If you know a company — customer, supplier, friend, or your own — that could benefit
from improved operations, from improved operations, let us know.
Your best interest is our best interest.

The Finish Strong^® monthly e-newsletter is for business leaders who recognize Operations as a strategic function that creates competitive advantage, profitability and brand loyalty to the marketplace.

READY TODAY FOR TOMORROW
Do your customers need to lower their expectations when doing business with you?

Your customers download books to their electronic readers using WiFi. They can easily see their ordering history along with recommendations based on that order history. And they can do that 24/7, including holidays.

Your customers can shop, viewing clothing in 360 degree rotations on an avatar reflecting their weight, height and hair color, just to see how it would look on them. And in many cases, orders today are shipped today.

Your customers can review the technical specifications of just about anything they consider buying online.

They have been able to do all of that for many years now, and technology keeps advancing. I can hardly imagine what will happen next to make my finding, customizing and buying activities even easier.

If you're not ready for today, will there be a tomorrow?

Your toughest competition is ready today for tomorrow. You need to be there too.

LEVERAGING OPEN SOURCE
I first became familiar with "open source" as a viable development approach about 15 years ago, thanks to two of my nephews. They told me about Linux, an open source computer operating system. Since then, I've seen open source development, learning, distribution in numerous venues. The concept of open source extends way beyond software.

You may make fun of Wikipedia, but the concept of making all information available to everyone is brilliant, and clearly has the support of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. If you think something is wrong or incomplete, fix it. That's the beauty of open source.

Don't like Microsoft? Download the free open source versions of Word, Excel, and Powerpoint that were developed in much the same way as Linux and Wikipedia.

TED was founded in the early 1980's as a nonprofit devoted to "Ideas Worth Spreading" and has become a significant open source approach to idea development and sharing. As Google continues developing methods to help us find and see everything about a topic of interest to us, being uniformed is less and less forgivable.

Does your product development, market research and marketing leverage the powerful capabilities of the new social processes embodied in open source? Do you really want to limit your company's thinking to the brilliance of internal resources? Creative thinking abounds; leverage it.

FINISH STRONG^®

The Starting Pistol
Harvey Firestone:
"Capital isn't that important in business. Experience isn't that important. You can get both of these things. What is important is ideas."

The Tape
Rebecca Morgan:
"All your employees, customers, suppliers and consultants have ideas, and good ones; listen for them."

TALK WITH FULCRUM VIA SOCIAL MEDIA