* Smart Online helps businesses keep in business online
A former President of International Harvester, John L. McCaffrey, is reputed to have once said: “The mechanics of running a business are really not very complicated when you get down to essentials. You have to make some stuff and sell it to somebody for more than it cost you. That’s about all there is to it, except for a few million details.”
Keeping a handle on those few million details is what takes most of the effort and to make that as efficient as possible you need a number of resources. These include plan development support, marketing plan support, an employee policy manual, all sorts of business forms, contact management, business letters, government forms, job descriptions, market research, business instant messaging, Web conferencing, landlord and tenant law resources, financial calculators, business guides, access to business experts, business references and tools, and a calendar to keep everything scheduled.
Having those facilities computerized and available is a huge advantage but having those features integrated into a coherent service suite that can be accessed online by multiple users from anywhere in the world is orders of magnitude more efficient and cost effective. That is what Smart Online (see editorial links below) offers as an ASP-style product.
Smart Online is ambitious in its scope and nicely presented. In addition to the list of basic features, you can buy access to additional service components as required.
As an example of the additional services, consider the business plan development module: It allows you to create a customized professional looking business plan through detailed instructions and examples. You enter your financial data and the service automatically creates tables and colored 3-D graphs that include 5-year sales and financial projections with ratios and sensitivity analysis that you can download for printing and distribution.
This module is very impressive with a level of detail that put it on par with the best business-plan development systems that I’ve seen. There’s also support for secure archiving of partial and completed plans and finished documents can be compiled into HTML and published with a unique URL for outside (non-Smart Online) users.
When you establish an account you get a dashboard that lists all of your documents in progress as well as those completed, your account information, your schedule, co-workers, and calendar. You can also invite co-workers to join from the dashboard section.
In each of the sections where additional specialized services might be needed Smart Online integrates offerings from other companies such as banks for loans, Dunn & Bradstreet for credit reports (a charged-for service), and the free Better Business Bureau Business Reliability Reports.
You can share documents and calendars with your co-workers and here’s my only complaint: When you want to share a document with your co-workers, there isn’t a list of user IDs available (this needs to be a drop down field that is pre-populated with all of your co-workers’ names).
Pricing is very reasonable. Unlimited use of the basic facilities is $29.95 per month with individual pricing on additional modules – again, using business plan development as an example, each plan costs $49.95.
As I said at the beginning, Smart Online is an ambitious service that is very well executed, presented, and delivered covering an impressive range of facilities that are competitively and affordably priced. You don’t get much better than that if you’ve got a few million details to handle.
