M & A Rainmaker

Poundbury Systems is in the Cisco mentor programme and receives a regular monthly mentoring session from Cisco mentoring partner Channel Intellect.

The bad weather in January and various issues in December meant that the Channel Intellect representative John Shannon could not get down from the Wirral to Dorset.

In December the mentoring session was carried out using the telephone. During the session a number of critical areas were discussed such as the order forecast and the commitment to those orders being received and personal coaching. The mentor came off of the December update feeling that he had heard the words but needed to see the facial reactions and other body language that accompanied those words.

Given the appalling weather conditions in January it was decided that another remote review was required but this time Cisco Webex video conferencing would be used.

Cisco Webex is a low cost video conferencing solution that is suitable for small and medium sized businesses to use. ( ie suitable for Poundbury, Channel Intellect and Poundbury’s customers ).

When John came off the January remote review he was convinced that messages  were received, understood and committed to.

Cisco Webex video conferencing makes business sense for a  number of reasons: Reduced travel time and cost; reduced carbon emissions; business continuity and the ability to see the whites of peoples’ eyes !

http://redeye.firstround.com/2009/12/finding-the-dreamers.html

They can’t sing but I like it !!

In February the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics Games will run video over Cisco Networks. In 2012 Poundbury hopes to do the same in Dorset.

Cisco Systems will be providing the video and all-media network that will allow NBC to broadcast the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.

See the official Cisco Systems Press Releases here:

http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2010/prod_010610.html

http://blogs.cisco.com/sp/comments/nbc_leverages_cisco_video_network_at_2010_olympic_winter_games/

Poundbury Systems is already promoting the use of Cisco Systems for communications during the sailing section of the 2012 Olympics based in the U.K.

The company is also developing video conferencing and remote networking
technology, to reduce the need for local businesses to travel during the Games.
‘We see video conferencing as the next big thing for businesses,
especially those outside London. We’d be developing it even if the
Games weren’t happening, but the event gives everyone an extra
push. I think it will be a catalyst for Dorset in many ways.
‘It has already given Dorset a short-term motivational boost. In the
long-term, the benefits of improving the area’s infrastructure will be
enormous.
‘Team Dorset is not about opting for a quick fix; it’s about building
long-term business relationships and improving the environment.
We all stand to benefit from the exciting and demanding challenges
the Games will bring. Dorset is a wonderful place to live and work
and we want it to remain so for many more generations”

Team Dorset is the lead agency in Dorset for promoting the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Weymouth and Portland. Thier website is here:

http://www.teamdorset.org.uk/

Poundbury Systems Limited, Dorchester
Poundbury Systems Limited (PSL) is an award-winning computer
and telephone systems integrator based in Poundbury, Dorchester, which provides
forward-looking technology solutions for SMEs across all sectors.

Since starting out 2001, PSL has enjoyed rapid growth and won numerous
awards including the British Chamber of Commerce’s South West Business
of the Year in 2007.

Director Clare Jenkins is in no doubt about what makes PSL special: ‘Our staff
are exceptional. They are highly skilled, but able to translate a technical issue
into everyday business terms.’

PSL runs an active community relations programme and gives time and
resources to local education establishments, including The Thomas Hardye
School and Weymouth College, as well as donating to Dorset charities.
As the 2012 Games approach, Clare and her team are aware they’ll need
extra staff and are increasing their interaction with schools as part of a futureproofing
recruitment drive.

The Birmingham post reports that M&A activity is looking positive for 2010 in this article:

http://www.birminghampost.net/birmingham-business/birmingham-business-news/financial-business-news/2010/01/08/optimism-for-midlands-m-a-market-despite-22-per-cent-activity-drop-65233-25557722/

In Part 2 I mentioned that Penny and Thomas had ( quite rightly in my view ) adopted a very open attitude towards other social networks.

Thomas Power was in fact one of the people who encouraged me to join Facebook ( as he  encouraged me to join many other networks aswell ) and while I was dragged kicking and screaming on to Facebook it became for me the most intuitive of the networks that I joined. Whilst Ecademy was easy to use Facebook was easy to use and also easy to mix media - text, pictures and video’s.

The use of Facebook by bars and clubs also opened my eyes to the massive potential for interaction with customers.

New Birmingham Nightclub Gatecrasher was perhaps one of the biggest examples of this

http://www.facebook.com/chris.windley?ref=name#/gatecrasher.birmingham1?ref=ts

http://www.gatecrasher.com/crasher   ( Hey - listen to the music here and think of me !! ) 

Gatecrasher has multiple Facebook pages ( because it keeps outgrowing it’s pages ) and operates globally.

I think ( but I am not certain ) that Gatecrasher first used MySpace to promote it’s events but then added Facebook as it became more popular.

If you have any doubt about the power of Facebook and MySpace for Gatecrasher then take a look at it’s pages and the way that it promotes events to it’s group members, offers incentives and provides photo’s and video’s of the events afterwards. Gatecrasher communicated with it’s ( young ) audience brilliantly. You should probably take more than a bit of notice that Gatecrasher is communicating with young people…… the businessmen and women of the future.

So, this led me to developing a Facebook page for The Glan yr Afon Inn

http://www.facebook.com/chris.windley?ref=name#/group.php?gid=25701627254&ref=ts

Of course it had nowhere near the membership that Gatecrasher has but we did our bit to try and communicate with our customers - those that had heard of Facebook anyway.

I ignored that fact that Facebook was a social site and used it to make business connections. I eschewed the many applications telling people to message me if they wanted to talk to me rather than throwing stuff at me - even kisses

I don’t know if it was just me but it looked to me as though Facebook took on a more business orientated approach as time went on.

Next on my Google is LinkedIn - THE internet social network for business people particularly those in the High Tech world. I developed a considerable network on LinkedIn but it never felt intuitive to me. I just could not put my finger on why. As for adding pictures and videos - it’s probably easy but was not easy enough for me.

Of course both big but closed ( to the Internet ) communities. Whilst some of the content that you posted appeared outside of these networks and on Google you could not do what you could with Ecademy - i.e. to post information that you knew would find it’s way out to Google. 

Again - had I lived longer I would have put more effort into learning more about and using LinkedIn.

Aside from Bill Gates I used to look at other ” Digital Citizens ” Googles to see how they came across, for example:

Mark Zuckerberg , the founder of Facebook

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=mark+zuckerberg&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=

Thomas Power, the co-founder of Ecademy

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=thomas+power&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=

Lucas Wyrsch, a highly connected friend of mine who I first met on Ecademy

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=lucas+wyrsch&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=

Penny Power, the other co-founder of Ecademy

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=penny+power&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=

Maria Sipka, of Xing and Linqia

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=maria+sipka&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=

Jet Rotmans - an Internet Artist I met on Ecademy and Founder of The Faith Factory

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=jet+rotmans&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=

Of course I have thousands of digital friends ( no, Mark Zuckerberg is not a friend, to my knowledge )

These people have many more connections/friends/tweeps etc than me and I suspect that thier digital memorials will be bigger than mine.

So, returning to my own Google my top listing is from PRFire, the Internet Press Release company. Now of course the message it gives, that I added marketing and  salesforce management advice to this M&A Rainmaker blogsite is relevant but there is a hidden story of the realisation of the  power of Internet Press Releases behind this announcement. As if to underline this power before I died I became the victim of a ” boiler room scam ” ( which of course you can Google if you don’t know what that is ) . Anderson Munro

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=anderson+munro+scam&meta=&aq=1&oq=anderson+munro

ripped me off by using Internet PR to support thier credibility. Of course once revealed as scammers I and other victims used the power of the Internet to ensure that other people searching on Anderson Munro ( and similar scam companies ) found out that they were scam. Nevertheless originally they used Internet PR sites to support thier own website and the power of Internet PR was considerable. Press Releases were once just about getting yourself into papers and magazines and onto TV and radio. Today Internet PR sites are amazing tools for getting over targeted Internet messages and you will find them distributed throughout my Google - touring the U.S. , adding another Nelson sculpture by Suzie Marsh to The Glan Yr Afon Inn, launching an ESM solutions club and talking about eBay buying Skype.

Increasing the power of the Internet Press Release is the ” Internet Share button ” enabling a Press Release to be shared to all sorts of social networking and aggregation sites like Facebook, Twitter, Digg and Stumbleapon.

I don’t know how long it will last for but this Google here

 http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=microsoft+small+business+server+dorset&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=

brings up another PRFire Press Release

http://www.prfire.co.uk/press-release/dorsets-global-production-defies-snow-with-asterisk-phone-system-5426.html

that helped Poundbury Systems be found for some great work that they had done in providing one of thier customers with remote working facilities that allowed them to carry on production despite the snow of January 2010.

Once again we are onto a subject that a book could be written about because there is great art in writing Press Releases and there is even greater art in writing Press Releases that appear in Google for words and phrases that you want them to.

The MyBlogLog result for my Google search is interesting. It was the first blogsite that I joined but I did not actually do anything with it very much. Then Yahoo bought MyBlogLog

http://mashable.com/2007/01/08/yahoo-mybloglog/

in 2007 and since then it has started aggregating ( picking up my posts from elsewhere and presenting them on MyBlogLog ) information that I put out.

Really, this blog and The Glan Yr Afon Inn blog, set up for me by Nikki

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=nikki+pilkington&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=

were my first real experiences of blogging. Had I lived longer I would have got much better at integrating graphics into my blogs because I was very aware that they were text dominated.

Once I got a friend of mine, Peter Herridge, to start running. He became a much more dedicated runner than me and ended up running 24 hour, 100 mile races. I bowed out at about 80 miles over 2 days. More recently I introduced my friend Richard Spooner

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=richard+spooner&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=

( He’s the Whole Brain Thinking one !! )

to blogging and with Howard of Seventh Wave Media

http://www.seventhwavemedia.co.uk/home

he has gone on to produce

http://zeststreet.wordpress.com/

and

http://smeworldinfo.wordpress.com/

which are full of lovely graphics !!!

After MyBlogLog we have entries on my Google from Ecademy. Ecademy was the first ” Social Network ” that I joined in 2005. Actually Ecademy is a ” Business and Social Network ” . At one time LinkedIn was ( to me ) the de facto ” internet business network ” and Facebook was the ” social network ” . Ecademy was a hybrid of the two.

Ecademy is also very open to the Internet and posts on Ecademy can be used to promote specific things on Google as you may have seen from the earlier Google on Microsoft Small Business Server for Poundbury Systems.  

Ecademy was a very formative part of my Digital Citizenship. Prior to it I had really only known about websites and email - to put it simply.

It is so nice that part of a testimonial from my digital friend Victor Marques 

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=victor+marques&meta=&aq=0&oq=victor+marq

comes up.

” After a week…i think today how great it is to have such a friend and adviser as Chris Windley…He is a master ,,, a true and passionated man about his … “

How nice is that ??????

Ecademy has evolved considerably over the last 5 years, offering many new features. In particular it has made good use of the share facility allowing Ecademy content to be shared easily to Facebook, Twitter etc etc

Penny and Thomas Power also have a very ” open ” attitude to other social networks promoting them aswell as Ecademy and promoting the whole Social Media space. 

I died at 5.21 and 50 seconds on Sunday 17th January 2010. I was born on the 18th June 1956. My mum knows the time. You can work out my age - it’s still a matter of some sensitivity to me.

Don’t grieve for me because I had a great life, I died quickly and painlessly and I was ready to go.

Of course when I put my old Captain’s wife’s picture up on Facebook last year telling them that she will ” live forever in cyberspace ” I knew that I would also live forever in cyberspace too.

I have a permanent digital imprint - I am - or was - a Digital Citizen.

If you don’t know what a Digital Citizen is you can look at this link here

http://mcdn.hubspot.com/Hiring_In_The_DARC_Ages_HubSpot_eBook.pdf

which I came across only recently and explains what a Digital Citizen is. I am not sure where having been a Digital Citizen is in the ranking of all the things that I did but it’s way up there.

As anyone knows who is 50 ish we lived from a time of black and white TV to the Facebook generation. We experienced the digital revolution. For us things happened at the rate of Moores Law. Man, we are talking serious progress here.

Of course you are your Google. I have known this from the day a salesperson that I was interviewing said ” Well actually I know quite a lot about you because I Googled you “. At the time I thought that it was rather unfair to come at me with a statement like that when I was just trying to ” put him at ease ” by telling him a bit about myself. I mean as soon as he said that I just wanted to get him out of the room so that I could Google myself and find out who I ( digitally ) was. What DID he know about me ????

It’s also true that it’s now too late to start that company that I always wanted to - the one that delved deeply into people and company’s secrets via the Internet. A digital detective agency. No, I never did that one but I did become a bit of a geek at using Google - not like super good - just pretty handy.

Anyway - you are your Google eh ?

Well here’s mine http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=chris+windley&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&oq= , well it was at the time of my death anyway - I don’t know what it will be like in 1 hour, 1 year, 10 years or 100 years. Only you will know that.

So, I hope that my Google of me bears at least some resemblance to yours or else this is not going to make much sense is it ?? ( Of course it might be even more interesting !! )

See, we already know that a Google depends on who you are, when you did it, where you are, what your preferences are and anything else that Google decides to introduce between the time that I died and the time that you actually read this and look at the Google. It’s looking like I could write a book about this point alone so I had better leave that one for another life.

Now, how many pages of Google search results describe your life adequately ???  I don’t know about you but I got bored at the 140th result.  No doubt ” the long tail ” stretches into infinity or something but at the time of my death I understood that people only really looked at the first couple of pages. Well - we were so busy we did not have time to click on the next arrow too many times did we ??

I thought I would Google ” Bill Gates ” just to see what his Google looked like ( sorry Bill I was not trying to rub in the fact that Google sort of eclipses Microsoft ) and discovered that he was dead aswell - well at least on page 2 of my Google of him there is a website called ” Bill Gates is Dead “. Bit weird really.

Anyway - I reckon that you will get the essential me in the first few pages - certainly by the 140th result you will know a lot about me. Having said that you may not find out much about my family - my parents, my wife and my children - and my pets. Of course Dave ( son ) and Claire ( daughter ) and even Pam ( my wife ) are now on Facebook. Oh yes and some of my old friends have recently ” friended ” me.

Now, lets get this one out of the way shall we. A whole load of experience has taught me that it’s actually not that beneficial to come up on Google for your name. ok - so there’s a few ( thousand ) people out there who know the ” Chris Windley brand ” but really I have been trying to come up on Google for what I offer rather than who I am. I doubt if you are going to find me by searching for ” salesperson ” or ” business angel ” or ” marketing person ” or ” Digital Citizen ” but you will find me for ” M&A Rainmaker ” and ” Condor Bermuda ” for example.

Had I lived longer I probably would have addressed some of these things. I could make myself come up on Google for at least some of these terms you know. Of course you can’t guarantee anything in the search rankings world but I am confident that I could have firstly defined the essence of myself better and then ensured that you would find it if you Googled it. If I had had more life I would have worked harder on this.

There will be some really random things that I will come up on Google for aswell.  Here’s one

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=mikuni+carburetors+harley+upgrade&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=

Now you are going to think I was a biking freak aren’t you ??? Well I wasn’t but I did make a film of upgrading a Harley Davison bike with Mikuni Carburetors with Mark ( my sister’s husband ) and some other guys. It’s on a social network that I started called ” The Bike Channel “.

How to achieve customer business transformation using Cisco technology and 5i methodology

Define your customers’ collaboration strategy - Transform their business (and yours)

Collaboration has become critical in a world where employees can be anywhere, travel budgets are tight, and information overload is ‘normal’.

Cisco’s latest solutions represent a major breakthrough in the capabilities of technology to transform business, but to ensure success, your customers need an effective collaboration strategy.

5i’s unrivalled experience in designing and deploying Cisco-based collaboration solutions has taught us a thing or two about making technology work to deliver business benefit - and we’d like to share them with you and your customers.

Here’s the simple 6 Step approach to driving the optimal value from your customers’ collaboration strategy:

1.Identify the value. Team members must understand the value they are expected to deliver, whether it’s increasing revenue or moving into a new market.

2.Link it to business strategies. Collaborations that are aligned to corporate strategy deliver the greatest value.

3.Select team players who are engaging, creative, and expert. Team members must be excited and optimistic about the project and bring a unique expertise.

4.Build trust. More important than employees trusting their managers is co-workers trusting each other.

5.Define business processes. Great collaborators require flexibility creating processes that are unique to their role in the collaboration. Each team member should have a specific responsibility and the opportunity and incentive to improve the process.

6.Employ technology that is flexible and secure. Collaborators need to communicate securely and flexibly. Virtual interactions can be just as effective as face-to-face meetings when they support preferred working styles and provide a valuable contact.

For a FREE introductory assessment of your customer’s collaborative potential, delivered via our proven partnering model that maximises your margin and project quality call 01189 885558 or email sales@5i.co.uk

For more information about 5i go to http://www.5i.co.uk

If you are looking for advice on Corporate Finance and M&A in the Birmingham area then take a look at the M&A Rainmaker website for practical help and information

Having started a Midlands based ICT business ( Voyager Networks ) in 1993 and sold in 1999/2000 Chris Windley went on to invest in a number of High Tech and other businesses with varying degrees of success. Last year he successfully sold one of these, 5i Limited, to Impera plc ( renamed 365iT plc ) which is currently on a buy and build strategy.

Following this sale, at one of the worst times in economic history and the earlier sale of Voyager ( at one of the best times for High Tech in history ) he documented the sales process used in both sales on the M&A Rainmaker website.

This has been added to with practical information about investing in businesses, marketing businesses and running the salesforces in businesses.

comprehensive i-technology media site

http://www.sys-con.com/