Archives for September 2008

Sarah Worsham / Sep 25, 2008

Vision & Goals for your Internet Business Strategy

Once you’ve figured out the methodologies for your Internet strategy and analyzed your current situation, the next step is to craft your vision and goals. Here are some questions to consider when creating your vision and goals:

What do we stand for?
What are we trying to accomplish?
Are our goals measurable? How will we know when we’ve achieved them?
How should we prioritize our goals?
Where do we want to be in a year? Where do we want to be in five years?
What should our mission statement be, given our goals?
Are our goals concise and understandable?
Can we form concrete objectives and tasks from our goals?

goaldogfrog Once you have a clear, concise vision and set of goals, have several people in your organization review them. It is important that your vision and goals are created in such a way that anyone understands what needs to be done, and more critically, where the organization is headed.

Think about your least business-saavy employee. Will they be able to understand the vision and goals that you have set for the company? You may think that only high level executives need to understand where the company is going. However, if the entire team is moving in the same direction, it is much more efficient and effective. You’ll find benefits you may not have accounted for, such as great customer service throughout the organization.

(photo by dogfrog)

Technorati Tags: internet business strategy, internet strategy, internet strategic planning, internet strategic plan, internet strategy consulting, internet business consulting

Aaron Worsham / Sep 24, 2008

The impossibility of speed

speed1 Microsoft, founder, organizer and social chair of the Desktop First Foundation, now sees through their own well trenched oppositions and admits that maybe, possibly it makes some sense for some applications to simple live out on the internet. They now join Google, Yahoo, Apple, Salesforce.com, NetSuite, ZoHo, Meebo, Zimbra, as well as an uncountable number of neuvo-funded startups who have banked on the internet as the universal delivery platform for the future.

Oh, also, Google and Amazon agree that users get antsy when they have to wait more than half a second for their application to respond, affecting customer satisfaction and repeat usage. Google’s VP Marissa Mayer recounted having experienced a 20% drop in usage for results delivered as little as .5 seconds slower than typical.

Possibly not for the first time, your customers are demanding the convenience and portability of online web applications while still clinging to expectations that web applications should consistently respond as fast as desktop applications. An immovable object just shook hands with an irresistible force.

The problem with web applications, frankly, is the web. Months of tuning web code can save seconds in application speed only to be lost in the network through slow routing, lost packets, or bandwidth throttling. This is the impossibility of speed on the internet. You have very little control out there.

To keep up with our need for speed, we will have to move more and more interface code off the server and onto the desktop’s browser in the form of Javascript. Google’s chrome team seems to agree, focusing their performance efforts for web apps on a high speed Javascript engine. SproutCore, famous for running Apple’s MobileMe web platform, is a fully modeled MVC framework in Javascript perfectly suited for this kind of application. Servers could begin to revert back to simply offering data storage. Instead of pageviews, we may soon be tracking information requests. An online ad industry addicted to clicks and impressions may have to get back on the wagon and find a whole new model (they’re so agile). This could be interesting.

I’ll just suggest this to any kid starting out the web development world: Learn JavaScript

Photo attributed to pctalbot @ Flickr CC

Sarah Worsham / Sep 23, 2008

Tom Wilson, CEO of Palace Sports and Entertainment on "The Palace Way"

basketballlaffy4k Tom Wilson, CEO of Palace Sports and Entertainment, spoke about “The Palace Way” at a local networking event last week. Palace Sports & Entertainment operates The Palace, DTE Energy Music Theater, The Detroit Pistons, The Detroit Shock and Meadow Brook Music Festival. “The Palace Way” is about winning and striving for excellence but it is also about taking care of your two most important assets – your customers and your employees.

The Palace has been voted Arena of the Year eight times by Performance magazine, twice by Pollstar magazine and is listed annually among North America’s top-grossing arenas. Voted “Best Outdoor Concert Venue” in Pollstar’s 2000 Readers’ Poll, DTE Energy Music Theatre has been listed as the nation’s most attended amphitheater by Amusement Business/Billboard each of the 17 years of PS&E ownership. – Reuters

Striving for Excellence

Obviously winning is important to professional teams, but also is important to any team. The Palace showed their employees (not just their atheletes) that they were consistently doing ok, but not excellent. They put it to their employees to be part of the solution and to strive for excellence in everything – sales, marketing, maintenance, customer relations – everything. This has created an environment which helps the atheletes perform and a place where customers want to be.

Listening to customers

The Palace is always asking their customers what they like and don’t like. Most people will say everything is ok, but even with 1/10 giving you places to improve, it will help improve the experience and environment for everyone. Customers talk to each other and every customer who has a great experience will share that experience with their friends and coworkers.

It’s a Team Effort

Along with the accolades listed above, The Palace has been listed as one of the best places to work in metro-Detroit and about half of the employees have been there for 10 years or more. Employees are treated as team members with a part to play in the overall goals of the organization. They are encouraged to come up with ideas and, more importantly, given the opportunity to fail. By failing, employees learn valuable lessons to improve their overall performance and care about the company’s future. You may have noticed that all of the awards and accolades have been won by groups of people based on the opinions of their customers. It takes a team working together to provide customer service so excellent that the customers are willing to give positive ratings in a award survey.

Don’t be Afraid to Take Risks & Think Outside the Box

When The Palace was being built, the architect and engineer involved had never built a sports facility of this magnitude. They didn’t know when to say no, so they were willing to take risks. The Palace was the first facility to put corporate boxes so close to the floor. This allowed them to provide an amazing experience for their corporate customers while keeping ticket prices low for general admission. The result was a unique and rewarding game experience that both corporate and regular customers wanted to be a part of, which, incidentally, creates an excellent game situation for the atheletes.

Do What’s Right

It’s important to make decisions that are moral and ethical and are right for the long term. Sometimes it is hard to make the right decision for the long run, but it is important to “stick to your guns” and make your case heard. Mr. Wilson spoke about the period in Piston’s history known as “the teal era”. The team wasn’t winning and ticket sales were hurting. The right thing to do was to lower general admission prices so that more people could attend the games. While this cost the company money in the short term, it allowed them to create a winning atmosphere that paid off in the long run – both for winning games and making revenue.

Summary

Often businesses get caught up in making “business decisions” without taking into account their most important assets – employees and customers. Sometimes “business decisions” should also be “people decisions” to further the long term health of the company. No one said doing business is easy or fun, but making the right decisions for the future can be very rewarding.

(photo by laffy4k )

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