Speaking Sensis

Learn how SEO, SEM and sustainability can benefit your business as Yellow Pages® experts take to the stage at this year’s NSW Small Business September.

Sensis is a key sponsor in this year’s event, which is an annual celebration of the importance of small business to the social and economic fabric of NSW.

In its fourth year of sponsorship, Yellow Pages® is running a month long series of education seminars targeting SMEs in growth in both greater Sydney and regional NSW.

Yellow Pages® experts will focus on to two key areas – digital marketing and greening up your business.

Experts from our business will talk about how SMEs can leverage mobile capabilities, undertake effective SEO and SEM marketing, provide key insights from a special report on e-commerce in metropolitan and regional NSW (from the Sensis E Business Report) plus sponsor a keynote speaking engagement by Jon Dee on environmental sustainability.

As in past years, Small Business September is an opportunity for people in small business to extend their networks, develop their skills and build links with the many support organisations that exist to promote business success.

I encourage small business owners of any background and industry to get along to these events (most of which are free) to help them build their knowledge and skills in managing a business across marketing, finance and operations.

Our consultants get quite involved in letting their customers know about these seminars and getting along to the seminars themselves to network with SMEs and further understand their advertising needs and business objectives.

Be inspired by over 300 events designed by industry experts to help your business flourish – I know I will.

To register for events – visit www.smallbusinessmonth.nsw.gov.au or call 1300 661 539.

Hi again. Well, Winter is here with some great rain for our gardens and dams. There’s a lot of exciting things happening at Sensis. And, to top it all off, St Kilda’s nudging the top of the AFL ladder. Could life get any better? In this update, I wanted to share with you some comments on our two speed economy, an exciting couple of months on the innovation front and a few beautiful sets of numbers.

Australia’s two-speed economy
We seem to have hit an uncertain cross-road in the Australian economy. There are signs of a solid return to growth and businesses in many sectors are performing well.

At the same time, however, confidence has dipped among Australia’s small to medium enterprises (SMEs). While SME confidence grew strongly from its historic lows during the GFC, the June Sensis® Business Index reported a significant quarterly drop in confidence. Confidence is still above the lows of last year, but it is concerning that it has fallen so far: especially when you consider that the chief concern among SMEs is ‘lack of work/sales’.

As we all know, the Federal Election is not likely to be far away. Given the importance of Australia’s SME sector and the millions of people it employs, I sincerely hope that the policies of all political parties will reflect a real focus on support for the SME sector.

A busy time for Yellow Pages®…
On a more positive note, we’re currently finalising the distribution of our Yellow Pages® print Regional and Living Local directories to households and businesses around Australia. As I mentioned in the last report, I’m proud to say that we have taken responsibility for the carbon footprint of all Yellow Pages® and White Pages® print and online directories from 1 February 2010. We will offset the carbon emissions through Government accredited providers and projects in Australia.

At the same time, the 2010 Yellow Pages® metropolitan campaign is now well and truly underway. This is one of Australia’s largest customer engagement operations with more than 1,000 consultants developing solutions that help hundreds of thousands of Australian businesses connect with the well over six million potential customers who use our print directories every month¹. That’ real muscle for Australia’s SMEs.

Of course, Yellow Pages®’ value extends far beyond the print directory these days, with millions more searches of Yellow Pages® advertising being conducted in online, mobile and voice every month.

… and a busy time in the labs as well
And we’re committed to building on that value. The evidence of this lies in the ‘run’ of digital innovations we’ve delivered recently. All these new releases further improve the quality and ease of use of our services for buyers and sellers. With so much to report, it’s hard to know where to start, so let’s just jump in.

Early June saw the launch of Yellow Pages®, White Pages® and Whereis® sites specifically designed for the Apple iPad. It was great to be able to launch these tailored sites (complete with gestural interactions like panning and zooming with a swipe or pinch of your fingers) in time for the iPad launch.

We’ve also released upgrades to our Yellow Pages®, White Pages® and Whereis® Mobile sites. All three incorporated auto suggest features to make searching easier for users as well as gestural mapping for high end Android and iPhone supported phones. On top of this, we added a more seamless click to call feature for the White Pages® and Yellow Pages® sites. In the case of White Pages® Mobile, this dropped the call wait time from around seven seconds to practically zero. And we also incorporated a range of new features for Yellow Pages® advertisers, including text descriptors, business logo and image gallery capabilities.

More recently, we launched a new social networking feature to White Pages® Online. ‘Save and Share’ lets you save interesting White Pages® listings or share them on Twitter or Facebook. Save and Share is already proving popular, with thousands of shares and a large number of resultant click backs from social networks to White Pages® Online. That, of course, means more potential leads for White Pages® advertisers.

Another exciting online announcement was the launch of an upgraded Bing search engine, which can now include Yellow Pages® listings (in the form of a ‘5-pack’) as part of its search results. This means Yellow Pages® advertisers can now be searched for on both Bing and Bing Maps.

We’ve loaded Citysearch® restaurant listings into Whereis.com. This has the joint benefit of improving the richness of the Whereis® experience, while helping to drive more potential customers to Citysearch® advertisers.

And we’ve launched online behavioural targeting for MediaSmart advertisers®. This gives advertisers the ability to deliver more relevant advertising to people using the MediaSmart® online network, which includes Sensis and Telstra sites and an extensive roster of third party sites.

Finally, we’re seeing great advertiser uptake of our bundled advertising products. Over the last year or so, we’ve released a strong range of new multi-product, multi-channel advertiser bundles such as the Yellow Pages® print and digital bundles and the priority advertiser bundle that spans 1234, Citysearch® and Whereis®. These bundles combine different advertising products into a single package, making it easier for advertisers to broaden their reach and create advertising solutions that meet their specific needs.

A beautiful set of numbers
Recently, there have been some great votes of confidence for what we’re doing at Sensis.

I mentioned in a previous update that Sensis looked like receiving great results on the 2010 Corporate Responsibility Index. The CRI, if you’re unfamiliar with it, is run by the St James Ethics Centre and is used by many major Australian businesses to benchmark their sustainability performance. Well, the results are now in. Our first year entrant score of 79.44% (bronze) last year has grown substantially to 92.51% (gold) this year. This result includes platinum scores (a new rating for benchmark performance) in three of the total six areas: sustainability strategy; integration; and assurance and disclosure. This achievement is a real source of pride and is the result of a strong commitment to sustainability from everyone in the business.

Meanwhile, we continue to see fantastic growth in mobile usage. In June, Whereis® Mobile officially became our first mobile site to hit a million visits in a month². Our other mobile sites – like Yellow Pages® and White Pages® – are also doing well. In fact, the whole portfolio is now being visited more than 3 million times a month², which represents high double digit growth over last June and potentially a huge amount of new ROI for our advertisers.

And on a totally different topic, we’ve been working with Mission Australia on the ‘1234 Project’. For every person who clicks ‘like’ on the 1234 Project Facebook home page, Mission Australia will give a pair of socks to a person in need. Our initial target was 12,340 socks and, in less than a month, we’ve already reached it!

The Human Yellow Pages®
Finally, if you think this update is a long read, spare a thought for Tansel Ali. To prepare for the upcoming World Memory Championships, Tansel, who is our own Australian Memory Champion, has turned himself into something of a human Yellow Pages®. Tansel is attempting to memorise every display advertisement (business card size or larger) in the Sydney Yellow Pages® so that he can recite any business name or number. For the record, that’s 2,306 pages, more than 16,000 numbers and a hell of a lot of reading!

That’s an incredible feat Tansel. All the best for the Championships in China later this year.

Best wishes,

Bruce Akhurst

1: Roy Morgan Single Source Australia, April 2009 to March 2010. Base: Australians 14+
2: Omniture SiteCatalyst. June 2010

Respected business finance commentator Ross Greenwood recently spoke of Sensis as the “great litmus tests for the health of businesses around the country”. Hear Ross speak with Sensis CEO Bruce Akhurst about small business confidence and profitability during the current economic climate on Sydney’s 2GB and Melbourne Talkback Radio.

David Egan finds speaking first hand with Yellow Pages® advertisers is an important reminder of the real challenges that face Australian businesses every day.

Last week I had the pleasure of talking with 300 passionate business owners in Brisbane as part of two seminars sponsored by Yellow Pages®, the Queensland Government’s Small Business Solutions and TNS Research. The focus of those seminars was online advertising and search engine marketing. The theme of the morning was how to tap into the latest online trends to help promote your business.

I prepared a 30 minute walk through of what I thought were the hottest topics of the moment, social media, mobility, applications and content. While I am sure these topics were interesting and entertaining, I came away with a very clear message from those in attendance.

As much as these business owners are interested in what’s new, many are still coming to terms with what the internet means to their business. They spend hours working in their businesses, from self-storage to pest removal and they are the best at what they do. They all reflect on how advertising their business was once a fairly straight forward activity – and then along came the internet with new opportunities and, of course, challenges.

It’s clear when speaking to the attendees that they strongly believed that in investing in their own website gave them access to new business sales and leads. They also believe that if their websites are constructed correctly, they can get “free advertising” through a presence on search engines. Rightly or wrongly the feel that the more time they invest, the bigger the reward will be.

But many spoke of the challenges they faced in getting their websites right.

Everyone has an opinion on how to manipulate websites. And in essence the way you lay out your physical web pages and the words you use on those pages goes some way to helping you get found. And to complicate things further, there are the paid listings on search engines.

One thing that was clear when I spoke to some of the attendees was that they started online they did it in a small way and things seemed pretty cheap.

But then they got hooked.

One business owner mentioned to me that they now spend as much each month on their online keywords as they do for some of their traditional methods of advertising. Interestingly that doesn’t include all the time they spend managing it each week!

When it came to questions, the one I was asked the most was who to trust.

The question seems to evolve from increasing numbers of people knocking on their door making all kinds of promises. And the best answer came from one of my co-presenters, Peter Baldwin from the Queensland Government-sponsored Small Business Solutions Team.

According to Peter, listen, learn and leave your credit card at home. And I agree. Meeting with people is a good way to develop your understanding while not burning a hole in your pocket.

The other question I was repeatedly asked was is what to stop doing if adding the internet to the marketing mix. You need to do it all.

While it is clear that new forms of online usage mean that there are new ways in which  people will search for and discover your business, not everyone has dropped traditional media. 

Despite the hype around mobile, a recent report from research agency Nielsen suggested that while 43 per cent of all Australians own an internet enabled phone only one third of them regularly use it to access the web.

Reasons provided include bill shock that comes with a fear of how much it will cost and the fact the early generation phone are hard to use.

It’s these sorts of stats that remind you that we need to remind ourselves that not everyone is at the bleeding edge of technology.

To illustrate this point, I’d like to leave you with a comment made by one of the delegates in attendance.

“All these new technologies are complimentary. When email first arrived in my business, I didn’t throw away my fax machine. In fact I still use my fax machine every day. I know that there are alternate ways to communicate now with emails etc, but lots of my customers still fax through orders.”

By now you will have seen the headline figures from this year’s Commonwealth Budget and although billed as “boring” by it’s main author, Christena Singh tells us what was interesting for small businesses …

Now, I’ve been asked to write a bit about the good news in the Budget for small businesses. And, as you would probably already know, the term “small business” was not one that received a lot of attention on Budget night.

Probably the best bit of news for small businesses in the Budget this year was that the Australian economy turned out to be in a better position than anticipated as you will see from the attached chart.

This chart actually builds on something the Head of Treasury, Dr Ken Henry, talked about after last year’s budget.  He was trying to forecast how Australia would come out of the recession this time round.  A year ago, the Australian Treasury was forecasting that we would actually head into technical recession, and it also had some gutsy predictions about the growth rates afterwards.  You may recall that some debate ensued …

But as you can see from the white line, we did not have a recession, and the economy is continuing to exhibit strong growth.  The Budget Deficit also exhibited strong growth this financial year, but that is another story …

However, it is important to remember that it is the businesses of Australia that are responsible at the end of the day for generating the positive economic results that are evident in this year’s Budget.  So apart from a growing economy, what was in the Budget for small businesses this year?  There were a few measures, but they won’t come in for a few years; so you won’t want to hold your breath. 

But in 2012-13 small businesses will get: 

• A two year head start on the new lower company tax rate – small companies will be able to access this from 2012-13, but note that this only applies to incorporated businesses; and

• The threshold under which small businesses can instantly write-off depreciable assets will increase from $1000 to $5000.

And another measure which may assist some businesses, particularly those that have had trouble finding staff, will be the $300 million that will be invested in skills. This includes $200 million for the Critical Skills Investment Fund, which will provide support for up to 90 per cent of training costs for small businesses. However, this will be allocated on a competitive basis, with firms having to apply for funding.

Hi again, and thanks for taking the time to find out more about how Sensis is bringing buyers and sellers together. In today’s update you can read about a tasty new way to demonstrate the value of Yellow® Pages; kicking off the 2010 metro canvass; more new innovations to make life easier for buyers and sellers; the phenomenal growth of mobile; and some more great news about our commitment to sustainability.


8,500 guys and girls and a pizza place
In April, Sensis ran a ground-breaking campaign that really brought the value of Yellow Pages® to life. The campaign worked a bit like this. Team up with well-known Melbourne pizza chef, Tony Fazio. Open a restaurant offering free pizza for two weeks. Don’t tell anyone the address or phone number. Instead tell them to “look it up the way you would any other business”. Then sit back and watch the dough fly.

And fly it did. Over the campaign’s two weeks, over 8,500 calls were made to Hidden Pizza, with over 70% of the callers saying they found Hidden Pizza through the print, online and mobile Yellow Pages®. That’s a lot of pizza… and a great testament to the ability of Yellow Pages® to bring buyers to your door.

Yellow Pages® Metro Canvass is up and running
Our people are now out and about talking to businesses as part of the 2010 Yellow Pages® metropolitan canvass. This must be one of the largest customer engagement programs in Australia, with consultants all over Australia contacting more than half a million businesses over the next few months.

This year, we’ve got some great new products for our customers. These include a Brisbane version of the popular Yellow Pages® In the Car book, Yellow Pages® Online Gold Plus, which is a new advertising solution for businesses without a web site, and enhanced accountability through our metered ad program.

But, perhaps the most exciting new step is a range of bundles that make it even easier for our customers to advertise right across our network. As I’ve talked about before, Yellow Pages® has evolved from a print directory to a diverse and sophisticated advertising network spanning print, online, voice and mobile. These bundles make it easier for businesses to profile themselves to potential buyers right across the network.

From the labs
Of course, we’ve been busy delivering for buyers – the people who use our products – as well.

Firstly, we’ve launched more new features to make our digital services easier to use.

Recently, we reconfigured the Yellow Pages® Online search experience. To begin with, we’ve dropped the ‘business name’ and ‘business type’ radio buttons in favour of a more intuitive search. Now, you can search for a business name, like ‘Sensis’ without having to click a ‘business name’ search button. Instead Yellow Pages® Online will drop down suggested listings relating to Sensis for you to choose from. We’ve also re-built the business profile pages to give buyers easier access to more content. The results of this have been pretty immediate, with a significant reduction in nil result searches and a big rise in interaction: most notably in the number of business profile readers clicking on email links and image galleries.

We’ve also added a series of new features to the White Pages® Online site. White Pages® is all about finding people and businesses you already know, so it’s a fair bet that you’ll be wanting to find your White Pages® contacts over and over again. Recently, we made this easier with the ability to save your contacts to a new ‘My List’ feature on White Pages® Online. We also launched send to mobile, which lets you send your listing from White Pages® Online straight to your mobile to save in your contacts.  In May, we’ll be taking this a step further by launching a new ‘save and share’ feature. With save and share, you’ll be able to save your White Pages® contacts to your pages on Facebook and a wide range of other social networks.

Secondly, we’ve made our services easier to access with new additions to our network.

As you may know, Telstra recently released the home phone of the future, the T-Hub. This is great for buyers and sellers using our services because White Pages®, Yellow Pages® and 1234 (with Whereis® coming soon) are all easily accessible right where your phone is. Just one touch of the console and you’re searching. And when you find the result in Yellow Pages®, you don’t even have to dial… just click to call.

The Yellow Pages® enhanced location search on Whereis.com I mentioned last time is also delivering results. Yellow Pages advertisers are now being profiled on Whereis.com more than 8 million times a month: a number that’s been boosted by about 2 million since we launched the enhanced location feature . This is fantastic for both buyers and sellers. It means Whereis is playing a growing role in bringing buyers and sellers together, while improving the ROI we can offer Yellow Pages® advertisers.

Finally, we’ve also been busy in the mobile space.

We launched a new CitySearch® Mobile site, with an improved look and feel, expanded TV and Movies content, a new ‘Bars’ vertical and improved mapping functionality. And we also launched new Yellow Pages® and White Pages® apps for Android devices to complement the incredibly successful launch of our iPhone apps.

Mobile coming up trumps
On that note, mobile has been an incredible success story for the buyers and sellers who rely on our services. As I’ve mentioned before, mobile usage is growing at a rate of knots. Average monthly Yellow Pages® Mobile visits for the March quarter have doubled YoY yet again. When you look across our entire network, mobile now accounts for over 13% of our total digital (online and mobile) usage.

And smart phone apps are playing an enormous role in this exciting growth. iPhone apps account for something like half of our total Yellow Pages® Mobile and White Pages® Mobile usage and these two apps still sit in the lifestyle category Top 10 in Apple’s App Store … months after they were launched.

More great news on the sustainability front
As I mentioned last month, I’m really proud of the positive contribution being made by our sustainability initiatives; such as our directory recycling program and the decision to offset our carbon emissions through Greenhouse Friendly™ accredited providers and projects in Australia.

Now, we’ve taken this a step further with the release of a new book: Small Business, Big Opportunity: Sustainable Growth. This free book, which is a complement to our highly successful advertising guide, provides practical information on how businesses can reduce their impact on the environment and save money as well.

Small Business, Big Opportunity: Sustainable Growth has been written by Jon Dee, who is the Founder and Managing Director of the not-for-profit action group, Do Something, and the NSW Australian of the Year 2010. If you’d like to order a copy, just check out the Small Business section on our corporate web site.

And finally, in more good news on the sustainability front, I’m pleased to say that our efforts to support a more sustainable future are being acknowledged. Last year we joined the global Corporate Responsibility Index program for the first time. This program is run in Australia by the St James Ethics Centre and we were incredibly proud to achieve a ‘Bronze’ rating and Best New Entry Award in our first year. Since then, we’ve put a lot more work into our sustainability commitments and, as a result, I’m told we have lifted our result even higher this year. More on that next time, when the results are out.

Until then, all the best,

Today, I’m exceptionally pleased to be blogging about the official launch of our brand new, hot off the press, ‘Small Business, Big Opportunity: Sustainable Growth’ book.

It’s a new and free resource for small and medium businesses in Australia with information and tips on how to operate more efficiently, save money and reduce impacts on the environment.

Now. Before you start accusing me of being a geek for being so excited, I’ll ask you to hold on for just a moment. Let me present my case and then, if you should still feel the need, the name-calling can begin.

This 230+ page resource has been authored by renowned environmentalist and 2010 NSW Australian of the Year, Jon Dee.

As Jon says in his introduction to the book: “For the modern and efficient business it’s not a case of having a successful company OR a healthy environment. In a truly sustainable world, you must have both”. I reckon this sums up the benefits of the book (and my excitement), very nicely indeed.

First and foremost, this book has been designed to help small and medium businesses save money by being more efficient in their operations. And by being more efficient, they can also reduce their impact on the environment.

Small (less than 20 employees) and medium (20-199 employees) sized businesses in Australia account for around 70% of actively trading businesses in Australia, employing around 40% of total employed people in Australia and contributing almost half of the value of Australia’s GDPⁱ.

So the SME sector is incredibly important to the Australian economy. With more than 2 million SMEs in Australia, this sector has the potential to make some significant changes to the impact they have on the environment.

If there’s an opportunity to save money, it’s something we all want to do. But what if the environment isn’t your thing? While it’s not popular to admit, you secretly just don’t care – you don’t have time. You’re not into hugging trees and you certainly don’t want to pay extra for some flash-harry light, you’ll be right with an incandescent, thanks very much.

The simple fact is, regardless on whether you believe in climate change or not, the global population is growing – 2.55 billion in 1950, 6.8 billion today and an estimated 7.6 billion by 2020ⁱⁱ. The fact is, we’re using more resources than our planet can generate and we need to start working out how to do more with less.

So, how do we address the challenge of a growing population and shrinking supply of natural resources? What can you do? You can green up your operations. Not only could you be saving yourself some cold hard cash, but you’ll be playing your part in ensuring a sustainable future.

Pretty exciting, yes? A free resource with information on how to save money and do your bit. You can order or download your free copy of the book here: http://about.sensis.com.au/small-business/free-sustainable-growth-book/

Yours in proud geekiness,

Jess

• ^i’SME trends and achievements’, Prepared for Telstra Business by CRA International

• ⁱⁱSee www.census.gov

On Thursday 22 April, I went along to Victoria’s most prestigious environmental awards ceremony: the 2010 Premier’s Sustainability Awards, which saw printing business VEGA Press win both the Small Business and Premier’s Recognition Awards. 

Victorian Premier John Brumby and Sensis General Manager Corporate Affairs Prue Deniz congratulate Vega Press Commercial Manager Robert Nugent. Photo: James Thomas

For the second year running, Sensis sponsored the ‘Small Business’ award category, which was also won by VEGA Press.

And as a nice little behind the scenes story, Sensis contracted VEGA Press to print some promotional material for our soon-to-be launched ‘Small Business, Big Opportunity: Sustainable Growth’ book the day before the Premier’s Sustainability Awards.

We appointed environmentalist Jon Dee to write the new book for small businesses, which features practical information and tips on how to improve their bottom line while also reducing their impact on the environment.

The book also looks at how small businesses can gain a competitive advantage by embracing environmentally sustainable practices, which is exactly what happened with Sensis and VEGA Press.

We put a call out to our print brokers for a printer with sensational environmental credentials that would allow us to print this piece of collateral in a way that had a minimum impact on the environment. VEGA Press came in with the most price competitive quote and the best environmentally sustainable credentials – which won them the job.

It’s wonderful to see first hand a practical example of a small business using its commitment to environmental sustainability to win work from a large business.

Vega Press is Australia’s first business to gain international certification for greenhouse gas verification from SGS Australia. It purchases carbon offsets to ensure all of its operational greenhouse gas emissions are calculated and offset. It has installed systems to reduce water consumption by 50 per cent, energy usage by 20 per cent, and since 2006 – waste sent to landfill has reduced by more than 50 per cent.

The theme for this year’s Premier’s Sustainability Awards was ‘Rise to the challenge of change’, recognising organisations that are acting now for sustainability.

It was held at the Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre, which is fitting since the MECC was the first convention centre in the country to be awarded a ‘6 Star Green Star’ environmental rating by the Green Building Council of Australia.

I wanted to share the story of VEGA Press winning Sensis’ business because of its commitment to sustainability, in hope of motivating other small businesses to take some steps towards greening up their operations as well.

Congratulations to everyone involved – entrants, finalists, and of course the winners. May your commitment to sustainability inspire and motivate others to embrace sustainability and ‘rise to the challenge of change’.

Do you know of a small to medium business that consistently goes the extra distance to provide a better service to its customers? Have you thought about ways to help it get the recognition it deserves? Would you nominate it for a business award?

Well, if you have answered “yes” to all three questions, you now you have a chance to do your bit. The 2010 Telstra Business Awards are now open and your favourite small to medium business has a chance to share in the fantastic opportunities that have been benefitting Australian businesses for the past 18 years. And for the first time this year, all entrants have an opportunity to receive a business health check to help them plan for tomorrow, encouraging them to keep up the good work.

I’ll be coordinating our support of the Sensis Social Responsibility award category. While sustainability is at the core of our Sensis’ business strategy, we recognise that embracing sustainability can be a bit scary for small and medium sized businesses. So, this is an opportunity for us to recognsie and support those businesses we believe are giving it a crack and to celebrate their efforts. And through their success, we hope to encourage more businesses to do the same.

The Telstra Business Awards give small to medium businesses amazing networking

opportunities, media exposure and business development prospects.

Every year, the awards get me thinking about the small and medium business owners I know and who I’d like to nominate. There’s a fantastic beautician I go to in Prahran, but then there’s also that amazing breakfast place on Gertrude St, Collingwood. And I can’t forget about my hairdresser in Fitzroy. The one thing they all have in common is that the owners and their teams are all putting their heart and soul into making their businesses the very best they can be.

While a lot of large businesses have their own internal rewards and recognition programs in place, who is there to pat the small and medium business owner on the back and say, “Well done. You’re doing it right. Keep up the good work”?

The Telstra Business Awards give them that and also provide them with amazing networking opportunities, media exposure and business development prospects – not to mention the serious prizes getting around.

So, a final question for you. Who are you going to nominate?

In business it is important to look forward, but it is also important to stop sometimes and look back.

One year ago, the Sensis® Business Index recorded the lowest level of confidence among Australia’s small and medium businesses since the survey began in 1993.  Confidence at height of the downturn fell to 12 per cent net balance in the first quarter to 2009.  This quarter, one year on, we measured confidence at 49 per cent.

And you can see from the chart it has been a pretty volatile couple of years in the business world.  And while confidence has improved, it suffered in the past quarter – such is the complexity of economic recovery. 

When global economies headed downhill, governments went into action with stimulus packages to keep things ticking over. The prescription that governments and central banks followed worked to a large extent.

While I could make a comment here about roof insulation, it is probably best to just say that the Australian economy made it through without a recession, technical or otherwise. Let’s just leave it at that…

The interesting thing is that the prescription for the GFC was pretty well known, but what was not well-known was what to do “next”.  As an economy we are now at this “next” stage and Australia’s small and medium businesses are saying that they are still facing problems of economic downturn, such as falling sales and lower demand.

But at the same time they are having to concurrently deal with the “problems” of growth, such as trying to find staff for their businesses and trying to get finance to grow their businesses.

Managing the recovery is as complex, if not more so, than managing the downturn. But it is still important to look back to where we were a year ago and what we have achieved since then.

And after you look back, it is also important to remember to start looking forward again. I’d be keen to hear about what you see on the horizon…