Archive for the ‘Innovators and Entrepreneurs’ Category

There’s hope for us all…….

Every once in a while I get to feeling sorry for myself. I see others accomplishing so much and making it look so easy. The very effortlessness by which they make things happen causes me to feel like they might have been born with a set of talents and skills that I don’t have.

But then, as often happens, just the right bit of inspiration came to me at just the right time in the form of a Harvard Business Review article entitled, “Six Keys to Being Excellent at Anything” by Tony Schwartz. In his article, Mr. Schwartz presents evidence that it is “possible to build any given skill or capacity in the same systematic way we do a muscle: push past your comfort zone.”

There is hope for all of us. Click here for more of his article

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This entry was posted on Monday, November 15th, 2010 at 2:53 pm and is filed under Entrepreneur, Innovators and Entrepreneurs, Sales Strategy, Start-ups. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

As leaders do we allow our teams to learn from mistakes? Really?

As leaders do we allow our teams to learn from mistakes? Really?

Where does our learning, our new knowledge come from? The Web, books and other forms of personal development, coaching & mentoring and training all come to mind. However, for me, most learning comes from mistakes I’ve made. By looking at what I might have done differently or better and applying that to the next, similar situation, I have continued to make the improvements I need to continue to evolve and remain competitive.

I am happy with the manner in which I’ve learned from my mistakes. I am not happy; however, with how effectively I’ve helped those on teams I’ve led learn from THEIR mistakes. If I can apply to my team members what I applied personally then there has to be a significant opportunity for team growth and development.

I found the following article, “Forgive and Remember: How a Good Boss Responds to Mistakes” written by Robert I. Sutton. I love his line “failure sucks but instructs.”

To read the rest of the article

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 25th, 2010 at 3:00 pm and is filed under Entrepreneur, Innovators and Entrepreneurs, Sales Strategy, Start-ups. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Warning!! Difficult / impossible relationship around the corner

In my business I have the chance to work with all sorts of people with a wide variety of backgrounds, qualifications, cultures, educations and skills. I feel quite fortunate to be able to say that 99.7% of the clients I work with are smart, fair, ethical and decent. I don’t want to appear to be the “glass half empty guy” but I wanted, for a moment, to focus on the “.3%”. Why? Because of the amount of my energy they consume.

I often wonder if, in the process of doing business with these folks, if I have ignored any warning signs that might have allowed me to walk away or to better negotiate specific (pain advoidance) points. I came accross a blog by Steve Nguyen entitled “People with a Situational Value System” in which Mr. Nguyen, using observations from the hospitality industry, points out one of his warning signs- people that treat the wait staff poorly while behaving perfectly civily with their dinner guests.

After reading his article I guess I need to take all my new prospects out to lunch!

To read the rest of the article

This entry was posted on Monday, July 19th, 2010 at 10:10 am and is filed under Economy, Entrepreneur, Innovators and Entrepreneurs, Marketing, Sales Strategy, Start-ups. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

How to Think Like a Bootstrapper

How to Think Like a Bootstrapper
Scott Allen

I just read this article by Scott Allen and, although it is directed to small businesses, I believe every point he makes applies to most of us and our businesses.

Bob

Jun 18, 2010 –

It may be the high-growth, venture-funded companies that get a lot of press, but the fact of the matter is that the vast majority of businesses are started for under $10,000, usually provided by the entrepreneur’s friends and family, credit cards, or their own pocket. While it’s true that bootstrapped companies have a slightly higher failure rate than better-funded companies, the difference isn’t significant, and there are lots of bootstrapped businesses that succeed, just as there are many well-funded companies that flop. Good management practices are far more important to your success than big piles of cash are.

Here are a dozen tips to help you start and grow your business with little or no capital.

The most important question before you start is: how much will it cost to make your first sale? Consider everything: product research and development, operational overhead, marketing, cost of goods, etc. If it all adds up to more money than you have, you’re not bootstrapping. Rethink your model – can you really bootstrap, or do you need a bigger stack of working capital?

Cash flow isn’t the most important thing — it’s the only thing. For the bootstrapper, cash is like oxygen. When it stops for more than just a brief period, you die. Learn everything you can about accelerating cash flow and apply as much as possible to your business. Focus on cash — not on profits, market share, or anything else. Be super-realistic — even pessimistic — when it comes to revenue projections. You have no margin for error on the back end — you have to build it into your estimates on the front end.

Start with partners, not employees. Payroll is most companies’ biggest expense. Without a big pile of cash, you can’t afford it, period. Find people who are willing to work for equity, or at least deferred salary, when first starting out. Don’t hire any paid employees until profits allow you to pay them. Of course, this means that you have to have all the core competencies for the company covered in your core team. Find people whose strengths cover your weaknesses.

Develop continuous, passive income, even if that’s not your core business. Your main business may be big-ticket, one-time sales, or project-based services. These are rollercoaster rides that may be wildly successful, but may also frequently bottom out for extended periods. In your business model, be sure to include an offering that creates steady positive cash flow — subscriptions, consumables, automated product sales of information products, etc. It may seem like a distraction at first, but the first time that rollercoaster bottoms out, you’ll be glad you made the investment.

You’re not in the business of lending money. So don’t. If a customer says they have cash flow issues themselves, that’s what credit cards are for. If payment plans are common in your market, find a financing company to partner with and let them handle it. Get payment — even partial — up front whenever possible. Require a deposit that at least covers your hard cost of the sale. Don’t make excuses — just make it your policy and be clear about it up front.

Use credit for cash, not capital. It’s perfectly sensible to borrow money to manage short-term gaps in cash flow, such as using vendor credit to delay payment until you can receive payment from your customers, or paying for something that will quickly generate profits that exceed the interest, such as a marketing campaign. What you don’t want to do is borrow money to gamble with. You wouldn’t (or shouldn’t) put a cash advance on your credit card to gamble in Vegas…don’t do the same in your business. You may very well have to personally guarantee those loans, and that’s how entrepreneurs end up in personal bankruptcy, not just closing the business and moving on.

Do without it until you can no longer do without it. Postpone any and every purchase as long as you possibly can. Share office space, supplies, equipment, etc. The longer you can wait to make the purchase, the more time you have to discover the best deal, or to clarify your needs and find which product or service is best suited to them. Also, particularly with technology purchases, prices tend to go down, not up. This also may mean doing things like having a founder’s spouse keep the books and using free contract templates instead of hiring accountants and lawyers at first. Sure, it has risks, but so does spending available cash on those services rather than on things that will generate revenue.

Don’t try to beat the big boys at their own game. Large companies have access to capital, massive distribution channels, widespread brand recognition, and established customer relationships. They also have baggage — bureaucracy, formalized risk management, overhead, massive investments in their current business model and brand. Forget about massive retail distribution (for now) — sell direct and/or focus on close relationships with a small number of niche resellers. Take advantage of your ability to be agile, to make decisions quickly and put them into action immediately.

Don’t sell what you can’t deliver. Manage your growth. Big companies can deal with manufacturing capacity, customer service problems, or even major product issues by throwing cash at the problem. You can’t. While it may not feel like it when you’ve been struggling, there really is such a thing as too much business. Make your current customers your top priority. While potential new customers may be disappointed about not being able to obtain your product or service, they’ll understand. Sure, you may miss out on some potential business, but you won’t risk crashing and burning because of reduced quality control or poor customer service. I recently heard a business owner tale a cautionary tale about his experience of growing too fast. At one point, he called his own customer service line to see just how bad the problem was, and the automated attendant told him his expected hold time was 14 hours!

Don’t gamble what you can’t afford to lose. Don’t finance your business with a second mortgage on your home unless you’re willing to be homeless. Don’t bet the whole company on one opportunity. No matter how much you believe, no matter how good the opportunity looks, until you have the money in the bank, nothing’s a sure thing. That said, take advantage of the fact that you don’t have nearly as much to lose as big companies do. You won’t destroy billions of dollars of market value with a poor quarterly report. Employees who come to work for a startup know they’re taking a risk, while those working for a large company are usually expecting more stability. You can take chances that they can’t because you really don’t have as much at stake.

Establish relationships to support your growth before you need them. Sooner or later, you’re going to have an urgent need for resources or expertise outside of your company. It may be your first business tax return, a big order that requires additional resources to deliver, an urgent legal question, etc. Figure out who you want to use and establish a relationship with them in advance, so that they’re ready to go when you call them. If you have to scramble to figure it out when the need or opportunity presents itself, your risk of problems goes up dramatically.

Focus on the customer. Create raving, passionate fans by consistently exceeding their expectations. It’s far cheaper to keep customers than to acquire new ones. And happy customers are both your cheapest and most effective advertising. Develop your relationships with them above and beyond the sale. Learn about their business and refer people to them. Connect with them on LinkedIn. Check in with them on a regular basis with no sales agenda – just to see how things are going.

Bootstrapping is really more of a business philosophy than it is just about a shortage of capital. Even if you have capital at your disposal, or if you’re well past the startup stage, applying these ideas will help you reduce your risks and achieve smart business growth.

Scott “Social Media” Allen is a 25-year veteran technology entrepreneur, executive and consultant. He’s coauthor of The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online, the first book on the business use of social media, and The Emergence of The Relationship Economy. His latest venture, NFN8 Media, maintains a growing portfolio of niche content and community sites. He enjoys working with entrepreneurs and serves on the advisory board of several startups.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010 at 11:27 am and is filed under Economy, Entrepreneur, Innovators and Entrepreneurs, Marketing, MBA, Sales Strategy, Start-ups, Technology, Uncategorized, VAR, Web 2.0 Strategies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

How to Leverage the Pain vs. Gain Mentality

How to Leverage the Pain vs. Gain Mentality
August 20, 2007 by Stephen Shapiro

I came accross this blog by Stephen Shapiro–about the power of language. His articlecasued me to think about my choices and word selections. I hope you find this valuable.

Bob

In an earlier blog entry, I discuss the power of language. I want to explore this a bit further today.

Here’s my variation of the “Asian disease problem” mentioned in that earlier blog entry:

Which would you prefer?

■OPTION 1: A guaranteed gain of $75,000?
■OPTION 2: An 80% chance of gaining $100,000 with a 20% chance of getting nothing?
When I give a speech and ask the audience this question, 75% choose Option 1. This percentage is consistent across all groups, regardless of who is in the audience.

Ok, what about the following? Which would you choose?

■Option 3: A certain loss of $75,000?
■Option 4: An 80% chance of losing $100,000 with a 20% chance of not losing anything?
When audiences answer this one, 99% choose option 4.

This once again supports the premise that people will take risks to reduce losses, yet will be more risk averse when it comes to increasing gains.

Interestingly, when you look at these options, even though most people choose options 1 and 4, options 2 and 3 give you better returns. On average, you will gain $80,000 with option 2 and will lose $80,000 with option 4.

Look around and you may begin to see examples of advertisers focusing on losses rather than gains, with stellar results. For example…

How many mattress commercials have you heard that say, “Buy our xyz bed and you will get your best night’s sleep ever.” Yawn. Boring. The commercial may put me to sleep, but it’s not going to get me to buy a bed.

Consider this actual advertisement. “If your mattress is 10 years old, it weighs twice its original weight due to the dust mites that accumulate over the years.” Ouch! This makes me want to replace my mattress now.

Instead of selling customers on how great your product or service is, show them the downside of using a less reliable alternative. As a friend of mine says, “If you need open heart surgery, would you shop for a cardiologist based on price?” She then launches into the risk associated with not getting it (your product/service) right.

What examples have you seen of great sales pitches, advertisements, or anything else that uses this concept?

P.S. One place where this concept apparently does not apply is on TV game shows. I see people on “Deal or No Deal” risk a certain $500,000 for a 50% chance of winning $1 million. Their interviewing process must do a great job at finding the few people who really do take risks to increase their gains.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 16th, 2010 at 2:11 pm and is filed under Entrepreneur, Innovators and Entrepreneurs, Marketing, Sales Strategy, Start-ups, Web 2.0 Strategies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Why You Should Love Failure

May 17, 2010

Why You Should Love Failure

Posted by Donna Fenn at 3:58 PM

I spent part of last week at a conference called MultiMania in Kortrijk, Belgium, speaking about young U.S. entrepreneurs and learning about their European counterparts. One of the most striking things I discovered is that while young people in Europe do have the desire to start their own companies, many are faced with a major stumbling block that is largely cultural: fear. Not fear of taking the leap into the world of entrepreneurship, but fear of failing at it. The topic also came up at SXSW last March at a panel discussion on “How to Teach Entrepreneurialism Globally.”

On all fronts, the consensus seems to be that it’s awfully tough to encourage entrepreneurship in environments where failing is viewed as catastrophic and humiliating, as it is in many parts of the developing world as well as in Europe. Not that we are universally in love with failure here in the U.S., but somewhere along the way, many of our entrepreneurs seemed to start wearing their failures as badges of honor – evidence of risk-taking, resilience in the face of adversity, and the ability to dust yourself off and start over again.

But there’s something else going on here as well, I think, and it’s a concept that Srikumar Rao lays out brilliantly in his new book, Happiness at Work. It’s about valuing process over outcomes. In other words, while you most certainly start a business with a big goal in mind, the true value of the entrepreneurial experience comes from what you do every day to achieve that goal. If you love the process and learn from it, then achieving the goal itself almost becomes secondary. In fact, you may discover that your accumulated knowledge can be leveraged more effectively toward an even worthier goal. It’s that laser focus on the process – not obsession with the end goal – that ultimately leads to success.

Great entrepreneurs understand this intuitively and I’m beginning to believe that this is particularly true of our younger entrepreneurs. Last Friday at Elliot Bisnow’s excellent DC10 Conference, I listened to Trip Adler (Scribd), Adam Smith (Xobni), and Drew Houston (Dropbox), speak with incredible enthusiasm and pride about the failed ventures that ultimately led them to their current successful businesses. “The worst thing is not having your idea fail,” said Houston, “it’s when it takes a really long time to fail.” That’s where fear comes in again: we’d rather hold on for dear life to something that doesn’t work than admit failure.

So I left Europe with fingers crossed for the same type of youth entrepreneurship revolution that we’re experiencing here in the U.S. Some notable bright spots: Fraser Doherty (otherwise known as Jam Boy) who started SuperJam with his grandmother’s jam recipe and experienced his fair share of failure before taking the UK market by storm; and a little Belgian design company called Elevenfeet whose co-founder Wouter Doornaert summed it all up perfectly: “So what if I fail? At least I’ll have a story to tell.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 8th, 2010 at 9:41 am and is filed under Economy, Entrepreneur, Innovators and Entrepreneurs, Sales Strategy, Start-ups, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Forget Your Elevator Pitch — What’s Your Dumbwaiter Pitch?

Umair Haque On:Global Business, Competition, Economy

Forget Your Elevator Pitch — What’s Your Dumbwaiter Pitch?

So you’ve got an elevator pitch — a short, pithy description of why your business is special, exciting, and unique. Yawn. Today, elevator pitches are the economic equivalent of speeches at a beauty pageant: predictable, often vapid, always bland.

Here’s a suggestion. Try a Dumbwaiter Pitch instead. It’s an exercise I often do with startups, giant corporations, social entrepreneurs, and investors. Its goal? To strip an organization right down to its bones, and see how compelling it really is.

What’s the one-word description of your business? That’s right: just one word. The most common answer is: hmming, hawing, and silence. The second most common answer is an imaginary benefit. The third most common answer is a raw product — just another mass-produced, meaningless commodity. All three answers reveal a business with whose foundation, its economic concept, is confused, muddled, and perhaps even nonexistent.
Let’s go through a few examples.

What’s the Dumbwaiter Pitch for a soft drink company? “Happiness” is Coke’s latest answer. Of course, the link between soft drinks and happiness is tenuous at best, and probably totally nonexistent in reality. Let’s get real: the Dumbwaiter Pitch for a soft-drinks company isn’t “happiness.” It’s just “sugar-water.” And in a world where the costs of obesity on the one hand and poor nutrition on the other are ever more apparent, that’s a weak, uncompelling proposition.

What’s the Dumbwaiter Pitch for Vertu — the Nokia subsidiary that makes luxury mobile phones? “Luxe” doesn’t work — it takes more than merely ostrich leather to make high-end tech, as Apple’s groundbreaking software so vividly keeps demonstrating. Blinged-out versions of a $50 phone that sell for 100x the price? The only Dumbwaiter Pitch for that set of economics is “consumption.” And that highlights the problem with the very foundation of the business, its economic concept. In a world where consumption must rebalance sharply, Vertu’s concept has reached its expiry date.

What’s Foursquare’s Dumbwaiter Pitch? If it’s “gaming,” there are plenty of more involving games, more powerful substitutes around. If it’s “connection,” who’s connecting? There’s a long way, it seems, to go before real connections are made. The Dumbwaiter Pitch highlights the need for Foursquare, while cool, to get serious about next-gen economics.

What’s Twitter’s Dumbwaiter Pitch? I’d say: “alerts.” And that’s powerful in a roiling, seething world where risk and volatility are vastly amplified. Information that alerts you to possibilities and opportunities matters more than ever before. You can’t get alerts anywhere else: not at Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft. Twitter is one of the few companies in the economy with a solid, compelling Dumbwaiter Pitch.

In simplicity lie the seeds of explosively powerful propositions. In complexity, only confusion, incoherence, and uncompetitiveness.

Reductive, simplistic, restrictive? Think again. Nearly every disruptive business, in fact, has a Dumbwaiter Pitch as pure, simple, and powerful as Niagara Falls. Google? Search. Apple? Beauty. Lego? Creativity. Conversely, companies that aren’t sharp-eyed enough to see that their real Dumbwaiter Pitches are lame, tired, or just plain evil — well, they usually end up facing extinction. Wall Street’s should have been “wealth” but it was really “looting” — pow! Big Pharma’s should be “health” but it’s really “pricing” — zap! Big Food’s should be “nutrition” but it’s really “obesity” — bang!

The Dumbwaiter Pitch is so powerful because it cuts through the obfuscation, glad-handing, and double-talk so beloved of boardrooms and beancounters and asks them to get straight to the real point. And, of course, like the sharpest of scalpels, it reveals where there never was any meat on the bones to begin with.

Only businesses with a razor-sharp, laser-focused vision — and a disruptive economic concept — can craft a Dumbwaiter Pitch. Do you have what it takes? What’s the one-word description of your business?

This entry was posted on Friday, May 21st, 2010 at 12:40 pm and is filed under Entrepreneur, Innovators and Entrepreneurs, Marketing, Sales Strategy, Start-ups. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Sales 3.0?

S. Anthony Iannarino on his sales blog postulates Sales 3,0, the fusion classic sales skills with technology enablers.  I am not sure how that is different from Sales 2.0, but I like the way Sales 3.0 sounds…perhaps he is onto something!

“Timeless Principles:

1. Self Discipline: The Ability to Keep Commitments to One’s Self

2. Optimism: A Positive Mental Attitude

3. Competitiveness: A Desire to Win

4. Initiative: The Ability to Take Action

5. Resourcefulness: The Ability to Find a Way, or to Make One

6. Determination: The Ability to Persevere

7. Caring: A Desire to Achieve a Positive Result for Others

8. Empathy and Emotional Intelligence: The Ability to Connect with Others

9. Communication: The Ability to Listen and to Explain Ideas

10. Influence: The Ability to Persuade Others

To succeed in sales, especially B2B sales, you also need the following sales-related skill sets:

Sales Skill Sets:

1. Closing: The Ability to Ask For and Obtain Commitments

2. Differentiate: The Ability to Stand Out from the Crowd

3. Prospecting: The Ability to Open Relationships

4. Business Acumen: A General Understanding of Business Principles

5. Diagnose: The Desire to Understand

6. Storytelling: The Ability to Share a Vision

7. Negotiation: The Ability to Create Win-Win Deals

8. Change Management: The Ability to Help Others Improve

9. Leadership: The Ability to Generate Results Through Others

10. Manage Outcomes: The Ability to Achieve Results

All of these attributes and skills are necessary to succeed in sales, regardless of the many benefits technology provides. I happen to be a huge fan of Jigsaw, but doubt that it is a great tool for those who lack the self-discipline to make their calls.”

Read the full post here.

- Bob Neeser

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This entry was posted on Monday, October 26th, 2009 at 11:01 am and is filed under crm, Innovators and Entrepreneurs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Balmer lays down markers on new economic pace

[Got this email from Steve Balmer last week.  I like the way he talks about the new economic client, and how to respond to it.]

Steve Balmer

Steve Balmer

In all the talk about the economy, one term that comes up more and more frequently is something called “the new normal.” I like this phrase because it speaks to the fact that economic reality has undergone a fundamental shift over the course of the past 12 months.

So what is the nature of this shift? After years of economic expansion fueled by unrealistic rates of consumption and unsustainable levels of private debt, the global economy has reset at a lower baseline level of activity. Today, people borrow less, save more, and spend with much greater caution.

This is the new normal and it will be with us for some time to come. The issue now is how to respond.

I believe the new normal requires a new kind of efficiency built on technology innovations that enable businesses and organizations to simultaneously drive cost savings, improve productivity, and speed innovation.

Because you are a subscriber to Executive Emails from Microsoft, I want to share my thoughts with you about how information technology can enable organizations to operate more efficiently, more effectively, and more strategically as they respond to the new normal by moving toward the new efficiency.

THE NEW EFFICIENCY: WITH LESS, DO MORE

In the new normal, one thing is clear: cutting costs is extremely important. But cost cutting by itself is not a long-term winning strategy. To build a sustainable competitive advantage, companies must ultimately do two things-increase productivity and find ways to deliver new value to customers.

The issue, then, is how can organizations take costs out of their operations, increase productivity, and expand their capacity for innovation all at the same time?

For years, we’ve talked about how information technology enables companies to do more with less. But during this economic reset, IT provides business leaders with the answer to a slightly different question: Can my company with less, do more?

Other trends give this question even greater urgency. Workforces are more distributed and employees are more mobile. Government regulations are increasing and compliance requirements are mounting. Data security is more important to preserve and more difficult to maintain.

At the same time, companies struggle with legacy technology systems built on incompatible and disconnected applications that limit access to information and impede collaboration. The complexity of these systems forces IT departments to focus too much of their time and too many of their resources on providing basic services and protecting security.

Today, a new generation of business solutions is transforming IT into a strategic asset that makes it possible to cut costs without crippling customer service or constraining workforce creativity and effectiveness. A new generation of business solutions is eliminating the barriers between systems and applications, and automating routines tasks so IT professionals can focus on high-value work that is aligned to strategic priorities. These technologies can help organizations reduce risk, improve security, and drive down support costs.

This is IT how achieves the new efficiency with less.

At the same time, these technologies streamline access to information no matter where it is stored and enable people to work together securely no matter where they are located. This new generation of business solutions also provides improved mobile computing capabilities so people who work in a branch office, at home, or on the road can be as productive as employees who work at corporate headquarters.

Most important, a new wave of IT technologies offers advanced tools that enable employees to transform insights into innovations that address unmet market opportunities and meet unfulfilled customer needs.

This powerful combination of greater productivity and improved capacity for innovation is how IT enables businesses to do more.

SOFTWARE SOLUTIONS FOR THE NEW EFFICIENCY

This year, Microsoft is introducing a wave of new software created specifically to enable businesses to tackle their most pressing challenges and strengthen their ability to deliver innovation to the marketplace.

It starts with Windows 7, the newest version of our flagship PC operating system. Windows 7 simplifies tasks and lets people get more done in less time with fewer clicks. Ready to deploy now, it enhances corporate data protection and security, and increases control to improve compliance and reduce risk. Part of our Windows Optimized Desktop solution that includes Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack, Windows 7 streamlines management of PC environments, making it easier to reduce costs, improve performance, and enable end users to work anywhere.

These and other enhancements are the result of close collaboration with millions of customers and thousands of IT professionals who participated in testing programs and provided suggestions about the capabilities and improvements they wanted to see. Thanks in large part to their help, Windows 7 is the best PC operating system we have ever built.

We’ve also just released a new version of our server operating system. Windows Server 2008 R2 is designed to increase the reliability and flexibility of server infrastructures. It provides a productive server platform that offers cost-effective virtualization and business continuity, great power saving capabilities, and a superior experience for end users.

Later this year, we will also launch Exchange Server 2010. The cornerstone of Microsoft’s unified communications technologies, Exchange Server 2010 provides a great email and inbox experience that extends from the PC to the phone to the browser and it helps companies archive and protect information efficiently. It also enables companies to reduce costs by delivering a built-in voice mail solution and providing low-cost storage options.

ACHIEVING THE BENEFITS OF THE NEW EFFICIENCY TODAY

Organizations around the globe are already deploying these solutions and reaping the benefits.

At Intel, for example, Windows 7 is providing improved performance, greater application responsiveness, and a better platform for mobile workers. Ford is taking advantage of Exchange 2010 and Windows 7 to streamline communications, improve decision making, and boost productivity. Continental Airlines expects to save more than $1.5 million annually in hardware, software, and operational costs through the server virtualization capabilities of Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V technology.

At Convergent Computing, an information technology consulting firm based in California, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 will eliminate the $40,000 in annual spending that was needed to maintain a virtual private network for the company’s 55 employees. In addition, employees can now access the company’s corporate network instantly and download files 30 to 40 percent faster than before.

Another example is Baker Tilly, a London financial services firm with more than 2,000 employees and a network of partners in 110 countries. One of the first businesses to deploy Windows 7 on a company-wide basis, Baker Tilly expects to save about $160 per PC by reducing deployment, management, and energy costs. And because Windows 7 improves productivity, it offers the potential to increase billable time for mobile workers at a rate of nearly $600 per PC. This could return the equivalent of one-half of one percent of the company’s current gross annual revenue to the bottom line.

Businesses aren’t alone in their struggle to respond to the new normal. Governments must figure out how to deliver more services on budgets that are sharply constrained by falling revenue. As part of its response, the city of Miami deployed Windows 7 and expects that it will save nearly $400,000 a year in reduced security, management, and energy costs.

IDEAL CONDITIONS FOR AN ERA OF INNOVATION AND GROWTH

Despite the challenges posed by the global economic reset, I’m optimistic about the long-term opportunities that lie ahead.

I’m optimistic because there are encouraging signs that growth may resume in many parts of the world during the course of the next year.

More than that, I’m optimistic because I believe we are entering a period of technology-driven transformation that will see a surge in productivity and a flowering of innovation.

The new efficiency will not only help companies respond to today’s economic reality, it will lay the foundation for systems and solutions that connect people to information, applications, and to other people in new ways. The result will be a wave of innovative products and services that will jumpstart economic growth as companies deliver breakthroughs that solve old problems and serve as the catalyst for new businesses and even new industries.

This too will be the new normal-economic growth driven not by debt and consumption, but by rising productivity and new ideas that provide real value to people throughout their lives. Information technology will play an important role. I look forward to seeing the progress that results.

Steve

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 6th, 2009 at 6:35 am and is filed under Business Intelligence, Innovators and Entrepreneurs, IT Professional Services. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.