SOLVE Q1 2015

Marketing Goes Mobile pg 6

Find Your Competitive Edge in the Cloud pg 12

Cybersecurity Decoded pg 24

WINTER 2015

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HOW TO SIMPLIFY

YOUR MESSAGE

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when you can see inside your network, it takes the guesswork out.

Gain data intelligence and 24/7 network visibility with the Ethernet Services Portal from Time Warner Cable Business Class.

Monitor and manage your network’s performance around the clock with our intuitive, user-friendly Ethernet Services Portal. Get access to valuable data intelligence and help ensure your network – and your business – are running as efficiently as possible.

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Products and services not available in all areas. Some restrictions apply. Subject to change without notice. Time Warner Cable Business Class is a trademark of Time Warner Inc. Used under license. ©2015 Time Warner Enterprises LLC. All rights reserved.

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WINTER 2015 | VOLUME 2 | NO.1

Features

Departments L ETTER TO THE RE ADER

02 You and Your Business, Ready for Anything

HOW TO INSPIRE p. 04 YOUR EMPLOYEES

The secret to leading a winning workplace team

06

p.

MARKETING GOES MOBILE Where your customers (and their devices) go, your strategy must follow

SEVEN REASONS YOUR p.12 COMPANY NEEDS TO BE IN THE CLOUD Here are the advantages you’re missing (but your competition is getting).

p.

16

KEEP IT SIMPLE

How to declutter your strategy, your business, and your message

IN SPIRATION

08 What the C-Suite Is Reading

F IEL D REPORTS

10 City of Cayce: Streamlining Services Fiber solutions help a dispersed workforce operate as one team.

15 Wylie ISD: Plugged In for Education A pioneering school district lassos the bandwidth it needs.

23 Wheel Warehouse: Speed Revs Up Sales The retailer needed new tools to provide showroom-level service online.

SUCCESS IN ACTION

Chief Talk: CEOs Tell How Technology Is Transforming Their Businesses 20 Sarah Hoit, Connected Living: Tech in the Service of Seniors 21 Scott Frith, Lawn Doctor: Innovating From the Ground Up

GUIDE TO GO

24 Decoding Tech Jargon 9 terms to help fight back against cyber attacks Winter 2015

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LETTER TO THE READER

You and Your Business, Ready for Anything DID YOU EVER HEAR THE FABLE—most recently popularized in the bestseller Have a Little Faith by Mitch Albom—about the farmer who desperately needed a hired hand? A man came to him with this written reference from a former employer: “He sleeps through a storm.”

The farmer had no idea what that meant, but he needed somebody, so he hired the man. Sure enough, some time later, a terrible storm swept through the countryside.

The farmer got up in a panic, only to find his hired hand sleeping peacefully.

However, the farmer also saw that the bales of hay had already been battened down, the animals given plenty of food, and the barn locked tight. Then the farmer understood the value of being able to “sleep through a storm.”

As we start a new year, every business leader knows he or she will be faced with some kind of storm, be it weather-related or market-related. With SOLVE magazine, we give you strategies for riding the whirlwind that is business today.

In this issue, check out need-to-know news about mobile marketing (p. 6), the latest in data security (p. 24), and more. We also offer thought-provoking ideas on how to simplify it all—strategy, operations, and message—in a special section starting on page 16.

We at TWCBC want to be your partner in the success of your business. Will you sleep through a storm? Well, as a leader, you’ll likely be awake and watchful. But with TWCBC in your corner, your company’s communications will never keep you up at night.

Jeff Greenberg Group Vice President – Mid-Market, Channels and Alliances

Goes Marketing

Find Your

6 Mobile pg

Edge Competitive

in the Cloud

pg 12

ity Decoded Cybersecur

pg 24

WIN TER

TELL US WHAT YOU THINK

2015

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LIF Y O SIMP HOW T

GE MESSA YOUR 12/17/14

12:50 PM

Talk to us! How did you like this issue, and what should we cover next? Write to SolveMagazine@twcable.com. See previous issues at www.solvemagazine.com. And if you've worked with TWCBC to SOLVE your technology challenges, we'd like to hear about it for future issues. Visit business.twc.com/nomination to share your story.

WINTER 2015 | VOLUME 2 | NO.1 RSL MEDIA EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Robert Levin SPECIAL PROJECTS EDITOR

Lee Lusardi Connor ART DIRECTION

Jim Nissen DESIGNER

Jaclyn Threadgill

TIME WARNER CABLE BUSINESS CLASS CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER

Stephanie Anderson GROUP VICE PRESIDENT – MID-MARKET, CHANNELS AND ALLIANCES

Jeff Greenberg SENIOR DIRECTOR – CUSTOMER LIFECYCLE MARKETING

Orlando Betancourt MARKETING MANAGER

Nafeisa Shukair © 2015 Time Warner Cable Enterprises, LLC. All rights reserved. Time Warner Cable and the Time Warner Cable logo are trademarks of Time Warner Inc. Used under license.

All trademarks remain the property of their respective owners. Material in this publication must not be stored or reproduced in any form without permission.

This magazine includes content created by third parties not affiliated with Time Warner Cable Inc. Time Warner Cable does not control or guarantee the accuracy or completeness of third party information nor does it endorse the views expressed or products/services offered by third parties.

All users accessing third party websites are subject to the policies of those websites.

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VOICE SOLUTIONS FEATURING SIP TRUNKS FROM TIME WARNER CABLE BUSINESS CLASS Technology is constantly evolving and accelerating, which makes decisions about investing in the right communications solutions even more challenging. Understanding the key advantages of SIP trunks, including how they can help unify communications and future-proof your network, can help you make an informed decision.

Learn more about SIP Trunks and find out if it’s right for your business with our SIP+Trunking Advisor at sip.network-needs.com

Call now to schedule an appointment with a dedicated Account Executive to customize a solution that's right for you.

877.857.0727 To learn more, visit: BUSINESS.TWC.COM/VOICESOLUTIONS

Products and services not available in all areas. Subject to change without notice. Time Warner Cable Business Class is a trademark of Time Warner Inc. Used under license. © 2015 Time Warner Cable Enterprises LLC. All Rights Reserved.

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HOW TO

INSPIRE YOUR EMPLOYEES

The secret to leading a winning workplace team

BY FRAN ZEULI

W

here does a winning team get its mojo?

When we think of sports, we often attribute success to wildly inspirational leaders. These are the coaches whose legendary speeches inspire teams to break down doors and win championships.

However, while we can all appreciate these high-octane, “this is our moment” messages, inspirational leadership need not be so over-the-top. In your company, fist pumping and a roaring voice aren’t necessary to engage your team and inspire it to reach new heights.

What is necessary? Authentic, honest communication from leadership.

Employee engagement means that workers are enthusiastic about and dedicated to a company’s goals.

It means there’s an emotional commitment that leads an employee to go the extra mile, whether the boss is watching or not.

When companies rank high in employee engagement, a 2012 Gallup study found, they also rank higher on nine performance outcomes, including customer rating, productivity, and profitability. Yet only 13 percent of employees worldwide are engaged at work, according to the Gallup study.

Here are five tips for engaging employees in a meaningful and inspirational way (no pads or helmets required).

SHOW THEM THE PLAN. Your company’s or department’s short- and long-term goals shouldn’t be information reserved for senior management. All your employees should be aware of them, and of exactly how their particular job fits in.

A call center we worked with started pulling reps off the phone once a

4

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month for 15-minute huddles. In these meetings, management reinforced company goals—a major one was increasing customer satisfaction scores by 10 percent—and explained how individual employee roles played a part in meeting these goals.

At first, it felt counter-intuitive to take performance-based employees away from their tasks. Over time, however, individual performance stats relating to customer satisfaction increased, company-wide.

SHARE THE “WHY.” One of my favorite authors, Simon Sinek, says, “People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.”

One regional bank, understanding this, defined its why as “helping people regain their financial footing to afford their dreams.” This concept was shared by leaders at employee meetings and posted throughout their offices. Yes, loan officers still evaluated and processed loan applications, but feedback indicated that they looked at their job more positively and better appreciated how much they were helping their customers.

Getting to the why can be difficult. (I highly recommend reading Sinek’s book Start with Why or watching his YouTube TED Talk of the same name.) But if you can define your why and share the story with your employees, you will see the significant employee engagement that is enjoyed by Apple, Patagonia, Harley-Davidson and many others who evangelize their purpose, their meaning, and their worth.

PAY ATTENTION TO EMOTION. According to Tom Hanks’s character in the movie A League of Their Own, “There’s no crying

in baseball!” That rule won’t fly in the workplace. People are not only full of emotion; they are guided and motivated (or demotivated) by those emotions.

You can use a survey to gauge emotional issues, but be sure the data you collect is relevant. Asking an employee to rate how likely he or she is to recommend the company to a friend gives us little direction. But ask employees if and how their supervisor inspires them—well, then we have a wealth of information to mine and act on.

A manufacturing company dedicated a portion of its quarterly employee reviews to simply asking how employees felt about their jobs and what would make them emotionally more satisfied.

More than 70 percent of the employees said they liked their jobs and felt appreciated, and then answered the question about emotional satisfaction by saying they wanted to see more clearly the value they brought to the company.

Leadership built and executed a department-by-department communications plan that connected the dots, so all could see how their efforts led to achieving company-wide goals. Over time, department managers reported higher employee satisfaction scores across the board.

TELL STORIES. From the beginning of human history, we’ve been telling stories to help us understand the world around us, to build history, and to provide perspective. Companies are no exception.

Ask one of your front-line managers if she remembers the specific performance metrics from last year or the ROI from 2011. The answer is likely to be no. But she will probably recall a story about the company—for example, that the company started with five employees

and now has grown to a profitable organization that donates money to local schools for new library books.

Companies like Microsoft have even employed a Chief Story Teller to share the company’s goals and expectations in story form. (You can see some of these at www.microsoft.com/stories.) Another excellent resource is Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins by Annette Simmons.

BE AVAILABLE, BE PRESENT, AND BE YOURSELF. Leaders don’t inspire others by simply saying the right words. It’s obvious to everyone when we’re being inauthentic or not true to ourselves, and we know it, too.

So while it might not be natural or comfortable for you to deliver a rousing half-time speech to your entire team, I’m certain you have authentic strengths and skills that will produce the same results. Inspiration can be delivered to an employee with a smile and a heartfelt “Good morning!,” or a spontaneous call for an all-employee chili cook-off competition on Friday afternoon, or even a 30-minute walk around the office to ask employees how they’re doing.

As leaders, we have to find our voice and our areas of strength and confidence, and then put the above steps into practice. That’s when we’ll find our “inner Vince Lombardi”—and our championship team.

Fran Zeuli is a partner in Fun Is Good, a consultancy that specializes in teaching corporations how to improve employee morale, engagement, and productivity.

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APPS MMS/SMS

PROXIMITY

LOCATIONBASED

PAYMENTS

MARKETING SEARCH

GOES MOBILE

SOCIAL

WHERE YOUR CUSTOMERS (AND THEIR DEVICES) GO, YOUR STRATEGY MUST FOLLOW.

BY WOJCIECH GRYC

M

id-sized enterprises face a challenge when it comes to adopting mobile technologies. Consumers are clearly embracing mobile: this past year, for the first time ever, mobile devices accounted for more than half of Internet usage in the United States. Yet consumers are also fickle: 40 percent of them will leave a website that takes too long to load.

Imagine how they’re reacting to the suboptimal apps and mobile experiences

6

that all too many companies have.

While mobile strategy can’t be neglected, the fact is that constantly keeping up with new technologies can be expensive and time-consuming.

Before you dive into new mobile marketing ventures, make a plan with these strategies: Make sure your current strategy is not a liability. If your business has been experiencing a steady decline in e-mail or website engagement rates over the past three to four years, it could be a result of poor mobile experience. Use

site analytics to collect data on the devices your customers use to interact with your business and ensure that the most common devices are supported properly. Make sure your site and your e-mail are responsive—designed to be easy to engage with (and to function properly) on any screen size.

Plan for the next one to two years. Survey your customers to explore whether they are using mobile technologies to make purchases or evaluate vendors. Understand exactly how this usage plays out—how your

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potential customers are shopping, how they interact with your business, and so on. When you make an investment, do so with the goal of repaying the investment in 12 to 24 months. Mobile technologies evolve so quickly that it’s unsafe to assume they’ll be applicable further out.

Focus on one or two technology trends. There are numerous mobile technologies that can be used to better engage with customers or leads. Do not “boil the ocean”—instead, pick a couple of tactics that work well with your brand and style of business, and are consistent with the market research you did earlier.

If you focus your efforts on effectively executing select tactics, you are more likely to get the ROI you are hoping for.

WHERE TO SPEND? The following trends in mobile technology could yield a significant return on your investment:

SMS Marketing If you have been limiting your outbound communications to phone calls and e-mails, consider using SMS (which stands for short messaging service, aka texting) as well. These messages often have six to eight times better engagement than e-mail. SMS marketing comes with the added benefit that, because so few businesses use it at this point, you have less risk of being caught in the clutter. Caveat: customers have to opt in to this approach by providing you with their phone numbers for this purpose.

Social Media, Particularly Twitter Because most social media users now access their accounts on mobile devices

throughout the day, social media is an excellent way to send messages to and engage with customers. You can also use these platforms to make announcements and special offers. A great “super-local” example is the Los Angeles–based Jogasaki Sushi Burrito food truck. The owner uses Twitter to announce where the truck is going to be next and has built a cult following in Los Angeles.

Mobile CRM

Mobile Payments and Wallets

If you have a business with multiple locations, whether B2C or B2B, it is important to make them easy to find.

Make sure your site prominently displays business hours, links to directions, and click-to-call phone numbers.

Most mobile searches are local, so it’s in your interest to appear in Google Maps when potential customers are searching for stores or services. (Google provides a service to help companies build such a presence.) At the same time, building web pages that target people in your region is an effective SEO strategy. For example, it might be difficult to get your business on the front page of a search for electrical contractors, but “electrical contractors Portland” might have significantly less competition—and thus, be more likely to get you on the coveted first page of search results.

These technology advances will help your business stay current, and should also help generate new sources of revenue and higher customer engagement. If you are new to mobile, focus on one or two strategies first, and scale as you see your successes roll in.

With the launch of Apple Pay, more businesses are preparing to support payments that are coming directly through mobile phones. This is a nascent technology, but one that is likely to be adopted quickly, because mobile technologies can offer a significantly quicker and more convenient customer experience. Such wallets are often tied to loyalty programs, as well.

Wi-Fi and Cell Phone Tracking Wi-Fi tracking technologies are enabling companies to generate metrics around how many smartphone-carrying people enter their physical locations and where they go once inside. Companies like Euclid Analytics and Level One Analytics can then provide reports that make your 30-year-old door counter feel like, well, 30-year-old technology.

iBeacon and Other Location-based Offer Engines (ie, Geofencing) The future of cell phone tracking is in iBeacon and related technologies.

When consumers download an app, these technologies enable a company to dynamically send special offers and discounts to them as they walk by.

If you have a sales force, particularly one that travels for work, consider a mobile-focused CRM system. Products like Resco Mobile CRM map your customers and allow your sales people to find prospects or accounts that are close to their current location.

Think Local

Wojciech Gryc is the CEO of Canopy Labs, a predictive analytics company that specializes in targeted marketing and personalization.

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INSPIRATION

WHAT THE

C-SUITE

IS READING Give and Take:

T

wenty-four years ago, the story goes, Bill Gates asked Warren Buffet what his favorite book was. The answer: Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street by John Brooks, a 1969 collection of New Yorker articles. It became Gates’s favorite book, too.

The two business titans weren’t the first or last to derive inspiration from between the covers of a good business book. What, we wondered, do leaders of successful mid-size corporations recommend today? Here, some answers from our wholly unscientific survey.

8

Why Helping Others Drives Our Success

by Adam Grant

“The ideas about understanding the dynamics of people and how to deal with them can be applied to every company in every situation.”

—Chris Dyer, CEO, PeopleG2, a human capital risk management firm, Brea, California

The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement

by Eli Goldratt

“This 1984 novel (who writes a business novel?) about fictional plant manager Alex Rogo’s fight to save his job and his factory through sheer critical thinking about business and process changed my life and my company.”

—Soren Ryherd, president, Working Planet Marketing Group, Providence, Rhode Island

Winter 2015

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E

G

INSPIRATION

Great By Choice: Uncertainty,

Who Moved My Cheese?:

Chaos, and Luck—Why Some Thrive Despite Them All

An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life

by Jim Collins

“When we started this company, we knew we had invited chaos into our lives. Jim Collins proves you can navigate through the world of chaos exceptionally well—to not just survive, but prevail.”

—Austin Casselman, CEO, Pro Merch, NFL player merchandise, Franklin, Tennessee

Never Eat Alone and Other

by Spencer Johnson, MD

“I read this in December of every year, using it as a touchstone to evaluate the success ratio of our company goals.”

—Kim Cubine, principal and president of Chapman Cubine Adams + Hussey, direct marketing specialists, Arlington, Virginia, and San Francisco, California

Turn the Ship Around! A True

Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time

Story of Turning Followers into Leaders

by Keith Ferrazzi

by David Marquet

“This book is an easy and fun reminder to open up as a business leader and go beyond networking to a new level of communication.”

—Chad Buckmaster, CEO, Processing Point, a business services provider, Carlsbad, California

“The book has reminded me that telling someone I want to empower them is easy.

Setting them up to succeed, in what David Marquet calls the ‘leader-leader’ model, is much harder.”

—David Silverstein, CEO, BMGI consulting firm, Denver, Colorado

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful

Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business

Lessons in Personal Change

by Gino Wickman

“This was a game-changing book for me. It opened my eyes to the fundamentals needed to execute on a plan and grow a business.”

—Jeff Ellman, cofounder and president, UrbanBound, a web-based relocation management software company, Chicago, Illinois

by Stephen Covey

“I’ve always been greatly moved by the seventh habit, which Covey describes as ‘sharpening the saw.’

It speaks to the importance of taking care of yourself physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally so that you can constantly improve and grow.”

—Charles Archer, CEO, Evelyn Douglin Center for Serving People In Need (EDCSPIN), Brooklyn, New York

The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

by Randy Komisar

“I was in a boring job getting paid so I could eventually retire and afford to do the things I wanted to do. This book gave me the sense of urgency and confidence I needed to start working on my own business.”

—Sam Rosen, CEO, MakeSpace, an on-demand storage solution, New York, New York

Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

by Tony Hsieh

“Fifty percent of an employee’s review here is based on attitude, a practice taken directly from Delivering Happiness. This helped us build a culture that has propelled our success.”

—Bobby Harris, CEO, BlueGrace Logistics, Riverview, Florida

Winter 2015

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FIELD REPORT

Roger Marini

Finally, the TWCBC solution also includes fiber Primary Rate Interface (PRI) phone service. “Just one PRI circuit is needed,” Marini notes, “because all our employees are on the same domain.”

City of Cayce: Streamlining Services Fiber solutions help a dispersed workforce operate as one team.

THE CHALLENGE: Like many local governments, the City of Cayce in South Carolina, has seen its workforce outgrow its city hall building. By 2012, more than 100 employees were assigned to off-site facilities. IT director Roger Marini needed to provide them not only with Internet and e-mail services, but with the ability to collaborate on the same domain and over the same shared network as employees at the fiber-enabled city hall campus.

“It’s important that employees who don’t get to city hall on a daily basis are still tied into the city system and have all the same [technology] benefits” as their city hall coworkers, Marini notes. However, achieving these goals was too expensive under the city’s service provider.

THE SOLUTION: Marini turned to Time Warner Cable Business Class (TWCBC) for flexible and affordable fiber service options. The City of Cayce now deploys TWCBC’s Ethernet Private Line (EPL) point-to-point fiber solution to connect four (soon to be five) remote locations to the city hall campus. The configuration includes an 80 Mbps aggregate host connection at city hall, three 20 Mbps remote sites, and one (soon to be two) 5 Mbps remote sites. Two Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) circuits—a 5 Mbps at the city’s wastewater treatment plant, and a 30 Mbps at city hall—provide symmetrical, high-bandwidth upload connectivity. The DIA service runs on TWCBC’s redundant and private end-to-end fiber network.

10

THE RESULT: The City of Cayce finds that its new fiber systems provide benefits for the bottom line, for its employees, and for its citizens.

Security and cost savings: Tying all the locations together reduces the cost of having off-site employees. Crucially, it also eliminates the security concerns that had arisen when employees were using personal Internet services and e-mail to conduct official city business.

Better control: The IT team now has better control over the network’s hardware and software configuration. They can monitor what’s happening with any of the city’s computers and quickly download updates and software fixes so all employees are using the same applications and versions as those used in the city hall offices.

Improved business continuity: Marini has servers at several off-site locations where he can store duplicate copies of data. These locations are also available as a work-around if a problem with connectivity ever arises at the central location.

Ability to scale as needed: Fiber’s functionality and scalability gives the City of Cayce the capacity to videotape or even broadcast council meetings, as many cities do. “We’re not planning on doing that immediately,” Marini says, “but it’s nice to know that we have the network in place to do it if we want to.”

Most important, the new technology allows the City of Cayce to excel at its mission: providing excellent services to the public. This includes such crucial tasks as giving repair crews fast access to city maps, letting managers share files and folders, and providing news about water-main breaks, boil-water alerts, and more.

All in all, Marini says, the fiber solution from TWCBC has been a solid investment: “We’re here to serve our citizens.

We’re not using fiber just because it’s high-tech. We need to maintain a connection to the folks we serve, and TWCBC has helped us do that.”

SHARE YOUR STORY!

How did you partner with TWCBC to SOLVE your technology issues? Tell us about it for a chance to be featured in an upcoming issue of SOLVE. Visit business.twc.com/nomination to share your story.

Winter 2015

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MANAGE YOUR

BILLS

SIGN INTO POSSIBILITIES WITH

MY ACCOUNT

MANAGE YOUR

SERVICES

Running a business is hard work, but managing your Time Warner Cable Business Class services doesn’t have to be. Save time and effort, and manage your account online

CONTACT

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And that’s just the beginning of what’s possible.

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Products and services not available in all areas. Subject to change without notice. Time Warner Cable is a trademark of Time Warner Inc. Used under license. © 2014 Time Warner Cable Enterprises LLC. All rights reserved.

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REASONS 1 YOUR COMPANY NEEDS TO BE IN

THE CLOUD Here are the advantages you’re missing (but your competition is not).

F

or a growing number of companies, cloud adoption is no longer a matter of debate.

They’re using the technology for everything from strategy and planning, to piloting solutions and production rollout. In fact, Forrester Research forecasts a growth in the overall public cloud market to $191 billion by 2020, up from $58 billion in 2013.

If your company hasn’t yet adopted a cloud solution, what are you missing? Let’s take a look at what companies who use the cloud—including, most likely, your competitors—are gaining.

12

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2

1

THEY’RE GETTING MORE PREDICTABILITY AND LOWER COSTS.

Cloud computing often shifts the burden of capital expense to a “pay-as-you-go” model for IT infrastructure, converting up-front capital expenditure to a predictable operational expense. IT staff costs associated with provisioning and managing structure are reduced, as are costs related to data center space, power, and cooling.

Cost reductions take shape in a variety of ways. For example, ConnectEDU used NaviCloud to accelerate the introduction of a new web portal for students seeking personalized college and career guidance. The cloud service lowered infrastructure costs by more than 30 percent because ConnectEDU pays only for the resources it actually consumes— an important benefit because of seasonal fluctuations in demand.

2

THEY’RE BENEFITING FROM IT INNOVATION AND OPERATIONS IMPROVEMENT.

The focus of internal IT has shifted from orchestrating specific technologies to managing the way users access and employ data.

Liberated from persistent maintenance and emergency response tasks, IT teams now have time for innovation, operations improvement, and helping their organization compete more effectively.

As IT professionals focus on strategic business initiatives, they begin to uncover new and creative ways to service both the organization and the end user.

For example, DAI is a private sector global development firm that is committed to helping developing nations become more prosperous,

STEPS TO GETTING STARTED healthy, efficient, and stable. DAI’s IT resources are directly involved in executing projects in developing nations on such topics as democratic governance and energy and climate change.

These IT resources, however, were stretched thin by the obligations of managing internal application environments. The firm decided to enlist NaviSite’s cloud-based managed application services for its Oracle E-Business Suite. Having offloaded management of the Oracle environment, DAI can devote more IT resources to end user–facing projects.

3

THEY HAVE THE FLEXIBILITY TO SCALE.

In a swiftly moving global economy, companies need the flexibility to scale up (or downsize) operations, or change tactics, as the need arises.

One such company is Cooper Gay Swett & Crawford (CGSC), one of the world’s largest global wholesale and reinsurance brokers. The company, which creates risk transfer and risk mitigation programs tailored to the exacting needs of its global clients, has grown rapidly in recent years. CGSC faced considerable challenges in providing first-class, worldwide IT services within a decentralized technology model.

The solution was found in the cloud.

Given CGSC’s high-profile clients, strict sector regulations, and the need to know exactly which jurisdiction their data was being stored under, the company decided to house all data within the EU only. Using a hybrid physical/virtual model based in NaviSite’s United Kingdom–based data centers, CGSC has been able to achieve the flexibility it needs without compromising on security, resiliency, or compliance. >>

As with any technology decision, the move to the cloud is not one that should be taken lightly. The journey begins with an internal business review to help drive the following decisions:

WHAT KIND OF CLOUD? Public cloud services generally cost less and are used for non-businesscritical applications that do not require controlled latency or special security precautions.

Enterprise cloud services, such as those offered by NaviSite’s NaviCloud platform, provide the necessary safeguards for mission-critical applications and for compliance issues. A variety of pricing models are available.

WHICH SOLUTION IS BEST TO START WITH? Cloud adoption is not an all-at-once, all-or-nothing deal. Do a thorough review and identify the areas that make the most sense to implement initially, be that virtual desktops, storage, or SaaS for business applications like Microsoft messaging or Oracle E-Business applications.

WHAT DO VARIOUS PROVIDERS OFFER? Businesses should look for clear and rigorous service level agreements (SLAs) regarding latency, security, and availability.

Crucially, your cloud provider should be able to articulate the bigger picture. Look for a clear approach and philosophy on how the cloud will evolve. The vision should encompass cloud evolution for enterprises in general, for your particular market—and for your specific, unique business.

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4

THEY’RE GETTING BETTER BUSINESS APPLICATIONS, FASTER.

Cloud applications are leading the charge in public cloud growth, according to Forrester Research—a clear demonstration of the value businesses are finding there.

Today, virtually every market demands the quick, flexible development of applications. Companies need to deliver applications that give end users— customers as well as employees— anywhere/anytime access to resources, on almost any device.

With cloud computing, internal IT developers can afford to be more creative than when every experiment required cost-justifying permanent infrastructure. They can create and use application templates in reaction to dynamic business needs.

In addition to building from scratch or customizing an off-the shelf package, IT teams now have new options to integrate the abundance of applications available via the Softwareas-a-Service (SaaS) model. The success of Salesforce.com is but one of many examples.

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THEY’RE SEEING PRODUCTIVITY GAINS.

By providing secure, reliable, and easy-to-use applications via the cloud, enterprises can accelerate many business processes and improve overall corporate communication and collaboration.

They’re also benefiting from IT professionals’ new availability—for example, an IT team might use its reclaimed time to support a marketing

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campaign that had previously been deprived of IT services.

One division of a large health care provider began using Infrastructureas-a-Service (IaaS) to avoid long waits for infrastructure that were preventing the division from meeting performance targets. Now the business unit can provision infrastructure on its own, and the process takes just minutes—and the business unit has seen productivity increase overall.

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THEY CAN TAP INTO TALENT ANYWHERE.

With DaaS—cloud-based desktop virtualization— remote and dispersed staff benefit from a seemingly borderless ability to work virtually anywhere, on nearly any device, and have the same experience they would have on office terminals. DaaS services can also alleviate security concerns, since employees’ applications and data are not held on a personal device’s hard drive, but on virtualized servers.

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THEY GET IMPROVED BUSINESS CONTINUITY.

By empowering nonlocal, remote, and mobile employees, cloud-based virtual desktops limit the adverse effect of inclement weather, disasters, or a pandemic on employees and other resources. Employees can work off-site using virtually any device at hand, and still maintain access to the applications they need most.

In this highly competitive economy, speed, efficiency, and time-to-market are critical. Cloud technology makes some aspects of business easier; others, less expensive; and others, faster. Moreover, it gives your team the time and tools needed to innovate.

Are these benefits that your company can use to grow and become more profitable? Only you and your team can answer the question (see sidebar, page 13). But don’t wait too long. Your competitors aren’t.

WHAT’S YOUR COMPANY’S CLOUD PROFILE? Is your cloud strategy meeting your needs—not only now, but for the long run?

If you’re not quite sure, you’re in good company: many businesses are uncertain about how to proceed as cloud services transform IT. NaviSite, a leader in the delivery of cloud services, has identified three distinct profiles for how businesses approach the cloud decision.

Find out if your company is a Cloud Contender, Cloud Charger, or Cloud Champion by visiting www.cloudprofile.navisite.com. A simple 10-question survey will yield a customized profile that will help your company chart its course.

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FIELD REPORT

Chris Lamb

Wylie ISD: Plugged in for Education A pioneering school district lassos the bandwidth it needs.

THE CHALLENGE: The Wylie Independent School District (ISD) in Texas covers 41 square miles, includes five campuses, and serves a population that is 13,000 students strong. The district was eager to use the Internet to bring new teaching tools into every classroom. However, providing a computer for every student would have been enormously expensive—and hard to sustain as the district population continued to increase.

“So the decision was made to create a bring-your-owndevice (BYOD) program and let students bring devices they already had into the classroom,” explains Chris Lamb, CIO for Wylie ISD. That included every student, from grades K through 12. But offering BYOD to more than 13,000 students meant Lamb needed more bandwidth than the 50 Mbps fiber circuit he had. In 2011, Lamb decided to upgrade and switch providers.

THE SOLUTION: Time Warner Cable Business Class (TWCBC) was chosen to provide a 100 Mbps fiber circuit and 10 Mbps Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) to Wylie ISD. The DIA service delivers symmetrical, private, and redundant connectivity for school districts that require fast speeds to maximize performance of applications.

The switch to TWCBC’s DIA was made easier by the fact that TWCBC is an E-Rate Eligible Telecommunications Provider (ETP). That meant that a portion of the DIA connectivity was supported by funding from the federal E-Rate

Program, which reimburses school districts and libraries for Internet, telecommunications services, and equipment, based on the percentage of the student population receiving free and reduced-cost lunches.

E-Rate funding enabled Wylie schools to increase bandwidth so they could make the BYOD program available to students who own devices. Now Lamb is able to focus his limited budget on purchasing laptops and tablets for students who don’t already have them. That ensures a more inclusive and enriched learning experience for all.

Ultimately, as more students came on board, Lamb realized the district needed even greater performance. He upgraded from a 100 Mbps circuit to 200 Mbps and, in 2014, to 1 Gbps.

Each time, the upgrade process was as easy as making a phone call to TWCBC.

THE RESULT: Students and teachers have experienced increased classroom engagement and more teacher-student collaboration. Lamb says the reliability of TWCBC’s DIA service is as great as any he’s experienced during his 30 years in the technology field. Between that stability, and the increased bandwidth, “We don’t hesitate to say every student can use Internet-based apps,” he says. “When faculty looks at programs or new learning initiatives to add to the classroom, we look for cloud-based options now rather than creating material in-house.”

Thanks to fiber-based DIA connectivity, Wylie ISD’s teachers and students now rely on Google Apps for Education, which securely integrates word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, and graphic tools. This change has allowed students and teachers to take collaboration and learning to a new level, Lamb says. “A lot of Wylie ISD teachers create assignments in Google. The students then create documents and share them with the teacher. The teacher opens them up and makes comments or notes. It’s very powerful.”

Wylie ISD, named for a nineteenth century Texas pioneer, is determined to continue to explore the boundaries of twentyfirst century education. “Technology helps us increase the speed of what we do,” Lamb says. It also paves the way for pioneering ever-richer ways of learning.

SHARE YOUR STORY!

How did you partner with TWCBC to SOLVE your technology issues? Tell us about it for a chance to be featured in an upcoming issue of SOLVE. Visit business.twc.com/nomination to share your story.

Winter 2015

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HOW TO

SIMPLIFY DECLUTTER YOUR STRATEGY, YOUR BUSINESS, AND YOUR MESSAGE In business today, complexity rules—in technology, in global connectedness, and in the speed of change. In fact, three quarters of midmarket CEOs anticipate greater complexity in business, but only about half are confident in their ability to manage it, according to an IBM Global Business Services study. Here, three experts tell SOLVE readers how smart companies are simplifying—and reaping the rewards.

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STRATEGY

SIMPLIFY YOUR

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or the last 15 years I have been obsessed by this nontrivial question: Why is it that successful people and organizations don’t break through to the next level?

It’s an important question for CEOs of companies (and for the rest of us as CEOs of our own lives) to answer. The answer I have found, hidden in plain sight, is: success.

I first noticed the phenomenon while working with executive teams in Silicon Valley. When they were focused on the correct few things, they had success.

But with that success came the “right problem” of more options and opportunities. These opportunities distracted the leaders from the focus that had led to success in the first place.

So—exaggerating the point in order to make it—success can actually become a catalyst for failure. It can lead to what Good to Great author Jim Collins has called “the undisciplined pursuit of more.”

The antidote to this is what I call the disciplined pursuit of less but better.

This is a simple enough idea to understand. But reflect on your own life and ask yourself, “How easy is it to fall into the undisciplined pursuit of more?” and “How hard is it to lead my organization toward the disciplined pursuit of less?” Everything in modern life leads us to the first. Almost nothing leads us to the second. It is only a very particular kind of leader—what I call an Essentialist—who can do it.

Consider the opposite kind of leader—a Nonessentialist. This is the highly driven, highly dispersed, and distracted leader we see everywhere

has said he sees himself as the Chief Editor of the company rather than the Chief Executive.

Essentialists don’t see focus as one more thing to do; they see it as the essence of their leadership. It isn’t what they occasionally do, it is who they are.

It is their disciplined pursuit.

The situation for CEOs is that life is fast and full of opportunity. The complication is they think they have to do it all. The impact of this is that they will end up making a millimeter of progress in a million directions.

My position is that CEOs can make a different choice: they create space to discern the vital few from the trivial many. As a result they can lead their organizations to break through to the next level.

today. It is the CEO of a 3,000-person company who recently announced he has 107 goals for the organization this year. That absurd number is only surpassed by the company’s 700 products. The company has so many products, in fact, that when I asked the marketing team about them I found that not one of them even knew what all the products were. I see similar examples everywhere.

Behind that example is a management myth that has been shared so deeply for so long that people don’t even question it. Stated Greg McKeown is the CEO of succinctly, the idea is this: if you can fit THIS, Inc., a company whose it all in you can have it all. The problem mission is to assist people is it happens to not be true. It is a lie. and companies to spend 80 We have even changed our language percent of their time on the to make the idea seem as if it is true. vital few rather than the trivial many. He is For example, the word “priority” came the author of the bestselling Essentialism: into the English language in the 1400s The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. This article and it was singular. It meant the very is condensed from an interview with him. >> first thing. It stayed singular, very sensibly, for the next 500 years! Only in the 1900s did we begin to speak of “priorities.” So while we can find ourselves feeling Every night, writ that everything is a priority, e down the top six tasks that ar essential to ge e literally by definition, it t done tomorro w , in priority orde Cross off the bo r. can’t be. ttom five. Take the top item, w it on a Post-it no rite te and put it on Essentialists operate your computer.

Schedule the fi rst two hours of out of a very different the next day to work on that on e thing. Repeat mindset. They assume of ten enough that this becomes ea sy and part of yo that almost everything is ur routine. One entrepreneur I work with star ted this daily ro meaningless noise. They and has built hi utine s $300,000 busi ness to a $400 see their priority role as million business . He completel y subscribes to discerning between the idea that the di the scipline of this ro utine is what go him there. —G trivial many and the vital t reg McKeown few. For example Jack Dorsey, CEO of Square,

THE POWER O DAILY POST-ITF THE

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SIMPLIFY YOUR

BUSINESS

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here does complexity in business come from? Here are four different sources, and actions that leaders can take in each of them.

ORGANIZATION: ELIMINATE LAYERS, INCREASE SPANS. Many companies, from the size of GE on down, periodically go through exercises of reducing layers between the CEO and the first-line people. Layers of management have the effect of a game of telephone in which messages get completely distorted.

“Increasing spans” means that instead of two to four direct reports, managers get seven to 10. When only a few people report to an executive, he or she tends to get into the details of their work. When more people report to someone, he or she has to let them do their jobs.

Bausch & Lomb underwent this kind of streamlining process several years ago. The company’s leadership was able to accelerate growth, reduce costs, and get the company to the point where it ended up selling (to Valeant Pharmaceuticals) for far more than anybody expected.

PRODUCT: REDUCE PROLIFERATION. Most companies like to add products and variations, but don’t like to take any away. Yet every time you add more products, you have to have more marketing material, training, warehousing, financing, and so on.

After a while, companies have some products that are very profitable, others a lot less so. Companies that 18

have reduced complexity look at tailend products and just get rid of them.

They stop offering them, sell them to somebody else, or migrate customers to better versions of the products.

Offering more is not always better, for customers or business. Furniture maker Herman Miller learned that with its award-winning Aeron chair. Nineteen customization steps in the ordering process led to 140 million possible configurations for the chair. However, an analysis revealed that only 4,000 options were ordered with any frequency.

The company judiciously pared back the available options—and greatly reduced its operational and SKU complexity.

PROCESS: BECOME STANDARDIZED. You do need a standard way of getting things done. This applies to manufacturing, of course, but it’s equally applicable to governance, budgeting, and other areas.

For example, many mid-sized companies don’t do a very good job of standardizing how they go to market.

A sales person sells first, then has to work with the manufacturing people to get the order done on time. There’s unnecessary variation and complexity.

Standardization means that before you sell, you have the info about whether and when the product is available.

A smaller example is the way people file expenses. Do they have to have them approved by somebody else? The more people you put in place to check other people’s work, the more complexity you’re creating. Is it possible that you can trust people to follow certain rules and only put in for legitimate expenses?

BEHAVIOR: START WITH THE BOSSES. Often, it’s managerial behavior that creates complexity. Take, for example, the way we structure meetings. Many times, it’s not clear whether people are there to get information, make a decision, or simply to socialize and eat a bagel.

Get to the point. Send your presentation out ahead of time with the message, “Here are the two questions we want to discuss in the meeting.” Some companies have adopted a rule that no meeting can last more than 30 minutes; others have taken chairs out of the conference room.

CEOs have to be careful about where they focus their attention. Are they asking for more information? That can lead to people creating reports that the CEO doesn’t do anything with.

I worked with one CEO of an information services company who went to department operating review meetings. He learned that people were over-preparing because they wanted to look good in case he asked a question.

When he cut the number of meetings he attended in half, he was able to spend more time with customers and with his board—and he freed up a whole lot of his employees’ time.

Ron Ashkenas is a managing partner of Schaffer Consulting and was an executive-in-residence at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Simply Effective: How to Cut Through Complexity in Your Organization and Get Things Done. This article is condensed from an interview with him.

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SIMPLIFY YOUR

MESSAGE

BY CARMINE GALLO

I

once interviewed billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson on the topic of pitching a business. As CEO of Virgin Group, overseeing some 400 companies, Branson gets pitched constantly. His take: “If your idea can’t fit on the back of an envelope, it’s rubbish.”

Far too many business professionals indulge in this “rubbish” by making their product or brand message too long, complicated, and convoluted. If

FOLLOW THE 10-40 RULE IN PRESENTATION DESIGN. The average PowerPoint slide has 40 words, which is far too many words for the mind to consume in that context. The next time that you create a presentation deck, try to keep your first 10 slides to no more than 40 words, total. This will force you to tell a story with pictures and images instead of text alone. In the neuroscience literature, this concept is called the picture superiority effect, meaning that

We can only carry about three “chunks” of content in short-term memory. you can’t tell someone what you do or how your product will change his or her life—and do so in one short sentence— take your pitch back to the drawing board and keep working on it.

Apple never releases a product without a one-sentence description to go along with it. For example, when Steve Jobs introduced the MacBook Air for the first time, he said, “It’s the world’s thinnest notebook.” In one sentence, he told you nearly everything you needed to know.

It takes work—and boldness—to make messages simple and clear.

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication,” said Leonardo da Vinci. So be sophisticated. Keep your presentations, messaging, and pitches short and simple.

Here are three ways to do so.

your audience will more easily recall your message if it is presented in pictures rather than text.

CUT YOURSELF OFF AT 18 MINUTES. The famous and ubiquitous TED Talks, which present new ideas and research to a global audience, are no more than 18 minutes long. Why? According to TED organizers, that is the ideal length of time to have a serious discussion without putting an audience to sleep.

Offering too much information results in cognitive backlog, meaning you’re giving your listener far more than he or she can retain in short-term memory, according to Dr. Paul King, a professor at Texas Christian University who studies communication and persuasion.

Cognitive processing—thinking, speaking, and listening—are demanding activities. “If you’re really concentrating, critical listening is a physically exhausting experience,” King explains. “Listening, for an audience member, is more draining than we give it credit for.”

So if you’ve got a point to make, don’t beat it to death; make it short and simple so your audience has a chance of retaining it and storing it in long-term memory.

STICK TO THREE SUPPORTING MESSAGES. We can only carry about three “chunks” of content in short-term memory. Great writers know this. Thomas Jefferson guaranteed us three rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. He didn’t outline 22 rights. The simplest way to create a simple message is to begin with a headline and support that headline with three points (features, benefits, and so on).

Many people will never heed this advice, and that gives you an advantage. Business professionals often refuse to simplify their messages because “everything is important.”

If you, on the other hand, keep your message short and sweet, your sales will grow; make it complicated and you’ll lose customers.

It’s that simple.

Carmine Gallo is a popular keynote speaker, communication coach, and author of the bestselling book, Talk Like TED: The 9 PublicSpeaking Secrets of the World’s Top Minds.

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SUCCESS IN ACTION

CHIEF TALK

CEOS TELL HOW TECHNOLOGY is TRANSFORMING THEIR BUSINESSES INTERVIEWS BY LEE LUSARDI CONNOR Why not involve veterans in one of our “Seniors to Soldiers” programs, where they get to connect remotely with men and women who are currently serving?

Further, right now having Connected Living is a differentiator. It’s seen as a huge plus by seniors’ families—the adult children, who are, of course, connected themselves, and who often have a big say in the decision of where seniors will move.

Support Breeds Success

Hoit with a resident at a Boston Housing Authority facility

SARAH HOIT, CONNECTED LIVING:

TECH IN THE SERVICE OF SENIORS

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s people age, studies have shown, one of the greatest challenges for health— both mental and physical—is social isolation. Enter Connected Living, Inc., a cloud-based platform for use by residents and administrators of senior living centers, cofounded in 2007 by Sarah Hoit, a serial social entrepreneur, and the late Chris McWade. The Quincy, Massachusetts– based company provides seniors easy-to-use technology that enables them to connect with family, friends, and the larger community.

Now in senior living centers in 32 states, the platform has connected more than 35,000 seniors. The Inc. 5000–ranked company has had a three-year growth rate of 248 percent 20

and 2013 revenue of $4 million—but has only just begun to grow, Hoit says.

Sell the Benefits We are addressing a very large need— connectivity for seniors—that has never been successfully addressed, so whenever you have a business model like that, you have challenges. But the question we asked seniors was not, “Would you like a computer?” It was, “Would you like to be closer to your children, and more in touch with the community?” That’s a different question.

For managers of senior living properties, this has totally changed the ways they can program. Why can’t a senior be on a virtual tour of the Louvre instead of at the same Bingo game every afternoon?

We pride ourselves on our cutting-edge technology, but that alone is not enough.

We have invested heavily in support, both remote and in-person, for seniors and for administrators of senior living properties. If clients need to get their buildings wired up to support this technology, we help them; we do tech audits for them. Our consultants have acted as change agents from the time we started this company.

We serve every type of facility from high-end, independent, almost golfcourse-oriented properties to 100 percent memory-care facilities where

Why can’t a senior be on a virtual tour of the Louvre instead of at the same Bingo game every afternoon?

—SARAH HOIT

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SUCCESS IN ACTION

everyone is suffering from Alzheimer’s.

You might be doing mini tech talks and genius bar activities in one facility. In another, you may be providing things to aid in therapy—the Frank Sinatra music a patient loves, or sounds from Cape Cod. Our support for delivery of care is driven by the facility’s needs.

Never “Talk Down” So many people who’ve tried to build technology for an aging population did it in an insulting way. Their content offerings were all about care. Our brand is about living, not dying.

We try to design things in a way that’s universally appealing. My kids should want to get on what we’re building as much as my grandmother does.

For example, we’ve incorporated picture-based e-mail. If you want to send someone a message, you don’t necessarily have to type in the e-mail address—you can touch the person’s face in a photo and an addressed message will automatically pop up.

We do pay attention to things like contrast, color, and icons, because we understand there may be a significant amount of macular degeneration among our users—but we aim for a presentation that is simple, uncluttered, and beautiful.

Next: In-home Apps There is so much coming up for our company in the next 12 months. We believe in the mobile revolution completely. Our platform is on every mobile device you can imagine, but we are also rapidly building new apps. We’ve been doing really exciting work with Apple’s health division and other groups.

As far as isolation and aging, many more people are at home than are within the walls of a facility. We will be releasing HomeConnect programs to

help people who are aging at home to reach a virtual community.

We will be lining up with an insurance company to see how Connected Living plays out with in-home health care. There’s so much research that shows that a connected life is a healthier life, with fewer hospitalizations. Why wouldn’t insurance companies want to make sure this kind of technology is a piece of their delivery, knowing they’ll save money on the back end?

From the federal government

standpoint, access to technology is going to be a huge issue. Increasingly, seniors need access to the Internet to get government services they need— but most seniors aging in public housing don’t have it. We are already in public housing in Atlanta and Washington, D.C., and expect that part of our business to expand.

I’m convinced there isn’t anything society can’t do for seniors, if there’s a willingness to pull together from a technology standpoint.

SCOTT FRITH, LAWN DOCTOR:

INNOVATING FROM THE GROUND UP

T

he suburban sprawl of the 1960s created generations of new homeowners, with new problems: how to keep the lawn looking green and lush? That opportunity was the genesis of Holmdel, New Jersey– based Lawn Doctor, a lawn care company that now has 500 franchisees nationwide.

The business, which had $98.6 million in revenue in 2013, has proved to be virtually recession-proof as consumers move from a “do it yourself” to a “do it for me” model, explains CEO Scott Frith, who took over the top spot from his father, Russell, in 2011.

Frith intends to continue to fuel growth through investment in technology related to customer relations, business operations, and >> equipment. He explains how.

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>>

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SUCCESS IN ACTION

Inclusion Is Key There’s a natural resistance in human beings when it comes to change. That’s why we really involve our franchisees in the innovation process. If you design, build, and put out a new technology without that input, you’re going to have missed some fundamental things— feature sets, functionality—that should have been incorporated.

We do this by having three functional groups: one for marketing, one for sales, and one for service. When we’re considering a new technology, the chair of each group surveys the group via regular conference calls, as well as face-toface meetings. In terms of innovation, forming these groups is one of the best things we ever did.

Branding Begins Online Some people see lawn care as a very hands-on, blue-collar type of business, but in reality we are extremely sophisticated in terms of technology.

This starts with the way the customer engages with the brand. It used to be a much longer process. Years ago, you sent a direct mail piece, someone would walk to the mailbox and get it, contact you, then the sales process would begin. We still do direct mail, but a lot of our budget has moved to the Internet.

Today customers want to solve a problem right away, because they’re living busy and complicated lives. The consumer wants a beautiful environment around his or her home, but doesn’t have time to do it him- or herself, so they go online and type in keywords.

Lawn care service is in our keyword portfolio, and that will serve up our paid advertisement. If you click on it, you go right to our home page and you can get

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our 60-second quote. You type in your address and zip code, and our data sets can calculate the size of your lawn, the agronomics of the zone you’re in, and what the pricing would be, based on the franchise that serves your area.

It’s been a real focus for our company to acquire this data from a variety of sources and build it over time so that we can engage with the customer at the moment he or she wants a solution.

We’re also reprogramming our site with responsive design so that it is sized correctly for whatever device is used—which is important since a third of visits to our site are from mobile devices, and the number is growing.

That interaction with our site could be the customer’s first introduction to us, so we have to educate them.

Today customers want to solve a problem right away because they are living complicated lives.

—SCOTT FRITH

Let Data Help Decide If you’re an innovator, you’re passionate about moving your organization forward, but that means you get pulled in a lot of different directions. I’ve had to learn that strategy is as much about what you won’t do as what you will do.

We’re still going to be innovating, but we are becoming very disciplined in our approach. We define a particular metric that we’re going after—for example, increasing the average

transaction per customer. There are many different ways to do that, but let’s not try to do three things at once. Let’s pick the one we think is going to get us closest to our goal, then do ideas number two and three.

We also now rigorously manage and analyze our data through a business intelligence tool we’ve developed.

Our data used to live locally with our franchisees; now we can roll it all into one hosted environment with a reportwriting engine that can give us specific information we request.

Look Both Ways As a CEO, you have people whose livelihoods depend on the decisions you make and on your strategy for the company. When you take over as the leader of a well-established company, the safe thing to do is to continue to do what we’ve done before, but maybe a little better, so you see incremental change.

But you can’t be too focused on the past. If you’re looking in the rear-view mirror, you’re going to hit something in front of you. For us, the right thing to do was move into a completely different direction in terms of digitization, customer management, even the type of franchisees we’ll recruit.

At the same time, as a leader, I need to be very respectful of the company’s past, its culture and relationships, the things that got it to where it is now.

I’ve had to really cultivate my listening skills and listen to people throughout the organization. To take a step forward sometimes means taking a step back.

I always say that I need to have one foot in the past, one foot in the future. A lot of business really comes down to balance.

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FIELD REPORT

Mike Yablonka

Wheel Warehouse: Speed Revs Up Sales The retailer needed bandwidth to provide showroom-level service online.

THE CHALLENGE: The Southern California city of Anaheim is home to 80 percent of the world’s wheel manufacturers— and also home to Wheel Warehouse, a retailer specializing in aftermarket wheels and tires. Since 1979, Wheel Warehouse has built a reputation for delivering an outstanding shopping experience, featuring a 7,000-square-foot “Disneyland for wheels” showroom where customers can see the latest rims and tires.

When Mike Yablonka and Chris Granger bought Wheel Warehouse a few years ago, they intended to replicate that famous showroom experience online. The idea was for sales associates to upload as many as 20 different product photos for consideration by a potential buyer anywhere in the world.

Unfortunately, the technology offered by their existing service provider wasn’t up to speed. “We upload lots of pictures to show customers options the same way we do in the showroom, but the Internet was so slow, I could have lunch between uploads,” Yablonka recalls. “We had phone quality issues, as well.” The dealership also wanted to implement a comprehensive social media strategy, but its efforts were hampered by slow service.

THE SOLUTION: Time Warner Cable Business Class (TWCBC) used its fiber-rich network as the basis for a turnkey solution with “capabilities I didn’t even know were available,” Yablonka says. A 5 Mbps Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) circuit alleviated the bandwidth bottleneck by delivering symmetrical upload and download speeds. A fiber-based Primary

Rate Interface (PRI) circuit provides 23 high-quality voice channels. “Whether sales associates are at home or out of the office, they answer calls as if they were right here in our showroom,” Yablonka says. “It’s pretty amazing.”

THE RESULT: Wheel Warehouse was able to create a faster, more engaging experience on its existing website and two new ones, including same-day service and a high level of personalized attention—just like what clients experience in the Anaheim showroom. DIA connectivity also lets Yablonka and his team do their work without bandwidth-related delays. Now Yablonka can engage with an Instagram following and monitor Yelp reviews without slowing down sales associates as they search the online parts inventory.

In addition, fast upload speeds make it easy for Wheel Warehouse to take full advantage of photo-sharing sites like Facebook, Pinterest, and Fanzy (Facebook’s incentivized sharing service). “[The sites] are great for showing what we do to change the look of the wheels and the entire car,” Yablonka says.

Just as important as TWCBC’s reliable infrastructure are its highly responsive customer support technicians. Not long ago, Wheel Warehouse experienced a 2:30 am fire in its building. “By 6:30 am, Time Warner Cable Business Class technicians had our phones back, while everybody else’s phones went down for over a week,” Yablonka says.

Yablonka feels his relationship with TWCBC is a true partnership. “So many people make the sale and move on,” he says. “Our Time Warner Cable Business Class account executive continues to support us after installation.” It’s the same kind of commitment to customer service and customized solutions that have always driven success for Wheel Warehouse.

“Now I have faster uploads, better phones, better service— and I’m not paying more,” Yablonka says. The payoff will come in the future as well as the present—because fiberbased TWCBC voice and data solutions are scalable, they’ll be there to help Yablonka carry out his big plans for growing his business.

SHARE YOUR STORY!

How did you partner with TWCBC to SOLVE your technology issues? Tell us about it for a chance to be featured in an upcoming issue of SOLVE. Visit business.twc.com/nomination to share your story.

Winter 2015

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GUIDE TO GO

TECH JARGON

DECODING 9 terms to help fight back against cyber attacks

BY JERRY IRVINE

It’s no secret that cyber attacks, hacking, and data breaches are causing millions in losses for companies of all sizes. And the number one way that cyber thieves enter a system is through anyone who accesses a company’s technology, also known as end users—or, put another way, your employees. That’s why everyone in your organization, not only your IT department, should be up to date on the jargon that describes both risks and defenses.

RANSOMWARE This rogue code is a form of computer virus or malicious software (malware) that often sneaks into a system by means of an e-mail attachment or a visit to an infected website. Ransomware encrypts all or a portion of the data on your PC or network, making it unreadable and unusable. Hackers then demand a ransom to unencrypt the data.

PHISHING AND SMISHING Phishing and spear phishing refer to targeted messages that are sent to users under the guise of being from an organization or person the recipient would know—often, a financial institution. When the recipient clicks on a link, viruses and malware are transmitted. Smishing is a phishing attack, but the means of transmission is SMS, or texting.

BOTNET Criminals use malicious software (spread by e-mail, infected websites, and by exploiting security vulnerabilities) to control a large number of computers or computerized equipment (eg, printers, smart TVs, alarm systems). These devices become a network in which, without their owners’ knowledge, they are used to send viruses, steal user IDs and passwords, and perform denial-of-service (DOS)

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attacks, which flood a network with traffic in order to disable it.

ROGUE ACCESS POINTS (APS) Hackers frequently set up wireless devices known as rogue APs (for access points) in public WiFi areas like coffee shops, airports, and hotels.

These devices can be configured to eavesdrop on network data or perform what’s called a man-in-the-middle attack, which redirects all traffic to the hackers’ computer systems so they can copy user data, passwords, credit cards, and more.

MULTI-FORM AUTHENTICATION Passwords are only one, easily exploited, form of authentication. In order to increase security, computers and devices should require three forms of authentication: • Something you know (ID and password) • Something you have (mobile device for receiving a security PIN by text or e-mail) • Something you are (fingerprint, retina scan, or some other type of biometric)

MOBILE DEVICE MANAGEMENT (MDM) SYSTEM This is a must for companies whose employees use their own devices—smartphones, tablets, laptops—for work (often called bring your own device, or BYOD). MDMs can be configured to encrypt systems,

segregate business and personal information, install applications remotely, and wipe company information from devices.

PATCH MANAGEMENT Viruses and malware are designed to take advantage of vulnerabilities or bugs in widely used operating systems, applications, hardware, and firmware (permanent software). Companies such as Apple, Microsoft, and Cisco regularly send out updates, or system patches, to improve security. The IT department should be consistently monitoring updates and installing patches.

APPLICATION AND VULNERABILITY ASSESSMENT (VA) SCANNERS Antivirus solutions cannot detect all viruses or malware, because hackers are always modifying the code. Therefore, companies need to employ proactive tools that perform step-by-step reviews of systems, applications, and hardware in order to find bugs, errors, or configuration weaknesses that put the IT environment at risk.

PENETRATION (PEN) TESTING This takes vulnerability assessment scanning even further by not only detecting potential weakness, but also attempting to use the weakness to gain access, obtain data, or take control of the system. Pen testing provides companies more information in order to protect their environment.

Jerry Irvine is CIO of Prescient Solutions, a Chicago, Illinois–based IT outsourcer, and a member of the National Cyber Security Task Force.

Winter 2015

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