But those of us on the business side of the corporate landscape depend on the computer folks to let us know how things are going with that highly valuable asset that we have in our IT systems, hardware and software.  Most medium to large businesses run very high capacity computers or multitudes of computers connected through a network and those systems must perform at top capacity each day to accomplish the goals of the business.

The upgrade and maintenance budgets for the computers that run your business no doubt represents a fairly sizable percentage of the corporate budget each year.  But because those systems are what make you competitive in the marketplace, that investment is worth the money to assure that the mission critical jobs those powerful systems do get done on time each week and month.

When a computer begins to show signs of straining under the load of work, we are giving it, that can be a cause of significant concern for a business.  If your business paradigm dictates that the load of traffic or system resources could be pushed to beyond what the computers can do with their existing computing power, that weakness in the IT infrastructure represents a significant risk to the company should the system become overloaded when there is a large body of work to be done by these machines.

What not every business person knows is that there may be a hidden goldmine of computing capacity already resident in your IT resources that simply is not being tapped to its fullest.  You know that it isn’t uncommon for your IT professionals to report that your systems are at 80-90% capacity and must be upgraded to handle the next big increase in business.

That hidden goldmine is a discipline that has actually been around for quite sometime but is infrequently tapped in the modern business world.  That discipline is called “capacity planning”.  By implementing a capacity planning office and monitoring function, you can put the tools and the talent in place to precisely measure scientifically if your computer systems are at capacity of if there is just a need for system tuning or realignment of computing schedules to get more out of the systems you already own.

Recently a large oil company in the Midwest noted that many of its mission critical functions were being delayed in processing, seemingly because the computer systems were overloaded and in dire need of an expensive and time consuming upgrade.  Capacity planning measurements were taken and the system was diagnosed to determine what the real problem was and it was found that job priorities of new functions were not tuned to the load of the system at critical time frames.  The adjustments were made by talented systems administrators and the IT infrastructure continued to perform at top-notch capacity and the delays were eliminated with no additional hardware or upgrades needed.

By utilizing capacity planning software tools and enabling your IT team to take advantage of this highly scientific computer measurement and prediction method, the business can get the most out of its computer resources and use its corporate resources to further the business objectives of the company.  And that benefits everyone.

The first major challenge that cyberspace brought to the music business was a complete shift to how music would be sold to music fans worldwide.  In what can only be described as an avalanche, the music buying public virtually abandoned conventional record stores and retail outlets and took the majority of their music purchasing business online.  But this mass influx of business could not be tracked to any one web site that was executing the revolution.  Because of a revolution in how bands and Indie record labels do business online, the music audience followed and began buying their CDs and even concert tickets directly from artists or record labels online and getting those products instantly via downloads.

But as drastic as the market changes this paradigm shift in consumer behavior represented, it was nothing compared to what the internet had in store for the music world.  The next wave of change represented a threat to the music business so serious that it had the potential of putting the music industry out of business forever.  When music consumers began to share digital music electronically over the internet using file sharing software such as Kazaa, Limeware and BitTorrent, suddenly it was possible for a music customer to access all the music they wanted for free by simply downloading this music from another internet user’s computer.

The plummet in music sales as result of these two forces was drastic and traumatic to the music world in general.  At first, the music business executives were at a loss of exactly how to go about stopping the widespread file-sharing phenomenon.  They tried to shut down the software services that provided the networks to users with lawsuits and other punitive actions.  These litigations took a long time and cost a huge amount of money and all the while the flood of free music going out over the internet continued to increase.  Worse of all, when they did slow down one file sharing network, it seemed many more cropped up to replace it which began to look like a nightmare scenario of constant lawsuits against a never-ending and constantly growing enemy.

Public pleas to the music loving public were another attempt to appeal to the conscience of the music world that if artists could not get paid, there would be no more new music.  But the opposite seemed to be the case.  As more and more Indie musicians began to capitalize on file sharing and using it as a method of marketing, the quantity and quality of good music only seemed to increase in this new music marketplace.

The final attempt seemed to be this technology called DRM.  DRM is a digital “lock” that would be required to go on every piece of music released on the internet.  Music with DRM would not be playable except to customers who had a legal right to use it.  At first, this seemed like a viable solution.  But even DRM didn’t stop the flood of lost revenue through file sharing.  And hackers seemed more than happy to learn to undo any technical locks the music industry could come up with.

So as we move into the last half of the first decade of this century, the music industry is learning to work with this new music marketplace rather than fight it.  And by learning lessons from the Indie labels and how to serve customers in a digital world, there seems to be a new solution on the way but one that is dictated on the customer’s terms rather on the terms of the big music labels.  Somehow, that seems like it is the way it should have been all along.

The truth is that those on the inside of the oil business know full well that the oil business is tremendously cyclical.  That means that the old adage, “whatever goes up must come down” definitely applies to the oil markets domestically and around the world.  The current high prices are more a reflection of problems with refineries and with supply due to tension in the Middle East than it does with the profit objectives of the oil companies involved.  In truth, oil companies have to cope with sweeping shifts in supply and demand and it impacts how they plan their economic futures as much or more than it affects the average consumer.

This upswing in the price of gas is not the first time the oil business has seen huge profits and gains in their returns.  And anyone who has been in the oil business for a few decades knows full well that the current high profitability economy which is benefiting oil companies tremendously will turn the other direction at some point.  Just as there is a shortage due to problems with repairs or temporary shut downs at the nation’s refineries, there will come a time when all refineries are producing at full capacity and there will be a glut on the market which will drive prices down.

Similarly just as oil shortages dominate the market and are on the minds of consumers because of Middle East tension, oil supplies can shift dramatically.  A new discovery in Asia, The Soviet Union, Europe, South America or off shore in America can suddenly send a glut of supply into the market that will send the price of crude oil plummeting and with it, gas prices worldwide.

This is not just pie in the sky forecasting but an industry trend in the oil business that is supported by years of experience, research and tracking by the businesses most impacted by sudden supply and demand turns in the markets, those big oil companies.  The oil business is so used to the roller coaster nature of the market that even though the market is good now for the oil companies, they are already preparing for the next downturn and how they will survive when supply exceeds demand and prices drop leaving them with big adjustments to make in how they do business.

As with any smart manager of a business or investor for that matter, diversification is the way to prepare a strategy for handling volatile markets like we see in the oil business.  And that has been a cornerstone of the strategies that have kept the oil companies able to ride the ups and downs their industry undergoes on these huge swings in supply, demand and profitability.  While the oil industry is enjoying unprecedented prosperity now, there is coming a time when they will see their profits drop and they will have to brace for a downturn of unknown length and survive it until the next swing of the pendulum back out.

Even now, you can bet that every big oil company in the world is already investing heavily in diversified business interests that can generate revenue to keep the company afloat when oil revenues are not as lucrative as they are now.  Those investments will be in real estate, the stock market and even in far flung unrelated industries such as retail or the entertainment industry.  The more diversified a company can get, the more prepared they are to ride out the roller coaster oil market.

And this shrewd business practice is a good signal to those who are investors in the oil industry as well.  Just as the companies who are fattening up our portfolios now are strong investments, we should know that the downturn is coming and diversify while times are good.  Then we can ride out the next oil slump just as handily as the companies that live or die by the oil markets do year in and year out.

But for every success story of how an AD agency took a business to the next level of success, there are plenty of horror stories of terrible advertising campaigns.  A bad advertising strategy not only fail to escalate the sales and success of the business, it may damage the business in the eyes of the consumer and cause damage that could take years to fix.

There comes a time in the life of any business when the decision is made to either employ the business’s first AD agency or to change agencies to find one that can fit the marketing objectives of the company.  To be sure that this process results in one of those success stories and not one of those horror tales, some precautions are in order such as…

§    Nail down the company’s marketing objectives before you meet with candidate agencies.  Don’t allow the AD agency to dictate what your marketing goals are.  By taking charge of what you want before you begin the process, the chances of finding just the right agency are vastly improved.

§    Put together a review committee for the search process of finding the right agency.  This team is well informed about the company objectives and the marketing goals that lead to the decision to bring an AD agency on.  They can be kept together throughout the selection process so you have wisdom from many different parts of the company management structure to guide the process.

§    Nail down the budget for the project before you put the invitations out to AD agencies to bid on your business.  If you know exactly how much you can spend, that will help in the selection of the right agency and in setting their limitations early in the relationship.

§    Establish the schedule of how long you have find an AD agency and then the time frame they have to put a campaign together, get it approved, produced and activated so the outcome is in sync with the company objectives.  If you have a major product announcement coming along, the time to start finding an AD agency is months before the week when the product goes public.  By timing the project so adequate time is allowed for each step, you don’t rush the process and end up with an inferior promotion which will result in unsatisfactory results.

§    Make sure the AD agencies you invite to bid on the business understand your business, what you do, the product to be promoted, your market and your business image.   They should also be aware of previous marketing efforts that were done by the business.   If the previous efforts were successful, there may be a strong tie in to the next promotion that would work well.  If that last promotion was bad or needs major improvement, the AD agency should know that so they can steer clear of the same mistakes.

By doing some planning up front and being ready when you begin to bring AD agencies in to discuss your goals, you will vastly improve your chances of selecting the right firm.  And by finding the right AD agency, you vastly improve the success your advertising will bring to the company which can be a tremendous boost to the corporate profitability.

Of the many business and market trends that have changed the paradigm by which business is done in the new century, internet marketing ranks near the top of the most drastic and sweeping change that virtually every business has had to adapt to in order to survive and thrive in the new business world.

At first, most in the business world considered the internet to be a toy and perhaps a good communication tool.  But in the last decade, the power of internet marketing and the need to compete in that marketplace has never been more evident.  And just as business learns new marketing and communication methods when they enter a new market such as learning to do business overseas, the internet has brought with it entirely new tools and weapons that the modern business must learn to use skillfully to succeed in a cyberspace business environment.

Of the many new acronyms that have been added to the business vocabulary, “SEO” is one that is central to success in the internet marketing world.  SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization” and it is an entire discipline unto itself.  By learning to utilize well developed SEO methods, a business can learn to dominate their particular market niche even in a cyberspace business world.

Just as in the conventional business world, to be successful with a particular market, you have to go where they are and learn to get noticed and get your message to the consumer even as your competition is doing the same thing.  In the world outside of cyberspace that may mean various methods of advertising, promotional campaigns, good customer service and a long term promotional strategy that will grow the businesses market presence over time.

All of these business objectives remain the same in the world of internet marketing, but the “places” customers can be found are profoundly different.  As such, it becomes critical that a business builds a modern and up to date web site that appeals to the customers perceptions of what they will expect when they come to shop with you and that stays up to date continuously s the internet continues to change and evolve.

But it isn’t enough to just have a state of the art business web site up for modern internet business web site to succeed.  Just as to be successful in the physical world, customers must come to you or you must go to them.  And the primary method of letting customers know who you are and drawing them to your well designed web site is to connect to them through a search engine such as Yahoo, Google or MSN.

Search Engine Optimization methods are powerful techniques that can be used to assure that when your customer looks for a business such as yours, they will notice you first and your competition second, or not at all.  That means when the customer “searches” for your product or service on Google or another search engine, your business comes up on the first page of selections that the search engine finds.

SEO takes time, investment of funds and talent and skill to work with the search engines so your business gets that kind of attention.  But it is worth the investment because the outcome can be an internet business presence that bring the kind of success every business wants.

The stand off came when the government began to demand access to the search records of all users of the major search engines.  When this upcoming struggle for privacy began to come to a head, many of us who depend on search engines for both personal and business research began to get that “big brother is watching” feeling.

It’s a tough compromise.  We know that our government must have the ability to find and put a stop to security risks that might result in another disaster like September 11th 2001.  But at the same time, Americans are tremendously protective of their liberties, their privacy and their right to be left alone by the government.

Of all of the search engines who were in the spotlight during that struggle, Google’s resistance to allowing undue invasion of privacy of their customers stood out as an act of courage in a difficult confrontation.  It turned out that Homeland Security really wasn’t becoming “big brother” and was simply researching how to use statistical data to possibly find terrorist patterns in search engine usage.  But many of us remember that while Yahoo and others knuckled under quickly, it was Google who stood up and protected user information rather than immediately turn it over to Uncle Sam.

This stand reflects a long established business ethic that Google has maintained to be protective of the data it collects about users of its search tools.  That protective nature has more benefits than just building our confidence that Google is a safe tool for all of us to use.  Google indeed has at its disposal a tremendous library of personal information on anyone using its search tools.  And as the dominant search engine in the industry, this potential includes just about anyone who accesses the internet.

The information that can be collected from you and I as we use the internet can tell an interested party a lot about your interests, what kind of business you are in, your religious views and your political affiliations.  Powerful analytical tools are available to take large volumes of search information and translate that into profiles that would be of great interest to the government and to marketers who would love to be able to target specific populations for sales.

For Google, this information has significant value to them as they fine tune their search engine methodologies.  They can methodically analyze this data to draw conclusions about how their search tools are working and how they should update the formulas that drive those tools to be more in step with how the internet audience is using cyberspace.  Yes, this is taking advantage of their already dominant position to secure that position and make their toolset even more capable of staying ahead of the game.  But we really cannot fault Google for using this data in that way.  That is just good business.

It turns out then that Google’s protective posture when it comes to that massive database of search information serves their purposes extremely well.  If they can keep this mountain of very specific data secure and proprietary, it represents a trade secret of tremendous value to Google to help them maintain their market superiority for a long time to come.

This is a case of the needs of the market serving the public good well.  For as Google protects our search information so only it can benefit from such knowledge, they also are protecting our privacy from the prying eyes of overenthusiastic government agencies, hackers, marketing campaigns and even the terrorists who could use that information for insidious purposes.  Therefore we can be thankful that Google jealously guards this data for its own uses because in the process, they are protecting us along the way.

It makes you wonder, just how many banks do we need in town and why are the banking institutions spending so much money to put branches in virtually every location that has open space?  It is a business trend that gets your attention and it makes you wonder what is driving this bank explosion.  After all, in many cases there are not more customers for those banks.  You have to wonder how banks can cost justify such expansion when the growth of bank branches is not even in step with population growth in a given community.

The phenomenon has become more profound in the last ten years than ever before.  And much of it has to do with changes in how banks are regulated and the financial objectives that these branches are targeting, financial objectives that bring big money to the banking institutions spreading all over town.

·    Regulatory Changes.  The rules for how many branches a bank can own and where they can open them have changed significantly in the last decade.  Now banks can open branches inside grocery stores and at a greater density than before.  And this has set off the growth war of branch banking that we notice going on all over town.

·    An explosion of services.  Along with a freeing up of the branch banking laws, commercial banks can offer many more services than ever before.  While we think of banks in terms of checking and savings accounts only, if you walk into the bank, you will be buried with offers for a huge variety of financial services including varieties of investment services and different forms of credit arrangements.  And these services are huge money makers for your local banker.

·    How banks really make their money.  Obviously banks don’t make much money just keeping your checking account working correctly.  But using checking as a loss leader, banks can capture your business to offer credit services and investment vehicles that yield them much higher returns on the use of your funds.  Further, the fees that can be applied for overdraft accounts and other fee based services are a pure profit mechanism for banks.

·    Visibility counts.  Each new customer a bank lands takes revenue out of competitor’s banks.  And if they can capture your banking business, the money you store in your accounts is available for loans and interest they can realize by using your money while it is in their care.  So they want to be visible to assure you think of them first when it is time to open a new account.

This trend is not likely to change any time soon.  The competition in the banking industry is fierce and bankers are aggressive business people.  So we should expect them to continue to work hard to capture the consumers business and make themselves available to consumers to steal your business away from competing banks.  And while it might be troubling to see every street corner filled with bank branches, its part of the market system that makes our economy strong.  And that is a good thing.

Of course, the value of the internet for sales and promotions has been well known in the industries that service the youth markets and for the companies dealing with entertainment and the arts.  Because the internet is in virtually every home and even now on hand held devices of every description, the access it gives to reach a target market are phenomenal.

This explosion of an entirely new marketing model has introduced the world of business to entirely new paradigms of marketing and new ways to achieve greater market penetration and sales.  And so any business who has had to get out on cyberspace to keep up with the competition has already had to learn a whole new vocabulary that has grown up around the internet marketing phenomenon.  Now terms like “Search Engine Optimization”, “Auto responders” and “Viral Marketing” become important and powerful tools to any business that wants to tap the power of the internet to increase sales.

The second wave of businesses that, perhaps reluctantly, ventured out into cyberspace were traditional retail business that you would not associate with cyberspace at all.  This includes sport teams, restaurants and even retail giants such as Wal-Mart and Border’s Book Stores.  In fact, the wave of change in how products and services are sold has been so rapid that entire market niches have been virtually revolutionalized by internet sales techniques.  Book and music outlets have been virtually hard hit as a large percentage of their customers have abandoned the “brick and mortar” sales outlets entirely to use the more convenient tools of internet shopping.

This has made it tough on some retailers to keep up.  For the “mom and pop” business, the change has been particularly devastating.  Already small, home grown businesses were struggling to compete with the giant mega-stores like Wal-Mart to keep their loyal clientele coming back.  Add to that the migration of customers to the internet and the need for change just to stay in business became even more urgent.

But even businesses who do not depend on marketing at all have seen the need to build and maintain a well functioning business web site so they will have a “face” in cyberspace.  In the modern marketplace, the consumer will go to the internet first to find out about a company and it’s goods and services.  This has turned traditional ways of connecting with existing and new customers upside down entirely.

The good news is that these rapid changes in how modern markets work have made the business world more diverse, more able to adjust to changing business dynamics and more open to the creative and innovative minds that have always been the real life blood of the business world.  And, ironically, it is often the small business that is most capable of making rapid changes to its online presence and ways to doing things.

In that the internet is a phenomenally dynamic place, new ways of reaching our customers change almost annually.  Where one year a simple web page may have been sufficient, soon we had to have chat rooms, MySpace pages and YouTube compatibility.  Any business that sees these changes as chances to do something new and exciting with their business will be the companies that thrive in this modern world.  And, as always, those who do not thrive with change will be destined to be made obsolete by it.

When a business turns its eye to cost cutting, there is a stated or unstated business objective that the business owners will discover significant bleeding of revenues that are going on within the systems of doing business.  So if those systems can be improved to eliminate that waste, the business would literally make money from the inside out because the overhead of the business would drop so dramatically.

The usual progress of such a cost saving campaign by a business is to find “the low hanging fruit” first.  By that we mean that in order to satisfy the demands of management, middle management will identify superficial savings in hopes of satisfying the requirement.  Hence switching from disposable cups to mugs or cutting back on break room amenities often go on the chopping block first.

Sadly, while there may be some superficial savings to be found in such places, the significant introduction of efficiencies for any business lie at a deeper level and take a more in-depth process of locating problems with how things get done internally.  The methodology of finding these “money pits” within a business is often called “Process Improvement.”  The concept of process improvement is to diagram a particular business process from inception to completion and document the stages it goes through, the handing over of authority for the process and to pin point places where inefficient methods are causing excessive cost in executing that process en route to the final stage of process completion.

Routinely, the areas of business structure that most often identified as being candidates for a process improvement examination are…

*    Excessive overhead between departments.  Departments within a business are notorious for taking on the atmosphere of a fiefdom and becoming resistant if not suspicious of other departments in the same company.  When that happens, department managers will introduce paperwork and unnecessary processing to cause “work” to move to his or her department from another or for completed jobs to continue along their path.  This excessive overhead can be costly at the department level and bog down the business as a unit enough to actually reduce the profitability of the organization.

*    Communication problems.  A business process moves through the organization as each department or entity adds value to the process through to the completion of the job.  However if communications between departments or people along the process chain are flawed, a process can grind to a halt and wait for hours if not days before the missed communication is discovered and the work is put into the cycle to be completed.  This slow down or break down in communications can be a tremendous drain on the company.  To correct the problem, modern tools of communication should be reviewed so each significant person along the chain is quickly made aware of work that needs to be done and can signal to the next agent that their step is complete and that the process is moving to the next stage.

*    An inefficient IT infrastructure. Out of date computer programs that are not integrated with each other cause needless work to be done to take data from one system and moving it into the next computer program only to be entered again at the next stop along the chain.  Standardization and integration of data and systems will introduce huge efficiencies to the process.

By streamlining the process of moving a business requirement from inception to conclusion, we can remove much of the inefficiency and waste that has become inherent to that process.  We can introduce up to date integration designs both at the IT and process level to quickly move the process from one department to the next upon completion.   The outcome is a streamlined organization that is no longer “bleeding money” due to inefficiencies and as such is making money “from the inside out”.

When you set up a marketing tool outside of cyberspace, the first concern is how will that new marketing effort get noticed.  So we are drawn to places where there is already an active traffic of people who would qualify as our customers.  That may mean putting up a billboard where it will be seen by people going to work.  That target audience may be the best population to respond to your message.  Or if your business appeals to youth, advertising on MTV or on popular radio stations is a natural place to put your marketing money because the traffic is already there.

We have to approach the internet differently.   Yes, the traffic is already there but we have to enter the world of cyberspace marketing with a different kind of strategy so we can reach the customers who are traveling certain “internet roads” and make sure those roads lead to our web site.

There is whole a cottage industry that has sprung up around the need for knowledgeable internet marketing gurus.  And, yes, it’s a good idea to use their talents to make sure the search engines put your web site in front of the right kind of client or customer.  These talented internet geeks can put your business web site into the flow of web surfers so you get your fair share of that traffic.

That said, you don’t have to wait for the internet marketing experts to make your web site more successful.   If the business has made the effort to put that web site up, you want to see it start to pay off right away.  That is why you should consider some creative ways to drive people to your web site from your traditional markets thus educating your current customers, clients and partners about the site.  Ways to do that include…

§    Promote the web site at the retail level.  Some creative signage at your retail locations can create some momentum and interest in customers to go see your exciting new web site.

§    Put the link on all correspondence.  If you have flyers, a magazine or other current means of communications, your URL should always be listed there.  Add your URL to your email signature and on business cards and all other forms of communication so your community of clients, customers and partners get used to associating that web site with you as much as they do your business name.

§    Create excitement.  It is easy to operate a business contest from your retail sites that drives people to the web site for clues or to claim their winnings.  That kind of momentum can create huge surges of traffic through your web site with the corresponding surge of sales and leads.

The modern customer or client is used to seeing the promotion of a web site included with other forms of promotion and advertising.  You are not “assaulting” your customer base with this information. If anything, when your audience sees that the business has burst into the cyberspace world in a big way, they will be thrilled and as likely to respond with, “It’s about time.”.

You know how much you depend on the internet to keep you informed about areas of interest and about businesses you like to patronize.  So you can see that not only putting up a good web site but letting people know that it is there and that there are big things there for them to enjoy is doing them a favor as much as it is creating new marketing opportunities for your business.