January / 2012

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The Steps Towards Continued Success in Business in Amidst the Whirlwind of the Technology Age:  This is the first in a series of articles by Heidi Chapnick, Associate member of FreshXperts, with over 20 years of experience in development and integration of digital solutions with brick and mortar businesses.Heidi Chapnick

 

1. GET ENGAGED!! Executive/owner engagement- buy- in from business owners/stakeholders

2. Needs Assessment/Analytics and the Science of ROI- who are your targets? How do you reach them in the way(s) that they desire to be reached?
3. Technical Engagement Modeling
4. Marketing
5. Operational Execution- Employee Excellence, business planning and evolutionary roadmapping
 

6. Customer Care and Centricity- focus on the customer/client

 

This first article will provide information on the first phase of Step One, Engagement, setting the stage for the evolution of your business, while future steps will explain how to sustain continued growth with integration of solutions in the technical age. We can help you to get traction by using these steps to their maximum potential. Here at FreshXperts, we can help you - systematically, with our industry experts, by walking, crawling and finally running your business to keep up with the ever changing landscape of technology offerings that your customers not only desire, but demand...

 

For hundreds of years we have used science to explain methodically and with evidence, the many unexplained phenomena of the universe. So it is not a far stretch use science to understand the parallel universe of the internet and digital space now that it exists. Espace is a whole new universe, ripe as your crisp bushel of apples....with the potential for earnings, revenue and happy customers that will rival and probably supersede any brick and mortar enterprise or any mom and pop operation on this planet. We now have the easy answers for the less knowledgeable and the tough answers to the most complex challenges through science.

 

The idea of using the hard sciences, (Biology and Chemistry) has always been a fundamental strategy in providing evidence and proof of hypothesis. The idea of using the soft sciences, psychology and psychiatry (the psychodynamics of customer centric behavior and subsequent solutioning) has only been fundamentalized over the past ten years as an integral and pivotal touch point for proof of concept. But the available rewards of using this approach are reaped with hard science metrics...customer satisfaction indexes, increased trust and loyalty, increased basket size purchases, increased frequency of sales by existing clients, increased retention...whether a mom and pop business, a wholesaler, retailer, ecommerce shopping provider, business to business distributor, or direct to consumer enterprise....or even if you have no current alternative way to sell your products...yet......engaging in some form of evolution with the internet will allow knowledge transfer about your offerings, possible additional ways to purchase or find out where to purchase your products, and...revenue...revenue...revenue...

computing

In relation to all digital, commerce, and content espace, 'hard science' implies using ROI (Return on Investment) analytics for needs assessments, prioritization and planning and'soft/social' sciences for the development and subsequent deployment of customer centric solutions to devise and deploy strategic business plans and roadmaps; building interactive empires, just as we have built brick empires for hundreds of years. And although this enterprise may be different in offerings and services, it must be the same in value, and although this enterprise may have different competitors than the complementary retail brick or farm stand competitors, integration is a pivotal and mandatory part of contemporary business, especially in this environment and economy. Finally, although the website or other channels may be for information and content (to explain your offerings), rather than transactions, unless you are willing to integrate all of your channels for content and commerce with your core business philosophy, and support and engage from the Owner/Executive level, you will not likely enjoy the fruits of a successful future enterprise, whether transactional or content/informationally driven - nor will your customers be fully and completely satisfied (or even be aware of what you are offering).

 

So, where do you start? You start where the customer is and walk a circle around them...It's that simple. The six steps outlined above are the components which will drive success going forward.

 

Step one: Get Engaged: Whether you have a commerce or a content website, one that combines both ecommerce and content or no website presence at all, it is imperative that you have a full understanding of and are setting the guidelines and positioning for your existing or new plan for a website and other channels of engagement (ie, mobile). Channels need to be properly directed, integrated and led by the people who have built your successful business or at the very least, collaborated with. Your channels need to be consistent and provide the customer an experience that is of the same value and with the same positioning as your core business/selling environment. Ideally, customers/clients should be able to use all channels in an interoperable manner. For example, if you have a loyalty card, its use and value must be the same across channels. The experience online or on mobile must offer the customer the same value because if it doesn't, a customer will utilize the method that yields the highest value and become frustrated with your other channel(s).

Office

Example: Cross channel merchandising (brick and web) can be a subset of the general merchandising department, but must be housed in the general merchandising department for the silos to be broken down. A merchandiser is a merchandiser is a merchandiser. So if you are just beginning to look at building out a website, remember this. Additionally, pricing strategies are pricing strategies. And although actual pricing might be different on line, these are still strategies for which there are experts within your organization or available consultants who have made their career out of focusing on these value propositions. If you are not studying industry trending for other channels then you should be. If you are limited internally, there are industry experts who can help. FreshXperts is founded on providing hundreds of years of combined experience in the evolution of business. If you do not engage and set a strategic top level inspired and supported point of view, you will likely have a different set of strategies for other channels which may be discordant from your enterprise strategy. And although you may need to deploy different tactics for other channels, these need to be fully researched and understood by the experts within or external to your organization.

 

 With new technology coming out at an exponentially growing rate, retailers, wholesalers and distributers as well as the food industry producers as a whole, are forcefully thrust into a swirling dynamic and volatile euniverse, scrambling to understand which technologies will help and across which channels and with the best ROI. Success factors and expected profit have been plugged numbers, with little ability (in the past) to really guesstimate with any degree of accuracy. Why? Because there was a lack of successful models and also a lack of understanding the factors that will either limit or facilitate success, causing business owners to make strategic decisions without all of the necessary information;  spending thousands of hours on hit or miss solutions. But hold on! We are still missing something.  What about what the customer needs and desires? Will your customers be fully and completely satisfied with what you are offering? Have you considered alternative methods of getting your products to your target audiences? Is this in your plans? Have you created a five -year roadmap for evolving your channels of sales and distribution? If so, who created it and who is driving it?  Are your cross channel priorities being defined by the ultimate stakeholders - you and your customers? Make no bones about it, it is about the customer/client. They are the single tipping point, the guide of the puck and our final redemption, or lack thereof (pun intended).  It's very easy to succeed when you start with the customer and then walk 360 degrees around them.

 

Next Installment: How to start your, "Engagement" Phase, integrating the pillars of your organization to pivot yourself towards a long term sustainable road map which considers your channels and filters down from the top.

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