The Merchant Stand from Bob Williams

Rethink text book distribution

Bob Williams — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 02:00:04 +0000

Text books are made for the education and instruction of students in our society right? Well, that’s the academic answer at least. Certainly the amount of money in the text book industry is benefiting a load of people in the value chain. Authors, publishers, distributors, retail stores, etc.

But really. Have you seen a student lately? They carry around backpacks busting at the seams. I weighed my son’s back pack tonight and it topped off at 20 pounds! Let’s be real, this can’t be healthy for the kids and certainly in this day and age we have other options for getting educational content to students other than over-sized printed text books.

Online textbooks or computer versions have been available for some time now and ocassionally offered in academic environment. These are good alternatives, but present a few problems:

1) They require reading the text book from a computer screen. Large amounts of reading from a back-lit screen is hard to do and eye-stresser. I haven’t found anyone yet that really likes this option for heavy reading.

2) They are not portable. What if you need the book in the classroom and at home? Laptops are not available to everyone and while they are close to portable aren’t always convenen

So now it’s 2010. The Kindle and iPad are making waves and I’m watching my kids break their backs trying to get to the bus. Let’s rethink to the obvious solution:

Get each student an eReader and have them load their textbooks onto this device.

Here’s why it works for everyone involved:

The students – The most important people in this equation are the students. They create the demand for the entire value chain: schools, authors, publishers, etc. They benefit because they get a portable device for reading valuable content. It weighs next to nothing and can even take notes and create markup.
The schools – Take the budget for buying the printed versions and use that amount to negotiate with the eReader providers and publishers for the eReader and eBooks. The student is assigned an eReader at the beginning of the year. If they lose it, then they have to purchase another one with their own dime (same policy today on text books). You could even require a deposit which is returned when the eReader comes back at the end of the year. Optionally offer the students the ability to purchase the eReader to keep and reuse. For colleges and universities, you can require the purchase of the reader and purchase of the books. Basic eReaders today sell for the price of a single textbook. It’s a one time purchase and in the long run text books should be less expensive for the student. Just imagine an article about a college/university that is decreasing a cost to its students instead of a double digit gain each year.
The publishers – It’s best to get involved in this game now and be a player rather than ignoring it so that the others determine a way around them and make their service irrelevant. They should continue to work with authors to make distribution easier.
The authors – Somebody still has to write the text!
The retailers – In a college and university environment they now sell eReaders and find a way to distribute the texts electronically. Their physical space requirements for textbook inventory just fell off the charts. So they can either refill that space with other merchandise or reduce their footprint and costs.
The trees – Yep, this is the environmentally responsible solution and the trees love it.

It’s really just a matter of time before this happens. Oh yeah, maybe, just maybe we’ll get the love of reading back into some of our students. These eReaders don’t have to be limited to text books. Students would be able to download and purchase any eBook they wanted to read. So what are we waiting for?

6 reasons I still love Twitter

Bob Williams — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 02:41:12 +0000

I still love Twitter and here are six reasons why:

It gives me the ability to connect with brands and people on my terms. I choose who and when I want to listen and engage with others. Twitter content providers, including myself, can “push” content all they want to. The readers choose if they want to listen to the messages.
It gives me the ability to listen and follow current events on specific topics. Sometimes I want to get a feel for what people think about an event or how they are interpreting information. So I setup a real time Twitter search and listen. I’ve used this capability to listen to thoughts about trade shows, sporting events, and industry related topics to my field of work.
It gives me another forum for primary research on topics of interest. If I’m looking for information about a topic I can choose to search tweets for the related keywords or I can post a request for information to the community at large.
It gives me the ability to listen to some of the most influential and thoughtful minds in my industry. I follow content that adds value and diversity to my thinking. It teaches me.
It forces content providers to stay on point with messages. At 140 characters, brands and people that use Twitter for messaging must be clear, concise, and simple. Just like cable TV and satellite radio give us oodles of choices for programming, we have many types of written media that compete for our reading time each week. Blogs, news, email, books, white papers, Twitter, Facebook, etc. At 140 characters it allows for quick scanning. Heck, I think its better than channel surfing on the tube!
Where else can I listen and follow my workplace competition on a daily basis? Yes, I have a Twitter search setup specifically to listen to content that my competitor(s) is adding to the industry each day. This helps me understand how they are engaging customers and what type of information is important to them.

I’ll be honest, I follow much more information than I can read each day on Twitter. I use TweetDeck to help me group and classify information. Even with that, and based on all my other obligations in life, I’m not able to read and scan TweetDeck each day. Gasp! I know. That means I don’t see every tweet of every person or entity that I follow. But that’s not a limitation of just Twitter. It applies to any type of PR or marketing activity you may perform. If you content is relevant, people will choose to listen and engage.

So tweet-up. It’s a way to listen, contribute, and engage with others. Now that’s, good business.

Sharpening the saw – people to people

Bob Williams — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 00:43:59 +0000

Most likely you’ve read or listened to work by Stephen Covey. His seventh habit of highly effective people is “sharpen the saw”. In his metaphor people are the saw, and we sharpen ourselves as we develop regular habits of emotional, physical, and spiritual renewal. This ultimately makes us more mature and effective in our lives. As with a saw or knife, when we are dull emotionally, physically, or spiritually, it takes more effort to accomplish our work. Dull skills are not as precise or prone to create the results we desire. Covey’s advice is excellent; Invest time in these areas of your life through reflection, reading, experiences, discussions, etc.

I’ve reached the cross-roads of a relationship in my life with someone that often did not see eye-to-eye with me. As I reflect back on the relationship, I now see that this person was helping me “sharpen the saw” of my life. Going through the process was not easy though. Just like sharpening a knife requires a stone and piece of leather, sharpening our lives often requires someone much different than ourselves. They challenge us to think in different ways. They teach us skills we didn’t know. They increase our emotional maturity by teaching us to have edifying discussions rather than destructive ones.

The important things in my life are built from relationships with others. I know now that “sharpening my saw” is no different. Will I go and look to associate regularly with people that challenge my comfort zone? Not necessarily. But I do recognize that I should not automatically run from others in my life who may challenge my way of thinking. These are the very people who could make me stronger and wiser.

In the tenth chapter of Ecclesiastes it says “If the ax is dull and its edge unsharpened, more strength is needed. but wisdom will bring success” (10:10). An unsharpened instrument used for cutting can be more dangerous than a polished and sharpened instrument. So keep yourself sharp and be thankful to those who help you get there.

Process: friend and foe

Bob Williams — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 19:12:55 +0000

In my reading this week I came across a blog post from Tom Peters entitled Strategy: War on Systems. Tom talks about “systems” within an organization and while they are developed with good intentions, they often become inhibitors to achieving the organizational mission. I talk about this very subject quite a bit on my blog also. In fact while reviewing my notes for blog post ideas I found this entry:

“Software Development lessons learned (process is both friend and foe) – Software development friend and foe”.

This thought matches exactly with Tom’s thought about war on systems. Your software development process has steps that exist to produce output and serve customers. Over time, the process becomes more elaborate. Steps are added to prevent faults that happened in the past, to satisfy regulatory requirements, to satisfy best practices, or even recommendations from a consultant. As Tom put it, this type of system or process can “strangle” the organization. It becomes a priority just to follow the process and team members lose site of the original mission. Team members become process engineers as they navigate the process from end-to-end and feel accomplished when they can check-off each step completed.

It’s a safe bet to say that end customer rarely has influence into the design of the process. Ultimately, the customer has to buy the output and no one else. So make sure your people have the ability to call-out and question process steps that don’t provide value for the customer. This is a big step for an organization that wants to increase its customer focus.

Bankers, make your Internet site a fully functional branch!

Bob Williams — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 00:54:24 +0000

Now more than ever, bankers and credit union managers need to make sure their Internet web sites are fully functional branches. I purposefully used the word ‘web site’ because an Internet branch is comprised of the entire web site including content pages, online banking, and other transactional links. Consumers are increasingly expecting to find a fully functional Internet branch whether they are accessing it for information, rates, customer service, or transactions. This applies to all account holder segments, including those with the highest balances.

Take a quick inventory

Take a look at your Internet web site. Are all of the products and services you offer explained on the site? Do you have services where you direct an existing account holder or prospect to visit a physical branch location to complete the transaction? If so, you have a crippled Internet branch that’s not meeting the needs and expectations of the empowered consumer today. Short of spitting cash out of the computer or mobile device, you should be thinking of ways to offer every service you do in a physical branch through the Internet.

But the Internet is not secure. It’ll invite fraudsters.

You need to come to terms with this way of thinking to make relevant changes to your offerings that serve account holders instead of penalizing them. Yes, criminals live on the Internet. Criminals also live and commit crimes within physical bank branches and offices. To combat this, follow the sage advice of security experts in developing a framework for a complete security system at your financial institution. The Internet is only a piece of the overall security concerns you have. Don’t penalize your channel for serving account holders by limiting the services based on an outdated policy.

And the winners are

In the Accenture Global Consumer Behavior Study, 2009 there was a question “What degree do the following describe what you like about the companies you do business with today?”. The top three answers receiving a 7 or higher on a scale of 1 to 10 were:

Easy to do business with
Trustworthy
High-quality customer service

Keeping and growing customers with high quality customer service is nothing new. Why show your account holders or prospective account holders a weaknesses in your customer service by not offering them a true multi-channel approach to your products and services? Today’s consumers wants to use mobile, the Internet, and branches to conduct their business with you. When you are where your customer is then you have a start at being easy to do business with.

Now that’s a recipe for success. You can bank on it.

Three golden nuggets for eCommerce financial metrics management

Bob Williams — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 12:00:53 +0000

The ultimate goal of financial metrics in your eCommerce operation is to provide a measurement against revenue and profits required to sustain and grow your business. Choosing which financial metrics to measure can be a tricky endeavor. You want to make sure to capture relevant data that define your business and to use your time wisely. Common areas of measurement include revenue, average cart purchase, up-sell ratio, retail dollars, number of items in the cart, cost to operate, adword spend,and delivery dollars.

But what is financial metrics management really about and how should you structure this part of your eCommerce operation?

Use financial metrics that define the success of your business

Make sure the financial measurement points to a key performance indicator in your business. Remember too that areas that define the success of your business go beyond dollars spent. For example, it’s commonly documented that retail giant Costco makes the bulk of its profits on membership dues rather than merchandise sold. Costco retail margins are capped at a lower threshold than typical retailers which is the basis for it’s low-cost but high-quality reputation. While I don’t work for Costco, I can imagine that a critical financial metric for them is both memberships sold and renewed. Other possible metrics include:

Profit per order – Filling shopping carts is only beneficial if its done so at a profit.
Number of units sold – Important for businesses that need to move multiple units to turn a profit.
Average time of inventory before sell – Think about the implications of receiving your customer’s payment for a product before paying your supplier.
Percentage of inventory sold – Think about transportation providers and selling available seats for a specific trip
Revenue per order – If your cost structure is in good order and you are trying to show investors a growing revenue stream then you may be focused on the highest revenue possible
Revenue mix – You measure the revenue mix of eCommerce (Internet) against other available channels. This is important if you Internet channel has a higher profit per order than other channels so you may want to show the total contribution of profit of the channel.

It’s worthy to note here that it’s also important to focus on measurements of customer behaviors that lead to the dollars spent. This often gets into site measurement areas such as time on the site, delivery selection breakdown, and number of items in the cart. I consider these building blocks to the financial results, but that’s the topic for another session.

Use incremental financial metrics as a basis for enhancements justification

If you are a marketer or product manager then the financial metrics of your existing eCommerce property are the gold used to purchase new enhancements. In some cases you may have measurements on a pilot effort and are looking for the remainder of funding to complete the roll-out process of that feature. In other cases you may be able to show the existing reach and contribution of an eCommerce property to your business as a basis to request more funding for expansion of products and ideas. One fundamental concept to remember when creating new businesses cases is that you need to use the incremental financial contributions your change is forecasted to bring to the business. Your existing financial metrics baseline is already established. Don’t double count the financial contribution that would be present if your site remained as-is.

Increased financial metrics may trump decreased site metrics

After you release any new changes to an eCommerce property there are a number of measurements to gather to determine if the new release is successful. The ultimate scenario is that a new release increases both site metrics (conversion rates, number of visitors) and financial metrics. However, there are some situations where a decrease in site metrics may be off-set and even trumped by an increase in financial metrics. A simple example to consider is with a price increase or additive fee on a site. The resulting price increase may decrease the site’s overall conversion rate yet give it a stronger contribution towards financial goals. So remember to compare the resulting financial metrics against the established baseline after a release. Consider the long term implications of the results on both site metrics and financial metrics. This will guide your decision whether or not to keep the change.

Taking timeout for the important stuff

Bob Williams — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 23:14:54 +0000

I didn’t get around to posting this week because I spent much of the week in the hospital visiting a relative recovering from cancer surgery. It’s good to see the altruistic nature of a person as they abandon all else to aid another. It’s also refreshing to see the good nature of people who helped as they could.

Next week I’m taking a bit of rest and relaxation with the family and then closing the week with a business trip. I’m anxious to get back to writing and sharing my thoughts and learnings with you.

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