Thursday, August 17, 2006
MBA's and you
Any business is a two-way streeet. You're selling to customers. they're telling you how you're doing, what they want, when they want it, and at what price. After meeting with two bright, young MBA grads this afternoon, their diplomas still shining and poolished, it hit me how out of date the average MBA program today really is. For web-based services, distribution, account management, customer aquisition, etc. the average MBA program doesn't seem to grasp the conecpt of instantaneous communication and the need for very rapid decision making based upon the massivly filtered and queried information that's available today. When our second candidate described his standard marketing proposal in terms of steps taking weeks to determine even basic customer analysis and customer segmentation, I knew that somebody (their educators) was missing the boat--stuck in the 1980's not in the world of clicks, long tails and continual public review.
Latest and Greatest
It's been a while since we've crcked open the blogger entry...time to get writing again. Right now, we're in the process or relocating RTBS's main office from Avon, NY to St. Cloud, Florida. Why? Anyone who's had to deal with the following will understand:
1. High NY Taxes. From unemployment insurance, supplimental unemployment insurance, corporate taxes, personal taxes, monthly and quarterly filing, contractor regulations, sales taxes, etc. In Florida? We'll save tens of thousands of dollars each year by simply relocating our main office, our servers, and our base of operations into this lower-cost area.
2. business growth. Western NY has none. Each month, the unemployment rate goes down--but only because the population levels are dropping faster than jobs are being lost. Right now, if you're not in the health care, telemarketing or support industries, you're dead in the water. We've seen major and minor suppliers, customers, and retailers all either packup and move elsewhere or simply go out of business.
3. Business sentiment. Customers and suppliers in NY are all 'simply holding steady, making the minimum maintenance payments.' Growth and development is a thing of the past as everyone's hoarding what little cash they can generate. In Florida, in the Orlando area, the business satisfaction index is over 90 and growing. There is a constant influx of both qualified, educated people as well as a rapid growth of new retail and service industries.
4. Weather. It's an old saw, but most of us would trade 8 months of rain, mud, snow, and gray skies for 3 months of very hot summer. Sure, NY's great from mid-May through early October (most years), and of course it's 'stay inside hot' from June through August in Florida, but to be able to be outside, to enjoy the sun, and to not pay heating bills for 6 months, we'll take Florida.
5. Social networks. With the rapid growth of educated families in Orlando and the converse--the steady decline of entrepreneurs and educated workers in New York--the social fabric of middle Florida is much mofr positive and progressive than that found in New York. Which, of course, leads to more rapid-fire business growth and development.
6. Technology. Due to the nature of the beast, technology enables us to be literally, at our customers' fingertips, wherever we might be based. Our contractors are still located throughout the country--some in NY, North Carolina, Virginia, Florida, California, etc.--but technology has lowered the cost of everything from video conference to telephone communications to flights, that RTBS can maintain a virtual presence in all of our customers' communities at a cost-effective rate--enabling our customers to maintain their support and contact with us at no additional cost.
RTBS is one of North America's leading suppliers of Marketing and Retail services to small to mid-sized retailers and associations. Our integrated Marketing, CRM and Retail platform allows our network of customers to increase profitability, increase sales, and increase marketing effectiveness--without the major costs and headaches of the large CRM solutions.
We're excited about this relocation and looking forward to continue to serve our growing customer base. But don't call us to complain about the snow!
1. High NY Taxes. From unemployment insurance, supplimental unemployment insurance, corporate taxes, personal taxes, monthly and quarterly filing, contractor regulations, sales taxes, etc. In Florida? We'll save tens of thousands of dollars each year by simply relocating our main office, our servers, and our base of operations into this lower-cost area.
2. business growth. Western NY has none. Each month, the unemployment rate goes down--but only because the population levels are dropping faster than jobs are being lost. Right now, if you're not in the health care, telemarketing or support industries, you're dead in the water. We've seen major and minor suppliers, customers, and retailers all either packup and move elsewhere or simply go out of business.
3. Business sentiment. Customers and suppliers in NY are all 'simply holding steady, making the minimum maintenance payments.' Growth and development is a thing of the past as everyone's hoarding what little cash they can generate. In Florida, in the Orlando area, the business satisfaction index is over 90 and growing. There is a constant influx of both qualified, educated people as well as a rapid growth of new retail and service industries.
4. Weather. It's an old saw, but most of us would trade 8 months of rain, mud, snow, and gray skies for 3 months of very hot summer. Sure, NY's great from mid-May through early October (most years), and of course it's 'stay inside hot' from June through August in Florida, but to be able to be outside, to enjoy the sun, and to not pay heating bills for 6 months, we'll take Florida.
5. Social networks. With the rapid growth of educated families in Orlando and the converse--the steady decline of entrepreneurs and educated workers in New York--the social fabric of middle Florida is much mofr positive and progressive than that found in New York. Which, of course, leads to more rapid-fire business growth and development.
6. Technology. Due to the nature of the beast, technology enables us to be literally, at our customers' fingertips, wherever we might be based. Our contractors are still located throughout the country--some in NY, North Carolina, Virginia, Florida, California, etc.--but technology has lowered the cost of everything from video conference to telephone communications to flights, that RTBS can maintain a virtual presence in all of our customers' communities at a cost-effective rate--enabling our customers to maintain their support and contact with us at no additional cost.
RTBS is one of North America's leading suppliers of Marketing and Retail services to small to mid-sized retailers and associations. Our integrated Marketing, CRM and Retail platform allows our network of customers to increase profitability, increase sales, and increase marketing effectiveness--without the major costs and headaches of the large CRM solutions.
We're excited about this relocation and looking forward to continue to serve our growing customer base. But don't call us to complain about the snow!
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Can you hear the drums?
That slowly growing backbeat that you hear in the distance is the growing chorus of our customers, new joining with the old, voices combining to make a melody describing the business environment--and what they need most to cope with it/maximize net from it. For the last 4 months, one overreaching theme has been getting louder and clearer: marketing. Our retailers and service firms are max'ing out their internal, operational efficiencies and need to get more bang for their marketing buck. Spending $0.75 per flat postcard mailer to 10,000 potential customers with no way to gauge the ROI doesn't cut it anymore.
Where we'd originally expected a significant portion of our monthly revenue streams coming in from management fees, we're now seeing a rapid increase in revenues from eMarketing campaigns and customer intelligence reports/usage. Plus, we've had customers literally fall into our laps as a result of unplanned, casual conversations with local business owners, discussing their marketing and advertising strategies. This fits like a glove with our ongoing Marketing and Customer Analysis upgrades (the ones that we mapped out last summer).
The spanner in the works is defining the pricing pressure points that provide our customers with cost-effective solutions. The marketing systems are transitioning from a smaller, service/retail-support system into a main, revenue generating division. Because our marketing systems are part of our 'Special Sauce'--something that isn't easily replicable by our competitors at our price range--we can reasonably expect that transition to be successful and to not be holding an empty bag at the end of the next 12 months.
Within the next 3 weeks, we will complete our first truly integrated Community--linking customers to retailers to suppliers. Pizza party for the sales and technical divisions!
Where we'd originally expected a significant portion of our monthly revenue streams coming in from management fees, we're now seeing a rapid increase in revenues from eMarketing campaigns and customer intelligence reports/usage. Plus, we've had customers literally fall into our laps as a result of unplanned, casual conversations with local business owners, discussing their marketing and advertising strategies. This fits like a glove with our ongoing Marketing and Customer Analysis upgrades (the ones that we mapped out last summer).
The spanner in the works is defining the pricing pressure points that provide our customers with cost-effective solutions. The marketing systems are transitioning from a smaller, service/retail-support system into a main, revenue generating division. Because our marketing systems are part of our 'Special Sauce'--something that isn't easily replicable by our competitors at our price range--we can reasonably expect that transition to be successful and to not be holding an empty bag at the end of the next 12 months.
Within the next 3 weeks, we will complete our first truly integrated Community--linking customers to retailers to suppliers. Pizza party for the sales and technical divisions!
Friday, January 13, 2006
January '06
Welcome to January 2006. In our ever-endless shift from a technology-based management company to a technology-enabled management company, it's a continuous re-organizing of priorities and time allocations. When it used to be allowable for our technical staffers to take that extra time to flush out their projects to 100% completion (as they defined it), our time is now spent getting the projects and solutions that our customers need and letting that extra 5% that the techies want to do fall to the 'to be done if there's free time later' list.
Needless to say, it's caused some furour among the masses.
As part of our ongoing marketing campaigns, we are re-positioning ourselves from a geo-centric service provider to a web-centric one. Upon review, we spend only a small fraction of our monthly time actually at customers sites, and as our customer base increases, it is more efficient for them to have meetings and dialogs with us over the 'net via vid. conference, instant message, etc, versus the the traditional 'we'll steup a meeting next Thursday.' This is a change in the small retail marketplace, as 2 years ago, most retailers with whom we'd worked and met, would not have been open to such new communication mores.
Is it a 're-positioning' or a natural evolution when you're reading the customer trends and responding to them? The MBA Question of the Day.
One of our ongoing goals is to continue to reduce the weekly time spent 'burping the baby'--this means everything from rebooting hardware to managing what should be automated details about customer accounts. The more time spent on billable hours is less dead overhead. To that end, I'm ready to throw a set of our VPN routers out the window.
Hope your New Year is going well and remember: less than 5 weeks before pitchers and catchers report!
Needless to say, it's caused some furour among the masses.
As part of our ongoing marketing campaigns, we are re-positioning ourselves from a geo-centric service provider to a web-centric one. Upon review, we spend only a small fraction of our monthly time actually at customers sites, and as our customer base increases, it is more efficient for them to have meetings and dialogs with us over the 'net via vid. conference, instant message, etc, versus the the traditional 'we'll steup a meeting next Thursday.' This is a change in the small retail marketplace, as 2 years ago, most retailers with whom we'd worked and met, would not have been open to such new communication mores.
Is it a 're-positioning' or a natural evolution when you're reading the customer trends and responding to them? The MBA Question of the Day.
One of our ongoing goals is to continue to reduce the weekly time spent 'burping the baby'--this means everything from rebooting hardware to managing what should be automated details about customer accounts. The more time spent on billable hours is less dead overhead. To that end, I'm ready to throw a set of our VPN routers out the window.
Hope your New Year is going well and remember: less than 5 weeks before pitchers and catchers report!
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