The Commercial Modular Building Blog

 Everyone knows the importance of good customer service. It can make or break a sale, it can determine whether a customer makes repeat purchases in the long term, and it can be passed by word of mouth from loyal customer to customer, which generates even more sales in the future.

Good customer service is an essential aspect when it comes to crafting a lasting, impressionable brand.

The business leaders that know this experience lasting success, while the ones that ignore this generally fall behind, though some can survive.

 There are always plenty of ways to achieve great customer service. General policy can be established which constitutes part of the company’s culture. Employees can be educated about the culture and ways in which they can appeal to customers and assist.

Social media is also another great way to interact with customers and really go the extra mile that makes them remember you. This process is described nicely in this article.

The art of good customer service has expanded due to the new complexities of social media technology. There are many more opportunities now to put a personal touch to your companies interactions with customer and keep them coming back. Definitely worth a read.

Good employee morale is essential for a well-functioning business. And that’s not only because happy employees are just more pleasant. Happy employees contribute to a better functioning business as a whole, since business itself consists of relations and cooperative actions that take place between people.

If you have a bunch of workers who are constantly in bad moods, or fatigued, or they just don’t work well together, your processes are going to suffer. Think of how long it takes to get a project done when you have that “one guy” who takes forever getting you the information you need, or sending in your report, or lagging on the assembly line. Let alone if there are multiple people that are dragging their feet.

Employee emotions, motivations, perceptions, attitudes, and everything else about their person is going to dictate how quickly tasks get done, and how smoothly the overall process works. Each mini task effects all of the other tasks they relate to, and so if even one gets held up, the whole chain slows.

That’s why it is so important for business to keep their employees happy and motivated. And that’s why there are so many how to articles stressing employee morale and motivation. That’s also the reason for recreation centers and conference rooms and cafeterias and every other social facility that is useful in a workplace. It is important to integrate all of your workers into the company culture.

That said, here’s some useful articles about employee motivation, and even about midday napping that we’d like to pass on.

Companies that adapt to the new economy have to innovate and slim down.

We understand pretty well now that today’s global economy is fast-paced and highly competitive. Many CEOs are asking themselves what they need to do to survive in this new, ever-changing global marketplace in the face of an ongoing recession. We’ve talked about what successful companies are doing to adapt: preparing for change, investing in green energy, branding…now I want to talk about the final two attributes that make today’s businesses adaptable and successful in this economy: the ability to innovate and slim down processes for maximum efficiency.

The necessity of innovation 

In today’s global economy, it is highly necessary for businesses to make innovation one of their dominant philosophies and to take measures in carrying out innovation on a practical level, which relates back to the article in which I stressed the need for businesses to be change-ready.

 The market is constantly changing, and very rapidly, with the incredible speed and availability of information. New competition is entering the marketplace all the time and this competition is constantly offering new ideas, taking advantage of previously untapped and unrealized consumer power. Technology is constantly changing as well, posing new problems and providing new marketable solutions.

The highly adaptive companies that are surviving are the companies that are constantly innovating to keep up with the market.

Innovation itself can pertain to technology, product ideas, marketing, or even the organization of the company. It doesn’t simply have to be about coming up with some new gadget or style, it could just mean restructuring the company as a whole or radically altering a company’s image.

Innovative companies are best able to remain relevant and appealing…and thus successful.

On slimming down

I approach the topic of slimming down with caution, especially when coupling the topic with the topic of innovation.

One of the main barriers to innovation is when a company insists on efficiency and profit-making ability as opposed to nurturing innovation and taking risks. Slimming down business processes can go two ways: either you make your processes more efficient and more effective, or you halt innovation and suffer for it.

Adaptive companies can restructure their processes and trim unnecessary waste in order to become more efficient, but they must also take care not to stifle much-needed innovation, and they must not be afraid to take risks either.

The optimal strategy is striking a balance between lean business processes and bold innovation. Not easy to do, but the successful companies will keep in mind both elements.

Conclusion

We’ve seen that the new economy poses quite a challenge for businesses. But with challenge comes innovation and change, and the emerging victors will be stronger and more successful than ever. To come out on top of the competition, it takes a business that can adapt and pursue bold new ideas, while taking advantage of existing methods and infrastructure to keep moving.

Branding

Branding has become an increasingly important practice in the new economy. As the global marketplace becomes increasingly crowded and competitive, it becomes necessary for a business to distinguish itself and develop a lasting consumer following. Because of the importance of developing a good brand, branding itself has become a highly involved science.

Today, the process of building a brand involves coming up with an appropriate name, color scheme, a possible symbol, slogan, and then marketing all of this not only to consumers but to the company’s employees themselves. Today’s successful brand is not just a name with some pleasant imagery; it is a culture, a way of life.

Sounds pretty involved, right? It sure is. Businesses spend big bucks on consumer research, figuring out what demographics to target and what makes those demographics tick. They then spend big bucks building brands that will connect with their desired demographics. After that they spend some more big bucks marketing their brands and nurturing and sculpting their brands into something distinct.  So is it all worth it?

Well, for starters, today’s most successful companies have built distinct brand names. Think of giants like Starbucks, McDonalds, or Nike. They have universally identifiable brands that can perpetuate their own cultures. Think of Apple’s products. Apple hardware has its own aesthetics that are immediately recognizable and completely different from everything else. A huge body of consumers identify with Apple’s products because of their slick appearance and air of elegance. Consumers identify with Apple on an ideological level. Owning an Apple product becomes part of that consumer’s identity. The consumer will defend that brand if they are taken care of. If a consumer identifies with a brand that deeply, that consumer is going to be loyal for life, as long as the company is still around and doesn’t do anything stupid or terrible. That is a powerful notion and essential in a competitive economy.

Now earlier I talked about how rapidly today’s marketplace landscape is changing. A brand will serve as a sort of anchorpoint for a changing company. A company’s product can change visually, or different features can come out or phase out of existence. A company could put out a completely different product altogether, or change the way it does business, but with that established brand, the consumer will continue to be loyal to the company, no matter what changes it goes through (as long as the company has been keeping up its side of the bargain and remaining true to its fundamental ideals of course!). With a brand, a company doesn’t have to start all over in marketing every time they change up their products.

Am I suggesting it is necessary to get as involved in building a brand as today’s business giants to survive in today’s economy? No of course not. However, it is important to understand the power of brands and why the big guys pay so much attention to them. Engaging in branding (whether committing to the full blown science or just creating a brand name to slap on a product) is one of the major tools a company can employ in adapting to and surviving in today’s economy. A brand is a way for a company to stand out in the crowded marketplace and gain loyal consumers.

In the last post of this series, I will go over the last two ways a company can survive in the new economy: innovate and slim down.

Flexible, Agile Businesses

In previous posts, I have beaten the notion of the necessity of change into the ground. So in this post, I am going to talk about it some more! However, this time I will relate it to survival in the new economy.

What characterizes our modern economy? Well, we are increasingly doing business on a global scale. The strongest companies in the US are growing and expanding their operations into other regions, such as Asia and Europe. Then, we see strong companies in regions such as Asia and Europe expand into our region and do business here. New competition is arising from different places in the world every day. With new competition, new ideas, and new innovations come changes in the market landscape and the way we do business. The changes we make in response to the changing market affect the market back and our competition as well and so this feedback mechanism continues back and forth.

But what’s the big deal? Hasn’t this always been the nature of competition? And hasn’t global commerce been around for a while?

To an extent, yes, global commerce has been around for quite some time, and we have seen these competitive behaviors since the dawn of competition. But what is different today is the extent of the global market and how fast information travels.

In the past, businesses were confined to the regions they did business in and traded goods worldwide. Now, businesses have a more pervasive presence worldwide, which affects respective economies and even cultures in a new way.

With the rapid information transfer that the internet allows, market activity has become faster and denser. Research can be done quicker and efforts can be coordinated instantly. What all of this results in is a highly volatile, ever-changing market to do business in. New innovations pop up all the time. Advances in technology change the market environment over night.

To survive, today’s businesses have to adapt to all of these changes and leverage the changing market conditions in order to attract more consumers and increase revenue. A changing market calls for changing businesses.

Businesses that are flexible are going to be the businesses that can change when the market takes a sudden turn. Flexible businesses have plans for reorganization. They also encourage employees to innovate and try new things whenever possible. They make change their policy.

I’ve talked about this before, but building with modular construction allows a business to have change-ready facilities. If a business needs a new workspace to begin working on smart phone applications, or a new computer room for social media marketing experts, that business will be able to expand upon their existing facilities without necessitating disruptive construction. New technologies require new workspaces to produce the latest product on the market. A smart business has to be ready for whatever is around the corner so they can be among the first to take advantage of it.

In the next post, I’ll talk about the significance of the green movement in relation to the new economy and how smart businesses are getting on board.

The Overview

Today’s economy is a fast, rapidly changing, virtually unpredictable landscape to do business in. The market landscape is changing every day. New businesses spring up and old businesses close as market trends take off in new directions, seemingly without warning. New, unexpected sources of competition emerge, forcing competing companies to alter their strategies quickly and effectively.

With the advent of the Internet and continuing on today, substantial research can be done quickly. Companies can check up on their competition with ease and alter their business strategies accordingly. With a rapid exchange of information comes an increased rate of business activity and change. As the global market sees more and more activity and encompasses more and more countries, we see new sources of competition arising all over the globe; as if domestic competition wasn’t enough!

It lends credit to the phrase, “It’s like a jungle out there.” And to an extent, this phrase rings true. Analogous to the diversity of jungle life, we see a diverse assortment of businesses out there, all of them with different services, approaches, and (sometimes strange) personalities. But with diversity and healthy competition comes a brilliance and vibrancy of life. Just take a look at the Amazon. Though this new economy is sometimes unpredictable and at times crazy, I myself am optimistic about the resulting benefits it will provide.  

But the question persists: in the face of this new, global, fast economy, how does a business survive?  Well by adapting of course! A business can adapt by becoming stronger, more intelligent, and craftier in method. This is not easily done, of course.  

Our struggles to understand this strange new fast-track economy have been exacerbated by this seemingly endless recession we have been stuck in. Times are still tough! But they are also getting better. And though this recession has been hard on us all, I think it is also making us stronger: more lean, more efficient, more conscious of the market.

Add our current environmental crises to the mix and we can be seen to have a lot on our plate. But even though it has been a struggle, we are now more conscious of the environment than ever. Our hardships and worries have given us a greater awareness of the need to generate sustainable living…both on an ecological level and an economic level as well. Our hardships have proven to be bittersweet. I believe we will come out of this recession stronger than ever and able to build a better society in the future.

This article series will cover how businesses are adapting to the changing economy and how they are continuing to survive in this new, crazy marketplace.

In the next blog post, I will go over how successful businesses are becoming more flexible and change-friendly in order to keep up with changing market conditions.

So in my previous post I went a bit philosophical on you and hopefully I didn’t bore you in the process. I wanted to talk about the benefits of modular flexibility in an age where change is necessary. Well, now I’d like to talk about the necessity of change in a more concrete fashion.

First I’d like to throw a couple of statistics at you:

•   A full 1/3 of the companies listed in the 1970 Fortune 500 vanished by 1983

So what we can infer from that statistic is that these companies vanished as technology and culture changed. Their leadership did not prepare the companies for change, so when the world changed around them, they had to go out of business.

• 67% of companies did not know the financial cost of IT downtime to their business.

This statistic is surprising considering the losses that are possible because of IT downtime. Losses could be estimated from $10,000 – $1,000,000 dollars an hour for some companies due to IT downtime. How does downtime happen? And how does it wreak so much havoc?

Well, downtime usually occurs when change happens upon a company that is not poised for change. The company scrambles to make the changes with a huge loss in efficiency, and day to day business processes stop and employees become unproductive. When your business processes stop and your productiveness goes down, your business hurts! No wonder downtime tallies up so many losses.

Change is a necessary condition for existence. Even for so much as a second to pass, change is needed. So if the nature of the world is that of change, then the nature of your business must be change, in order to continue to prosper.

Always have a plan for change to follow for your company. If you are faced with a sudden change and your company isn’t prepared for it, you’re going to scramble around trying to implement  the change and your company is going to experience costly downtime.

Imagine for a moment two planks of plywood. If that plywood is struck by a sudden force, which piece is going to remain whole: a rigid, brittle piece of plywood, or a flexible, bendable piece of plywood? The same principle holds for a company. The flexible, bendable company is going to remain whole when it is struck by a sudden, new force.

How do you plan for change? Well, there are many facets of a company that can be made change-ready but I do not have enough expertise to advise you on everything. I do have enough expertise to advise you on one facet: the buildings that a company conduct their business in. Allow me to explain.

The nice thing about modular building systems is that they are flexible by their very nature. Modular wall systems are designed to be removed, added, and rearranged to meet an endless number of applications.

When it all comes down to it, if you construct buildings for your company and you use modular construction to do it, you are already planning for change on the building side. Modular construction is based on change. When you build a modular building, you are giving that building the capacity to be just about anything you need it to be for your changing business.

Now that’s some smart and easy planning right there.