Your Best Asset

Stacy Bergot's article ("Power to the People," December 5, 2000) was a joy to read and once again reveals the ability of Intelligent Enterprise to convey events from the perspective of those involved.

We are in a world of constant communications - a world in which the movement of voice, data, and images is now the essential component that defines the way we relate to each other as individuals, enterprises, and societies.

The world is smaller and the possibilities are larger. Yet, communication remains what it has always been - one person reaching to another or to millions.

The make-or-break moments when time and money are critical are when our clients recognize the full measure of our commitment and our attitude.

A company's ability to offer quality and excellence lies in its people. People are your foremost asset, and your business philosophy should be based on team management, accessibility, and respect for the entire team.

Nurturing and sustaining long-term relationships with your best customers is where you'll find the real profits. Customers want more personalization, and learning how to manage virtual conversation with customers is the key to the kind of relationship that will drive increased value exchange and loyalty.

The only way to guarantee 100 percent customer satisfaction is through the application of a comprehensive customer relationship solution. The result is a business recognized and valued for its superior products, services, and most important, the powerful relationships it has fostered between customers and employees.

As the 21st century dawns, more and more companies are entering the global arena. Businesses must overcome the global barriers of different languages, time zones, currencies, and large geographic areas.

In the 1990s, we learned that sustainable profit and growth come from loyal customers. Measuring and rewarding people for retaining and building on current customers vs. acquiring new customers is a major cultural and economic shift for most companies.

Survey Wrap-Ups

>Gartner Group Inc. conducted a nationwide telephone survey of 1,005 registered voters, between November 30 and December 5, 2000. Fifty percent of those surveyed said they would be very willing to go to a polling place and cast their vote using a touch screen, similar to a bank ATM. Twelve percent of the respondents said they were not at all willing to use such technology (called direct registered electronic voting).

>The sentiment for e-voting is not unanimous, however. Even among heavy Internet users, 18 percent are not willing to use the Internet to register or to vote. That proportion rises to more than half (52 percent) among people who don't use the Internet at all, who still constitute one-third of respondents in this study.

>A Meta Group survey found that although IT staff are working longer, they are producing less. The study found that U.S. computer professionals worked an average of 45 hours a week in 2000, an increase of 36 percent from 1999. The increase outside the United States was 30 percent. But the increasing complexity of technology projects and the resulting need to learn more have been detrimental to productivity. The average U.S. software developer produced 9,000 lines of code in 1999. In 2000, the average fell by 47 percent to 6,220 lines of code. Productivity at non-U.S. companies fell 29 percent, from 9,100 lines of code last year to 7,000 this year.