Monthly Archives: April 2009

Protect your digital assets

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Do you own a company? Does your company have a logo, a website, a brochure, business cards, letterheads etc.? Where are those original files now? Do you know who to ask should you decide you want to embark on a marketing campaign?

padlocks

We’re currently reconstructing a customer’s corporate brochure because the designer of which “can’t find” the originals. Now we have to scan in the document (11 pages including a gold foil print on the cover page), re-type it, extract all the images where we can, clean them up and make them ready for their website.

This is not the cheapest exercise, and if I were the client, I’d probably bill the original designer what we charge him.

The quality of the images will never be as good as the originals for print, but luckily for him this is a web exercise and the printers seem to have retained the original litho plates. If he wants to make changes however… well, there he has another problem… and expense!

Are your digital assets in safe hands? If not, I recommend getting ahold of them as soon as possible and making some good solid backups and put them in your safe.

Don’t allow your assets to be held ransom

Another concern in this industry is the type of designer/firm that chooses to retain the original files in the vain belief that they can hold them ransom for a fee, or keep the client this way for future design/print work.

I personally believe this to be underhanded, and we never retain these materials due to the fact that we prefer to retain clients based on the value we provide, both in the form of service, skill and the return they get on their investing their money in proper solutions.

Check the fine print. If your service provider wants to claim full copyright and only hand over the finished product and none of the raw Photoshop files, then either find out what he/she wants in exchange for that ownership, or find another service provider. Simple as that.

Perhaps this will spark some debate amongst designers that disagree with me, but please keep it friendly, and lets discuss things nicely, even if you want to banish me to the depths of hell for this post. Remember, the comments are moderated.

Streamline your business using the internet

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Does your website solve a business problem? If not, do you feel that your monthly/annual hosting fees are justified? Perhaps it’s slight financial drain on your business as opposed to actually providing either more revenue, or streamlining some otherwise time consuming business process.

fighter-jet

Having teamed up with SAWD and worked in their offices for the last 6 months, I’ve learnt a lot about solving business problems through the effective use of the internet. It’s not all black and white, and through brainstorming on various projects with them, our differing skills have complimented each other’s and we’ve managed to provide some seriously effective strategies for some of their and my clients.

Last night I was sitting at a braai (BBQ to non South Africans) and there were two business owners amongst us (three if you include myself). One of them owns a successful dairy distribution company and the other a thriving, upmarket Italian restaurant. Thankfully we were all in the mood to talk shop to some degree, and since we were all in different industries, it was quite an interesting discussion.

The reason I mention this is because in our discussion, my mind kept moving into “problem solving” mode. Since thats a majority of my work, it’s a natural state of mind for me. While listening to their gripes about various business difficulties (theft, client & staff problems, logistics etc.), I was ticking over ideas that can solve their issues.

Got milk?

An example of one of these solutions was for the dairy distro. business. While a successful, thriving business, she is still inundated with rude phone calls from clients (mostly noise) and due to the size of the company, she is no longer able to provide the level of personal service she used to when the company was smaller.

My internet based solution for this is from an automated and analytical standpoint. A facility whereby an unhappy client can log a complaint online with a list of possible gripes. Perhaps:

  • Late delivery
  • Milk was off
  • Wrong items delivered
  • Driver was rude
  • Delivered to the wrong branch
  • Too expensive
  • etc.

Then of course, you could include an “other” field where the person can put their own gripe if it’s not on the list, and all the data then gets injected into a database, and an email notification can be sent to the company owner, and an email thank you note sent to the customer.

That data can then be analysed, and my friend can see what are the major gripes amongst the lot and begin to address them accordingly. Communicate with the client, and let them know (via email) that in an effort to improve service levels, they will start addressing the following problem areas (listing the top three or five problems).

Of course, it’s a task to create something like this, manage it and implement the changes, but in the long run -which is the term most small business owners are in for- it’s a solution to a problem that will otherwise persist.

Well, thats all I have to say for today, and it’s -I think- a good theoretical example of how you can use the internet as a tool rather than merely providing a digital brochure with your contact details.

As a last note… I did not mention this solution to my friend, because I don’t like to sell my business offering at a social function. Thats not my style. If people want to do business with me, I’ll gladly discuss during business hours. I did however email her the link to this article :)