The Teckki Says

What is Cloud Computing?

If you have a public email account, understanding Cloud Computing is low pressure, because your emails, pictures and other information are stored in the Cloud Computing stratosphere. This, and your ability to access your account, is the basic gist of Cloud Computing. Google takes this a step further, allowing you to store documents and spreadsheets online.

Given this, many of you already trust the Cloud.

But some of you may have been introduced to a hail of issues in Cloud Computing if you owned a T-Mobile Sidekick and weren't able to restore your phone information from a backup after your battery went dead. In that instance, you understood it all too well - you got drenched.

Storms do occur in Cloud Computing, and there can be serious consequences.

In the future, I suspect that you will be flooded with marketing from companies touting Cloud Computing, sunny scenarios and all. Cloud Computing is relatively safe, considering that you've trusted your websites to such technology for years. However, are you ready to jet stream ahead and trust more of your company data and functionality to Cloud Computing?

It has the ability to transform the atmosphere in your business, reducing equipment costs and shifting labor to outsourced services. In the high pressure environment of survival, reducing costs is something in everyone's forecast. However I would think about this carefully, because the rules are still being written on Cloud Computing.

There is only so much information I personally am going to let go beyond my internal computers and servers. This mirrors my philosophy on business functions I will never outsource - finance, marketing and R/D. Yours may be different, but I feel that those three functions define so much of what a company is that they should be carefully guarded and secured. In the Cloud, I would give up this security.

I would also be more vigilant about what my own employees could do on the Cloud. In some cases, lapses and carelessness can be embarrassing, and in other cases, they can be considered crimes. If it happens on internal computers, it may just be a local issue. In the Cloud, you might have to fend off federal wire fraud charges. If you think this is a stretch, note what can happen to an underage kid who posts pictures of his under-dressed, underage girlfriend to Facebook. Prosecutors in some cases are upgrading charges to that of an adult sex offender.

You have been using the Cloud successfully for years, but those have been defined uses, and the companies you have been using have been fairly clear on how to use their technology. As you puff your Cloud with more of your information and functionality, the rules become more general, and your culpability increases. Keep that in mind as you use more Cloud Computing, how you weather the experience is prognosticated on how well you manage the climate. Sunny days can be many if you do this well.

While we are all waiting to see the Big Game between New Orleans and Indianapolis, there's another battle of titans that's going on between electronic and the publishing industry with Amazon.com and Macmillan Publishing Company. Seems that Macmillan got tired of watching its first-run, New York Times best seller list books being sold on Kindles for $9.99, and felt the digital versions were worthy of a field-goal point price bump or better. When Amazon blocked the attempt, Macmillan took its ball (I mean its books) off the field. Amazon then decided it could not play the game without Macmillan. This was a nice goal-line stand by a publisher, but in the end, its' ball control strategy will fail, because Amazon, and a walk-on player named Apple, control the field. No one controls the clock, but it appears that time does not favor the publishing industry.

Maybe it takes a genius to understand that whoever controls the delivery system eventually controls the game, but that genius doesn't have to understand much. The publishing industry seems to think that it can dictate though content, and to some extent, it can. It may help to remember other titans who clashed with digital to see how the publishing industry will eventually fare.

The Music Industry. Who can forget, as they saw their business model fail so completely? They'd like you to believe that piracy more than anything eroded their industry. It might have been the train, but it rode a delivery system that the labels no longer owned, and couldn't control. When that didn't work, they thought that suing their customers was a road back to profitability. They were wrong.

The Print Industry, as defined by newspapers and magazines. They actually helped their own demise by putting their content online, made it free, and now want people to pay for it. If they were an ATM charging me to get to my money, their plan might work, but unless they all decide to make all of their content subscription at the same time (anti-trust and collusion laws would prevent this), they can kiss that dream goodbye.

The Motion Picture Industry. They have tried to pre-empt and modify the delivery system through devices, copy protection and legislation, but the net effect this could eventually have is to suppress the market, in the same manner the Digital Audio Tape player was killed by the protectionist music industry. The jury is still out on the Movie Industry, but music CD's once enjoyed a no-copy world before their demise (see earlier paragraph).

Macmillan's defensive stance may have kept Amazon from scoring points, and has no doubt emboldened other publishers to run up the score as well, as they are now pounding Amazon with their new ground game. Amazon punted, and Apple appears to also be giving up yardage as to not be burned by the big pass play.

For now, the Publishing Industry appears to be winning, and it would be great if the game was decided on downs or half-time scores. But holding or raising prices is like trying to keep a score tied. You eventually have to either get into the end-zone, or give up the ball. Because both Apple and Amazon sell more than books, there's a lot of time left on the clock, and they control the field.

Sometimes you get more than a morning jolt when you stop by the coffee shop, although I drink decaf. I did get more than the high octane shot most of you get, and I want to share it with you. A friend stopped by my table, and we talked, among other things, about marketing.

My questions started on the topic of surviving the current recession, knowing that this friend had been through several. He’s been in business over twenty five years, so he's seen downturns in a number of flavors. The jury appears to be in, and the verdict looks like he will survive this one also.

Many of you have heard these before. However, in a downturn, the panic button gets pushed more often, so it's nice to be reminded. Here are the five tidbits I gathered from our conversation:

(1). Contact your customers. Look particularly at those customers you acquired from the last recession until just before this one. If you've been in business for less than five years, this will be everyone you’ve done business with. Rekindle and/or reinforce those relationships

(2). Find out what works. This is easy because right now, almost nothing seems like it does. All editorializing aside, someone is still buying from you, or contributing to your cause. What works with your marketing right now? What types of mail or samples gets kept, what gets thrown in the garbage? Now is the time to ask.

(3). Redeploy your workforce. You will find out just how good your hires are in this climate. If there is less work, there is more time to do other things, like calling current customers, or making sales calls. This is the time to make your organization more customer–focused by perhaps engaging with customers personally.

(4). Set your limits. Not every business survives a downturn, and yours may be one that doesn't. Know this beforehand, so you are not losing the business, your house and personal possessions, your family and everything else because you think the last quarter in the slot machine is going to hit big. For instance, you may have to adjust customer payment patterns, just know what your limits are there, too.

(5). Cut strategically. No where does the reflexive budget cut ax wield so recklessly in many companies as in downturns. All of those "25% cuts across the board" mandates may sound good at department meetings, but if your heart, brain, legs and arms are the heads of those departments, mandates like this will get you one dead person. I like the way my friend phrased this – first make the personal cut, then make the personnel cut.

One of my favorites is to get out of the office. Isolation only solves one problem I know of, and that is to focus on a problem where you need to cut out interruptions and clutter. Holding your face in your hands, while lamenting a poor economy, is not that kind of problem. Besides, you never know who you will see in a coffee shop. It might be someone who could give you five great marketing ideas!

Yes!

You should advertise in a recession.

I know that this is one of the first items to go during a recession. It should actually be one of the last. I know the logic – in a recession, customers aren't buying as much, so why advertise more than you have to?
One answer to that is the other guy’s customers.

You have competition in good times. In bad times, two things are happening. First, someone is going out of business. This is not the case of vultures circling a dead carcass. Some firms will lose customers at a rate that is unsustainable for the business they have built. They will starve at the level they are at. Additionally, they may not be able to downsize fast enough before they starve to death, or figure that if they can't eat at the level they’re used to eating at, then they won't eat at all. This doesn't bode well for the customers left behind. Advertising makes you a potential suitor.

Another reason is that in every recession, organizations make decisions regarding current services and products they use. In many cases, they use less products or different services. In other cases, they change suppliers. Again, you can be the beneficiary.

These things are happening to you and your customers as well. You have to decide how you are going to resize your organization, and if you don't do it well, your suppliers lose a customer. Customers are also deciding whether you are going to be their supplier going forward. This is where you increase your customer service efforts, but that is another article. However, you can do your best and still lose. It won't be your fault, but it will be your problem. You'll have to replace a customer with another customer, and in recessions, they are not sitting on shelves waiting for you to pull out on a rainy day. You're going to need to advertise.

In good times, some of us are too busy to advertise. In recessions, we've got more time than we need to advertise. By then, we do it as a matter of survival. Or, we cut it, hoping to pick it back up during an upswing. If you take that approach, consider something you may have never thought of during your good times.

Organizations go out of business in peak periods, too.

It happens every time.

I am in the doldrums. I can't see "up", because my hands are in my face. In these times, I'll bet that many of you have experienced this as well. This is one tough recession!

Then it happened.

The phone rang.

It is a prospect inquiring about services. That's my version of "saved by the bell".

Then, I remember the best business advice I ever got.

Hang in there.

When I first heard it, it was in the midst of the last recession, my first. I got this advice when I asked business owners who had been in business close to thirty years – they survived the recession of the early 1980's. I had also asked people who had started their businesses after that period, generally, after the early 1990's. If you remember, that was the longest economic boom in history. In all that time, a generation of businesses that knew nothing but good times faced their first downturn. Many of them did not survive.

Hang in there.

I thought to myself, "Is that all?" It was only three little words! No great pearls of wisdom, no game-changing speeches, no 3, 5, 7 or 10 steps, just three simple words.

Hang in there.

This was shorter than an elevator speech! What could this have possibly meant? I had already asked other businesspeople. Heck, they were asking me for ideas! All I could think is, "That's the best you've got!" These folks had been in business for over 30 years - that's why I asked them!

Hang in there.

I set out to find out what that meant. I did not want to offend those I asked by asking them again. Over the course of time, I discovered what those words meant. You see, they could not tell me how to run my business. Nobody can. What they were saying was find a way to stay in business. Keep the phone on. Be in a position to be contacted. Be in a position to do business with a prospect. In other words, "Hang in there."

When I think that this might be it, that I might be ready to hang up the shingle, the phone rings. This is what I am hanging in there for.

Many of you are reeling. Some of you won't survive. The economy we had will not be the economy we're going to get. Some industries will not come back. I'm not trying to further depress you. I am trying to get you to take a sober look at where you are. Many of you have a lot to offer, but not in industries that are going away. That's like trying to sail a boat in a lake that is going dry. You already know that this lake doesn’t contain all of the world’s water. My advice to you is to do all you can to find water.

And, hang in there.