Often we learn how best to run our own businesses by studying successful practices of successful companies.  Recently I had the chance to interview Stephen Miller, President and CEO of Net Exchange and learned several things about not only his company, but how to thrive in a fast-paced digital economy.

1. Embrace the best of the old while stretching for the useful new.  Net Exchange allows a company to work with e-mail that they are already receiving in a traditional way.  With new, patent-pending technology the company provides relational e-mail.  This means that a company can sort e-mail by project, attachments, date, person or other ways.  If you need to find all the people working on the Denver project, you’ll find that.  In addition, you can also find all employees working on a given task whether that is with the Denver project, the Sacramento project or any other project.  All this can be done without creating separate files or folders.  Similar to a database (like Access, Paradox, or  Approach)  you can sort by many different criteria.  Blend the best of the old with the most useful new technologies that your customers can implement.
2. Be flexible.  You have to provide what customers want in the form they want it.  Don’t insist on doing things the way you’ve always done them.  For e-mail messages, text alone worked in the past.  It still works today in many applications.  However, today’s MTV-hyped, turbo-junky web maniacs demand electrifying video, audio, graphics along with text.  Net Exchange provides the ability to receive e-mail messages with text, audio, video and pictures.  The approach is to provide what the customer wants in the format the customer wants.
3. Be a geographic agnostic.  Geography is fast loosing its relevance.  We can operate from almost anywhere at anytime in today’s Net-driven new economy.  Because Net Exchange is web-based, users can access rich, multi-form e-mail from any Internet accessible computer.  That means if your computer is not available for any reason, you can still get e-mail messages, sort by topic, date or project automatically (Net Exchange’s technology does the work for you!) from almost anywhere.  For busy executives, mobile professionals and salespeople, this can be a huge boost to productivity.  Not only that but you don’t have to lug around that 10,000 pound laptop (they weigh more the farther you carry them!).  Think how you can expand your business beyond your geographic marketplace.  Your marketplace is now planet Earth, not just your own locale.

4. Dazzle customers with benefits they want.  You have to do the research.  Find out what your customers need today.  Listen to them and find out what they are asking for.  Net Exchange listened to their customers and determined that e-mail is critical for business communication today and will be in the future.  They provide what customers need in a cheaper form than through traditional means ($5.00/month/user plus $10/month for administrators).  This cost for Net Exchange is much lower than the traditional method of having to buy the hardware, hire the high-priced personnel to service and support it and pay for regular maintenance.  Scott Cook founded Intuit on this philosophy, created Quicken and has made millions providing accounting and financial services to customers.    How can you save your customers money in important tasks they have to do but would rather not do?  Be creative and let your imagination soar.  That soaring thinking can help generate your personal fortune!
5. Dazzle customers with benefits they can use but don’t recognize yet.  Yes, we have to provide what customers want today.  However, it is your job as a forward-thinking businessperson to anticipate what they aren’t asking for but can use in the future.  Net Exchange provides a way to collaborate over e-mail in a way that is impossible through traditional styles.  Their patent-pending software puts the heavy lifting on their own servers so customers don’t have to invest in massive hardware.  They anticipated the demand for beyond-text e-mail messages.  They anticipated the great need for collaboration between geographically diverse people working on projects and tasks.  They also anticipated people with diverse computer systems (mainframe, Windows-based, Mac, Unix, etc.) all working together and sending messages.  Here’s your toughest assignment:  You have to think about what customers are doing today and what they could use if it were available.  The late Akio Morita, co-founder of Sony Corporation taught businesses world-wide the importance of developing new, innovative products that the customers is not even asking for yet.  Your competitors can provide what your customers want today just like you.  It is in your creative, innovative ideas that will give your customers their currently unknown desires and your future success.

 Net Exchange is an innovative company that can teach all businesses important principles.  Their service is in beta and free until December 1, 1999.  Do yourself a favor and check it out.  Look at it from two perspectives: 1) How you can use the service of relational e-mail? and 2) What Net Exchange is doing right that you can learn from in your own business?  Your future profits depend on your customer-serving innovation and ideas.

 Ask Terry to speak at your next meeting!  He is an internationally recognized professional speaker, consultant and author in the fields of business productivity, technology and marketing.  His is a regular columnist for the American City Business Journals and can be reached at 407-363-0505 or by e-mail at terry@terrybrock.com.