Posts Tagged ‘ROI’

When beginning or continuing an investment in a Business Intelligence (BI) system, a company must look at how it will be able to garner the largest Return on Investment (ROI) for such an initiative.  There are many factors to take into consideration in reaching the largest possible ROI.  These factors can be grouped into direct and indirect benefits:

Direct Benefits

1. Quantifiable cost savings related the more efficient access to data.  This allows analysts to spend time analyzing and not gathering information.
2. Automation of process, leading to real time savings and greater productivity.
3. Shorter budgeting and financial planning cycles with reduced effort, allowing staff to continue doing their jobs.
4. Improved efficiencies in operational groups such as inventory management, IT, facilities management, etc.
5. Reducing support costs associated with reporting while terminating legacy reports and systems that go unused.

Indirect Benefits

1. A single version of the “truth”, official company records and reports, leading to less rework and manipulation of data by individuals to justify differing views of what that data means to their groups.
2. Facilitates containment of costs based on targeted areas as opposed to just saying every group’ cuts costs by 20%, as an example.
3. Allows for the ability to run “what-if” analyses, the results of which often lead to better decision making.
4. Improved customer service, resulting in increased sales.
5. Allows for the long-term alignment of operations and strategy.

There are many other direct and indirect efficiencies and benefits that can be realized through the proper planning and implementation of BI tools and systems.  The more end-user groups that participate in the planning of a company’s BI system, the easier it becomes to change the ultimate corporate culture. Once the buy-in from the users is attained, the real savings begin, and a platform to accelerate corporate growth now exists.

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Tagged as: active garage, business intelligence, data center trust, IT Finance, matt carmen, Matthew Carmen, Return on Investment, ROI

Regardless of the size of your organization, someone is responsible for identifying the need of a service or product being purchased. One could therefore surmise this individual would also assume the ongoing ownership and maintenance of the product, providing vendor management oversight, right? Well, you might be surprised by the number of occasions on which the linear progression of identifying a need and satisfying the need becomes disconnected in technology organizations.

This disconnect often occurs when a business unit obtains approval to bring a new product to the company which in turn places new or expanded requirements on its Information Technology (IT) organization.  With their backs often against the wall, the IT department will “buy” the technology in order to meet required deadlines. What happens in this case is that the IT department ends up relying on the vendor to manage the technology, and often times let the supplier act as the IT point of contact for the “customer” – the internal business unit.  Well, as we know problems often start out small and later mushroom out of control.  This situation is no exception:  If the new product the company has developed becomes successful, IT will continue to buy more of the necessary technology for the business unit.  The next thing you know, the original contract for, say, $100,000 morphs into an agreement covering perhaps $5M in purchases – and since the vendor manages the technology, no clear internal owner exists.  A sure-fire recipe for big problems.

The process starts with the negotiation of the contract which typically initiates a rather ‘interesting” time within the organization.  The discussions with the supplier often times become stressful with both sides treating the negotiations as a form of competition to obtain the best price and terms.  This is further complicated with the coordination of the different groups who provide input and are required to approve on both sides of the agreement. For example, the finance departments will be called upon to review the financial impact to budgets and Return on Investment (“ROI”), while the procurement and legal departments review terms and conditions.  With all these organizational units involved, the final agreement ends up segregated into sections which are relevant to disparate groups within the organization, and in many instances no single person understands the agreement as a whole.  This issue can be avoided by identifying the organizational unit that owns and drives the negotiation of the agreement, and ensuring this unit also has the authority to represent the company and manage the supplier.  By insisting on thorough preparation and coordination regarding input and approval processes in advance, the individual or group acting in the vendor management capacity will not only secure a contract which is beneficial to the company but will also foster a positive ongoing relationship with the supplier.

With the vendor management role clearly defined, you will avoid the most costly mistake of relying on the supplier to manage the agreement for your company.  The vendor manager will not only monitor the suppliers’ performance, but will also leverage the vendor on your company’s behalf to provide service level and performance metrics along with other valued services such as expert consulting support.  The individual acting in this role in your company can carry the title of Vendor Manager and coordinate with the technology owner(s), or this role can actually be incorporated into the technology owner’s job description.  In any event, the most important role of the vendor manager is to routinely meet with the supplier to review performance and to insure the negotiated service level agreements are applicable and are being met.  For those of you who practice ITIL, you may even want to invite your suppliers to attend your problem management reviews.  Problem Management aims to resolve the root causes of incidents and thus to minimize the adverse impact of incidents and problems on business that are caused by errors within the IT infrastructure and to prevent recurrence of incidents related to these errors.   Inviting suppliers to problem management reviews was always my favorite way to make sure the supplier understood my business and was focused on working for my company.

Identifying issues with your existing contract will insure that your company is prepared when it is time to negotiate a new agreement. This is especially critical in large organizations with dedicated procurement departments.  These procurement teams are responsible for negotiating agreements on behalf of the technology owner(s), often based upon templates and procurement methodologies meant to cover everything from bed pans to mainframes.  In these circumstances, the vendor manager must be prepared to identify and educate the procurement manager on any issues with the current supplier. This is especially true with products that the procurement department might consider as “commodities”.   (Products are referred to as commodities when the product is seen as fungible or the same no matter who produces it.)  The commodities tag can sometimes prove to be a BIG mistake, especially with technology as this term is often applied incorrectly.  I once had a junior level negotiator assigned to a request for purchase because the procurement department perceived desktop computers as fungible commodities.   That quickly changed once we were able to quickly show – from trends in our monthly product performance scorecards that we had experienced a 20% failure rate of over 75,000 desktops that had been in service less than a year.  These failures not only had a negative impact on customer service but also negatively impacted IT service level metrics with a dramatic increase in help desk calls and required additional contracted field support to fix the devices.  The vendor manager was subsequently able to successfully team with the procurement department and negotiate product quality guarantee’s which the suppliers indicated had never before been included in their contracts.

Once your suppliers are being actively managed, your organization can maintain a fully mature vendor management model by monitoring the lifecycle of your agreements.  The hallmark of a mature vendor management lifecycle model is tracking when agreements are scheduled to terminate.    Being prepared for expiring contracts is critical because your vendor manager will make sure all necessary parties are prepared to enter into a negotiation and avoid delays which result in the original agreement being extended because the organization was not ready to negotiate.  This is often times the point where organizations which are not prepared will bring in outside assistance to coordinate the competitive bid process and subsequent negotiations.  If you believe your organization needs external assistance, make sure that whomever you contract with is not only negotiating terms and conditions, but also provides an on-going vendor management model after the negotiation.

Lastly, I mentioned the importance of fostering a positive relationship with your supplier.  You want your account manager and his/her team to be the envy of the organization for account relationships.   Obviously the amount of revenue an account team brings to their organization is a major component in determining their performance within their company.  However, don’t underestimate the importance that suppliers place on their representatives to maintain healthy relationships.  Just as within your organization, you want your suppliers’ account team to be proud to be working for their company and proudly say they are servicing your company because, at the end of the day, your success is a result of performance – and support – of suppliers’ product and services.

At this point you’re ready to begin managing your vendors.  As we’ve seen, a successful relationship with your suppliers begins not with the contract itself but with the management of the agreement after it has been negotiated.  If you haven’t met with your suppliers recently give them a call and initiate your vendor management process by asking for an account review.  Before the review, draft a list of items you would expect them to cover when they walk into the room and then compare your list with their presentation.  You’ll quickly be able to identify gaps in your supplier relationship and use your list as a roadmap for obtaining better pricing and services from your vendor.  The results are guaranteed not only to surprise yourself but will result in new respect from your vendor.

Tagged as: active garage, Brian Superczynski, contracts, costs, data center trust, datacentertrust, IT Finance, ITIL, ROI, suppliers, vendor management, vendors

Now, admittedly, the title might have confused you a bit as just about 3 weeks ago, Himanshu posted an article titled It is the ROI, not the ROC, stupid! The simplest explanation for this seemingly contradictory titled post is… the ‘C’ in Himanshu’s post was Cost whereas in my post, the ‘C’ in the ‘ROC’ stands for Communication.

While talking to my father on the phone the other day, I had a breakthrough. Not the kind my therapist would like to see, alas, but one that answered a major business question: “Why do so many managers treat communication tools like they’re made of gold and not use them every day?”  It all comes down to how we measure the ROI (Return on Investment). Maybe we sometimes need to measure the ROC (Return on the Communication) instead.

I was trying to ask some pretty serious questions about his health and Dad kept trying to avoid the conversation and wrap it up. Finally, he said “Look, this is costing you money, so we should talk about this another time…”. Now you, I and just about everyone you know has an unlimited calling plan. Talk for two minutes or twenty, it doesn’t really matter- it’s just not a concern for most of us any more. But because all he could hear was the meter running, my dad didn’t want to get into a long drawn out conversation. Remember this is a guy who taught us to call person-to-person collect for ourselves so he’d know we got to our destination safely and we wouldn’t have to pay for a long distance telephone call from a payphone- he’s a bit frugal to say the least.

That kind of thinking affects managers and organizations as well, and has a direct impact on how they use communication tools with their remote teams. Here are some common examples:

• “We pay per minute and per connection, so we’ll save webmeetings for when it’s really important” I have numerous clients who have invested in webmeeting platforms, and then refused to let people practice with them, or need to get budget approval to hold a meeting in order to keep costs down. Then they are surprised that people don’t utilize the tool or use it poorly. No one will ever practice or get proficient with a tool that they can’t use at will without the accountants watching. By the way, if you’re still paying per minute per connection it’s time to have a serious talk with your provider…they’re treating you like you’re my dad.
• “We don’t waste time on chit-chat. Keep it business” In this age of Agile, virtual, matrixed and under-resourced projects – time is money.  The myth is that the less time you spend talking the more time and money you’ll save and people can get on with the “real” work. This is a perfect example of measuring something that doesn’t indicate real results. You can’t easily measure the amount of risk-management, proactivity and trouble-shooting that good, frequent and rich communication gets you. Of course, if you really want hard metrics, measure the amount of rework, lost productivity and project overruns from not staying in constant contact with your team. Take the time to find out what’s really going on with them and who else is sucking up their time.
• “We didn’t cut the travel budget just to spend it on IT”. Okay, we all agree that the reason we need these tools is our travel budgets were slashed and they are NOT coming back anytime soon (at least not in the foreseeable future). That doesn’t mean we don’t need to communicate effectively and that there is no cost of doing business. Just because people work from home doesn’t mean (magically) it doesn’t cost anything to have them on the payroll. By the way, if you look up from the “telecommunications” line item in the budget you’ll see that you can pay for a lot of bandwidth, webmeetings and telephone calls just with the money you used to spend on drinks for the team when they could get together or put more subtelly … Psssst… “It’s really not that expensive.”

Effective questioning, timely feedback and sharing information have value to an organization and a team. We need to focus less on the dollars spent and more on the value created by those interactions. Sometimes we need to focus on the Return on Communication

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Tagged as: active garage, budget, Communication, Greatwebmeetings, investment, online communication tools, Return on Communicaiton, Return on Investment, ROC, ROI, telecommunication, Wayne Turmel, web meetings

As an entrepreneur, whatever product or service that you sell, it is critical to look at not only how it helps your customers; but also to look at how it might hurt your customers. Most of the offers that exist in the marketplace end up being ordinary and have little value associated with them, because they end up “hurting” customers at places which have serious consequences for them. The “hurt” can be of different types (and depending on what the level is, it hurts the marketability of the product or service) and you want to stay as far away as possible from the one that comes with the serious consequences for your customers.

Here’s a little personal story of mine: I recently bought a new bed frame from one of the discounted retail stores. It was a beautiful wooden (brownish) frame; both my wife and I loved it. While my wife strolled around to the other parts of the store, I walked around the bed inspecting it and marveled to myself how it’d look in the room we were thinking of putting it in. While I was mentally playing taking this beautiful piece of furniture home, I heard my wife call me from the other aisle. As I started walking towards her casually; I felt a sharp pain under my kneecap and immediately sat down. That’s when I noticed that the bed had a protruding part on the corners of it (the corners where the legs would go) which could easily go unnoticed (Hello?) and “hurt” people. Suddenly, the beauty, the wooden frame and the comfort vanished from my mind and all I could remember was the “hurt” that I felt from my little accident with the bed frame and how “dangerous” it could be for people in the house. The product (or service) called “The bed” immediately lost its marketability with me, its customer.

While you are designing your product or service for providing the fantastic help that it’ll provide your customer, be sure you give a thought to how it might “hurt” your customers. While one can argue that it’s impossible to come up with a product/service that is “Perfect” in all aspects and causes no “hurt”, one can surely design it in a way so that the “hurt” is kept to a minimum. Here are a couple of levels of hurt to consider while you think of the design of your offer:
1. Fundamental Hurt – This is what I call the “Deal Breaker”. This is the hurt that will instantly kill any marketability of your product or service. It wouldn’t matter how aesthetically tasteful your product is; it wouldn’t matter how practical it is or how valuable it is. If your product or service hurts a fundamental concern; it will, in all likelihood, not be very marketable. My example, above fits the bill for “fundamental hurt”. The bed, regardless of how comfortable and elegant it was, was dangerous to the fundamental concern of my body. The moment that dawned upon me; the offer was outta-the-door for me.

2. Derivative Hurt – This is something that the customer sees as not impacting his or her core concerns and thus, is open to a cost-benefit analysis of whatever product or service it is that he or she is considering buying. It’s like your offer gets a Second-chance-at-least kind of hurt. This is where most of the “good” products or services fall in. They all “Cost” something (which obviously hurts the customer in a way since it eats into his or her resources) but if the Return is good, the Cost is viewed as more of an investment and the conversation suddenly centralizes around the ROI, and not just the “Hurt”. As an example, offers such as entertainment magazines and Television fall in this category. They provide customers with a sensation called “Relaxation” and “Fun” in return for the money and time they cost the customers.

When you are designing your products and services; look closely for what kind of “Hurt” they might cause your customers… and stay away from the “Fundamental Hurt” as much as possible!

Tagged as: active garage, business, cost, derivative, design, entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, fundamental, help, himanshu jhamb, hurt, investment, offer, offering, product, Return on Investment, ROI, sales, service

Everyone does not view social media with the same lens. Different people have different stands about social media. For some people it’s a nuisance and for others it’s their life.

I have grouped the kinds of relationships people have to social media in seven categories. You may be able to identify yourself in one of them or somewhere in between. You will notice that the investment you make and the returns you get are directly influenced by the approach you take.

As you can see, only in the last two kinds of relationships can you expect reasonable ROI from social media.

So, here are the seven kinds of relationship in detail:

1. Despise

You hate social media and social networking. You might even think it’s a nuisance. You think it’s artificial and you just keep thinking about the old days when people could really meet and talk. This new kind of building relationships seems so fake to you. Some of you may think that this is a fad that’s going to go away sooner than later. So why bother?

None of you in belonging to this category have any plans for participating in the social media. Some of you may question the intelligence of others who are participating in social media. Obviously, you can’t expect to see any returns from social media with this attitude.

2. Distant

You don’t hate social media but you don’t love it either. You are standing at a distance and watching all the action. You are sometimes amused, sometimes surprised and sometimes shocked with what’s happening there. When you read a success story you are encouraged to begin your journey but you stop yourself saying that you may not be ready to make that BIG commitment of time, energy and mindshare into this without being fully clear about the return on that investment.

Some of you in this category may be afraid that you might abandon the ship prematurely if you are not fully equipped before you start. Whatever be the reason to keep the distance, you can’t expect any returns from social media with this stand.

3. Dream

You are more open to participating in social media but the right time has not come in yet. You know what you will do when you finally start engaging in social media. In your mind, you have a grand plan but the time to execute has not come yet. Even here, your ROI from social media is not much for you as the marketplace rarely places a premium on people’s dreams. Dreams are important but action is even more important.

4. Deal

You are someone that had no choice but to jump into social media. Someone posted about you or your company on a blog. Someone tweeted about you or your company on Twitter. You are now forced to respond, especially if you feel the article or tweet was not backed with facts. You jump into the social media to set the record straight. This is a reactive approach rather than a proactive approach. However, you can still benefit from dealing with the situation on social media. People appreciate that there is human touch from the company. You might decide to engage proactively from now on or you might again go back to the sidelines and come back whenever there is a need.

5.  Dabble

You are definitely on the social media side of the fence. You are experimenting on various tools, techniques and tactics albeit without a clear strategy. You act as if the latest tools that surfaced were the missing piece in the puzzle. You embrace new tools with vigor but you don’t follow through with the same vigor as new tools in the marketplace continue to distract you.

While you may not get a long-term return using this approach you do see some benefit as you start making and building relationships on the web.

6. Dedicated

You are committed to participate and engage in social media. You are active on various networks, ask and answer questions and do everything to engage with community. People know you as not only competent in your domain but also as a “nice and helpful” person and probably will reciprocate back when you are in need. You are on the path to building long term relationships that matter.

This is where you start seeing serious returns from social media.

7. Dance

This is social media mastery at display. You know what it takes to “dance” in the social media. You not only help – you ensure that your help is “valuable.” You not only give away stuff but you ensure that what you are giving away is “SIGNFICANT.” Whether it is an article, eBook or a tweet, when you talk people listen and they are thankful that you are there in social media and you are accessible. You change lives via social media and make things happen.

Your returns from social media skyrocket with this stand.

If you are not engaged in social media, I urge you to start engaging with the view to “dance” someday. That’s where all the magic is.

Tagged as: active garage, engage, facebook, flickr, linkedin, Rajesh Setty, relationships, Return on Investment, ROI, significant help, Social Media, Twitter, youtube

Many different areas of business have been covered in the past several weeks on Activegarage.com from the dance of entrepreneurship , creating and protecting your intellectual property, to protecting your company’s data .  Our goal is to help people transform their world by coming up with uncommon offers in the marketplace. 

So, now you’ve come up with the next breakthrough and are ready to take your first step as an entrepreneur.  You’ve come up with a name for your company and have set up a corporation.  You’re excited.  Financial freedom is just around the corner.  You go to register your company’s domain name and you come to find out…someone already owns it.  Don’t give up. 

Here are some simple steps to help you to continue moving forward.

1.     Change Your Domain Suffix

If .com is not available, look to see if any of the other domains are available (.net, .biz, etc…).  Be careful though as you might be in violation of a possible trademark infringement if the other domain in use is a legitimate business.

2.     Change The Name Slightly

Work on finding variations of the name you want until you find one that is available.  Again, be careful with this option as well as you could also be in violation of a possible trademark infringement. 

3.     Buy The Domain Name

Domain names are bought and sold all the time at sites like GoDaddy.com or BuyDomains.com.  Having the right domain name online can help establish your company’s identity.  Determine what the value of building your brand without being able to use the company name and domain you desire and compare that to what it would cost to buy the domain you want.  If the latter is less, simply buy the domain and continue moving forward. 

4.     If You Already Own The Trademark

If you already own the trademark to your company’s name, you have some options.  If you are dealing with a cybersquatter, the first, and less expensive, option is to contact ICANN and file a dispute under the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy.  The cost to go this route varies as it depends on the number of domains filed in the dispute and the number of panelist required.  You can also send a cease and desist letter to the party that is “squatting” on your desired domain.  A sample letter can be found here .  While this process might be time consuming and cumbersome, it is considerably less expensive than the final option. 

5.     Seek Legal Advice

When you’ve exhausted all of your options, this might be the only one remaining.  Before going down this path, consider the time and money it might take if you try to resolve this matter with the “help” of an attorney.  If this goes to court and you win, you could have all or part of your legal expenses paid for by the other party, but be careful as you could very easily lose and incur legal expenses and still not have the name you wanted for your business. 

Unfortunately there is no one way to resolve this issue, but it is important to understand that you do have options should you encounter this problem.  It is just as important to determine how much time and money you are willing to invest before you go after the name you want.  Sometimes it’s just easier to come up with a new name.

Tagged as: active garage, Branding, business, cease and desist, Copyrights, cost, data security, entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, http://activegarage.com, Identity, Intellectual Property, Leadership, legal, management, marketing, Return on Investment, Robert Driscoll, ROI, Sales and Marketing, trademark

“Every Successful enterprise requires three men:

a dreamer, a businessman, and a son of a bitch.”

Peter McArthur, Photographer

History has shown that whenever the Presidents’ approval rating drops under 50%, the markets rally and the growth averages 9%. Sounds strange?

Change isn’t always popular and as a young COO running the operations of a $25 Million manufacturing company, I found myself being disappointed if at the end of the week I did not find any graffiti about myself on the notice boards of the plant restroom. I could not understand why I felt disappointed until one day it came to me … I was not active enough and I needed to take more risks that introduced change into the idling system. CHANGE is what causes popularity loss. Not the talk about change, but the actual change/shakeup of someone’s perceived state of “unruffled” comfort.

Note this sequence:

Popularity DOWN when CEO demanded –

• higher efficiency
• more overtime
• more output
• more sales effort

Popularity UP when CEO increased –

• increased benefits
• increased commissions
• increased paid time off programs

You can continue this list, but you see the trend.

The formula for business is: Profitability = Revenue – Costs.  Simple and obvious yet very complex at the same time. Every CEO must (and CEO performance is based on) driving revenues UP and driving cost DOWN so that they do not grow in the same proportion as the revenue. That will assure growth in Profitability.  Now compare this objective of every CEO with issues related to His/Her Popularity. In most cases, when one strives for Popularity, this will increase the cost of running the business and will stagnate revenue growth.

For example, Steve Jobs, a dreamer, a businessman, and most unpopular CEO (to insiders) of Apple, created an unprecedented business success story for a company that was about to collapse.  While he strived to create a new type of industry and product lines for Apple, there were still stories about people trying to avoid at any cost getting in the same elevator with him. Today the results are outstanding and those who benefited on the share price growth are happy, but most of them still do not like the CEO who introduced the CHANGE, got them all to work hard and sacrifice a lot of personal comfort in the process.

Leadership is tough on popularity and likability. Executives and managers who strive for popularity, friendship, and for “being liked” by their peers and employees will become less effective and as a result, often impede their progress to succeed in the marketplace.

Let’s take it to my favorite examples with our kids. There is always this dreadful moment when your 5 year old suddenly in frustration tells you: “I hate you …”. What just happened? Your popularity rating just dropped to the bottom … but most likely this was after you got him to do what you wanted as most of the time these words come after your insistence on doing something they do not want to do on their own. If you let them have their way and drop your demands … well, you know, you will get a smile and “I love you” and a kiss. It is hard to demand and insist … but it builds character and eventually respect; after recognizing that your demands were reasonable and fair and that after performing as requested, you gave them candy or something they wanted so much.

Lets just substitute the striving for “love and popularity” with striving for respect and you may hit the perfect balance.

So here are two magic life rules for a better balance that will lead to respect and efficiency:

• Always demand performance, but be reasonable and fair and adjust these demands to the person you are asking to perform these requests.
• Always acknowledge the effort of the implementation even if the result is not 100% to your expectation, but do not hesitate to ask and insist on another solution if the result is unacceptable.

General Patton was known to demand performance and would not take any excuses, for that many called him “the most respected SOB” in the forces.

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Yakov Soloveychik is a business advisor, mentor and a personal coach to CEO’s and business owners. Yakov’s professional and entrepreneurial career includes VP,  COO, CEO positions and service on board of directors with a number of technology based companies in Los Angeles and Silicon Valley

Tagged as: active garage, business, Business Management, CEO, Change, Entrepreneurship, Identity, leaders, Leadership, management, Patton, respect, Return on Investment, ROI, SOB, Strategy, www.activegarage.com

Description of Help (v):  to give or provide what is necessary to accomplish a task or satisfy a need; contribute strength or means to; render assistance to; cooperate effectively with; aid; assist:

Help is surely something that you would like to have in abundance in your personal and your business endeavors. Have you reflected on how much help is around us, and what it is to us?

Last week I led a value workshop for, hopefully, a future client. Our sales lady has been in communication with this organization for over a year now and in an effort to offer them help to facilitate moving forward with a deal a one day Value Workshop was suggested to help them identify their solution needs. We used a method called Pain Chains^TM developed by Keith M. Eades. This organizational assessment method enables you to evaluate the impact and value of an organizations pains. The concept is that pains in an organization are felt by individuals within the organization. These pains are often as a consequence of some other interdependent individual’s pain within the organizational process chain.

As an outcome of the value assessment, one of the pain chains the participants estimated, increased the costs at around 7% of payroll and another contributed to the loss of revenue in the order of 8-10% of revenue in a primary division. This accumulated cost, in a single year, far outweighs the solution costs and to think that they have lost a year already in indecision and likely another year between making a decision and realizing the benefits of which ever solution they choose. Ironically this organization helps their clients through their product and services offering in a very similar way.

At the end of the value workshop we asked for feedback and all responded very favorably to the exercise and how it had opened their mind to the impact of their problems and the urgency with which they needed to address the situation. However one particular individual’s feedback really stood out – while very enthusiastic about the outcome of the workshop and what had been revealed to him he concluded that “ …there was nothing in the session that we couldn’t have done ourselves!”

That assessment is 100% correct, but what it doesn’t take into consideration is at what cost to you and your organization. Yes anyone can do just about anything given enough time, but time is the one thing we have no control over which makes it scarce and expensive. That is why we need help and that is why when we get help acknowledge it and realize how much it is contributing to your Return On Investment (ROI)!

Tagged as: ability, business, capacity, cost, effective business, results, Return on Investment, ROI, Strategy, time

It is important to understand what is going on here. There is a real shift underway. Building your brand through traditional tools and trends need a closer look. Are they making you vulnerable? Are they making you a stronger business?

Speed of change is HIGH. Advertising has been moving online and is becoming less effective. The payouts of online advertisement are declining. It is harder to justify marketing budgets and ROI for online advertising.

Here are some current trends:

Trend #1 Balance of Power
There has been a big power shift and today consumer has unparalleled power.

Trend #2 Emerging Marketing opportunity
More intimate customer relationship marketing is possible.

Trend #3 New Technique to build brand identity
You can shape your brand identity through response to social market. Transperancy and humility are rewarded. Authenticity is identity.

Every marketeer is now struggling with the following questions:

Should we be on FB?
Do we start a blog?
Do we offer everything for free?
Why aren’t we tweeting?

There are a lot of people who know what is social media BUT are not sure how to use it. Social Media is focused on the long tail so it is customized for easy adaptation by consumers. For marketeers to use it effectively, they need to demonstrate leadership in using social media. They need to develop social leadership strategy that delivers desired outcome and meets their business objectives.

All day I read articles, blogs, case studies about brands that tried something — usually — missed the boat, and are now enjoying the not always positive feedback we are all so ready to give. But then again, every once and a while a company comes along and really hits the nail on the head.

The Nature Conservancy leverages Facebook and Digg for cause marketing: How TNC raised nearly $75,000 through Facebook Causes and a partnership with Lil Green Patch, a popular Facebook application. The group has also built significant brand awareness through the social news site Digg! (As reported by Jonathon Colman of TNC, September 29, 2008).

So why bother with social media?

I meet with a lot of companies, and almost always I am asked to “give an example of how a company has increased their bottom-line with social media.” Well, now, in addition to my usual spiel of stats, graphs, etc., I can also hand case studies. What it comes down to is any company can find success with a social media strategy; they just need to have the right goal in place. They need to understand where their audience is hanging out, and get in there with a good story … start passing it around. The rest usually takes care of itself.

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Contributed by Deepika Bajaj, President and Founder, Invincibelle, LLC. Invincibelle helps women who live and work in a multicultural world to accelerate their professional growth. You can follow Deepika on Twitter at invincibelle.

Tagged as: advertisement, blog, budget, deepika bajaj, facebook, Identity, invincibelle, Leadership, marketing, online advertisement, Return on Investment, ROI, Social Media, Twitter, www.deepikabajaj.com, www.invincibelle.com

I just got back from a 3 day conference where I met some of the most accomplished individuals in the business world. Many of them were successful entrepreneurs who had started companies, failed time and again… and then succeeded. Many were leaders in executive roles in their organizations. The conference had a few break out sessions which were led by some of them. I couldn’t help but notice how they moved around and conducted themselves. Here are some of their actions and what they meant to me:

Imagine the increase in productivity in whatever you do, if all the meetings and sessions were run with these fundamental tenets in mind, regardless of if you were a participant or the leader.

Imagine the ROI!

…I’ll leave you with that thought to reflect upon!

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