Al Dhalla and I attended a sneak preview of the Vancouver Internet Marketing Conference hosted by Anduro Marketing.
It was kind of like appetizers before the main meal. Tasty but not very filling.
The full conference should be a lot more meaty as it goes for three days rather than just a couple of hours. Looks like there are lots of good presenters too.
Good compilation of business and marketing tips from various authors.
Today I was thinking of what competitive advantage really means and came up with a few categories or methods of gaining competitive advantage. I think it is well worth looking at how you stack up against each category periodically (anything missing?).
Capability
Essentially you have something or can do something that is significantly better than your competitors. Even better if you are the only one or there is a barrier to entry.
Speed
How quick can you deliver on your promise and how fast can you respond to change.
Knowledge
What do you know that your competition doesn't. Knowing your customer fits here and so does intellectual property.
Location
Location, […]
Who are you? What matters? What do you stand for? What do you want to become?
At the core, the business and owners must be in synch for long-term success.
Sure you can buy a franchise for a proven business, say a muffler shop, but if you have absolutely no interest fixing cars it is going to be a long painful ride.
I've been running Sunwapta Solutions for over 9 years now and we never clearly defined this for ourselves… until now. Luckily strong ethics and doing good work were part of our core make up without thinking about it regularly.
If you just go with […]
Lately cloud computing has been getting a lot of buzz. It is a giant umbrella for either hosting your applications "out on the Internet" or acquiring software hosted by someone "out on the Internet".
It is actually quite funny in a way. An evolutionary happening is being sold as a revolution.
The cloud has been there for years. The hype is newer.
Reality
A large percentage of people don't really understand computers, hardware, software, networks and the Internet very well at all. They really don't care where something is running or where the data ends up as long as:
It is easy to use,
It works […]
Sometimes you pick up a business or personal development book and you enjoy reading it, but for some reason, nothing really changes afterward. Some are read it once and never read it again.
Well, recently I was perusing my bookshelf and picked up two I had read quite a while ago for a re-read.
When reading these (or any other books), you are not likely to get magic ideas or formulas to guarantee success in your business. What works for one company will not work for yours straight out of the box.
No the thing to get out of these books are […]
Ever have one of those days where customers (internal or external) keep derailing something you want to get done?
If only they would go away, life would be simpler and you could accomplish all your projects.
Yup, no customers would be perfect.
No customers, no distractions… no revenue… no business.
POP!
The trick is not in making your customers go away. Unless you have no intention of growing you actually want more happy, satisfied customers receiving something they need. Your business depends on it.
So the trick, is setting up your business so you can do both; and I don't mean working 16 hours a day.
You need to […]
Web Site Update
Thought about it some more… need to just get things done so new Sunwapta Web Site version one will focus on content and not so much on being an unusual tech site. Just not enough time to do everything.
However, we have a product launch scheduled for September and I will be creating a brand new site for that. That is where I will focus my creative energies.
Convention over Configuration
This evening I went to a Calgary .NET User Group meeting and presentation by James Kovacs (MVP) on "Convention over Configuration". Another passionate presentation by a very talented developer covering a […]
There are two main reasons to build your own software versus buy an existing software product:
The impact of competitive advantage through software and automation is underestimated by most small and mid-sized companies (and many large corporations too).
Non-Existent
Despite the vast amount of software out there in the cloud and available to be run in your own enterprise, there are still a number of business problems that cannot be solved by off-the-shelf or preexisting software.
And even if that software exists, it may have been tooled to be too specific to one environment and the cost […]
In my last post on this subject I mentioned how fun it would be to do a parody of a normal website. Then I said I didn’t think I had the courage to be taking that kind of risk.
A few people have challenged me to not put out a standard (serious and boring) tech website.
Of course, they are not the ones that would be taking the risk so it is easy to say “Jump!”.
I am thinking that the parody version would not be right for me. Fun, but not really what I am about and certainly not what Sunwapta […]