ADAPT Installations Now
Total Ten
With new
customers, NewHope Media (division of Penton Media, Inc.), and Diversified
Communications, there are now 10 installations of ADAPT in the world. To
summarize, by using demographics, based on prior registration information,
ADAPT attracts people to events with more focused direct marketing. Companies
use it to save on fulfillment costs (direct mail, e-mail or phone calling) and
market segmentation. By using ADAPT, one of our clients cleaned out their list
by 30%.
This
elimination of duplicates in their database saved them postage and printed
materials cost. The flexibility that
ADAPT gave their marketing managers has improved their marketing effectiveness
by 20% (reduced printing cost, etc.).
The link
below contains a demonstration of ADAPT developed by Chenault Systems and
Hanley-Wood during 2001-2002. This
product won "Trade Show Innovation of the Year" in 2003. The system takes data from all kinds of
formats and aggregates it into ONE central database. The system can also be used over an Intranet.
The
link to the 6-minute demo is www.adaptdb.com/adapt_demo2.html.
Do Good Guys Finish Last In
Business?
By Barry Moltz
Unfortunately
in this world, the bad guys win a lot. In fact, mean and dishonest people
sometimes can find easier financial success in business than those who play it
straight.
If
making money is one of our goals, why do well at all and why play fair in
business? Why show compassion to others
when sometimes it may seem like it’s easier and quicker to cheat? I have pondered this question over the years
as I done business with all types of people and with every outcome.
Jennifer
Flaitz of KPMG questions the
definition of a good guy. She wonders:
“Is it just being nice to people and treating them with compassion or is being
a nice guy something in addition to providing a business solution that
consumers need?”
Flaitz
uses Starbucks as an
example.
“While
many didn't think Starbucks early business growth strategy of setting up shop across
the street from their competition was fair, the truth is they provided a
consistent, quality product, were open at the most convenient times and
provided friendly service. That was and
continues to be the key to their success.”
She
concludes: “Those who finish creating positive karma, are compassionate and
passionate while providing a service, solution or product that fills a need
will always be successful maybe even more successful than their evil
competitors.”
Dave
Dailey at Silicon Valley Bank
believes that it all starts with the leadership of a company that sets the
standards.
“Strong
leaders are people who can attract other talented and smart individuals around
them,” he said. Like-minded people with
similar morals and ethics are generally attracted to each other. Successful companies are the companies that
have strong leadership. Smart people are
not going to follow ruthless leaders.
There are exceptions, but by some arcane application of logic, nice guys
should finish first or at least not last.
Lori
Erickson at public relations firm Ruder Finn examines the issue in her own profession.
The
reputation of PR people has had its ups and downs over the years, she
said. “Overall, I think the profession
has good practitioners who can make a real impact for the companies they
represent as well as poor practitioners who sell well and do not deliver. Unfortunately, a few bad apples can make the
efforts of the well-intentioned practitioner much more of an uphill battle.”
The
efforts of the well intentioned pay off eventually but those focused on the
ends over the means are simply weights around our necks that slow the process
of meeting that inevitable outcome, she added.
It takes tremendous endurance and some degree of faith to pursue the
higher path because it is a long process with small and infrequent
gratifications.
There
are temptations along the way to conform to the ways of those focused solely on
personal gain because it is the easier path.
For me personally, that would mean compromising principles that I'm not
willing to compromise and being a person I am not willing to be.
Another
PR professional, Karen Andre of K Andre Consulting, sums up her philosophy by saying: I do not believe there are shortcuts in
business or in life. If you follow what
you know to be true, you will discover there is a unique set of opportunities
for your business. It takes a leap of
faith and consistently treating others the way you wish to be treated.
Clay
Garner, president of Growth Resources, believes that the tough guys and the
good guys can achieve success. He added: “The real question is: What kind of a
person do you want to be once you get there?
After more than 20 years of business, my conclusion is that the question
of where good guys finish is irrelevant.
It doesn’t matter if good guys finish last, first or don’t even enter
the race.”
As
business people, we should strive to be as fair as possible simply because it
is the right thing to do. We should
treat people the way we want to be treated. It is the way we need to try to
live our lives regardless of what others do.
All
religions have preached this as the famous “golden rule.” One of my favorite versions is by Judaism’s
Rabbi Hillel. When asked to explain all
of Jewish law, he simply responds: “What is hateful to you do not do your
fellow man. That is the entire law. All the rest is commentary.”
As I reflect on my business life in relation to this golden rule, I have not always been successful in acting in this way. Still, it is a goal I strive for every day. So do good guys finish last? It depends on where you sit and how you keep score. Mostly, it doesn’t really matter. Just do good.
Scams, Lies, Deceit, and Offshoring
By John C. Dvorak
Someone
has to take the jobs that, as President Bush and others say, “Americans don't want.” There appear to be a large number of these
jobs. In fact, it seems that our fastest-growing business segment is the
creation of more and more jobs that Americans don't want. Often, American companies will lay people
off, only to train newcomers to replace them.
Here
is how the real scam works. You are a programmer at one of the big IT or
computer companies. You're 55 and nearing a retirement plateau; in fact, you're
a liability. You're making, say, $80,000
as a program designer. You have various responsibilities. The company eliminates your position in the
process of downsizing.
To
be fair to you, it creates a new position, Associate Program Designer that pays
$35,000 a year. Its responsibilities
coincidentally match those of your old job.
You can take this job, doing what you did before but at a huge cut in
pay, or look elsewhere. If the latter,
it's apparent that this new job is one that “Americans don't want.” The company can then hire a “body shop” to
drop in a foreign H-1B or L1 visa holder, who will not be quite as good but
will work for a lot less.
This
is a bait-and-switch scheme that is designed to screw older and more
experienced workers out of their retirement benefits, plain and simple. This sort of thing, unfortunately, is nothing
new to corporate America: Every time I write about it, I get hundreds of
e-mails from people who have been abused by such practices.
More
horrendous still is the sudden emergence of offshoring, whereby we send the
money as well as the jobs overseas, mostly to India, where labor is even
cheaper. The proponents of offshoring
have a rumored $100 million PR budget; anyone who speaks out against this trend
is bombarded by hate mail. Just
mentioning the problem here will result in numerous requests to my editors that
I be fired. Few of the senders will be traceable.
The
sinister nature of offshoring jobs has corrupted the highest levels of our
nation. Hillary Rodham Clinton, for example, is directly involved with one of
the big body shops, Mumbai-based Tata Consultancy Services. Bush is actively promoting the replacement of
American workers. Colin Powell recently
promised India that the administration would continue to promote offshoring. Which country does he represent, anyway?
In
an economic argument that is floating around, people cook numbers to show that
every job lost to offshoring is a ridiculously large net benefit to the U.S.
economy; we are making money on the deal.
One math genius claimed that although we export around $10 billion in
outsourcing fees, the economy somehow recovers over $300 billion in savings.
It's a bonanza. Taking this logic to an
extreme, if we offshored all American jobs and nobody here worked, we'd be
filthy rich. Let's just do that! Where do I get my check?
I
hear all the time that coders in India are cheaper and better. What makes them better? Have there been some blockbuster Indian
software programs that I somehow missed?
Maybe they are good at patching spaghetti code or doing well-defined C++
modules, but who knows? You'd think that
some killer apps would have come out of India by now, as they have from Europe,
the U.S., Japan, and even Russia.
Even
more irksome than this notion of “better” is the fact that companies are trying
to hide their offshoring operations, a deceptive practice at best. Help desks, bill collectors, and
telemarketers are in India. All the
AT&T staffers I have talked to seem to be in India, but ask them where they
are and they won't say. They are trained
to fake American accents. They say their
name is Bill or Dave or Patty; it is clearly not. They never tell you where
they are, because Americans don't like having their American Express records
(yes, AmEx uses India) in Bangalore, where our privacy laws aren't in force.
One
company told my wife that its reps don't say where they are from because of
terrorism. Terrorism? My wife is going to fly to Bangalore? The companies we do business with lie us to;
plain dishonesty is at work here.
Although
I appreciate some aspects of globalization, I can't excuse the cavalier
attitude toward fellow Americans that we see among large corporations who
benefit from the free-enterprise system and American infrastructure. It will come back to haunt them all.
Reprinted
with permission of John C. Dvorak.
Copyright
(c) 2005 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Quote Worth
Noting
“If it's true that we are here to help others, then
what exactly are the others here for?” -- George Carlin