Editor's Notebook
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From RSPA INSPIRE: Yes, KPIs Can Be Fun
1/23/2013
Running your reseller organization often gives you a rush – landing a big installation, seeing your ideas brought to life, negotiating a deal, discovering new technology at a trade show. But talking about key performance indicators (KPIs) for your business isn’t exactly pulse-raising stuff. Even just reading a list of some KPIs can induce a yawn. Examples include warranty work cost, value of obsolete inventory, and office supplies as a percent of overhead.
If you’re still awake, here’s some advice for you the resellers and vendors attending this week’s Retail Solutions Providers Association (RSPA) annual INSPIRE winter conference in Curacao have already learned. You can bring KPIs to life by engaging your entire team in improving your business. You’ll not only achieve and surpass your KPIs, but you can have a blast while getting there.
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4 Lessons You Should Learn From Resellers At INSPIRE
1/22/2013
You might think you’re having a more productive week in your office compared with the resellers attending the Retail Solutions Providers Association (RSPA) annual Inspire winter conference in sunny Curacao. You’re at your desk, in meetings, or on the road while these resellers attend a morning workshop then hit the pool, golf course, or ocean.
But Inspire has proven once again to go beyond the fun and games. The 30 or so resellers attending this event are among the most successful in the retail IT industry, and their actions I’ve observed over the first two days of the conference offer a glimpse why. Resellers who want to improve their business could learn a thing or two – or four – from these VARs
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13 Ways To Practically Apply Ownership Thinking
1/21/2013
Consultant and businessperson Tom Bouwer, the featured speaker at the Retail Solutions Providers Association (RSPA) annual Inspire winter conference, doused the 80 attendees at today’s workshop with Ownership Thinking principles. Bouwer is educating executives from retail IT reseller, vendor, and distributor organizations at the Santa Barbara Beach & Golf Resort in Curacao.
Following are three fulcrum principles of Ownership Thinking along with practical advice on how to implement this philosophy in your organization.
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RSPA Inspire 2013: In-Depth Education Sneak Peek
1/18/2013
Business Solutions editor-in-chief Mike Monocello speaks with Tom Bouwer, Ownership Thinking, the keynote presenter at RSPA INSPIRE 2013.
The Ownership Thinking Management System™ is based on 4 primary components: The Right People; The Right Education; The Right Measures; and The Right Incentives. We will go in-depth into each of these areas:
- The Right People: Create an environment that promotes learning and development, while at the same time increasing visibility and accountability. Your best people will excel, and your poorest performers are generally self-selected out by their peers.
- The Right Education: Teach employees the fundamentals of business and finance, how their company makes money and how they add or take away value.
- The Right Measures: Identify the organization’s Key Performance Indicators and teach employees to forecast results in an environment of high visibility and accountability.
- The Right Incentives: Create incentive plans that are self-funding and clearly align employee’s behavior to the organization’s business and financial objectives.
We will be learning and discussing how these concepts can help RSPA members navigate their rapidly changing environment. For example, “how can this model help companies move from an up-front payment model to a SaaS model?” “How can we make our companies more profitable in the face of market convergence?”
One of the keys to this is to eradicate entitlement thinking which is pervasive in companies today. Companies need to replace this entitlement mentality with a culture of earning; a culture of high visibility, accountability and purpose – that purpose being to create wealth where wealth may not have otherwise been created.
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Top Tweets From BlueStar’s VARTECH 2012
10/8/2012
Promoted as a “mobile trade show,” BlueStar hosted its annual VARTECH Conference Oct. 5-8 on the Carnival Imagination cruise ship traveling from Miami to Nassau, The Bahamas. More than 1,400 people attended the event with over half of them being the distributor’s top resellers from the U.S. and Latin America. Among the technologies represented were data capture, point of sale, mobility, digital signage, video surveillance, and physical security technologies. By Jim Roddy, president, Jameson Publishing and Business Solutions magazine
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8 Pitfalls To Avoid When Reselling Security
10/7/2012
On the final full day of VARTECH 2012, I was a man on a mission. Several VARs I talked with in the morning said they were interested in adopting video surveillance and security solutions but they wanted to know the pitfalls first. So, my mission today was to gather as much information as I could on that topic. By Jim Roddy, president, Jameson Publishing and Business Solutions magazine
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BlueStar Makes Trade Show On Cruise Ship A Reality
10/6/2012
About a year ago when I first heard that VARTECH, BlueStar’s annual conference, would be held on a cruise ship, I thought it was a ruse. There couldn’t possibly be a floating trade show, right? You couldn’t actually coordinate nearly 1,400 attendees throughout North and Latin America, along with exhibitor hardware, and get everything and everyone onto one boat, right? By Jim Roddy, president, Jameson Publishing and Business Solutions magazine
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Retail IT Leaders Predict Bright Future For (Some) Resellers
9/17/2012
The Industry Vision Panel discussion at RetailNOW 2012 attracted approximately 450 retail IT executives and covered a wide range of channel topics. This year the panel was divided into two segments, a hardware-focused group and a software focused group.
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Top Quotes From RetailNOW 2012: HP's Ray Carlin
9/14/2012
Ray Carlin, VP and general manager, HP Retail Store Solutions Global Business Unit, was one of the members of the Industry Vision Panel at RetailNOW 2012, which took place July 29-Aug. 1 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. The panel was divided into two segments, a hardware-focused group and software-focused group, and was moderated by Jim Roddy, president of Jameson Publishing and Business Solutions magazine. As part of the hardware-focused group, Carlin shares his thoughts below on many of the different topics impacting the POS industry today that were discussed at the panel.
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Top Quotes From RetailNOW 2012: Ingram Micro's Justin Scopaz
9/14/2012
Justin Scopaz, general manager and VP, Ingram Micro Data Capture/POS division, was one of the members of the Industry Vision Panel at RetailNOW 2012, which took place July 29-Aug. 1 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. The panel was divided into two segments, a hardware-focused group and software-focused group, and was moderated by Jim Roddy, president of Jameson Publishing and Business Solutions magazine. As part of the hardware-focused group, Scopaz shares his thoughts below on many of the different topics impacting the POS industry today that were discussed at the panel.