Doug Wagner, Author at Sunwapta Solutions

29 Sep 2009

Tide, Things are a Changing

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:22:57-06:00September 29th, 2009|Categories: Doug's Blog, Marketing, Sales|

I was watching the breakfast show on TV this morning. Tide had a commercial talking about how environmentally friendly their product was. Their detergent is 2x concentrated reducing plastic in the packaging by 47% and allowing them to use less diesel fuel shipping it.

Yup, these are good things right?

The only problem is that every other detergent is exactly the same. In fact I saw one that was 4x concentrated.

Yet they are implying they are different… better even.

I think the days of putting a "spin" on the routine and calling it differentiation are quickly disappearing.

If you are going to claim […]

28 Sep 2009

Creating Lasting Business Partnerships

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:23:01-06:00September 28th, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog|

Over the past couple of years we decided to start partnering with other companies to broaden our market reach and increase our ability to provide a comprehensive suite of services and products.

There are two keys to forming any lasting relationship; trust and communication. This is especially true in business.

Trust

Trust is built on a foundation of strong ethics. You then have to be genuinely committed to the success of the relationship and for that to happen, both parties need to give. The final component is that you need to be trustworthy… do what you say you will do in a way […]

24 Sep 2009

Web Site Updates

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:23:07-06:00September 24th, 2009|Categories: Current Events, Doug's Blog, Technology|

Joomla 1.5

Finding quite a few undocumented "features" embedded in Joomla out of the box. For example, the default WYSIWYG editor does not appear to be generating proper HTML and there are a few 500 series errors generated by the admin site. The search engine optimization feature does not work if you are hosting on IIS instead of Apache, you need to acquire an ISAPI filter.

Don't get me wrong, Joomla has some pretty powerful capabilities and because it is open source, the price is right. But, there is a learning curve and work required to get it right if you […]

21 Sep 2009

Our Company Purpose

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:23:11-06:00September 21st, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Software Development, Technology|

As I have mentioned before, we have been working on our corporate web site. It is always hardest to work on your own stuff for some reason. Client projects, proposals and hundreds of other things get in the way.

We've been looking at what we are good at, our past projects for clients and where we want to be. I also wanted something strong that we can get excited about, fits in with where we are going right now with our products and goes with my strong interest in what makes a business succeed. In the end, we have come up with the […]

18 Sep 2009

Employee Share Ownership – Alignment of Goals

By Doug Wagner|2017-07-26T21:26:37-06:00September 18th, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Dream Teams|Tags: business strategy, employee engagement, Employee Share Ownership Program, ESOP, ESOP Builders, leadership, Perry Philips, small business, small business owner|

In my previous post on Strategy and Corporate Governance for Small Business, I talked about aligning Shareholder goals with the running of the company. This applies to employee share ownership as well.

When offering employees ownership you are making them shareholders.

Companies sometimes do this in an attempt to retain employees as the primary motive. However, there are issues:

Shares in a privately held company are not the same as a cash bonus. They are a paper benefit until they can be sold.
The goals of employee shareholders need to be in alignment with majority shareholders. If they are not then it might […]

18 Sep 2009

Two Robins and Some Lessons

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:23:22-06:00September 18th, 2009|Categories: Current Events, Doug's Blog, Mindset and Motivation|

Earlier today I was watching the birds in our yard. They are starting to gather together in greater numbers as they get ready to start migrating. It was interesting watching them dart through the air and how they interacted.

As I was getting ready for work, I heard a big crash.

I went back to the window to see what was going on and two robins were laying beside the glass on our deck. In their high speed acrobatics, they had missed that fact that it was glass and not a normal opening.

One of the birds eventually got up and was still […]

15 Sep 2009

Strategy and Corporate Governance for Small Business

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-06T12:43:02-06:00September 15th, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Leadership|Tags: business, corporate, doug, execution, goals, governance, planning, solutions, strategy, sunwapta, wagner|

Corporate structure goes something like this:

Shareholders – The owners of the business or enterprise
Board of Directors – The elected representatives of the shareholders whose function is twofold: provide strategic guidance to the corporate officers (management team) and make sure the interests of the shareholders are protected.
Corporate Officer or Management Team – The senior person (and sometimes some of the key subordinates) are be appointed (approved or hired) by the board of directors to carry out the will of the Board of Directors and Shareholders.
Other employees and contractors – Are hired by the management team or their representatives […]

9 Sep 2009

Lessons From Amazon

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:23:41-06:00September 9th, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog|

The lessons in a nutshell:

Always focus on your customers first; not your competition or anything else.
Invent – Don't settle for either or; invent a solution that gives you both… invent for your customers.
Think Long Term – Keep your eye on the long-term payback and not the quick results. If you are doing the first two in conjunction with this you will eventually do well.
It is always Day 1 – There are always new opportunities to focus on customers, invent and think long-term.

8 Sep 2009

Fall – Back to Business

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:23:48-06:00September 8th, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Current Events, Doug's Blog|

We are up on a bit of a hill. Last night we got a surprise frost. So much for the weather forecast.

Yup the nights are getting cooler here in Calgary and that means everyone is getting back to business after a relatively short summer.

There are two main periods of busy business activity here in Calgary: Fall and Winter/Spring. Stampede until Labour Day is a slow period and so is December/January. This year with the doom and gloom economy still lingering, it was especially pronounced.

Federally, the politicians are thumping their chests again. Too bad they consider their job to be mudslinging […]

4 Sep 2009

Outsourcing your HR Needs – Small Business

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:24:05-06:00September 4th, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Dream Teams|

Al and I finally reconnected with Kim Bechtel after losing touch a few years ago. We did a project for him while he was at the City of Calgary. Somehow we lost touch and then when Kim changed jobs, his contact information no longer worked.

Today Kim is the President and Chief Idea Officer at YourHRco (web site under construction).

He has been working in HR for many years but has decided to focus on HR strategy and services related to smaller businesses. Small business is different than the big companies and HR needs to be applied to helping small businesses with those […]

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