Doug Wagner, Author at Sunwapta Solutions

22 Jul 2009

The Lifetime Value of a New Customer

By Doug Wagner|2017-06-08T20:46:14-06:00July 22nd, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Marketing, Sales|Tags: Lifetime Value, Lifetime Value of Client, Lifetime Value of Customer, marketing, Marketing Budget, sales|

One of things you need to do for your business is to determine the lifetime value of a customer or client. This is the lifetime income from that customer to your business and should include factors such as:

Amount spent per year (minimum, maximum and average) on your products or services,
Expected duration of relationship (min, max and average),
If you have multiple levels of products/services you will also need to consider the likelihood of moving them up the value chain.

Now determine the fixed and variable costs in delivery your product or service. Fixed costs are those that you have regardless […]

21 Jul 2009

Clean Code (a la Mode)

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:26:27-06:00July 21st, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Software Development|

Clean Code

Our team recently wrote some code for a client of ours to handle user authentication through Silverlight. It was largely from scratch and implemented a lot of business logic both in Silverlight and on the server.

The nice parts: clean code with lots of unit tests… and a very happy client. Good work team.

Silverlight

Microsoft's Silverlight platform is starting to mature quite well with Version 3.0. Our developers are getting quite good working with it… so much so we are seriously considering switching from an AJAX web browser application to Silverlight part way into a project. If it will speed up future development the […]

20 Jul 2009

Jumping on the “Everyone” Bandwagon

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:26:31-06:00July 20th, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Marketing, Sales|

We see it all the time.

Real estate is doing well, everyone starts buying up properties and the prices start climbing. The stories of easy money generates momentum. Then the market becomes saturated and the cycle reverses. Many caught at the end are left buying high and selling at a loss or finding tenants to cover part of their payments. There are some markets that defy logic but generally that is the way things go. The problem is, no one knows how long the rise will last.

The real (i.e. lower risk) money was in being there early.

The same happens in […]

17 Jul 2009

How Do You Make the Best Business?

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:26:41-06:00July 17th, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Marketing, Sales|

I listened to a live interview of Satyen Raja, leader of WarriorSage by Andrew Barber-Starkey of ProCoach International on Wednesday evening.

Satyen presented an idea for the ideal marketing or business plan. It is not brand new, I've heard variants of it in the past but it is brilliant in its simplicity and a good reminder that things need not be overly complex so I thought I would share it.

You have an idea for a business. Go to 10 of your ideal or best potential customers and present the idea. Ask them to write an extraordinary testimonial for […]

14 Jul 2009

Dance Through Life

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:26:46-06:00July 14th, 2009|Categories: Doug's Blog|

Recently a friend of mine (who is also my dance instructor), decided to take the entrepreneurial plunge. She is opening up a dance studio here in Calgary.

It reminds me of the time nine years and a bit ago that we started up Sunwapta Solutions. A dream, a commitment and the excitement and fear in jumping into a new world. So much to learn and do.

Dance Through Life (web site coming) will be focusing on adult dance and fitness classes. Most of the dance studios in town cater to children and teens and while some offer adult classes, there is […]

9 Jul 2009

Does Your Business Work For You?

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:26:51-06:00July 9th, 2009|Categories: Doug's Blog, Leadership, Mindset and Motivation|

Be honest. You don't have to share the answer with anyone but yourself and you are doing yourself a huge disservice if you deceive yourself.

Do you work for your business or does you business work for you?

You can work in your business (employee), you can manage your business (manager) and you can work on your business (entrepreneur).

You can have a business plan, cash flow, working capital, investors, products and services, customers and an exit strategy. You can be providing a critical service to society.

But that does not answer the fundamental question. Why are you in business in the first place?

To answer this […]

6 Jul 2009

Exit Planning – Be Prepared

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-06T12:18:32-06:00July 6th, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog|

When you buy a ticket on a plane you have a destination in mind. When you arrive you get off the plane and it is the end of the flight. You have arrived and there is no ambiguity.

When you are taking off, the flight attendants tell you where all the exits are in the event of an emergency. If you’ve flown a number of times you have them memorized by now. Hopefully you won’t have to use them.

If your plane has to divert to another destination due to bad weather, you will have to make alternative arrangements to continue your […]

2 Jul 2009

Raising a Business

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:27:00-06:00July 2nd, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog|

These days there are a lot of blended families. I recently got to observe one such family closely. Children, parents, step-parents, joint custody, two sets of grandparents, day care workers, teachers, coaches…. It reminds me of that saying, "it takes an entire village to raise a child". Sometimes the village works and sometimes it doesn't; to the detriment of the children.

Starting and running a full-fledged business is a lot easier when there is a village behind it. Sure it helps to have a strong leader too, but succeeding in business is hard enough without having to go it alone. When you […]

29 Jun 2009

Sharing Code Between Silverlight and WPF

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:27:14-06:00June 29th, 2009|Categories: Doug's Blog, Software Development|

I recently saw an advertisement for a webinar on the subject of this post in a newsletter. The seminar looks at the feasibility and some of the limitations.

For us this is a been there done that subject. We worked with one of our clients (partners) to develop a framework of tools, etc. for them to quickly build out applications that would work in both WPF desktop and web via Silverlight.

That is not to say there were no limitations or gotchas involved. The XAML is not 100% compatible between the environments and similarly the with the .NET framework… essentially Silverlight is a subset of […]

25 Jun 2009

Sunwapta Solutions Turns 9

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:27:18-06:00June 25th, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Current Events, Doug's Blog|

Our company just turned 9 years old. I spent that day with family and the evening on a plane returning to Calgary after visiting family.

While on the plane I spent a few moments reflecting on where we have been and where we are going as a company.

It has been an incredible personal journey to this point… highs and lows abound in business. We've built some incredible software and technology has changed faster than most would like.

The people have been amazing. My business partners, our staff, our customers and our partners/vendors have all contributed to our success over the years.

Behind the scenes we […]

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