Chapter 11: Getting an edge over your competitor

================================================ We must be willing to risk change to keep apace with rapid change. The key is moderation and balance, supported by sufficient information to allow meaningful feedback. It requires adaption by management and staff in developing the necessary skills and vision. This chapter starts with how to use the networks to manage projects. Next, it treats how to monitor competitors, prospects, suppliers, markets, technologies, and trends. It winds down with marketing and sales by modem. Project coordination -------------------- So far we have mainly been looking at sources of information. Let us start this chapter with some words about 'online conference rooms' for project coordination. Several services offer rental of private conference areas to businesses. Corporations have discovered them to be an efficient way of coordinating a group of people, who are far apart from each other geographically. They are also useful when team members are constantly on the move and hard to gather face to face. Many international companies use such services regularly. The applications are different. They range from tight coordination with suppliers and subcontractors, to development of company strategies and new organizational structures. Renting an online conference room has advantages over doing it in-house. The company does not have to buy software, hardware, expensive equipment for communications, and hire people for to run and maintain a conferencing system. The more international the business, the better. For ideas about how to set up and operate a coordination conference. Study how volunteer organizations do it. One place to check out is KIDPLAN, one of several coordination conferences used by KIDLINK (see Chapter 2 and 5). KIDPLAN is usually most active during April and May each year. This is when their annual projects are being closed down, and new projects are started. Read the dialog between coordinators to get an idea of how the medium is being used. Old conference messages are stored in notebook files. You can therefore have the full coordination dialogs sent you by email. Send all requests for notebook files to [email protected] Getting notebook files is a two-step process. In your first message to the LISTSERV, ask for a list of available files. Do this by using the following command in your email: INDEX KIDPLAN The LISTSERV will return a list of files. The following part is of particular interest: 101/2/ KIDPLAN LOG9105B ALL OWN V 80 2397 91/05/14 23:40:22 Started on Wed, 8 May 91 00:11:09 CDT 102/2/ KIDPLAN LOG9105C ALL OWN V 80 3141 91/05/21 20:44:16 Started on Wed, 15 May 91 01:24:51 CDT 104/2/ KIDPLAN LOG9105D ALL OWN V 80 2685 91/05/28 22:34:31 Started on Wed, 22 May 91 17:01:21 +0200 Don't bother about the details. You just want file names, and dates. The file LOG9105B contains all messages from 8 May 1991 until 15 May. If you want all these three files, send another message to LISTSERV with the following lines: GET KIDPLAN LOG9105B GET KIDPLAN LOG9105C GET KIDPLAN LOG9105D The files will be forwarded to your mailbox. Note: Some mailbox services have restrictions on the size of incoming mail. This may prevent you from receiving large notebook files. If this happens, contact your local postmaster for help. Some email systems are unable to forward your return-address correctly to LISTSERV. If you suspect that this is the reason for lack of success, try the following commands: GIVE KIDPLAN LOG9105B TO Your-Correct-Return-Address GIVE KIDPLAN LOG9105C TO Your-Correct-Return-Address GIVE KIDPLAN LOG9105D TO Your-Correct-Return-Address Making it work -------------- Making online conferences and task force meetings work, can be a challenge. Most of the dialog is based on the written word. The flow of information can be substantial thus causing an information overload for some participants. To overcome this, many companies appoint moderator-organizers for their online conferences. This person: Adds value by setting agendas; summarizing points; getting the discussion(s) back on track; moving on to the next point; mediating debate; maintaining address and member lists; acting as general sparkplug/motivator to keep things flowing by making sure that contributions are acknowledged, relevant points are noted, new members are welcomed, silent "Read-Only Members" are encouraged to participate, and the general atmosphere is kept appropriate to the goals of the conference/task force meeting. Great online conferences don't just happen. Hard work is required. A few people must be responsible for getting the meetings fired up and keep the discussion rolling. The meeting's organization may depend on the number of participants, where they come from, the exclusivity of the forum, and the purpose of the "meeting." In large meetings, with free access for outsiders, the best strategy may be to appoint a Moderator-Editor. This person Filters contributions, gathers new information, summarizes scattered contributions, does background research. Filtering may be needed in conferences that are open to customers and media. The main purpose, however, is to help participants cope with the absolute flow of information. A conference can have an educational purpose. If so, you may bring in someone who can add value by bringing experience and expertise to the group. You will also need someone to do all the dirty jobs everyone expects to be done - but never notices until they are not done. This person must keep the show running by serving as a benevolent tyrant, sheriff, judge, mediator, general scapegoat, and by playing a role in setting the general policy and atmosphere of the meeting. Now, back to the 'normal' applications of the online resource. Monitoring what others do ------------------------- The best business opportunities are outside your company, in the external world. We need to monitor customers and markets, find technologies to help develop and build products, research new business actions, find new subcontractors and suppliers, people to hire, and persons to influence to boost sales. In this marketing age, where sales calls cost hundreds of dollars and business-to-business marketers use the telephone or the mails to reach prospects, complete and accurate market lists are most valuable commodities. There are many other questions: What are our most important customers and their key people doing? What new products are they promoting? Who are their joint-venture partners? What else may influence their willingness to buy from us? What prices are our major suppliers offering other buyers? Should we get other sources for supplies? What major contracts have they received recently? Will these influence their ability to serve our needs? What new technologies are available now and how are they being used by others? Threats are the reverse side of opportunities. What are our competitors doing? What products and services have they launched recently? Are they successful? What are our competitors' weaknesses and strengths? What relationships do they maintain with our most important customers? How is their customer support functioning, and what methods are they using in their quality assurance? Each company has its own priorities when it comes to watching the external environment. The information needs are different from company to company, depending on what products and services that are offered, the technological level of the company, the markets that they address, and more. Needs and priorities also differ by department and person, for example depending on whether a user is the president, a marketing manager, product manager, sales man, or has a position in finance or production. Remember your priorities when going online to search. You cannot possibly capture and digest all information that is there. Your basic problem remains to find the right information in the right form at the right time. Build your own, local 'database' -------------------------------- It does not take much effort to check one hundred different topics from multiple online sources on a daily basis. The computer will do it for you. Also, you do not have to read all stories as carefully as you would with printed material. Most experienced users just read what is important now, and save selected parts of the retrieved texts on their hard disks for later reference. We handle printed material differently. Most of us make notes in the margins, underline, use colors, cut out pages and put into folders. These tricks are important, since it is so hard to find information in a pile of papers. Not so with electronic information. With the right tools, you can locate information on your computer's hard disk in seconds. In seven seconds, I just searched the equivalent of 2000 pages of printed text for all occurrences of the combined search words 'SONY' and 'CD-ROM'! My tool was the shareware program LOOKFOR (see Chapter 14). It searched through 4.2 megabyte on my 80486-based notebook computer. If you use an indexing program, the search may be completed even faster. I guess you can see it coming. My personal databases usually give more direct value during my working day, than what I have on paper, and have available online. My hard disks contain megabytes of texts retrieved from various online services, but only what I have decided to keep. This private database therefore contains more relevant information per kilobyte than the online databases I'm using. Searching the data often gives enough good hits to keep me from going online for more. | I repeat: You will often get better results when searching your | | own subset of selected online databases, than by going online | | to get information. It is usually easier and faster. | On the other hand, your in-house database will never be fully up- to-date. Too many things happen all the time. Also, the search terms used for your daily intake of news will never cover all future needs. Occasionally, you must go online to get additional information for a project, a report, a plan. Updating your database means going online often to find new supplementary information. | Regular monitoring gives the highest returns, and is required | | if you want to have an edge over your competitors. | For beginners, the best strategy will often be to start with the general, and gradually dig deeper into industry specific details. Let us now review some good hunting grounds for information, and how to use them. Clipping the news ----------------- Several online services offer 'clipping services'. They select the news that you want - 24 hours a day - from a continuous stream of stories from newspapers, magazines, news agencies and newsletters. Several services make news immediately available, when they have been received by satellite. The delay previously used to protect the interests of print media is disappearing quickly. Online services usually deliver news sooner than in print media, radio or TV. You select stories by giving the online service a set of search terms. The hits are then sent to your electronic mailbox, for you to retrieve at will. 'Clipping' gives an enormous advantage. Few important details escape your attention, even when you cannot go online daily. The stories will stay in your mailbox until you have read them. 'Clipping' on CompuServe ------------------------ CompuServe's Executive News Service (ENS) monitor more than 8,000 stories daily. They use sources like Deutsche Press-Agentur, Kyodo News Service, TASS, Xinhua News Agency, the Washington Post, OTC News-Alert, Reuters Financial News Wire, Associated Press, UPI and Reuters World Report, IDG PR Service, Inter Press Service (IPS), Middle East News Network and European Community Report. One of them, Reuters, has 1,200 journalists in 120 bureaus all over the world. They write company news reports about revenue, profit, dividend, purchases of other companies, changes in management, and other important items for judging a company's results. They write regular opinions about Industry, Governments, Economics, Leading indicators, and Commerce. Reuters also offers full-text stories from Financial Times and other leading European newspapers. Its Textline is a database with news from some 1,500 publications in over 40 countries. It includes Reuters' own news services, and has translated abstracts of stories from some 17 languages. The database reaches back 10 years and is updated at around one million articles per year. (Textline is also available on Nexis, Data-Star, and Dialog.) Another one, the IDG PR Service, sends out high-tech related news gathered by the staffs of IDG's magazines. InterPress Service covers Third World countries. Middle East News Network integrates the contents of 28 information sources covering this region of the world. The Executive News Service lets you define up to three 'clipping folders'. Supply up to seven 'key phrases' that define your interests. These key phrases will be used when searching stories as they are sent. Hits will be 'clipped' and held in a folder for you to review at your convenience. Each folder can hold 500 stories. When creating a clipping folder, you set an expiration date and specify how many days a clipped story is to be held (maximum 14 days). To browse the contents of a folder, select it from the menu. Stories can be listed by headlines or leads. Select those you want to read, forward to others as email, or copy to another folder. Delete those that you do not need. Defining key phrases is simple. The important thing is not to get too much nor too little. General phrases will give you many unwanted stories while too narrow phrases will cause you to miss pertinent stories. Let me illustrate with an example: The phrase APPLE COMPUTERS will only clip stories that have the words APPLE and COMPUTERS next to each other. This may be too narrow. Specifying just APPLE or just COMPUTERS would be too broad. Entering APPLE + COMPUTERS is a better phrase since the words can appear anywhere in the story, and not necessarily next to each other. ENS carries an hourly surcharge of US$15/hour over base connect rates. Clipping on NewsNet ------------------- NewsNet greets users with this opening screen: ----------------- - N E W S N E T - ----------------- W O R K I N G K N O W L E D G E ***New--Electromagnetic Field Litigation Reporter (EY86) tracks developments in every important legal action involving electromagnetic radiation from power lines, cellular phones, VTDs, and radar and microwave equipment. ***The title of HH15 has been changed to Cancer Researcher Weekly. This service was formerly entitled Cancer Weekly. ***Important work in the blood field throughout the world is covered by Blood Week (HH44), including research, literature, and upcoming events. ***TB Weekly (HH45) is an internationally-focused newsletter that concentrates on tuberculosis-related news and research, including business developments. New Services on NewsNet: TB Weekly (HH45) Blood Weekly (HH44) Electromagnetic Field Litigation Reporter (EY86)