content for today’s class

A balanced scorecard is a management methodology that was primarily developed by Dr. Robert Kaplan of the Harvard Business School. It is “What companies should measure in order to balance the financial perspective” as stated by Dr. Kaplan. The balanced scorecard method is to clarify vision and strategy by providing feedback in two part on internal business processes and external outcomes.

One of the goals of the balanced scorecard is to appeal to both traditional businesses and accommodate businesses of today, the business full of knowledge workers, the businesses built around the Internet and the Information Age. The balanced scorecard aims to create future value through investment in customers, support activities, employees, processes, technology and innovation.

There are four perspectives in the balanced scorecard, they are, Learning and Growth, Business Processes, Customers, and the Financial Perspective. Each perspective can be evaluated in with the indicators Objectives, Measures, Targets, and Initiatives. We will discuss each perspective independently in brief.

1. Learning and Growth Perspective: This perspective of the balanced scorecard is inclusive of employee training, corporate cultural attitudes of both the individual and company, and individual and corporate self-improvement. “Learning is more then training” it includes mentors, tutors, communication and a positive work environment (Dr. Robert Kaplan) and high performance work systems, including internal Intranets.
2. The Business Process Perspective: This perspective is to allow managers to have a quick way to know how their business is running. The business process perspective determines whether products and services conform to customer requirements, if they are mission oriented and how the support processes are doing. This is very similar to the value chain presented by Porter (see Porter’s Value Chain).
3. The Customer Perspective: This is solely based around the customers perception of the value that they receive, their perceived value and how focused the company is on the customer. It is simple, customer focus and satisfaction. Poor performance in this area is the leading indicator of a decline even if the current financial future looks good.
4. The Financial Perspective: Financials, risk assessment and cost benefit data should come out of this perspective. There should be good tools that give you good data quickly. Financials should not have to pass through many hands before you have them.

Those are the basics of a balanced scorecard. Once the indicators are built in and the logical flow of your company then you will have the ability to start doing performance evaluations based on the balanced scorecard management methodology.

I apologize to my readers for not posting more often. I would like to, and have so much to say but find myself so busy everyday that I find the time slipping away faster and faster. In the future I wish to write more, and I hope are enjoying the new wordpress theme!

We recently signed up for Traffic Blazer with GoDaddy for a domain just to see what happens and it appears that they submit your domains to a bunch of link harvesters, random search engines, indexes, etc. all which to me seemed pretty useless. From what we saw it isn’t going give you PageRank and it isn’t going to generate you that much useful traffic.

You can buy traffic, specifically impressions, and those impressions may generate a few clicks and a few clicks will only generate a few click-troughs that in turn will only generate you a very tiny number of conversions which at that point you must to convert to paying clients.

The conversion ratio on low demand professional services type work (like I do) seems to ALWAYS be less than n<0.01% (1 in 10,000) of total impressions.

There are a couple of things that I would do right away if you haven’t already.

Make sure that you are using a statistics package that is at least as good as Google Analytics it will teach you a lot about your site.

Map your keywords, phrases etc. with AdWords Traffic Estimator and the Adwords Tools

Validate and clean up your site with Google Webmaster Tools and a robots.txt to make sure that Google and other search engines are reading your site as cleanly as possible.

There are analogous tools for the other search engines to those I listed above. At this point the most important thing that will benefit you is updating your content, getting linked to from other high PR sites (not link harvesters, but sites with HIGH PAGERANK – PR7, PR8, PR9) and last but also the very most important, time – the length your site has lived on the web is one of the most important factors, unfortunately it isn’t something that we can control.

*Note: Also watch to see how things you do affect your PageRank, I use SEOBook’s ‘SEO For Firefox‘ tool for Firefox to watch my PageRank and inbound links. Another tool that I find interesting is SocialMeter.

Useful Links:

• Adwords Traffic Estimator – https://adwords.google.com/select/Login
• AdWords Keyword Tool – https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
• Google Webmaster Tools – http://www.google.com/webmastertools
• Google Site Analytics – http://www.google.com/analytics
• SEOBook – http://www.seobook.com
• On Google PageRank – http://www.webworkshop.net/pagerank.html
• PageRank by Sergey and Larry – http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html

I also have to remember who my web site is for sometimes. Those who benefit most from it are those who I have told “go read about technology support or about us on my web site.“ Those are people who are in the conversion process to becoming paying clients and they are the most important to me so I focus on having a site that caters to them. My site will never generate me leads because of the nature of my product, the web is probably working harder for you then I in this case. So I use it for educating to make the sale, not generating the lead.

Sorry I didn’t get back to you earlier; I hope you find this information useful. The web is a really interesting place to do business and honestly I feel that it benefits large corporations selling high volumes of product much more than the small business.

The small business benefits by having a functional business card and supporting information about their business and products. It is so important that we educate our potential clients about our unique products as small businesses, letting them know that our products and unique to our businesses and our businesses are designed and have adapted to the climate and demographics that we operate.

The latest discussion that I have been contemplating is, “Who is the benefit vehicle for the growth and provisions of economic stability within a community, the public or private sector.”  This becomes even more interesting when the revenue streams are primarily ‘pass-thru’ revenues from local state and municipal government.  This question at this point is rooted only is quantities of rhetoric which is of unknown quality.  To better examine this question I need to better outline my methodologies, questions and rationale for my method of approach.  I am looking for some initial comments to help fire me into the right direction.

Can we teach ourselves to think ahead; to think beyond our colleagues? Can we know enough that we are conscious of the daily progress of concurrent explorer actively working on new ideas?

My answer at this time is, “no.” We actively as individuals – in disjointed unison – work almost tirelessly on ideas that others are concurrently exploring, evaluating, solving, manufacturing etc. It is also my belief that other factors exist that do allow us to get ahead of mysteriously competitive counterparts if we work diligently. Time-to-market is necessity.

Well how do we know if we are being outdone?

We don’t.

How can I ever become successful?

Luck.

I do think that there is the possibility of winning all the races with the right strategic mindset. If you think that there is any chance that your competitive counterpart may of developed the technology yesterday or today, TERMINATE, ADAPT and PURSUE with PASSION (TAPP). Examine what you have, what your target is and attack at speeds swifter then your competition can dream while they are relishing in their accomplishments (something I think we all do). Attack your ideas your visions with such gusto and determination that people around you think you are crazy. These are the ideas that win, these to me are ideas that are realities that you create.

We all know what it takes to be better, grow to always be the best, grow to love and thrive on being the best and always improve yourself, the people around you, the business and your passion. We all know what we can do to make something better, do it.

Hansen Gress, our company, is a wonderful example of striving. Every day I think of new ways, examine new technologies, look at new methodologies and complimentary business ideas that will enhance our business far beyond our competition.

technorati tags:Innovation, Business, Passion, Ideas

Disclaimer: This is in response to an email that I received from someone in my social/political network. He has articulated several interests and ideas to me recently. This is more or less my response. In the beginning this article is about exploring the production of more content where I antagonize if this is a good idea without a more complete focus or reason. I then go on and open the doors to explore evolution of the web, the indexing of the web, advertising, consumer purchasing, ethics and business decisions. In this articles current state of chaos it is, what I believe to be information rich, but discontinguous and random. It is abstract and ab-scure (obscure) but it is the foundation for some very interesting research. It is my starting place and hopefully will make for some good discussion.

Who will it benefit or what is the outcome desired, understand your consumers and focus. First we need to evaluate if there are good methodologies to access this increase in content. We first need a solid ontology language/technology other then our traditional semantic processing and indexing technologies (Google/LSI) otherwise content will continue to be inaccessible even though it is readily available (statistics about Internet indices below).

Currently the most important issues I feel is to understand outcomes that will benefit people worldwide with little ethical implications – then achieve those outcomes with great passion and focus. Lets get off topic for a bit and read this quote.

“A major reason paying for content doesn’t work very well yet is that it’s not practical to charge small amounts. The cost and hassle of electronic transactions makes it impractical to charge less than a fairly high subscription rate.

But within a year the mechanisms will be in place that allow content providers to charge just a cent or a few cents for information. If you decide to visit a page that costs a nickel, you won’t be writing a check or getting a bill in the mail for a nickel. You’ll just click on what you want, knowing you’ll be charged a nickel on an aggregated basis.

This technology will liberate publishers to charge small amounts of money, in the hope of attracting wide audiences.

Those who succeed will propel the Internet forward as a marketplace of ideas, experiences, and products-a marketplace of content”

(Content is King; Bill Gates, 1996).

What Mr. Gates described to us is Google AdSense and Web 2.0. The advertisements that show up in search results, inline on web pages, YouTube, Flickr, MySpace. It is the monetization of the accessing of content that was described in the aforementioned quote.

The quote stated that we would pay to access information, we do, but indirectly. This cost to us the consumer occurs very indirectly and subtly; I’ll explain why. The advertisers, the companies advertising are paying for advertising which I believe to affect PPI, which effects production costs. I believe consumer goods price inflation is heading upwards everyday; it is because we continue to consume more and more of the same item. It is the aggregate value of a type of good consumed over a lifetime — that is where our new aggregated-product CPI is moving upwards. Consumers buying lots of a type of good (cell phones) has allowed companies the luxury of greater economies of scale. Keeping CPI down, hiding the strain on the consumer and increasing PPI.

I am new to CPI/PPI and understanding Inflation but I am going to do a little more research and work the math out myself so I have a little better grasp. Here is an article that I found that leans toward the belief that something is causing a spread in PPI/CPI.

It is my belief that inflation of cheap consumer goods is real; the strain placed on the consumer is even more real then ever, consumers are very distracted and make decisions without thinking about them. We buy lots of the same item (See Guardian) regularly (a potential explanation here for QOL issues American’s have). Proof of this increase in how much we are purchasing is demonstrated by the increase in advertising dollars being spent. Advertising as a percentage of GDP (currently ~1%) is projected to grow faster then GDP and Google projects that we will see it grow to 3% of GDP (I think I heard this in a recent Google Keynote/PSA) .

What Bill said was ten years ago. In 1962 Quillian said while working on AI (Turing et al.) a grand effort would be to have a semantic interconnected web, this is just now coming to fruition in some elementary way. Google has been so bold as to put a date on when they were have AI.

Lets think about content is king some more. In 1998 Google had only indexed 8% of the Internet and Hotbot around 15%. It was said that it could take up to six months to get your site indexed on the Internet back then — now it takes 6 hours and today Google has indexed ~80%. As we move to a more semantically rich web that is described by a clear, concise ontology language the web will become much more valuable to us as consumers of mass information, syndicate and aggregate! Web 2.0 might be ending, so I wouldn’t bet on hopping on the media bandwagon anytime soon .

So now we have two interesting concepts that I have to somehow relate to bring this entry to a conclusion. The impact of web-based advertising and the production and accessibility content. These are two distinct paths which you can head down with a new idea.

Option 1 | You can produce content to have somebody buy it at a later date, because it is “hopefully” desirable content that can be monetized (Google|YouTube|Fox).

The Google|YouTube|Fox merger is interesting, it is what I like to think of as the billion dollar pass-thru. Fox pays Google to monetize MySpace and then Google buys YouTube with the money from Fox, YouTube videos shows up on MySpace, which Fox owns. Ironically YouTube videos account for 1 of every 3 videos on the web. That is alot of monetization going on. This triad is sucking money out of advertisers and the consumer.

Option 2 | You can generate a new creative method of advertising, which as I discuss earlier is seemingly unethical, but really not a bad business idea and has a promising market outlook with a growth of 2% of the world’s GDP.

Option 3 | You can find a new method for organizing and maintaining content like Wikipedia or Google or Vivisimo has done and probably sell it for a great profit to someone like Google, but trying to monetize this new system is very high risk.

In one of the latest QE reports from Google Eric Schmidt spells it out very clearly, pick option 2, because there is a lot of room and they are looking for good competition. My advice right now is to narrow your focus on accomplishing one of these things and be ethical, know that you are promoting a healthy economic environment for people and business.

I don’t want to say that Google is bad, but I do have to note that they may possibly be the antithesis of “Don’t be evil” when it comes to what is happening with traditional marketing dollars, money that once paid postman, printers, paper companies, shippers, frieght companies, ink companies, copy companies is being pasted between members of our corporatocracy. I admire Google, I use Google and I think what they have done to organize the Internet and make it a fun, and useful experience is amazing, I recommend anybody to use their products and check out Google Labs but they have done this at the cost of the consumer, hopefully it has made everybody’s life a little bit better in a way that justifies the cost to the end user. I suppose that Keynesian ethical arguments apply here, or maybe you like a different ethical school of thought.

Good luck and good reading please leave any comments or questions you might have. Feel free to blow massive holes in my arguments, I need some feedback and I understand that I have lots more to learn!

I have been writing since I was very young, we all have.  It has taken me since I was very young to become, at my best, an acceptable writer. For years I have struggles with long perplexing sentences, comma usage and poor organization.  Sometimes I think it is not because I don’t know the rules and constructs of the English language but instead it is that thoughts rush-to and pound tirelessly at the exits of my mind. I literally cannot get ideas from my thoughts, the clouds in my head, to paper fast enough. As a result my papers, that seemed so beautifully composed in my mind, fall apart for myriads of reasons like the Roman Empire.

Mr. Strunk and Mr. White fell into my life when I started college.  A teacher that I admire very much, Donald Cecil, a professor at the University of Alaska Southeast gave me his copy of “The Elements of Style” that he had in college.  I read little snippets from it at convenient times and every time I pick it up I am astounded at how dense it is.  They have managed to boil down textbooks of information describing the English language into just a few less then 100 pages. I have to thank them for this marvelous work and for helping me write more concisely. 

Principal 17 is titled, “Omit needless words.”  I haven’t really caught on to this yet but the concept grows on me.  The reason that I am discussing writing today is because it is your most powerful tool in negotiating and understanding business transactions and your relationship with clients.

Clean, clear and concise writing is growingly important as we continue to increase how we use email, instant messaging, and increase our participation in on line social networks. I advise anybody and everybody to begin understanding the language they use — even programmers can benefit from a book like “The Elements of Style.”

So many of our philosophical discussions occur at random times and often for me with my girlfriend Stacy.  Stacy is amazing at remembering terminology and concepts as we learned the academically, recalling them and applying them in our philosophical discussions whereas my strengths often come from observations, my experience, common sense and what I believe is my ability to recognize abstract patterns and how they relate. 

This is of course very rough thinking and it is more contemplative then anything, but I believe that there are some sound arguments that compensation or human value is determined by a few properties of a person, the trust or integrity of that person compared to competitors, the expanse of ones social network, and the skills which they are being compensated for.

My compensation axiom would state that,

“A person with a known skill and an expansive direct and indirect social network in which they have demonstrated integrity will reap the benefits of a higher compensation relative to the demand of their skill.”

This came about after determining through recognition that corporate executives are paid significant compensations for who they are, what they do, and who they know.  It is my belief that people do not understand fully why these individuals are compensated in the way that they are.  This may in fact be an act at defending my future, but I believe that it is actually related more to integrity and it’s confirmation through the size and respect of one’s social network. 

At this time I haven’t quite developed a complete philosophical argument but I have a example that I believe is adequate for now that supports the axiom stated above.

A person named Joe of company X is very social and has spent years focused on his field while building his social network.  As Joe demonstrated success in his skill to his social network his network became more competitive by compensating Joe more for Joe’s time — though, why does Joe of company X have command a higher price that Sam of the competing company? It is because Joe has demonstrated a 100% integrity over years to his social network.  This is phantom value, it is value that exists that isn’t quantifiable but results in a compensation that has a yield that is either a multiplier or exponentially higher then Sam who has had a few holes shot into his integrity over the years. Now why wouldn’t a Pete, who has more skills, and a very small social network not be able to command the same levels of compensation?  It is assumed that a persons integrity to deliver, if proven historically, is more important then having more skills.

If there is anybody who wants to help me create a more formal proof of this axiom I would greatly appreciate, I will probably revisit this in a couple months.  Thanks for reading my work and leaving your comments.

—

See “Hard Determinism“ (Wikipedia).

technorati tags:Blogging, Business, Money, Compensation, Philosophy, Axioms, Social, Networks, People

Alaska’s captial city is RESISTENT to TRADITIONAL MARKETING AND ADVERTSING as a mainstream method for connecting with the consumer, is your city or community like this, maybe there are some tips in here for maximizing your market share through INTEGRATING into THE COMMUNITIES TIGHT SOCIAL NETWORK.

Hansen Gress is based in Juneau, Alaska (economics, go “Juneau“) and through a painful process of trial and error I have discovered that traditional marketing mixes that are known to be effective in other communities do not work in Juneau, Alaska’s capital city.

When we incorporated in 2005 we did what many businesses do, pull advertising, produce marketing materials, cold calls etc. We rapidly learned that we weren’t receiving as much recognition as I felt like we should have. Hansen Gress was wasting money. To correct this I severed all previous efforts at marketing and advertising and even though we may have had the perfect marketing mix in almost any other community — the prices, promotions, placements, and rock solid products (4P’s) we couldn’t stir up any interest in the community. To quantify how bad it was I would spend $1000 for every $45 dollars earned. Essentially 22:1 earning ratio, a total loss. 

That is when I decided that if Hansen Gress was going to succeed I needed to “sell the business” personally.  I needed to become part of the community and start utilizing the social networks that I had been building my entire life.

I started finding people who were “the right people” and those who like to generate “hype” and “buzz” and that people flock to for advice. I learned about the people and their businesses and as a result of doing that they would develop a strong trust and rapport with me and indirectly Hansen Gress.  Maybe it was because I was more tangible then a product on a piece of marketing collateral, maybe it was because I was just a good sales person, or maybe it was because I was the product.  I was building the brand, “Hansen Gress.”  Now when companies were ready to do business they knew to come to Hansen Gress, they knew to come to me. 

We became heavily involved in the community and primarily the Juneau Chamber of Commerce, we knew that the Chamber represented most anybody who was anybody in Juneau since the organization had been around since about 1924. The people who have been involved in the Chamber are actively involved and are the same people who are determining the future health of the City and Borough of Juneau.  I noticed that these individuals, these business men and women don’t do it alone, they do it as a very tight social network and “the network” is the medium for educating people, creating ideas, motivating people to progress and catalyzing change.

“The network” as I call it is composed of a mix of old-Juneau, middle-aged-Juneau, current and past politicians, politically involved parties from across the State, and individuals that have been integrated into the community through non-profits by providing support services.  There was a complete absence of youth involvement in the Chamber of Commerce and that was my entry way into the business world.  By regularly attending all Chamber functions it became very easy for me to become readily recognized as a young, motivated, entrepreneur that had built a successful enterprise with very little assistance from the Community.  Now that I had the attention or at least drawn the curiosity of the Chamber it was easy to then become a strand in “the network’s” social fabric, but how?

It is as easy as this: lay in bed before a Chamber meeting and focus purely on motivating people like yourself; after you have recognized your lever, leverage it.  For me it was my age, I was able to then come out and promote my peers by offering a little bit of money to join the Chamber of Commerce so they would have a voice in the future of Juneau.  This action right here was a turning point for my business, this confirmed my integrity and bought the trust that was necessary to then become involved with the Board of Directors and Committees of the Chamber and later become a Board Member where I would be able to continue to prove myself and earn the trust and respect of my peers in the tight social network of Juneau, Alaska.

By becoming a strand in the social fabric of Juneau’s business community we were able to command the price, educate people of the value, build the brand and turn the flywheel.  It has continued to deliver amazing, high quality clients and the respect of the community.  This is something that you can do, if you find yourself in a community that you feel is resistant or not responsive to advertising and traditional marketing use a creative PR method to access your clients, then let them do the work, let the social networks create trust in you and your product or service.  Let the people do your selling so you can work on your core focus, your business and your product or service.

Please post any feedback, questions or comments.

technorati tags:Marketing, PR