Hunkering down in tough times
John started his career selling local insurance products. Eventually through perseverance, charm, good business acumen, and the strong support of his wife, he started his own insurance brokerage. At the height of his success, his company was raking in over US$5 million in insurance premiums. For a small company with under 40 employees, John was the epitome of success. You could argue that his strategy to stay focused on a specific market segment and narrow band of products (he only sold products from one principal) paid off.
Today his company is on the brink of failure. What went wrong? As a business, you could surmise that greed and pride were at the roots of the impending demise of his company. He and his wife decided to take a back seat and let the children run the business. The children were inexperienced at managing people much older and more experienced than they. The company elected to diversify its product portfolio approaching several principals and using the company’s track record to secure lucrative deals. Sibling rivalry pulled the company into different directions as employees lost direction, drive, interest and loyalty. John’s dream of building a dynasty is in the brink of oblivion. At this very moment, he is trying piece together plans to resurrect his business. Is he too late?
John’s fate is not an exception. Nor is it the stuff of local soap dramas. Rather it is endemic of business cultures that fail to use initial success to drive growth and innovation. It is also a lesson in separating personal interests from those of the business. Neither is his company a norm. AllBusiness.com, a D&B company lists 10 reasons for failure:
- Overexpansion
- Poor capital structure
- Overspending
- Lack of reserve funds
- Bad business location
- Poor execution and internal controls
- An inadequate business plan
- Failure to change with times
- Ineffective marketing and self-promotion
- Underestimating the competition
(more…)
Bold by any other name
What’s in a name? As a former marketer I have learned to understand and believe the power of brands. Take away the shareholder equation ($$$) associated with brands and what you have at the very core of a brand is Trust. The old adage in IT was “no one ever gets fired for buying IBM”. While this may still hold true in some business quarters in many parts of the world, the “trust” a brand builds over time can easily be thrown out by a single, badly managed incident.
But that is not my point here. My point is that sometimes marketers can get carried away with the exercise of creating a brand name that they lose sight of a deeper goal – maintaining the level of trust a brand has established over the years.
Anyway, you’ve probably read two of my product reviews (Samsung Omnia and HTC Touch Diamond). I would not be surprised if after reading both you’d think of me as being patently pro-BlackBerry. I can assure you that while I like some of the technologies that RIM has created over the years, I am still very much not in favor of some of their current business practices. But this is a another product review so let me get that off the table and come back to my RIM issues towards the end.
I use a BlackBerry Pearl (8120). I’ve used a BlackBerry Curve (8310) earlier this year – sorry it got stolen during a holiday in Manila. Recently I was loaned a BlackBerry Bold (9000) to try out. As before, this is not an exhaustive review. If you want a technical dissertation, click on the list towards the end of this blog.
Likes about the BlackBerrys
- Rugged form factor (I’ve dropped each model on a few occasions – unintentionally of course – and each survived mostly unscathed – yes, minor scratches – you should see what a 3 foot drop can do to an iPhone 2G – the model with an aluminum case. Imagine what would happen to the plastic iPhone 3G)
- Simple to understand user interface plus the ability to hide functions you don’t need or don’t use. (I firmly believe that a true test of a consumer device is to use it effectively without ever reaching for the manual)
- Syncing with MS Outlook is easy as is installing/uninstalling the software – BlackBerry Desktop Manager
- Screen is crystal clear – but the Bold beats everyone – iPhone, all previous BBs, SonyE, Nokia, HTC, MotoQ, in fact everyone except the Samsung Omnia i900 series.
- Power-up is almost instantaneous (except when you remove the battery)
(more…)
In My Humble Opinion 