|
2.0 Jobs in the "com and .com" Market
3.0 Schedule of Events You can use our online calendar by clicking here for NetSuds and here for MedSuds. The calendars are free to use for both tracking events and for posting your own events. To post events, login as "guest" with a password of "guest". Non-Minnesota companies conducting events in Minnesota will not be allowed to post events for free. Events posted to either of these calendars are not immediately available for viewing. All events will be marked "pending" and will be reviewed for content prior to public viewing. The Calendars are accessed at
NetSuds -
http://www.netsuds.net/cgi-bin/calweb/calweb.pl?cal=default
4.0 Tidbits
NetSuds loves on-site tours! Email me if you want to show off your company. I can be reached at
matt@netsuds.com.
4.1.1 Independent Natural Resources -
www.inri.us
I visited Independent Natural Resources at their facility in Eden Prairie and
met with CEO Mark Thomas, 952.920.8035,
mark@inri.us. INRI is not your
typical tech company. Their technology is an alternate renewable energy
company. They make products which can be used to generate energy.
Their primary product is the SEADOG pump; a mechanical pump which uses the
energy in ocean waves to pump ocean water ashore to a conventional
hydroelectrical generator.
The SEADOG is not just a paper design. Mark demonstrated the pump in
action; a version which stood about 15-20 feet high. When the SEADOGs are
in actual operation, their bases could be tens of feet in diameter and stand
several stories tall. They are intended to sit in relatively shallow
off-shore waters approximately 1-5 miles from shore. Fields of
dozens or hundreds of SEADOGs are intended in order to generate sufficient
energy to be of commercial use.
Mark is hard at work getting potential customers lined up in California.
The gamut of regulatory issues will be formidable but California state law
mandates the use of alternative energy sources according to Mr. Thomas. 4.2
Email Advertising
The
NetSuds and
MedSuds
email lists reach 7900+. The
NetSuds
email lists are double-opt-in and concentrated on professionals in the
communications, IT and Internet markets. The
MedSuds email lists are
double-opt-in and concentrated on professionals in the medtech, biotech and
life sciences markets. So, rather than spend your
advertising dollars on any other email lists in the Twin Cities, consider the
NetSuds and
MedSuds
lists. Contact
matt@netsuds.com or 612.605.5252. For current ad rates, visit
www.netsuds.com/adrates.htm.
4.3
NetSuds
CEO Roundtable - Next Roundtables starting in January 2004
NetSuds
is opening up another group of CEO Roundtables in June 2004. If you are tech or medtech CEO and want to join us, (the
first session is free), contact
matt@netsuds.com.
A synopsis of the CEO
Roundtable can be found at
www.netsuds.com/ceo/ It is repeated here
as well.
NetSuds
CEO Roundtable Membership Only CEOs of tech and
medtech companies are allowed to join the
NetSuds
CEO Roundtable. If you are a VP, CxO or President, you are not welcome
unless you also hold the CEO title. Perhaps we will start a CFO, CTO or
COO Roundtable but until then, we are only interested in the top dog, the CEO.
If you are interested in becoming a member, contact
matt@netsuds.com.
Membership is not automatic. There must be an available spot open in the
roundtable. You must have employees. Your company must be
incorporated. Your company must be a tech (communications, IT,
software, Internet) or medtech (medtech, biotech, life sciences) company. You
must pay a yearly fee of $1200 in advance. You may not send substitutes to the
Roundtable. Roles Unlike the days of knights,
kings and Camelot, there is no king of the
NetSuds
CEO Roundtable; only a facilitator; Matt Noah, CEO of NetSuds.com, Inc.
Knights are replaced by CEOs and the table won't be quite round. Schedule The Roundtable will meet 10
times per calendar year on the last
Tuesday of every month. Each meeting lasts 2.0 hours starting at 7 am. A facility
convenient to the majority of Roundtable members is used. A continental breakfast
is served. Purpose CEOs need resources to
assist them in executing their duties and leading their companies. Boards
of Directors and upper management are not always the best or most independent
resources upon which to draw. The CEO Roundtable exists to provide CEOs
with an independent resource of wisdom and shared experience. Your key
'take-aways' from the Roundtable will be accelerated learning - so as to avoid
common and uncommon pitfalls -, an expanded network of advisors and colleagues
and tools to enhance the productivity and value of your enterprise. Content First, networking among the
CEO members of a Roundtable is the best and richest content. Second, the
Roundtable facilitator will schedule subject matter experts of interest to the
CEOs. Examples include intellectual property, branding, sales,
engineering, marketing, finance, compensation, human resources, M&A, etc. Format Meetings will consist
primarily of 2 elements. First, "content" will be presented and discussed.
Second, "discussion" of common problems and solutions will take place. The
facilitator will lead both elements or assign elements to certain CEOs. Confidentiality Roundtable meetings
are completely confidential. Nothing said in a roundtable discussion,
short of illegal activity, leaves the meeting. This allows each CEO to
feel comfortable discussing issues and subjects he may not feel comfortable
speaking about with others.
4.4
NetSuds CTO Roundtable The NetSuds
CTO Roundtable is off to a flying start. An introductory
session for the fourth
NetSuds
CTO Roundtable will be held on Wednesday, April 28. If you are a CTO, Chief Scientist, VP of Engineering, CIO or
Technical Director (reporting to one of the VP levels at a large
corporation), please send an email to me at
matt@netsuds.com
to request an invitation to this CTO Roundtable.
4.5
NetSuds
Executive Search
See the following URL for more information on our executive search service -
www.netsuds.com/search/
Sponsors
Looking for the perfect candidate?
Contact
NetSuds
You never pay a fee unless you hire a candidate
we refer. All placements are 100% guaranteed!
MJ
& Associates
4.6 VoIP Happens for Minnesota Dept.
of Labor Three years and $435,000 after a
cash-strapped Minnesota state agency deployed IP phones, officials are sold
on voice over IP. For one thing, it has halved its phone bill.
Companies Making Room For VoIP
4.7 Ripe For An Internet Solution
This database search is just
"asking" for an Internet solution. Can anyone say why we still need to
use the US mail?
4.8 FireFox or Internet
Explorer?
From the March 25 InfoWorld email newsletter
-
www.infoworld.com. I downloaded FireFox and now use both IE and FireFox. So far,
Firefox is more stable and faster. Browser War Part II.
In January 2004,
94.8 percent of Web surfers used Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher,
according to the Web analytics research company OneStat.com. Not me, though.
For many months I’ve been using a Mozilla-based browser that can’t seem to
settle on a name: Phoenix, Firebird, now Firefox. Identity crisis
notwithstanding, it rocks.
4.9
NanoTech Day at the UofM
Are you a legitimate angel investor, investment banker or venture
capitalist? A technologist with technical interests in nanotechnology?
If you are a member of either of these two interest groups, the UofM has a
free program to introduce you to nanotechnology research at the UofM. Date: May 14, 2004 If you have any questions, contact Dick Sommerstad at
612.625.8352. From
NetSudser
Jeff Pulver -
jeff@pulver.com. I first discovered
orkut
in early February and it took me a couple of weeks to warm up to
it...mostly because of the fact that I've been so busy, going to
another website to engage in "social networking" was not high on
my priority list. But as I started to explore orkut and started to observe its growing
feature set, I realized that in some ways, orkut, could turn out to be: "the
eBay of Social Networking." At the moment, the orkut network is closed. When you click on the link on
their home page 'join orkut' you get to a page which says: "orkut is unique,
because it's an organically growing network of trusted friends. That way we
won't grow too large, too quickly and everyone will have at least one person
to vouch for them." While I enjoy using LinkedIn for some of my business social networking, I
find myself doing "community development" using orkut. One has to be careful
using orkut, as if you build your network too fast, you may be "orkut'ed"
and have your account suspended. To date this has happened to me twice for
reasons which I don't understand, but thanks to Orkut Buyukkokten, my
account was quickly restored. If you are already on orkut, you are invited to join two communities
which I'm currently supporting - Free World Dialup, <http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=12029>
and pulver.com <http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=27240>. As a reader of the Pulver Report, if you are not already a member of
orkut and if you would like to give orkut a try, please send email to:
jeffp@pulver.com
with the subject: "orkut invite" and when I have a chance, I will send an
invite. 4.11 Citizens For Local Phone Service
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact:
Dennis Egan March 3,
2004
612-325-1330 St. Paul, MN – Consumers and telephone
competition received a major setback in the wake of a federal circuit court
decision to overturn the Federal Communications Commissions’ rules to
promote telephone competition, according to Citizens For Local Phone
Choice. “The DC Circuit court sided with the telephone
monopolies and essentially turned its back on competition and consumers
nationwide,” said Dennis Egan, executive director of Citizens For Local
Phone Choice. “The decision to free telephone giants like Qwest from their
legal obligation to share the public telephone network with competitors is a
serious disappointment.” More than 17 million Americans have the benefit of
competition under the existing FCC rules, according to Egan. Recent studies
show that consumers nationwide save $10 billion a year in lower phones bills
because of competition. Small businesses saved $4.4 billion in 2003 from
expanded competition. These savings could skyrocket to more than $6 billion
if policymakers maintain policies necessary to sustain competition. “Now, those savings and the benefits of competition are
in jeopardy because the court chose Telephone Giants over consumer
interests,” he said. “We can all expect to see higher phone bills if
fledging competition dwindles out completely.” An appeal to the Supreme Court is expected to uphold
the FCC rules to promote competition. Citizens for Local Phone Choice is a consumer advocacy
group whose mission is to facilitate research, develop and exchange data and
information involving local telecommunications options in the state of
Minnesota. The coalition’s members include business owners and consumers
statewide. The coalition has participated in several public forums and has
had numerous interceptions with both state legislative and congressional
candidates and members. Further, CLPC has built successful relationships
with key influencers statewide. 4.12 Google Redesigns, Adds New Services From
Ziff-Davis' What's New Now - www.ziffdavis.com I'm not a huge fan of
Google's redesign -- I think it blurs the lines between real search results
and sponsored links. The upside to the shake-up, however, is two new
projects from Google Labs. What's Google Labs? Apparently, each engineer
over there has to spend a day or so a week on some personal "project," to
advance search. Google's search bar, the e-commerce search capability tool "Froogle,"
and other strokes of genius all came from the Labs' pet projects. Well, now
there are two cool new services to help you customize and get more out of
Google. Our story shows what they do and explains how they can help. Cool New Google Tools:
http://eletters.wnn.ziffdavis.com/zd1/cts?d=75-154-1-1-527686-7351-1 5.0 Facet Technology Google is a noun, a verb, a website and a company. One hardly thinks twice
about using Google to perform a web search; at least a text-based web search. Have you ever wanted to find an image using a text-based search engine? Try
it. Try to find an image of a football by typing in "football image" in to
Google. I'll wait here while you examine the results. Performing image searches using text and text-based search engines is
hit-and-miss. "Football image" didn't work very well in Google. Try "Shroud of
Turin image" and your results will be much better. Now, extend your imagination a bit further. Forget text and text-based search
engines. The Web became the Web because of multimedia; images, videos, voice and
music. Think image and image-based search engines. Imagine an image-based search
engine where you upload an image to the engine rather than type in text. The
search results are listed according to closest match. Have you finished
imagining the implications? Scale back your imagination to some limited applications and you'll find one
of the earliest entries in to this market category; Facet Technology - You won't be surprised to learn that Google is working on this as well. So is a company called PicSearch. Do the same search for an image of a football at http://images.google.com/ or http://www.picsearch.com/. The secret to Google and PicSearch is that the images must have the search name as part of the image file name; hardly an image search but interesting results, nonetheless. Great technology companies need great management teams, differentiable and unfair competitive technology, large market opportunities and solid execution. A quick look at Facet's patent portfolio indicates many technological advantages over their competition. The market opportunities are numerous and extremely large. To date, Facet CEO Jamie Retterath has assembled a respectable management team which will be expanding in 2004 as he grows the company from ten to over forty people. "We could grow to 50 or 60 people in 2004 but may outsource some of that growth and keep our internal headcount to 30," stated Mr. Retterath. "Revenues will grow from slightly under one million dollars in 2003 to between $4.5 and $6 million dollars in 2004," he stated. Fueling this growth will be several new customers who are in the early stages of adoption. The US Census Bureau has contracted with Facet Technology on a major project involving the image capture of a great deal of the residential USA. Cargill is using Facet Technology in food inspection applications. 3M has a 9% stake in Facet Technology. Approximately twenty percent of Facet's revenue is based on image or object classification with a real-time decision. Augmenting human inspectors with an objectively measured object classification has improved the meat grading process, shortened the inspection time and reduced the cost to consumers. Eighty percent of the company's revenue is based on post-processing of images and database search. In other words, Facet Technology is paid to both collect and analyze images and objects. The technology behind Facet is object processing based not on template matching but on complex mathematical modeling and geometric searching. This rules-based approach takes in to account such attributes as color, size, shape, texture and alignment. The processing can take place on a PC-based Windows system for most applications. In the past, image processing has suffered from a lack of computing horsepower and algorithms to garner much market attention. Today, with commodity PC prices in the hundreds of dollars and processing power unheard of 10 or 20 years ago, it is now economically feasible to consider wide-scale deployment of image processing products. Processing power also unlocks the power of algorithm development. Complex mathematical processing can be performed quickly and new algorithms developed. Facet Technology has arrived at an opportune time in the marketplace. A well-executed business plan can help grow the company well beyond the 2004 projections. 6.0 Who’s Taking Responsibility for Results?
Sadly, the Blame-Game has become a pervasive phenomenon in America’s corporate culture with Enron epitomizing increasingly popular finger pointing among top management. In helping my client companies grow their businesses, I invariably meet Blame-Game players, the people who make and accept excuses for non-performance, in all strata of the organization. Taking a cue from Dave Kurlan, president of Objective Management Group, I believe it’s important to identify and eradicate lack of accountability in the sales organization in order to improve sales productivity. “Real growth and change won’t occur until an individual stops making excuses and starts taking responsibility.” Identifying Accountability IssuesA local manufacturing company experienced declining revenues and margins for four years. Determined to reverse the trend, the management team asked me for an objective assessment of their organization’s business-development processes. The evaluation revealed that the entire team had a problem with excuse-making, even the president/owner. Interviews with key players in the company about why sales were declining yielded comments that ducked accountability, blaming the market, competition and management: § Customers have such unreasonable expectations. § Our competitors are slashing prices. § Manufacturing needs to get their act together. § We don’t get any training around here. § Marketing is way behind schedule. § Management is so confused; they’re clueless. § There’s no support help around here. We have to do everything ourselves. § The marketplace as a whole is declining. In reality, when someone blames the economy, an external element, they don’t believe they have control over the outcome. Therefore they’re unlikely to do anything that will improve their effectiveness. When competition is cited, it’s really an admission of being outsold by the competition. When management incurs blame, that’s just the easy way out. As Kurlan explains, “They would be criticizing themselves if they were to take responsibility for not following through on something or letting something fall through the cracks.” Fixing AccountabilityHere are four rather simple, effective ideas to start eliminating lack of accountability: § Hire disciplined people. § Implement a No-Excuse policy. § Require powerful questions. § Track performance metrics. Hire Disciplined PeopleIan Troup, the leader of Upsher-Smith as they grew from 8 to 200 Million in annual revenues over an eight year time frame, recently said, “If you don’t have the right crew, the right captain doesn’t make a difference.” Although I discussed recruiting in a previous article, having the right people cannot be overstressed as critical components of building a high-performance sales culture. Disciplined people, who operate with a high degree of personal responsibility (they don’t make or accept excuses for themselves or others), have disciplined thoughts, which fuel disciplined actions, which fuel disciplined results. Thoughts--------Actions-----------Results Case in point: A client company had a growing gap between their revenue projections and results. The president was quite proud of the leadership team he had recently put together, each with more than 25 years in the industry and excellent technical knowledge. However, upon further evaluations, both blamed their lackluster results on stiff competition in their respective markets. They let their competitors be an obstacle versus a stepping-stone to creative brainstorming and strategic development. Even given stiff competition, people with a high degree of personal responsibility would have delivered better bottom-line results. Implement a No-Excuse ZoneLike the president of that company, we too often accept excuses. It’s imperative that we start recognizing excuses. Then, we need to enforce a No-Excuse zone where we stop accepting excuses of any kind, from any one, at any time, for any reason—even if there is a shred of validity to them!” Kurlan advises us to raise expectations by asking, “If you couldn’t use that excuse, what could you have done differently to overcome that obstacle? It sounds harsh, but the strategy empowers your people to work harder and smarter, knowing that you won’t accept that excuse ever again. The VP of Sales for a local medical-device company flew all his sales people in for their annual national meeting. They only had one piece of “homework,” which was to be turned in at 5 p.m. on the first day – a major account strategy worksheet for three of their largest accounts. At the appointed time, only three of the 17 people had completed their worksheets. They all had legitimate excuses: they were going to work on it on the plane, but the person next to them talked too much; they were going to do it last week, but they had a family crisis and couldn’t fit it in. Every excuse was legitimate. However, legitimacy does not change the fact that the paperwork didn’t get done. What a dilemma for the sales managers who’s trying to build a disciplined sales group! Does he let them off the hook? Despite the fact that accountability is one of the sales manager’s most dreaded responsibilities, Bob took the high road and delayed the evening festivities until all 17 sales people had completed their documents. Oh yes, there were lots of groans. However, the next time Bob asked for a report, it was done on time! Require Powerful QuestionsThe third step is to train yourself and your staff to ask empowering questions. John Miller, author of QBQ! The Questions Behind the Question, suggests the following format: § Begin with “What” or “How” (not “Why,” “When,” or “Who.”) § Contain an “I” (not “they,” “them,” “we” or “you.”) § Focus on action. In using the QBQ! process, the accountability-ducking comments identified earlier, now become: § What can I do help set proper customer expectations? § What can I do to differentiate my products/services? § What might I do to ensure that my customers get the right products at the right time? § What training do I need to move my skills to the next level? § How might I improve my communication with marketing so that my projects get done on a timely basis? § What information might I provide that will help them make good decisions? § What steps might I take to better organize my time? § What can I do to jumpstart the sales in my territory? Jake constantly complained to his sales manager, Sue, that sales were down because his prospects just didn’t see any reason to pay a higher price for their product and services. Sue challenged Jake to reframe the situation. Instead of complaining, she invited him to ask himself, “What can I do to begin providing added value so that prospects will begin to see why they should do business with me?” Of course, Jake thought the exercise was a waste of time. However, at the end of the week, he reported that after talking with colleagues, clients and prospects, he’d come up with three new ways that he could help his clients either reduce expenses or increase revenues. Within 30 days, Jake’s pipeline was full. Within 60 days, he was closing new business. Why? Because his manager challenged him to think differently. Track Performance MetricsStep four is all about performance measurement and holding people accountable, the most critical aspects of revenue generation. Research by Objective Management reveals that in growing organizations committed to developing consistent growth in revenues, 25 percent of a manager’s time is spent holding people accountable and measuring their performance in both activities and results. Numerous tools can be utilized to enhance the accountability process, from fast-start programs to pipeline management tools to scorecards to Quick Quote Qualifier. Here is an example of one tool that can be helpful. One of my clients, a successful IT consulting company, uses Sales Track, an on-line activity-tracking tool. The sales manager set up the program with each rep, jointly establishing weekly/monthly/quarterly and annual revenue and/or margin results. Based on each personal income target, the managers and their reps determined together what revenue needed to be in the pipeline in order to meet their income goals. Once the revenue number was determined, they worked backwards to determine how many prospects were needed based on the rep’s closing percentage. By continuing to work backwards, they were able to determine exactly what key activities (phone calls, appointments, proposals, seminars and other best practices) were needed each day/week to achieve the company’s and sales rep’s goals. Each Friday the sales people input their data. By Monday morning, both the sales rep and the manager get an activity/results report that analyzes where they are against annual objectives. Accountability Accounts for GrowthThe line that separates winners and losers in organizational growth is accountability. Losers only talk about why past efforts went awry, while winners take action and make changes. Stop accepting excuses and making your own. Step up to industry’s most difficult challenge and make sure everyone’s responsible for results. To inspire your sales people to rise above their circumstances and to take action to achieve profitable growth, try implementing some of the ideas I’ve shared. And let me know how they work for you by emailing danita@salesgrowthspecialists.com. 7.0 Staffing Software Industry Consolidation And What to Expect In 2004 by NetSudser Tim Giehll, tgiehll@eempact.com, CEO, eEmpACT Software, 952.854.3050 x230 The staffing software industry has seen Covantis shut its doors in 2000, VCG acquire Caldwell Spartan in 2001 and eEmpACT absorb Allegro last year. Quite understandably, these developments – coupled with similar ones in the tech sector at large – have people wondering whether such consolidation portends an accelerating trend. In a nutshell, I think that it most certainly does, and that we’ll be seeing considerably more of the same over the next two years. Some staffing software companies will be forced to close their doors, and others will be acquired by stronger competitors. In order to understand why, it will help to first take a look at the past to get a broader perspective. History shows quite clearly that consolidation within an industry is a natural and inevitable occurrence – an outcome of the business equivalent of Darwinian evolution, based on the same “survival of the fittest” principle that rules the plant and animal kingdoms. Typically, the earliest years of an industry are marked by a proliferation of players, all lured by the marketplace’s profit potential and all eagerly competing for the same customers. Then a winnowing process takes place, with the weaker players succumbing, until a balance is reached – often with only a few major players dominating. For example, in 1855 there were 50 telegraph companies in the United States, but within two short years that number had dwindled to only six, and nine years later Western Union dominated the entire industry. Similarly, there were 253 automobile manufacturers in 1908, 108 in 1920, and by 1929 just three companies (Chrysler, Ford and General Motors) controlled 80 percent of the market. More recently, we’ve seen the number of computer companies drop from 100 in 1993 to 30 today, with two of them (Dell and Hewlett-Packard) controlling 51 percent of the U.S. market. In addition to such historical precedent, experts say that today’s tech sector – of which the software industry is a critical part – is still bloated, despite the massive pruning that followed the recent popping of the tech bubble. For that reason they predict the imminent demise of 1,000 or more of the 10,000 companies that currently swell its ranks. But there are a number of other compelling reasons to expect further consolidation among staffing software companies. First, most staffing software was created in the late 1980s and early 1990s, so its technology is roughly 10 years old – which is typically when industries see their first wave of consolidation. Within that period of time, competing products tend to become fairly uniform in terms of features, as manufacturers fill in gaps that they see are covered by their competitors. And in fact, this is exactly what has happened to staffing software: the various staffing software solutions have become so similar that it’s hard nowadays for customers to choose one purely on the basis of functionality. When functionality is fairly uniform among competing software solutions, buyers turn to the quality and dependability of customer support to differentiate between products. But roughly half of the 60 staffing software companies provide adequate support, which doesn’t narrow the field down much and leaves only price as the key remaining differentiator. If functionality and service are both pretty much the same, customers will choose the software solution with the lowest price. That’s precisely what we find has happened with staffing software, which has had its prices slashed in half over the past year, from an average of $1,800 per user down to $900, as manufacturers have begun to differentiate themselves by charging less than their competitors. Some vendors have even dropped their entry-level prices to only $199 per user for small installations. But there’s a very important cause-and-effect that occurs when everyone in the industry drops their prices, as has happened with staffing software. When price drops, revenue drops accordingly. But spending can’t be cut back to the same degree, or else product development will suffer. So while price and revenue for staffing software have been cut in half over the past year, vendors’ expenses have remained pretty much the same. In that kind of environment, something has to give. And that’s just what is starting to occur now. The weakest fish in the pond – those staffing software companies with the smallest customer bases and the least-efficient products – are beginning to lose their vigor because they can’t find a way to stay profitable under the kind of pricing pressure they’re now facing. The most robust fish – those companies with the largest customer bases and the most-efficient products – are the only ones that can survive under those conditions, and some of them will, inevitably, end up consuming (i.e., acquiring) their weaker competitors, as is already starting to happen. This can have disastrous repercussions for the firms that rely on the software solutions these weaker fish sell. There are two main scenarios that can occur. One is that a software vendor gets acquired by a more robust one. Since the acquired company is invariably the one with the inferior product, this means its customers will need to move to the dominant technology. The second possibility is that a software vendor simply closes its doors, leaving its customers stranded, with neither technical support nor a means of adapting their systems to meet the ever-changing needs of their businesses. This is what happened, for example, when Covantis closed its doors without warning in 2000. Not only were its 100 customers forced to scramble to find new software solutions, but many had prepaid for the coming year’s technical support – money which they never got back. The best way for customers to protect themselves from either eventuality is by taking a long-term view when buying staffing software. That is, they should determine who the dominant staffing software companies are, because those are the ones that are likely to still be around five years from now. The trend toward consolidation in the staffing software industry will eventually lead to the creation of an industry standard (i.e., a dominant technology), similar to what has happened with the operating systems of personal computers. There used to be a number of PC operating systems, including IBM’s OS2 and Novell’s NetWare. What happened over time is that the dominant technology – Microsoft’s Windows – surpassed those other players and either put them out of business or acquired them. But we’re not yet at that point with staffing software, which hasn’t seen the emergence of one dominant vendor. I think that’s still two years in the future. There are only three staffing software companies that are starting to move to the forefront, but it’s not yet clear which one is the leader. Those three companies are gaining new customers at an average rate of anywhere from one to three a week. The other 57 staffing software vendors are, in my opinion, in serious danger of folding or getting swallowed up, because they aren’t growing but are just in a holding pattern. They may be adding only one to three new customers a year, and so are basically dependent on the money they get from servicing their existing accounts. That may allow them to keep their doors open, but it’s not enough to reinvest in their products – to develop new features, functionality and services – so that they can successfully compete in today’s marketplace. In light of all this, companies that use staffing software would do well to give some thought to what eventually happened to the owners of such ill-fated products as Edsel cars and Micron computers. Change is inevitable, but it’s always better – translation: cheaper, easier and more efficient – to be proactive than to be reactive. 8.0 Guest Writers for This Report If you are aware of others who would like to receive the NetSuds Report, ask
them to visit
http://www.netsuds.net/mail.htm
to subscribe or
unsubscribe. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||