Thursday, June 24, 2010

The New Economic Value

 In the old economy you wanted "value" from all of your vendors, right?  In the old economy, we all said we wanted value, but did we really mean it?  Now, more than ever, I am finding that many small businesses are looking for better ways to do business with vendors.  Seemingly for the first time, I am seeing innovative thinking applied to every aspect of small business, including the purchasing process.  

What specific change precipitated us all to take a second look at value?  In our industry, I believe massive layoffs at larger companies changed the overall value of their products and services.  I have not concluded if the value change was intentional.  Would you intentionally "layoff" a valuable asset?  Regardless of the strategy, I believe in most cases value declined, while the cost of the product remained the same.  (That leads me to believe: the results were strategic and intentional - the bottom line staying the same and/or increasing was the ultimate goal)  Have you found that you are receiving less service, doing more work, and yet the costs remained the same?  If you lead an organization or run a small business, have you started asking questions like:  How does this organization become more valuable?  What is stopping us from setting the standard of becoming the most valuable ________ (fill in the blank of your product or service)?  Georgia Business Net's vision is to be your LAST Phone & Internet Solution Provider.  If we are going to be the LAST, we had better be valuable.  I hope that with this vision that we have inherently woven the idea of maximum value into our business culture.  There is certainly room for us to improve, however I think we are on the right track.  I hope some of my vendors are listening to this!  Will they take this information and use it?  Will you?
Like many small businesses, there is a customer service gap we fill as your Telecom and Internet vendor.  Roles we play like purchasing agent, your turnkey solution provider, your project manager aren't new to our business model.  Ten years ago those roles weren't nearly as valuable as they are today.  Why?  Much to my disbelief, those key roles with our competitors and some of our vendors were some of the first subjected to downsizing.  Change is awesome, and all of these changes have led to great innovation and opportunity.  I hope your company is taking advantage and seizing the current "gap" opportunities.  Maybe I lack logical reasoning, but if you layoff the value, won't your results include a less valuable bottom line?

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