masses.  Rumors have been rife that Wananchi Online will launch a product for KSh.3,000 per month that will have upwards of 512kb bandwidth and a phone line.

How is Access Kenya dealing with this?  By launching Access@Home.  256Kbps for KSh.7,000 a month.  It seems obvious that to me that the efforts of Safaricom, Celtel, Telkom and Wananchi will result in shrinking revenues and slower growth for Access Kenya in the short term.  Their decision making process hints at trouble in the long term as well.

How then are their share prices going up?  Why does anyone want to buy stocks in a company that will not have much to show in 9 to 12 months?

My money is in the bank for another month.  All this activity means SME owners will get hitherto unprecedented low prices for Internet access, a scenario that can only be a good thing for all of us.  A bad thing for Access Kenya if their price sensitive, SME clients bail out for more affordable, flexible and low-investment-required internet services.

It feels and looks a lot like facebook, which is a good thing in my books since I will find it easier to adopt to it. Signing up was fast and easy. I did wonder how they would use the bio data they collect during registration. It may become a great way to use technology as a tool to build business through social networking. It may well be the easiest way to grow a small business.

See the press statement here from the launch at the end of May 2008.

The service is available in Nairobi and Mombasa at this time but will be rolled out countrywide later.  It covers that gray area small business finds itself in.  Once you are located where there is no line-of-sight to a basestation belonging to the usual wireless operators, your options are narrow and unreliable.  This product allows small and medium sized enterprises to locate their business wherever they want without worrying about service availability (at least within those two locations).

The costs are the icing on the cake.  At KSh.10,000 for a wireless service that fast is uncommon here.

The downside is the limitation on the amount of data you can transfer.  But at the amounts they are talking about, we think many SMEs will be fine.

We apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused.

In June, we are inviting at least 75 business owners and decision makers to a one-day seminar on how to make the right decisions for the SME where technology is concerned. This is not a technology event. There will be no techno-speak (at least not much). It is all in plain English. With pictures where necessary.

We will cover;

• What to consider when shopping for I.T. stuff
• How to make sure the wrong people are not looking at your business information.
• How to prepare your business for the day after a disaster
• Which options to look into where Internet access is concerned

…and much more.

The costs are KSh.1,800.00 per person. Plan to be there.

I first came across Turbocash in 2005 and I immediately knew this was a product that provided a serious solution for capital-challenged small businesses in Africa. I had used Pastel 5.2 for a couple of years and the prospect of a system as good (even better in my opinion) without the steep cost was irresistible. The new version (Turbocash 3.75) is even better.

A couple of our clients in Kenya are using Turbocash and it works very well for them. One is a fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) distributor based in Mombasa, Kenya. The other is an ethnic interiors business based in Nairobi. The FMCG distributor is more interested in monitoring stock movements, inventory levels and cash flow while the ethnic interiors shop is more interested in point-of-sale functionality and inventory levels. It is not a perfect system in its ability to fulfill your every whim (speaking from an accounting software perspective), but it will get the job done. Every time.

It uses a fairly good system for storing data (Borland’s Database Engine [BDE]) and works well on Microsoft’s Vista operating system. I also spotted a plug-in that allows a business with many branches to use a multi-branch feature which I will investigate and let you know exactly what it does.

This may seem like a vague review of the software but the point is to point you in the direction of an alternative to the more expensive systems available in the market. Put that $600 in what your business is really about and download Turbocash instead. If you really like it, consider purchasing something from their online store to support the project. That’s how we keep great free software around longer.

And did I mention it has some integration with Microsoft Office?

Kenya Data Networks have been using the term quite freely in the recent past in their attempt to be identified as an environmentally responsible brand. Being carbon neutral is therefore very important to them. However, I think better than being carbon neutral is being ‘carbon-less’. How about zero emissions?

KDN still uses a lot of diesel and regular electricity to power its infrastructure. It is now looking to put up digital villages as part of its CSR initiatives and to improve Internet penetration. My bet is that they will use regular computer equipment powered from the grid or diesel power. Carbon is still being emitted. Exactly HOW are they going about being carbon neutral?

I would like to see a 100% solar powered data network with digital villages that run on alternative energy as well. Using thin clients and an Ubuntu server running LTSP5, we were able to setup a 10-workstation cyber cafe with a LaserJet printer. Our total power consumption was below 1KVA making it possible to switch to solar power to run the cafe without incurring huge costs. For starters, I think KDN should consider using socially responsible software (read open source) in those ‘villages’, using solar to power them and using solar powered base stations on their infrastructure. They will produce less carbon that way which is what they should be investing in if going green is that important to them.

Let us consider investing more in carbon reduction rather than carbon offsetting which is what ‘carbon neutral’ is all about.

What do you think?