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Where we WorkIn the beginning, most of our work was in the Greater New York Area. Gradually, 2 things happened that changed that scenario. First, our clients were increasingly multi-site companies, as concerned with their sales office in Chicago as with their warehouses and general office in Northern New Jersey; and Second, communications technology improved to the point that we can frequently have as much a "local presence" in Southern California as in the next town.For years, we have been urging our clients to minimize their travel. Our motivation for this recommendation is twofold: first, the cost of travel is huge and difficult to measure (adding the bills is easy; calculating lost opportunity based on what they could be doing rather than traveling is not); and second, more often than not, their customers would prefer the problem solved now (if possible) rather than wait for them to visit 3 days later. So, we started to listen to our own sermons. We established procedures and purchased the necessary equipment to perform most of our tasks remotely. Our purchases include remote control software, conference phones and connections, video conferencing and NetMeeting. We urge our clients to fax us information when possible, to hold discussions by phone, to allow us to demonstrate and install software remotely, and lastly, to aggressively use e-mail whenever possible. The end result - we work for people with sites up and down the east coast and beyond. In fact, during the past year or so, we've added a few clients literally half way around the world. |
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