Climate Business Network

Walking through the local mall the other day I ran into the Mad Butcher, Peter Leitch, owner of the Mad Butcher chain and rabid rugby league supporter. He asked how my day business was going. “Well it has been a little slower this year.” “You know where the problem is?” he said “Look in the mirror!”

He does not believe in pulling any punches.

Now I have heard that from him before at another time our business was a bit quiet. Interestingly that conversation took place in a mall as well.

Peter is a well known personality in New Zealand and Australia, highly opinionated and entertaining. He supports the local rugby league side, the Warriors. He is involved in a number of community charities. And he had grown his chain from a single butcher’s shop to a large number of outlets around the country at a time when supermarkets were competing strongly for the retail meat market.

At the initial talk he had told me that in his opinion you could grow a business in any time, in financial crises, recessions and all. To his mind you just applied yourself and it worked.

He had had his share of tight times in the past.

And recently, after a heart scare, he had sold his chain and become the figurehead. He was at the mall to check the local bookshop’s display of his recently released autobiography.

This time he mentioned how most of his franchise chain of stores did great business with the odd one not doing so well. He related about a recent one where he had told the owner to get his head out of his ass and see what was going on. He still did not come right and was eventually replaced by another owner, with the same business model, who succeeded massively.

As he said, some owners tend to think they can have a business and be off having a good time thinking everything would tick over fine. And, as he mentioned, the staff are critical. He related it to bar staff and how some can be so unwelcoming and unhelpful, which, as he pointed out, in the current economic climate is not great for business. Continue Reading

Now, Vermont is a tiny state and certainly does not represent most of the United States. Its unemployment rate is low, its workforce a mix of highly skilled professionals and those engaged in farming, forestry, construction, or tourism. But what is noticeable is that this loss of jobs is attributed to demographics.

Andy Condon, chief of the economic and labor market information section of the Vermont Department of Labor says, “We believe it is demographic, that working-age population is beginning to decline in Vermont.” He goes on to say that as we come out of this recession, companies “may have a hard time finding workers.”

While this may be an isolated example of the impact of an aging workforce on employers, I believe it is validation of the claim that we will face a large shortage of qualified workers because of exiting Baby Boomers and the lack of younger skilled workers to replace them. Of course, many young workers have left Vermont for warmer and more prosperous climates, but this trend underlines the larger issues all organizations, state and governments will be facing over the coming decades.

Social networking offers the beginning of a solution to finding qualified people, no matter where they are, and connecting and communicating with them about opportunities. Social networks give recruiters the channel to market what they have to a broad, global audience.

They give recruiters a chance to develop personal relationships with people they have never seen face-to-face and to learn a great deal about them. Vermont’s issue may simply be that people are not aware of what the state offers or what jobs are available. Connected recruiters could make a difference in changing that perspective.

Being proficient at searching for candidates on the Internet also extends your reach and power when it comes to filling those hard-to-fill positions. I have been in discussions recently with recruiting leaders in remote areas of North and South America who are seeking mining engineers, one of the toughest professions to find. Without the Internet, they would not be able to find half enough of these engineers to meet their needs. By using Internet search techniques, they are slowly building talent pools that will continue to grow as they are linked into a private social network. Continue Reading

The all-too-familiar promise of enterprise business intelligence is the ability to optimize decision-making at every level of the organization through a blend of systems and technologies that leverage highly useful, accessible, accurate data. In many industries, BI use is so pervasive that it is essential just to remain competitive! But many organizations never realize the full value simply because they are not agile enough to adapt to the new speed and complexity.

The Good: Great Opportunities

Enterprise BI solutions offer a powerful competitive edge in today’s fast-paced, high-tech, global economy.

For years, organizations have been automating their reporting and online analytical processing capabilities. Recent trends are moving toward advanced analytics as the central focus of BI. This includes data mining, predictive analysis, complex SQL, natural language processing, statistics, and artificial intelligence. Advanced analytics provides a competitive advantage as it allows organizations to detect and model patterns and trends in all areas of their business, such as market shifts, supply chain economics, cost fluctuations, and more.

The Bad: Typical Challenges

Given the myriad of enterprise-BI solution options, just getting started can be challenging. In addition to the standard solutions that have been in use for many years, new Web 2.0 services, virtualization, social networking, and software-as-a-service options are available now, too. With so many choices and possible implications for the business, the decision-makers need to be thinking about how to optimize the balance between customer and shareholder value while considering all the financial and political implications.

The Ugly: The Real Competitive Advantage

Following an enterprise BI implementation, the expectation is that our day-to-day tasks will get simpler and more satisfying. After all, we have streamlined and automated many of the left-brain linear processes, freeing us to focus on expansion and innovation. But the reality is often very different. What many leaders don’t fully comprehend is the destabilizing effect that enterprise BI can have on an organization. Successful BI implementation requires a level of agility that is not inherent in most organizations. Continue Reading