HASSLE-FREE IT HELP
By John Reinan, Staff Writer
A prepaid card gives businesses access to tech experts for small projects.
When Tom Niccum joined the Burnsville Chamber of Commerce, he thought it might help him land some new business. He just didn't expect to land the business at chamber meetings.
But when Niccum started talking to fellow small-business owners, he realized they had a need he could fill. Niccum, who founded Lancet Software eight years ago, has developed Web sites and information technology systems for multibillion-dollar companies such as Land O' Lakes, Best Buy and General Electric.
As he talked to chamber members, however, he saw an untapped market.
"I would ask people who does their Web site," Niccum said. "They'd say, 'My brother-in-law.' Or 'my nephew.' Or 'my ex-secretary.' I realized that the average Chamber of Commerce member is really the heart of a target market: the franchisee, the two- to 10-employee business."
Niccum's solution: the LancetCard, a stored-value card coupled with a Web site that allows clients to order and track small IT projects with minimal hassle. It's a simple idea, but Niccum said his research turned up nobody else who was doing it.
Clients pay $750 for 10 hours of time, with discounts for bigger time blocks. Lancet employees then handle any IT needs, from building Web sites, e-mail servers and business-intelligence systems that track sales and inventory, down to tweaking existing systems.
Work can be handled in increments as small as 10 or 15 minutes. One client, a construction firm, has Lancet load digital photos onto its Web site.
So far, about 60 clients have signed up for cards since last fall. Niccum said his business benefits from having a known workload it can plan for, as well as reducing sales time.
"We used to have to sell each hour of work virtually as an entire project," he said. "We're trying to remove all friction from the process, so we can be profitable selling these tiny bits of work. This allows us to maintain a long-term, low-level contact."
It also helps set Lancet apart in what is increasingly becoming a commodity business. There are hundreds of IT firms in the Twin Cities alone, not to mention the thousands doing business elsewhere. With modern technology, a business probably can find someone in Singapore who will build a Web site for a pittance.
"If people are going to look at us as a commodity, we're going to be the best ... commodity there is," Niccum said. "We're going to make it easy to deal with us and give them a value proposition along with high quality."
"It's kind of Zen-like to say, but by embracing the commodity, we can stand apart from it."
John Reinan is at jreinan@startribune.com.