Tempering the Supply Chain With Better BI

Tempering the Supply Chain With Better BI
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By Michael LockeCRM Buyer Part of the ECT News Network 10/22/09 4:00 AM PT
Competing in an industry that sorely needs the business visibility and analytical capability that BI tools deliver, companies in the consumer packaged goods industry are becoming more mature and sophisticated in their information management strategy. Research shows that CPG companies are often more organizationally mature when it comes to several areas of process, knowledge management and performance measurement.eMarketer Whitepaper: Optimizing the E-Commerce ExperienceFrom the Web to the Contact Center, are you prepared to proactively engage and keep your savvy customers? Read how e-commerce leaders are optimizing their sites with ratings, reviews, live help, Web analytics, mobile and more. Many organizations in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry are experiencing a trade-off between the benefit of high product volume sales coming at the expense of extreme data complexity. At the same time, these companies struggle to maintain open lines of communication with their retail customers and distributors in order to better manage the upstream flow of product.The main challenge however, is that these issues are no longer specific to the IT department. Line-of-business managers in marketing, sales, manufacturing and procurement -- to name a few -- are now forced to drive tangible business value from this quagmire of data and generate a healthy flow of information throughout the value chain. In the face of these challenges, many CPG organizations are gravitating toward business intelligence (BI) tools to help create those supply chain linkages and deliver product more efficiently.
Aberdeen's April 2009 Benchmark Report, "Moving Past Spreadsheets: What You Need to Know About BI Deployment Strategies," demonstrated that 40 percent of companies in the CPG industry are driven toward BI technology in order to address their need to improve speed of access to relevant business data. This Aberdeen Sector Insight examines companies in the CPG industry to determine how these organizations are driving BI into the hands of more business managers in order to better manage fluctuating product demand. The Value of Timely Information Customer service is a crucial element of every business, but considering the today's economic uncertainty, coupled with the top-heavy concentration of many retail customers, channels and distributors, CPG companies are in a precarious position with respect to their customers. Retailers are more price-sensitive than ever, and with the fierce competition inherent in the CPG world, the ability to resolve customer issues quickly -- or preempt them altogether -- can mean the difference between retaining and losing millions of dollars of business. CPG companies recognize the need for customer visibility and have leveraged BI tools to help to understand, instill retention practices, and grow their customer base.With clean, relevant and timely information at their fingertips, these companies are able to address customer issues in a shorter time frame, ultimately leading to a higher degree of customer satisfaction and overall retention. The ability to access information faster and make quicker decisions based on that information is a key underpinning of improvement in several areas of the business, including customer service.
Faster Information, Better Decisions From a business perspective, what sets CPG companies apart from other industries and enables them to provide heightened customer service is their ability to find information faster and make more timely decisions.Aberdeen's March 2008 Benchmark Report, "Data Management for Business Intelligence," revealed that companies of all shapes and sizes struggle to manage an average of 15 unique data sources. Such extensive data heterogeneity can wreak havoc on the most sophisticated of IT departments and lead to incorrect or irrelevant information being delivered to the wrong people at the wrong time.BI tools offer the ability to sift through mountains of data in order to find a single tidbit of information that can aid in decision making. The data shows that companies in the CPG industry have successfully leveraged BI to reduce time-to-information and time-to-decision. A Foundation of Organizational Maturity
There is a definite chain of competency leading to improved business performance. Superior customer service is supported by the ability to gather and act upon information in a shortened timeframe. This improved time-to-information and decision is founded upon several areas of organizational maturity. The ability to properly leverage a BI solution goes well beyond mere features and functionality. Companies need to have a wide portfolio of technical capabilities to capture, assemble and deliver the right information to the right people at the right time. Aberdeen's research shows that companies in the CPG industry are more organizationally mature when it comes to several areas of process, knowledge management, organization and performance measurement.
Given the complex nature of their information environments, CPG companies are more likely than firms in other industries to have developed or acquired the appropriate technical horsepower to manage the collection, assembly and delivery of information to key stakeholders. Having these defined BI skill sets helps ensure that the data is accurate and more relevant to the appropriate stakeholder. From a management standpoint, CPG companies are also more likely to have the ability to monitor use rates of the BI system. This promotes greater adoption of BI through the ability to reduce or reallocate underutilized systems.
From a technology standpoint, CPG companies also excel in their ability to leverage features and functionality in order to get information into the hands of non-technical users faster. Between order tracking, inventory management, supplier lead times, promotions management, and many other information-intensive applications, CPG companies consume an overwhelming number of reports on a regular basis. The ability to automate the generation and delivery of these reports allows companies to free up IT resources for more technically complex issues, while at the same time delivering and making valuable information pervasive to the many business users throughout the enterprise. Beyond the IT Department Perhaps the most notable trend emerging from Aberdeen's data is the push to bring BI and analytical visibility into the hands of non-technical line-of-business (LoB) managers. While many employees think of BI as a strategic tool for planning, budgeting and forecasting, largely residing in the financial department, or as a tactical tool for real-time visibility into business information, the simple fact is that BI tools have grown in business applicability and improved in ease-of-use, cultivating an environment in which just about any business function from HR to procurement can find value in BI. This has been established time and again in the research. Aberdeen's June 2009 Benchmark Report, "Pervasive BI: Six Steps to Enterprise-Wide Business Intelligence," demonstrated that Best-in-Class companies were more likely to deliver BI to more roles within the organization as well as more LoBs across the company.Pervasive BI is becoming a priority for more organizations across many industries, but the tie-in with the CPG world becomes evident when considering the importance and associated fragility of CPG -- retail relationships. While the market downturn has had a varied impact on the CPG world -- some companies have seen a predictable slowdown as disposable incomes have shrunk, while others have seen an influx of business as consumers migrate to lower-priced items -- the only real certainty is uncertainty. As CPG companies look to mitigate that uncertainty to the best of their abilities, many strive to create information linkages to their retail counterparts in order to better manage fluctuating demand and nurture their retail customer relationships. On the other side of the fence, retail companies are following suit by leveraging BI and analytical tools for better visibility into supplier activity. Aberdeen's November 2008 Benchmark Report, "Increasing Retail Productivity: Enterprise-Wide Business Intelligence," showed that the top-performing retail organizations were far more likely than all others to exploit their analytical strategy to help create supplier and back-office information linkages.With the appropriate usage of tools like BI, the vaunted ideal of open communication and information exchange between CPG and retail companies is no longer a pipe dream. For their part, CPG companies are also working to leverage a pervasive BI strategy to bring analytical visibility across the fence and into their retail partners. The February 2009 benchmark report, "Collaborative Business Intelligence: Three Steps Toward Superior Customer Responsiveness," showed that 38 percent of CPG companies were already working toward a collaborative effort with their suppliers and customers to deliver BI capabilities across their value chain. The Challenge of Market Volatility The outlook for the CPG industry, however, is not entirely rosy. As mentioned previously, while some companies experience a counter-cyclicality in their business, wherein sales actually improve during an economic downturn, the majority are negatively affected by the volatility in the market. Fluctuating energy costs, exchange rates, and shipping costs can wreak havoc on these companies.If the overall goal is to generate sustainable profitability and revenue growth, the various elements of information management discussed previously are crucial steps on the road, but they typically aren't the end game themselves.Competing in an industry that sorely needs the business visibility and analytical capability that BI tools deliver, CPG companies are becoming more mature and sophisticated in their information management strategy. Despite flat or declining top- and bottom-line business performance, many CPG companies have assembled the necessary components of success with a proper BI implementation.

One of the most inspiring clips on what our country

One of the most inspiring clips on what our country and it's citizens can and should be - Ronald Reagan Plato once said: "The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men". I now realize this to be true. I've spent most of my life thus far ignoring political issues and rolling my eyes at the claims of politicians. I joined the Republican Party initially to anger my family and grandmother, as they were strong and dedicated Democrats. Yet I was excited to vote. I felt all grow'd up casting my vote the first time. As time passed, I would vote for a candidate I thought was most enlightened. Most of the time it was a Republican. When I didn't know the issues or candidates, I voted for some third party wannabee.2008 is yet another election year where opponents from various political parties square off on various issues and what they believe is the best solution or path to improve the great country known as the United States of America. For most Americans, politics holds very little importance in their lives. They go about life excited for the next winner of Dancing with the Stars, or some other mindless alleged reality show, engaging in a never ending consumption of mindless entertainment that holds no real worth a week later. Others are so involved in taking care of their families and living paycheck to paycheck that to take their nose from the grindstone could be catastrophic. So, for most Americans, who can be bothered with politics when life is in the way and the government seems to grow bigger and bigger with no interest in listening to it's citizens? Well, now I can be bothered, and I am.The last 2 years or so, I have awakened to the need to be involved in the political process. I have awakened to find the ideals I was taught in my youth, constitutional values, have been trampled upon, sometimes before I was of legal age. The Democrat Party of my parents and grandparents and beyond has been hijacked by fabian socialists cloaking themselves as "saviors" of the poor and creating victims of anyone they can spin it upon. If you aspire to be wealthy, they wish to redistribute the success of those that can manage money to those that cannot, including to the federal guberment. The Republicans spend and bend. They waiver in the wind instead of standing strong on the values that founded this country and that have proven true over time. America is in jeopardy of becoming tribal in nature as each party becomes more and more partisan and in one case more socialistic by forcing compassion upon the masses. Being awakened recently gives the one advantage of seeing the distraction techniques of the press and politicians, mostly the democrats in my not so humble opinion. You know the trick, where they say look at this (a meaningless sock puppet) and then with their other hand they are reaching around your back and robbing you of your wallet. Then you have the media, brand names we all grew up with and thought we could trust, covering up and pretending to be objective. In some cases they seem so convincing, yet when you dig into the facts they omit and backgrounds of those involved, you find stuff that makes Hollywood spy conspiracy plots look like childs play. The issues with the politicians and the media are so deep and disconcerting that you could write volumes on the connections to corruption, journalistic and political malpractice, and their greed for power and wealth.Lately I've been noticing movement in the idea that all the problems will dissappear if we abandon capitalism, if we allow the government to decide how to help the poor and needy, if we allow the government to determine how patriotic we are by taxing us and businesses (large and small), and how just handing out money will satisfy us to the point we are blind to their mistakes and ambitions to usurp power from the people. But this is the key that people do not seem to remember, The power belongs to the people and not to the government. As President Reagan said: "If no one among is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else". So when you hear soundbites and various political pundits on TV that are pretending to be experts that know what's best for you or make you feel guilty or frustrated for feeling otherwise, that perpetuate the myth that government knows best or props up someone that believes in more government as the default winner, such as Barack "Hot Air Balloon Ride" Obama, you need to remember what our founding fathers said and warned against in the case of the government gaining too much power. You need to learn what other great US Presidents have said and done in the past in regards to protecing us, we the people, from growing government and over taxation in the guise of helping the less fortunate. Government's job is to provide protection of the opportunities, not equalize opportunities to bless one group of people and to punish another. It's job is to ensure personal responsibility and the opportunity to pursue happiness, not guarantee it through forced compassion or via the spreading of wealth.Socialist and Marxist ideals that many high ranking democrats embrace and implement have failed time and time again. So those that embrace it must be aware of this fact and therefore must be desiring the destruction of the United States as we know it. If not, then they are emotionally invested and no longer practice common sense and are not fit to lead the rest of us.Now, before I finish, I'm not happy with Republicans either. If I could find a party that truly embraces the constitution, our founding values, personal responsibility, limited government, helping the poor by encouraging compassion from it's citizens instead of mismanaged guberment programs, protecting the environment without buying into whimsical data like that of man-made global climate change or forcing everything to be studied and litigated to death, as well as embracing religious freedom - not freedom from it; then I would join that party. But for now the choices are where we have are: socialists, renamed as progressives as if their idears are new and unheard of, posing as democrats. Then we have goof balls with holes in their wallets pretending to be conservatives. Then a bunch of so called independent parties that have nothing of substance to offer but wastes of time when looking at their platforms/candidates - think Green party and the gal they nominated as their candidate for President ... she slapped an officer for inconveniencing her as she went through security screening at a congressional building ... now that really instills confidence.So when you go to the polls this year, think deep down in your heart and reflect upon what you know about history, and then think about which candidate will embrace the values our country was founded upon, even at a local level. Then ask yourself: Which one promises to do the hard things that need to be done? Which one is less likely to be buying off your vote with free stuff we all pay for anyways? Which one sounds like they will cost less to us as taxpayers? Which one will allow you to be free and make your own decisions with your money and not meddle in your private affairs? I know who I am voting for, after 2 years of research and study, even if I do not like all my choices. But I refuse to let my country become a socialist country and I will fight the rest of my days to keep this it free for us all, as best I can, and no matter how small I can assist in such an endevour. So, on a personal level, I ask you to please support those that believe in smaller government and those that will "fight" for you and what is truly important. We do not need nor should we desire the guberment and our representatives to tell us otherwise nor to ignore us. Change is good, but only if we know what that change is and that it is soundly rooted in principles that are proven to work for us, not against us.Remember this, Compassion can be exercised individually, but freedom can be taken from us collectively.

Responsys Acquires Smith-Harmon, Keeps Brand for Now
By Christopher Heine, ClickZ, Oct 29, 2009
E-mail services provider Responsys will announce today the acquisition of the digital creative agency Smith-Harmon in what's being characterized as an undisclosed cash-and-equity deal. The Smith-Harmon brand will remain alive -- at least in the near term -- as Responsys looks to leverage its newly gained team of designers and copywriters to pick up e-mail clients and other interactive advertising accounts. "Their creative services are such a big positive that it's sort of a halo effect for us," said Dan Springer, CEO of the San Bruno, Calif.-based Responsys. "We like the idea of the combo branding... But I think over time, [the Smith-Harmon brand] will become less and less important and will probably fade away." Springer singled out Smith-Harmon's embedded video-in-e-mail capability and social media know-how as two specifically key assets getting picked up by his firm. Also, he suggested that a wide range of campaign marketing issues like e-mail deliverability and landing page testing can now be more adeptly handled by his company. And while Springer said that Responsys will continue working with clients' established third-party agencies, the purchase allows it to target more share of the creative design market than before. "[Clients] won't need to have a third-party agency or have any kind of project management or coordination between the two players," he said. There's no question that Responsys looks to distance itself from an e-mail-channel-only reputation while becoming known as more of a cross-platform brand. With this in mind, Springer lauded the acquisition as a vehicle for his company to improve its strategically planned integrated marketing programs, including various online mediums, mobile, and direct mail. Its upgraded cross-channel management assets will help power a new set of interactive marketing tools called "Interact Suite," which will also be announced today. Springer said the Smith-Harmon deal is the company's biggest acquisition since buying predictive analytics firm Loyalty Matrix two years ago. "Smith-Harmon has more experience in deeper cross-channel work," he said. "This was an opportunity to get [talent]...not only from a volume standpoint but also in terms of quality and experience." Springer said the deal will not affect the jobs of Smith-Harmon's more than 20 employees -- who will remain in their Seattle office. He predicted having a local presence in the Pacific Northwest will bring new accounts that Responsys's Bay area location otherwise wouldn't.
Meanwhile, the two brands were hardly strangers before today's announcement. For instance, they co-released a series of e-mail marketing studies last spring. And they already shared clients, including Orbitz, SalesForce.com, and Walt Disney Co.

From Bloomberg to Small Hoboken Campaign, Social Media Matters

From Bloomberg to Small Hoboken Campaign, Social Media Matters
By Kate Kaye, ClickZ, Oct 29, 2009
New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg's campaign is spending a small portion of his giant campaign budget on search ads promoting his Twitter account. Meanwhile, across the Hudson in the mile square city of Hoboken, Mayor Dawn Zimmer's campaign can barely afford to run ads online much less blitz voters with TV and radio spots like her Gotham counterpart. Despite their financial differences, both campaigns count social media efforts on Facebook and Twitter key components of their reelection strategies. For the Zimmer camp -- a three-person team on a shoestring budget -- it's a means of disseminating messages inexpensively, building grassroots volunteers, and counteracting misinformation.
Though Twitter followers are an arguable measure of campaign momentum, the differences between Bloomberg's and Zimmer's numbers and those of their opponents is worth noting. Like Bloomberg, Zimmer has far more followers on Twitter than her six opponents; she has around 165 while the others each have fewer than 50. The chasm between Bloomberg and his closest opponent, Democrat Bill Thompson is far wider: Bloomberg has more than 12,000 Twitter followers while Thompson has only around 900. There's no arguing that, at least for Bloomberg's campaign, the stark difference compared to his opponent is indicative of the candidate's popularity and the campaign's momentum, at least relatively speaking. "You really have to look at it in the context of our specific objective here which is we're running for reelection against Bill Thompson," said Jonah Seiger, managing partner with Connections Media and lead digital media strategist for the Bloomberg for Mayor 2009 campaign. In addition to targeting Google ads to people in New York City who search for "Twitter," the campaign is asking supporters to "tweet out the vote" by enabling the campaign to automatically update their Twitter accounts to state, "I support @mikebloomberg for re-election! Help me Tweet Out The Vote on 11/3...The campaign is also asking voters to "donate" their Facebook status through a similar automated message to be posted on election day. The Bloomberg camp has been acknowledging some people who post about their support of the mayor -- many with high numbers of followers -- through its own tweets. "It's another part of that listening and engaging strategy," said Seiger. "We want people to know that they're part of our campaign." Thompson's campaign is asking supporters to "donate" their Facebook profile pictures to the campaign by uploading their photos to a system that will overlay a Bill Thompson for Mayor banner on the image.
Bloomberg's Twitter followers spiked in August, when the mayor wrote his own posts for a day, and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey made note of it in his own update. "A big part of that bump happened right after Mike tweeted for the day," Seiger said. Bloomberg's Risk-Averse Twitter ApproachYet, despite Bloomberg's Twitter prowess, the campaign's approach to using the short messaging service is torn from the traditional political playbook. Campaign staffers post almost exclusively about organizations and individuals who have endorsed the mayor, or to highlight negative information about Thompson. "Because we're not pretending that those tweets are coming from Mike, it just wouldn't make sense for it to be like, 'I just had a bagel,' " explained Seiger."These are campaign-oriented messages." According to Seiger, the Bloomberg camp doesn't have a social media team per se. Rather, "It runs across interactive and communications and field and get-out-the-vote...This campaign is a fully integrated operation."
"The one thing the Bloomberg campaign doesn't want to do is to make mistakes, especially in New York, where there's a level of [media] scrutiny that's [intensified]," said David All, president of conservative digital consultancy David All Group. He also suggested that if executed well and in a consistent, steady manner, Twitter can serve as a way for campaigns to steer media observers to interesting information or campaign tactics in a non-risky way. Less intense scrutiny of smaller campaigns like Zimmer's means it can probably take more risks. Yet, her campaign isn't exactly going out on a limb. It, too, is sticking mainly with campaign messages like, "Our opponents are outspending us, but with YOUR help we will continue to change #Hoboken City Hall." Zimmer Camp Fights Myths on FacebookZimmer's team is also relying on free social media to counteract what it deems untruths. On Facebook recently, the campaign wrote, "There is a large amount of misinformation coming from other campaigns regarding the NJTransit resolution...You have heard the myths, now look at the facts." The update linked to a Q&A on ZimmerForChange.com. Calling the use of Twitter and Facebook "integral to our campaign," Zimmer Campaign Manager Sam Griggs told ClickZ News, "What we can do is a fact check on our Web site and get the word out on Facebook and Twitter." The campaign also launched LivingInHoboken.com, a site intended to host photos, video, and other content generated by supporters. So far, though, most of the few submissions have been posted by the campaign team. In this last week before the election, the Zimmer team is also running display ads through networks geo-targeting Hoboken residents. Though Zimmer has only around 200 Facebook supporters and around 165 Twitter followers, Griggs said they are "the most keyed-in, most informed, most involved people...they're influencers." Zimmer, who also serves as Hoboken's city council president, has held her acting mayoral post since July, when newly-elected mayor Peter Cammarano resigned following a corruption scandal. The Zimmer camp posts around once per day to Twitter, while the Twitter activity of most of her opponents has been spottier if not nonexistent. "What's most interesting to me...is not that the Zimmer campaign is doing anything so innovative, but that even the other candidates that do have money have chosen not to leverage the social media space," said Corey Kronengold, campaign volunteer and managing editor of OnlineVideoWatch.com. "The cost of one direct mail piece...would enable them to do some very interesting social media campaigns."

Tech Talk: Florist Switches Payment Platform

Tech Talk: Florist Switches Payment Platform
By Elizabeth Wasserman
An online fresh-flower seller found that sales increased dramatically after the company deployed a new software-as-a-service secure payment solution that integrated customer relationship management.KaBloom is a Massachusetts-based online florist in business since 1998 that has a patented technique for shipping fresh-cut flowers in water overnight. The company found that sales increased dramatically after switching to a new online payment platform that allowed the firm to better communicate with customers and allowed customers to more easily process payments, CEO David Hartstein tells IncTechnology.com. Elizabeth Wasserman: You have a patented system for sending fresh flowers in water to customers over night. How did that impact your technology decisions? David Hartstein: We've been in business since 1998 and our business has gone through different cycles. Today we have over 30 stores but our business model right now is focused on mainly selling online at KaBloom.com. The majority of our stores are in Massachusetts. We also have stores in Chicago and Florida. But we deliver nationally. Fresh cut flowers that are delivered over night are usually delivered by FedEx without water. When you go through the rigorous distribution and logistics within FedEx, you can not pack flowers in water. Think about taking a bottle of water and putting stems inside. If this ends up on its side or upside down, the water will be all over the place. We have a patented technique where we are the only one in the world that can ship fresh flowers in water via FedEx. Our flowers can be in any position, upside down and sideways, and no water will spill. When we started offering this to customers, we needed a new platform, a new way to communicate with our customer and tell them about what we do, what we have, and why we are different.
Wasserman: What did you decide to do?
Hartstein: We decided to implement a new payment platform called whizPay mainly because it provides reliability and ease of use. It provides a very easy customer checkout process. The back office that we have with it has very rich functions. It assists us with product description, with the content, with our stores and our stores managing platforms. Each store has the ability to manage their orders. It's a central platform that they can access from different locations. They get a notification when an order comes in for them. They have the ability to log in to the main platform, communicate with the customer, change the order, change the address. Without having to have an administrator do it for them.
Wasserman: At the same time, does it protect your data? Hartstein: It's all secure. There is information that can only be managed by the administration and not by each store. They can not delete a customer's information. There are other benefits, too. For example, say we have a store in Virginia. That store knows their customer base and knows what the customer likes. They have the ability to display the designs that their customer likes so that when the customer orders a certain design, the system knows to go to that store to deliver that product. We have the ability to say that product X can only be delivered from Y location.
Wasserman: What it easy to implement? Hartstein: It was easy -- as far as anything in technology is easy. We launched Sept. 1, 2008 and we never had to during that process shut our site down and bring other alternatives online. There are always hiccups but we've never had issues.
Wasserman: What results have you seen?
Hartstein: Since February of this year, we have seen an increase of about 50 percent in orders through the new platform. That is quite astonishing in this market. There are two reasons for this. First, we have a product we sell that no one else sells and that is that we are the only one can deliver flowers in water from coast to coast over night. Second, our management function within our platform allows us to communicate with our customers in a much easier way. var disqus_title="Tech Talk: Florist Switches Payment Platform";var disqus_message = "An online fresh-flower seller found that sales increased dramatically after the company deployed a new software-as-a-service secure payment solution that integrated customer relationship management."; var disqus_url="http://technology.inc.com/internet/articles/200906/tech_talk_hartstein.html"; var disqus_iframe_css = "http://www.inc.com/views/css/disqus.css";Using Twitter to Find Customers
By Minda Zetlin Most businesses think of Twitter as a promotional tool, but it can also be used to find sales leads. Here's how to use Twitter to find potential customers and how to convert those contacts into sales.
Boloco, a burrito restaurant chain with 16 locations often runs ads in a Boston newspaper. The ads contain coupons for the chain’s popular burritos for a special price of $3. It makes sense to advertise in Boston, since 13 of the chain’s 16 restaurants are there, but CEO and co-founder John Pepper wished the ads could also bring customers to Boloco restaurants in New Hampshire and Vermont. So, when he ran one recent ad, Pepper also posted a photo of the coupon on Twitter, inviting diners to bring in any image of the coupon -- a photocopy, printout, or even an image on a mobile phone -- to get the discount. “It was a way to bring people outside Boston in the print advertising, and a way toincrease our visibility,” says Pepper, whose Twitter ID is @boloco. The tactic proved wildly successful, he says. “Usually we get about 350 coupons on that kind of promotion. This time we got 900, including the mobile phones. About 25 percent of our transactions that day came from the coupon, which never happens.” In effect, he says, posting the ad on Twitter decreased cost per reader by increasing circulation. Connecting with customers Most business that use Twitter think of it mostly as a promotional tool, a way to announce new products, perhaps gain readers for a blog. But some smarter companies are actually using Twitter to sell products, such as Dell Corp., which recently acknowledged that it had made $3 million in sales in two years over Twitter, primarily by posting coupon numbers for discounts of 10 percent or more on Dell Outlet items. “There’s no reason not to try Twitter,” notes Stefanie Nelson, marketing manager for Dell, who created Dell Outlet’s Twitter campaign. “There’s no cost, and it’s a limited time commitment, at least it was for me at the beginning. Before we built up the following and reach that we have now, it took me literally minutes a week.” (Things have gotten a bit busier now that @DellOutlet has over 700,000 followers.) According to Nelson, the most important first step is to know exactly what you want your tweets to accomplish. “Understand why you’re on Twitter,” she says. In her case, she adds, the objective was to quickly sell Dell Outlet items, which are usually excess inventory. And, she says, “If you know your objective, and who your target audience is, Twitter can be just as effective for a small company as a large one.”
Boost sales with Tweets Using coupons to create boost sales is only one way to reach customers with tweets. Here are a few others: Give your company a human face. Pepper uses TweetDeck to track mentions of “Boloco” on Twitter, and one day it flagged a tweet in which a woman bemoaned the cool, rainy weather this summer and pondered whether to spend the afternoon at Boloco or a different restaurant. “I’ll respond to that one, with something like, ‘I vote for Boloco!’” he says. Twitter users are usually pleasantly surprised, he adds. “They expect @Boloco to be like @DunkinDonuts. They don’t expect to hear from the head of the company.” There’s a delicate balance between making human contact, and sharing too many everyday details that may not interest your customers, Nelson says, a dilemma she partly addresses by using @StefanieatDell for more personal tweets. Whatever you do, she advises, avoid spamming followers with promotional direct messages not specifically written for them. Find customers when they’re looking for your product or service. Searching Twitter can be a very effective way to find new customers. For instance, Rocky Mountain Ace Stores, an affiliation of Denver area Ace store owners, uses monitter to search Twitter for both keywords and locations of tweeters. One day, the group flagged a Denver man worrying about insects in his lawn. “So we tweeted to him about beneficial insects, such as ladybugs, which will eat bugs all summer, and which we sell,” says Andy Carlson, who owns an Ace store in Denver and is on the group’s board. “He wound up coming in to one of our stores and buying ladybugs.” Chris Savage, CEO of Wistia, a video-sharing site for business use, advises putting some thought into picking the terms you search on Twitter, just as you would for meta tags. “Research the most frequently searched terms in your market on Google and other search engines,” he says. “Then search or monitor those terms on Twitter. Deal with disgruntled customers -- fast. One evening Ace customers posted an angry tweet because a tool he’d bought from a Denver area store broke after one use. “We got in touch, recommended which store he should go to to return the item, and alerted the manager at that store,” Carlson says. “He didn’t know that Ace hand tools all carry a lifetime guarantee.” The man was very impressed, and went from being angry at Ace to being a devoted Ace customer. The complaining tweet came through late at night, Carlson notes, well after the stores were closed. And, he says, it was especially important to intervene quickly. “You don’t know whether he’s going to go back to the store right away, or stew about it for three or four days and tell more people. The more time between the bad experience and the resolution, the more likely he is to tell his friends, so the quicker we can solve a problem, the better.” And that’s the nice thing about Twitter, he says. “You can catch a problem when it happens, and do something about it.” var disqus_title="Using Twitter to Find Customers";var disqus_message = "Most businesses think of Twitter as a promotional tool, but it can also be used to find sales leads. Here's how to use Twitter to find potential customers and how to convert those contacts into sales."; var disqus_url="http://technology.inc.com/internet/articles/200907/twitter.html"; var disqus_iframe_css = "http://www.inc.com/views/css/disqus.css";

The Character of Your Web Content

The Character of Your Web Content
By Brent Leary
The only way we stand a chance of having the content of our business character judged in the age of social media is by creating Web content that is full of character. In his immortal speech delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King Jr. shared his dream for this country. In one of the most quoted parts of the speech, he spoke of his wish to see his children judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. Those words will live on forever to inspire generations of people to come. Because the content of our character is what tells people who we are, what we believe in and what we stand for. And through this speech we understood the content of this remarkable man’s character.So if we’re to be judged, we’d like to be judged by our accomplishments, capabilities, and by what we’re made of. And from a business perspective, we not only should want to be judged in this manner, we need to be judged as so. However, the people we seek judgment from do not preside over courtrooms and pound gavels, but rule over social networks and comment on blogs. But shrinking attention spans coupled with an exponentially-increasing supply of online information is making it harder for us to plead our case to the judge. One thing we do know -- the only way we stand a chance of having the content of our character judged in the age of social media is by creating content that is full of character.
Some may confuse character-filled content with colorful content. Others may feel images, pictures, and videos will turn heads and focus eyeballs. And they absolutely can, but only for a minute if there’s no real substance accompanying the color. Because substance is what our online judges are looking for to allow them to make important decisions. And while it is important to offer up content on a regular basis, the quality of it is the most important factor.Quality of content not quantityMany feel it’s too time consuming to create good content, or that it’s too daunting a task. But you don’t have to write volumes to share the content of your character. Abraham Lincoln needed less than three hundred words to express his feelings for what took place on a battlefield in Maryland during his Gettysburg Address. What many feel was the most important speech in our country’s history is shorter than the average blog post. No Flickr picture or YouTube video necessary. But even today those words move people to tears. Just as Martin Luther’s words, nailed to the door of a church in Germany, started a religious revolution that’s still being felt almost 500 years later. Using content to display our true character, as individuals as well as business entities, is not a new thing. But we have to be ready and willing to make sure the content we produce represents us in a truly meaningful way. Meaningful to us -- as we need to represent ourselves and our businesses properly. More importantly, we need to make it meaningful to the judges out there who have to make the important decision on whether or not we have the expertise, experience, and character to help them answer the challenges they face. Despite the obstacles we are faced with, in terms of creating content that captures the attention of our online judges, it’s time to get over it. Don’t tell it to the judge, because they have their own issues and concerns to deal with. They are looking for help -- good help. They’re willing to search for it, discuss it, and share their story in order to find it. So use pictures, videos, blogs, and whatever you need to share your story. Post once a day, once a week, or once a month. Automate, co-create, and user generate it if it can help streamline the generation process. But remember one thing: All the judges ask is that you make it as easy as possible on them to find the real you, by creating content that allows them to understand your business’ character. Now go out there and throw yourselves on the mercy of the court.Brent Leary is a small-business technology analyst, adviser, and award-winning blogger. He is the co-author of Barack 2.0: Social Media Lessons for Small Business (http://barack20.com). His blog can be found at http://brentleary.com, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/brentleary.Tech Talk: Online Meetings Serve Clients By Elizabeth Wasserman A Connecticut based information technology company that serves community banks and credit unions found online meetings not only helped save travel costs but allowed the firm to be more accessible to clients.COCC, of Avon, Conn., provides information technology services to community banks and credit unions to help process checking accounts, debit card transactions, loan accounts, ATM transactions and more. The company's use of online meetings, says vice president Brent Biernat, has allowed COCC to better service customers, avoid travel costs, and expand its offerings to existing customers.Elizabeth Wasserman: Tell me about COCC and how you use technology.Brent Biernat: COCC is a cooperative data center for financial institutions, banks, and credit unions. We provide their transaction processing for them. If you go to a community bank in Connecticut, New England, Ohio, New York, or the Northeast, there is a good chance that your transaction is being processed by COCC. We've been around for 40 years and have about 350 employees.Wasserman: Why did you invest in a virtual meeting service?
Biernat: Every company in the world says they are very concerned about customer service, and as a cooperative we live and breathe customer service. The presidents of all these financial institutions sit on our board of directors. They fill out report cards about our service. We want to be able to stay high touch as we continue to add more credit unions. We want to be able to communicate with them more readily. And there was a great technology to enable us to do it from GoToMeeting. If you try to do this on a regular phone and conference call, you lose something. You don't have that collaboration.Wasserman: How do you use it?Biernat: We do a lot of it with our customers. There are various reasons. We do a lot of online training with them to show them a new feature in or product or to give them an update. We use it to introduce them to a new product or show them an entire demonstration. And we also use it to do regular collaboration if we have a project going on with them. We set it up and all join together and we can have some webpages or material in front of us that everyone can see. We also use it internally if we have a lot of production items we want to review and make changes to. In the past, what we'd have to do is gather in a conference room and huddle around for a discussion with a few callers on speaker phones. We have several buildings on our campus. It wastes productivity if you're trying to have a meeting and gather everyone in a room and you don't realize how much time that costs when you can have an online meeting with these same folks and they can join in right from their desks. They don't have to spend that time walking and socializing. It's much more efficient.Wasserman: What have the results been?Biernat: Essentially, it's saved us a significant amount of money and still helped us to maintain a very high touch with our customers. In the past, we used a rival technology and an average meeting cost us $250. We found this easier for our customers to use. We've saved lots in terms of travel costs alone. Every time we get in a car or on a plane it ends up costing a lot. We figure we've saved about $3,000 a month in travel costs. The flip side of that is that we still want to get our executives out in front of our customers so they still have meetings where they have face-to-face time but during the travel time back, they can call in and be part of the regular internal meetings or join another customer call.Wasserman: How long have you been using virtual meetings?Biernat: We've been using this technology for four years now. We pay a flat monthly fee per host for the service and can host unlimited meetings. We've really incorporated it into our overall strategy. As a financial services company, we're always concerned about pandemic planning and we've made sure we're set up for it. The virtual meetings are a piece of that. If swine flu seriously increased, it would allow us to have meetings without being face to face in a closed room.

In the USA and Canada, 10^12

European business-to-business (B2B (Business to Business) Refers to one business communicating with or selling to another. See B2B e-commerce, B2C and B2G.
B2B - business to business ) Internet commerce will increase in value from 61 billion euros in 2000 to over 1.5 trillion One thousand times one billion, which is 1, followed by 12 zeros, or 10 to the 12th power. See space/time.
(mathematics) trillion - In Britain, France, and Germany, 10^18 or a million cubed.In the USA and Canada, 10^12. euros in 2005, according to according toprep.1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians.2. In keeping with: according to instructions.3. new IDC forecasts. emarketplaces will be responsible for the majority of this growth in the mid to long term. According to IDC, B2B ecommerce will be driven by numerous factors. Companies wish to optimize optimize - optimisation the flow of information within the supply chain. The Internet is an excellent platform for this as the infrastructure is there today. The desire to implement ecommerce solutions may also be spurred by business partners that are interested in maintaining an electronic dialogue with their clients and suppliers,' said Mikael Ambjerg IDC's lead analyst in European B2B and emarketplace research. However, B2B has to overcome some barriers along the way including security concerns and, in certain industries, a lack of understanding of what the Internet can do. The discouraging experiences of the dot-com shakeout ShakeoutA situation in which many investors exit their positions, often at a loss, because of uncertainty or recent bad news circulating around a particular security or industry.Notes:During the dotcom boom and bust, numerous shakeouts occurred. may still have a negative effect on B2B ecommerce initiatives, although this should not be such a negative correlation Noun 1. negative correlation - a correlation in which large values of one variable are associated with small values of the other; the correlation coefficient is between 0 and -1indirect correlation .
write_ads(2,1)IDC distinguishes three types of B2B Internet commerce: edistribution, emarketplaces, and eprocurement. edistribution accounts for the majority of B2B Internet commerce transactions today. Although the volume of goods sold via edistribution is growing, growth will slow over the next few years as buyers and sellers turn to other types of B2B ecommerce models. emarketplaces are the fastest-growing segment in ecommerce and will continue to grow rapidly over the next five years. The growth of eprocurement is almost as impressive, but eprocurement is mostly interesting for larger companies that will dominate this segment. From the perspective of novelty Novelty is the quality of being new. Although it may be said to have an objective dimension (e.g. a new style of art coming into being, such as abstract art or impressionism) it essentially exists in the subjective perceptions of individuals. business models, emarketplaces will be the most interesting to watch. eMarketplaces will position themselves through a combination of commerce and other services, in terms of revenue, emarketplaces may opt for a transaction fee-based solution, but this may not work well in all industries. An alternative solution is membership fees. Industry-specific content may help the emarketplace obtain a better position in the quest to become a market leader. Additional services, such as ebusiness consulting, may also develop into a revenue stream for emarketplaces.

Europe Learns Its E-Commerce Dos and Don'ts

Europe Learns Its E-Commerce Dos and Don'tsPrint Version E-Mail Article Reprints By Michael MahoneyE-Commerce Times 04/20/01 10:12 PM PT A U.S. e-tailer attempting to make inroads in Europe still has to contend with regional taxes, language barriers and shipping logistics, making it much easier for most Europeans to shop their own brands.Increase Customer Sales with VerticalResponse Email Marketing! Quickly and easily send email newsletters, coupons & sales announcements to your customers – no technical expertise needed. Sign up for your Free Trial today and send 100 emails on us! According to a report released by the European Commission (EC) in late March, less than 5 percent of all European Internet users shop regularly on the Web. Surprisingly, that may be a good thing for e-commerce on the continent.It may be taking Europeans longer than Americans to gravitate toward online shopping, but the numbers also mean that European dot-coms have not had as far to tumble. With European e-commerce lagging some 18 months or so behind that in the States, the U.S. dot-com shakeout has served as a highly visible business lesson for European e-tailers -- helping to prevent them from making many of the same mistakes.
"Europe's fall with the dot-coms wasn't as painful as it was in the U.S," Gartner European research director Mark Raskino told the E-Commerce Times.
"The number of overhyped dot-coms didn't have the same time to gestate," Raskino said. "[Europe's] Old Economy companies have digested the opportunity a little bit more carefully; they're taking a longer-term approach. They've looked at the U.S. market, and can see it takes five years to build a business online, so they haven't wasted all those resources up front."Mainframe Rehosting with Oracle Tuxedo: Accelerating Cost Reduction and Application Modernization Find out how mainframe rehosting lets IT profes... How to Effectively Leverage Social Media Relationships with Real-Time Collaboration Tools Terms like Facebook, Twitter, wikis and blogs a... Next Generation Audio Conferencing While the advent of the Web changed the way we ... How to Utilize Open, Simple, and Scalable Storage at a Fraction of the Cost of Traditional Systems This white paper demonstrates how power, coolin... Why Security SaaS Makes Sense Today Corporate IT teams are waging a significant sec...
View More Research Attendez, S'il Vous Plait As a result, the very barriers that have hindered widespread penetration of e-commerce in Europe may turn out to be its saving grace -- just as the continent becomes poised to take advantage.Until last year, the European market was severely hampered by the lack of telecom competition and Internet access using flat rates. However, according to the EC, the number of European households connected to the Internet increased by 55 percent between March and October of last year, and Europe now has more users than the United States.Internet access prices fell by an average of 23 percent compared to the year-earlier period in Europe, and by as much as 47 percent in some EU countries, the EC said.Lento pero Seguro "The transition of control to existing, Old Economy businesses has already happened -- some of these players are picking up assets from the failing pure plays," Raskino said. "But the Old Economy companies recognize that the world is a multichannel place, as well as the need for integration between on/offline channels."However, many European e-tailers still lack the infrastructure and logistics integration needed to provide consumers with an exciting value proposition for buying online.The result: like the U.S., it is the traditional offline powerhouses that have the resources to move online, only ... more ... slowly.Bisogni Speciali The European market also suffers from a "lack of novelty" factor when it comes to the Web, according to Raskino. Unlike the U.S., Europeans have had access to interactive information services since the 1970s, in the form of teletext services over the TV and telephone mini-tel systems.Additionally, Raskino said that Europeans have been promised high-speed mobile capability, but are still waiting to see much of it delivered. Skepticism toward new technologies exists across the continent."Consumers have had time to mature," Raskino said. "They expect to see good logistical operations, and integration between online (and) offline channels."A U.S. e-tailer attempting to make inroads overseas still has to contend with regional taxes, language barriers and shipping logistics, making it much easier for most Europeans to shop their own brands.Jolly Good Show However, while achieving e-commerce success in Europe may take longer, the patient are likely to be rewarded. For one thing, Europe doesn't suffer from the same online privacy issues that the U.S. is bombarded with, Raskino said. European data protection laws already in place have dramatically reduced privacy issues as a barrier to online shopping.Some of the success stories are already apparent. According to Raskino, a number of European banks already have over 1 million online Web banking customers.Additionally, the U.K.'s No. 1 online grocer, Tesco, has managed to avoid the problems that plagued similar U.S. ventures like Peapod. By building slowly through the use of local grocery store deliveries, rather than by spending large overhead to set up their own warehouses and logistics, the company took less risk and is now getting the financial payback from its patient, steady growth.
"We know we're behind the game but we're slowly doing the right thing," Raskino said of Europe. "Even though there's a threat of a U.S. recession impacting Europe, I expect to see the old economy retailers slowly but steadily grow online Web commerce volumes. Understanding which channels matter in which customer contexts is the way to win."

E-Commerce in Europe: Diversity Without the Melting Pot

E-Commerce in Europe: Diversity Without the Melting Pot
Print Version E-Mail Article Reprints By Janaina WittnerE-Commerce Times 10/15/09 4:00 AM PT Like the U.S., Europe is diverse. Unlike the U.S., there are bright lines separating Europe's many different cultures. For companies that want to do business in Europe, it's critical to localize marketing efforts to specific populations. Otherwise, the result is sure to be misunderstanding at the very least, and offense at the worst. Neither is likely to produce robust sales.Live Webcast: Future of the Data CenterRegister now to attend on Thu, Oct 29. Presented by Cisco, Microsoft and Intel. It is important to understand that Europe is not a melting pot like the U.S., where people of different cultures and religions blended together far from their native lands. Politically and culturally, Europe is diverse, but each country has a different history, religion, national language, culture and heritage to which it remains strongly attached. Europe consists of 520 million inhabitants in 34 countries, within which 32 languages are spoken and 23 different currencies used.This diversity represents a real challenge for companies wanting to penetrate the European market, as they will need to localize their products for the specific needs of each country. As the former German Chancellor Willy Brandt once said: "If I'm selling to you, I speak your language. If I'm buying, dann müssen Sie Deutsch sprechen."However, the challenges are not only linguistic, but also cultural. Technical Challenges Linked to Linguistics Text string expansion: It is not uncommon for short texts, such as the titles of software commands, to be three times as long in German as they are in English. For example, the English word "Redo" translated to German is "Wiederherstellen" -- up from 4 characters to 16, representing an expansion of 400 percent. Character sets and encodings: Character encoding schemes are limited in size, and do not always cover all the characters of a specific language. For instance, encodings belonging to the ISO-8859 family are represented by one byte, and are thus limited to 256 characters. In this family, Latin 1 covers Western European languages with characters such as © , «, ¿ and à, while Latin 2 covers Central and Eastern European languages with characters such as ś, ŭ, ť and č. Unicode standard covers almost 100,000 characters and most scripts (writing systems) in use today. Multilanguage software should thus be adapted to Unicode to support as many languages as possible. The necessary adaptation process is by no means trivial, as not only does the software need to be adapted, so do all related legacy systems that store data. Keyboard character layout: Keyboard layouts vary from one country to the next, as they have been customized to the characters and symbols mostly used in a given language. Keyboard input may not be appropriate if the product is not internationalized and does not recognize other keyboards. Keyboard short cuts: These will also need to be localized to make sense for a particular language. [Ctrl] O makes sense in English for "Open," but not for its Portuguese equivalent "Abrir." Alphabetical sorting order: Sorting rules for extended characters differ from language to language. In Polish, extended characters are collated after their non-extended counterparts: A, Ą, B, C, Ć, D, E, Ę, .... while in Swedish, they are placed at the end..., X, Y, Z, Å, Ä, Ö). In Hungarian, both extended characters and consonants are written with single, double or triple characters. The alphabetic order thus looks something like: A, Á, B, C, CS, D, DZ, DZS, E, É, F... It goes without saying that when sorting lists of items in the graphical user interface (GUI) or in your documentation's indexes, you need to be fully concentrated and have all the rules at hand. Abbreviations: Abbreviations are often used to save space in English documentation, but they don't always translate into other languages, or worse, may sound like an offensive word! Text and audio concatenation or placeholders: Concatenation occurs when a sentence is composed of different segments of text. For instance: "do not," "click on" and "print" could be composed as "click on print" or "do not click on print." Well-intentioned programmers use concatenation to save space. While it makes perfect sense in their native language, it may not work for other languages which are structured differently. German, for instance, requires the verb to be at the end of the sentence. If composed in the same way, a German sentence will thus be grammatically incorrect: "Nicht klicken auf Drucken" instead of "Klicken Sie nicht auf Drucken." These localization issues require re-engineering and are time-consuming. Similar issues occur with placeholders. If we take " percentd red," "flag" and "flags," where percentd is the placeholder for the number, it will be impossible to obtain a correct sentence in Polish as the word "red" changes based on both the numbers and the gender: For illustration, we selected the Polish word for flag (flaga - female), for armchair (fotel - male) and for lake (Jezioro - neutral).Technical Challenges Linked to Cultural Differences Numeric formats: 10,000 means the number 10 for a French person, while for an American it means 10 thousand! 100,000.99 does not mean anything in France, where decimals are separated by a comma "," and not a dot "." as in the U.S. In France, this number should be written 100 000,99. Currency: In Europe, the symbol associated

The Asian E-Commerce Opportunity

The Asian E-Commerce Opportunity
Print Version E-Mail Article Reprints By Kirti VasheeE-Commerce Times 10/22/09 4:00 AM PT Asia is extremely diverse economically and culturally, but there are some strong common elements. Global businesses will need to learn the cultural cues, develop the linguistic capabilities, and learn to tap the growing human resource pool in Asia to make inroads into this market.Analyst Report: Keys to Successful eCommerce ProjectsWith practical insight like, "Top 10 Things To Do Before Kicking Off Your Replatforming Project" and "What To Watch Out For: Common Problems With Platforming Projects," download the complete report today and ensure your eCommerce success. For many in the West, Asia is viewed as a large monolithic geographic area with some slight differences among regions. However, a more-informed understanding is that there are several market segments, and an understanding of some of the key differences between segments is valuable to developing effective market strategies.Today, both India and China are propelled by strong economic momentum. Historically, they both also had a deep and lasting cultural influence on much of Asia. An awareness of this history is useful in developing effective business strategies.Japan, the second-largest economy in the world, is part of Asia. It has historically been the "best" Asian market for most companies, but this is rapidly changing as the China-India momentum builds.Wide-Open Market Opportunities It is useful to get a sense of the scale of the opportunity. An examination of the worldwide Internet population shows Internet activity concentrated in the U.S. and Europe.Internet Users Worldwide by Region(click image to enlarge)China, Japan and Korea have a rapidly developing Internet presence. Most of the rest of Asia is undeveloped but growing -- and wide open in terms of opportunity.The Internet is only just beginning to take root in much of Asia (18 percent vs. 73 percent for North America), and only Africa has less penetration. However, it is expected that almost half of all Internet users will be Asian by 2013.Already, there are more people online in China than in the U.S. There could be a major opportunity for companies that learn to tap into this new online population. However, this will require an understanding of the diversity and characteristics of the various segments and will also demand new approaches in communication and marketing .
Did You Know?
Some interesting, perhaps little-known facts provide a useful contrast between Asia and Europe and demonstrate both the present-day reality and the scope of the future opportunity: GDP per capita in Asia (approximately US$15,000) is less than half the EU average, and there is a much wider standard distribution. A large population lives in poverty throughout the continent. While India and China are among the fastest-growing economies in the world, the latest figures on GDP per capita are $2,800 for India and $6,000 for China. They should both still be considered developing economies. The top GDP per capita countries (2008) in Asia: Singapore ($52K), Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea ($23K), Malaysia, Kazakhstan and Thailand ($8.5K). India has 22 official languages that are as distinct and different as the 23 EU languages; half a dozen different scripts are used. English is spoken by a mere 7 percent of the people in India. However, it is possible to get deep penetration into the Indian market with five key languages.
There is very little content in local Asian languages on the Web, in general. Based on a survey done by Asia Online in 2007, less than 15 percent of the total content on the Web is in Asian languages. Almost 90 percent of the Asian language content is in Chinese and Japanese. There is a huge need for more local language content in Southeast Asia. China now has the fastest-growing patent office in the world. The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) states that China is clearly an emerging scientific and technological power.The share of Asian country-based patent filings is now in excess of 50 percent of all patents filed across the world.
India has more gifted and talented students in high school than the total school student population in the U.S. China has more students in science and technology college degree programs than India and the U.S. combined. McKinsey & Company has identified a "Rising Asia" as a stable long-term trend that will fundamentally change consumption patterns. Gartner (NYSE: IT) suggests using IT to reach the market. The research firm suggests that global companies use IT to "lighten" their Asian business model in order to address specific cultural, geographic reach, and supply chain considerations. Wealthy Asians are concentrated in major cities like Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Mumbai, Delhi, Seoul, Manila and Bangkok. China is now the fastest-growing market for Bentley and BMW. Even countries like Laos, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lan

MAXWELL ENERGY PRODUCTS WINS $4.1 MILLION CAPACITOR CONTRACT

MAXWELL ENERGY PRODUCTS WINS $4.1 MILLION CAPACITOR CONTRACT
Maxwell Energy Products has been awarded a $4.1 million contract from Los Alamos National Laboratory for the ATLAS program. The contract consists of the sale of more than 400 high voltage advanced technology capacitors for delivery over an 18 month period.
"We are very pleased with the Los Alamos decision," said Gregg McKee, president of Energy Products. "We have been developing the product for a period of time and during that process we competed with other capacitor manufacturers. The award, which represents one of the largest capacitor orders ever awarded for this type of application, is a clear indicator of the technical superiority of our products."
Added McKee, "As previously demonstrated, there are global commercial and governmental opportunities for Energy Products and it is our intent to leverage this win into additional opportunities."
ATLAS is a pulsed power facility designed to perform high energy-density experiments in support of nuclear stockpile stewardship and basic research programs. It is designed to be an international user facility, providing experimental opportunities to researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, Sandia National Laboratory, AWE, and various academic institutions.
Maxwell Energy Products is a leader in pulsed power technologies, providing pulsed power based systems and components for a wide range of commercial applications and research and development for both commercial customers and the U.S. government. The Company's advanced technology solutions address diverse markets such as medical equipment and products, food processing and packaging.
MAXWELL ENERGY PRODUCTS WINS MAJOR CONTRACTS FORCAPACITORS TO BE USED IN DoE DARHT ACCELERATOR.
Maxwell Energy Products announced today that it has won two sole source contracts to supply 2690 each of its Model 35309 and 1396 each of its Model 35349 plastic case high voltage capacitors for use in the second phase of the Dual Axis Radiographic Hydrodynamics Test (DARHT) facility at Los Alamos. The capacitors will be integrated into modulators that power the induction electron accelerator and the electron injector.
The particular model of capacitor used in the Pulse Forming Network (PFN) within each modulator is based on a standard product line, TYPE PD/PM. While the basic "double-ended plastic case" design has been offered by Maxwell for many years, recent improvements to the dielectric design have resulted in increased life and reliability. These improvements allowed Maxwell to meet the critical reliability requirements of the large DARHT system.
Model 35309 is a 0.05 uF 100 kV rating in a 4.0 x 8.0 x 16.0 inch (102 x 203 x 406 mm) case. Model 35349 is rated at 0.073 uF 50 kV and is in a 2.3 x 5.9 x 10.7 inch (58 x 150 x 272 mm) case.
A list of standard ratings for Type PD/PM and other styles of high voltage capacitor are available on the company's website: http://www.gaep.com.
Figure 1 shows the DARHT facility and Figure 2 shows typical TYPE PD/PM capacitors.

GA-ESI 2-50kV HIGH VOLTAGE POWER SUPPY LINE DECLARED

GA-ESI 2-50kV HIGH VOLTAGE POWER SUPPY LINE DECLARED TO CONFORM TO CE
General Atomics Electronic Systems (GA-ESI) announces it meets the essential requirements for CE (Conformité Européenne or European Conformity) Declaration, for its 2-50kV CCS power supply product line. The power supplies purchased with the CE option conform to the Electro Magnetic Compatibility Directive and the safety standards of the Low Voltage Directive. The Declaration of Conformity can be seen here.
The CE Directives met ensure that the complete line of high voltage power supplies can limit the electro magnetic disturbances produced and can operate under a given level of external electro magnetic disturbances. The line also can meet safety standards related to electric shock or burn, mechanical hazards, excessive temperature, fire, effects of fluid and explosions, as specified under the Low Voltage Directive safety standards.
"CE Declaration of the CCS high voltage power supply family opens the European market to a US supplier with decades of experience with high voltage, high power, demanding applications," says Joel Ennis, the GA-ESI power supply Product Line Manager. "This achievement demonstrates the commitment we have to serving our international partners."
The CCS series of power supplies spans 2-50KV and 2-12kJ/s and is designed to fit a standard 19" rack. These power supplies are modular, enabling simple parallel operation for higher power levels. Protection monitoring and alerts cover over voltage, over temperature, over current, cooling fan fault and open interlock.
The CCS Series of power supplies is ideally suited for critical, high power, capacitor charging applications. Uses have included modulators, lasers, x-ray generators, and energy storage capacitor banks. More information and the full product specification can be seen at High Power, High Voltage Power Supplies.
General Atomics Electronic Systems (GA-ESI), formerly part of Maxwell Energy Products, is globally recognized as a leading U.S. developer and manufacturer of capacitor charging power supplies and pulse power systems/sub-systems. Power supplies have voltage ratings as high as 100kV and pulse-to-pulse repeatability tolerances within +/- 1%. Primary markets include national laboratories and universities, energy and defense contractors, and medical and industrial companies around the world. In addition to capacitor charging power supplies, GA-ESI develops and manufactures other high voltage components such as advanced film capacitors, resistors, fuses, and PFN's (pulse forming networks).

GA-ESI SCIENTIST RECEIVES NAVY RESEARCH GRANT

GA-ESI SCIENTIST RECEIVES NAVY RESEARCH GRANT
Dr. Geoff Staines, a senior scientist in General Atomics Electronic Systems (GA-ESI) Power Systems Group, has received the Office's of Navy Research 2008 CNR Challenge award. The CNR Award, or Chief of Naval Research award, is granted to Science & Technology leaders to support the continued development of cutting edge research that is projected to improve US Navy and Marine Corps war fighting capabilities. Dr. Staines' award includes a grant for continued development of his linear generator concept for directed energy weapons.
Staines, a pulsed power systems expert, has been a senior scientist at GA-ESI for 3 years, and is currently assigned to support GA’s Electromagnetic Systems Division EM Launcher projects. He has over 16 years of experience with high power circuits and most recently led the design and development of high voltage systems for applications including electromagnetic launchers and High Power Microwave (HPM) devices. He received his Ph.D. in physics from Flinders University in Australia in 1991. Staines’ high voltage pulse forming network (PFN) expertise lent itself to developing this linear generator concept, which would convert chemical energy directly to high power electrical pulses, eliminating multiple steps of energy conversion and storage used in capacitor-based systems.
Receiving this ONR CNR Challenge award "demonstrates GA's continued support for developing rugged and viable pulsed power systems at the energy levels required for cutting edge weapons systems" commented Staines. Staines further explained that the linear generator is just one of several approaches that GA is studying for providing the high energy pulses needed to drive directed energy weapons deployed on ships, aircraft, or ground vehicles. "While capacitors continue to be the basis for most laboratory pulse power systems, other approaches must be considered for the future. It’s not a one-size-fits-all world out there. Different problems require different solutions."
General Atomics' grant of this award and inclusion in the first Director of Innovation Newsletter results from the fact that GA is a recognized leader in innovating future technologies for the Navy. Examples of high power, high energy Navy systems to which GA has played a leading role include the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS), Advanced Arresting Gear (AAG), Electromagnetic Launcher (Railgun), and Integrated Fight-thru Power (IFTP) systems, just to name a few.
General Atomics Electronic Systems (GA-ESI), formerly part of Maxwell Energy Products, is globally recognized as a leading U.S. developer and manufacturer of high voltage high power components i.e. capacitors, charging power supplies and pulse power systems/sub-systems such as advanced film capacitors, resistors, fuses, and PFN's (pulse forming networks). Primary markets for these products include national laboratories and universities, energy and defense contractors, and medical and industrial companies around the world.
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Canada’s advantage stands out

Economy at a glance - Oct. 12, 2009
Recession has proven that the home is the foundation of the economy
ALEX CARRICK
Chief Economist, CanaData
The American experience with the recession has been much worse than the Canadian one because of a weaker residential construction market leading to a steeper slide in consumer spending. Consumption plays a big role in economic growth. The two graphs below show in dramatic fashion the ways that the U.S. and Canadian economies have taken different paths through this latest recession. Canada’s advantage stands out in the residential investment chart. In 11 out of the last 12 quarters, residential investment in Canada has performed better than in the U.S. – either growth versus decline or small decline versus large decline. There is a strong tie-in between the relatively stronger housing market in Canada and the better performance in consumer spending. In eight of the previous 12 quarters, Canadian consumer spending has outperformed U.S. consumer spending, on a quarter-to-quarter annualized basis. In three quarters, real (i.e. inflation-adjusted) consumer spending in the two countries has been about the same. In only one quarter (Q1 09) did the U.S. do better than Canada, and then only slightly. The weak U.S. residential market has devastated consumer confidence. The sub-prime mortgage mess — leading to foreclosures, a credit squeeze and home price plunges — has caused families south of the border to retrench in a major way. The weak demand for goods and services, many of which are for the home, has caused job losses leading to further crises of confidence. Canada’s experience of the downturn has been much less severe, except in some key resource areas (a worldwide phenomenon) and automaking (brought on by the bankruptcies of GM and Chrysler). Less-risky mortgages and lower consumer debt have meant that most Canadians aren’t worried about losing their homes. As a result, they are still able to indulge in their favourite pastime: spending their weekends at the mall. For more articles by Alex Carrick on the Canadian and U.S. economies, please see his market insights. Mr. Carrick also has a blog site. His lifestyle blog entries are at www.alexcarrick.com

The Request for Proposal has become a popular procurement

October 9, 2009
Construction contracts
RFP model offers flexibility, but carries risk
DAN O’REILLY
correspondent
The Request for Proposal has become a popular procurement model because it offers a greater degree of flexibility compared to the tender process, a legal expert warned participants at the Canadian Institute’s second annual Managing Risk at the Pre-Tender Stage conference. With that flexibility comes risk, however, and whatever procurement process owners choose they have to know the differences between RFPs and tenders and realize they have legal obligations under both, warned Glenn Ackerley, partner with WeirFoulds LLP Without legal analysis, clear specific language and attention to detail those distinctions can often become blurred, with the result that projects can be delayed or cancelled and owners hit with costly lawsuits from contractors who believe they have been treated unfairly, he said.

Glenn Ackerley
“The courts may view a poorly worded RFP as tender, potentially exposing the owner to strict legal obligations and damages,” said Ackerley, one of several guest speakers at the conference. His presentation was somewhat of a primer for the audience, some of whom were government, municipal and non-profit agency employees with limited experience and exposure to the procurement system. Others were lawyers who don’t specialize in construction. A tender is appropriate when competitive pricing is required, a large degree of certainty is possible, the design is complete, a budget/estimate has been established and objective assessment of bids are possible, said the lawyer, providing an overview of the Contract A and Contract B system. Under that process each side has certain responsibilities. Bidders have to hold their prices for a set time period and then take on the project if they win the award. Just some of the legal obligations of owners include providing the same information to all bidders and rejecting non-compliant bids, said Ackerley. “The owner has a duty to treat bidders fairly.” While the fairness principle still applies, RFPs give owners the ability to search for innovative creative submissions for projects that haven’t fully been scoped out. As opposed to tenders where the determining “objective” criteria is price, RFPs involve subjective evaluation by the owner on elements such as the proponent’s proposed design, financial terms, and even the project partners, the audience was told. “How do you tell the difference between an RFP and a tender?” asked Ackerley, pointing out that it’s not always easy, especially with the increasing number of “hybrids” now in the market. These are procurement documents which contain wording and conditions from both. As an example of the problems that can arise from a hybrid, he referred to the Tercon Contractors versus British Columbia case. This ongoing legal dispute is over a highway project in northern British Columbia which began with a RFP. The successful bidder had joined forces in a joint venture with an outside contractor after pre-qualification but before submission of a proposal. Tercon, the runner-up bidder, sued for breach of Contract A, with the trial court ultimately deciding the process should be considered as a tender and ruling that the province had committed a “fundamental breach” by accepting an ineligible proponent’s bid. An exclusion clause that said that no proponent participating in the RFP would have a claim was deemed not be clear enough to cover circumstances and Tercon was awarded $3.3 million in damages. However, that ruling was overturned by the B.C. Court of Appeal, which ruled the clause was clear and unambiguous. In turn, Tercon appealed to the Supreme Court which heard the case in March of this year. While the court so far hasn’t made a decision, the original trial judge set a list of factors an owner should consider when trying to decide if they are issuing an RFP or a tender, Ackerley pointed out. Some of those factors include the wording of the procurement documents; the irrevocability of a bid, the formality of the process; where responses were invited or “solicited,” plus the anonymity of bids, the deadline for submissions and for performance of the work.

Ecommerce Consulting
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At ECommerce Partners, our passion is building successful businesses online. Our approach differs from most other agencies in that we view the underlying technologies we offer as mere tools of the trade. Instead, the value we deliver to our clients can be measured in business terms, including superior ROI, increased revenue and higher traffic.
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DKNY HOME
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ECommerce Partners is a full-spectrum digital agency with service offerings that range from Internet Strategy and Requirements to vendor integration projects and dedicated site hosting. Our Solutions include: Ecommerce Strategy: Remember the 5 Ps: Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance. We’ll ensure your site’s success through improved site strategy and requirements-definition using our unique Ecommerce Requirements Specifications (ERS) (link) methodology Significantly Increased Conversion through Improved User Experience: Our User Interface specialists will help ensure your site architecture, navigation and experience are optimized for maximum conversion and sales Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimization: Perhaps your site is functioning fairly well, but it’s not getting sufficient traffic. 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Let us do the necessary optimization to ensure your site is better equipped to handle your traffic and customer service queries. We’ll also improve your overall site performance, stability and robustness Ecommerce Hosting: Reliable and scalable hosting is part of our outstanding customer service. Are your sites loading quickly, and is the administrative interface easy to work with and configurable to your needs? Is someone overseeing your hosting to ensure it’s always up and running? We offer our clients a compelling dedicated hosting solution. Our Methodology We swear by our process because it works! We believe successful ecommerce solutions require clear goals, precise planning, and a winning strategy. ECommerce Partners has created a unique methodology called the Ecommerce Requirements Specification (ERS) that leverages our extensive industry expertise to help you achieve lasting success. The below steps outline it in a nutshell. The first step in our process is to understand your product, your industry, your value proposition, as well as the target audiences and your competitive environment. This is done by performing intensive research, data-collection and analysis. Next we plan how to satisfy all the needs and requirements of each potential target audience through use of different personas by user segment. This ensures the maximum range of qualified traffic and conversion. Finally we create a blueprint and roadmap that clearly outline the complete project scope and the implementation methods. This benefits the client by illustrating the final product and provides clear instructions for the implementation team. The complete deliverables of the ERS include Creative Requirements, Functional Requirements, SEO Requirements, Search Requirements, Content Requirements and Technical Requirements. It also contains the functional design of information architecture wireframes, sitemaps and process flows and recommends to what extend custom development and 3rd party applications will be necessary during implementation, or whether standard ecommerce website tools could suffice. The ERS is a stand-alone deliverable that can guide development by either ECommerce Partners or a 3rd party team. If you choose ECommerce Partners, the implementation phase will begin, which we term the Ecommerce Development Module (EDM). The EDM produces tailored solutions to meet all the requirements as defined in the ERS. The EDM encompasses the Design, Development, QA, User Acceptance Testing, Migration and Launch processes that are involved in any professional website development. Each step is thoroughly planned in advance in the ERS phase, and then implementation is carefully choreographed and managed to ensure the best results. The below chart illustrates the ERS and the EDM processes. For more information, see the Ecommerce Strategy Section.