A big part of Dunn’s strategy is to reach non-English-speaking markets through a new technology developed by Vancouver web firm goodboog.

“A company anywhere can take my information and understand my product and check to see if I have what they want,” says Dunn, whose Surrey-based company grossed $14 million in revenue last year. (www.scaffolddepot.ca.goodboog.com).

Goodboog’s “global virtual catalog” allows someone in, say, Japan to read about Dunn’s company in Japanese, in Norwegian in Norway, in Finnish in Finland. How does this work? Essentially, goodboog organizes its clients by having them classify their products and services using its database of 76,000 categories. Since all 76,000 categories have been translated into 25 languages, users across the world can read about a company’s products and services in their native language.

“Ninety four point nine percent of the world’s population using the Internet is located outside of North America,” says Michael-James Pennie, a native of Vancouver and goodboog’s chief marketing officer. “With emerging economies worldwide, businesses have to think globally. For you to have a website that’s only in English is very limiting.”

Dunn, who signed up with goodboog three months ago and has 250 “Catalog Cards” displaying his scaffolding products, has received inquiries from China, Germany, South Africa, Brazil, and the United States, resulting in deals from China and in the United States.

He anticipates he’ll be hearing from non-English speakers using goodboog’s “Communication Translator,” which includes 4,000 pre-defined business correspondence phrases. “They can send me back a few reference phrases that can start the conversation. It’s about opening doors that would be closed otherwise,” Dunn says.

Dunn’s products can be found through the goodboog’s search engine as well as through search engines around the world. “We’ve partnered with Google, so we push the Catalog Cards in the Virtual Catalog through a web feed to a system called Google Base in order to allow direct product search engine indexing,” Pennie says.

Since Dunn’s scaffolding products are funnelled through Google Base (which is Google’s product search engine), when a customer searches for “ladder,” Dunn’s goodboog site will figure higher in the page rankings. “It will increase their page ranking,” says Pennie. “It’s a process that a company on its own would have to pay thousands of dollars to integrate and we do that automatically, which makes their products that much more visible.”

Goodboog is currently working to build similar partnerships with search engines worldwide, and as the company team embarks to Beijing with the BC Trade Mission this month, it will meet with Baidu, China’s equivalent of Google.

Goodboog currently has 2500 companies signed up with their own Virtual Catalog. “We have people from all around the world – China, India, Turkey, Hungary,” says Milan Hucko, 43, co-founder and CEO of goodboog. In his Kitsilano office, Hucko displays the online analytics map of the world, which shows a list of countries and the number of people currently surfing the catalog. The site receives between 22,000 and 30,000 hits a day.

Goodboog has been savvy to attract a customer base. Any company can list its business card for free. In total, about 3 million free firm-business cards are listed worldwide, with 97,000 in Canada. And newly rolled out this month is their virtual rolodex, in which business professionals can profile themselves and network with other professionals worldwide for free.

A “newbie” on the internet, Cynthia Newman, 50, owner of The Little Skin Care Company, is enamored of goodboog’s easy-to-use platform. “This is a good way for people just starting up in business. It’s easy, simple, and you can control and update your own site any time and it’s very inexpensive.”

She is hoping that The Little Skin Care Company will move beyond “cottage industry” size with its exposure 1. in goodboog’s global virtual catalog.

“I’m looking at mega size,” says Newman, who works out of her West Vancouver home. Newman cooks up a natural, multi-purpose skin creams from a recipe that her Swedish grandmother in Chicago developed for her husband in the 1920s to help soften his hands, which were calloused and coarse from fixing cars and farm equipment.

Newman’s creams, some industrial strength and some cosmetic, contain baking soda and Hawaiian sea salt and a number of secret ingredients that are all natural. To her delight, the creams have also been useful for contact dermatitis, acne, and psoriasis.

A recent subscriber to goodboog, Newman was pleased to see the number of hits her products received – 112 within the first day of set-up. “I had a person call the next night asking me to send a sample to New Zealand … I was really impressed. Wow, this is working already!”

Newman calls goodboog a “one-stop shopping” for her online needs: a website, a domain name and she’s looking forward to the possibility of adding interactive web 2.0-like features to her site, such as video of her cooking up the creams (www.psor-relief.ca.goodboog.com).

For its basic rate of $99 a year Goodboog offers:

• Virtual Catalog in 25 languages with Communication Translator.

• Web-based hosted content management system with domain name.

• Global search engine marketing in 25 languages.

• An open developer platform (which means it can integrate with other sites and facilitate diverse marketing and business tools).

• A free firm business card listing.

• A free business professional profile.

www.goodboog.com

  2. Organize the unorganizable

Openworkbench.org

MARKET: For businesses with extremely complicated projects and events that need to be organized.

COST: Free

Open Workbench is an open source, Windows-based, free-to-download desktop application that provides all the functions required to ensure the smooth transition of all aspects of your projects from concept to completion.

With Open Workbench you can plan your projects right down to the last detail with project breakdown structures, sub-projects, inter-project relationships, schedule master, and sub-projects with interdependent structures that define, assign and configure resources, and estimate, monitor and guide projects through their various stages and much more.

There’s a long list of differences between Open Workbench and its proprietary competitor, Microsoft Project. Primarily, Open Workbench is resource-driven, whereas Microsoft Project is task-driven. And Open Workbench is free, whereas Microsoft Project is not.

—Basil Nainan

3. The evolution of business matchmaking

PartnerUp.com

MARKET: Entrepreneurs who want to take a more systematic approach to finding potential  partners.

COST: Basic membership is free. Premium membership starts at $24.99 a month.

Sponsored by Networks, PartnerUp is an online community that’s built with the specific objective to help you find business partners, co-founders, executives, board members, service providers and commercial real estate among other entities. Unlike a social networking site, PartnerUp focuses on locating and matching the strictly key people in every business with one another.

Whether you have an existing business or wish to team up with a business that thinks like you and has the same goals, PartnerUp’s powerful MatchUp search technology engine collates profiles and information about people within the same criteria mix and generates a list of probables and possibilities that you can network with.

—Basil Nainan

4. A fast easy way to send SMS messages

ClearSMS.com

MARKET: For marketers, distributors, event planners, small businesses, service providers and vendors aiming to reach an audience in one click.

COST: Calculated in credits. In Canada a message costs one credit (about 10 credits for $1). You purchase credits, which are then deducted after messaging.

ClearSMS is a Web-based application that lets you send bulk short message service (SMS) messages to your customers, contacts, or just about anyone. It’s very simple. All you need to do is sign up, pay per your requirements and then enter the mobile numbers of all the people you wish to SMS. The application does the rest. If you wish to promote a new product, offer a discount, manage and collaborate with employees, vendors or other personnel, make announcements, send reminders, schedule events or activities or any such bulk activity, ClearSMS is your best choice. 

Schedule delivery, track results and store a list of all people to whom the SMS has been sent.

—Basil Nainan

 5. Editing with colleagues made easy

Writeboard.com

MARKET: Businesses with employees in different parts of the city or globe who need to share documents.

COST: Free.

An easy-to-use and convenient online writing program, Writeboard allows you to collaborate on writing projects with associates in separate locations. All they need is access to the internet. You can invite others to read, write and edit letters and memos without writing over earlier versions. A list of earlier incarnations of the document is kept in the sidebar so you can always go back to what you had.

Its “Compare” feature (the program’s most useful one) highlights the edits between newer and older versions. Sign-up is instant. No personal information is required, only an email address. Documents are saved online and are password protected. The program has only the simplest of formatting features and no spellchecker, but text can be exported or copied and pasted into a word processing program.

—Franka Cordua-von Specht

6. Billing without the pain or boredom

FreshBooks.com

MARKET: For all types of service providers, freelancers and micro-business owners who dread the invoicing part of their business.

COST: Free account: up to three active clients. More than three clients: $14 – $149 per month.

Most of us view invoicing as, “Oh, I’ve got to get that out of the way.” But, of course, if we don’t bill we don’t earn.

FreshBooks is an online billing and tracking software that’s designed to provide all your invoicing needs on time, efficiently and with the least amount of drudgery.

You don’t need to have great accounting skills, yet within seconds of your transaction your invoices can be sent. From anywhere in the world, anytime, 24/7. Your data is safe and secure. Accessible only to you. Unlike other accounting software such as QuickBooks where you have to go through 100 steps to do one action, or Excel where the formatting is just not designed to your needs, FreshBooks is created by people who know how much of a chore it is to maintain financial accounts when accountancy is not your core competency. You can send invoices by regular post, collect your payments and keep a meticulous track of payments received. Finally, someone has solved the billing problem.

—Basil Nainan

7.  Free CRM software

IGSuite.org

MARKET: For those companies and small businesses who wish to get their business aligned to communication resource and activity sharing with complete document management.

COST: free.

Integrated Groupware Suite (IGSuite) is an innovative, open source, web-based groupware application suite providing some of today’s vital business applications, such as customer relationship, resource and content management.

IGSuite has moved beyond a simple “office suite” definition. It’s not just a word processor or spreadsheet, or even just a bundled mail, calendar and task suite. With IGSuite you can now plan, manage information and communicate better, not only internally with your employees, partners and collaborators, but even externally – with your clients.

Everything you’d ever need from and of your business office, including document management, relationship handling, communication networks, computer systems management – you’ll find at IGSuite. Moreover, they don’t exist as a set of standalone applications; rather as one harmoniously integrated solution.

—Basil Nainan

8.  Not free CRM software

SugarCRM.com

MARKET: Industrial strength customer relationship management for those with more of a budget.

COST: On-Demand pack: $40 – $75 per month. On-Premise pack: $275 – $449 per user per year.

SugarCRM is the world’s leading provider of commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) software for companies of all sizes.

Unlike proprietary CRM applications, which are rigid and designed as stereotyped business frameworks, SugarCRM adapts to any business environment and offers a more cost-effective performance – this means any business can customize SugarCRM to function in a manner perfectly suited to the business processes it employs to accomplish the degree of customer relationships it desires.

—Basil Nainan

9.  A mouse click away from a professional network

Linkedin.com and Xing.com

MARKET: For any entrepreneur or professional seeking to make connections up and down the food chain. Also great for recruiting.

COST:

Linkedin.com: Basic personal account is free. Business account is $19.95 per month or $199.50 per year. Business plus account is $50 per month or $500 per year.

Xing.com: Basic membership is free. Premium, with more features is 5.95 Euros per month.

You are who you know. All you need to be a member of these extremely popular business and professional networking sites is the desire. Twenty million professionals from across the world spanning 150 industries are right there waiting to network with you. Exchange notes, consult, seek advice, hire, be hired, train, enlighten, set up new ventures... it’s all possible. At any given moment, your profile is seen by thousands of people across the world.

—Basil Nainan

 10.  Self-publishing on a shoe string

Lulu.com

MARKET: Ideal for anyone looking for a short-run professional publication; the entrepreneur who’s working on that book.

COST: Register for free. Publication Pack: $500.Marketing Pack: $350

You think you don’t have the qualifications or skills to be in the publishing business? Great! Those are exactly the credentials you need to be a successful publisher.

With Lulu, you have the nuances of the publishing business literally at your fingertips. You publish anything, from paperbacks and hard cover books to comics and photo albums, music and movies and everything in between, all on your own. You edit, design, collate, format, promote, market, number, convert, print, distribute and expertly conduct every function of the publishing business by yourself. And how do you learn to do all that? Actually, you skip that step. You just do it.