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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
Advertising on search engines is one of the most cost effective ad vehicles available. Potential customers are using the search engines to research products and services. Can they find your company in the search results? How much of your traditional marketing budget should be shifted to search engine marketing?
Apogee Web Consulting LLC is a full service search engine marketing firm whose mission is to help businesses succeed on the Internet. Services available include search engine optimization (SEO) and pay per click (PPC) advertising campaign creation and management.
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:
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:
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:
Shared IT Support Services opens doors to smaller companies that allow them to focus on their core competencies and utilize information technology as an effective enabler to cost reduction and competitive advantage. With enterprise level capabilities, companies can leverage the true value of their information technology.
MBS is a global IT service provider focused on delivering high-value IT services. From managing & monitoring a company’s infrastructure to developing and supporting their critical applications, we help clients reduce costs, streamline their operations, and improve their business and IT performance.
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:
A successful franchise is a network of interdependent business relationships that allows a number of people to share a unique brand identification, a successful method of doing business, and a strong support system The franchisor provides the brand, the system and the support; the franchisee provides desire, management skills, and capital.
FranChoice provides consumers with free guidance and advice to assist with the selection of franchise opportunities that best matches individual interests and financial qualifications. Our goal is to find the "perfect match" for who you are and what you want to do.
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:
The key to reducing operating costs and increasing revenue potential within your business is “total business automation”. Capturing information from the marketing level and automating the customer life-cycle allows your business to grow with less resources needed to obtain your goals.
Founded in 2001 and based in Tampa, Florida; KnowTia Corporation has been providing client/server based CRM software for the SMB market that specializes in the complete customer life cycle.
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:
Progressive leaders are using powerful visual maps to overcome complex challenges and leverage opportunities. RavenFire’s white paper, “Visual Maps as Business Solutions,” describes what visual business solutions are and their applications. In addition, the paper outlines the benefits of visual mapping, the process for building a relevant and useful map and how to get started.
RavenFire is dedicated to rapidly improving clients' business results. To more quickly achieve these goals, we designed Visual Business Solutions, which accelerate alignment, clarity, focus and execution. For more information, contact Randy Boek 425.359.8506 randyb@ravenfire.com www.ravenfire.com
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:
The globalization of commerce, communication, and transportation has changed the business landscape permanently. The new global economic interdependence impacts everyone at every level of business, government, and society. This impact of globalization is apparent to all of us all. We are all living and doing business in the global marketplace, which places new demands on business leadership.
The Profit Circle, LLC focuses clearly on their clients’ profit growth. An association of carefully selected experienced professionals, TPC offers high quality services at rates that reflect expertise and value to clients, without adding the overhead of an operating infrastructure.
Report Summary:
Over the past fifteen years, two forces have been working in tandem to homogenize products and services in the minds of customers: the sheer amount of information at their fingertips and the increasing quality of products and services. Because these forces are growing exponentially more powerful, no product or service is safe from the appearance of commoditization. As a result, today’s decision-makers are transforming the nature of their vendor relationships.
Huthwaite’s business is sales performance improvement. Pioneers in the application of behavioral analysis to benchmark selling excellence, we combine empirical research with the fundamentals of organizational change and world-class training to improve the effectiveness of sales professionals.
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
Successful organizations continually look for ways to reach the right prospects and boost response rates while strengthening customer relationships. As competitive pressures rise, improving the customer experience has become increasingly important to organizations worldwide.
Document Sciences is a market-leading provider of customer communications management solutions. Its award-winning xPression® software suite enables organizations to automate the creation and delivery of highly personalized communications.
Report Summary:
Ongoing adaptation is essential to capitalize on opportunity and respond to change. Collective employee and vendor alignment must be coordinated to achieve sustained performance in spite of dynamic factors. Performance Management aids in accomplishing this goal.
BetterManagement is a unique mix of educational activities combining interactive web resources and live conferences connecting decision makers with relevant information. Global perspectives from respected publications, associations and academic institutions form a learning path on critical issues.
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:
In order to make better, more informed and timely business decisions, executives must have better access to key business information, when and where it is needed, in a form that is easily accessed and used. Appropriate and concise information ‘at your fingertips’ can be realized and is achieved today by using a technique called Execunomics™ – or ergonomically correct executive information. This article will present the foundational principles for applying Execunomics™ in your organization.
Semeron Corporation, a global consultancy, focuses on helping clients align their strategy, people, process and technology for measurable business gain. With clients from Fortune to entrepreneurial, Semeron helps executives visualize and achieve business objectives through reality-based innovation.
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:
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.
Report Summary:
Upon reading this report and the free whitepaper, the user will have an understanding of what the common Operational Risk solutions and implementation essentials are, relating from regulatory acts such as Sarbanes-Oxley, Gramm-Leach, Blihley, HIPAA, CA SB 1386 and Basel II.
Adaptive Business Consulting specializes in working with senior management in Strategic Planning; Operational Risk Planning; Security Forensic Assessments & Remediation; and Business/Technology Alignment.
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:
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:
Outsourcing your Customer Service function could be the best strategic move your company could make this year. If you haven’t considered outsourcing because you believe Customer Service is a critical support function to your core competency; that may be the exact reason to do it! Leveraging the expertise and best practices of a third party whose core competency is Customer Service, could prove to be a key differentiator for your company in the market place.
American Customer Care is among the Top 25 providers of outsourced contact center services worldwide. With 7 centers and 1,600 agents located across the U.S., ACC offers its clients complete customer contact management, including phone and web support, fulfillment, mail and back office services.
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.
