Thesis: If you have no social intelligence goals, you will always be reactive. To take charge, you need a plan and a platform.

The Four P’s of Social Intelligence:

1. Purpose. Why are you doing this? Pick a business goal. Drive more sales, decrease help desk incidents? Decide how social can influence your business.

2. People. Who does what? What skills are needed? How will your people get training in the required skills? Remember that your social media information is only as good as the person analyzing it.

3. Platform. [sales pitch] How will you listen to the market? What data will you collect? What will your scorecard look like? Listening is impossible without technology — platforms pull data, clean it, organize it, and present it in a logical way.

4. Process. How will you manage incoming information? How will you determine what’s a good insight and what’s not? What happens to item you flag…are they assigned to people? Who? How is the loop closed?

Want to learn more? There are some useful links in the author’s follow-up email…

Thank you for participating in the recent American Marketing Association and Overtone‘s most successful webcast so far this year!  It’s clear that the topic, “How to Make Social Media Data Actionable,”  is something marketers are challenged with and want to continually learn more about.   Forrester’s Analyst, Zach Hofer-Shall, offered insights about social media strategies that we hope you will find useful.   We thought you might like to view the webcast again or forward the link to a marketing colleague.

You will find the 60-minute recorded version of the webcast and the slide presentation, here.

Defenders of the status quo at newspapers, book publishers and the magazine industry are in a panic. Some are even misguidedly asking for government regulation or a bailout.

All three industries are doomed (if doomed means that they will be unrecognizable in ten–probably three–years). And yet…

And yet there’s no shortage of writing, or things to read. No shortage of news, either. And there doesn’t appear to be one on the horizon. In fact, there’s more news, more images and more writing available to more people more often than ever before in history.

No, just about all of the whining is about protecting paper, the stuff the ideas are printed on, not the ideas themselves.

It’s paper that makes the economics of the newspaper industry work (or not work). It’s paper that creates cost and slows things down and generates scarcity. And scarcity is what they sell.

It’s paper that makes the book industry what it is. As soon as you remove paper from the equation, the costs change, the timing changes, the barriers to entry change, the risk changes. And defenders of the status quo don’t like change.

Is there not enough paper in your life? Why are we wringing our hands about the demise of paper as the economic gating factor for ideas? In fact, some of the trees I know are delighted that we’ve found a better, faster, cheaper way to spread ideas.

If the demise of paper means that good people doing good work in important industries will have to find faster and better ways to do their jobs, I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

permalink to original post here.

f8 is a Facebook conference where developers and entrepreneurs collaborate on the future of personalized and social technologies. At f8, members of the Facebook team and the developer community explore a variety of topics including new tools and techniques, business growth strategies and open technologies.

Read up on the Open Graph initiative and social plug-ins, such as the new Like button, and how the distinction between traditional .com assets and Facebook will start to blur. The new Like button is already visible on over 50,000 websites, and Facebook is providing an API-based way to access what they’re calling a user’s “Open Graph,” which is a list of everything he or she has “liked” across the entire web — music, books, restaurants, food and more.

You’ll find plenty of tasty fare as you sample f8 soundbites, such as:

• We’re building toward a Web where everything is social
• We want people to have instantly social and personalized experiences wherever they go

But here’s one that might lead a few marketers to conclude they’ve been invited to watch the party from the outside looking in:

• All [Facebook] social plug-ins are extensions of Facebook and are specifically designed so none of your details are shared with sites on which they appear

Hmmmm. Does that mean a marketer who loads up a .com site with Facebook social plug-ins has to grin and bear it when all that social interaction data flows from the user straight to Facebook, bypassing the brand utterly and completely? Even if the user were willing to let the brand have the data in the name of improving the user’s experience?

Is it time for a new breed of “brand-friendly” social plug-ins that respect user privacy while giving marketers an opportunity to better serve customers?

Seth Godin blogs a lot. From the perspective of  “intellectual engagement,” his content is very good. He makes you think. He doesn’t hit a homerun every day. Who does? However, what he does do every day with brilliance is present his message in a way that’s easy to consume.

How does he do it? How does he make his writing so readable? He gets the little things right every time.

Let’s examine a recent Seth post (below) called “Breaking news.” I chose it randomly. Take note of this:

• It’s short — about 190 words
• About 125 of those words (2/3) are 1 syllable!
• I found only one word ending in -tion; too many of those make for a tough slog
• It’s broken into 8 paragraphs, or just over 20 words per paragraph

You don’t have to be a gifted writer to leverage these tricks of the trade. Try using these techniques to remove the density from your own blogging for a while. See if you like the results. Ask others if they like the results. Then drop a thank you note to Seth.

Breaking news

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there seems to be a lot more breaking news than there used to be.

The thing is, there’s no more news, just more breaking.

If news is stuff I need to know, want to know, stuff that will help me make better decisions or generally keep me informed, then, no, I’m not noticing more of it.

If breaking is stuff that interrupts a TV interview, flashes across a website, breaks into a radio show or just shows up on Twitter, then yep, there’s a lot more breaking going on.

You can turn your reddit posts or your press releases or your Facebook updates or blog posts into urgent announcements that demand attention. And in the short run, it might work. But then you’ll exhaust your readers. We don’t want any more urgent emails from you.

… like the boy who cried wolf, the villagers aren’t going to come.

Does knowing about something ten seconds or ten minutes faster really matter? Is it worth the adrenalin?

Sorry, wake me up in the morning, not in the middle of the night. Unless it’s actually news.

Despite the big brain, he was and is a humble person. So whenever he said something that struck me as controversial, I paid close attention because I knew he wasn’t doing it to draw attention to himself. He was fond of saying that commercial research and development organizations can control only three things:

• Features — what does it do?
• Dates — when is it available?
• Quality — how bullet-proof is it?

And of these three, Dates are the most important. Why? Because a good product or service in the market that’s generating some revenue and feedback is always better than “perfection” that never sees the light of day.

You can probably guess his favorite corollary to this Truth. When an R&D team is fighting the calendar and in grave danger of missing a delivery date, the answer is to simply deliver early. Take what you got and get it to market.

As you can see, speed-to-market was his primary focus. What’s yours?

Make more money…wouldn’t that be nice? There is a great new opportunity to do so through the team of experts at Abbott Label. We challenge you to ‘see for yourself’ how Abbott Label can get you in a better position with your label business. In turn, we will help you make-more-money!

Abbott Label only sells to resellers and has experienced over 25% growth even during the recent economic crisis. This is due to ongoing diligent efforts in backing their valued distributors. We are now eager to help you succeed, and forwarding orders automatically through Four51 is a great start. Why touch an order if you don’t have to?

Below are some testimonials from just a few partners Abbott Label has been servicing:

* Denny Skellie of Birmingham, AL states: “The customer service team at Abbott Label has been very aggressive in providing thermal label solutions and is always eager to supply various material samples for evaluations. In addition, Abbott’s pricing has been very competitive and they will often provide relief on prices to help keep me in the best position on label projects.”

* Bill Brand of Lubbock, TX states: “I deal with Abbott simply because we have such a wonderful history! I can count on Abbott Label to do what they say and can truly trust them with my business. They have offered outstanding personal service and really seek to understand my customer’s needs. When Abbott Label asks ‘What can we do to help?’ they mean it!”

* Bruce Catalde of Winnetka, CA states: “In dealing with John Abbott on down, I have noticed that everyone at Abbott Label are good honest folks. They have always come through on prompt deliveries. Also, their extensive die selection has alleviated tooling costs which have previously gotten in the way of doing business. I will continue to be loyal to Abbott Label.”

Click here to view complete announcement.

While there is a frantic edge to many marketer’s search for ways to calculate social media ROI, having to justify engagement in social media may be a moot point.

As observers have noted, the deployment and use of social media is spreading rapidly and ineluctably. As B.L. Ochman wrote on businessweek.com on February 19, 2009:

“For companies, resistance to social media is futile. Millions of people are creating content for the social Web. Your competitors are already there. Your customers have been there for a long time. If your business isn’t putting itself out there, it ought to be.”

Like the need to have a presence on the World Wide Web, companies have realized they need to have a presence on Twitter, Facebook, and other venues, and are flocking there.

Similarly, just as e-mail is provided company-wide to all employees, social media is becoming a universally deployed and consumed medium, with or without ROI justification.

As Tim Walker noted in “Social Media and the Acid Bath of ROI” on hooversbiz.com on May 30, 2009:

“Understand that, sooner or later, social media will probably become as pervasive for your business as e-mail, phones, or face-to-face communication. That’s neither good nor bad — but it’s a good idea to be ready for that day before it’s staring you in the face.”

In another twist on this concept David E. Bowman in “What Is the ROI on Social Media?” on thefuturevalueofbusiness.com on June 5, 2009, writes:

“ ‘Social Media’ is not the ends it is a means.  The question is like asking what is the ROI on a telephone system?  Well, it depends who you talk to, what you talk about, what you learn from the call and what you do about the things your conversations uncover?   Sure you can concoct ways to measure this generally, but to be useful you have to measure ROI based on the specifics of what you do with social media, not on social media itself.”

As social media becomes pervasive, marketers also are pondering the question of whether ROI is relevant. Among them is Don Bartholomew, the Metrics Man, who has been actively seeking ways to measure social media ROI. As Bartholomew wondered in a blog entitled “In Social Media, Are We Looking for ROI in All The Wrong Places?” on metricsman.wordpress.com on May 28, 2009:

“One important question seems to be missing from much of the conversation, to what degree should social media be considered a cost of doing business (from a corporate/organizational viewpoint) rather than a distinct activity that must/should be justified by hard ROI?”

Some of these projects went very smoothly. Some less so. Among the latter, we were reminded that good systems expose bad people.

What warning signs should business leaders watch for? How will you, as a leader, know if implementation struggles are the result of good people adjusting to a new way, or bad people floundering? Beware of these:

• Finger-pointing
• Inability to let go of the implementation consultant (AKA no strong owner has emerged inside the business to champion positive change)
• Re-emergence of old habits, old spreadsheets
• Complaints from customers and vendors…expect a few initially, but they should die down
• Employees creating meaningless work for themselves — they’ll look slightly scared and slightly desperate because they realize they have much less to do now that a good system has eliminated manual processes

What should a business leader do in response? Take corrective action quickly:

• Demonstrate commitment. All must know that the boats are burned
• Pick one problem and fix it by meeting twice a day
• Make hard decisions, then empower the right person to make the hard decisions. You might have to hire this person first.

The other option is to simply be satisfied with a lifestyle business that makes a lot less money than it could, but it keeps Uncle Billy, Aunt Darla and that one-guy-who’s someone’s-cousin employed.

In this 6-minute video, your hosts set up shop in a make-shift mailroom to answer some common Four51 questions. But there’s a plot twist.

We took a look at the most commonly queried words and phrases in the Four51 knowledgebase — but we looked at only those words and phrases that resulted in No Articles Match Your Search. In other words, these are unrequited queries. This type of analysis helps us build a better knowledgebase, and it also inspired this video.

- Jim, Jason, Joey

Four51′s SAP Business One implementation team has been working with a group of about 20 very focused, very aggressive distributors over the last year. These guys aren’t complaining about hard times. They’re sharpening their tools and investing in growth.

The integrated Four51/SAP system is well beyond the beta testing phase. As we accelerate the pace at which we’re replacing old embedded industry systems around the country, we’re discovering some patterns.

1. Buried Treasure in the Business. Once you have a real business management system, you’ll find money that’s been leaking out of the business for years. Where? Inventory management and purchasing management, among other areas. One Distributor found $3,000 per month of pure profit within the first month of going live.
2. Benefits of a Connected Business. The systems we’re replacing allow employees to work in silos. Information doesn’t flow from department to department, so the business has no built-in quality control and no ability to act in real-time. Simple things can make a big difference, like a business owner being instantly alerted that a CSR changed the payment terms for a customer. Or a sales rep being notified that the largest order of the year was just received into inventory.
3. Waxy Build-Up in the Business. Putting in a new system forces healthy dialogue, and requires that cross-functional teams tear down processes in order to improve them. Some of these processes have been around forever, and have gummed up the business. We’re seeing a lot of these conversations:

• “Why do we do it that way?”
• “I guess because we’ve always done it that way.”
• “We can eliminate steps and use the system to make this easier.”
• “Awesome.”

Liberating, yes. Saves money, yes. Makes you faster, smarter, and more responsive to clients? Yes. Just ask the distributor in TX who landed a Top 10 retailer based on the reporting power of SAP.

Do something today to get your business ready for tomorrow. As the noted Austrian psychologist The Terminator once said: Anger is more useful than despair. Drop us a line if you want to talk about end-to-end integration, FanTools for Facebook, or custom development services.

“

Do your clients like You?

Do you know as an organization the answer to this question? Most do not….we are building a Call Center in WI that can help you build client loyalty. Our goal is to develop projects with companies that “get it”…. we can customize lead generation, retention, and loyalty programs. For more information, call Phil at XXXXX,  #715-350-XXXX.

“

This is a provocative question. Implicit is the idea that we should want our clients to like us. Therefore, a truthful Yes is the “right” answer and No is an indictment. No is a problem that needs addressed.

But it’s worth pondering whether it’s important that your clients like you. I think it’s more important that they’re loyal, and the body of the email actually uses that word instead of like.

Good business relationships are characterized by spirited debate, challenges to the status quo, and intense negotiations. All before 10 am. It’s not reasonable or desirable that all parties like one another at all times in all circumstances.

There will be friction. There should be friction.

There are a lot of alarming stats floating around, but here’s one that should make all of us stop and take notice: a recent study says that 69% of employees have received little or no communication about the virus at work.

Here’s what Four51 is doing.

1. We’re publicizing a FREE online H1N1 readiness course created by Bluedrop Performance Learning, one of the most pedigreed training development companies in North America
2. We’ve created an Open Network Catalog (formerly Shared Catalog) that features a single product: a one-page .pdf titled H1N1 in the Workplace. It explains the benefits of the course. Click here to see it.

This online course will assess the readiness of you and each of your employees. By taking a brief test before and after the 15-minute training, you will be able to actually measure your preparedness, and how effective the course was in improving the readiness of everyone involved. Read more about the course on Bluedrop’s website.

We hope you’ll evaluate this free offering for your own business, and in addition introduce it to your customers. Who knows…this might help you land that hard-to-get meeting with senior HR personnel, and eventually lead to a discussion of solutions for a company store, employee rewards or employee on-boarding.

If you would like Four51 to connect the H1N1 in the Workplace catalog to your admin interface, send a request via email by clicking here.  The connection is free, of course, and you have complete control over deploying the catalog to your customers’ storefronts. This is the same technology that Ennis is using to offer its products to Four51 Print Service Providers. (Keep in mind that the catalog will inherit the existing theme of the sites you deploy it to.)

Here are some recent mentions of Bluedrop’s program in various media:

• CBC TV
• Blogger
• PR Newswire

Regards,

Four51

Do you think you can name some of the top ten words used in new taglines? I got five of 10.

The most commonly used words or concepts (alphabetically):

1. believe
2. far/further
3. future
4. imagine/see
5. innovate/innovation
6. more
7. new
8. save/savings
9. together
10. you

This info would be more interesting with some historical perspective. For example, I would like to know if numbers eight and 10 have recently cracked the top 10, or are they perennial favorites.

Paola Norambuena, Interbrand’s head of Verbal Identity (ed. yes, that’s really his title), says that keeping on top of commonly used taglines is important for two reasons:

• First, it can highlight how companies are responding to shifts in the market
• Second, it highlights what to avoid. Using only popular words creates lack of distinctiveness

Norambuena notes that different words aren’t enough to create distinctiveness. The same idea can be expressed in dozens of ways. Take, for example, Target’s “Expect More. Pay Less.” It feels very similar to Wal-Mart’s “Save Money. Live Better” and even similar to Home Depot’s “More Saving. More Doing.” In the current economy, we know consumers are looking for ways to save, but what in the taglines truly drives differentiation?

Keep in mind that brand identity and equity consists of much more than a tagline. That’s why I wonder if these monster brands worry much about overlapping taglines/messages. They are simply tweaking and reinforcing what they’ve already come to stand for in the mind of the consumer. And what they’ve come to stand for is the sum total of many types of inputs.

When choosing taglines, most companies explore options along a continuum of “descriptive” to “timeless.”  There are arguments for both, especially if taglines and slogans are to be applied at the corporate, divisional, and product levels. (The only universal rule is to never invite lawyers or accountants to these meetings.) Four51′s current tagline is On-Demand Smart Catalog Technology. This is mostly descriptive. A tagline like “Think Ahead. Stay Ahead” is timeless. In other words, it’s hard to imagine a time when this tagline would clash with the company’s strategy and goals.

Parting thought: remember that the burden of telling your company’s story doesn’t rest solely on the tagline. Don’t try to make it do too much. It can’t. It needs help from the compelling content on your website, the skill and friendliness of your customer-facing employees, and the professionalism of your reps.

SDN – SAP Developer Network – http://sdn.sap.com
BPX – Business Process Expert Community – http://bpx.sap.com
BOC – Business Objects Community – http://boc.sap.com
SAP EcoHub – http://ecohub.sap.com
UAC – University Alliances Community – http://uac.sap.com
SAP TechEd & SAP Tech Tour – http://sapteched.com
SCN – SAP Community Network – http://scn.sap.com

Together, these communities have ~1.7 million members in 200+ countries, with forums, wikis, blogs, eLearning, downloads, whitepapers and articles, plus 400,000 bi-weekly newsletter subscribers.

Yolton uses an interesting phrase in his response to the question below: richness of relationship. Everyone says relationships matter, and implicit in that statement is that they matter from a financial perspective. He goes on to say that “communities have brought SAP tremendous financial and non-financial benefits.” What is a non-financial benefit? Is it perhaps a financial benefit that just can’t be measured the traditional way?

Q: According to Charlene Li’s Altimeter Group’s recent report that deep brand engagement correlates with financial performance – do you think that’s true? Or is it the reverse? SAP was listed as a brand using best practices for engagement – your engagement is not limited to a few social media experts, but extends across your brand.

A: It’s a chicken and egg question. Are successful companies more engaged in social media because they can be – because they are successful, or are they successful because they are engaged in social media? There is a correlation…we don’t know if there is causality. I can say that being engaged in community and social media has brought SAP tremendous benefits, including product adoption, market penetration, and so on — and also richness of relationship which can translate into customer satisfaction and success – and I would guess that would translate into customer loyalty. I know that these communities have brought SAP tremendous financial and non-financial benefits.

Okay, here we go again….

Just like 10 years ago when Four51 paved the way in e-commerce, we’re now leading the way into the rapidly growing social economy by introducing Four51 FanTools for Facebook. We’ve been working on social media for the better part of a year.  And now we’re excited to unveil Four51 FanTools for Facebook.  Our ultimate vision is total social media and marketing management via support for the most popular social tools.

Here’s what we’re doing…we think these tools will help your business thrive in today’s 24-hour marketing cycle. We’ve reached an age in which instant marketing on Facebook, Twitter, and in the Blogosphere can work seamlessly with more traditional printed and branded communications tools (direct mail, brochures, promo items, etc.).

You now have the ability with the push of a button to post, tweet, update, blog. And with Four51’s widely embraced e-commerce platform you can now synchronize these real-time social media channels with the traditional marketing mix. Online and offline: fast, synchronized, cohesive.

Simply put, Four51 FanTools for Facebook allows brands, their agencies, and their sellers in segments like retail, franchising, distribution, and manufacturing to quickly and simply implement a Facebook Fan page strategy. And in doing so, get a head-start on competitors in building your (or your client’s) dynamic, vital social communities, comprising customers, prospects, partners and other important participants.

Four51 focused its initial launch in the social economy on Facebook for one simple reason: it’s huge. This is a market of 200 million-plus members, growing rapidly week-in and week-out. Facebook is becoming the standard for the social economy. As it strengthens its hold, more and more of your customers and their customers are going to be doing business – buying and selling – in this environment.

Four51 FanTools for Facebook is an excellent fit if you’re a brand, agency or seller wanting to nurture your community online. With it, you can configure your own, and/or your customers’ Facebook fan pages quickly, making offers to targeted prospects based on gender, geography, age, and lifestyle.  Further, now you have excellent ways to create reports showing those accessing offers, accepting them, rating and sharing them.

Central to Four51 FanTools is the DealStream, a configurable, dynamic portal platform consisting of four distinct yet integrated programs:

• The Offer Portal, supporting unlimited offers via coupons, gift cards, mobile SMS messaging
• The Dealer & Location Portal, allowing fans to quickly find nearby locations
• The Brand Central Portal, an online source of branded video communications
• The Brand Store Portal, featuring immediate “buy-now” e-commerce integration via Four51 ecommerce technology

There are a number of benefits. For example, Four51 FanTools for Facebook lets you:

• Implement a social commerce strategy with minimal investment risk
• Manage the presentation of more dynamic brand content as a Facebook “Application”
• Control your social interactions
• Measure your campaign and communications effectiveness

Best of all, you now can seamlessly coordinate the emerging social media environment with traditional offline activities, ensuring that messaging and materials in both environments are in synch and delivering ROI.

As you know, we’re in an age where people and communities are exerting more and more influence over the brands they prefer. I learned this from my four kids who are in their teens and early 20s. Maybe you have too.

Say “so-long” to the brand manager, the agency, the distributor, the manufacturer mired in long planning cycles, extended production runs, dead-on-arrival messaging and repetitive static campaigns. That approach is so 24 hours ago!  Today’s the day to plan how you need to message and market and sell tomorrow, based on what the world is tweeting or posting about you right now.  And tomorrow’s the day to start planning for the day after.

Welcome to the 24-hour marketing cycle.  Welcome to Four51 FanTools for Facebook.

Drop me a line if you want to learn more and see a demo.

Thanks
–tim
tmorin@four51.com

PS Look for Four51 FanTools updates on Four51’s Facebook Fan Page.

Sorry for the cheap shot, Jeff. It was just too easy. Jeff has been a friend of Four51 for many years, so we’re hoping there’s enough equity there to compensate for a good-natured poke in the ribs.

The employee guidelines are a must-read if you’ve been wondering how to empower your employees while still sleeping at night.

——————————————–

Dear Friend,

Social media has amazing potential to help businesses grow. I can say that because it has done alot for Kodak.
As we continue to explore social media’s business potential, we would like to share with you our lessons learned thus far.

We have created this engaging and thought-provoking guide illustrating ways to engage in two-way conversations with
customers via this growing medium.

In this guide you will find:

• Brief description of the social media landscape
• Myths about social media
• 10 Social Media Tips from Kodak’s Chief Blogger
• Top 10 list for Twitter usage
• How to get started in social media
• Kodak social media activation examples
• Troubleshooting
• Social media guidelines used for our employees

This guide is available electronically at: http//www.kodak.com/go/followus or, you may request printed copies at: mailto:gcgsitelet@kodak.com

We hope that you find the information contained in this guide useful as you consider your social media plan.
If you want to grow your brand, strengthen your connection between you and your customer and be aware of what people really think about your company, it is well worth the time invested.

Thanks for letting me reach out to you, and if there is anything Kodak can do, please let me know!

Sincerely,

Jeff Hayzlett

First, the move to POD is gaining strength. Digital continues to replace offset. [ed. granted, this one isn't very controversial]

Second, an aging sales force is largely complacent, and resists introducing new technologies to customers. Result: penetration stalls, accounts become vulnerable.

Third, distributors risk getting blind-sided by these developments: first, equipment sellers are successfully placing small color devices into buyer accounts — the machine is installed with a 5-year lease before the distributor knows what’s going on. Like getting nibbled to death by ducks. No single duck hurts a lot, but the cumulative effect is devastating. Second, buyers are finding self-serve, online options for printing more attractive every day.

Anyone that has written JavaScript knows how difficult it can be making that code work in every browser. Debugging your code in those browsers was painful without tools like Firebug. Still, all too often you’d get everything working really well only to find that IE wasn’t happy with your work. I’d say this has caused me to go bald, but that happened way too long ago.

The new IE Developer Tools are simply amazing. They’ve incorporated nearly everything that Firebug offered (it is missing hover over variables) and I think they’ve improved on the user interface. Plus, Firebug development has slacked in keeping up with Firefox upgrades and still has some very annoying bugs. I am contemplating switching over to IE8 for my primary JavaScript development environment and I honestly am surprised I’m writing that.

I urge each of you that follow this section of the blog to try out the new tools for yourself.

I want to go beyond the simple “You can use it as a default value” in a spec form. I think that’s understood because you’ve always been able to use those default value tokens before. I’d like to take a different path. I will diagram how you can use custom user fields and tokens to display contact information for their assigned customer service representative on your Home Page.

I’ll first create a new user field named “Rep” and make it a selection type. I’ll set it to display to the user and add some choices for the dropdown and save. Then I’ll assign it to the entire company.

Now, I’ll put the contact information on the home page through the Buyer Site Customization Home Page template. The home page customization looks like this:

[[CustomMessage]]
[[Rep]]


[[Catalog]]
[[Messages]]
[[Orders]]

What I’ve done first is create a span element that will hold the Rep token value. Giving the span an ID property allows me to reference it in a script easily. I then added a div element to hold the result of the script. It will be what is displayed on the page. Then I add the script. I created a JSON object that holds a key value pair that matches the Customer Service reps in the custom user field with phone numbers. Just a simple example. At this point I declare a variable, “rep”. That variable value points to the span element I created to hold the token. Referencing the innerHTML property returns the value the token renders on the page. Finally, I take the token value, look up the pair in the JSON data object, and write it out to the “ContactInfo” div element so it will display on the Home page.

This example doesn’t hold any real world value. I just want to demonstrate to you how, with some imagination, you can do so many things with the information available to you in the new Custom User Fields. As always, you can go to my demo site play with the example I documented today.

If you have any questions about this blog post, please join us on the forum.

Is it dangerous to put this kind of feedback on our own blog? Once upon a time I would have said Yes. But not now. The Web has changed everything, especially now that The People control the content. Tools that allow us to communicate and collaborate so thoroughly pretty much demand transparency in order to provide real value. Couldn’t this customer simply share his or her opinions on his own blog or a forum if he wanted to? And is it really a big secret that on some days, some customers aren’t thrilled with our support processes?

Jason has answered the question and been thoroughly helpful.

…For the record, yes I am aware of your technical support processes and your discussion forum. I have, and will, avail myself of those processes when an appropriate technical problem or question is at issue. That isn’t the case here.

What I can’t seem to get you or your sales people to understand is that it is not a technical problem I am having based on my lack of understanding of your products/services. This is a technical LIMITATION of your system. As such, tech support and customer forums don’t seem to me to be the appropriate venues for discussing this issue. It is a bigger issue than that.

I was hoping for a more interactive dialog with a higher-level technical person in which I could present this as a problem and find out where Four51 is going with any plans to improve your service. To me, such a discussion seems mutually beneficial. I didn’t realize it would be such a big deal to request a one-time, 10 minute discussion after having been a Four51 customer for a number of years now, and considering the large amount of business we COULD be sending your way.

Despite the availability of your support process, forum, webinars, and roundtable discussions at various conferences (all venues in which YOU strictly control the process), I, as your customer, was foolishly looking for a more personal touch. I will not make such a mistake again.

This customer makes a number of points across several different topics, and I think some of them are quite valid. There is one in particular that I want to focus on:  the sense of entitlement to bypass Four51′s support process to have a (presumably) quick phone call with a higher-level technical person (a developer, in this case). In my opinion, underlying this request is the statement near the end that speaks of “looking for a more personal touch.”

More on that in a moment. First I want to describe our Tech Support philosophy and the building blocks of the process itself. Four51 decided to make technology a cornerstone of how it provides support. That isn’t the same as removing people. As we learned at the psda’s Spring Technology Conference: Technology will never replace people. People who use technology will replace people who don’t.

First, we like to prevent tech support cases if possible. Wouldn’t it be nice if you never needed to contact support with basic How To questions? We would be lonely, but customers would be delighted. To that end, Four51 offers a comprehensive activation program that includes 2 hours of introductory training. In addition, a range of beginner and advanced classes are offered online and in a classroom setting. And all customers are encouraged to participate in our beta release testing cycles. That’s a great way to keep current and influence what we’re working on.

But let’s face it, everyone needs Tech Support at some point. Could be you’re taking the software into uncharted waters, could be you got an error message. Stuff happens. The front-line, if you will, consists of outbound communications and self-service options:  the 300-member forum, the 300+ articles in the knowledgebase, Lunch ‘N’ Learn webcasts, University Four51, micro-blogging, weekly Tips & Tricks emails, the wiki, and to some extent this blog.

Next in line is the case management system, or ticketing system, a component of Four51′s ERP system. From the customer’s perspective, using the ticketing system amounts to exchanging emails with Tech Support personnel. We also use the phone to provide support, because some situations simply require real-time voice dialogue. (The phone has significant downsides as a support tool, but it is necessary in some cases.)

Woven into this apparatus is a Service Level Agreement: we will respond to every case within 24 hours. Often we’re able to close routine cases, let alone respond to them, within an hour. There are also escalation processes based on the nature and complexity of the issue and quality of service:

• Technical Path: Tech Support -> Level II: Senior Testing, Integration, Architecture and Business Analysis Resources -> Level III: Senior R&D Resources -> CTO.
• Complaint Resolution Path: Tech Support -> VP Customer Service -> CEO.

Now let’s talk about trade-offs. What customers get with this technology-centric approach:

• Speed. Assuming they’re complete and detailed, when you use self-service tools you are essentially dictating how fast your question will be answered by removing our response time from the equation.
• Speed II. Submitting a case electronically means your question was routed to the right set of experts at the speed of light. There is no voice mail hell, there is no vacation black hole, and there’s no waiting for your question to get from the wrong person to the right person.
• Convenience. Access anytime from anywhere there’s a browser and an Internet connection.
• Accuracy. Knowledgebase articles are peer-reviewed and updated frequently. All users get the same thoroughly-tested answer every time.
• Accuracy II. The first-response Support Professionals working cases at Four51 are seasoned experts, not entry-level kids reading from a script.
• Influence. Cases automatically feed our Product Lifecycle Management system, where they can be counted and dissected in order to prioritize fixes and determine future functionality requirements.
• Audit Trail. All parties have a complete log of all interactions when the case management system is used.
• Predictability and Efficiency. Customers quickly learn how to work with us — all of us — and what to expect; new customer employees and new Four51 employees can be “raised the right way the first time”.
• Lower cost. Technology-enabled service solutions are far more scalable than traditional labor-intensive help desks. This gives Four51 the flexibility to put more resources into features, testing, infrastructure, and keeping overall costs down.

What customers don’t get:

• Coziness and warmth. Self-service options and email can seem impersonal. We understand that. This is one advantage that the phone has, and it’s one reason Four51 regularly attends industry events. But when it comes to Support — remember that the speed and quality of our Support often affects our customers’ ability to make their customers happy — we believe you would rather have speed and accuracy than a new best friend.
• Familiarity. Print services providers and technology companies tend to use different methods for providing customer support. This can cause friction.
• The chance to mandate that we skip steps. Processes can feel rigid and legalistic, especially when we’re convinced that we should be able to skip steps.

I think the e-mailer above was looking for 1) warmth; and 2) a free pass to skip ahead in the escalation process because he perceived his question to be beyond the grasp of Four51′s Tech Support team. It turns out that his question didn’t require escalation. But the fact remains that we dug in and enforced elements of a process: submit a case to initiate dialogue with Support, direct access to senior R&D resources is based on a defined escalation procedure. (It’s worth mentioning that phone conversations did take place per the Complaint Resolution process noted above.)

This technology-centric approach has worked well for us. We’ve achieved our cost and quality goals, and the market accepts it. But it certainly comes with trade-offs, and not everyone in every case is happy with the trade-offs. I’m sure it’s not perfect, and it never will be. We welcome input.

Have I been too critical all these years? There’s an enjoyable profile of Rafael Nadal in the current issue of American Way. It got me thinking about accountability and fortitude in business, especially in tough times when self-pity is more tempting than usual. I quote:

“As a boy, Nadal played plenty of soccer. But he gravitated toward tennis, the sport favored by another of his uncles, Toni. Like a kid scrawling in a coloring book but still managing to stay within the lines, Nadal could slug the ball and do it with accuracy. Toni set some ground rules, telling Nadal, “First, if you ever throw a racket, we’re finished. They’re expensive, and when you throw a racket, you don’t just disrespect the sport, you disrespect all the people who can’t afford equipment. Second, losing is part of competing. You will lose. And when you lose, it’s not going to be my fault or the fault of your racket or the balls or the courts or the weather. It is your fault, and you will accept it and try and do better next time. Third, have fun. When you stop enjoying this, it’s no good. You’ll find something else that gives you pleasure.”

Full article by Jeff Pearlman can be found here.

How can you create, produce, market, sell and get paid for your
product or service if you’re feeling ashamed? You can’t. You have to
be shame-less.  Not arrogant.  But confident of your gifts and eager
to share them with others.

If I had one wish in the world it would be to eliminate shame.  I
think that feeling holds massive amounts of great thinking by all
humans in check and feeds fear.

Successful entrepreneurs, leaders, scientists, cops, engineers,
salespeople, public servants, actors, GIs, artists, teachers,
marketers, chefs, pilots, clergy,  to name a handful, are able to
create great works large and small because they all have two things in
common. They have gifts. And they are shameless about sharing them
with the world.

-tim morin

tmorin@four51.com

Isn’t that a sad thing for a big-time marketing honcho to say?

Data is the weapon of choice for people playing defense. People playing offense build communities, or what Seth Godin more imaginatively calls “Tribes”.

If you want to be the leader in whatever category or market segment, you need to be the community (Tribal) leader. And you need to breathe life into your community with your purpose, passion and vision.

More importantly, you’ll need to let your community breathe life into you with its honesty, stories, wisdom.

Does this take data? No. It takes guts.

Guts to work the room AND let the room work you. Sitting behind the desk and the data is a missed opportunity.

Data’s not a rock. It’s sand. Use it as filler material to pack around insight gaps.

Compared to your data, do you see your community as a way more real rock to stand on?

-tim morin

tmorin@four51.com

Yikes, I hope he can call on You-Know-Who for a miracle or two. Ask him about how he satisfies the profit motive while sporting a Roman collar and this Jesuit will tell you simply: “No Margin. No Mission.”

So he has the same issues less sublime folk like me (and maybe you too) address every day, only inverted. Out here in the secular world our problem is: “No mission. No Margin.”

Why do you suppose so many business people can state within a tenth-of-a-percent their latest profit margin, and yet they can’t come within a country mile of finding a clear, compelling mission consistently communicated by their company? Not having a mission during The Great Recession seems like a rocky road to no margin.

Ask the Jesuit priest about his publishing company’s mission, and he’ll tell you: “Helping souls.” The Jesuits have been around for 500 years, so I suspect their mission will lead to continued margin, even though their publishing business is in an industry that’s upside-down right now for a lot of historic (maybe even biblical) reasons.

Here at Four51 our mission is: “Help businesses market and sell more while spending less.” Okay, so it’s slightly less ambitious than the Jesuits. But, for now, it’s working. We’ve been fortunate to produce margin because of our mission in a really tough economy. We’ll wait to claim complete success in another 490 years or so.

How much time are you thinking about your margin? How much time are you thinking about your mission? Here’s to swapping success stories of Mission and Margin in the 26^th century.

-tim morin

tmorin@four51.com

If you haven’t read it, you should. And if you did read “GOOD TO GREAT”, it may be time for a refresh.

In either case, the latest installment is really well done. Enjoy!

-tim morin

tmorin@four51.com

Here’s one that is delightful because the people who created it were tuned to the voice of their customer and experience of a fellow human.

You may have been this human being if you just spent 12 hours wide-awake on a long-haul overseas flight from somewhere like Minneapolis to Tokyo scrunched into seat 64A in the tail of a stuffed 747-400 who sleepwalked on arrival to an airline lounge to see someone somewhere in this wonderful world had thoughtfully and deeply reflected on who you are at that exact moment in the universe within the arc of all time and responded with passion to quench, not world thirst, but something way more important, that being your thirst right there, right then.

If Four51 were a beer machine we’d work really hard to be what you see here:

Here’s to humans listening to humans.

-tim morin

tmorin@four51.com

Take for example our grand announcement last year featuring this headline: NO COST SAP SOFTWARE. We invented this scheme in which suppliers would pay us for the orders they received from distributors using our system and we would rebate our distributors in such a way that they’d get NO COST SAP software. We called it “Software for Commerce”. And we thought it was genius in action.

Wow, were we wrong.

Our community sized this idea up in, like, half-a-minute. Then it measured us for a corporate dunce cap. Naturally, we tried our best to explain, position, cajole, even beg customers and prospects to see it our way.

Then our toaster popped up when some guy in the community simply told us: “You know, I don’t want free software, even if it is from Four51 and SAP. I just want to buy it like a normal business buys software.”

Here’s the genius of that guy, a voice in the community:

• He runs a normal business
• He accepts complexity in the process of switching to a better accounting / ERP system, not in the process of orders between his customers and suppliers.

So, thanks to the voice of our community, here’s what we learned: Dump Software for Commerce onto the ash-heap of history (we did). And let ‘em buy software like normal companies (they are).

Hopefully print distributors never see a scheme like this one again.

-tim

tmorin@four51.com

1. Brand and product line extensions
2. Slamming the competition

Wells Fargo is well known in the financial services industry. Not so much in the construction materials industry…so a Wells Fargo line of sheetrock or power tools feels like a stretch. Why exactly does it feel like a stretch? Hold that question.

Just last week I heard a radio spot for Cambria Mortgage Service. Hmmmmmm. The quartz counter-top dudes? That Cambria? I wondered. Indeed, it was that Cambria. Seems like a stretch. A disconnect, even. And the reason is that brand extensions by definition are based on transferring credibility. Your brand is (hopefully) credited/associated with expertise in some product or service category. In a brand extension strategy, you are asking your target audience to believe that your skill in X will transfer to Y. Your fanatical followers will believe you because they believe everything you say. But what about everyone else? What happens when you take that story beyond the 3 F’s: fools, friends and family?

Back to that thought I asked you to hold: a major factor in launching and growing a successful brand extension is the distance between X and Y. Banking and sheetrock seem rather distant to me. So do quartz counter-tops and mortgages. In contrast, the Starbucks Barista Aroma Solo™ Drip Brewing Machine makes sense to me. In fact, line extensions are often much easier to pull off than a full-scale brand extension because the leap you’re asking your target to make is much smaller.

I once did some work on a Kraft Velveeta line extension: Mexican flavored Velveeta. This extension was, as I recall, not particularly successful. (I know you’re shocked, because it certainly sounds de-lish.) But in this case the downfall was taste, not lack of credibility. Trial was strong; repeat was not.

So I think the Cambria folks will be challenged to transfer any polish from the quartz biz to the banking biz. They might succeed anyway. I suspect there’s a cross-sell idea in play somehow.

In this same radio spot, the folks at Cambria told me that they aren’t like those fly-by-night mortgage companies that suck your blood and make you read and cause you all kinds of grief etc etc. This falls short of a direct attack on a specific competitor, but it is a good example of what I call “knocking the category,” and it’s a dubious selling tactic. You may counter that it’s knocking only the dirty, slimy segment of the category. Fair enough, but why bring it up at all?

While the idea quartz miners deciding to originate loans strikes me as odd, it does not strike me as prima facie dodgy or questionable. After all, the quartz side of the business is well established. Why plant the seed? Furthermore, the sponsor of the ad doesn’t really have the right to tell me they aren’t dirty like those other guys. It’s OK to say you’re clean, but saying you’re not dirty in a category where many others are has a hollow ring to it.

• People who are focused on your positioning and your brand behavior in every expression possible in today’s marketplace.  This touches and lives through everything.  Your people.  Your products.  Your language.  Go to an Apple Store.  You’ll see this alive there.

• People who collectively comprise the voice of the customer, not by surveys, focus groups and remote audience testing, but by intimately walking the specific journeys of your customers every day and knowing first-hand, on the ground, what is delightful and challenging to them.

• People who collectively comprise the voice of the community.   Community organizers don’t get a lot of credit in the business world.  Please don’t think like this.  The best case study right now on why your business should think like a community organizer was recently elected U.S. president.

• People who are sales docents.  That’s right, docents.  Not hunters, or gatherers, or farmers.  But people who can guide your customers and prospects toward our magnificent world as it is emerging.  Docent derives from Latin, meaning “to teach.”  If you get permission to be the teacher and guide from a community of believers, you will win.

Here’s a quick example of our Four51 SAP integrated accounting product:  we are positioning the best real-time business management platform on the market today.  It’ll be month-end before you get important data with our competitors’ systems.  Imagine doing a Google search and waiting until the 30th or 31st of the month to get your results.  Four51 SAP provides important data you need, right here, right now.

Branding ourselves closely with SAP is also vital to our world-class technology promise.  SAP is the most successful business software company on the planet today because of its rich technology.  Our competitors may question this claim. If so, we say call the Germans and any of their 75,000+ business customers where they will find the claim is well-grounded.

We spend a lot of time daily with each of our customers in their operations, knowing first-hand their interests and their challenges.  And they’ve been just as close to us in designing and developing our product.  In fact, our product is truly designed by a community of print distributors for print distributors.

Finally, we made a decision that doesn’t fit with a new product launch:  we stopped selling.  And now we have hundreds of people lining up to use our product.  Sometimes people ask us what’s going on with SAP and Four51.  Sometimes we ask people if they’d like to get an update about what our community is up to.  In either case, when people are curious, we simply give them a tour.

So, as it is with good art, when someone likes what you show, they come back for another look.  And they talk to others about the experiences that moved them.  This works well when we serve as guides and allow the product, i.e. the art, and a community of believers to speak for themselves.

-tim

tmorin@four51.com

We weren’t expecting anything fancy.  Mrs. Morin had a simple salad.  I ordered spaghetti and meatballs.
But something didn’t seem right when, just as our entrees arrived, the apparent house rock band over in the corner, kicked into “Love Me Two Times / Baby Please Don’t Go” by Jim Morrison and The Doors. I was expecting lively mediterranean ambience because its website said it offered “Italian classics and imaginative dishes with the most affordable and adventurous international wine list anywhere.” Instead, I got rock-and-roll meatballs. What a weird place, and the people were strange. If Michael Scott (who used to run THE OFFICE at Dunder Mifflin) ran a restaurant, this would be the kind of outfit he’d have. This is a place where on-brand behavior was not on good behavior. And it left me wondering:  Why is it so hard for a business to maintain good, on-brand behavior?

One simple answer is that most businesses don’t know what position they want to hold in the market and what they really want their brand(s) to mean. This is a tough thing for most businesses to do really well.  Ask yourself and nine colleagues:  “What’s our market positioning and the meaning of our brand?”  If you get 10 different answers, that’s a big problem for your business. Even more difficult is having a well-articulated positioning and brand, and making sure your business is always on good brand behavior.

At Four51, we believe our positioning and brand hold a place in the market for really, really good technology. Our SMART CATALOGS help tens of thousands of businesses, many of them very large, and millions of users operate more efficiently. Our positioning and brand promise drove our decision to invest millions of dollars into integrating SAP’s accounting system with the Four51 product. This kept us on track even when we faced challenges early on. The market is a wise and perceptive place. It recognizes good, on-brand behavior. And, fortunately, it is giving Four51 credit for having the best and most complete e-commerce business management platform available.

Being aware of your brand behavior may be the most important thing you can do for your business, no matter what role you have at your company.  Making sure your brand is always on good behavior is priceless. The alternative could turn you into a place known for rock-and-roll meatballs. Don’t let your brand become just another lost angel. Drop a line with your thoughts about your positioning and brand, if you have a minute.

-tim
tmorin@four51.com

I’m going to use my last ounce of professionalism — there wasn’t much there to start with, mind you — to disguise the company names.

1.
I found your company on the internet and I wanted to take a moment of your time and introduce you to C_______. We are a 25 year old manufacturing facility for CD’s and DVD’s. We provide complete manufacturing services from pre-mastering analysis, glass mastering, molding, silk-screening, offset printing, packaging, and fulfillment. If you want to know more about our company please visit our website at www.____.com and if you have an upcoming project please drop me a line at any of the numbers below and I will be happy to discuss it with you and provide you competitive costing.

Sincerely, X

Jim’s commentary: We, we, we, we…product, skill, product, skill…25 years and low price.

Wow.

How about starting with how you can help me solve my problems rather than what you’re capable of doing? And you want me to visit your site? Why? And I should remember to drop you a line when I recognize that I need the stuff you know how to do…the stuff so drenched in jargon that I couldn’t understand it? Can I get you a fresh cup of coffee, too?

2.
Just touching base to see what sort of projects you may have going on that we can bid you out on…ECONOMY BUSTER Specials:

1,000 Full Build CD’s …CALL!!! prices so low they embarrass our competitors
1,000 Full Build DVD5′s… CALL!!! prices so low they embarrass our competitors

Ask about our USB flash drive prices…

All sorts of board packaging…wallets ,sleeves, digipaks…lowest prices out there

Tape to disk transfers, authoring, printing, packaging…call and ask us for a quote on anything…Best pricing in the business right now…fastest turn times…

I______ is committed to providing the absolute best customer service to all past, present and prospective customers. Again, Please advise if you currently need a bid on anything..

We’d like to thank you for choosing us as your replicator/duplicator…

Thanks, Y

Jim’s commentary: Heavy doses of product and price, price, price. Not to mention some grammar that tied me in a knot.

Please…if I’m a prospect, solve a problem for me. If I’m a current customer, talk to me like I’m a current customer. Prices that will embarrass the competition??!! Do you want a relationship based on my belief that you’re a commodity?

Great customer service is expected. It’s table stakes. In contrast, “faster turn times” comes dangerously close to being relevant to me, but it was left hanging. Naked. “Jim, in your business fast turn times are critical because…” That’s the email that wasn’t written, the message that wasn’t delivered. So I’m left with PRICE as the key take-away. (By the way, is there a worse opening than Just touching base? I can’t think of a stronger signal that everything to follow is dull and of no real consequence.)

And as we saw in the first email, I have the privilege of advising him when I need what he can do.

The rant is over. Please don’t be lazy. Forget your skills and study my problems. Remember that I’m trading money for a solution to my troubles, not your ability to do something cool at an embarrassingly low price. You need to connect the dots that lead from my problems to your offerings. Be inspired, then do something inspiring.

Every day, Fred records his lessons using a digital smart board and a simple web-cam device, which he uses to upload lessons to the web.  Every night, his students log in to view his lesson.  Then, they show up the next day and spend the whole hour in class doing homework together based on the previous night’s posting.  Imagine that, teacher and students, all doing math homework together in class. Wow!  That’s different.  That’s probably even brilliant.  It makes me want to go back to school and re-take math class with Fred.

Here’s another place that just came into being:  Read It For (dot) Me.

If you like to stay current on the latest business books but don’t have time to read them, this place is for you.  All it takes is 10 minutes a week and you’ll get a great snapshot of some of the best thought leadership on the market today.

Steve Cunningham is the fellow who started it and he obviously has his pulse on the mismatch between big, best-seller business books and busy business people.  So his response was to do something completely different. He’s making it easy for business people to catch up on the latest big ideas with a thorough multi-media web summary in a few minutes.

As Steve says:  “while you’re sleeping, he’s reading.”  Go look at it.

Ok, one more different idea for you.  This one comes close to crass commercialism but, hey, I offered you a couple of cool ideas up front so hopefully you’ll forgive me. Guess how many people in the print distributor business are going to be doing something really different this year by using Four51′s integrated accounting system, powered by SAP BusinessOne? As of today, the number is in the hundreds.  And that’s the result of only actively marketing this revolutionary product for three months.  By the end of 2009, we think that number will be way into the hundreds based on the interest we are seeing. All this is happened while America and the world were in the midst of an historic economic downturn (don’t get me going on our sense of timing here at Four51.  Being experts at calling a market and when it’s ripe to introduce a product, we’re not).

But that shouldn’t obscure the reason people are interested.  What we’re hearing is simple:  Trying to grow by doing the same thing and same technology won’t cut it. Like Fred the Math Teacher and Steve Cunningham, more and more people believe the time to do something different is when it’s clear their results will change for the better.

Drop me a line if you have any “Different is better” storylines in your world.

-tim
tmorin@four51.com

Broadly speaking, the questions we get can be categorized as follows:

• What can the Four51 system do?
• What resources are available to help me learn?
• How do I sell Four51 to my customers?
• What are others doing?

We’re constantly analyzing the specific questions. Doing this helps us create go-to-market programs, add useful features to the application, measure the success of our new-customer orientation process and prioritize new articles for the knowledgebase.

Starting this week, we’re going to use this analysis in a new way. We’re going to begin publishing a weekly “Did You Know?” info-mail to all of Four51′s Distributor and Supplier customers. These emails will be short, sweet, relevant, and contain links to more detailed information. They will also be archived. What’s more, customers can suggest topics — and there will be a wonderful prize for the customer whose suggestion we cover in a future Did You Know?

The theory is that if one person is asking, there are probably 20 who need the same information but aren’t asking…or don’t know what they don’t know. The goal is to make every last one of our many thousands of customers better, smarter, faster, happier, richer.

Once I was done reading it, I wondered about these questions:

• What will a print distributor’s business look like in 5 – 10 years?
• Is technology from Four51 and our integrated partners like SAP going to be helpful in creating the distributors of the future?
• Who will the distributors of the future be selling to?
• What will the distributors of the future be selling to their customers (that is, what will be their key value proposition)?

You may have other questions. Even better, you may have the answers. Either way, let us know what you think after reading Seth’s latest blog post

-tim
tmorin@four51.com

So, here’s the speech I wish the president and other leaders across America would start giving:  “What It Takes To Be #1″

“Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all-the-time thing. You don’t win once in a while, you don’t do things right once in a while, you do them right all the time.”

“Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.”

“It’s a reality of life that people are competitive and the most competitive games draw the most competitive people. That’s why they’re there – to compete. They know the rules and the objectives when they get in the game. The objective is to win – fairly, squarely, decently, by the rules – but to win. ”

“And in truth, I’ve never known a person worth his/her salt who in the long run, deep down in his/her heart, didn’t appreciate the grind, the discipline.  There is something in good people that really yearns for, needs, discipline and the harsh reality of head-to-head combat.”

“I don’t say these things because I believe in the ‘brute’ nature of humans or that men and women must be brutalized to be combative. I believe in God, and I believe in human decency.  But I firmly believe that any person’s finest hour – their greatest fulfillment to all they hold dear – is that moment when a person has worked his/her heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle – victorious.”

This speech is on the office wall of a fellow named Keith, who is the CFO of one of our customers.  Keith is a Green Bay Packers fan.  So it’s no surprise that he has the speech you just read, from Vince Lombardi, hanging on his wall. It’s also no surprise that Keith and his business have a habit of winning.  Theirs is a business where winning is an all-the-time thing; where you do things right all the time, not once in a while.

What if our president, our leaders, our businesses and our citizens all together talked, believed and acted as Lombardi did and Keith’s business does today?  How GREAT would America be then?

-tim
tmorin@four51.com

I’ve created a demo project that allows for width and height inputs. This is just one example of the 4 types of document actions.

There are 4 different page resize document actions: ResizePage, ResizeWidth, ResizeHeight, ResizePageByPercentage. The demo focuses on the ResizePage action, but the principles are the same.

The first thing to consider is that these actions require proper measurement values. For example, you can define a page size with the following values: Width = 5in, Height = 3in. If the input is not in the proper measurement format an error will be thrown. That’s why the demo uses a dropdown selection. That makes enforcement of those measurement formats easy.

Another major factor to consider is that these actions ONLY resize the page. Not the objects on the page. If that’s an issue you will have to ensure you’ve set all your project elements to flex appropriately. In the demo each element has many flex and copy fit rules applied. It will render correctly with any dimensions that are chosen.

I’ll repeat that these actions are most likely never the best solution for your products. They have a great probability of formatting your output incorrectly and without warning. The more content on a document the more likely it is there will be problems. I almost always recommend using multiple projects and or variable documents.

I have set up a demo product named “Documents Actions ResizePage”. Go to the site to see it in action, and also download the project files I created.

Just kidding.

I normally say that you are welcome to charge, but I don’t recommend it. Do you charge your customers when you send them a catalog in the mail? Do you charge your customer a portion of your phone/fax/email expense every month so they can send you orders?

You could make the case that you should actually charge customers less if they order online…it’s the most efficient way for you to take an order. Plus, there are other ways to recoup your technology costs: you can increase your margin, you can charge a handling fee, or you can simply absorb the costs the same way you do for the other technology that you use.

If it costs you $1,000 to create product templates, create a custom theme and setup the permissions and buying rules on a site, should those costs be passed on to the customer? If you can generate a couple of thousand dollars per month in online orders, you can easily absorb those setup costs over the course of the first year.

Plus, once you get customers ordering online, you may even be able to charge them more for the products, increase your margins and handle increased order volume without hiring additional customer support resources. So how can you get your customers to pay more for the product they order online? More on that next time…

Bill

This is a guy who sells more business management software to businesses large and small around the world than anyone else.  So he should have a pretty good handle on major business trends. What he told Charlie Rose is really interesting and notable for print and indirect products distributors.  (At least we think so, since SAP Four51 is being installed in distributors’ businesses today.)
Here is Apotheker’s take on where businesses like yours and ours are heading :

• “I believe business is going to be fundamentally different 5 years from now.”
• “I think you will see more and more companies working in networks.  Not just because of the current crisis;there was an underlying trend happening already.  Now I believe the current crisis will accelerate it.”
• “They may be loosely coupled networks or tightly integrated networks but they will be networks.”
• “You will see more and more of these networks coming together.  They need interactivity among themselves.”
• “And in order to be in such a network, what do you need?  You need insight into your network and, of course, outside your network.  And you need business processes that go (across) the entire network because that network needs to function as one virtual entity.”
• “That is going to be a fundamental shift in the way people do business.  And it requires collaboration among human beings and it requires collaboration among businesses.  And you need to open up the network so that everyone can cooperate with everyone.”
• “That is going to require a completely different IT environment.”

80,000 businesses run SAP business software today.  In the next year or so, that number will be well over 100,000.

What you are seeing is the formation of a massive business network.  And this network, as a virtual entity, buys a lot of print, promotional items, office products and other types of indirect goods every year. Is this kind of business network interesting to you?  Do you agree with Apotheker that it will require you to operate a completely different IT environment?   How well will your business software match up with your customers’ networks in 5 years?

Let me know what you think.

Tim

tmorin@four51.com

Now it’s January. Inauguration Day, to be precise. Time for new leaders to lead in new ways. Time for change.

Here are a few thoughts on change from the great thinkers down through the ages. If there’s a common thread, it’s this: buck up and deal with it; change is a constant.

——————————–

He who rejects change is the architect of decay.  The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery.
~Harold Wilson

It is not necessary to change.  Survival is not mandatory.  ~W. Edwards Deming

There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse!  As I have often found in travelling in a
stagecoach, that it is often a comfort to shift one’s position, and be bruised in a new place.  ~Washington Irving

When you are through changing, you are through.  ~Bruce Barton

They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.  ~Confucius

Stubborness does have its helpful features.  You always know what you are going to be thinking tomorrow.  ~Glen Beaman

After you’ve done a thing the same way for two years, look it over carefully.  After five years, look at it with
suspicion.  And after ten years, throw it away and start all over.  ~Alfred Edward Perlman

——————————–

And finally, from the great American philosopher George Carlin: I put a dollar in one of those change machines.
Nothing changed.

… Many companies are struggling to understand how today’s economic climate will impact spending, jobs and business viability. And if you are a purchasing professional, you are tasked with the additional challenge of cutting costs and saving money throughout the organization.

Below are just some of the questions we are frequently asked and some ideas on how you can address these challenges.

Question: Beyond personnel costs, where can costs be cut?

Answer: There are really only two options to generate savings: you can negotiate better prices for what you buy, or you can simply buy less. Often by setting aggressive goals and budgets, you can drive the organization to adopt a more penny-pinching attitude, which translates into overall cost savings for the organization since people will not be spending as freely as they might have originally.

Certainly logical. You can try to squeeze more blood out of your vendors. It’s unclear these days how much is there to be had, and a financially strapped, anemic vendor means some additional risk in your business. In addition, you can threaten the troops every Monday morning: make less coffee, and when you feel you must make coffee, use the filter twice!

But isn’t there another path to consider here? Call it stewardship. Is your company a smart owner, distributor, and consumer of the products it buys? Many are not, especially when it comes to indirect goods in large, complex, highly distributed organizations. The proverbial $74 bottle of Windex cost only $2 to buy, but $72 to requisition, receive, store, distribute and consume. Why?

Let’s discuss one factor: the curse of indirect goods supplier-sponsored technology.

The indirect goods supply chain for most companies has traditionally been of secondary importance to its direct goods supply chain.  Because direct goods affect the competitiveness of the product or solution, they have long been scrutinized by procurement professionals. In the ’90s we saw a small revolution as companies like General Electric and GM saved billions by evaluating all elements of their direct goods supply chain.  Sometimes that led to greater vertical integration and sometimes it led to more outsourcing.

The indirect goods supply chain, however, has been a different story.

Typically, since it has not been a high priority for many companies, employees, departments and even entire locations have been allowed to procure indirect goods as needed from the vendors that they choose.  The more distributed the business, the more fragmented the vendor base from which they procure.  Many times this resulted in hundreds if not thousands of vendors.

Many companies have now realized that the total spend can be large.  Accordingly, they have assigned procurement teams by category of spend (i.e. print, office supplies, jan-san, promotional products, etc.) to improve control in these  respective categories.  This is called the “Product Category” approach to indirect goods procurement.  For each targeted spend group, companies consolidate the vendor base by aggregating the spending and offering the entire category to a single vendor with the lowest price.  Large multi-year purchasing contracts were offered to vendors that offered the lowest price and the best suite of value-added capabilities.

Naturally, as all commodity-based business models demand, these providers are constantly in search of value-added services that enhance their offerings products and differentiate them from the competition. In order to ease the procurement process for their customers, many offer online ordering technology. There was mutual benefit. The buyer got ease of ordering with the (at least perceived) ability to extend the solution across a highly distributed enterprise, and the vendor got deep hooks into the buyer.

Buyers are discovering that using vendors’ on-line ordering systems comes with consequences. For example, the buyers’ processes become hopelessly entangled with the vendors’ processes. In fact, supplier-sponsored ordering systems are often able to get upstream and prevent the buyer from ever adopting a single, streamlined buying process and achieving zero switching costs. Which in turn is why incumbents rarely get displaced.

Moreover, even with just a few vendors, a company still has a few ordering processes with a few sites.  Not only is changing vendors hard, but adoption by the extended enterprise falters because there are too many ways to buy. An overdose of convenience is no longer convenient, in other words. Four51 is working with a company that had 71 separate supplier-sponsored buying sites. Employees won’t tolerate that, so maverick spending ensues.

So, as far as cost of ownership (versus cost of acquisition) is concerned, it’s not too surprising that Accenture concluded that 85% to 90% of buyer workflows associated with indirect goods were inefficient, and could be streamlined based on providing a single buying experience across the extended enterprise.

Pay attention to pure product cost, by all means. But don’t overlook the costs of ownership, and the role that suppliers can play in entrenching those costs.

Using the published document action from Pageflex, I changed some of the functionality and imported it into the Four51 Document Actions library. The goal was to make it more flexible and targeted, as well as work more similarly to the existing actions in the library. Due to the unique nature of this document action I thought a blog post was in order. Of course, you should use the wiki as a reference guide.

What does this document action actually do? It’s actually pretty simple. First it gathers the size (width and height) of the image and it’s parent (area template). It then compares those sizes to determine the greater difference between the two ratios. If the height ratio is larger then the image will be scaled to the height of the area template, and vice versa for when the width is greater. This scaling will obviously leave the image larger than the area template in which it’s contained, but this is desired. The area template will crop the excess image area, leaving the entire area template filled with the area the image fits.

The anchor point property of the image controls how the image will be cropped. If the anchor point is set to Center/Middle it will be cropped evenly on all sides. If the anchor point is set to Left/Top the image will be cropped on the right and bottom.

Special recognition for this solution goes to Pageflex. It was their idea and source code that forms the basis for this offering.

This document action example can be viewed and downloaded at the demo site. The product is named “Documents Actions Scale Image To Fill”.

Gordy is the unsung hero who’s saving the State of Minnesota hundreds of thousands of dollars by getting state employees to use simple, inexpensive web technology from Four51 (a Minnesota Tech Company) to buy stuff the state needs to go about its business. Mark, a real executive (he has a V.P. title) in state government, is the guy who okayed our contract a couple of years ago that allowed Gordy to go out and do some good for the State of Minnesota and its citizens.

While this is going on, Governor Tim Pawlenty (T-Paw) is on the road talking about his big $5 billion budget pothole problem and making speeches to Minnesotans that this legislative session will require tough choices and big changes in how government does its thing.
When you boil it down, T-Paw is advocating new thinking  in the face of a crisis, Mark is empowering his team to make change happen, and Gordy is in the trenches doing it. Four51 is really excited to do its part to help them. In fact, we’re going to let them use our simple, inexpensive web technology for free (it doesn’t get any more inexpensive than that).

These three have talent, tools and tenacity. Who or what could possibly stand in their way? No one, we hope; but beware of Andy the Potted Plant. Andy dislikes innovation. He wants to ride out this storm, keep his comfortable government job, and if taxes have to be raised now or later, oh well.

I worked with Andy at a grocery warehouse back in my Teamster days. Summer job for me, real job for Andy. We stood at the end of a conveyor belt. When bulk food items came down the belt, we pulled them off, put them on a pallet, and loaded the full pallets onto a delivery truck. It’s not unlike getting your luggage off the carousel at the airport. You have to grab the right stuff, sometimes you wait forever, and there are similar issues with lost and crushed items.

One day, the Warehouse Brain Trust decided to establish performance standards for all warehouse jobs. That meant a time and motion study. Joyless industrial engineers with clipboards lurked about for a week, and then one day ominous electronic devices were mounted in the rafters. Long cords descended from the devices, and at the end of each was a hand-grip with a button on the top. Andy and I and the rest of the crew were trained to push and hold down  the button when we weren’t actually removing items from the belt or stacking the items on pallets. This would allow the Brain Trust to remove the effect of idle time from the productivity calculation.

Well, it wasn’t long before the summer-only types figured out that you could do the work WHILE HOLDING DOWN THE BUTTON. This confused the Brain Trust and probably defied a few laws of physics, but it made for some truly stellar productivity numbers…numbers which were duly published for all to see. A new benchmark was established!

Andy the Potted Plant assembled the college-types and delivered a withering diatribe. We had no right to change the status quo. Now everyone would be held to a higher level of performance. Accountability was the enemy. Everything was just fine before. It’s true we had gamed the system, but Andy the Potted Plant wanted it gamed in the other direction, post haste.

There are certainly some Potted Plants working for the State of MN. Perhaps acres of them. All they want is a little sun, water and fertilizer now and then. They are root-bound, and can’t grow, but that’s OK by them. They will feel threatened by the new thinking proposed by T-Paw, Mark and Gordy.

Who will win this epic struggle? If the cost to renew my vehicle tabs triples, we’ll know who won.

Then we heard about the reaction from some Guy Higher Up The Food Chain than Gordy worried that this story about saving money may cause problems and wanted us to stop talking about it.

While this is going on, the Governor is on the road talking about his big $5 billion budget pothole problem and making speeches to Minnesotans that this legislative session will require tough choices and big changes in how government does its thing.

Now there’s another unsung hero to introduce to you. He’s Mark the Visionary and he’s a real executive (he has a V.P. title) in state government. We call him Mark the Visionary because he’s the guy who okayed our contract a couple of years ago that allowed Gordy the Government ROI Guru to go out and do some good for the State of Minnesota and its citizens.

Back then Mark the Visionary had the vision (of course) to someday market the power of simple, inexpensive web technology from Four51 The Minnesota Tech Company to all of State Government once Gordy got it up and going and was helping the state save a lot of money.
We’ll be getting in contact again with Mark the Visionary this coming week because we need to come up with a new contract with him in February. And we’re excited about this because we think we’re going to help Mark the Visionary be even more visionary in the years to come.

Here’s why: the beauty of simple, inexpensive web technology is that it just keeps getting less and less expensive. That doesn’t happen very often, especially in places like government where it seems like everything just keeps getting lots and lots more expensive every year.
So Four51 the Minnesota Tech Company is really excited to do its part to help Mark the Visionary, Gordy the Government ROI Guru and even the Governor save a lot more money. Here’s how: We’re going to let them use our simple, inexpensive web technology for free (it doesn’t get any more inexpensive than that).

But wait, there’s more: We’re also going to guarantee to reduce the amount of money the State spends on stuff like business cards and forms and other print by 20%. That’s worth repeating: Guaranteed 20% cost reduction in printed stuff for the state.

We won’t bore you with all the small details of how this works but here’s a snapshot: Since it started in 1999, Four51 The Minnesota Tech Company has had web technology that allows people to buy, sell and supply stuff. There are 30,000 companies using Four51 today. 1.3 million people use it. And way more than 3000 suppliers who make stuff like business cards and forms and envelopes use it.
In Minnesota alone there are hundreds of companies and their suppliers and thousands upon thousands of their employees using it (including 10% of state agencies and 1,500 employees today thanks to Mark the Visionary and Gordy the Government ROI Guru, and the Governor for letting them do their thing).

Our whole purpose in life is relentlessly eliminating costs for people and companies who use our technology and system. And it’s happening every day. We know this because more than a thousand new people a day sign up to use it.

We’re really excited now’s the time to put the power of all that technology and all those companies to work for the State of Minnesota. Now’s the time to show the rest of the country and the rest of the world how Minnesotans shed their fears and have no limits to changing the way us Minnesotans do things, no matter how bold and out of the (ice)box the ideas may be here.

Now’s the time Mark the Visionary, Gordy the Government ROI Guru and the Governor to show governments everywhere what “CHANGE” really means. And now’s the time for Four51 The Minnesota Tech Company to do its part to help them be best-in-class as true 21st century change-agent leaders, leading a 21st century state.
What a week it’s been for State Government! Isn’t it great to able to serve Great Americans like Mark the Visionary, Gordy the Government ROI Guru, and the Governor at a time like this?

-tim
tmorin@four51.com

In our last post, you met Gordy the Buyer. He’s the state government guy who’s saving the State of Minnesota hundreds of thousands of dollars. Gordy’s done this by getting state employees to use simple, inexpensive web technology to buy stuff they need to run Minnesota’s government (technology from Four51, a Minnesota company). Naturally, we thought of Gordy the Buyer as an unsung hero. So did a lot of people who read our blog post.

One person wrote us to say “Gordy for Commerce Secretary.” Another even said “Gordy for Governor.”
How great is this story, we thought. Especially right now when it’s tough times for the government.

Turns out we were wrong about this being a tough time for the government. Sounds like all we did was stir up tough times for Gordy the Buyer and spark a little ruckus in St. Paul. Yesterday, a Guy From Higher Up The Food Chain than Gordy called Four51 saying this story “on your Insights blog could cause problems for us over here.” This Guy said “of course, we are happy” with the stuff Gordy’s done with this simple, inexpensive web technology being used by 1,500 government people. But, he said, we can’t be talking about this. “Nope. Not now. This could cause problems for us.”

Four51 was “respectfully” asked to take the story off of our blog.

So here’s what we know:

1. The State of Minnesota, like most states and the federal government, is in the hole. In Minnesota this hole is $5 billion dollars deep.

2. There’s a guy named Gordy who has taken the initiative all by himself to get people in state government to use technology to buy the stuff they need and in the process has helped eliminate hundreds of thousands of dollars in inefficiencies while improving quality.

3. There’s a Guy From Higher Up The Food Chain than Gordy who isn’t happy about this because “this could cause problems for us.”

4. He doesn’t want anyone to know about this.

5. He “respectfully asks” Four51 to remove the story from our blog.

We’re stumped. We thought this was a great story about good government in action. We asked the Guy From Higher Up The Food Chain why he wouldn’t want to tell this story to everybody in state government. Like the heads of all 50 state agencies. And maybe even the Governor (talk about a guy whose got a big problem…he might actually want to know about this because he needs all the help he can get from all of us.)

Here’s what the Guy From Higher Up The Food Chain had to say about that: “Well, you know, we’d, you know, be interested, you know, in maybe hearing your thoughts and maybe we can get together and have a meeting in the next few days. But, meantime, I respectfully ask you to take that story off your blog.” Yikes. This doesn’t sound like it would be a very a fun meeting. Neither does the meeting that the Guy From Higher Up The Food Chain and a bunch of other guys even higher up the food chain are going to be having with Gordy in the next few days.

But, who knows, maybe (hopefully) they’ll end up backslapping and high-five-ing one another for saving the state a bunch of money and imagining how to do even more with this simple, inexpensive web technology (from a Minnesota tech company). Our last post asked “Shouldn’t we be writing our nearest elected official?” about Gordy’s great story of good government in action. Bad idea. We respectfully ask that you please don’t contact your nearest state representative or state senator.

For now, that will only cause problems for the Guy From Higher Up The Food Chain. And the State of Minnesota has enough problems with its $5 billion pothole. Let’s not create more problems with stories about guys like Gordy. Oh, this being America and a democracy and all that, what’s your vote on whether we should take the story about Gordy off our blog?

Tim
tmorin@four51.com

Send a private note to me here, or post a public comment below…
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Anyway, Gordy and the Four51 team caught up a few weeks ago about his experience as a Four51 customer so far. We came away convinced (actually, we were speechless at first) that if there were a lot more Gordy’s in Minnesota government, the state might not be facing a humungous $5 billion budget shortfall.

Before I share with you what Gordy told us, here’s a little background: 18 months ago, Gordy decided to use Four51 to help Minnesota’s state agencies to buy their indirect goods more efficiently.  He started off using it primarily for printed products like business cards, etc.   And he did this without any mandate from the mountaintop of Minnesota government.  In fact, I’m pretty sure no one up on the mountaintop even knows what Gordy is doing to help his state save hundreds of thousands of dollars by using simple, web-based, indirect goods spend technology to order products more efficiently. Gordy isn’t a technology guru.  In fact, when you meet Gordy, the word guru will never cross your mind.

Common sense and pragmatic, instead, are words that cross your mind when you meet Gordy.  And these are traits that fuel Gordy’s passion for doing things smarter and more cost-effectively at the State of Minnesota.

Here are just a few things Gordy has accomplished on a really modest monthly budget (seriously, it’s a budget number that has NO COMMAS in it ):
1.    Enabled one agency to reduce 3 FTE employees who were dedicated to proofing and processing business card and other print orders;
2.    Eliminated costly errors and rework on a popular State of Minnesota map program for its citizens;
3.    Saved huge money on expensive and inefficient warehouse expenses for another state agency;
4.    Proliferated usage of this technology across state government to more than 1,500 employees who buy this kind of stuff;
5.    Here’s Gordy’s marketing model:  informal coffee and doughnut sessions to show off the technology to
colleagues around state government who buy stuff.

Now here’s what’s really slick:  Since Gordy configured the Four51 system, buyers at various state agencies have used Four51 to process 1,200 transactions in 2007 and in 2,850 transactions in 2008.   As this rate continues to grow in 2009, the state’s agencies will likely process around 6,800 orders. When you figure the typical administrative cost of $59 (Accenture reported this figure in a recent study) for processing these kinds of orders manually, Gordy has managed to remove nearly a quarter of a million dollars in processing cost and inefficiency. And when you add what’s to come this year, that number will approach three-quarters of a million dollars in combined savings to the state.

Gordy believes he’s only just begun because he’s configured 10% of the state’s agencies on this systematic, cost effective, simple web technology.  Gordy’s convinced the state could be saving millions if Four51 became the standard for buying indirect materials.

My occasionally esteemed (or maybe just plain steamed) colleague, Jim Lahner, suggested that government could save this kind of money by deciding to NOT decide on who to seat as a U.S. Senator and permanently leaving the lights off in that office. But that seems like making a messy situation messier.  Besides, for the cost of the simple solution he’s using, Gordy is surely in the middle of one of the greatest ROI stories in all of state government. Maybe instead of Gordy the Buyer, we should call him Gordy the Government ROI Guru.

Shouldn’t we be writing our nearest elected state official about this kind of stuff?

-tim
tmorin@four51.com

Now you know why I never bet big in Vegas. IDC estimates that by 2012, about 66% of ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) will offer applications in a SaaS model. Software-as-a-service is here to stay. But is it right for everyone? We probably need to know what it is before we can answer that. (Thanks to the folks at Trigent for this background info.)

SaaS is a combination of software and services provided over the Internet and an on-demand model through a subscription agreement typically based on the number of seats/users utilizing the service or on a usage basis.

SaaS is a subscription service rather than the typical purchased or licensed software application implemented on-premises. SaaS agreements typically include support and service level agreements (SLAs). When the subscription period expires, the software service is either extended or terminated. A good example of SaaS is a Web-based application that is subscribed to over the Web, downloaded from the Web or run via your Web browser or smart client such as Four51′s Smart Catalog Technology or Salesforce.com’s CRM software.

Some characteristics of software delivered via the SaaS model include:

• Applications that are managed and hosted centrally and made available to customers over the Web
• Features and enhancements that are released in small increments on an on-going basis
• The application delivery is typically closer to a one-to-many model (single instance, multi-tenant architecture) than to a one-to-one model, including architecture, pricing and management characteristics (according to IDC)
• Built on a single technology and infrastructure stack rather than heterogeneous technologies

Other SaaS operating models may include multi-instance on a shared service, a separate instance and separate environment or a hybrid environment.

SaaS is a significant enterprise trend and according to a recent InformationWeek survey, about 33% of companies are using SaaS for at least one application. According to Gartner, the worldwide SaaS market will see an upward trend over the next four years and will grow from $6.3 billion in 2006 to about $19.3 billion by 201. Additionally, VCs have invested about $1.4B in SaaS-focused companies. This growth is expected to come from both new solutions designed and deployed for SaaS as well as reengineering of legacy software and solutions.

Business Challenges that May be Better Solved by Adopting the SaaS Model

Companies that are considering the SaaS model do so because they are wrestling with many of the following business challenges:

• More flexibility to support ever changing and/or evolving market and business needs
• Customer acquisition, relationship management, collaboration and service
• Focusing and investing on core business activities and off-loading the non core technical infrastructure, software, maintenance and technical skills due to scarce management time and fewer resources to support end-user desktop installations
• Access to applications and technology for more competitive advantage and ease of deployment while minimizing risks, time, up-front investment and cost of entry
• Cost reduction, moving from fixed to variable cost and more predictable cash flow
• Getting closer to customers and aligning with their business processes via Web Services and SOA

If for no other reason, harsh economic realities will force companies to evaluate SaaS applications in the near-term. Doing more with less…even doing the same with less…will be common refrains in 2009 as companies look to boost productivity with no new capital spending.

There are corporate compliance guidelines for internal and external communications.  There are regulatory compliance issues if you are in the financial services business for example with entire departments deployed to make sure nothing gets created that will violate the regulatory requirements of a particular business.  There are brand standards that need to be complied with and adhered to when you are creating marketing materials or anything with your logo on it.

Some companies have entire web sites and thick books dedicated to their brand standards.  Of course, it’s one thing to have the standards clearly defined…it’s another thing entirely to ensure that those standards are adhered to.  We’ve all seen simple examples where a logo is produced with two different PMS colors, but how do we know if an ad or direct mail piece has been altered to either diminish the brand message or worse yet, violate a regulatory requirement?

How does your organization ensure compliance in all of the above areas?  Is there any automation involved in processing requests for new communications or marketing material?  Are there approval processes in place that ensure compliance with your corporate guidelines?

I have talked with enterprise level customers who have given up on approving internal requests because it is too difficult and time consuming.  Are they putting their business at risk?  Is there a simple solution out there to solve your compliance issues?  Probably not.  But don’t give up.  Find an area where there are solutions out there that empower remote employees, partners, branch operations — your entire distributed ecosystem — to automate the approval process, to customize a marketing piece within the guidelines you establish, or to upload only pre-approved logos and content so they can customize the message without having to do the creative themselves. (We’ve all seen their creative efforts…) Implementing the right automated system can ensure compliance and empower the folks in the trenches.

In addition, requisition-to-order cycles were slashed by 66% and total spend under management jumped by 20%.

Increasing spend under management is critical because each new dollar brought under management can yield 5% to 20% cost reductions, again according to Aberdeen’s research. The savings can come from aggregating more purchasing power, reducing administration, and taking advantage of quick-pay discounts.

But there’s a gotcha in this story. How many different ordering sites does your company use?  More than one is one too many!  I talk to customers (large and small) every day and am continually surprised by the lack of a standard, web-based ordering site for corporate and field employees to use.   The problem exists because every supplier brings in their own system.  You end up with a proliferation of sites to order from; one for your office supplies, one for your variable print, one for your warehouse/release items, one for your promotional products, one for your MRO products and on and on.  All of these suppliers have the latest and greatest online ordering site, but you end up with a training, automation, and integration nightmare.  Can you really expect to train the salespeople to use 7 different systems?  Do all of these systems integrate into your financial accounting system to reduce order entry, minimize the number of orders, invoices, checks, etc. The proliferation of sites compounds the problem and dramatically increases the costs associated with the processing of an order.

The prescription: consider how you can consolidate your online ordering into one site, reduce training requirements, integrate those orders into your financial accounting system and provide comprehensive reporting for all of your orders across all of your suppliers.  There are many technology solutions to take advantage of to consolidate your ordering, punch out from one catalog to another, or extend your enterprise procurement systems out to more desktops using simple to deploy web catalogs. There are real savings to be had by simplifying and standardizing how you order.

Accenture’s summary of th efindings is not the easiest prose to read. Sometimes I think big-buck consultants are paid based on some multiple of syllables, sentence length, and the number of times they can quote someone at Toyota. But there are interesting insights from GE, P&G, CitiGroup, ITW, BestBuy, Amgen and others.  So I’ve decided to link to the full article — just click on the tea pot — and summarize the key points here.

1. The only way to get good at business transformation is to practice it every day. The status quo should always be held in disdain. As the article says: “Foster creative discomfort.”

2. Improve your “market sensing” abilities. Your spider sense must be highly evolved, because you’re going to be asking for change when things look good. There will be resistance.

3. Don’t let senior leadership become entrenched. Shake it up. See examples from Walmart and Amgen. Strive to promote early and bring in new blood as needed.

4. Be ready for traditional project management techniques to fail. Gantt charts work well for predictable, linear flows. The “transformation journey” will have dark alleys and dead-ends. New tools will be needed.

In summary: at all times, high performers seek to control their own destinies.