I just picked up a Magellan RoadMate 1400. There was no real magic behind my decision. I’m not usually taken by all of the hype to buy the latest and greatest thing (although the live traffic feature of the 1430 would’ve been nice - if it would’ve been in stock). Instead I relied upon references from friends heavily, my own experiences , a competitive price, and brand to a lesser degree.

I resisted purchasing a GPS up until this point just because the need wasn’t pressing enough - and probably some of that bravado men share about taking direction. Well, yesterday I had finally reached a tipping point and picked one up. After one day of using the product, it struck me, what could my business learn from a GPS?

What’s in a Choice?

There were a few key factors in my decision to not only purchase a GPS, but which brand to purchase. Why did I purchase a Magellan instead of a Garmin or TomTom?

1. References: My friends recommended the Magellan simply by using it. I had used Garmin, and liked it, but I never heard any recommendations.
2. Price: The price was competitive.
3. Branding: TomTom? What is that? I can’t take that name seriously.

So, when all things were equal, the references were the key deciding factor. Price and brand were also important, but not weighted as heavily.

What Encourages Loyalty?

Any experienced business owner will tell you that the initial purchase is only one step in the life cycle of sale. You must also deliver upon or exceed the expectations the customer had at the time of purchase.

Many companies rely upon the hope that the hassle of a return is greater than the disappointment in their ability to deliver on the packaging.

The time it took me to pull the GPS unit out of the bag and begin to feel comfortable using it was about 10 minutes. The hardest thing about getting started was figuring out how to open the packaging. Do packaging engineers get their kicks out of “open-proofing” their packages?

So, I was up and running in about 10 minutes and had it mounted in my car within another 10 minutes. And in using it for just one day, it helped us not only get from point A to point B, but make a few educated stops along the way.

Here are my takeaways from what a business should learn from a GPS after the sale:

1. Quick Setup: The easier your product or service is to use from the start, the more I want to use it. This also means your business collects on the residual revenue more quickly if you have this model in place.
2. Friendly to use: There is a difference, in my mind, between quick setup and daily use of the system. The principal here is not to let the product or service get in the way of the user experience. Instead, you want to enhance the user experience.
3. Give me what I want, not what you want: If you give me what I want in an easy to use and friendly package, I will likely buy from you. I was finding things I wanted to see in minutes, not just what the computer had “in stock”.
4. 1.3 million points of interest: If I get stuck and need help, the GPS was there with suggestions. I may or may not take them, but only when I got stuck did it attempt to help. Remember, don’t get in the way of a man and his natural sense of direction.

Remember, running a business isn’t so much about pushing product out the door. This is important, but you have to ensure that product is a fit for your customers in the long term for you to build loyalty.

Today, customers can generally buy competitive products from many different sources, and more and more consumers are savvy on price- and feature-shopping. Now you must figure out whether your features will not only bring your customers closer for the initial sale, but if your benefits will keep your customers coming back for more. In this case, Magellan was a winner and I have moved from shopper, to customer, and now returning customer should my need for navigational GPS again arise.

What do you think of when you think of the term ‘currency’ ? Dictionary.com offers these definitions of currency:

cur·ren·cy [kur-uhn-see, kuhr-] –noun, plural -cies.

1.	something that is used as a medium of exchange; money.

2.	general acceptance; prevalence; vogue.

3.	a time or period during which something is widely accepted and circulated.

4.	the fact or quality of being widely accepted and circulated from person to person.

It is interesting to notice that while money is certainly mentioned, first and foremost, currency is a medium of exchange, indicating value does not lie within the value of the coin or dollar intrinsically. So then, who decides what manner of exchange is to be employed and what value is to be placed upon the denominations used?

As they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

In social media terms, Twitter has followers, FriendFeed has subscribers, and Plurk has Karma… they are all status symbols signifying importance or authority… Who places value on them? The participants of those communities, of course. If you are not fond of social media, or have not been exposed to it, then you might ask why such trivial things matter?

Let’s broaden our analogy: For those in web-based marketing, often termed search engine optimization (SEO), maybe it’s unique visitors (uniques) or conversation rates. For those in brick-and-mortar businesses maybe it’s customer retention rates, revenue per employee, or sales per square foot.

All in all, we all seek to assign value to our transactions and why? Quite simply, to survive.

We live in a world where everything has a price, and in assigning value to your product or service you attempt to broadcast your worth to your clients, to the world, and most importantly - to you, yourself.

Ah, now there is the rub. Up until this point, this is all basic economics, right? Well, have you ever considered the reason you are so caught up in trying to inflate your value is to take a place of superiority for yourself - above others?

Let me give you a more personal example:

I started this blog several months ago for a reason, I would even call it a cause. My goal was two-fold:

1. I wanted people to know who I was.
2. I wanted to share my thoughts with others, and encourage debate and discussion.

I dug in, and learned more and more about blogging tools, tricks, and sought any advice I could get. I worked long hours building this site, and had quite a few frustrations. Then somewhere along the way, I discovered I was spending more time pumping my blog - pumping myself up - and less time creating content. I found I was spending less time enjoying myself.

My currency had become me… pushing me, pumping me up, talking about me… Does that sound as self-centered as it looks while I’m writing this?

Now here is my adjusted goal:

1. I wanted people to know who I was.
2. I want to share my thoughts with others, and encourage debate and discussion.

Now that I am focused on connecting with people, I am much more focused on creating content and having fun. I have rediscovered the joy of interacting with others simply for that - not with ulterior motive in mind. Where the currency I had traded in used to be a currency of “me”, I have learned that trading in a currency of “you” actually betters my experience, and comes back to me ten fold.

So as you travel through your life, ask yourself, “What currency do I trade in?” If it is a currency of “me”, you may find that you are feeding your ego and starving your soul.

Ken Stewart’s blog, ChangeForge.com, focuses on the collision between the constantly changing worlds of business and technology. Ken is also the Director of Technology at Kearns Business Solutions.

At my current employer, I have had the opportunity to build a network connectivity team to complement and merge with the hardware break/fix team. That was a brutal transition, and at a several points I almost didn’t make the cut.

Our culture was resistant, our customers didn’t understand why things were changing, and there wasn’t really a clear roadmap to follow. It was even tougher because we had the makings of a great team, but there were positions where individuals still existed - not team players.

Over time, and with patience, we worked through many of the issues. I then handed my team off to another set of managers, and began the road of building a call group, a professional services group, and a training group.

Today, I had an interesting conversation with another of our managers. Basically, a large customer’s request had not been met, and I ended up being on the receiving end of the customer’s frustration.

I could tell that my previous trials had helped me grow as a problem solver. My first instinct was not to blame or harass anyone; it was to first ensure everyone understood the call process procedure and then begin to assess if there were any ways to augment a great team with some tweaks to any of our processes.

What I and the other manager ended with was a scheduled meeting where both of us would trace through our call process and find ways to streamline the process - asking tough questions and playing devil’s advocate as necessary.

What I find interesting about these types of sessions is we do not solely focus on a single aspect of solving an issue, nor do we allow the one customer drop to dictate an entire process. We review all options from personnel to technology in order to determine what the most value-added options are.

Some decisions will come back as too expensive to implement, some will show as flawed, and some just plain won’t be adopted no matter how well intentioned they are. We have to demonstrate the laser-focus on our mission and goals.

Keep your Vision in sight at all time and demonstrate a real desire to listen to the needs while resisting the first impulse to start “swinging axes”.

Another guest post by a good friend and author, Corey Smith, mastermind behind the business and technology blog, masterthebusiness.com. In his spare time, Corey has also founded several companies to include Resumango and TributeMedia as well as being the Chief Web Architect for Dealer Marketing Systems and Editor-in-Chief at Office Product News. I do hope you enjoy reading this post as much as I did.

Change is not easy to implement in an organization. People are resistant to change. The fact is, much of what we try improve with change fails. Not because that the change is bad, but because we don’t make sure the change itself succeeds.

If you are the lone wolf crying in the office, then don’t expect any of the change you want to implement to happen. The only way for change to work is if it starts from the top down. If the boss doesn’t care about what you are trying to accomplish, it simply won’t happen.

I find it interesting when IT departments implement some new technology and then wonder why it doesn’t work. More often than not, the business leaders in the organization don’t want to make any change, so the new technology simply falls on deaf ears.

If you are going to push for any change in your organization, make sure the boss is on board or be prepared to fail.

 Corey Smith’s business and technology blog provides a common sense approach to running your business. He also maintains a news feed service for the copier, printer and document management industries.

Let’s be honest here. You are all pack-rats with your e-mail, aren’t you? If you are reading this you probably have an affinity for technology. And that being the case, you probably spend a good bit of time in e-mail. Let’s face it, e-mail is a wonderful tool to help communicate with a lot of people often and keep track of things in writing.

I just took a look at my work account and I sent roughly 3200 e-mails in 60 days. That’s an average of 53/54 e-mails every day (including weekends). And let me tell you, I don’t always write very short e-mails…

I typically receive anywhere between 80-120 e-mails every day, just in my work account mind you, and this generates a lot of work and communication.

In our environment we use [tag]Outlook[/tag] with an [tag]Exchange[/tag] back-end. This is very convenient for a lot of reasons and offers some wonderful collaboration tools. Everybody that’s anybody integrates with Exchange and/or Outlook.

Let me tell you though, from a network administrator’s position, Exchange can be a real bear. About 18 months ago we had to conduct an emergency migration to another exchange server. That was 28 hours of pure agony as we watched many 2 GB mailboxes move 1 item at a time. It took ALL night to move 70 e-mail boxes.

That’s when I started thinking about tools that would help me groom the exchange database, called the [tag]Information Store[/tag] (IS) and increase the ability to search e-mails as Outlook’s built in search feature is pretty weak.

I began scouring sources, and found a strong candidate - EMC’s [tag]e-mail Xtender[/tag]. I kept on searching, but there didn’t seem to be anything else in the market - at least not for the SMB. So I began the long process of working with a partner company, asking questions, viewing demos, and trying to ascertain if the solution would be a good fit.

The price tag started at $5000, and then quickly went to $10,000 after some discovery - and ended around $20,000 for what we were really trying to accomplish. I found that I had to fill out lengthy technical surveys and even have EMC approve the installation.

All of this for 68 mailboxes?

I began shaking my head… I needed something to make my life easier - not more complex. Exchange with Outlook and [tag]PST[/tag] files was bad enough, but the pain of that wasn’t enough to bring us to spend that amount of money and more importantly time… With more than 5 major projects going on already, and a slew of minor ones, I just couldn’t stomach a 2-3 month roll-out.

So for now, we will continue to be pack-rats and continue with the way we do business until something comes along that can knock my socks off. For now, as much as I hate to admit it, I am going back to the old saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

I was meandering around the web, and ran across this really great little site. I have some more investigation to do, but I thought I would share this. It’s called Back of the Napkin, by Dan Roam. There is a great little flash presentation on the site. 

 

 

 

 

 

I believe that any problem can be solved with a picture. And that anybody can draw it.

Are you a glass half empty of half full kind of person? Do you seek answers or offer excuses? I can throw a stone and hit someone that is giving excuses instead of solving problems - and I used to be one of them, too.

A couple of days ago, I started talking with someone who seemed very bright, confident, and seemed to bring a lot of experience from past positions. This person commented the training program was far less than expected and in fact didn’t think one even existed.

I paused a moment, and asked a question, “With whom have you spoken about your concerns? What types of training do you feel you were ‘promised’ but have not received?

I listened intently for a period of time. I heard things about needing to know how to show features of systems X, Y and Z. I heard things about filling out leasing paperwork. I heard things about sales training.

And you know what I heard loud and clear? This person was feeling a little deflated and had allowed some obstacles to get in the way, I heard reasons “why not”, but not “how can I…?” questions. Basically, being brutally honest - I heard excuses.

As a manager, I do not wish to deflect any blame either. We are responsible for creating training programs for our teams. To be quite fair, I could lob out a whole slew of excuses as to why I’m not very good at this, but suffice it to say - I’m not. What I can say is that I look at life as a great proving ground. There are all sorts of lessons to be learned, and if I am asked I am always more than willing to stop and explain something - in particular why something works the way it does.

So you better be listening, and you should be expecting me to tell you why. I expect you to reason out the rest and ask me questions if you are unsure. You are an adult, as am I, and never want anyone to feel like a problem is bigger than they are. It’s all a perspective game… a game of how to eat an elephant.

If you want to succeed in life - not just exist - you must have a seeking heart and set your mind about reaching your goals. Don’t allow obstacles to turn into excuses of “why not” and the stand in your way.

In a recent post by Michael Krigsman over at ZDNet, Krigsman asks if IT is becoming extinct (also note the cute url post: (…?p=666). While Michael most definitely has experience within the technology industry, the title is a bit sensationalist and the subject matter seems a bit over-the-top… While I agree many of the yester-year IT leaders are ill informed on how to bridge business objectives using technology, I disagree that IT will become extinct.

The executives must understand how to hire talent that is customer service focused, and not keep hiring the “computer guy” (SNL). Of course IT as a whole is not going extinct, but Krigsman is correct in that many job roles are becoming a commodity. However, there are so many dynamics abound within each company, let alone a vertical or IT as whole, to simply gloss over and come to some reactionary hypothesis.

Just because individuals are espousing this gripe or that complaint about corporate IT, it shouldn’t coerce you into putting on blinders and cracking the whip…

After all, we are talking about people when it is all said and done. What was it the once beating heart of IT cared so deeply about? Wasn’t it a way to help people reach new levels of productivity and feel good about their contributions without having to repeat the meaningless and mindless tasks required of yesterday’s business?

Well, it looks like Scoble did it again. In his article ‘Why enterprise software isn’t sexy‘, Scoble sends a shot across the bow at Bill Gates, calling him out on whining about the lack of enterprise software coverage in the blogosphere. Albeit an older article, I found it compelling, so here are some thoughts…

Scoble asks:

Well, how many people in the world actually buy business software? … Instead, let’s look at the business of journalism or even of blogging. We’re paid to deliver page views. Advertisers call it “CPM” (cost per thousand viewers). Now, what’s going to get more of you interested? Consumer software that you actually have a role in adopting or purchasing or enterprise software where some CIO somewhere else in your organization decides on?

Scoble bemoans having to use SAP because some CIO in his ivory tower made a business decision and forced him to use it. Why not look at end user adoption as a key metric? Can you live by the subjective metric of customer satisfaction? Embrace this simple fact, when you really meet the needs AND wants of your customers, it becomes a game changer… it’s ultimately the greatest metric for true success (see my previous posting Are You Focused on What Your Customers Need, or What They Want?)

Scoble also asks:

Any of you have any ideas on how to make business software sexy?

Sexy? Some of the pundits are asking why make enterprise software sexy? That’s not the point… well not exactly. Maybe I’m sick in the head, but I think it’s uber-sexy to get paid well to help a business run well and keep customers (internal and external) happy!

My contention is business software doesn’t necessarily need to be sexy, but it definitely needs a PR make-over!

Several years back, I know everyone always wanted more information and more data to make [insert adjective of choice here] decisions… Fast-forward a few years and just about everyone uses a search engine of sorts to find what they need in the mountain of data we are inundated with. What does that say about the amount of information we ingest on a weekly, daily, or even hourly? … ‘Google’ is now a verb!

I specialize in the managed print services (MPS) and document management solutions (DMS) spaces, and we always talk about discoveries as well as structured and unstructured data. Structured data is what most people are used to interacting with in the form of line of business (LOB) and database systems. Unstructured data is often the disparate file folders on servers and spread across the sea of corporate hard drives.

When interacting with all of the stakeholders in play at the various levels of our company and our clients’ companies, I often hear comments about how we need this information or should have that data. Sure, having the data is one thing, but is it meaningful to the company or our clients?

You see information is a tricky thing. If you don’t have enough the risk of making an ill-advised and/or unsupported decision is quite possible. However, there is an even more dangerous myth afoot in the world today; That is too much information is even worse.

Well how could too much information be a bad thing? Ever try drinking water from a fire hose at full blast? Exactly!

Our sensory perception allows us to take in quite a bit of information, process it, and make subsequent decisions or adjustments in order to achieve certain goals. Our minds can only handle so much information before it starts filtering out what it believes extraneous to allow us to focus on what is important. When I moved back from San Diego, the silence and still of a country night was maddening for a time; my mind had gotten use to all of the motion and action and took some time to ratchet back down.

With information hitting us from so many directions every day, to see a massive blob of numbers in rows and columns means absolutely nothing until our mind can process the information. So how do you dissect the data into manageable and usable information?

I won’t go into some of the more arcane methods of BI, but one easy way is to manage by exceptions. This goes back to having processes to manage your business. If you have flexible processes to manage your business you can watch for exceptions to your process and manage to those variances. Be cautious of the variances, and spend time investigating the ‘why?’ behind them; these will often lead you to discoveries of flawed processes. It is important to heed and fully understand the problems, and when realized move quickly and accurately to resolve them.