It's About the Experience, Not the Technology

Microsoft doesn't quite understand why Google is successful in search. Do you think the average surfer even knows how Google determines what order pages appear on your screen when you run a search? I can tell you right now that they don't care and they don't really want to know. So why do people choose Google over Microsoft if it isn't about the technology?

It's all about the experience. Google has a very clean homepage that is good for one thing - Search. That's it. If you want to do anything else with them you have to go looking for it. Live Search by Microsoft is moving in the right direction but still doesn't quite get there. The trick is to make it clear what users should use your site for - or your business - for.

How does this tie into your business? Keep your pitch simple. Don't offer too many choices, don't drop a menu on their lap and tell them to pick. Tell them what they need. Show them how you will help them. It's an easy to duplicate formula at the end of the day.

The reason Google is successful is that they were able to take their one product offering - Search - and leverage it into a profitable advertising company. They now make money off of nearly every search. If you are a marketing company, remember to first assist companies with their marketing. If you are a distribution center, remember that distribution is the only end result that matters to your customers. Make it fast, make it effective, make it run well but always keep in mind your one singular core priority.

The Carbon Neutral Smoke Screen

It is all the rage for companies to strive for carbon neutrality. A system has been set up to trade carbon credits on the open market where carbon neutrality can be bought at a price. No longer are companies applauded for simply reducing their footprint, it requires an additional outside investment in, usually, a non-profit carbon harvesting plan.

True carbon neutrality is impossible to achieve using even the most modern technologies. It is the marketing and advertising arms of large companies have convinced them that carbon neutrality is still achievable. It is one thing to be able to make the claim that you've reduced your carbon impact on the environment by 45%. It's another to say that you have no impact on the environment. This leads down the messy path towards carbon positive companies which I can only imagine is not far down the road due to typical corporate one-upmanship.

There is a better way to achieve carbon neutrality as a company that will put those additional dollars at least partially toward the bottom line: invest in carbon reduction technologies for your suppliers and customers. You make the investment for them and claim the carbon savings for yourself. Any agreement with them would be for them to pass along operational savings to your costs as well.

Retailers should invest in improved manufacturing processes for their suppliers. Manufacturers should invest in improved transportation modes from producers of raw goods. Real Estate companies should invest in the infrastructure of leasable buildings. Restaurants and grocery stores should invest in the growth of local agriculture.

The pay-back for reduced item costs is a bonus on top of the ability to claim multi-year carbon neutrality. The good will it will generate also has a value. Sure your competitors will benefit as well, but why should their good fortune keep you from making a wise business move? Is it really better to put your money into some carbon farm that has no financial benefit to your company other than the claim for one year of carbon neutrality?

Evaluating A Product Release

Amazon.com just came out with a new device called the "AmazonKindle." The device is supposed to be the iPod of books but I really have to wonder about the thought process that went into the design and price structure of the Kindle. The $399 price tag can be justifiable if the baseline content and overall technology is at a very high level. Technically speaking, everything is there: long battery life, free wireless connection, high capacity storage (several hundred books if you use an SD card) and no back light. Unfortunately the content doesn't seem to match the cost.

There is very little free content for the device. From my first look it appears like you can get wikipedia.org for free and a built-in dictionary. You can't even read blogs on the Kindle for free. It doesn't come with any partner content for free. The Wall Street Journal costs $9.99 per month. Sure that's less than actually buying a hard copy of the paper everyday, but you would think they could have partnered with CNN.com or any other other free online news papers for free content.

Even the books aren't cheap. The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court has a print cost of $27.97. Amazon sells it for $16.77 and advertises it for $9.99 on Kindle and say that it is a 60% savings! I'm not great at math, but it seems to me that it is less than 50%. Closer to about 40%. A public domain book costs $1.99. This is what is driving many of the reviews I've read today regarding this product. Amazon seems to be using two pricing structures at the same time which turns people off quickly.

This isn't a review of Kindle or whether it is a good/bad/indifferent product. This is about the importance of factoring in the on-going consumer costs versus the alternatives. You have to have a really special product to charge for something consumers can get free somewhere else in the same or better quality. If the initial cost was lower or the on-going costs were lower I believe there would be less initial negative reaction to the product on the review pages. Those review pages will affect whether many people buy the product or not. If you are launching an innovative product to the mass public and currently has no competition, you sure had better get some good reviews and not alienate many people right out of the gate.

Products like this typically come about from a completely internal development process with unconnected decision makers. They probably tested the product extensively with consumers but do you think they tested the price structure simultaneously? A product is only as good as its cost/value ratio to individual consumers. How do you test products before release? What differences are there between your successful releases and products that didn't do well? Do you anticipate negative reviews and have a strategy for dealing with them if they occur?

I doubt that Amazon predicted the reactions to the Kindle. They probably do not consider the iPod a direct competitor for this product. Consumers seem to be thinking that it is. They want more features and they want to put anything they want onto it, not just Amazon provided material. Why shouldn't the Kindle have a built-in web browser? Why should consumers be forced to pay for content that has never had a price before (public domain books and blogs). Dealing with unexpected reactions to a product is an important part of development. Make sure you anticipate all of the possibilities surrounding your release.


Technorati Tags: kindle, amazon, technology

Warehouse RF Network

It is becoming more and more common for warehouses to have an RF or wireless picking system. The advantages of the system outweigh the initial costs. Increases in productivity, inventory accuracy and order visibility reduce overall costs every single year as the warehouse becomes more adept at using the system. However the installation of the system has become a point of question to many looking at RF. Who should design the system? How do I know what I need? What am I missing?

Having built and fit-out several warehouses with this technology it is not going to be as bad as you think from a design and installation point of view. The key to a successful system install is to team with a quality and knowledgeable IT and Data Wiring vendor. Whichever vendor you ultimately select should have the ability to layout and procure the IDF cabinets, Access Points, wire pathways and all other equipment. They should know the proper specs and ranges for all of the equipment they recommend and should give you an electronic drawing of everything in your warehouse.

There are several aspects to an RF system that you will need to decide. The first is what kind of bar code technology will be used on products and locations. Wikipedia has a page describing the many types of bar codes that exist and their many uses. Most handheld scanners have the ability to read multiple bar code types, but it is still important to coordinate and make sure that everything is compatible from the bar codes to the printers to the scanners to the WMS. If you receive product from other vendors they may already have their own standard that you can use. Check with them if you are thinking of matching their technology.

In the typical warehouse there are many ways that bar codes will be scanned and many obstructions that could interfere with the wireless signal. Rack in particular is the biggest issue with warehouse RF. It is important to take into account several rack related RF issues during your strategy:

1) Lift Equipment Scanners - Vehicle mounted RF or Handheld units. Forklifts present several issues of their own. Vehicle mounted RF is typically more robust, more difficult to steal and more difficult to drop and break. However there is the additional cost to mount it to the forklift and you don't have the flexibility to use the scanner for floor picks.

2) Lift Equipment - Man-up forklifts or Man-down forklifts. The type of forklifts used in the warehouse come into play with where location tags can be placed on the rack. For man-up forklifts the tags will go directly underneath the product on the beams. In man-down environments the tags will have to all be placed on the first or second level to allow scanning. If there is a mixed environment there could be room for quite a bit of confusion.

3) Rack Density - The more packed together the rack in your warehouse is the harder it will be to get a clear signal to every point a scanner could be used. For a density of one pallet every 4 square feet you will need to have the wireless access points much closer together than for a density of one pallet every 7 square feet.

4) Rack Flexibility - If there is the ability to add and remove pick levels or locations there will be a need for a more flexible labeling scheme throughout the warehouse. The most flexible scheme I've come across follows the AA-12-34-56-78 format. AA stands for the rack type or forklift used to pick and putaway in the area. 12 is the aisle, 34 is the bay number in that aisle (odds and evens should be on opposite sides), 56 is the beam level within the bay and then 78 is the location on the beam. (ex. SS-23-34-02-02 would mean the location is in the Single Selective rack on aisle 23 in bay 34 (with evens being on the left) 2nd level up and in the right hand position.)

Once all of these issues are decided it is time to work with the IT vendor to actually develop the design. Don't stretch any of the equipment you get to its maximum range. Your IDF cabinets will likely be about 250 ft apart. Your access points will be staggered throughout the building on about 100 ft to 150 ft centers depending on rack density. With a 500,000 sf building your probably looking at a 400 ft depth which gives you two rows of IDF cabinets running along your building and 3 rows of access points. There are a lot of items that need to be coordinated so much sure you develop a robust plan for what you want and need this system to handle.


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UPDATE:

There has been a lot of interest in this post. If you have any additional questions feel free to email me at dmusic [at] integratedstrategiesinc [dot] com .



Technorati Tags: rf, wireless, warehouse, design, barcode

CAD Tech Turns 25

It was 25 years ago today that AutoCAD was first released upon the design world. That's 25 years of increased design productivity, 25 years of better design drawing quality and 25 years of computer frustrations. No one will ever get past aggravating computer issues, but just imagine going back to drawing everything out by hand. I think everyone will agree that we'd rather not.

There is barely an industry out there that doesn't use a CAD program. Most notably will be any engineering, architectural or manufacturing company but think of all the new ways that computers are aiding in design. Marketing comes to mind as the beneficiary of many new tech toys to assist in design. Why can't PowerPoint or Photoshop be considered a CAD program?

What will the next 25 years of design be like? What new programs and innovations will come around to make life simpler for us engineers? If I have my say it will probably be something like Google's SketchUp program which is already replacing much of the 3D CAD work I used to do in AutoCAD. Once programs make it as simple to work and design in three dimensions with color and texture as it is to draw in two dimensions now there will be a new design revolution. Most of the arguments against CAD programs are that they take the human element out of the project. It is difficult to envision and feel what is being designed.

Not many news rooms are running this anniversary but it is one that really has changed the world a little bit. How many buildings are currently built that don't use CAD? How many products are manufactured without an electronic design developed first? How many engineering companies (design or otherwise) haven't invested in at least one copy of a full CAD program? Why would anyone continue to design by hand when it can be designed faster, better and more accurately on a computer?

If you are working with a company that isn't employing these technologies you should really be asking them why they aren't using them. Sometimes there really are valid reasons not to use computer programs to assist in the design but they are few and very far between. For any real estate acquisition you should ask for the electronic site plan (and I do not mean in PDF). Too often clients come to us asking for design help with their facility and we learn that there are no electronic copies of the property. Recreating a CAD from a hardcopy is possible but it shouldn't be necessary anymore. Even simple office renovations require drawings to get permits completed. Having that electronic version is a requirement. It should accompany any lease or building purchase.

Welcome to the next quarter century. It should be a fun time.


Technorati Tags: autocad, cad, tech, computer, design

Advanced Web 2.0

Yesterday I discussed how to set yourself up to take advantage of blogs and their content. Today we'll shift gears just a little bit and discuss some of the other tools out there for finding the information you need. There are sites out there in the world that have a mission of finding the popular and interesting articles in the world. The most common of these sites are digg.com, del.icio.us, reddit.com and stumbleupon.com. These sites collect stories tagged by users as popular or interesting. They sort out the good from the bad for you.

At the end of many blog posts (and even news articles now) are links asking you to "Digg This" or "Stumble It" or "Share this post." These sites provide a unique service where they find "the best of the internet" so that you don't have to go looking for it. Over time they have developed a large enough following that their communities find and review their content for them. They essentially are just aggregators of stories. If your small business has been lucky enough to be mentioned in one of the articles headlined there you've probably seen the traffic spike it can cause.

Aggregators are another useful tool for finding information. If you are looking for ways to actually use Web 2.0 technology to help your company you may want to look at Social Networking. Social Networking is simply a website that allows individuals and companies to create a profile of who they are, what they do and what they are looking to accomplish. These sites provide a place to post pictures, videos and discuss very current events. You've probably heard of the most popular two: Myspace and Facebook. There are many stories out there about how businesses have created pages on these two pages and been very successful at attracting both talent and new clients. It's amazing how far reaching these sites are. Myspace is the 6th most visited page on the internet. Facebook is the 7th. That's a lot of potential eyes for what you are offering.

For the more business oriented social network, look no farther than LinkedIn.com. Linked In connects professionals to other professionals. Instead of worrying about keeping all of your business cards with you at all times, just keep your bookmark to linked in. It outlines your network of contacts to 3 degrees of connections. Through this site you can ask questions to the open boards, recruit new employees or find businesses to help with problems you need solved. The site is gaining so much traction that many people are beginning to put their Linked In profile web address on their business cards.

I'm seeing more and more of the tasks that businesses do on a day-to-day basis moving to the internet. Microsoft and Google are leading the charge to put everything they possibly can onto the internet. Google offers an entire MS Office style suite of products online and is even currently scanning in millions upon millions of books to create a searchable online library. E-commerce is a growing industry while brick and mortar stores continue to either grow slowly or die out entirely. Selling your product or service over the internet is the wave of the future. If doctors can perform surgery over the internet then almost anyone can sell their product online.

Most importantly to many businesses is online advertising. It seems to be everywhere. Most webpages you visit probably have some level of advertisements. Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and many, many other companies offer online advertising tools. If you want to just test the water, simply sign-up for a program offered through one of the big three and see if it helps your business at all. If it does then it might be worthwhile to sit down with an expert and put together a true online advertising platform and plan.

There are all kinds of ways to take advantage of the internet to advance your company and advertise yourself. The number of roads that any person can travel are unlimited. Don't be afraid of learning the internet. Most everything you will want to use has been simplified more than you will believe. The internet is a very user friendly place for the most part, jump right on in and make yourself at home.

----There are all kinds of additional tools that I haven't mentioned just because talking about them all is quite a hefty task on its own. Look around and find the tools that work best for you.


Technorati Tags: blogging, web 2.0, networking

How to Make Blogs Work for You

Only 14% of small to medium sized businesses believe that blogs will be important over the next five years. Web 2.0 as a term is filled with mystery to many business owners and operators. It is one of those things that Google and college kids do, not something that they need for their business. Blogs, wikis, RSS and social networking are all well and good if you know what they are, but who has the time to learn when there are customers to go after? Sure it would be great to get new information about what's going on in the industry but there is no way to do that.

Let's step back a second. If you can use Microsoft Outlook you can do the blog thing. First let's go over what everything actually is:

Blogs are the basically just one person or company's view on a particular subject. The subject could be anything from sports to politics to personal improvement to small business advice to comedy. Any subject you can think about there are likely hundreds of blogs currently be written on it. Supply Chain? Real Estate Strategies? 18th Century Coins? Los Angeles Lakers? Yes on all counts. Tips on how to run your particular business better? That's why I'm trying to convince you this is worth your time.

I'm a fan of this topic because I regularly use blogs as a source for knowledge improvement. I learn new marketing methods, ways to make better charts and the latest tips and tricks from Google. It no longer surprises me how useful all of these sites are to my day to day activities. The best part is that they are entirely free! Even the time commitment is not overly significant. I probably spend about an hour reading the latest headlines and interesting articles from all the blogs I check. More than once I've emailed an author a more detailed question pertaining to an article and gotten a response back that was able to save me time on an actual project I was working on.

Most blogs are simultaneously published on an RSS feed. An RSS feed is basically a tool that can be picked up by blog readers. My personal favorite is Google Reader but there are also readers available free from bloglines, newsgator, technorati, windows live, pageflakes, newsburst, feedreader, myearthlink, myyahoo, netvibes, rojo, myaol, and newsisfree to name just a few. The best bet if you are new to this and want to give it a try is use the one from the website you are on most often. Typically that is going to be Google, Yahoo, AOL, or MSN. The reason I say this is that you won't have to change any of your current online habits to integrate blogs into your daily routine. You go to a site regularly anyway, now you just change what comes up when you go there.

Look at the right hand side of this page. One of the things you see is an orange logo that says "Subscribe in a reader." Once you've picked your reader you can find the RSS feed on all of your favorite sites and instead of visiting NYTimes.com or CNN.com, all of their headlines can be sent to your reader. I personally subscribe to Inc.com, forbes.com, time.com and entrepreneur.com. Instead of having to visit their sites now, all of their latest stories are sent to my personal space in the reader that I use. I'm able to get two or three times as much content that I did when I had to visit each of these pages individually. The other benefit is you can easily see the articles and pick the ones that are interesting to you much easier.

So why should you do this other than the time benefits, extra knowledge you'll gain and simplicity it will add to your life? The extra benefit is that you become part of the communities that make up the blogs you read. Even semi-popular blogs develop a regular following and provoke comments from readers. Long, involved discussions on any given topic is not unheard of. Participating in these discussions helps to establish you as an expert on a certain topic within that particular community which is better than just free advertising, it is additional reputation. If I go out looking for small business help that I'm looking to spend money on, where am I going to go first? I'm going to go to someone that I trust because I've been reading his opinions on the subject for the past 2 years first. Not some company that I have no knowledge of. And because it is all online, you don't have to read it everyday to keep up. If you skip two or three days it doesn't hurt anything at all.

To summarize the steps in making Blogs work for you:

1) Setup a reader at a site you frequent a lot (Google, Yahoo, MSN or AOL more than likely)
2) Subscribe to the sites you visit a lot that you know off the top of your head (CNN, NY Times, etc.)
3) Add new sites as you stumble upon them and expand your network
4) Participate in the comment discussions on your favorite sites
5) Keep your subscriptions up-to-date. Delete old ones, keep adding new ones.

You are now well on your way to helping yourself.


Technorati Tags: blog, rss, how to

Green Marketing

When was the last time you evaluated your marketing budget and scope? If it was more than 5 years ago you are likely missing out on some of the latest methods for getting your companies name out in the market. The internet of course is the biggest driver of much of this, but there is another. Social consciousness is the latest way for bringing new customers into the fold. Showing that you are helping the environment through your business practices can do as much or more than showing a 5% lower cost than a competitor.

LEED has been the biggest driver of this trend. Whenever the latest company decides to make their buildings and space LEED Certified it makes quite a few major magazines and news reports. Writing off this additional cost to the marketing budget is the best way to justify these decisions. GE is the latest driver of the Green Marketing trend with their announcement of expanding investment of the ecomagination lines. Right now those lines don't have as good of a return as others, but the press they are getting for it is through the roof which bolsters sales of their other lines as well.

Any good marketing director will know how to push your initiatives into the public eye (or at least in front of your customers). Adding a marketing page to all of your brochures and presentations is the simplest way to let people know how you're helping. Marketing to the community is the next best way. Communities love to hold up the companies that are working to stay involved and be socially conscious. It could be a way to become a community sponsor and open up new lines of business.

Why can't changing out light bulbs, adding motion activated switches or using environmentally friendly products be marketing? Thinking in new ways is how companies become leading edge. With the cost of marketing being offset from cheaper ways of mass communication and replication, it is a simple matter to allocate some money to non-traditional marketing. Make sure you are still doing right by your business and investing in things that will still have a return on your investment, after all you are in charge of making good decisions. Doesn't a quantifiable return on your marketing expenses sound good to you?

Start looking down the road five to ten years from now and try and see where your market will be. Will they care about being environmentally friendly? More than likely they will and they will want to do business with like minded companies. You can either be a leader by making the small steps now and taking advantage while the time is still good or you can play catch-up when the change happens. It happens all the time with technology like this. First it was computers replacing typewriters. Then it was email replacing fax and letters. Next followed the internet replacing dictionaries and research books. The future will be clean technologies replacing wasteful technology.

Technology equipment will begin using less electricity, buildings will feature sustainable and intelligent systems and every product on the grocery store shelves will have some green aspect to it. Green beans in cans from recycled materials, cereal in recycled bags instead of boxes and cleaning products in higher concentrations (which has already started).

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Welcome to those visiting from the Carnival of the Capitalists. If you liked this post we have some other posts on Green design and thinking:

Green Design and LEED
Environmental Marketing Gone Crazy
Greening the Warehouse

Feel free to subscribe to the blog! Thanks for visiting!

Technorati Tags: green, marketing, technology

Environmental Marketing Gone Crazy

This is a follow up to our LEED posting with an article from Environmental Leader. Apparently Sun Microsystems is of the opinion that "Double Carbon Neutral" companies are on the horizon. Companies so "dedicated" to helping the environment that not only do they completely offset their footprint, but they offset it a second time as well are not adding real value along the way. This just goes to show that many environmental programs are no longer about the environment, they are simply marketing strategies.

I'm a fan of helping the environment. I believe that every company should be working to reduce their carbon footprint and impact on the environment within the framework of their business. Sun is doing it precisely the way I believe is most appropriate: looking at their areas where they are most deficient, putting together a business case and budget for improvement and then putting the improvement into place. Humans will never be carbon neutral creatures, especially with the way technology operates today.

Being carbon neutral is a noble goal if approached for the appropriate reasons. Marketing can be a good reason for it, but we have to be careful that a distinction is made between companies in it for the marketing and companies in it for the environment. Any company that wants to could scrounge up funds to purchase enough carbon offsets to make them carbon neutral as many times over as they care to. Is that company really any better than a Sun Mircosystems that isn't carbon neutral but is working towards it organically?


Technorati Tags: LEED, environment, sun, carbon neutral

The Power of Technology

Technology can provide a powerful way to differentiate your company. Whether it is your ability to use technology to lower your costs, improve your service or increase your visibility, technology should be on your radar. The cost of implementing different forms of technology has decreased in terms of cost and ease of execution. A few years ago it took an expert to start up a blog. Now all it takes is a few seconds and the ability to type. With free blogging services the cost is nothing either. The same is true of user forums and wikis (such as wikipedia).

Every company is different in how they would be able to use technology, but there is no one who can't benefit from some use it. The benefits are there for anyone to see: improved communication, quicker customer feedback, active community involvement in design, etc. Technology is not a cure all for every company though. Some business cultures just cannot support it because employees are scared of it or customers don't need it or their IT rules are too strict to allow it. It is these companies that need to look at alternative deployment methods.

For companies that have scared employees, start a grassroots movement until it gains traction. Start a program to roll it out to interested employees and develop a history of use. Prove its benefits and eventually everyone will buy in. This applies particularly to the newspaper industry. For decades they have had a very successful and profitable business model. Over the past five to ten years that model has begun to fail with panic spreading across the industry and many insiders becoming technology-phobic. However it is the companies that have strong technology models that are having the most success.

For companies with customers that aren't technology savvy, begin training them in the ways it can be used to their advantage. Also, branch out and begin drawing in new customers using technology. The wine industry had been very anti-technology until just very recently. Australian wine companies discovered that technology could be used to produce inexpensive, superior tasting wines. Others in the industry now have to try and catch up.

For companies that have strict IT policies preventing new technologies, it may be time to reevaluate why those policies are in place. Often those policies came about through fear of the unknown or were reactions to stories in newspapers and magazines. Different companies require different security policies and often require multiple policies depending on the group or customer involved. Just because one group or customer needs the highest level of security and policies does not mean it should apply across the board.

Technology should be part of your core business model. Even though it is changing at a seemingly daily rate you should be willing to embrace it and put it to work for you. Be wary that it does not leave you behind in the changes though. It is not a one time investment and then forget about it. It is a long-term investment of time and energy, but it will pay off in the end.


Technorati Tags: it, technology, consulting