When we were in Melbourne in the first weekend in March, we attended a small business expo being held at the Royal Exhibition building.

The expo had a particular emphasis on hospitality and IT. Right up our alley – lots of people talking about computers and food!

In actual fact we skipped over a large portion of the hospitality – it was mostly wines and we don’t drink.

Although the IT sector was heavily represented there were a lot of general business services that were showcased as well. The whole event was hosted by the City of Melbourne and was free to enter.

Some of the stands that we found particularly interesting were these: Google intranet search solutions. Theirs was a very high tech looking stand with luscious looking chocolates set up near the seminar room. A big banner read ‘Google’ just like it appears on their home page. At first I didn’t realize that they were representing the google, I thought that they were just willing to talk about google and how to get a good ranking. So we enrolled to hear their seminar, and instead of hearing about google’s view of the search world, which would have been a bit of an expose, what we did hear about was Google’s new tool for intra business search. Apparently 25% of employee time is spent in trying to get information. People’s contact details, prices, timetables etc. So what google has put together is a functionality that you can add straight to your existing system that allows you to search your computer or your network if you have one. Email programmes and everything can be accessed by it.

They said that your employees won’t take any time to learn how to use it, as it looks like google pappa and works the same way. And as most people use google to search the web most people will be au fait with this new system.

Fascinating concept – privacy is the issue of course. The Google guy said that the new search functionality does not make things less or more secure than they were before, it just makes it easier to find the info. So if you have things that should be limited access, pay roll details for example, that aren’t securely protected, you would want to establish proper pass word protected areas before implementing the search system.

We heard another seminar before google, offered by one of the website and seo providers who were exhibiting. They were talking about the basics of search engine optimization. And it was the basics. It must have been hard to tell, just by looking at their audience, who there was already aware of the basics, but I think possibly they were speaking to a group of their competitors. There were only about 15 people in the audience and bar one couple they were young and looked fairly tech savvy. Although appearances can be misleading.

There were lots of web creation companies there and one of the companies was particularly interesting. There were five guys who had got a stand together, and one of them had only been in the website creation and optimization industry for 2 years. And he personally did no creation or optimization, although he described himself as a “pay per click expert.” What he had done was buy a $60 000 franchise, which allowed him access to the parent company’s name, logo and their supply chain. So he had to do all his own advertising, but his clients went into the database under his name, meaning that they couldn’t be poached, and he then farmed out the work that they wanted done to one of the creation points that are located around the globe. I imagine that a fair amount happens in the US (where the franchise is originally from) but increasingly in India, Malaysia etc as these countries become more technically savvy. When he heard what we did, he was happy to give us information about how we could become a supply point. We said that we didn’t want to spend $60 000 to be their first franchise holder in Tas.

One of the interesting things that I noticed about the other internet companies was that every company that offered website creation also offered optimization and internet marketing. Everyone knew what it was, which is a bit of a difference to Tas.

Other non IT businesses included insurance brokers (Alliance) and travel companies (wotif and virgin blue).

There was a stand there devoted to promoting Michael Gerber’s Emyth revisited and its associated products. For those of you who haven’t heard of Mr Gerber he wrote a very influential book that he has recently updated and called the Emyth Revisited. In it he talks about why most new startups fail, and what can be done not just to make sure they don’t fail, but to turn them into profitable and easy to run organizations. His book makes a lot of sense. He says basically that to be hugely successful you need to set up procedures for your business to follow, that are easy to teach and give the customer a standard experience when ever they use your business. Your business must not be driven on whim. And he looks like he has followed his own advice and created a business with easy to replicate procedures, that has been exported around the world. The emyth booth was not only selling the book, it was selling other related dvds, and their major product was the training – which was actually relatively reasonably priced. It is not taken by Gerber, but by trained professionals.

One type of business that I didn’t see at the expo, and which I would have been interested in talking to, was superannuation providers and experts. Especially ones that target small business owners and the self employed. I also did not see any businesses offering succession planning of any type, and given that many small businesses in Australia are owned by baby boom aged men, succession planning is a real issue.

Rory has a friend who works at WHK Denison and it is something that they are really focusing on at the moment. Succession planning has many different aspects, but it boils down to how do you as the business owner who is planning to exit the business get maximum value for the business. To get maximum value for the business your businesses value must be clear. You need good books, good procedures, good documentation (suppliers, manufacturing or technical procedures etc) you may sometimes be selling the business to a junior partner, or handing it on to children, and in both cases you may allow these people to buy you out over a period of years, thus replicating your salary, or you may want to sell the business on the open market. In any case you are going to need accurate valuations of your business. It is a good idea to begin this planning well before you actually want to get out of the business, so you can make any changes that are needed.

The other businesses I did not see at the expo were training organizations. Apart from work place safety who had a good stand, there was no one offering government accredited courses of any kind.

So, is it worth exhibiting at expos of this kind? It would depend what business you are in I think. I also think it depends upon how well the expo is advertised. There were not that many people looking around at the stalls, but then we did visit between 2-4pm on a Saturday afternoon. However, we went to a wedding expo in the same building years ago and there were many more people attending.

A lot of the other visitors to the expo were older couples, indicating to me that they were probably mom and pop business owners of various degrees. And that is not a bad thing, but they may or may not have enough business to think investing in something like Google’s business search was worth their while.

But the expo did get the businesses a certain amount of exposure, both to potential customers -and to their competitors we found it was a goldmine for competitor analysis!