This website provides informative insights and solutions on a wide range of business topics. Reports were written by leading professionals at companies nationwide, to provide readers a practical, hands-on perspective. Condensed versions appeared in BusinessWeek magazine. All reports may be viewed or downloaded without charge, however usage of this site is only permitted only in accordance with the stated terms and conditions.
Report Summary:
Choosing the right technology partner should be the singular focus for independent retailers wanting to succeed in today’s challenging marketplace. What constitutes a great partner? Innovative technologically advanced partners with retail experience, offering an all-inclusive approach will guarantee retailers to achieve business success through their point of sale systems. Ultimately, retailers who find that synergistic relationship will thrive where others will experience frustration and fail.
Business Automation Consultants, Inc. (BAC) specializes in providing solutions in all facets of retail technology and network services to retailers. Among BAC’s offerings are Retail Pro, the world’s leading POS software; and Microsoft Retail Management System (RMS).
Report Summary:
Marketers burdened with complex sales and marketing material distribution requirements have often not taken advantage of the best practices and technology advancements implemented in other areas of the business. In order for marketing to progress, marketers need to quickly embrace new on-demand web-based technologies that can provide cost-effective process improvements and help recover budget dollars currently wasted on non-optimized operations or non-revenue generating activities.
Report Summary:
Firms are searching for ways to improve their customer’s buying experience. With the advance of 3D graphics on almost all PCs, several leading companies are creating competitive advantage by deploying intelligent catalogs. These catalogs utilize interactive 3D software to convey product choices, options and configurations in the context of customer’s needs. In this report we explore examples of how these new intelligent catalogs are changing the way firms present their products to customers.
CHI-LLC is a Seattle-based custom software firm that develops 3D design and configuration sales software for both web-based and desktop applications. Our applications utilize simple-to-use graphical interfaces, kinetic 3D graphics, embedded product configuration logic, and sales quote generators.
Report Summary:
Gone are the days of numbers-driven dictators who motivate staff through intimidation or elaborate incentives. Instead, the most effective sales managers are multi-faceted—drawing on a number of diverse competencies to optimize their sales teams’ performance.
AchieveGlobal is the world’s leading resource for helping organizations translates business strategies into results by developing the performance of their people.
Report Summary:
Many companies struggle with constructive ways to increase employee performance. This report covers the way tangible employee incentives and recognition programs answer this dilemma to ultimately enhance company profitability.
Rymax Marketing Services, Inc., an industry-leading provider of merchandise incentives, understands the important role incentives play in increasing a company’s bottom line.
Report Summary:
Business leaders, managers, engineers and quality professionals will learn specific questions to ask to generate knowledge about their products and processes leading to variation reduction and enabling compliance with customer-driven requirements. Readers will also be provided with a deployment strategy proven effective in reducing the Cost of Poor Quality.
Air Academy Associates is a leading provider of innovative Lean Six Sigma process improvement consulting and training services, e-learning solutions, open enrollment workshops, textbooks, training aids, and software for clients worldwide.
Report Summary:
Here are some things to think about that may help you decide whether or not it’s the right time for a business owner to update their company’s logo design. The report outlines key indicators of an outdated logo design, including a brief case study of a small business owner who needed an updated logo and has seen the benefits of having a new, updated logo design.
Logoworks is the world leader in graphic design services to small businesses. They have helped over 45,000 small businesses look great through logos, stationery, business cards, brochure, website and other design.
Report Summary:
Since the late 1990’s, CRM has been an important enterprise application in the technology marketplace. After the accounting and ERP revolution dominated the limelight and then eventually matured, the next natural step appeared to be the automation of the corporate “front office”, which included sales, marketing, and customer service.
Report Summary:
Strong brands create emotional bonds that allow them to enjoy higher price points and volume, stronger consumer loyalty, longer business relationships, competitive insulation, and more. It’s a competitive advantage so important that Wall Street often values brand equity more than the assessed value of its underlying infrastructure. Think Coca-Cola®.
Report Summary:
Online technology has revolutionized business communications. This report explores the electronic equivalents to handwritten signatures, certified mail, and other authentication elements needed for contracts, legal correspondence, and compliance-related documentation. Learn how platforms like Inscrybe from Authentidate are not just analogous to, but superior to, traditional methods, including how and why these technologies are superior to their paper equivalents.
Authentidate Holding Corp. is a worldwide provider of software and web-based services that enable enterprises and individuals to securely conduct the trusted exchange of electronic content.
Report Summary:
Product development is essential for any business, yet it is complex, costly and risky. What’s more, product failure rates are notoriously high due to fierce competition and lack of consumer understanding. This report details how your company can increase your odds for product success by using marketing research to understand consumer needs and gain the insight necessary to make the best business decisions during new product development.
MRSI, an MVL Group company, has provided custom quantitative and qualitative marketing research across multiple industries since 1973. Its full-service firm specializes in product development research and helps develop strategies that increase your odds for product success.
Report Summary:
Hackers, viruses, and worms have generated fear about network security. It is essential that enterprises optimize network security. A three-step structured approach is used to minimize Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) while meeting security requirements. This puts network security investments on a sound business driven basis where discussions of project benefits and financial metrics such as ROI and payback take the place of reactive “threat-of-the-week” style management.
Network Strategy Partners, LLC — management consultants to the networking industry — helps clients make strategic decisions, mitigate risk and effect change through business and technology consulting engagements. We provide architecture, design, IT process and vendor management services.
Report Summary:
Technology Strategic Plan recommendations eliminate duplicative efforts, increase productivity, and apply technology effectively, often reducing the number of workers required for a specific process, thereby decreasing costs.
The Plan also addresses unanticipated risks: intrusions, both physical and electronic, hackers, time lost due to ineffective work practices, viruses, social engineering risks and inappropriate or unproductive use of technology.
Information Access Strategies, Inc., founded in 1983 and privately held, provides independent consulting services to municipal, local government and private sector clients focused on Technology Strategic Planning using the Business Process Review methodology.
Report Summary:
This article addresses the issue of hidden or lost profits that many companies do not recognize or recuperate that can be identified and captured by using effective management techniques. The author is uniquely qualified to speak to this issue because of his engineering background, his 28 years in consulting and his position as Managing Director of the Solutions Group of Strategic Business Partners.
Strategic Business Partners offers strategic, change management consulting relationships primarily to businesses. We pride ourselves on our versatility, agility in virtually any vertical and our steadfast adherence to excellence in delivering high-impact, value-added, predictable results.
Report Summary:
Search engine optimization, or SEO, allows successful companies to achieve top rankings for their web pages in the search engines like Google and Yahoo. With 340 million web users relying on Google or other search engines to locate new businesses every day, a sound SEO strategy that leads to top rankings in the search engines can turn a small business into a large business almost overnight. Learn how you can utilize the expertise of SEO experts like SlickRockWeb to market and grow your business.
SlickRockWeb Inc. is a leading provider of search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing services. SlickRockWeb creates and manages cost-effective pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns and elevates a website’s natural ranking in the search engines through a variety of proprietary SEO methods.
Report Summary:
With the ever-increasing proliferation of viral media vehicles - from YouTube and the blogosphere to camera phones - marketing and branding have never had more potential opportunities and challenges. Oneupweb offers some key suggestions for thriving and surviving in this new environment through the effective integration of your online marketing efforts.
Oneupweb is a leading innovator in online marketing, creating integrated plans for some of the world's most recognized brands. Services include natural search engine optimization, paid search marketing, podcast production and tracking, social media marketing, online market research and analytics.
Report Summary:
Businesses planning to invest in a new CRM solution need to insure that the solution is flexible, scaleable, and integrates quickly and easily. Ideally, the CRM solution will be easily installed, so deployment is fast and easy so ultimately users will be up and running immediately, including wireless devices. The CRM decision maker first questions will be, what does it cost and how is the CRM application to be supported.
Full Spectrum CRM, a MVI Solution company, is a leading provider of secure, scalable, CRM solutions. Full Spectrum offers superior support, consulting, training, while hosting all web applications on the finest, most secure Tier 1 platform in the USA.
Report Summary:
This report contains specific recommendations and conceptual strategies for negotiating a world class telecommunications contract with best in class pricing and robust contract provisions.
Telwares works with large enterprises to optimally source and manage their telecom investments. With focused practices in Voice, Data, Local and Wireless services, Telwares is the trusted advisor to over 200 enterprise clients, including over 30% of the Fortune 100. www.telwares.com.
Report Summary:
This report is designed to assist C-level executives of the importance of developing and continuing a training program for their sales team and organization, which offers a unique perspective of how to break down the training process to achieve the greatest return on investment.
This article provides 2 clear examples of how to measure the total potential return from incorporating a training solution, and how to continue to improve results.
Ashton Zane Inc. offers a variety of beneficial services to meet the needs of sales people and organizations. Our training system is two-fold by providing public seminars and customized training. We utilize a multi-faceted approach to encompass your sales team with a complete learning experience.
Report Summary:
Maintaining peak performance and avoiding or reversing aging requires that management systematically address the following:
1. Mission and Scope
2. Organization Structure
3. Accountability
4. Compensation and Incentives
Since its founding in 1986 Corporate LifeCycles has helped organizations to design and implement change programs that accelerate the achievement of their growth, profit and other business goals.
Report Summary:
Even major technology firms took a beating during the dot-com bust just after the millennium. The wounds have been slow to heal. Established technology firms are finally seeing growth in spending once again. But are the heady days of go-go double digit sales growth likely to reappear? Save the rare Google, most experts hedge at the prospect. The maturing of the technology sector is one of many indicators that future sales increases may not reach the spectacular growth seen in past years.
Answers Research of Solana Beach, CA is a leading provider of custom primary market research for Global 1000 clients. The company designs and executes critical proprietary research and specializes in applying sophisticated statistical modeling to primary data collected from around the globe.
Report Summary:
Create an email self-promotion campaign that keeps your name in front of your prospects and clients – and elevates you to expert status. Share your expertise and watch your sales soar.
Karen Gedney is an award-winning creative director and copywriter, specializing in innovative, results-driven direct mail and email campaigns. She writes a biweekly online column on B2B Email Marketing for ClickZ -- and offers both training and coaching in email strategy and writing.
Report Summary:
Financing or leasing equipment helps your business generate a better ROI. The tax advantages of leasing coupled with the preservation of capital prove to be the best option for business owners to acquire income producing assets.
With customers nationwide, American Capital is a leader in the equipment financing industry serving equipment end-users and equipment vendors. We are a preferred source of financing for equipment distributors and purchasers.
Report Summary:
The Report will provide fundamental insights into the best practices of for-profit and not-for-profit institutions as they strive to fulfill their specific missions. Suggestions are made regarding diagnostic and prescriptive protocols that are designed to strengthen institutional infrastructures as they relate to internal culture and the quality of professional relationships.
Shea Consulting Services provides guidance to for-profit and not-for-profit firms and educational institutions to enhance the quality of organizational behavior as it impacts institutional mission and infrastructure, boardsmanship, leadership and management.
Report Summary:
Companies spend vast amounts of time, effort and money to provide their salespeople product training. It isn’t unusual for organizations to have product training budgets ten to twenty times that of their sales training budgets. As the name implies, product training tends to be product-centric vs. customer-centric. Within most organizations, helping customers understand how offerings can be used, is unfortunately left up to individual salespeople.
Report Summary:
Everyone has ideas – few make money. The commercialization of innovation is a complex journey in which you can lose your way. How can you stay the course and turn your vision into value? The Innovation EDGE™ is a "dashboard" to help guide you through the process and increase your chance for success.
Report Summary:
Is your sales team a strategic weapon? Competition is tougher than at any time in modern business. Basic economic theories of supply and demand have been blown apart as excess supply has put extraordinary pressure on pricing. The days of taking Purchasing to lunch and negotiating next year’s contract are over.
Carew International has established its reputation as a leader in the design and delivery of sales, sales leadership training, customer service and overall organizational effectiveness solutions.
Report Summary:
What does knowing your customer really mean?
Simple and obvious advice: know your customer. But are just understanding where they are located, what they purchased from you last year, the industry they are in, and some estimate of their size (in employees or revenue) really enough to drive your business forward? In a technology market that continues to change rapidly, understanding the technology buyer in the corporate space is critical to your success.
Harte-Hanks is the leading provider of database products and services to the technology and telecommunications industries in North America, Europe and Latin America.
Report Summary:
An email newsletter offers the small business owner an opportunity to reach out to customers and prospects in ways that were simply not possible just a few short years ago. Whether you do it yourself, use a service like Constant Contact, or hire an agency to handle the entire process, an email newsletter is a useful tool - well worth adding to your repertoire.
Constant Contact®, Do-It-Yourself Email Marketing™ helps small and mid-sized businesses and associations develop an ongoing relationship with their customers and site visitors.
Report Summary:
Historically security has been seen as overhead and not expected to improve the operations of the organization. Security professionals gave little attention to Return on Investment (ROI) and focused more on the trade off between convenience and safety. With the deployment of a smart card centric security system, business leaders are able to not only improve the security of the organization, but also improve employee productivity, efficiency, and reduce organizational costs.
Pro-Tec Design assists clients in the evaluation, selection, and deployment of security technology. We specialize in the design of non-proprietary, industry leading solutions that leverage existing infrastructure and maximize return on investment.
Report Summary:
Today’s leading brands, retailers and customer-focused organizations recognize the power of carefully designed, authentic and experiential interactions with their customers. This strategic approach is resulting in new levels of customer loyalty, satisfaction and shareholder return.
Second To None, Inc. is a multi-disciplinary customer experience optimization firm, serving leading brands in measuring, understanding and improving on all aspects of brand performance and customer experience. The company delivers actionable business intelligence and critical strategic insight.
Report Summary:
Increased activism by shareholders and Boards, coupled with key new directives from legislators and regulators, have resulted in the most significant transformation in the executive compensation and benefits landscape in over a decade. In this report, readers will learn about the profound changes taking place and some of the recent trends guiding the industry.
Clark Consulting (NYSE:CLK) is a leading public executive compensation and benefits consulting firm. Founded in 1967 and now with over 70 offices nationwide, Clark Consulting helps more than 3,900 corporate, healthcare and banking clients to keep their best people.
Report Summary:
Process Based Leadership™ (PBL) is a management system, which uses non-negotiable business process to drive organizations to performance excellence and a culture of accountability. PBL is a solution designed to combat the current debilitated state of organizations and their leadership—perpetuated by a lack of structure, discipline and habit.
Competitive Solutions, Inc. (CSI) is an international consulting and training organization specializing in Leadership Development, Accountability Systems, Communication Strategy Development, and Business Focused teams.
Report Summary:
Make your non-profit, school or business e-commerce savvy with a web-based payment solution. Studies show that organizations making the switch to web-based payment transactions increase their consumer base, generate more revenue and improve customer relations. Online accessibility allows your customers/donors to pay anytime, anywhere with the click of a button. A web-based payment plan can be tailored to your company’s needs to set up one-time donations to periodic payment/donations.
NetCharge is a leader in web-based transaction services that provides online payment solutions for non-profit organizations, educational institutions and businesses. NetCharge works with organizations to customize and manage payment plans that increase sales and improve customer satisfaction.
Report Summary:
The Internet has become an attractive medium for advertising. Search engine operators now sell "keywords" to promote goods and services. Web site operators and advertisers using this technique should recognize the risks in this practice as shown by recent cases filed in such diverse jurisdictions as Illinois, California, Louisiana, and France.[1]
Report Summary:
This has never been as true for marketers as it is today. Your target prospects now have so many new media and format choices – Blackberry, Mobile ads, Podcasts, RSS feeds – to name a few.
