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As the economy turns around in 2012: re-training opportunities in the healthcare value chain

As 2011 winds down there is positive news in the quarterly jobless numbers,in real estate and the stock market. 2012 should be better than the last four years of the recession. OK it may not be boom time but there does appear to be the right signals for at least modestly better economic times ahead in the US. So where are some opportunities if you want to retrain and re-skill , even if you have a job?

One definite opportunity area is healthcare which is in focus ever since the healthcare reform by Democrats and President Obama that Republicans derisively call Obamacare and promise to repeal if they come to power in 2012. But guess what: no matter what the law or politics of healthcare there are opportunities galore for re-training, re-skilling to make healthcare more efficient and reach all Americans. People are living longer- just because of better medical research and its dissemination and well- better healthcare ! This spawns a whole bunch of requirements including gym trainers, physiotherapists,  home care for the elderly, senior living,leisure and entertainment. Just look at the huge growth rate of seniors in the US.

And then you look at the healthcare opportunities at various points of the value chain of healthcare delivery in the Fortune list of hot careers for 2012:

1. Information technology opportunities exist at every point of healthcare. Start with patient records, to insurance billing and claims - you name it and there is something to be improved and costs reduced.
2. Healthcare professions considered high growth include direct service providers like nurses, physical therapists,dieticians and  dental hygienists as “wellness” becomes more important.
3. Healthcare support staff requirements in administration, marketing, finance are likely to grow as you cannot really deliver the entire healthcare online and a whole bunch of people beyond just the doctor is needed.
4. Engineers for whom the medical equipment business is a growing area.
5. Industrial skills including welders, electricians who specialize in the  healthcare sector  is  a great possibility for those in the trades.
6. Big pharma will see less recruitment as small biotechs and pharma try to be more agile in drug discovery and will need research folks and associated support staff to run small organizations effectively.
7. Sales is a huge field for health insurance in B2B and B2C side as the market develops.There should be considerable growth in the digital marketing and sales funnel in all parts of the healthcare channel including hospital to patient. 
8. Accounting and finance skills in the health sector is a specialized skill and is just likely   to grow.
9. Discount retailers are trying to offer both prescription drugs at low cost and first stop       instant medical care. Just look at how everyone has got into the “Flu shot” business this year!
10. Management skills for any part of the healthcare value chain should be in high demand by start-ups and existing players that are trying to innovate in the healthcare sector.

So just as you are thinking of new year resolutions around weight loss and healthier eating consider: that  no matter what your professional interest there is some opportunity in the healthcare value chain that can be developed.

Wishing all blog readers a Very Happy 2012 !

Nike Air Jordan frenzy,Payroll Tax deal and the iPhone 4S Santa's Christmas assistant Siri: is the economy turning around?

The  1Billion $ + Air Jordan brand of Nike shoes had frenzied crowds buying the Black and White  Jordans that went on sale at mid-night Thursday. People lined up in thousands all over the US and needed police protection as they walked back to the parking lot with the $180 shoes. Many were put up at eBay and folks were asking for $500 to sell their "catch". Interestingly,in the rush to buy the new Jordans, some of the brand's fans left their perfectly good Nike shoes behind if you see the ABC video here ! The excitement around the brand  got so out of control that Nike had to request loyalists to be safe and respectful. 

If consumers in such large numbers could take such a lot of trouble for shoes, it sure could be a sign of increasing US consumer confidence.

Also helping public  confidence was the two month extension of the payroll tax cut just before Christmas. That both parties could work together is happy news.

In the electronics space,the iPhone4S  (with voice assistant  Siri)  was doing very brisk business. The iPhone Santa Ad is among the most successful ads of the holiday season. 

The Apple business is highly digitized and integrates  stores and website really well. If you could not find a 16 G White iPhone 4s in any Apple Store in Connecticut on Thursday, you were required to 'reserve" an iPhone starting at 9 pm at the Apple website. The only problem was that the Apple booking system went on crashing for at least 15-20 minutes before one could search for availability. Only one out of five stores had the iPhone and we could reserve one on line. At the store, after only a brief wait, we got the phone.  That there was digital overload (no pushing inside the Apple mall store though!) for the iPhone4S is a good sign for the economy. It appears that 2012 will be better for business than 2011.

This blog wishes its readers a Merry Christmas!

College Text Book Rentals: Chegg is like Netflix for the supply chain- but a social cause marketer at the front end

Ask any US college student and they'll tell you how expensive college books are. To come up with a working  textbook rental model for this $10 billion segment of the book market is just brilliant for Chegg.com. At the back end Chegg.com has a Netflix type model for logistics. It even has former Netflix Chief Operating Oficer Tom Dillon to manage the logistics and distribution.

In this video, Chegg CEO Dan Rosenweig explains some of the Chegg model. While Netflix founder Reed Hastings famously founded Netflix upon being charged a $40 late fee for a video cassette, for Chegg.com it is the college experience with high cost  text books of founders Osman Rashid and Ayush Phumbhra  that seems to have nailed the "customer need" part of this wonderful innovation.

The great recession with rising college costs and crushing student loans have turned the Chegg model to something of a social cause. By planting a tree for every book , Chegg has been able to align an environmental  cause to its business model as well.

Apart from the logistics and distribution/return channel similarities with Netflix there is a major differences between Netflix and Chegg in terms of opportunities for the creators of content ( Movie makers for Netflix and College Text book writing industry for  Chegg). Movie makers with a small audience or less clout with theatres would not be able to get the movie to the audience. Netflix was able to provide the long tail opportunity to such movie makers.In contrast, 80% of College Text books are produced by four publishers and upper level courses have small numbers but students have to get the books, in many cases with a financial struggle. With Chegg probably the students' life will be easier.

Given the other social media type of approaches (sharing of schedules on Facebook including an iPhone app ) that Chegg is employing - the college textbook market is ready for disruption. Time for textbook publishers, their sales force and college text book stores to take a look at their business model. Contact StratoServe.

AT&T and T-Mobile merger off: when upstream supply chain consolidation alarms consumers

Supply chain consolidation is a huge mantra in supply management. When you consolidate supplies with fewer suppliers, things become easier to manage . And this is exactly what At&T was trying to do by buying up T-Mobile so that all that wireless bandwidth became available to feed the zooming demand for wireless data via mobile phones,iPads and so on. The AT&T  and T Mobile merger would have  created an entity with 120 million customers, the largest telecom company and with Verizon controlling 80% of the US market.

So what is the problem : when band width becomes available it's good for AT&T, T-Mobile and the entire industry? Not so if you watch this video from LA Times. Obviously, supply chain consolidation is not going well in this case of upstream supply chain consolidation.

It's not so much that monopolies are frowned upon as much as in the heyday of antitrust law enforcement. But in this particular case consumers seem to have bad experiences with US cell phone operators. In fact, from the other end of the supply chain,i.e., the customer end both AT&T and T-Mobile are consistently rated at the bottom by Consumer Reports. And these bad ratings could not help the merger case that AT&T and T-Mobile were trying to build on the grounds of increasing bandwidth.

On the other hand if within the wireless industry, AT&T and T-Mobile had very high customer satisfaction perhaps the supply chain consolidation logic might have worked with the public and the Government regulators. 

Both AT&T and T-Mobile have a lot of work to do. And that work is not on the upstream consolidation of  spectrum but trying to get the wireless customer side right.

Where did medical transcription, tax preparation, legal documents work get outsourced? To self-service technology

Just a few years ago if you traveled in small town India you would see billboards  offering medical transcription training. Students would be put through rigorous training to learn medical terms and also go through intense training to understand the American physician's accent on each of these highly technical medical terms. For the assurance was that once the doctor dictated notes in America and uploaded the audio file the transcription would be available the next morning in America - with 99% accuracy at a fraction of the cost to transcribe in America. Today medical transcription is slow business in India.

Tax preparation was also an activity that paid some extra money to the tax preparer who did not have to be a CPA and even CPA's had some extra income during tax season. Similarly, legal documents like Wills provided simple work and a modest fee to the typical town lawyer in America.

All these three professional services type of work in America got outsourced but not to India or another low cost location. They got outsourced to self-service technology. Here is what is happening:

• Medical transcription is becoming obsolete as electronic medical records via hand held devices become more accessible. Doctors follow evidence based medicine and check mark boxes on their devices. When integrated with insurance billing the diagnosis,treatment and billing is all squared away. Perfectly.
• Tax preparation is also taken over by tax preparation software . For next year Intuit the makers of Turbo Tax will offer free telephone advise to capture a segment of customers who feel challenged and  go to tax prep chains like H&R Block. Turbo Tax via self service  costs $44 and a return at H&R Block costs $188. 
• Legal Document Services are expensive and according to a report 80% Americans cannot afford legal fees and therefore take the help of sites like Legalzoom and Rocket Lawyer. In the process the local lawyer loses fees.

So no matter what your organization's service offering, be sure that what can be done by self-service technology will be done so by your customers. It is therefore timely to think about expanding your services to offer unbeatable value to your customers. Value that builds on your expertise and the work that your customer can do via self service. A tough one sometimes when you are competing against self-service technology and not just low-cost overseas competition.

Integrating web marketing to Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC)

It was in the 1990's that IMC started getting popular in marketing. The Internet was just getting started and social media was in the distant horizon.By the early 2000's  organizations particularly in consumer products started figuring out IMC between their packaging,billboards,TV ads,magazine and newspaper ads and Point of Sale materials. The time has now come to integrate web marketing efforts with the off-line marketing efforts. And not just for consumer product organizations but for all types of organizations that need to communicate with prospects,customers,suppliers,shareholders or any other stakeholders.

The idea of having the same colors on the soap package and the ad on the bill-board is old and it is exactly the same thing that organizations need to do between their websites and physical artifacts. You don't need to paint your building the color of your website page, but an active consideration of how to convey the same message across your web presence and physical presence is something that all organizations should consider.

So should you lead with changes on the website or with the direct mail and bill boards? For efficient execution it's probably better to start with the website,social media pages and follow with other physical content. This way the firm repainting the bill boards can just log on to the website and know what the purpose is and the same with the printer trying to get the direct mail piece together. Best of all,branches (of say a bank) can have posters that reflect the look and feel of their website.

It's really easy to change the look and feel of the colors and logos on your website but for global organizations there may be millions of physical touch-points like retailers,branches that might be difficult to reach. So it's important to be careful with the change of the look  and feel of your  website just so that your physical materials get a chance to come into sync with the website.

The fun part of digital marketing is that it is only the look and feel that needs to be consistent with your off-line communications. Content is king in the digital world and more detailed your material,more current and exciting your material ,more engaged is your audience. So when the customer,supplier or stakeholder actually visits you in say a retail store, the poster has only to remind them for they would have already done their research online and might actually do research from their smart phones while at the store! Contact StratoServe.

Search marketing explains the 15% rise in online sales?

In a slow US economy it's refreshing to know that online sales grew by 15% over last year. This huge increase is really because customers searched on line for the best deals and took them! The ability of customers to search and initiate contact is a fundamental shift in marketing that organizations have not fully grasped.

Media planning is based on what a target audience might see and is in turn based on the notion of firm initiated contact. The firm puts out an Ad and  faces to quote John Wanamaker: "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half."

Well recent B2B research by Wiesel,Pauwels and Arts (2011) suggests customer initiated contacts are about 15 times more profitable than firm initiated contacts like flyers(leaflets),faxes or email. Their research was at Inofec in the Netherlands (English translation of Inofec website) who are B2B furniture suppliers and installers in the Netherlands. The research suggested that spending 1 Euro on Google AdWords provided a return of 55+ Euros compared to a return of 0.57 Euro on every Euro spent on Flyers. See Table 4 on Page 608 of the article. The research is also featured as a Practice Prize Video at the Marketing Science Institute. The authors suggest that the company spend less on flyers and more on AdWords.

In other words, the above research now provides evidence from an organization's point of view that tapping into search marketing can really help in B2B marketing apart from certainly helping in zooming holiday consumer or B2C sales.

USPS to slow down first class mail: how the Internet affects your business

First class mail at the USPS is down. In fact down from 104 Billion pieces in 2001 to 73.5 Billion pieces last year and is projected to go down to 39 Billion pieces in 2020. As a result the post office is cutting half its mail processing facilities besides planning huge cuts in deliveries and post offices. There is just not enough volume of mail.The most poignant comment in all of this was from a TV news anchor who said that at least the holiday packages will get delivered on time this year as the cuts will happen from next year.Obviously all the ordering has been done on line and when the product is relatively in-expensive and you are not paying for speed the USPS delivers the product to you - faithfully and reliably. In the process a third party vendor for Amazon gets to make a sale.The USPS situation is once again a wake up call for every business - no matter what your business.

Consider that strangely, news stories about the decline of the USPS business rarely mentions Fedex or UPS its competitors in the package delivery business. It is the first class mail which is the culprit and clearly it is where the Internet has hit the USPS hard. People have got used to paying bills online  and that alone cuts the first class mail volume hugely. And if you consider that people might not respond by letter to offers (that are opened) in the junk mail - USPS has a problem. Today, if you like an offer in the mail - you are always given a convenient web address to respond. Thus,cutting out the chance to send a letter.

Here are a few questions to ask for your business, whether you have a product or service:

1. Can the customer order online? Are we giving her/him an easy opportunity to do so?
2. Can we deliver our product digitally (think books,music,training, movies, gaming, entertainment)? Are we doing so?
3. Can the customer pay online? Are we making it easy for the customer to do so?
4. Are we keeping all our product related information easily accessible online? Think of a customer who has lost your appliance's manual and just Google's it. Do they find the manual information at a forum or at the official website of your organization? 
5. Are we able to converse with the customer online for service matters?

A hard look at your business should uncover gaps in all of these areas. Your business has changed both in the way you attract new customers and how you service them. Can you re-define your business mission for the digital world ?

Website Re-Design: do not remove old content if you want your audience to find you

All manner of organizations seem to get tired of the look and feel of their advertising and communication material. Consequently billions are spent worldwide on re-launch, re-branding, re-design just because the audience is "supposed" to have got tired of the "old" design. If you notice only the biggest brands (like Coca Cola and McDonald's ) do not redesign their logos and have extremely detailed and thick design manuals to follow throughout the world. A can supplier to Coca Cola in Brazil needs to match the exact red on the can. These mega brands were onto something - much before the Internet and search engines.

In a non-Internet world you cannot have even minor changes in your brand communication without some loss of audience traction. In the Internet world when your audience (customers,suppliers and stakeholders) search for you or some particular aspect of your activity.It's really important to be found.

Between organizational leaders,advertising agencies,digital marketers and website folks   somehow "looks" sometimes counts more than the "content." Suddenly everyone is so ashamed of the old content that they simply take it off-line. This is just disastrous for Search Engine Optimization(SEO) and particularly ironical as there is no additional cost to keeping the old digital content up.

Now the Google bot (yes Google's eyes are mechanical - OK I mean digital) had classified and stored your old content over months and years. As you added more content and more people found you,  refered you- your search engine rankings improved or you became better in SEO terms.

Now your organization takes off the old content and there is some time gap between putting up the new content. In this period all your search engine visitors find broken links and are disappointed. If the search engine bots can't find your old content - guess what:  your web ranking and credibility declines.

Just think of a retail store or coffee shop in the brick world. Would you as the store-owner smother the building with tarpaulin including its signs - as you renovate?  No. And that's what happens when you take off old web content.

Granted that  if you are re-launching,re-branding or re-designing you are doing so because you are not Coca Cola or McDonald's. But ask your web folks to make sure that all website content is never taken off and only added to. Contact StratoServe.