What’s the difference between a big business and a small business? Long time ago, a CEO explained to me the only difference between big business and small business was the number of 0s after the number. At the time his concept seemed to make sense, but that was 40 years ago. After years of business process engineering, and outsourcing, and off-shoring, most big businesses are now devoid of any flexibility or empathy, either for customers or employees. These days the most obvious difference between small and big businesses is now the customer experience. Invariably (?) the customers’ experience with the big businesses is poor at best whereas their experience with smaller businesses is usually very good.
It seems to me companies and organizations have gone through numerous changes since then, driven by competition and also by fashion – ideas published in books, like Re-Engineering the Corporation. After all business as usual isn’t very sexy for those trying to get noticed in the rat race.
The main difference I see today is, for big businesses of any description, what happens inside the organization is infinitely more important than that which happens outside. Customers take a back seat in the competition to deliver the CEOs strategy, and get noticed doing it. It’s all about the rules – delivering operations, not innovating strategy.
Actually just like the public sector.
On the other hand, for smaller businesses what happens outside the business is infinitely more important than what happens inside. Everybody’s focused on the customer.
So the rules are different, depending on the size of our business. For smaller businesses its all about interfacing with external factors whereas for big businesses its all about interfacing with internal departments.
And our sales and management processes and systems need to be different as well. In small businesses they need to be about sharing and co-operation – working together to get the job done, regardless of who’s owns responsibility for the task.
There’s no shortage of software touted as being designed for small business, but the marketers miss the main point. They’ll show how price and limited features as ways the software fits the needs for smaller businesses.
That’s naive. Software properly designed for smaller businesses is all about flexibility and sharing.
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