Small & Medium Business

I’m excited to introduce the last finalist from the Dell/NFIB Small Business Excellence Award program.  This company came up with a program that helps a small business compete in the same arena with large national retailing chains for customer loyalty.  It’s a small business that is helping other small businesses be more competitive.

Interactive Marketing from Warrenton, Virginia, has been in business for eight years and is the developer of the Web-based Welcome Back Rewards customer loyalty solution which offers small companies access to affordable, easy-to-use customer loyalty programs.  The company is now taking the technology to the next level with City Masterkey which allows small businesses to run both loyalty and cross-marketing programs.

If you think about it, almost any national chain retailer you visit today will have their own customer loyalty program (not to mention Web retailers, financial companies and more).  But historically, the small local business has been hampered by cost and added complexity in offering a similar program.  And yet, repeat customers are the best customers any business can ask for –they tend to outspend new customers and customer acquisition costs are expensive.

The basic technology of the Welcome Back Rewards program allows merchants to run the program off of their existing computers and Internet connections.  Merchants scan a customer’s loyalty card at point of sale (generally through a bar code scanner) and are able to track customer activity and award points as rewards customers can use with future purchases.  All transactions occur with the merchant and the merchant has complete access to customer data – there are no hardware, software or transaction fees for the merchant.  And no employee training or major new purchases needed to start the program.

Eight years ago when Interactive Marketing introduced this for small retailers it was revolutionary for that market. And today, they are taking it to the next level with City Masterkey.  The Masterkey works just as easily for small businesses but can also link merchants together in groups (for example, all of the downtown local retailers in a community), and allows them to offer consumers one card to use at all of the retailers and restaurants they like to visit.

That sort of group cooperation opens up tremendous cross-marketing opportunities for merchants, and it’s easier for consumers to manage one loyalty card they can use anywhere they like.  Even better, the program ties in local charities to the program and a portion of the $5 fee consumers pay for the card is donated locally. To date the program has donated over $100,000 to charities including the Susan G. Komen Foundation – way to go!

Congratulations Interactive Marketing!

I hope you have been enjoying reading about our 10 finalists of the Dell/NFIB Small Business Excellence Award which we have been sharing.  Both of our next finalists are in the healthcare industry and I wanted to share their stories.  The use of technology to make health care more efficient is especially topical, and here are two health care companies showing how it can be done well. 

Acadia Foot & Ankle, P.A. is headquartered in Bangor, Maine, and is a three-physician foot and ankle medical and surgical treatment center.  They have been in business for 23 years and have eight employees.  Their investments in IT have revolutionized the way they are able to help patients, saved thousands of dollars a year and helped them grow the practice.

The Acadia team uses three dimensional scanners to take impressions of patients’ feet and is able to submit the results over the Internet to a cad-cam manufacturing process for the production of orthoses.  The orthoses that patients need can be in production within minutes of the scans being done. For patients that means receiving those orthoses in less than two weeks – before the scanner, they had to wait up to six weeks. It also reduces errors and improves quality. 

The team is also using digital x-rays to take images they need which both allows rapid transfer of the images to other practitioners but more importantly, patients can leave the office with a CD that has their x-rays and they are exposed to less radiation during the x-ray process.

And finally, the team has invested in a VPN to connect their office network and a computer based answering system – which means the doctors can both be easily located in the event of an emergency, and have access to the patient data they need online – all without carrying a pager.

Bellingham Internal Medicine in Bellingham, Washington, has also made some smart investments in technology that are paying off in terms of business efficiency and patient service and results.  The four-physician practice with seven employees has been able to continue providing high-quality primary care internal medicine through a difficult economic environment because of the efficiencies they have realized.

What I really liked about this company is they have already implemented a completely paperless medical office.  Each exam room has Internet access allowing doctors to use the Internet for patient education.  The doctors can also use cell phones to dial into the office computer system and forward critical patient records and important tests, like EKGs, to emergency rooms when needed.  They can also access the results of lab tests or x-rays within minutes of a patient’s test.  They even use instant messaging to communicate between exam rooms, the nurses’ station and the front desk.

All in all what that means for patients is the Bellingham team is focused on patient care and not filling out and managing paper records. The numbers show this – a typical medical office has 2.74 full time equivalent support employees per medial provider. Bellingham’s use of technology means they run efficiently with 1.25 full time equivalent support staff per provider, and they never have to schedule more than two patient appointments per hour.

Congratulations to Acadia Foot & Ankle and Bellingham Internal Medicine!

As you’ve been reading, we have been posting about the 10 finalists from the Dell/NFIB Small Business Excellence Award program.  I think you’ll enjoy learning about our next winner.  Here’s a small business that is helping law enforcement teams across the country be more effective.

The Forensic Training Network based in San Francisco has been in business for two years and is filling a much needed gap in the world of forensics.  They provide online and onsite training services to crime lab employees, law enforcement personnel and attorneys on forensic science-related topics.  Their training is helping clients address budget shortfalls which can affect training and travel budgets by providing an affordable way for personnel to stay trained in the forensic field.

This company is the first in their industry to create online and self-paced training modules. Materials are available to clients at ForensicHub which also serves as a connection point for the forensics community.  The training modules which are interactive and available online 24/7, contain audio, animated graphics and simulated exercises to ensure training is rich and effective.

While this company has built a business that relies on IT, they are also relying on technology to run their firm.  Founding partners are located in different cities and yet don’t miss a beat staying in touch with each other and meeting client needs through smart use of online tools.  And their efforts are winning rave revues from clients in locations ranging from California to Texas to Nebraska.

Given how effective their training solution is, Forensic Training Network was also just awarded a federal grant to help make their services available to law enforcement personnel free of charge.  All in all, this is a great story of a small business meeting a critical need and delivering it through technology – and meeting that need helps keep all of us a little safer.

Congratulations to Forensic Training Network!

We’ve been posting about the 10 finalists from the Dell/NFIB Small Business Excellence Award program.  Our next finalist is deeply immersed in technology but has used that immersion to help clients with easy to use applications that help tell their own stories.

Any business or organization needs the Web today to tell a story, and we know that content-rich applications help tell a story the best. Unfortunately the next thing we all learn is that managing that content and keeping it fresh can quickly become very expensive or very time consuming.  That’s exactly what GroundWork Design, based in Richmond, Virginia, helps clients address.

The team at GroundWork specializes in developing applications for the Web that help clients like The Julliard School and the University of Miami bring their campuses and experiences to life via rich multi-media.

They have a unique approach that in the end helps their clients. They first take all forms of content about a company or organization and then ensure they build applications that can help mange that content and grow with it. The overriding goal is to ensure that any tools developed for clients are easy to use and powerful enough to be self-sufficient.  Finally they put their client firmly in control. Using video, visual thinking diagrams, and more, they help demonstrate to clients the complete scope of their own content, and what is possible with it.

What I found really interesting is the smart use of technology to connect with clients to manage some technology-intensive applications.  GroundWork’s team is rarely in the same room with clients and yet labor-intensive projects are completed successfully and clients are satisfied because of Groundwork’s smart use of technology to guide clients through the entire process.

They are also using these tools to stay in touch with each other and with partners.  Each project for a client has a method to keep track of time and files and they create a customized project page for each client. If you think about it, they are managing files that are often hundreds of gigabytes in size so interconnection is critical to their process.  Employees also have access to VPN and remote desktop technology to accommodate working from home or extended hours on a project.

You can learn more about the company on LinkedIn, Facebook. Congratulations to Groundwork!

I hope you have enjoyed reading about the 10 finalists from the Dell/NFIB Small Business Excellence Award program as much as we’ve enjoyed sharing their stories with you.  We covered our finalists in no particular order, and I’m excited to introduce our next finalist, BusinesSuites based in Austin, Texas.

Anyone who has managed an office for a business knows it can be an expensive undertaking. And when an entrepreneur sets out to set-up an office that is professional, productive and client ready can really be cost prohibitive. That’s exactly where the team at BusinesSuites steps in. Much like the software-as-a-service model, they offer clients subscription-based office space and services.  Clients are not burdened with the expense of long-term leases and pay only for the services they need or use in a given month.

It goes without saying that the success of BusinesSuites is based on the satisfaction of their clients and they have turned to IT to help deliver a great customer experience.  Clients rely on BusinesSuites for a complete back-office solution – they are acting as office manager, IT department, receptionist – and sometimes a right hand. 

BusinesSuites manages their network at each location which means they can ensure the quality of the Internet service their clients use and provide services like remote printing to printers with commercial capabilities and direct connection to overnight shipping.  They have also automated the move-in and move-out processes and created a custom satisfaction survey for clients from which they implement great ideas to improve the space.   By making their IT infrastructure as plug and play as possible, they are able to get clients up and running quickly. They have even used this service to help get local businesses up and running after natural disasters.

Seven years ago, BusinesSuites reports it was struggling and embarked on a significant technology plan to address their challenges. The move has paid off, they have reduced costs, improved their client experience, leveraged a smaller infrastructure and boosted profits.

The team is also using technology internally to help grow the company. BusinesSuites has 55 employees spread across 16 offices making staff collaboration difficult at times.  Today the team stores information at a collocation facility and uses web-based systems for billing, sales, marketing, client information and meeting room scheduling. This means any employee can access any information they need 24/7. I really enjoyed learning they have implemented a BusinesSuites wiki as well which has become their internal hub for sharing information and best practices.

Congratulations to BusinesSuites!