5/20/03

More tips to improve your life, business and attitude...

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HOW TO STAND OUT: Or Be Forgotten
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In a world where natural resources are considered to be vanishing, overabundance of everything else is the norm. Want a computer, the question is what size. Need a book, on what topic. Chemicals, iron, candles, blenders, chairs, recreational vehicles, hotel rooms, aggregates, hair salons or tires--in almost every category there are options to satisfy consumers' wildest dreams. The challenge is not to produce or deliver, since everyone does that already. It's delivering what you do with flare or uniqueness. Song Airlines was just announced from Delta as the next airline in the low-cost high-value market. Did anyone think that JetBlue had the only competitive edge? Seats with a TV...passe...how about someone to change the channel for you? Uniqueness and reliability are now more sacred than just showing up. Stand out, or it won't be long before someone else surpasses your offering with something that attracts attention.

From the management point of view, taking the leap over the top means a possible risk to an entire business. Yet as worrisome as that thought is, seeking safety in blandness could leave one very far behind. Remember when copier machines were something of a novelty? Cannon had taken a very complicated machine with expensive repairs and reduced maintenance costs by developing a "drum cartridge and toner cartridge." The cartridges encompassed the majority of parts that could break down due to wear, eliminating service costs and drastically placing the company at a competitive advantage. Starbucks, on the other hand, started with a product that Maxwell House sells for a few dollars a pound, and bumped its price to a few dollars a tablespoon with a shift in delivery and atmosphere. Lexmark, the printer company, developed a low-cost technology to place color imaging on our home desktop for less than $100.00; it now makes a fortune off the replacement-cartridge industry. The uniqueness in each case requires foresight into the future. Then again, cartridge discounters and compatible products are now taking their share of the market. Stand out by creating a distinguishing characteristic that places your product ahead of another.

1. Your products or services offer a twist, increasing their value. Swan Industries out of Toronto, Canada sells/rents oil-treated mop heads to customers at twice the going rate of non-treated mops! The process of cleaning the product is almost the same as the traditional cleaning and treating method. However, an oil-treated head places the product "a nose ahead of the competition," offering huge rewards.
2. Your products and services are purchased in more convenient methodology. Whether it is through the net or sales staff, each way makes life easier for the buyer. Oak Express, the national oak-furniture store, uses their stock room as the delivery floor. See a chair you want, pull one from the 50 units.
3. Your firm offers information before others in the industry or in a more complete fashion. Con-Way, one of the larger LTL carriers in the US, attempts to be the carrier of choice by linking the shipper to the firm by offering up-to-date shipping documents and transit positions through their extensive website.
4. Your firm makes some outlandish (yet truthful) statement. Bauer and Associates owner Joel Bauer uses this tactic and says he will draw huge crowds at an event or trade show or you don't owe him a dime. Guaranteed.
5. Technologically your product can't be touched. Israel-based VKB has created a virtual QWERTY keyboard that is not a typical keyboard. It's a "holographic-type" image displayed onto a surface, and as your fingers touch the keys, it types. No more worries about spills in all those little keys. Also a great product for sterile environments.
6. You can deliver it faster. Pirelli Tires offers a twist in JIT through MIRS (Modular Integrated Robotized System) mini factories. Need tires in various sizes and treads? They can place an automated, tire-manufacturing facility right outside your factory door. Every few minutes a tire is produced. Changeover times are reduced from six days in a typical plant to 72 minutes. Inventory is reduced where only 12% of the raw materials are being processed at a time with 88% in the wings. Every 72 minutes you could deliver a one-of-a-size (and tread) tire whenever you wish. This process reduces and/or eliminates inventory, delivery time and manpower.
7. You support a cause. Bath and Body Works made "animal testing" taboo and made environmental awareness chic.
8. No one else is you. Oprah, Madonna, Richard Branson. Enough said.
9. You've created a relationship with your buyer no one can touch. Who's the person who cuts your hair? The relationship between salon technician/barber and customer is almost sacred to many.
10. Consistently everyone knows and expects a level of service. Mercedes to the auto market, Zenga to the men's clothing industry...how about Corian countertops, Armstrong flooring, Spaulding sports equipment, and John Deere outdoor equipment? Try to argue the Ford-versus-Chevy issue to a truck buyer.

Technology and processes shorten delivery and manufacturing times, providing buyers with copious options. You, too, have choices. Do you want to struggle, to fight on price, and run with the herd? Or would you rather stand out, either with image or unique product features, and charge ahead of the pack? Choosing the latter involves some risk, but the payoffs are usually worth it. Just one note: tomorrow someone else will be copying you...so be prepared to stick your neck out and stand out all over again. Actively working the cycle makes business fun and profitable.

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TAPPING INTO YOUR POTENTIAL: Utilizing Technology
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Are you maximizing your mental potential? We've all heard how we only use about 10% of the gray matter sitting between our ears, but is it true that we're only using 10% of our brain's potential? Perhaps the other 90% is useful for other survival needs-fight or flight, instincts, etc. If you want to look at a vast area of "potential neglect," look at how we use, or don't use, technology at our disposal.

We can be more productive in the front office, yet we get by at a snail's pace. A managing director of Equity Arbitrage at a top brokerage firm cringes every time he sees subordinates using brainpower at the exclusion of technology. His firm handles hundreds of millions in internal hedge funds to help others invest corporate monies and every minute could spell lost millions. His staff relies on raw data from the strength of global currency to the comparison of financial statements to make mathematical predictions that can be exploited. The director cringes when he sees his people plodding manually when they could soar technologically. Why mull over the numbers line by line rather than address tasks as technological? His thoughts are that anything that is digital can be and should be strategically analyzed as the computer is far more efficient than the human brain for such activities. The answers: build a theory to extrapolate, build a software model to process the information, and utilize computer power to enhance the human potential.

The healthcare industry faces similar potential-squelching woes with the looming threat of HIPAA. HIPAA is a mandate requiring all medical personnel to record any and all contact with patients. Imagine the mountains of paperwork and endless hours of record keeping! Hospitals and healthcare facilities are already inundated with laws, regulations, and paperwork. Think of the added burden for the many facilities that are in financial trouble. Now healthcare providers, working longer hours with more responsibility, have even more work being piled on their shoulders.

The manual way to address HIPAA is inefficient and archaic. It ignores the ability to maximize potential, expedite processes, and reduce errors. It doesn't make use of technology, meaning the data won't be as complete, as accurate, or as easy to collect and utilize as developers think. What happens when you order a cheeseburger at a fast-food drive-thru? The attendant pushes one of several pre-programmed buttons labeled "cheeseburger." A request is sent to the kitchen and the item is logged onto your final bill. What happens if you drive through an automated toll booth? No attendant is needed as the cartridge on your windshield is electronically registered, and your bank/credit-card account is automatically charged...all in real time. Why can't someone summarize the most popular provider/patient activities, program them onto a keypad, and record activity. A touch of a button next to each bed captures customer contact as it happens, collecting 98% of the activities without service interruption. The technology could allow for some handwritten notes to be converted to computer text, just like Microsoft's new tablet PC notebook computers do.

Nurses, doctors, and other attendants could have digital identification badges that record where they are and when they meet with patients with no human record keeping. The new biometrics on facial recognition, vein and artery scanning or fingerprint technology would restrict abuses of the system. These two systems could save millions in collection-of-data costs.

Think it's too expensive to integrate technology and build in security systems? Have you ever seen the bumper sticker that says, "Think education is expensive? Try ignorance." Business 2.0's February 2003 issue explains hardware from Synaptics and software by Oftex that will enable computer manufacturers to start shipping laptops with secure fingerprint touchpads for about $100 each. As for the other costs, the touchpads that the fast-food franchises use are inexpensive and the only battle is the software tracking and integration system. Notice that this is where another tool comes into play: Alliances. Also consider that the tool of the manager or executive may often be mental.

Some may complain that start-up funding is an issue. Investing in technology is an up-front cost that can be managed, especially when balanced against the long-term savings. In the case of HIPAA, 10 non-competing hospitals and a handful of medical groups surrounding each hospital form a joint venture and invest $10,000-$20,000 each to build a starting pot of $400,000. They hire a software firm with the expertise to develop the software, then sell the final product, splitting the payoff between all parties.

Strategy, linked to technology, tied to alliances and new product/service development maximizes brain power and makes money. Testing is a must. Risk is there, but think of regions of the world that skipped land phones and went directly to cellular. Here, we make a skip to office automation.

1. Challenge yourself to eliminate an office function through the use of linking data beyond the software you've bought off the shelves.
2. Take a tactical person's job and eliminate it by redefining what is necessary to be accomplished.
3. Take a course on Access, C++ or any programming: not so you can use it, so you know what can be done and then hire people to write the code.
4. Ask yourself, what one function would a customer want to do that they could do themselves if given the tools.
5. Join a computer users' group and throw down a challenge.
6. Try to utilize the above model of a strategic directive, solved by technology, built by an alliance and developed into a new product or service for your firm.

Our mental faculties provide us with vast and limitless opportunities. Wisdom and humility are necessary traits that enable us to let go and forge ahead with what the future brings. That future is the embracing and utilization of technology to maximize the brain's potential. Who cares about the 10% or the size of the brain? The payoff-results, achievement, money, freedom, time-can be huge when you're willing to marry gray matter with digital power.