SmallBizResource Blog -- Business Know-How

How Bill4Time Is Braving A Slow Economy

Posted by Janet Attard, Courtesy of Business Know-How Thursday, Apr 2, 2009, 10:32 AM ET

How do you come up with a great business idea? And how do you grow that business in a slow economy? Ask Morris Tabush, and he'll tell you the answer.

Solve a problem you have, and then sell that solution to others who share your problem.

That, in fact, is how his latest venture, Bill4Time got its start -- and how it's continuing to grow in a down economy.

Tabush started an IT consulting company in the late 1990s. After a couple of years, the company had grown to the point where he needed an efficient way to manage projects and to track and bill for employee time. When Tabush couldn't find an off-the-shelf program that met his needs, he created his own, tweaking and improving it as time passed.

The system worked well, so when one of his IT clients complained he was unhappy with the time and billing software his small law firm was using, Tabush showed him what he had developed. The client was Robert Rimberg, a managing partner at Manhattan-based law firm Goldberg & Rimberg, who later partnered with Tabush to launch Bill4Time. He loved it, Tabush says. "He told me that there were no really great time-tracking and billing systems out there for the small company," he says. "There was a big void in the market, and we had already developed a lot of what was needed to fill that void."

With input from the client, Tabush and his team customized and enhanced the software, turning it into a software-as-a-service (SaaS) online billing system. Bill4Time is accessible via Web browser, desktop widget, and smartphone/PDA, and is suitable for just about any small business that has to manage projects, track and bill time. "We've designed it around what we thought our customers wanted, and then we've added features based on what our customers have asked us for," Tabush says.

Building a better mousetrap is an important part of launching a new business. But you need more than a good product or service to achieve success. You also need effective marketing and advertising efforts.

Like many startups, Bill4Time, which has more than 1,000 paying subscribers, has used numerous methods to attract subscribers, including print advertising and online advertising. By January 2009, Tabush says, the company was seeing a 20 percent to 25 percent monthly increase in the number of subscribers.

To achieve that increase, Tabuth says the company redesigned the Bill4Time Website to better explain the service, and also increased its public relations efforts. The company also added a free version of the software, giving potential customers the opportunity to test the software to see how it would work for their companies. (Free customers are not counted as a sale for measuring their monthly subscriber increases, Tabuth says.)

In addition, the company stopped its print advertising campaigns, putting more money into search engine optimization and refining its online pay-per-click campaigns.

The deteriorating economy played a role, too, Tabush believes, forcing small businesses to look for ways to cut costs and be more efficient about billing their clients.

In recent months, customer referrals have become an especially important source of new business for Bill4Time. "We have a form on the site that people can use to tell us how they found us, and last year about 5 percent were saying they heard about us 'through a friend.' Now we're getting 30 or 40 percent who are just coming from straight-up referrals," Tabush says.

What can other small businesses learn from Bill4Time's success? Among Tabush's advice: Don't be short-sighted, don't be penny-wise and pound-foolish, and don't focus primarily on defensive tactics to keep your business going.

"Right now I feel like a lot of people are getting too nervous about keeping their existing customer base, and they're just sitting there playing defense all day," he says. "They're forgetting that even in this economy, most likely people still need to use your service or buy your product. So you've still got to be out there on the offensive, selling and growing. You may not grow at the rate you did -- you may have to work a lot harder and make a little bit less money than you did last year -- but you still have to do it. You can't stop trying."

Business Know-How