Q4 2012

Del Merenda, President, i-MARK, Inc.

Recent Read: Harnessing Innovation To Jumpstart Growth

While reading the latest issue of Forbes INSIGHTS about innovation, I thought back to 1997 when i-MARK faced our own innovation challenge. It was: should we stay with, or toss, our static CD-ROM-based Catalog production tool in favor of an interactive Internet eCatalog platform. We chose the latter. Many in our BtoB markets said that the Internet would never replace their long-standing, tried-and-true marketing and sales methods. We disagreed. We envisioned the Internet as a highly invasive and disruptive technology that sooner or later, would replace these comfortable ways of doing business. In fact many of our early-adopting customers (grey-hairs, like me) did not like this new "interactive" business model one bit, but they fully bought-in nonetheless. For them and for us, it was not a matter of what made us comfortable, or what methods we liked or disliked. It was about giving the market what it demanded. Now in 2012, we and our customers can assuredly say - we sure did choose right!

This issue of Forbes INSIGHTS contains familiar themes relating to our then risky decision. It reports results about the impact of innovation within mid-sized companies and found that companies with a more "transformative" mindset are more likely to achieve a range of benefits that drive stronger financial performance. It may help you decide if it has come time for your company to become "transformative" in the way that you interact with your global markets. You can also receive the full report by going to the website address referenced in their summary.

Click to Read the Forbes Report Summary

final marketing

Study: Component Manufacturers

Hit Paydirt Online

The Forbes INSIGHTS research, featured in this eNewsletter could not have arrived at a better time. Coincidentally, i-MARK was also busy researching over 40 of our customers to measure the impact of their investment in our front-end marketing-and-sales-based eBusiness modules that we seamlessly integrated into their websites. Their results were nothing short of astounding and ROI justification was clearly evident. The profitable-growth and cost-saving results confirmed that their gutsy decisions to deploy fully-interactive eBusiness systems to run in parallel with traditional marketing programs, paid-off handsomely. In 80% of the cases, our customers' eBusiness processes actually out-performed their traditional marketing programs, measured in sales volume, profitability, and cost savings.

Read the Summary

Source: i-MARK

final motion2