Doug's Blog Archives – Page 40 of 58

15 Oct 2009

Honesty in the Real World

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:21:58-06:00October 15th, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Marketing, Mindset and Motivation, Sales|

In the last few days I have personally witnessed 2 companies (other than ourselves) deal with annoyed customers.

Honesty

In the first case (no names, my blog is not about embarrassing others), the owner of the company had to deal with a customer that was upset about a missed deliverable. This occurred while we were meeting with him. What impressed me about it was his attitude. Yes, he was genuinely upset about his company's process failure… but he was not embarrassed about it or trying to cover it up with the client or with us. Honesty goes a long way.

Too Much Success

The […]

13 Oct 2009

Feeding a Need on Thanksgiving Weekend

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:22:11-06:00October 13th, 2009|Categories: Doug's Blog|

My business partner Al Dhalla and his friend Al Mohammed started Feed-a-Need a few years ago. Our business has always supported giving back to the community through organizations such as this, the Interfaith Food Bank, Bethany Care Society, The Mustard Seed and the Boys and Girls Club organizations.

We are a web application development company and have recently volunteered company time to help revamp their public website (still not released yet).

Over the weekend they had an opportunity to make another big impact and I thought I would share it with my readers:

Just thought I will share FeedaNeed’s […]

12 Oct 2009

Automating Success (Measurement)

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-06T12:40:12-06:00October 12th, 2009|Categories: Doug's Blog, Leadership, Technology|

My last post (Measuring Success) was on measuring key factors before and after a change to determine if the change had the desired effect.

Just as important, if you want to be sure that measurement is easy and will not get put aside when things are busy; you need to automate the process of generating the measurements.

This follows the agile principle of automation for anything that gets done more than once. It is equally effective for businesses.

If you have managers or staff members whose job description includes manually generating part of all of a report or key performance indicator, you have […]

7 Oct 2009

Measuring Success

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:22:19-06:00October 7th, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Leadership|

To succeed in business, common thinking says you need a vision of where you want to go, then you need a strategy (plan) for getting there, and then you need to take action over the short-term (goals, projects, tactics).

One part missing from this is measurement.

If you make a change to improve on the execution of your strategy, how do you know it has the right impact?

Gut feel or intuition? Anecdotal evidence? Or do you measure the key factors before and after?

For small to mid-size businesses, who often don't have access to a host of expert analysts, this is a difficult […]

5 Oct 2009

Your Web Presence

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:22:25-06:00October 5th, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Marketing, Sales, Technology|

Every business should have a web presence… it is a no brainer right? Maybe.

Actually, the first thing you need to decide is what you want to accomplish on the web. Whether your goal is: marketing, sales, connecting with customers, or something else….

You need to align your web presence with your company vision and strategies if you want to be sure you are not just throwing money out the window (and as a small business owner that is your money).

Don't spend any time or money developing a web site until you know what you want to accomplish.

3 Oct 2009

Knowledge Is Power

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:22:34-06:00October 3rd, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Leadership, Technology|

Knowledge is power if you can use it to make better business decisions. The trick is to get the right knowledge in front of the right people at the right time.

Inside a business there are normally three key sources of knowledge:

Data,
Information or Document Repositories, and
People.

Chances are you have a lot invested already in each of these islands of knowledge… but they may not be connected or otherwise delivering the value you want. If the data does not already exist in a usable format, you may need to capture it.

Relying on Bob

Too many small businesses have critical functions that only one person has […]

2 Oct 2009

The Future Is Small and Big

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:22:43-06:00October 2nd, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog|

Over the next few months we will be launching a number of software products and services aimed specifically at small to mid-size businesses (depends on how you measure size).

In most cases, small businesses (should) behave and operate differently then their much larger counterparts.

We are very good at certain aspects of technology and understand how small business is different. Working with small business owners is potentially very satisfying… you get to see significant results from your work. Our work with larger corporations is interesting too… it is just harder to see the bottom line impacts.

We are also aligning ourselves with several […]

2 Oct 2009

Sunwapta Message Update

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:22:50-06:00October 2nd, 2009|Categories: Doug's Blog, Marketing, Sales, Technology|

Our latest iteration on messaging for our website.

What We Do For Clients

Data. Innovation. Software. People. Vision.

We bring meaning and life to complex data through innovative software solutions. This allows people to collaborate more effectively and make better decisions; faster and with more confidence.

Software, knowledge and people aligned with strategic vision drives competitive advantage.

We adjust our approach based on the situation and the people involved. Large organizations are inherently different than smaller owner operated organizations, we've worked in and with both.

No matter what your challenges are, we believe there is a better way of maximizing the return on your technology […]

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 […]

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