The Connected Web

Technology changes such as cloud computing and social networking are usually looked at in isolation, but their impact on the nature of business is part of a bigger picture that encompasses a raft of Web-enabled technology factors. The big picture is that the Internet, aided by software automation, allows businesses to move faster and has raised the bar on how they're expected to perform. The practical results are seen in hundreds of small changes to how businesses operate today. For example:

• Product specifications are more complex and get refreshed with new versions more frequently


• Automated appointments, web meetings and mobile communications put pressure on salespeople to see more prospects in the day and close deals faster


• Sales incentive plans are more sophisticated and change more rapidly because they're easier to calculate and roll out


• Self-service access to web-based information and choice frees up administrators and agents to focus on more complex cases


• Sofware-as-a-service has made all of these changes available to businesses of all sizes, not just those with huge IT infrastructure budgets.

Mindflash.com, which launched last week into private beta, is one such start-up. New CEO Donna Wells was formerly chief marketing officer at Mint.com, the online personal finance service that grew to two million users in just over two years and was acquired by Intuit last year for $170 million. One lesson Wells learned during her stint at Mint.com was "how inexpensively one can run a company now," she told me in a phone interview last week. Marketing costs and many aspects of operations are far lower now than a few years ago, thanks mainly to the Internet. And yet, she said, "The one area I was still spending a ton of money was in communicating across the company and to partners." That is where Mindflash aims to make its mark.

The product tackles the seemingly simple yet crucial challenge of keeping employees in small businesses up to date with the know-how they need to do their jobs. "The most relevant candidate right now is the small business person who believes his best solution is emailing documents, powerpoints and video files out to a distribution list of people in the company he thinks needs that information," explained Wells. Mindflash adds all the ancillary processes needed to make sure that information sinks in: management of the invitation and reminder process, along with real-time feedback on usage and on progress through the content. There are tools that make it easy to embed simple quizzes to test whether the content is sinking in, along with support for making changes to content on the fly if the first draft doesn't succeed at driving the message home.

Mindflash believes that preparing for new product launches will prove to be the highest-value use case, but there are other potential examples, all represented in the bullet points above: getting out information on the new quarter's compensation plan, bringing new employees up to date with company policies and benefits, new marketing initiatives or customer service routines, and so on.

Much of the potential demand for this Internet-delivered product is a result of the Internet business environment: the need to reach out to employees who are no longer all based in the same building, and to get them up-to-speed on frequent product changes much faster and more cost-effectively than before. The initial beta works with Powerpoint, Word and PDF files but support for video (the preferred training medium of the Youtube generation) will follow before long. Another thing Wells has learned about start-ups today is the need to get out in the market with the 'minimum viable product' and iterate based on customer feedback. "Any months you can get out in the field with real customers banging on your product is worth many months of research in your own office," she told me.