The Three Killer Small Biz Apps coming in 2012

I'm going to make a few predictions for the remainder of 2011 and 2012.

Charlie Sheen and the producers of Two And A Half Men, unable to ignore the riches of an additional one season, will ultimately reconcile. The most recent Pirates of the Caribbean movie will bomb. The Mets will not make the playoffs. President Obama will win the Democratic primaries. I will pay more in health insurance, not less. Check back and see if I'm right on these. I'm pretty confident.

But not as obvious as I am about a few trends that will work on my company, and other small and medium sized businesses. In the next two years, I predict that at least three killer apps will emerge that will have a critical impact on us all. Are you ready for them?

Killer App #1: movable payments

I recently discovered a great way to save money. I don't carry cash. This way none of my immature kids can dig into my wallet when I'm not colse to and walk away with ten dollar bills to fund their pizza fix. Instead all they find are useless prestige cards. Well, in a merge of years they won't even be able to find those. That's because I'll be doing it all on my phone. As will most of my customers.

First some facts. Data Week says that 38% of small and medium sized businesses already depend on movable apps. American Express is working on a new e-wallet application. Microsoft, Apple and Google are implementing near field communications (Nfc) technology for movable payments in their next generation of products. As we speak, Google is testing an Android cost system in New York and San Francisco. PayPal is teaming with innovative clubs like Blingnation to bring movable payments to its customers.

Mobile payments are the next killer app. How will it all work? It's not that complex. Your customer's prestige Data will be embedded in a procure application on their phone. You will have a wireless final related to your cash register, or stand alone, that will quote with their phone using Nfc technology, or something similar, to transmit data. Using the touch screen or camera on the movable device, the technology may merge fingerprint, eye scan or some other type of protection if necessary. Your customer waves her phone over the terminal. The transaction is recorded. A receipt gets mailed all around. The transaction hits your bank catalogue and accounting software with no more human interaction.

Is your company ready for this? You nothing else but should be. Because soon, a customer's going to walk in your door and ask to pay for a product using her smartphone. At first when you tell her that you don't accept payments that way she'll understand. But after a while, when more and more of your competitors and other businesses are taking smart phone payments she's going to stop being so inpatient with you and take her company elsewhere.

Will this cost us more? What do you think? Of policy it will! We'll have to pay hundreds for new smartphone scanners and sign up for services and dispell further fees and charges. You know this is going to happen. You know that the citizen who are nothing else but going to get rich off this are the clubs I mentioned above. But it won't stop us. Because we're going to need to supply this potential to our customers in order to stay competitive. It may even drive more company our way. And save a slight time in processing too. We'll see.

Killer App #2: Lockers

Last week Amazon announced that it would be providing up to 20Gb of storage to its customers for whatever they want - music, videos, ebooks, etc. They call it a "cloud locker." One thing's for sure - this locker will smell a lot best than my gym locker. And say what you want about Amazon, but these guys not only spot trends well in advance, they also start trends of their own. I never concept citizen would go for ebooks when they were first introduced. Now I see that Amazon's sold colse to eight million Kindles in 2010. Shows how much I know.

But I do know this: storage space is cheap. And finding new customers is expensive. So we're all the time finding for ways to keep our customers close to us. And what best way to keep them close than to give them "lockers" to store their stuff? It makes it easier for them to keep coming back to us to buy new products. That Jeff Bezos is a smart dude. And the fact that he's bald makes me like him that much more.

Call it whatever you want to call it, but I believe that many smart company citizen will begin offering some type of "lockers" to their customers in the coming years. Not just for music or ebooks. But to store quotes, estimates, invoices, orders, documentation, images, etc. For example, when I sell a new software application to a client, I would create for them a personalized "locker" where they can go to download their most recent updates, manuals, training guides and all of our paperwork. It keeps them tied into my company. And it's an further value-add: clients won't have to worry about storing all of this stuff and can nothing else but passage it from our site. And if I want to offer some further products as incentives I can do that too. Each client would have their own space on our servers (or some server that I rent somewhere) with their own access.

Killer App # 3: Apps

Another killer app? Apps.

Ask Jonathan Rochelle, a Group product employer for Google. "Business software is going through a platform shift to the Web." he said in a up-to-date interview. "As that happens, all prior software can be re-questioned. So there are opportunities for the guy who writes the application that helps a dentist's office, the guy who writes the application that lets you run your hardware store, or helps a journalist be more effective. The biggest occasion is in delivering the best software in those niche classes on this new Web platform. Web-based software is much less costly for buyers than primary software and programmers can be so much more innovative, that it's worthwhile for an entrepreneur to say, Ok, let's start from scratch."

I don't agree with all things he says. I don't think most small company owners would trust some guy to write an app that runs their entire business. It's probably because I sell company software and that concept scares the you-know-what out of me! But I do think that Rochelle hits on the next killer app that will work on many of us. And that killer app is...apps.

Take a look colse to and we see most big businesses creating their own slight apps for their customers. Airlines have apps for us to look up flights, check times and now even use our phones as boarding passes. Restaurants have apps for ordering and checking menu items. Whole Foods, Espn and Fedex have apps. And didn't I just see a market where a father in London uses an app to turn on the ignition of his Buick so his immature daughter can take it out for a joyride with her friends? She's taking out a Buick for a joy ride? What a loser!

Over the next merge of years, many smart company owners will also be creating their own apps for their own businesses. These apps will enable a customer to check pricing for the products they buy. Or look up the status of an order. Or open up a issue ticket. Or ask a quote. Or pay their open invoice (except for my customers, who do all things in their power Not to pay their invoices).

Like Rochelle says, this stuff is much less high-priced than it ever used to be. The tools are already available and there are a growing whole of developers available to write apps. Of policy there will be challenges: holding the applications up to date, production sure they can run on complicated devices, supporting users when there's an obvious problem. But today a typical developer can write a movable app for a few thousand bucks and a merge of cans of Red Bull. And, if deployed right, an app can enable a customer to get things done faster and more profitably with your company. Which means they'll want to continue to do company with you going forward.

So yes, I predict Charlie will be back on Two And A Half Man. And I predict that these three killer apps will impact the way we all do company in the next few years. And if my predictions come true, we'll all be winning.