Industrial Affiliates Blog

Venture in Internet Marketing

2010-09-04T09:01:00.002-04:00

Industrial Affiliates is looking for an Internet Marketing firm ,
- Located less than 30 minutes drive North or South of Laval, Quebec
- Specialized in WEB publishing, Search Engine optimization and PHP programming ;
- Valued between 750K and 1M $ ;
- That has been operating for several years ;
- Not satisfied profitability ;
- Interested to address world markets in partnership with a large company ;
- Interested to explore possibilities for capital/venture/acquisition .

In this context, we are also interested to discuss performance based commission to any third party who can refer us a company that would close an agreement with us.
Please contact pierre.dumas@affiliesindustriels.net

ExportPro.org: REPEX new trade mark.

2010-07-20T07:05:00.005-04:00

July 10 2010, REPEX is proud to announce its new trade mark on North American and world markets and presents one of the templates of its forthcoming portal

Innovation is one of the foundation of our economies. But innovation is foremost in relation to the needs of the markets. It is from the needs of the markets that new ideas emerge and are being converted in new products or services. It is also through the markets these new products and services gets converted in benefits for society.

Today REPEX innovates and mark a new step in its transformation on Quebec and Canada historical and main markets with the introduction of ExportPro.org 's template and trade mark.

Our new domain represents a market of over

200 million people
10 trillion dollars in GDP
50 million candidates including over 4 million engineers
5 000 business organizations and economic development agencies.

The introduction of ExportPro.org is also the opportunity for REPEX to reposition itself as a back office provider helping business organizations and economic development agencies to increase performance and networking. Our new trademark also evoke the use a computer ports as a way to increase commerce between businesses and professionals.

Doing so, ExportPro.org new era will contribute to implement the vision of its founders

Be a leader among the trade associations and groupings of businesses of Quebec through the implementation of WEB centric technologies with and for its economic partners
Be an inclusive organization whose members come from all the spheres of activity connected closely or by far to the international trade
Contribute to the progress of the practice of the international trade

ExportPro.org is meant to provide back office services networking communities located on large markets. ExportPro.org's bottom up strategy is based on the federation of a large number of small organizations while providing new services that will help local, regional and national organizations to network and improve performance.

For more information contact pierre.dumas@repex.qc.ca

OMS Enterprise: the Next Generation Opportunity Management Software

2010-07-11T06:18:00.012-04:00

Lead by Pierre Dumas, this week, Industrial Affiliates made a new step toward the configuration of OMS Enterprise, the next generation opportunity management software. Following its agreement with Industrial Affiliates, Internet Merchandising System installed its Powerful Online Business-to-Consumer Reservation & Booking Software Platform ready to be configured and converted into Industrial Affiliates' Opportunity Management System.

This installation launches the configuration of OMS Enterprise, the next generation of opportunity management software operating as a service (Saas). The software provides unlimited information distribution capacity with a truly scalable, value added, 'Mix & Match' Internet reservation & booking software. The system can be easily adapted to the OMS as a large interactive selling platform with cross-channel functionalities, XML/API & multi vendor opportunity reservation solution.

Leap ahead of what is currently on the market, OMS Enterprise aims to become one of the most advanced opportunity/ecommerce online reservation control solutions provided online as a service (SaaS) .

OMS Enterprise accommodates multiple distribution channels, with multi-division, multi-brand marketing strategies, providing web-based interfaces for Call Center, Business to Agent to Business (B2A2B) reservations via online web sales, call-center, front desk, mobile, on-board & kiosk sales.

The opportunity reservation software is integrated on a modular basis and is highly customizable, scalable, PCI compliant, for any size operation using PHP and with a powerful MySQL database.

Ready to be configured the system is only few weeks away from being an effective applications to reserve opportunities in a multi city, multi organizations, multi trade category, multi industry and multilingual environment.

For more information contact Pierre Dumas pierre.dumas@affiliesindustriels.net

Economic Development Agencies structures: Like it was 25 years ago

2010-02-18T19:31:00.004-05:00

Local Economic Development Agencies and Chambers of Commerce are not yet organized to optimize access to markets. In some way they are operating like community banks were operating 25 years ago.

25 years ago, there was about 14 000 community banks. Between 1994 and 2003, the number of community banks fell from 9600 to 7300; at the same time, branch banking nearly doubled with about 86 branch banks totalizing about 40 000 branches in 2003.

Since then, the traditional image of the brick and mortar bank where the bank manager was understanding the local market and had strong customer relationships changed dramatically in good part because of technology and regulatory changes. Automated teller machines (ATMs) proliferated; the Internet gave rise to virtual banking. Banks developed centralized call centers to handle customer service issues and to initiate transactions. The way banking was brought to local markets changed dramatically because of technology and convergence.

The same is about to happen for local Economic Development Agencies and Chambers of Commerce. Currently federated through regional and local office. They are not yet organized to optimize access to markets. In some way they are operating like community banks were operating 25 years ago (if not 50 years ago). Still today, thousands of economic development agencies operate as "brick and mortar centric" organizations where directors understand their local market and have strong customer relationships locally.

But things change. Economic Development Departments and head offices can witness a drastic change in the way international communications are performed. They have realized that preparing trade shows and commercial mission are not sufficient to attract commerce, investment and contracts.

We can predict that media and consulting convergence is about to change the geographic federation of economic development agencies by region, states and provinces and cities. Instead of being focused on local markets, agencies will become focus on export markets using the new media and virtually federating with flexibility under diverse criteria and categories.

Under economic pressure governments will be forced to accelerate these changes and to put away the dominant organization architecture based on brick and mortar. The convergence of digital media will change the current balance between political marketing and business marketing and accelerate the divide between these functions.

The private sector has already taken a large part of international communications channels; this trend shall affect the way economic development agencies will perform in the near future.

Selected as finalist by New York State

2010-02-16T22:39:00.002-05:00

Last December, Industrial Affiliates has received a request for proposal to provide business development services to the New York State Department for Economic Development (NYS DED) and to the members of its export clusters. Last January our proposal was selected as one of the three finalists.

We beleive our selection as finalist was based on the strong background of professionals who joined us. For this occasion, we have regrouped professionnals from Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec joining together for the proposal and cumulating an impressive experience in Export, Training, Consultation, Market Intelligence and e-commerce. Several members of this Linkedin Group were part of this proposal

Inspired from corporate strategies used in the financial products and services industry, we proposed a scalable development plan based on the tools of the 21rst century. Our marketing plan and our tools can service a single business as well as to develop a network of hundreds of economic development agencies and thousands of export ready companies.

It was an honor to receive this request for proposal. Our selection as finalist energized our group and multiplied the possibilities to expand our reach in Quebec, Ontario and New York State in the very short term.

Our recent venture for the OMS Enterprise is an other step towards the implementation of the reach out plan. Today, we can say several economic development agencies are showing interest to use the tools and the business model to expand their reach in New York as well as several other states and provinces.

As the foundation of our business model is based on software as a service (saas) any one of our readers could use the system and the business model for their own success and business development.

In other words, our experience can become yours.

Industrial Affiliates and IMS add “OMS Enterprise” to their OEM agreement

2010-02-15T16:16:00.002-05:00

Industrial Affiliates and Internet Merchandising Systems Inc. announced today their intention to add “OMS Enterprise” under the umbrella of their OEM Software Agreement signed on November 28 2009.

”OMS Enterprise” is part of this new generation of scalable softwares that include virtual resources provided as a service to businesses and professionals. OMS Enterprise is designed to:

Help business managers to advertise an unlimited number of business offers, to receive leads and reserve them under the the account of the disclosing party as well as to send informations of the sales process to the disclosing party.
Help Economic Development Agencies, to advertise an unlimited number of businesses on the WEB and to receive reports about the performance of their business cluster or partners.
Create an unlimited number of free regional business opportunity boards that extends the reach of businesses to receive sales leads from new markets and find new clients they could not find easily otherwise.
Help businesses receive leads from professionals, reserve each leads under the professional accounts of disclosing party and provide systematic follow up.

”OMS Enterprise” is also designed to find business offers and opportunities through

1.Economic Development categories and subcategories
Trade

direct sales
distribution

Investment

Acquisition
Joint Venture
New Implementation
Real Estate

Contracts

Lisensor/licensee
Sub-contractor/subcontractee
Strategic Alliance

2. North American Industry Codes (NAIC)

Including

Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing and Hunting
Mining, Quarrying, and Oil and Gas Extraction
Manufacturing
Wholesale Trade
Information and Cultural Industries
Finance and Insurance
Real Estate and Rental and Leasing
Professional, Scientific and Technical Services
Health Care and Social Assistance

3.Geographic targets

Region (ex: North America),
Country,
State/province,
Airport city

For example, ”OMS Enterprise” software design can help to advertise and publish business offers from New York State companies searching for acquisition opportunities in the mining industry in Canada; to receive leads, reserve these leads under the name of the disclosing pary and to follow up information to them.

The extension of our OEM software License Agreement with IMS Cart to ”OMS Enterprise” is a major step for the integration of our services within technological clouds, which will increase our strength and provide access to large markets » said Pierre Dumas, president and founder of Industrial Affiliates.

« OMS Enterprise is designed and configured from IMS's Enterprise Distribution Manager, a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) application, with a powerful pre-built functionality that delivers features, benefits and exceptional price performance», said John Shenton, President of Internet Merchandising Systems. IMS Enterprise Distribution Manager can used by any reservation company seeking a system that enables them to distribute rates and inventory online and establish a significant and powerful booking and reservation online e-distribution centre.

About Internet Merchandising Systems Inc
Internet Merchandising Systems Inc. was founded on a commitment to develop innovative products and services to meet the online reservation needs of our clients and partners in improving their profitability and productivity. IMS has created and delivered, pre-built application functionality with a scalable service orientated architecture for Internet reservations, and integrated ticketing systems that helps companies build connected enterprises to capture more market share, communicate effectively and operate competitively in today’s Internet environment. www.imscart.com

About Industrial Affiliates
Industrial Affiliates provides business networks development services with agents referring opportunities to organizations, whether business associations, manufacturers, consultation and service providers. Industrial Affiliates also help to systematically manage opportunities between product and service suppliers and referring agents while keeping suppliers in charge of customer relationships. They acquire new customers they could hardly reach otherwise and pay referring agents only when sales or qualifying actions are completed. www.industrialaffiliates.net

Forthcoming Marketing Campaign

2010-02-07T19:12:00.202-05:00

In the past few months, Industrial Affiliates signed affiliation and alliances with

Salesforce http://www.salesforce.com/ ,
Taleo http://www.taleo.com/ ,
Echosign http://www.echosign.com/ ,
CFCI http://www.contactsmonde.com/ and
Help Online http://www.help-online.ca/ .

Our business offer

What we are looking for
Industrial Affiliates is looking for companies and professionals interested to develop business in an interdependent and complementary fashion on new markets.

We propose a unique marketing campaign
Our first goal is to federate a group of companies interested to publish and advertise business offers to over 1200 economic development agencies located in 10 provinces and 25 states. These states are located in the North East, Mid Atlantic, Mid West and South of United States. Globally these markets represent over 10 000 billion dollars in Gross Domestic Product.

Our second goal is to find sponsors interested to begin this reach out plan in

New York State,
Ontario and
Quebec.

These provinces and state represent over 1 700 billion dollars in GDP.

How can this campaign be free of charge?
We believe that our federation in the same marketing campaign can be a powerful vector to contact thousands of economic development agencies, intermediaries and clients the targeted markets. We also know this audience has a strategic value for large private companies and for governments. However, at this point in time, we do not have confirmation of sponsorship yet and we do not guarantee that we will have the sponsorships.

For Industrial Affiliates and for you as well, this campaign is a way to open new information pipelines and to gradually increase the number of companies using the same approach. We can start with small steps and grow as we gain momentum.

Geographic segmentation
We plan three stages in the reach out plan

1. Advertise and publish business offers in and between New York State, Ontario and Quebec markets. .

2. Same in the remaining 8 other provinces Canada and 13 states of USA:

Canada: Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New-Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia Saskatchewan

USA: Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Wisconsin).

3. Reach out to 11 more states

USA: Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, Indiana, Tennessee, Missouri, Louisiana, Alabama, South Carolina.

We estimate that over 190 000 companies would be involved in interstate, inter provincial and export in these markets. We also think that Economic Development Agencies and other intermediaries can become good intermediaries as they have contacts, knowledge and access to these companies.

The foundations of this campaign
Our approach is to federate several small companies into export clusters sharing the same marketing campaign.

This campaign is also based on entrepreneurship. We are all independent contractors. Nothing in our joint marketing campaign must be interpreted a partnership, legal association or joint venture. The marketing campaign will include an advertising agreement including several disclaimers and conditions to protect everyone as independent businesses.

Industrial Affiliates do not act as a sales intermediary or referrer during this promotion except for the companies that we have signed a formal affiliation agreement. So anyone who wants to join the campaign do not commit commissions, royalties or fees unless it is specifically agreed

Industrial Affiliates simply shares a marketing process , a communication plan and communication platform to advertise and publish business offers to economic development agencies or other intermediaries and clients.

Each business offers proposed by you must therefore have a reasonable competitive edge on the targeted market. Your business offer also need to be structured in a way to attract members in its customer value chain. Your business offer must therefore emerge from a thoughtful marketing and communication plan. This is the responsibility of each members

My roles as entrepreneur and publisher
As many entrepreneurs I have several roles in my company. I am a marketing consultant and Internet Technology entrepreneur. My roles will be described in our marketing agreement before we advertise business offers. Acting as a publisher I am interested to publish business offers that in our judgment will make sense to the audience as economic development agent.

However, we do hope this campaign will lead you to generate sales and along time to invest more in new marketing and communication services increasing sales and reducing costs. We also hope like most of our members, that we will continue to expand our affiliations with other companies, continue to provide marketing services and Develop IT systems

Your role
You are in charge of your plan and you delegate tasks and responbilities. You are responsible to advertise good and competitive business offers

Don't be too technical. Think of this campaign as if it was a trade show: your role is to write a business offers that can raise attention, interest and action from our readers, intermediaries and prospects.

Tangibles for your organization

First and foremost, the federation of our business offers aims to find sponsors for our collective campaign;
This campaign can create new information pipelines that will help you find new intermediaries and clients on new markets;
You will gradually learn from this new marketing experience.

Take this opportunity and advertise your business offer.
Our interest is to convert networking into sales.
I invite you to take this opportunity

Take the time to advertise and publish a precise business offer according to your business priorities

You can write as many business offers that you want.

In the beginning you will advetise in the section discussion of this group.

Later we intend to publish your offer on the platform appropriate for our audience

Just make sure your offer can raise attention, interest and action on these markets.
It will be useful any way.

I have traveled to developed business in 20 of the 35 states and provinces targeted.
I remain available to answer your questions.

Pierre Dumas, M.Sc.

The Extended Enterprise - Part 1

2010-01-31T17:01:00.014-05:00

Enterprise Architecture in commerce

With the rise of WEB centric systems and cloud computing, CRM companies and Economic Development Agencies would benefit most by federating small businesses and agents building enterprises from bottom up. Already on the WEB large numbers of agents and small companies have been architectured and federated in Enterprise systems in the Real Estate Industry, Travel Industry, Financing Industry. In the field of Software as a Service (Saas), the bottom up Enterprise approach has proven to be far more efficient than the Top Down Enterprise approach. In the field of export and interstate commerce, the same kind of Bottom Up Enterprise Architecture can be federated to increase sales interaction and cost efficiency.

In today's world, it is possible for a large number of people and small organizations working together to grow from their joint involvement. Small and medium size businesses that are grouped by government agencies with export clusters will benefit the most if they delegate business intelligence responsibilities to a common business development agency and if they use WEB centric CRM systems to provide information from bottom up as well as to receive information top down.

The Bottom Up Enterprise Architectures emerging from these federated organizations can be far more efficient than traditional structures in their domain because of the increased flow of information within the customer relationship value chains and because of the cost reductions arising from the use of Internet technologies on large territories.

Enterprise Architecture globally in commerce

As reported by Wikipedia

An enterprise architecture description gives a holistic, systematic description of an enterprise. It encompasses business functions, business process, people, organization, business information, software applications and computer systems with their relationships to enterprise goals.

Describing the architecture of an enterprise aims primarily to improve the effectiveness or efficiency of the business itself. This includes innovations in the structure of an organization, the centralization or federation of business processes, the quality and timeliness of business information, or ensuring that money spent on information technology (IT) can be justified.

One method of using this information to improve the functioning of a business involves developing an "architectural vision": a description of the business that represents a “target” or “future state” goal. Once this vision is well understood, a set of intermediate steps are created that illustrate the process of changing from the present situation to the target.

While enterprise architecture is closely tied to IT, it should be viewed in the broader context of business optimization in that it addresses business architecture, performance management and process architecture as well as more technical subjects.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_architecture

It should also be noted that when redesigning work-flows to improve efficiency, Enterprise Architects considers Bottom Up as well as Top Down approaches. The goal is to gain efficiency.

Therefore, in the world of Enterprise Architecture, it is out of the question to ideologically reject Bottom Up work-flows. This rejection attitude would defeit the whole purpose to adapt, improve and increase efficiency of existing Enterprise Architectures.

More...

Part 1: Enterprise Architecture in commerce

Part 2: A Bottom Up Enterprise Architecture in computing: Cloud Computing

Part 3: A Sales Architecture : targeting the Enterprise companies

Part 4: The Extended Enterprise for Export clusters

The Extended Enterprise - Part 2

2010-01-31T17:01:00.013-05:00

A Bottom Up Enterprise Architecture in computing: Cloud Computing

One of the most flamboyant example of the benefit of federating small organizations in a larger cohesive Enterprise built from Bottom Up is the business strategy underlying Cloud Computing.

Since 2000, Internet Technology companies are increasingly using Cloud Computing as a strategic way to grow. While the Enterprise application development with traditional software are complex, slow, and expensive, Cloud Computing emerged as a new Enterprise Architecture to address these problems.

According to Salesforce.com, inc,

Cloud computing refers to the use of Internet (“cloud”) based computing, storage and connectivity technology for a variety of different services. The pervasiveness of the Internet, along with the dramatic decline in the pricing of the technology components has enabled this new generation of computing, in which dynamically scalable and often virtual resources are provided as a service to both enterprises and consumers. Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure “in the cloud” that supports them.

In the context of enterprise business applications, cloud computing fundamentally changes the way business applications are developed and deployed. Application developers no longer need to create and manage their own infrastructure of servers, storage, network devices, operating system software and development tools in order to create a business application. Instead, the entire infrastructure is managed in the cloud, and developers simply use an Internet browser to access the development environment.

http://www.salesforce.com/assets/pdf/investors/FY09AnnualReport.pdf

Salesforce.com, inc. has introduced its cloud computing platform http://www.force.com/ which became a strategic tool to increase the strength of the company on the market. Ranking 43rd in the Fortune 100, Salesforce.com, inc describes itself as an "Enterprise Cloud Computing Company " and one of the top companies in the U.S. . This position illustrate how the Bottom Up enterprise approach can be productive and efficient.

An other company, Taleo, has chosen cloud computing as part of its growth strategy http://new.taleo.com/resources/about-cloud-computing and launched Solution Exchange http://solutionexchange.taleo.net/sx/ . More than 4,200 organizations use Taleo for talent acquisition and performance management, including 46 of the Fortune 100 and over 3,500 small and medium sized businesses across 200 countries and territories.

Globally technological clouds help companies to expand from a Bottom Up Enterprise Architecture approach. His approach helps computing organization to grow their business faster and increase brand brand recognition faster and at a lower cost than traditional Top Down Enterprises.

Cloud Computing is a strong example of business development based on Bottom Up Enterprise Architecture approach within the product/development value chain.

The benefits of Bottom up Enterprise Architecture within the "Customer Relationship Value Chain" is not quite well understood as they are within the "Product Development Value Chain".

More...
Part 1: Enterprise Architecture in commerce
Part 2: A Bottom Up Enterprise Architecture in computing: Cloud Computing
Part 3: A Sales Architecture : targeting the Enterprise companies
Part 4: The Extended Enterprise for Export clusters

The Extended Enterprise - Part 3

2010-01-31T17:00:00.007-05:00

A Sales Architecture : targeting the Enterprise companies

In the Customer Relationship Value Chain, Enterprise Business Representatives (EBR) rarely support Bottom Up business development strategies based on federating large numbers of small and medium size businesses.

In the traditional sales patterns Enterprise Business Representatives (EBR) methodically prioritize and prospect into enterprise companies structured with a president, vice presidents and divisions. Often, EBR are themselves part of regional teams, consisting of a Regional Vice President and a select number of Account Executives which focus on «Enterprise companies».

In this traditional Top Down sales model, leads, contacts, opportunities and sales originates from prospects at the top of the hierarchy list. EBR create and prioritize targeted account lists, methodically prospect into the accounts, and conduct high-level conversations with senior executives about their business operations.

This point of view is efficient to generate sales with large organizations but is ill equipped to efficiently address sales leads coming from large number of small organizations and individuals in the process to federate.

Increasing marketing attention to Bottom Up Enterprise Architecture

Over the past 5 years, convergence of communication and marketing tools has improved the capacity of aggregators to federate small and medium size businesses in cohesive business development Enterprises.

At the same time the economic crisis highlighted that traditional road shows, economic missions, magazine advertizing and trade shows and not necessarily the most efficient marketing tools.

Several industries already rebalanced their Enterprise Architecture, increasing access to the markets though Bottom Up Work-flows This strategy in the Customer Relationship Value Chain is often emerging using WEB centric software to federate large numbers of small and medium size organizations. The increased efficiency of the Bottom Up Approach is common knowledge in the Travel, Insurance, and Financial Service industries.

Would travelers deal with a travel agent who would not use an online reservation system and who could only sell travels in the one or two locations they visited in the past months?
Would home buyers deal with a real estate agent who does not have MLS system and who could only access information on houses they visited?
Would investors engage with agents who would not have access to online performance reports?

Despite the enormous sales opportunities arising from federated organizations, still several sales development organizations knowingly decide not to pay attention to this type of business architecture. They,

Focus almost exclusively under the Top Down Enterprise Company marketing-sales model.
Work mostly with the last opportunity contacts and neglect to systematically following up large number of leads;
Rely on few trade show participation to increase their sales networks;
Usually adopt a regional sales structure focusing to prospects located close to their office;
Loose sales reporting capacities on all sales leads that cannot be converted immediately into opportunities.

There is nothing wrong with these strategic choices. These organizations do not adapt because their managers do not perceive economic incentives to change for more cost effective, flexible, and efficient strategies.

In turn, their choices create opportunities for other organizations who see the benefits to better balancing their Top Down approach to the market with Bottom Up Enterprise Architectures.

For example, in computing, innovative companies increased performance through Cloud Computing.Likewise, in the Customer Relationship Value chain, other organizations are positioning themselves to federate large numbers of small organizations to increase access to market.

The Extended Enterprise - Part 4

2010-01-31T16:59:00.003-05:00

The Extended Enterprise for Export clusters

To customers on export markets, the Enterprise represents a combination of business organizations and governments that provide good and services. Often called the "Extended Enterprise", this point of view looks beyond each company and represents the complete value chain for good and services.

The Extended Enterprise is an enterprise architecture model raising leads and opportunities for a large number of small and medium size organizations federating within export clusters.

In defining the extended enterprise, managers determine which individuals and organizations they want to keep information about. They identify the kind of information they'd like to capture, and design systems that provide this information to the people who need it to facilitate their business. They then supply information to economic partners, employees, agent and distributors, partners and affiliates and prospective clients, which result in the extended enterprise.”

The Extended Enterprise can increase the value of its members who share common goals, policies and practices, and who delegate business intelligence, thus, increasing the flow of information though WEB Centric CRM Systems.

Globally, the Enterprise Architecture of the Extended Enterprise is on the Customer Relationship Value chain, what Cloud Computing is on the product development value chain: both Enterprise Architectures adopt a bottom up development strategy connecting with an array of small and medium size organizations operating under the same policies and practices increasing the efficiency for all.

The Extended Enterprise business model is a business opportunity in itself.

In 2010, the situation in sales and marketing have changed a lot. We believe it is time to adjust our sales and marketing strategies to the realities of the new economy. Everyone can see how the new economy has changed dramatically several industries such as publishing, job boards (Monster, Linkedin), advertizing (Google), travel, etc. IT companies are turning to the benefits of Cloud Computing to increase their power from bottom up with third parties. This is the new economy.

The business model of the Extended Enterprise on the customer Relationship value Chain relies on the same Bottom Up benefits than Cloud Computing does on the product-development value chain. Both

Federate large numbers of organizations and professionals on large territories;
Go beyond the conception of the Enterprise as the sum of the brick and mortar and the employees under the same roof.

Still several organizations have no incentive to drive the market and rapidly cannibalize their existing businesses for more cost effective, flexible, and efficient strategies for most of their clients.

At the same time those interested to cope with the rapid changes of the new economy and want their clients to take advantage of the tools available, can actually grab a larger part of the market by extending their reach in a permanent, systematic way on large trade regions.

Receiving Opportunities through the Extended Enterprise

2010-01-31T10:52:00.021-05:00

PDF format

Generally most sales organizations target, prioritize and prospect into enterprise companies to conduct high-level conversations with senior executives about their business operations and to find revenue opportunities. This point of view is limited since it neglects a large number of opportunities that can be captured from federating large numbers of small companies on large markets.

With the rise of WEB centric systems and cloud computing, CRM companies and Economic Development Agencies would benefit most by federating small businesses and agents building enterprises from bottom up. Already on the WEB large numbers of agents and small companies have been architectured and federated in Enterprise systems in the Real Estate Industry, Travel Industry, Financing Industry. In the field of Software as a Service (Saas), the bottom up Enterprise approach has proven to be far more efficient than the Top Down Enterprise approach. In the field of export and interstate commerce, the same kind of Bottom Up Enterprise Architecture can be federated to increase sales interaction and cost efficiency.

In today's world, it is possible for a large number of people and small organizations working together to grow from their joint involvement. Small and medium size businesses that are grouped by government agencies with export clusters will benefit the most if they delegate business intelligence responsibilities to a common business development agency and if they use WEB centric CRM systems to provide information from bottom up as well as to receive information top down.

The Bottom Up Enterprise Architectures emerging from these federated organizations can be far more efficient than traditional structures in their domain because of the increased flow of information within the customer relationship value chains and because of the cost reductions arising from the use of Internet technologies on large territories.

Enterprise Architecture globally in commerce
As reported by Wikipedia

An enterprise architecture description gives a holistic, systematic description of an enterprise. It encompasses business functions, business process, people, organization, business information, software applications and computer systems with their relationships to enterprise goals.

Describing the architecture of an enterprise aims primarily to improve the effectiveness or efficiency of the business itself. This includes innovations in the structure of an organization, the centralization or federation of business processes, the quality and timeliness of business information, or ensuring that money spent on information technology (IT) can be justified.

One method of using this information to improve the functioning of a business involves developing an "architectural vision": a description of the business that represents a “target” or “future state” goal. Once this vision is well understood, a set of intermediate steps are created that illustrate the process of changing from the present situation to the target.

While enterprise architecture is closely tied to IT, it should be viewed in the broader context of business optimization in that it addresses business architecture, performance management and process architecture as well as more technical subjects.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_architecture

It should also be noted that when redesigning work-flows to improve efficiency, Enterprise Architects considers Bottom Up as well as Top Down approaches. The goal is to gain efficiency.

A Bottom Up Enterprise Architecture in computing: Cloud Computing

One of the most flamboyant example of the benefit of federating small organizations in a larger cohesive Enterprise built from Bottom Up is the business strategy underlying Cloud Computing.

According to Salesforce.com, inc,

Cloud computing refers to the use of Internet (“cloud”) based computing, storage and connectivity technology for a variety of different services. The pervasiveness of the Internet, along with the dramatic decline in the pricing of the technology components has enabled this new generation of computing, in which dynamically scalable and often virtual resources are provided as a service to both enterprises and consumers. Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure “in the cloud” that supports them.

In the context of enterprise business applications, cloud computing fundamentally changes the way business applications are developed and deployed. Application developers no longer need to create and manage their own infrastructure of servers, storage, network devices, operating system software and development tools in order to create a business application. Instead, the entire infrastructure is managed in the cloud, and developers simply use an Internet browser to access the development environment.

http://www.salesforce.com/assets/pdf/investors/FY09AnnualReport.pdf

A Sales Architecture : targeting the Enterprise companies

Increasing marketing attention to Bottom Up Enterprise Architecture

Would travelers deal with a travel agent who would not use an online reservation system and who could only sell travels in the one or two locations they visited in the past months?
Would home buyers deal with a real estate agent who does not have MLS system and who could only access information on houses they visited?
Would investors engage with agents who would not have access to online performance reports?

Focus almost exclusively under the Top Down Enterprise Company marketing-sales model.
Work mostly with the last opportunity contacts and neglect to systematically following up large number of leads;
Rely on few trade show participation to increase their sales networks;
Usually adopt a regional sales structure focusing to prospects located close to their office;
Loose sales reporting capacities on all sales leads that cannot be converted immediately into opportunities.

The Extended Enterprise for Export clusters

The business model of the Extended Enterprise on the customer Relationship value Chain relies on the same Bottom Up benefits than Cloud Computing does on the product-development value chain. Both

Federate large numbers of organizations and professionals on large territories;
Go beyond the conception of the Enterprise as the sum of the brick and mortar and the employees under the same roof.

List of RSS feeds from our Linkedin Group

2010-01-27T08:33:00.005-05:00

Affiliates Networks Enterprises aims to increase trade with companies and referring agents worldwide, interested to develop markets in North America.

We focus to advertise business offers and related opportunities in the following categories:

1. Trading products or services

1.1 Direct trading with customers
1.2 Trading through distributors

2. Investments
2.1 Real estate investments
2.2 Takeovers
2.3 New implementations
2.4 Joint ventures;

3. Contracts
3.1 Sub-Contractor/Sub-Contractee
3.2 Licensor/Licensee
3.3 Strategic Alliances (ex: marketing)

Here bellow the current list of RSS Feeds on our Linkedin group :

Canada-U.S. Relations http://www.international.gc.ca/media/rss/topic-sujet/canada_us-relations-canada_etats_unis_eng.xml
CanadExport News http://www.international.gc.ca/canadexport/rss/news_nouvelles_eng.xml
Commerce Highlights http://www.international.gc.ca/commerce/rss/commerce_highlights_eng.xml
Crain's New York Business - Small Business News Feeds http://feeds.feedburner.com/crainsnewyork/small_business
Forbes.com: Most popular stories http://www.forbes.com/feeds/popstories.xml
Forbes.com: News http://www.forbes.com/news/index.xml
International Chambers of Commerce http://www.iccwbo.org/collection4/folder165/rss.html?title=ICC%20-%20The%20world%20business%20organization
Invest in Ontario - General Announcements http://www.investinontario.com/rss/general_announcements.xml
Latin America http://www.international.gc.ca/media/rss/topic-sujet/latin_america_caribbean-amerique_latine_caraibes_eng.xml
Monster Press Releases http://about-monster.com/press_releases/rss
NYT > Small Business http://feeds.nytimes.com/nyt/rss/smallbusiness
Ontario Exports - General Announcements http://www.ontarioexports.com/rss/general_announcements.xml
The Economist: Business http://www.economist.com/rss/business_rss.xml
The Economist: Corporate leadership http://www.economist.com/rss/corporate_leadership_rss.xml
The Economist: Economics http://www.economist.com/rss/economics_rss.xml
The Economist: Europe http://www.economist.com/rss/europe_rss.xml
The Economist: Finance and economics http://www.economist.com/rss/finance_and_economics_rss.xml
The Economist: Globalisation http://www.economist.com/rss/globalisation_rss.xml
The Economist: Mergers and acquisitions http://www.economist.com/rss/mergers_and_acquisitions_rss.xml
The Economist: News analysis and views http://www.economist.com/rss/news_analysis_and_views_rss.xml
The Economist: The Americas http://www.economist.com/rss/the_americas_rss.xml
The Economist: The European Union http://www.economist.com/rss/the_european_union_rss.xml
The Economist: The World Bank and the IMF http://www.economist.com/rss/the_world_bank_and_the_imf_rss.xml
The Economist: The world this week http://www.economist.com/rss/the_world_this_week_rss.xml
The Economist: United States http://www.economist.com/rss/united_states_rss.xml
Trade Relations (Asia) http://www.international.gc.ca/media/rss/topic-sujet/asia-asie_eng.xml
Trade Relations (Europe) http://www.international.gc.ca/media/rss/topic-sujet/europe_eng.xml
Trade Relations (U.S./Mexico) http://www.international.gc.ca/media/rss/topic-sujet/mexico-mexique_eng.xml

Please note that Linkedin only allows a maximum of 30 feeds.

We will manage this list in our best judgment.

Any way, sharing your RSS feeds suggestions will help everyone to discover new sources of information in regard to the goals of this group.

You can visit and subscribe to our group at http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=2639263

Thanks

Text of our first video advertising on the WEB

2010-01-26T19:58:00.030-05:00

WEB technologies are evolving at fast pace.

Millions of people are already putting video on the WEB. So we stepped in today: we made the my first tests of WEB video advertising for Affiliates Networks Enterprises.

This first WEB advertising was brought up with the support of http://www.help-online.ca/ with whom Industrial Affiliates has signed an alliance last week.

Industrial Affiliates will soon have a full directory .../enterprises/ dedicated to businesses and professionals interested to provide secured visio consultation.

Here is the text of this first WEB Video Advertising:

-------------------

Welcome

My name is Pierre Dumas.
I have 25 years of experience in the fields of Economic Development, Marketing and Distribution.

You are now watching one of the most innovative business development community that I have ever seen.

This WEB service is for any companies and professionals in the world, interested to develop business in North America.

Our business community helps you to:

Recruit more members in your sales networks;
Access large markets;
Advertize your business offers in a simple and efficient way;
Pre select partners, and representatives;
and more.

Make the first step.

You can register for free
Right here,
Right now.

------------------

Wikipedia reports that "Books on tape are recommended to be 150–160 words per minute, which is the range that people comfortably hear and vocalize words". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Words_per_minute#cite_note-4 .

The text of this 103 words which took about 39 seconds, so yes, I spoke at a rate of 160 words per minute.

This was a test. Nevertheless, will put it on the WEB for a short while.

Our goal is to propose cohesive marketing strategies and world class WEB centric technologies helping members of our business community to increase sales. More info will come.

Meanwhile, if you think you could reduce costs or increase revenues with visio consultation technologies, do not hesitate to contact me.

Pierre

Industrial Affiliates signs an alliance with Help Online Consulting

2010-01-23T18:16:00.003-05:00

Industrial Affiliates has signed an alliance with Help Online Consulting . Each parties develops and provide products and services in the field of online consultation and network development on the Internet. Both parties think it is of their best mutual interest to work together. This alliance reflects the spirit of cooperation between Help Online Consulting and Industrial Affiliates.

This alliance is an important step to provide an integrated technology solution between

A Talent Management Suite focusing on important recruiting sources;
An highly secured online visio consulting solution helping businesses to reach out efficiently to professionals and specialists around the world;
A unique Opportunity Management System enabling businesses to receive opportunities,follow up development with referring agents and generate more sales.

Industrial Affiliates will use and propose Help Online Consulting solutions to meet three goals:

Launch a promotion program on export markets including Help OnLine secured visio consulting solution ;
Provide a visio consulting service platform profitable to businesses and business associations;
Provide a unique pre selection tool to recruit specialists on large territories.

About Help online
Help Online Consulting provides a highly secured technological platform designed to meet the need of a diversified client base. Help Online Consulting provide access to professionals while keeping confidentiality and network security required by professional associations rules and regulations. Help Online reduce obstacles related to consulting services whether related to distance, isolation or efforts required. The system increases access to professionals in everyone's office at their convenience.
http://www.help-online.ca/ .

About Industrial Affiliates
Industrial Affiliates provides business networks development services with agents referring opportunities to organizations, whether business associations, manufacturers, consultation and service providers. Industrial Affiliates also help to systematically manage opportunities between product and service suppliers and referring agents while keeping suppliers in charge of customer relationships. They acquire new customers they could hardly reach otherwise and pay referring agents only when sales or qualifying actions are completed
http://www.industrialaffiliates.net/

Estimation of extra-provincial trade in Canada

2010-01-21T22:45:00.002-05:00

Estimation of extra provincial trade in Canada

About

24 000 companies between 20 and 499 employees would be trading outside their province;
20 000 companies would be involved in international activities from the manufacturing;
5 400 companies would be involved in international activities from the service industries;
9 000 companies would be contracting with companies outside their province;
3 000 companies would be making direct Investment outside their province.

Trading products
About

20 000 companies would be exporting directly to clients outside their province;
7 400 companies would be using distributors outside their province.

Investment
About

3 000 companies would be investing outside their province;
2 000 companies would be investing in real estate outside their province;
1500 companies would be involved in takeovers outside their province;
800 companies would venture outside their province.

Contracts
Sub-Contracting
About

10 000 companies would sub contract to companies outside their province;
4 000 companies would subcontract outside their province.

Licensing
About

1500 companies would acquire licenses outside their province;
2 800 companies would sell licenses outside their province.

Strategic Alliances
About

2 400 companies would make strategic alliances with a partner established outside their province;
2 000 companies would make strategic alliances on markets outside their province.

Our role is to help capture these opportunities

Advertisers and Trade Professional subgroups on Linkedin

2010-01-19T15:28:00.026-05:00

Affiliates Networks Enterprises http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=2639263 is a Linkedin Group registering members interested to develop business in an interdependent and complementary fashion.

We have created two subgroups to develop business and trade services. These subgroups are dedicated to active organizations and professionals ready to expand markets.

Business Offer Advertisers Group : This group is reserved for professionals and companies worldwide, advertising Business Offers targeting North American markets.
Trade Professionals Group : The goal of this group is to advertise services offered by trade professionals and ultimately generate sales of trade services with companies interested to expand markets.

Although we have an open door policy for all companies and individuals interested to increase trade, only registered members of Affiliates Networks Enterprises Group can join these two subgroups.

Admission is free. New members can then invite their contacts to become part of the our group and then to register in the subgroups http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=2639263

You can contact us for more detailed information.

Best Regards

The management team

8 Steps to Advertise Your Business Offer

2010-01-15T08:23:00.001-05:00

The advertisement of a business offer shall lead the readers to take action like a funnel leads liquid in its center. A good offer inspires the right people to register to the companies referring program and to be interested in reading more throughout the advertising. The following is a basic template for a business offer advertisement.

1. The title of the offer.
It must be an eye-catching title. Think of your business offer as an advertisement.

2. Snapshot of what the company is looking for.
Start with a title and quickly state the results you offer: “This piece of equipment generate up to 15% in cost reduction”; “Commissions up to 300 000$ for a term of three yearsduring .

3. Statement of the intangible benefits for the referring agents and the client.
The next statement leads with intangible benefits of the offer, based on the companies brand, and tells the recipient what is unique. This statement can be specific to the business offer (ex: innovation, markets, etc.) or to the company (ex: expertise, trustworthiness, etc.). Intangible benefits can be described from the point of view of the referring agent and from the point of view of the client

4. Why is this business offer important?
You can refer to the heart the companies brand or to the benefits of the product or service to our society, referring agent or to clients.

5. Basic product/service information.
Technical aspects of the product or service offered. But don't be too technical. Explain the benefits for the end user client, the markets, the various applications. Value on the markets. Competitive edge, etc..

6. Tangibles for the referring agent
Explain tangibles like commissions, conditions, etc.. Statements like “we reserve each opportunity for 24 months. Referring agents can make an extra 30 000$ per year with only one sale closed. Online training, news and information, existing network, free communication tools are also tangibles for the referring agents.

7. Statement before the invitation to take action.
Present why they should refer opportunities to your company. or explain the commitment of the company for innovation, quality or service.

8. Invitation to take action.
Think how experts in your field can read your business offer. What can your company promise and deliver that is different than competition?

There are two types of invitations to take action that are online standard : “find out more about the company and “email this offer to a contact” .

If recipients choose either, you can use them to reinforce their interest.

If they click on a link to “find out more,” direct them to a special section of your Web site and thank them for their interest to refer opportunities to your company. Do not send them to the home page of your WEB site because you will not control the business offer message and risk loosing their interest while studying the entire WEB site of your company.

If they e-mail the job to a colleague, have your system set up to send them a separate e-mail -- inviting them to send an inquiry .

Strategic Alliance with CFCI

2010-01-13T12:46:00.000-05:00

The International Commerce Training Center (Contacts Monde) and Industrial Affiliates announce a strategic alliance to open additional communication channels to support interstate, inter provincial and international commerce in North America.

Mr Karl Miville de Chêne and Pierre Dumas will offer world class communication tools to economic development agencies and businesses interested to increase daily communication on these markets.

The first campaigns will target and links markets from Quebec, Ontario and New York State which count over 32 000 export companies.

The two businesses create this strategic alliance to link innovative organizations and business people who are generally positive with:

• Inter regional and international collaboration;
• Accepting products, services and ideas coming from outside their organization;
• Opening capital investment to new projects;
• Involving risk taking entrepreneurs able to initiate new businesses on new markets;
• Innovate using communication channels reaching out to millions of users;
• Reaching out to all possible channels, customer groups, and regions with new products and services;
• Use databases linking a large number of talent available to increase commerce on local and international markets.

The two companies are aiming to systematically monetize international business networks to increase sales of goods and services. Business relationships will be deployed in four steps:

1. Send and receive information related to opportunities;
2. Receive acknowledgment of one's unique contribution in while disclosing an opportunity;
3. Establish formal and flexible agreements related to each opportunity;
4. Receive compensation in accordance to their agreements and based on performance.

This alliance adds up to the partnerships and affiliation agreements made between Industrial Affiliates and Taleo, Echosign and Salesforce as well as with hundreds of companies and public organization who dealt with ICTC (Contacts Monde). Several other alliances and affiliation will be announced shortly.

The two businessmen see an obvious need to increase communications on export markets as well as to monetize business social networks on the Internet. The alliance will collaborate with several export promotion agencies and businesses worldwide, interested to increase market penetration in North America through the communication channels of the twenty first century.

Affiliate networks for technology clusters

2010-01-07T11:06:00.001-05:00

Industrial Affiliates can increase the promotion of technology clusters with affiliate marketing strategies and tools.

These networks can banefit from WEB centric technologies linking technology clusters to highly specialized markets. The system also allows the diffusion of sales oriented WEB links and banners through built for each members of the technological clusters, to their distributors, resellers, retailers, sales agents etc..

Industrial Affiliates Channel Marketing tools:

Can be adapted to promote technology clusters and communities
Can be adapted to technology cluster and community WEB site
Integrates with existing third-party web sites;
Provides an online descriptive catalog of each companies in the technology clusters.

These tools can also centrally manage companies information, including:

Content – Images, Descriptions, etc.
Categories – Groupings of similar products
Cross-Selling Opportunities – Display required / related companies within a technology cluster;
Tracks and archives opportunities of requests for proposals and order history;
Each company of the technology cluster can manage their opportunities of requests for proposals;

Referring agents from each company can also access online reports of the sales process as well as to report themselves new informations.

Benefits:

Expands the technology clusters visibility
It can reach market niche in the global marketplace at a fraction of the cost of printing, trade shows, cold calls;

It can integrate all members of the value chains in a cohesive communication plan in the country;
Expands the visibility of technologies on world markets
It supports each company's channel marketing strategy for each product, service, solution and technology;

It helps companies to expand their reach to thousands of sales agents in the world highly specialized in their field of business;

It can turn business and social networks into a competitive advantage;

It can use job boards and resume databases in 54 countries;
It is sales driven;
It helps to manage opportunities of requests for proposals and to track material facts with external sales force;

It helps to create trusted networks between companies and external sales force increasing the possibilities to make sales;

It makes it easier for partners throughout the world to start business relationships with members of the technology cluster;
It helps to complete the supply and production value chains to the customer Relationship Value Chain on highly specialized markets.

The innovation value chain

Industrial Affiliates in partnership with Salesforce.com

2010-01-06T11:20:00.001-05:00

Industrial Affiliates develops referring agents networks on large geographical markets.

Industrial Affiliates is now registered in Salesforce.com Cloud Computing partner program. Based on the same principles of collaboration and transparency prmoted in the "Cloud Computing" program, Industrial Affiliates invites its economic partners to collaborate to develop an implement export clusters on large geographical markets.

Salesforce.com is mostly recognized in two areas: its sales automation software (CRM) and its platform Force.com.

Sales force automation
Sales force automation (SFA) enables salespeople to be more productive by automating manual and repetitive tasks and by providing them with better, more organized data about current and prospective customers. SFA helps companies establish a system and process for recording, tracking, and sharing information about sales opportunities, sales leads, sales forecasts, the sales process, and closed business, as well as managing sales territories. SFA also helps sales organizations manage unstructured information such as sales collateral, presentations, price lists, and video assets.

Industrial Affiliates interest in SFA is based on the followings :

Conformity with governmental and economic development agencies interested to develop referring agents networks involved in trade;
Real time analysis and reports helping to make decisions;
Immediate deployment of the application online worldwide and off line;
A user friendly CRM system whit hundreds of thousands of users;
Capacity to modify and adapt the application to the needs of the customer relationship value chain;
Software proposed as a service online (saas);
The "Cloud Computing" approach will help Industrial Affiliates to deploy its Opportunity Management system more quickly;
The Affiliate Marketing approach and the export cluster approach proposed by Industrial Affiliates share the same principles of the Cloud Computing: increase efficiency (increase sales, reduce costs) through the aggregation of resources coming from multiple members located in large geographical markets.

This partnership also increases our capacity to manage large number of stakeholders through a hub which increases business relationships between the members of the customer relationship value chain as well as to provide real time reports and analysis to governments and trade agencies.

Force.com
Industrial Affiliates partnership with Salesforce.com Cloud Computing (force.com) also increases its capacity to develop and distribute its Opportunity Management system.

Industrial Affiliates also shares the view of Salesforce.com in regard to the needs to develop trust to increase performance. As such trust networks that are open on the Internet are based on collaboration and transparency.

For more information about Industrial Affiliates services click on http://www.industrialaffiliates.net/

For more information about Salesforce.com click on http://www.salesforce.com/company/investor/

NOTES
Software-as-a-Service (“SaaS”)
SaaS enables businesses to subscribe to a wide variety of application services that are developed specifically for, and delivered over, the Internet on an as-needed basis with little or no implementation services required and without the need to install and manage third-party software in-house.

SaaS contrasts with the traditional enterprise software model, which requires each customer to install, configure, manage and maintain the hardware, software and network services to implement a software application in-house. Moreover, traditional enterprise software vendors must maintain support for numerous legacy versions of their software and compatibility with a wide array of hardware devices and operating environments. As a result, they either have to dedicate fewer resources to innovation, or incur higher research and development expenses as a percentage of revenue compared with on-demand application service providers.

Salesforce.com believes the market should not discriminate between small and large companies, and businesses of all sizes and across all industries should be able to use the same software based on a multi-tenant architecture. This architecture enables Salesforce.com to leverage a common infrastructure and software code base across all customers who benefit from access to the most current release of the application, automated upgrades, more rapid innovation and the economies of a shared infrastructure.

Salesforce.com believes the shift to SaaS applications provides significant benefits even beyond those associated with multi-tenant infrastructure. Businesses are able to realize many of the benefits offered by traditional enterprise software vendors, such as a comprehensive set of features and functionality and the ability to customize and integrate with other applications, while at the same time reducing the risks and lowering the total costs of owning enterprise software. As a result, Salesforce.com believes the continued emergence of SaaS applications is bringing about a fundamental transformation in the enterprise software industry as businesses will be able to replace their purchased software with subscriptions to a wide range of application services.

Cloud Computing
Cloud computing refers to the use of Internet (“cloud”) based computing, storage and connectivity technology for a variety of different services. The pervasiveness of the Internet, along with the dramatic decline in the pricing of the technology components has enabled this new generation of computing, in which dynamically scalable and often virtual resources are provided as a service to both enterprises and consumers. Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure “in the cloud” that supports them. In the context of enterprise business applications, cloud computing fundamentally changes the way business applications are developed and deployed. Application developers no longer need to create and manage their own infrastructure of servers, storage, network devices, operating system software and development tools in order to create a business application. Instead, the entire infrastructure is managed in the cloud, and developers simply use an Internet browser to access the development environment. Application users are able to gain access to a variety of business applications via an Internet browser or mobile device, and are able to take advantage of a robust, secure, scalable and highly available application at a relatively low cost, without the cost and complexity of managing the application.

Enterprise cloud computing, which refers to business applications that are developed using the cloud and a technology platform that customers and developers use to build and run business applications, includes both application Software-as-a-Service for users and Platform-as-a-Service for developers

It powers nearly 60,000 businesses running more than 100,000 applications that 1.5+ million users count on every day. http://www.salesforce.com/platform/cloud-infrastructure/

The AppExchange is the complete marketplace for cloud computing with 1000+ apps and services that extend use of Salesforce CRM and the Force.com platform http://sites.force.com/appexchange/apex/home

Ontario-Quebec Global International Trade

2009-12-29T14:50:00.001-05:00

According to a survey made by L'Institut de la Statistique du Québec", in 2007, 55,6% of the Small and Medium Size Businesses in Quebec with 20 to 499 employees were involved in international activities. From this study and from the queries made on www.icriq.com and based on Ontario and Quebec GNP's, we'd draw the follwing picture:

International Activities
About 12 000 companies between 20 and 499 employees are trading outside their province
About 9 900 companies involved in international activities are from the manufacturing
About 5 400 companies involved in international activities were from the service industries.
About 4 600 companies were contracting with companies outside their province
About 1 500 companies are making direct Investment outside their province

Trading products
About 10 300 companies are exporting directly to clients outside their province
About 3 700 companies are using distributors outside their province

Investment
About 1 500 companies are investing outside their province
About 970 companies are investing in real estate outside their province
About 815 companies are involved in takeover outside their province
About 375 companies made joint ventures outside their province

Contracts

Sub-Contracting
About 4 665 companies are involved as sub contracting to companies outside their province;
About 2 100 companies are making subcontracting agreements for companies outside their province.

Licensing
About 780 companies are acquiring licenses outside their province
About 1 400 companies are selling licenses outside their province

Strategic Alliances
About 1 200 companies are making strategic alliances with a partner established outside their province
About 1 020 companies are making strategic alliances on markets outside their province

The Canadian environmental market

2009-12-12T20:46:00.002-05:00

There would be over 6 600 private companies directly involved in environmental products and services in Canada;

There would be a total of 105 00 establishments (private and public) who have at least one employee involved in environmental tasks.

The environmental industry would have a total of 503 000 jobs in Canada.

About the number of Environmental companies in Quebec, Ontario, Alberta, British Columbia

Quebec
In the Province of Quebec, there is 1600 businesses and more than 34 000 jobs related to green technologies and environmental companies with an average growth of 41.4% in the past 5 years.
Investments in this field past from 16,8 M$ in 2006 to 59,4 M$ in 2007. www.mdeie.gouv.qc.ca/index.php?id=84&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=1494&tx_ttnews[currentCatUid]=68&tx_ttnews[backPid]=4563&no_cache=1

Ontario
2,467 environmental companies employs more than 62 000 jobs are related to Environment www.2ontario.com/industry/environment.asp

Alberta
Almost 1,330 companies, employing 26,000 Albertans and generating more than $3.5 billion in revenues. www.albertacanada.com/industries/1160.html

British Columbia
Over 1,300 companies with revenues close to $2 billion. The main components of the sector are environmental construction, recycling, and solid and hazardous waste management, consulting services, water and wastewater goods and services, renewable energy, air pollution and noise control, analytical services, and green building and sustainable urban planning.
www.bceia.com/documents/overview_on_BCs_environment_industry.pdf

Overcoming sales challenges in the personal insurance industry

2009-10-04T13:56:00.007-04:00

There is about 80 000 insurance agents in Canada. Each year 20 000 of them have invested a tremendous amount of time and efforts in this profession and nevertheless decide to abandon.

The environment of Insurance Agents in their industry
The Insurance Industry looses about 75% of its talents after three years. In average it is about 25% of losses per year but it would not be surprising to reach 30% of turnover the first year. In Canada, this situation would translate into 20 000/80 000 insurance agents who invested tremendous amount of time and efforts in this profession and nevertheless, each year, decide to abandon their profession.

There may be a wide variety of reason why insurance agents abandon but we can also explain this situation with simple observations and calculations.

The prevailing culture of the insurance industry is to screen all of the contacts a new agent can bring and afterward, if the agent cannot renew its contacts base efficiently all by himself, he/she abandons; the insurance agency focus then to hire new candidates who own a new contact list.

This business structure brings results but is not as efficient as it could be in times where the Inbdustry as a whole is in need of talents. It is an expensive business process, structure and culture: each agent lost represents 70 000 in sales lost and 35 000 in credits. 100 agents lost would represent losses of 7 million dollars in sales.

For Insurance Agents candidates, either they perform 2 contracts per week or they abandon sooner or later. Insurance Companies often use Talent Management Systems to manage their talent pool; so we'll use the words "talent pool" to represent the pool of candidates to the job of Insurance Agents. Here is the simple calculation explaining why so many talents abandon each year:

If a talent wanted to make 90 000$ in revenues, he would need to sign 153 insurance contracts per year;
To sign 153 contracts, it would mean over 3 contracts per week;
To sign 3 contracts per week it would mean to meet 10 prospects per week;
To find 10 prospects per week it would mean to make 250 calls per week (4% success rate);
Each call would take 5 minutes so it would take 20 hours;
The "talent" would spend 2 hours in meetings with each of the 10 prospects + 45 minutes of transport per prospect: 20 hours+ 7.5 hours=27.5 hours ;
He would make 2 meeting of 2 hours with the 3 clients+ 6 times 45 minutes of transport=12 hours + 4.5=16.5 ;
He would spend 3 hours making proposals and reports = 3 ;
He would spend 3 hours of administrative work at the office=3.

So in this scenario we are now at 70 hours and we are not even sure the talent would perform as planned.

In addition, to get involved and get trained, the talent would need to sacrifice probably 4 months of the year and he would have a dept to recover. Some candidates can go through this process; most don't. This is a terrible lost of talents.

It is true that some exceptional agents can make 300 000$ in revenues because they are exceptionally good or they have purchased their client base from an other agent.

In reality the average agent makes 35 000$ and generates about 70 000$ in sales.
Often, the average agent does not make its 35 000$ in revenue the first year.

So for a sales talent with a family, it does not make sense to pursue this scenario. But there is other ways to attract and keep talents.

This way of business consisting of recruiting a lot of agents and skimming their contacts in the very short term is one way but not the only one. The Insurance Industry has already recognized the talent crisis and started cooperation between its members to attract and seek the engagement of more.

Retain the equivalent of 1000 insurance agents from those 20 000 who abandon each year;

What if the industry was adjusting its ways and attracting more talents for a longer period of time?

Challenges

Increase insurance agents retention;
Increase recruiting efficiency,
Increase sales efficiency

Objectives

Increase Insurance agents retention by 2%
Increase recruiting efficiency by 2% each year;
Increase sales efficiency by 0,5% each year

Expected results

126 million dollars in sales:

70 million dollars in sales : 1000 Insurance full time jobs filled each generating 70 000$ in annual sales;
28 million dollars in sales: Increase recruiting efficiency by 2%: 2% x 20 000 agents abandoning=400 x 70 000$ in annual sales;
28 million dollars in sales: 80 000 insurance agents increasing their annual sales by 0,5%= 80 000 x 0.05% x 70000$ in sales

Information Technology Solution

A Talent management suite integrated with
A Talent Exchange solution enabling to create a talent pool dedicated to technical sales agents integrated with
A Sourcing Solution helping to increase the pool of talents across the globe linked to
An Opportunity Management System to follow up business opportunities and to report performance metrics.

Estimated annual costs of Information Technology Solution

Approx 3440$ per business user;
Free for Sales Agents ,

Pilot projects
Each insurance company can start with pilot projects.

Two pilot projects could be explored:
1. Part time Job project
To recruit 240 agents who abandoned or are about to abandon and offer them an environment to work part time. This pilot project would generate about 2 million dollars in sales; the equivalent of 30 full time agents. This pilot project could lead to a pool of talents driven in the whole industry.

2. Referring program targeting business owners.
This referring program would channel 1500 opportunities to a team of specialists trained and qualified to address complex situations often found with business owners. This pilot project would be based on a referral system and would initially target 1 million dollars in sales. The equivalent of 14 full time insurance agents.

Conclusion
The insurance companies would increase efficiency if they could retain more insurance agents through a part time program. But once an agent is lost from an insurance company, the agent lost is lost for good.

At the same time, the industry is facing an increasing demand and several difficulties to increase and retain sales force. If the idustry was sharing database infrastructures to retain the insurance agents who want to abandon. These infrastructures would enable Insurance agents to work part time.
Once signed up and engage again, these agents would simply be retrieved from the list of agents available.
Each company would therefore benefit from this pool of talents.

Pierre Dumas' background

Pierre is a channel marketing consultant for business association and companies; he is also an IT entrepreneur ;
He was president and founder of Fac-simile e commerce systems, a company which became subsidiary of a public company in 2000;
In the past few months he has preselected near to 26 000 candidates in technologies (mostly engineers) using Monster Worldwide database in North America;
As an IT entrepreneur he recruited employees in IT for his company;
As Economic development agent for the Quebec Government he has made several interviews with business owners, preparing information and propositions;
He developed plans with 4 public companies ;
He also recruited distributors and representatives in Quebec, Ontario and east, mid-west, Mid Atlantic and South of United States;
He designed and developed business in two IT projects (Fac-simile, SunCET) ;
He is currently developing an Opportunity Management System in PHP and prepare partnership for its transition in HRXML as a value added solution TMS;
He was administrative manager for a medical products assembly plant with over 100 employees;
He launched and developed a plastic Injection molding company with 40 employees which shows that I know the culture of manufacturing companies and their employees;
He made a lot of client prospection in IT services and developed a channel marketing approach and reward plan for business associations ;
He made two conferences in the past few months and wrote several articles about recruiting commercial agents;
He prepared and participated in a dozen of trade shows;
He is interested in the mix of HR technologies, sales networks management and sales;
After starting the recruiting process and training, he worked for over a year to asses the situation in the Insurance Industry ;
He is familiar with the roles of the Insurance agents, insurance companies and l'Autorité des marchés financiers in the Province of Quebec.

Overcoming challenges related to Engineering Sales

2009-10-03T10:25:00.002-04:00

Opportunity:
50 companies providing technological solutions in Aerospace, Life Sciences, Process & Industrial and information technology are interested engage Sales Engineers in United States, Europe and elsewhere in the world. Each are looking to engage 50 agents located in 50 different cities: 2500 Sales Engineers.

Challenges

1. Sales Engineers are amongst the most demanded talents in North America and Europe.
2. Brick and Mortar Staffing Offices

Are not structured to help one company to find one engineers in 50 cities;
Are not interested to provide flat rate recruiting services and share it with a business association;
Are not used to pool talents and share information across borders;
Are not providing Engineer Sales management outsourcing services.

Solution:

Source and create a pool of Sales Engineers who have access to opportunities of requests for proposals;
Provide Information technology supporting Engineers Sales management services outsourced to companies engaging with a large number of agents in several cities worldwide.

Information Technology Solution:

Talent management suite integrated with
Talent Exchange solution enabling to create a talent pool dedicated to technical sales agents on export markets integrated with
Sourcing Solution helping to increase the pool of talents across the globe linked to
Opportunity Management System to follow up business opportunities and to report performance metrics.

Estimated annual costs of Information Technology Solution:

Approx 3440$ per corporate user;
Free for Sales Agents

Benefits:
For Business Associations

2 600$ per corporate user
130 000$ for 50 solution providers

For staffing services

9400$ per corporate user;
470 000$ from 50 solution providers.

For solution providers

10 sales of 500 000$ (5 million dollars)

if, for example, solution provider converts into sales 10% of 100 opportunities of request of proposal referred by 50 Sales Engineers located in 50 cities.

Channel Partner Program

2009-08-09T09:06:00.003-04:00

Do you know a company interested to test commercial agents markets in North America?
Are you interested to join other members to share networks fixed costs?

This article presents the broad line of Industrial Affiliates Partner/Reseller program.

This opportunity is open to any consultant or business group who knows one company interested to test the markets in North America.

Goals
Industrial Affiliates' Partnership/Reseller Program helps organizations to develop new commercial services to their client base while reducing their costs during the implementation.

Our goals are to :

Help recruit and manage referring agents for companies interested to Export in North America;
Provide network statistics and candidates data to our partners and its clients;
Gradually build a client base so our channel partners reach the break even point to have their own Talent Management System and its own database of candidates interested to become agents ;
Increase reporting services.

Commissions or margins for channel Partners
Commissions or margins are very interesting for channel partners during the incubation process; between 23% and 35%. For example, 10 companies engaging in a market test and continuing with an annual plan could generate commissions or margins of 36 400$.
This program is ideal for:

Export Consulting firms;
R&D Consulting firms;
Export Commissioners;
Industrial Commissioners ;
Industrial Park associations;
Chapters of Import/Export Associations ;
City Convention Centers;
Business groups;
Wholesalers ;
Industry Associations;
Chambers of Commerce.

Objectives with export companies
Our objectives are typically to :

Help each company recruit 50 referring agents in 50 cities in North America. These referring agents are typically selected because companies believe they have access to 2 opportunities of requests for proposals;
Contact 100, 200 or 1000 profiled candidates. From these profiled candidates we typically receive 25% of interest and 5% of recruited agents

Requirements for export companies

An attractive offer for profiled candidates;
Products with competitive edge;
Define the profiles of candidates in vertical markets

Services provided to export companies

Contact profiled candidates (20 to 40 candidates per week);
Receive interest from an estimated 25% of contacts;
Filter 5% candidates who have the most promising opportunities of requests for proposals for each company;
Follow up with candidates interested but that have not been categorized in priority;
Reports to Partners and companies;

Candidates contacted

Candidates interested

Referring agents recruited

Follow up with referring agents

Benefits of the marketing approach
Our program is efficient because:

It costs less to use an agents than a distributor;
The program is entirely compatible with distributors and external sales force;
Fixed marketing costs are shared between several companies;
Affiliates develop a local presence creating long term loyalty and they will send market feed backs to manufacturers;
Direct costs of the initial engagement are often covered at the first sale;
ORP sent by external sales agents save cold calls time for salary paid technical sales persons ;
External sales agents are only paid on qualifying or sales performance;
External sales agents are engaging themselves with ther company because they

Think they can make money generating opportunities for the company;

Hold a tacit knowledge of the local market that does not have salary paid
technical sales force;

Companies engage with each external sales agents because they are convinced
They have the knowledge and expertise required to explain the products to
their contacts;

Their contacts are in a decision position to request proposals;
Helps to prepare and complete commercial missions and trade shows.

About Industrial Affiliates
Industrial Affiliates develops external sales agents networks on export markets, manage the and reports sales process to suppliers, external sales agents and other stakeholders. New opportunities are raised efficiently through external sales agents profiles in each targeted market defined by each exporter.
Opportunities of requests for proposals are sent to supplier and its channel partner who take care of customer relationships from beginning to end. Exporters receives opportunities of requests fr proposals they could hardly get otherwise. External sales agents are only paid when qualifying or sales actions are completed.
Developing an external sales force is an efficient way to overcome obstacles often found to introduce new products on export markets:

Obstacle of distributors who do not want to take over the inventory costs or the costs to acquire knowledge and expertise
Low efficiency of cold calls on new markets;
Low return on investment of trade shows.

The costs of this marketing program are often recovered during the first sales. These value added services

Recruit highly specialized commissioned paid sales force referring opportunities of requests for proposals (ORP);
Systematically manage large numbers of external sales agents and ORP;
Systematically develop long term business relationships bringing measurable results because they are managed under network user licenses with Industrial Affiliates and legal contracts between exporters and external sales agents;

Sends ORP directly to technical sales representatives or channel partners.
These services can be applied as well to sell products than to commercialize intellectual property in North America, in Europe or elsewhere in the world.

Over 57 000$ in costs reduction

2009-07-03T10:43:00.007-04:00

Innovation should be considered as the introduction of a new idea that bring economic or social benefits. If a new product is not brought to the market, it does not bring social of economic benefits. So the point is to bring innovative products to the markets.
Innovations often take years to get widely used on the market. The goal is of course to reduce the span of time for its introduction.
Industrial Affiliates commercial clusters are innovative in many ways:

It is an innovative organization targeting its diffusion on world markets;
It targets the successful introduction of new products and process on world markets;
It generates the benefits of the extended enterprise to the commercial value chain;
It brings benefits while reducing costs.

This article is about the cost reductions brought by affiliate marketing in the business to business commerce.

Annual cost reduction over 57 000$

Commercial cluster typically target the engagements of 50 sales agents for each company as well as the identification of 100 opportunities of requests for proposal. We estimate that the engagement of external sales force through our system cost 57 000$ less than it would for the same results without our services:

With an annual cost of 840$ the opportunity management system generate about 4920$ in savings.
With an annual cost of 10 000$ we also estimate that companies can save over 52 000$ with the talent follow up system.

Here is how we come to these numbers.

The opportunity management system

The opportunity management system provides an online descriptive catalog enabling external sales force to disclose and reserve opportunities of requests for proposals. The OMS

Registers the members acceptance of the network policies and practices;
Register Sales Agents;
Records opportunities of requests for proposals (ORP) coming from external sales force;
Puts ORP in queues until they get validated by supplier;
Communicate and records material facts from the ORP up to the step of paying commission to external sales force;
Reports each step of the sales process to whom it concerns;
Reports global performance of the sales channels.

Cost comparisons

Keep up communications with external sales force
To Keep external sales force informed, your business has to :
Generate trusts and confidence with sales people through general policies and practices;
Implement systematic 12 steps follow up about material and immaterial facts of the opportunities of requests for proposals, coming from 50 sales people, 200 leads, 100 opportunities of requests for proposals, 20 contracts;
Forward and coordinate communications between sales force, salary paid technical sales force and sales manager;

Total: over de 960 emails
Estimated work : 225 hours (15 minutes)
Comparative costs: 4 800$

Reporting activities to sales director.

Report sales activities every week:
Number of candidates contacted;
Number of candidates interested to become sales agent;
Number of sales agents engaged;
Number of Opportunities of Requests for Proposals (ORP);
Number of ORP accepted;
Number of proposals submitted;
Number of sales agents engaged;
Number of closed deals;
Amount of sales collected;
Global amounts of commission.

Estimated time: 48 hours (4 hours par months during 12 months)

Comparative cost: 960$

Talent Follow up System (TFS)

The Talent Follow up System TFS allows to reach out to thousands of candidates specialized in over 50 industry categories and to filter them up to the point that we find sales agents who actually have access to opportunities of requests for proposals.

Costs Comparisons

Database access in North America

The recruiting process is carried on during 12 months.

There is four service options on the market to access databases reaching out talent in North America: 1 month service, 2 200$, 3 months service, 5 300$, 6 months service, 8 400$, 12 month service 13 000$;

Individually a small business could hardly afford these services for 12 months;
The equivalent monthly costs for these services for the 3,6 and 12 months are 1767$, 1 400$, 1 083$

If 5 companies were sharing costs to access database during 6 months twice during the year, it would each costs them 3 360$

With the commercial cluster the cost to access is only 650$ per member.

Comparative cost: 3 360$

Contact and filter candidates

To engage 50 sales agents, a company must typically contact 20 candidates per week during 50 weeks and select among 250 interested candidates

Estimated time: (500 hours)

Comparative cost: 10 000$

Time saved in cold calls

In front of the problem to find distributors interested to sell specialized products, services and solutions, companies often assigns technical sales agents to make cold calls on new markets, to go in trade shows and commercial missions. For example, a technical sales person could spend 20 hours per week for prospection and collect only 6 prospect per week, 15 requests for proposals and 5 contracts on new markets. With a marginal contribution of 50%, this way of prospecting would generate only 125 000$ for equipment sold at 50 000$ and cost around 32 400$ if we add participation to a trade show. The benefits of this approach are too low.

Affiliate marketing for B2B can save thousands of dollars in cold calls to companies

Estimated time: 1 000 hours

Comparative cost : 20 000$

Time and resources for Marketing and sales director

Small businesses usually promote their company through WEB sites and generally have few financial resources to:

Hire a marketing and sales director able to compensate the inefficiencies of the traditional distribution chains on new markets;
Implement push promotional strategies to salary paid sales representatives;
Spend money in traditional media (such as magazines and trade shows) to build year after year, brand and recognition to large geographical markets;

As the external sales force on new markets do not create demand but respond to demand, marketing and sales directors must clearly define their product/service/technology/market strategy and provide a business environment for that will generate attention, interest, desire and action from potential clients generating opportunities of requests for proposals on new markets.

Estimated time from marketing/sales director for marketing activities without external support: 14 hours per week;

Estimated time from marketing/sales director for marketing activities with external support: 7 hours per week;

Time saved : 7 hours per week

Annual time saved: 350 hours at 30$/hrs

Comparative cost: 10 500$

Maintain relations with 250 people specialized and interested to your products

It is often recognized that 80% of the leads in commercial trade shows are not followed up.

The talent follow up system provides access to external sales force candidates of 100 millions job seekers categorized. The TFS is a filter connected on the world allowing to contact non solicited candidates who have access to opportunities of requests for proposals.

The annual license fees of the SST costs 39 000$

The management of the SST costs 58 000$

If 5 companies were sharing these 97 000$, it would costs each one of them 19 400$.

In a commercial cluster with Industrial Affiliates share these costs are shared between 20 companies: 3550$Comparative cost: 19 400$

Globally

The OMS and TFS are the foundations of an innovative organization and process reducing costs: they help to perform more sales at lower costs.

Globally, we estimate cost savings over 57 000$.

The following tables summarize costs savings described in details in his article.

Small businesses are ill equiped to manage trade secrets

2009-06-11T22:26:00.004-04:00

WHAT IS CONFIDENTIALITY?
Confidentiality is the act of limiting disclosure of private matters; maintaining the trust that an individual has placed in one which has been entrusted with private matters.1

Legally, there are two basic requirements for protection of confidential information, namely 2
(a)The subject matter must be confidential, and
(b)The subject matter must have been communicated in circumstances which impose an obligation of confidence between the disclosing party and the receiving party

Finally, Confidentiality is also the status accorded to data or information indicating that it is sensitive for some reason, and that therefore it needs to be protected against theft or improper use and must be disseminated only to individuals or organizations authorized to have it3.

Secrecy and privacy are often used synonymously with confidentiality.

Is the matter of the transmission confidential?

We can reasonably think that information is confidential if the disclosure4:

Harms an employee's or third party's reputation or safety;
Harms the financial or competitive interests of the corporation;
Violates securities regulations for a public company;
Prejudices finalization of a project or transaction currently in progress or under negotiation;
Prejudices litigation, (e.g. which would breach solicitor/client privilege
Leaks a Trade Secret
Breaches with privacy laws
Etc

What kind of information?

SunCET's confidential e-mail transmission tools should be used everyday to send and receive personal information, trade secrets or to protect copyright.

Personal Information
Most countries in Europe and in America have adopted laws to protect personal information

Trade Secrets
Most developed Countries in the world have adopted laws to protect Trade Secrets. Employees send trade secrets every day in a non-confidential way by e-mail (ex: strategic plans, technical information or R&D information, production or quality control information, marketing, administrative or financial information)

Valuable Copyrighted information
Everyday, creators, designers, authors are submitting their work and need digital and legal protection to reduce illicit copies or to keep the commercial value of their work.

Has it been communicated in circumstances that impose an obligation of confidence between the disclosing party and the receiving party?
Why leaks occur?
Confidentiality breach can occur for a large number of reasons that are not addressed by the technologies proposed on the market.5 If we look closer to the risks of breach of confidentiality in E-mail, encrypted information can easily loose their confidential status because the most important risk of breach of confidentiality in an e-mail transmission comes from the senders and the recipients.

For example, the confidential information is not treated in a confidential way if the
Recipient does not agree to a confidentiality agreement and
Document is not identified as confidential and
Attached files are not encrypted permanently,
Sender does not have the tools and the administrative process to manage the confidential information,
Recipient is not aware of the confidential status of the information
Recipient does not know how to protect the information
If all reasonable circumstances are not imposing an obligation of confidence, the information can legally lose its confidentiality status.

The circumstances that impose obligation of confidence require technological, legal and administrative protections and measures.

In the Internet Technology (IT) world, confidentiality is performed by cryptography along with data integrity, authentication, and non-repudiation. Confidentiality that is achieved using cryptography makes use of encryption to render the information unintelligible except by authorized entities. The information may become intelligible again by using decryption.

The dominance of Internet Technologies in the Information security has a perverse effect: because most people hear that IT protects confidentiality, they believe that confidentiality is protected; it is a false assumption. It is wrong to believe that encrypted transmission protects efficiently confidential information.

Using encrypted e-mail do not means that information is disclosed in a confidential way. If all circumstances of the transmission do not impose an obligation of confidence between the disclosing party and the receiving party, then a judge could rule the information as public information.

THE SITUATION ON THE MARKET
It is getting widely known in the public that free non-protected e-mail is not enough to protect the rights of valuable information. Few people know that
The general principles of Information Security clearly state that it cannot be insured without using technical, administrative and legal protections alike.
If confidential information is sent in a non-confidential way, it can legally lose its confidentiality status.

Nevertheless, the general response of the security vendors has been to:
Propose medium and large enterprises, e-mail solutions that comprise encryption and secure socket layers technology to insure security6.
Focus on encryption services
Leave all administrative and legal measures required to protect confidentiality to consulting firms.
Neglect the needs of small enterprises to have access to affordable system offering reasonable circumstances that impose an obligation of confidence.

Small businesses are ill equipped to manage disclosures of trade secrets, personal information and valuable copyrighted information.

Marketing challenges in the new economy

2009-04-27T20:48:00.010-04:00

Opening new export market requires a strategy, goals, objectives, market mapping, channel mapping, communication plan, etc. Competition a globalized world requires the most efficient communication plan. Often, small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) tend to use traditional media and distribution channel to address export market in the context of the new economy.

This article highlights some of the problems of the traditional distribuition channel and media for SMEs marketing innovative products, services or solutions. It also shows that the new economy provides the tools to address these problems.

First problem: Costs of inventory or acquisition of knowledge in the long tail
Machinery and equipment manufacturers sometime use distribution structure based on wholesales price, inventory and floor plan agreements made with financial institutions and retailers whereby retailers hold the inventory and incur most of the customer acquisition expenses.

In the traditional supply chain, machinery and equipment manufacturer sells products to the retailer at a fixed unit wholesale price. The retailer holds inventory and sells it to the customers at a fixed unit price. In this model the retailer both takes inventory risk and influences demand by exerting effort. For the retailer, if a product is out of stock, the sale is lost. On the other hand unsold inventory is carried over to the next period incurring holding cost. In this model, the retailer is the sole decision maker who decides on both the stocking quantity and the customer acquisition spending. Therefore the retailer has some power in the chain but he also bears all the inventory-related risk.

This distribution model is not efficient for innovative products, services and solutions specialty machinery and equipment manufacturers.

When inventory or knowledge acquisition costs are low, it may be profitable to sell specialized products, services or solutions. But when these costs are high, retailers focus on popular products letting aside specialized products.

Small retailers, they are generally not organized to implement regional promotion plans generating enough sales of specialty machinery and equipment. The lack of sales at the end of the year often proves the inefficiencies of the traditional distribution model for the specialty machinery and equipment.

As for the large retailers able to capture a major part of the supply chain profits they are usually not interested to carry inventory of specialty machinery and equipment and yet demand high profit margins. Large retailers who can reach large markets and territories are generally not interested to take the inventory or the knowledge acquisition costs and are asking for large margins reducing dramatically the benefits for the supplier.

And so, sales intermediaries are generally looking for 20% of products bringing 80% (1) of sales (see green section on the long tail graph) on small geographical markets, while specialty products, service or solution providers targets clients base located on large territories(see yellow section on the long tail graph).

The traditional supply chain is therefore not efficient for the distribution on 80% of the products representing only 20% of the sales on large territories but on a world market the sales for this 20% (the long tail) can be huge. Entrepreneurs and inventors often see the potential for their products, services and solutions on world markets but often use medias traditionally used to market the 20% of the popular products.

Second Problem: inefficiency of cold calls
In front of the difficulty to find a distributor for a specialty product, suppliers will assign technical sales representatives to make cold calls and participate to trade shows.
Ratios are different for each business and sales representative prospecting new clients but, let's just take the example of prospecting new clients for a specialty equipment of 50 000$.
In this scenario our technical sales rep. costs 30$/hours and works 35 hours a week (annual salary and benefits of 51 450$ and 1715 hours within 49 weeks per year).

In this scenario, technical sales rep would spend his 1715 hours as follow:

Sales prospection on new markets: 20 hours
Follow up with clients and quotations: 274 hours
Business visits : 252 hours
Trades shows: 100 hours
Preparation of quotations: 60 hours
Administration: 49 hours

On a weekly base, in average, it would mean approximately:

Prospecting new markets: 20 hours
Follow up with clients and quotations: 5,6 hours
Business visits : 5.18 hours
Trades shows: 2 hours
Preparation of quotations: 1,22 hours
Administration: 1 hour

As for the results our technical sales rep would typically spend 20 hours to search, get 6 prospects per week; 294 prospects in 49 weeks

From these 294 prospects, 72 (25% )will typically generate visits. From these visits, 15 (20%) will typically be interested to buy and will ask for a quotation in the short term.

In our example, 15 requests for quotation cost 32 400$ for prospecting and trade shows (980 hrs + 100hrs x 30$)

If the business has an historical conversion rate of request for quotation into sales of 30%, this will mean 5 contracts of 50 000 on new markets.

If directs costs (direct material and labor) for these equipments are 50%, the contribution to the fixed costs and profits will be 125 000$

Usually the sales director will have hire expectations of returns on investment for the company.

Third: Problems with trade shows
While large companies are going in average to 25 trades shows per year in the United States in order to get the effective frequency for branding strategy.(2) As trade shows are in fact traditional media requiring at least 4 exposures to have an impact on the audience on new markets.

Studies also show that between 70% and 80% of the leads in a trade show are not followed up.
The efficiency of trade shows are questionable for small businesses going to trade shows once in a while in various markets and especially for SMEs contracting out the their trade show campaign.

The trashow industry is in crisis (See: www.meetingindustrycrisiscenter.org/ ). It is also adapting to the realities of the new economy. (See: www.mpiweb.org/CMS/uploadedFiles/Research_and_Whitepapers/FutureWatch2009.pdf )

SMEs with innovative products need to consider trade shows as one aspect of the comunication plan on new market but not necessarily as the center piece of the export plan.

Third problem: Marketing resources for SMEs
In front of the inefficiencies of traditional supply chain, technical sales representative cold calls and trades shows for SMEs involved in new markets, SMEs will have generally do not have the resources to employ a full time marketing and sales manager able to compensate for these inefficiencies on new markets.

They do not have resources for:

Push promotion plans reaching out to salary paid sales force;
Pull promotion plans reaching out to large geographical territories;
Advertising in traditional media to build their brand year after year in new markets.
New marketing solutions are then required for the marketing of specialty products on a business to business export markets.

Solution: take the benefits of the new economy
Small and medium size businesses are facing challenges in the context of the new economy. One might see the new economy as a source of problems or as the source of solutions. The last point of view is the best. We need to understand the trends and adapt our marketing strategies accordingly.

The new economy is a knowledge economy: in a knowledge economy, knowledge is a product, in knowledge-based economy, knowledge is a tool;
The new economy is a digital economy: because of the changing usage patterns of Internet technologies, the cost of transactions has dropped so significantly a firm will tend to expand through outsourcing until the cost of carrying out an extra transaction on the open market become equal to the costs of organizing the same transaction within the firm;
Virtualization: it started 50 years ago. These technologies give the capacity to manage resources starting from a central point and to share resources for better use. Virtualization generates major competitive advantages. In he past 10 years, virtualization technologies progressed a lot to interconnect;
Molecularization: Large organizations are becoming fragmented into dynamic clusters of individuals.Inter networking: The most notable example of inter networking is the Internet ;
Disintermediation: lower transportation costs, central warehousing, ERP, drop ship strategies and call centres facilitate direct sales from producers to users;
Innovation: the conversion conversion of new ideas into benefits, whether social or economic, becomes the driver of the economy;
Prosumption: firms using collaboration tools to filter content organize themselves to perform through the performance of a large number of individuals and develop opportunities worldwide;
Immediacy Companies can no longer afford to concentrate on developing the domestic market first and then seek out foreign markets. The rapid technological diffusion now makes it unlikely that a company can rely on a technological competitive advantages for long.
Globalization: integration of national economies into the international economy through trade, foreign direct investment, capital flows, migration, and the spread of technology ;
Convergence: Refers to the evolution of previously distinguishable digitalized information formats, services, applications, networks, and business models in ways that reduce or blend the distinctions. Convergence is driven by the rapid development of digital technology.

The new economy provides the capacity to:

Reduce the costs of inventory or the cost of the acquisition of expertise on large geographical markets;
Implement pull and push promotions on global markets compensating for the inefficiency of traditional distribution networks and traditional medias;
Outsource the quest for request for quotations on new markets than to manage the business development (cold calling) and traditional media (trade shows, magazine) costs entirely inside the firm.

Industrial Affiliates:

Networks manufacturers to professionals sending opportunities of requests for proposals on export markets
Follows up and reports sales process to stakeholders.

New business opportunities are found efficiently through networks of highly specialized professionals located in several states.
Manufacturers and their distributors receive opportunities of requests for proposals and take care of the sales process. They acquire new customers they could hardly reach otherwise and pay affiliates only when sales or qualifying actions are completed. The break even of these external sales networks is often reached within two to four sales.
References
1Given a large enough availability of choice, a large population of customers, and negligible stocking and distribution costs, the selection and buying pattern of the population results in a power law distribution curve, or Pareto distribution. This suggests that a market with a high freedom of choice will create a certain degree of inequality by favoring the upper 20% of the items ("hits" or "head") against the other 80% ("non-hits" or "long tail"). This is known as the Pareto principle or 80–20 rule. The Long Tail concept has found a broad ground for application, research and experimentation. It is a common term in online business and the mass media, but also of importance in micro-finance (Grameen Bank, for example), user-driven innovation (Eric von Hippel), social network mechanisms (e.g., crowd sourcing, crowd casting, Peer-to-peer), economic models, and marketing (viral marketing). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Tail
2 The concept of effective frequency is simple: Too much advertising repetition leads to overkill and waste; too little and no results. http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/5899.asp
3 http://ezinearticles.com/?Why-You-Have-to-Urgently-Follow-Up-Your-Trade-Show-Leads&id=2026221
4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_economies
5 Wikinomics : How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, Don Tapscott, Anthony D William, 2007. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikinomics
6 http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb3265/is_n3_v33/ai_n28631973/?tag=content;col1
7 http://www.iccwbo.org/uploadedFiles/Digital_convergence.pdf

Preparing a channel marketing plan

2009-04-16T22:03:00.009-04:00

Affiliate marketing allows to engage commercial agents sending opportunities of requests for proposals to manufacturers, distributors or solution and service providers who take care of the sales process and the closing of the sale. Affiliates gets paid only against a qualifying action or a sale.

Industrial Affiliates provides affiliate marketing services on Canadian and US markets.

Affiliate marketing is part of the distribution channels. This seminar targets small and medium size entrepreneurs. This seminar can help to prepare a new distribution strategy.

This seminar includes the following topics:

Establish an executive team to initiate the strategic process
Market mapping
Define Goals and Objectives
Categorization of channels
Channel Mapping
Establish the foundation of the Marketing Channels
Implement closed-loop system of communication
Establish a communication plan
Communication with to stakeholders in the channel map

Issue identification

Knowledge processes
Channel marketing
Governance with Industrial Affiliates

Channel Management

Drive revenue

Metrics

Affiliate marketing is based on the basic rules of distribution of product and services: the key to success is to generate Awareness, Interest, Desire and Action (AIDA) to potential buyers of innovative products and services.

Affiliates do not create demand; they respond to the demand. This is why we need to clearly define the channel marketing strategy leading affiliates to send opportunities of requests for proposals.

For information

Tel: 450-689-6688
Toll Free: 1-877-789-6688
Email: info@industrialaffiliates.net

Engineering and natural science managers in the USA

2009-04-15T12:55:00.006-04:00

Engineering and natural science managers represent a good potential of affiliation for companies providing environmental technologies. Here is a description of this employment category in the United States. As the median salary is around 100 000$, exporter can gage their performance based commission so they can represent a significant incentive for affiliation.

According to the United States bureau of Labor and Statistics,
http://stats.bls.gov/oco/ocos009.htm

Employment
Engineering and natural sciences managers held about 228,000 jobs in 2006. Manufacturing industries employed 38 percent of engineering and natural sciences managers. Manufacturing industries with the largest employment are those which produce computer and electronic equipment and those which produce transportation equipment, including aerospace products and parts. Another 31 percent worked in professional, scientific, and technical services industries, primarily for firms providing architectural, engineering, and related services and firms providing scientific research and development services. Other large employers include Federal, State, and local government agencies.
...
Earnings
Earnings for engineering and natural sciences managers vary by specialty and by level of responsibility. Median annual earnings of wage and salary engineering managers were $105,430 in May 2006. The middle 50 percent earned between $84,090 and $130,170. Median annual earnings in the industries employing the largest numbers of engineering managers were:
Semiconductor and other electronic component manufacturing $120,740
Federal executive branch 116,140
Navigational, measuring, electro medical, and control instruments manufacturing 115,150
Aerospace product and parts manufacturing 111,020
Engineering services 103,570
Median annual earnings of wage and salary natural sciences managers were $100,080 in May 2006. The middle 50 percent earned between $77,320 and $130,900. Median annual earnings in the industries employing the largest numbers of natural sciences managers were:
Research and development in the physical, engineering, and life sciences $120,780
Pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing 111,070
Federal executive branch 96,100
Architectural, engineering, and related services 88,990
State government 65,570
In addition, engineering and natural sciences managers, especially those at higher levels, often receive more benefits—such as expense accounts, stock option plans, and bonuses—than do non managerial workers in their organizations
...

Nature of the Work
Engineering and natural sciences managers plan, coordinate, and direct research, design, and production activities. They may supervise engineers, scientists, and technicians, along with support personnel. These managers use their knowledge of engineering and natural sciences to oversee a variety of activities...
To perform effectively, these managers also must apply knowledge of administrative
procedures, such as budgeting, hiring, and supervision. ...
In addition, these managers use communication skills extensively. They spend a great deal of time coordinating the activities of their unit with those of other units or
organizations. They confer with higher levels of management; with financial,
production, marketing, and other managers; and with contractors and equipment
and materials suppliers.
Engineering managers may supervise people who design and develop machinery, products, systems, and processes. They might also direct and coordinate production, operations, quality assurance, testing, or maintenance in industrial plants. Many are plant engineers, who direct and coordinate the design, installation, operation, and maintenance of equipment and machinery in industrial plants. Others manage research and development teams that produce new products and processes or improve existing ones.
Natural sciences managers oversee the work of life and physical scientists, including
agricultural scientists, chemists, biologists, geologists, medical scientists, and physicists. These managers direct research and development projects and coordinate activities such as testing, quality control, and production. They may work on basic research projects or on commercial activities. Science managers sometimes conduct their own research in addition to managing the work of others.
...

Announcing phase 1 of the affiliate program

2009-04-13T14:16:00.005-04:00

Pierre Dumas, president of Industrial Affiliates is pleased to announce the launch of Industrial Affiliates systems.

Phase 1 is the time to sign up General Agreements with manufacturing companies as well as to provide affordable marketing consultation services to recruit affiliates.

Planned for May 2009, phase 2 of the affiliate program will advertise technologies on the WEB as well as to implement an opportunity follow up system.

About Industrial Affiliates

Industrial Affiliates helps manufacturers to receive opportunities of requests for proposals from external sales force located on export markets. These services complements the sales efforts from manufacturers and their distributors. When an affiliate sends an opportunity of requests for proposal, manufacturer's sales manager takes control of the sales process. Manufacturer also controls at which stage of the sale process affiliates will get performance based commissions.

General Agreement

In the General Agreement, manufacturers and affiliates are required to subscribe to the guideline of OECD to multinational enterprises. They must also subscribe to the policies and practices of Industrial Affiliates network which are disclosed time to time by email and on Industrial Affiliates WEB site.

The General Agreement defines each party's role. Time to time, Manufacturers proceed to engagements with Industrial Affiliates and/or with affiliates.

Industrial Affiliates, manufacturers and affiliates are independent contractors and have no authority to obligate or bind the other in any respect except for the clause of this agreement.

Each party owns and shall retain all right, title and interest in its names, logos, trademarks, service marks, trade dress, copyrights and proprietary technology, including, without limitation, those names, logos, trademarks, service marks, trade dress, copyrights and proprietary technology currently used or which may be developed and/or used by it in the future.

Industrial Affiliates and/or affiliates do not have rights or responsibilities to deliver the product or service intended between manufacturer and its customers.

In no event shall either party be liable to the other party for any direct, indirect, special, exemplary, consequential or incidental damages, even if informed of the possibility of such damages.

Industrial Affiliates is not responsible for the fulfillment of engagements between manufacturers and affiliates.

The annual cost of the general agreement is 840$

Industrial Affiliates' role in the general agreement

Industrial Affiliates remains a third party who do not have rights and/or responsibility to deliver product and services intended in the transactions between Manufacturer and future Customers.

Industrial Affiliates

Develops and maintains networks of affiliates;
Develops the system composed of business relationships, agreements, web sites, advertising, lead reservation and sales process reporting system helping manufacturers to generate sales through Affiliates disclosing opportunities of requests for proposals;
Proposes clusters reducing marketing costs to manufacturers
Reserves the right to exclude from the system, any member who do not respects the guidelines of OECD or the policies and practices of the networks.

Manufacturer' roles in the general agreement

Manufacturer

Holds the sole right and responsibility to

Determine in the product and service offered under his name in the system
Convert Affiliates sales leads into Request for Quotation (RFQ)
Convert RFQ into sales;

Advertises accurate information such as description, prices, up to date pictures and texts in the System ;
Promptly updates the system if and when the products and services are not available;
Is responsible to deliver product and services posted in the system according to the terms agreed with customers;
Can change, suspend or discontinue any aspect of an offer in the system with 24 hours prior notice ;
Warrants that sales leads assigned for a product would be followed through the system would report or update information in the system the same working day including but not limited to:

Business opportunities reception receipt
RFQ date;
RFQ Commission payment date;
Amount of Commission for RFQ;
Sales Contract date;
Customer Purchase Order number ;
Purchase Order Sale amount ;
Payment Date of Sales Commission;
Sales Commission Amount ;
Machine/Equipment Delivery date;
Payment date;
Sales Commission date;
Final Payment Date

Insures that products and services are conforming to all applicable laws and regulations;
Maintains proper liability insurance coverage or the product and services covering Industrial Affiliates his employees, affiliates, suppliers, board members are covered in the liability insurance;
Pays commissions within seven (7) days of the occurrence of the material facts defined in the Engagement (ex: date of RFQ or Delivery Date)

Termination of General Agreement and engagements

Either party can the General Agreement at any time, for any reason, provided that they provide at least seven days prior written notice of such termination to the other party.

The termination of the General Agreement would also terminate any outstanding Engagements.
However, all rights to payment, causes of action and any provisions which by their terms are intended to survive termination, would survive the termination of the Agreement.

Termination of an Engagement would not terminate the Agreement.

Engagement for consultation services

Engagements with consultants are optional and in addition to the General Agreement.

Manufacturers can engage marketing consultants to help prepare their sales plan. Service rates are agreed between parties prior to work.

Consultants engaged by manufacturers must subscribe to the OECD Guidelines, as well as to the network policies and practices disclosed and updated time to time on Industrial Affiliates WEB site.

Consultation services related to the affiliate networks generally include

Marketing Services ;
Sales Management Services ;
Digital Information Management Services;
Communication Services;
Pre selection of affiliates.

Industrial Affialiates service rates are available on Industrial Affiliates WEB page « Begin »

Engagement for the use of the system

This engagement is supplemental to the General Agreement and will be implemented in phase 2.

It enables the parties to share fixed marketing costs between several manufacturers.

Industrial Affiliates

Provides first line services to affiliates;
Provides pre selection and affiliate selection systems;
Provides WEB site displaying technologies and providing opportunity reservation system;
Collect engagements taken between manufacturers and all affiliates recruited;
Collects and reports information related to

Affiliates ;
Product and services offered by manufacturers looking for opportunities of request for proposals;
Material facts related to the sales process and commission sales process.

Service fees for the use of the system will be posted on Industrial Affiliates WEB site and can be changed at any time with 7 days prior notice.

Parties can terminate this engagement at any time without reasons with 7 days prior notice.

Industrial Affiliates innovates

Innovation is the conversion of new ideas into benefits. Phase 1 and Phase 2 are converting technologies of the new economy to increase networking and sales on export markets.

Millions of citizens are using social networks to interact. Industrial Affiliates is only adjusting business processes with WEB centric technologies that became pppular in the past five years to optimize the opportunities of requests for proposals.

Phase 1 is very affordable allowing manufactureres to start their affiliate networks

Helping economic development organizations to create jobs

2009-04-04T22:40:00.007-04:00

The success of organization holds in large part to human resources

Industrial Affiliates helps regional economic partners to integrate a world class career center into their WEB site, taking care of employment needs in the region as well as recruiting external sales force for local businesses on export markets.

More sales, more jobs, more prosperity in the region

Regional Career WEB site
Regions can now implement a career WEB site that totally integrates to their WEB site with harmony. Career WEB sites can help businesses in region to benefit from professional recruiting tools . This gives job seekers access to professional search-and-apply tools from within the region economic development’s website — an enhancement that generates higher completion rates and better overall candidates for your open positions.

Better functionality
The system provides industry leading functionality to make sure regional career site is optimized for businesses. All job details are kept in one, easy-to manage location, which helps recruiters and hiring managers save time and increase productivity. Then, as candidates apply, their resumes become part of the regional career proprietary database, so they can be contacted in the future. The system also allows to search for passive candidates and forward their resumes to hiring managers in just one click.

Supporting Businesses on international markets
Industrial Affiliates Unique services brings remarkable benefits:
Increase sales through external sales force on export markets
Increased capacity to attract technical and scientific job seekers
Increased sales on export market en more employment

Main Benefits
Give job seekers professional search-and-apply tools in the regional careers website;
Manage all online candidates in one central location;
A hosted career site and a private resume database;
Allows to leverage world class technology and expertise to reap the maximum benefit.

This solution

Provides a powerful way to recruit candidates;
Promotes the region's brand image and awareness;
Conforms to information privacy laws in Canada.

Conference held at REPEX was a success on March 30th.

2009-04-04T21:15:00.003-04:00

The conference was held at Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada in Montreal. The conference was also WEBcasted.

The conference was titled: How to start an export cluster composed of small businesses.

The main topics of the conference were:

The growth of social networks in 2009;
How to position the export cluster in the extended enterprise;
Benefits of affiliate marketing for manufacturers on export markets;
Benefits of starting a cluster for a business association;
Partnership program which auto-finance the implementation of the portal;
Benefits for the export consultant ;
Benefits of export clusters on the economy.

The conference showed that the monetization of social networking entered a growth phase in the business world in 2009.

It showed the impressive opportunity that we have to access 70 millions resumes and world class affiliate selection systems as the foundations of our business.

Institutions VS Collaboration from Clay Shirky

2009-04-04T15:27:00.003-04:00

Ted Conferences : “Institutions VS Collaboration”.

In this prescient 2005 talk, Clay Shirky shows how closed groups and companies will give way to looser networks where small contributors have big roles and fluid cooperation replaces rigid planning.

Using affiliate marketing in the Environmental Industry

2009-03-28T05:40:00.031-04:00

The Environmental Industry is booming. I went to the trade show of Americana in Montreal last week. I met several companies and organizations interested to network with specialists to export innovative technologies in the United States.

Some of the environmental companies are using the Voluntary Carbon Market as a commercial tool to finance environmental projects. Other groups are building communities on the Internet to identify local environmental issues.

In the past four months, I have met two world class Internet Technology companies and raised their interest to provide their technologies to service affiliate networks on export markets.

I am now looking for third parties interested to venture with us to to link environmental technology companies with social groups and individuals sending opportunities of request for proposals in exchange of sales commissions.

The project will be funded by environmental companies paying 1000$/month to access affiliate networks providing opportunities of request for proposal.

The break even and benefits of this opportunity can be seen on our "partnership" WEB page. . The investment required for the assembly and implementation of the technologies is minimal compared to the huge economic and societal benefits of the implementation that would trigger such affiliate marketing program. 20 companies subscribing to this service will generate 240 000$ to the venture. Therefore, the software licenses would be implemented and paid for through performance: we do not have to buy expensive licenses upfront.

For more information, Email to info@industrialaffiliates.net

______________________________

You will find here bellow some of my notes about

Affiliate Marketing
A partial and quick list of facts and stakeholders in the Environmental Industry

1. Using Affiliate Marketing in the Environmental Industry

Affiliate Marketing allows registered affiliates to reserve opportunities of requests for proposals and to credit their organization in exchange of sales commissions. Once prospects are sent away to manufacturers or solution providers, the technical sales representatives leads the sales process up to the contract and purchase. Manufacturers and solution providers acquire new customers and pay affiliates only when a sale or other qualifying action is completed.

The Affiliate Marketing process is designed to increase sales:
1. Diagnostic and Market mapping
2. Define goals and objectives
3. Implement stakeholders management and map channels
4. Establish communication plan
5. Implement telecommunications
6. Governance and channel management

Some companies are able to finance the implementation of their technologies by themselves at their client's site, taking into account the ROI provided by the carbon voluntary markets. The voluntary carbon market can certainly reduce the costs of remediation to environmental problems.

It is possible to use affiliate marketing technologies to network environmental companies with affiliates submitting opportunities of requests for proposals to re mediate to environmental problems.

2. Quick and partial map of the stakeholders on the environmental markets.

The facts and figures presented in this article can be seen as key elements of the Diagnostic and Market mapping of the Affiliate marketing plan.

In the United States
"The US environmental industry has had a long-standing tradition of developing cutting edge technologies and has hence grown into a major industrial sector in the U.S. According to Environmental Business International, Inc. (EBI) San Diego, CA), in 2001 the U.S. environmental industry represented total revenues of $214 billion and exports of $22.4 billion generated by almost 35,000 private sector companies and about 87,000 public sector entities. It has recently been recognized as a valuable and vital part of the economy, responsible for more than 2% of GNP and employment of nearly 1.6 million people in the United States in 2002. It is no surprise that the U.S. is one of the leading exporters and importers of environmental technologies in the world." www.benchmarkemail.com/newsletters/parlezusa/us_environment.htm

In Canada
There would be over 6 600 private companies directly involved in environmental products and services in Canada.

There would be a total of 105 00 establishments (private and public) who have at least one employee involved in environmental tasks.

The environmental industry would have a total of 503 000 jobs in Canada.

Quebec
In the Province of Quebec, there is 1600 businesses and more than 34 000 jobs related to green technologies and environmental companies with an average growth of 41.4% in the past 5 years.
Investments in this field past from 16,8 M$ in 2006 to 59,4 M$ in 2007. www.mdeie.gouv.qc.ca/index.php?id=84&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=1494&tx_ttnews[currentCatUid]=68&tx_ttnews[backPid]=4563&no_cache=1

Ontario
2,467 environmental companies employs more than 62 000 jobs are related to Environment www.2ontario.com/industry/environment.asp

Alberta
Almost 1,330 companies, employing 26,000 Albertans and generating more than $3.5 billion in revenues. www.albertacanada.com/industries/1160.html

British Columbia
Over 1,300 companies with revenues close to $2 billion. The main components of the sector are environmental construction, recycling, and solid and hazardous waste management, consulting services, water and waste water goods and services, renewable energy, air pollution and noise control, analytical services, and green building and sustainable urban planning. www.bceia.com/documents/overview_on_BCs_environment_industry.pdf

State of the Voluntary Carbon Market
Market studies are showing that the Voluntary Carbon Market had had a growth of 165% in 2007 and was valued US$258m. The same market analysis says that The voluntary carbon markets can be broken down into two categories: the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) and the “OvertheCounter” (OTC) market. The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) beeing the world’s only voluntary capandtrade system.

The Katomba Group published "Forging a Frontier, The State of the Voluntary Carbon Market 2008"

Here some interesting information about the members of the environmental industry and the voluntary carbon market:

Anticipation of regulation is often cited as another major force behind the voluntary markets but that it is currently difficult to separate purely voluntary buys from precompliance buys;
The vast majority of credit buyers in the 2007 voluntary markets were private businesses (79%). Approximately two thirds of their credits were purchased to immediately offset emissions, with the remaining third bought for investment purposes;
NGOs comprised 13% of the buyers, individuals 5%, and governmental entities less than 1%.
In 2007, buyers from the EU represented the greatest share of demand (47%) for credits on the voluntary markets. North American buyers purchased 37% of credits. Demand for credits by customers in Asia, Latin America, and Africa remains low;
Like last year, corporate responsibility and public relations/branding efforts remained the main purchasing motivations of buyers in the voluntary markets in 2007. Two thirds of customers purchasing offsets in 2007 did so to offset institutional emissions;
“Additionally” the demonstrable ability to reduce emissions beyond the levels that would otherwise have occurred – remained the primary criteria for selecting an offset provider in 2007;
Environmental and social co benefits were also ranked highly as a motivation to buy credit.

The North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation

The North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC) include procedures allowing non-governmental organization or person residing or established in the territory of a participating country, to make submissions that a party to the NAAEC is failing to effectively enforce its environmental law.” The CEC has published “Guidelines for Submissions on Enforcement Matters” explaining these procedures.

Stakeholders listed at the Chicago Climate Exchange WEB site

The Chicago Climate Exchange describes itself as "the world's first and North America’s only active voluntary, legally binding integrated trading system to reduce emissions of all six major greenhouse gases, with offset projects worldwide there is over 400 organizations listed in 47 categories on the Chicago Climate Exchange WEB site.

Exporting in the context of the Extended Enterprise

2009-03-22T22:13:00.011-04:00

Several specialists agree that innovation is tied to collaboration and coordination between stakeholders. The new economy presents some interesting challenges to organizations in the business-to- business (B2B) environment. In defining the enterprise, prior to the globalization of markets, organizations rarely looked beyond their own doors. This is changing.

While we frequently think of the enterprise as the bricks, the mortar, the salary paid employees, adopting the customer's perspective dramatically impacts our perception about what is our organization. The fondation of the new economy are the networking, partnerships and commercial agreements based on collaboration. This is Industrial Affiliate's framework.

To the customer on Export Markets , the enterprise represents a combination of business organizations and governments that provide good and services. Often called the "Extended Enterprise", this point of view looks beyond our company and represents the complete value chain for good and services.

In defining the extended enterprise, you determine which individuals and organizations you want to keep information about. You identify the kind of information you'd like to capture, and design systems that provide this information to the people who need it to facilitate your business. You might supply information to economic partners, employees, agent and distributors, partners and affiliates and prospective clients, which result in the extended enterprise.”

While we used to think that the most important stakeholders are the employees, the suppliers, the bank, etc., in the new economy the members of the community of practice are getting more and more influence. This point of view can change dramatically the way we communicate on the Internet to export innovative products, solutions and technologies.

We are changing our paradigm from a brick and mortar centric business environment to a knowledge based, clustered and internetworked world where innovation is perceived as the most important way to export and where the members of the communities of practice play a major role in the commercialization of new ideas, new products, new solutions.

To support communities of practices, WEB sites are becoming interactive communication tools where servers and Internet links and WEB addresses are replacing the brick, the mortar, the office behind the door and the street address.

Virtualization of business started more than 30 years ago with the MRP and ERP. The CRM systems increased in popularity in the 90's. Deloitte says that 2009 is the year of WEB 2.0 for the Standard and Poor 500.

The tools are available. This is why Industrial Affiliates currently implements export clusters based on communities of practices composed of economic partners, businesses, consultants, affiliates, prospective clients coordinated through code of ethics, policies and practices and leading their business through agreements, request for proposals, sales and performance based commission.

Welcome Industrial Affiliates new blog

2009-03-22T06:04:00.001-04:00

The lauch of this blog in English is a new step in our business developments. This blog is represents in fact the beginning of a large publishing process designed to reach out on export markets.

It is also the consequences of several developments I have made in the past ten years to develop business in the United-States and it represents the conversion in English, of several activities in the past few months in the province of Quebec where I had the opportunities to meet several high tech companies and business associations interested to develop networks of affiliates through the tools available to access opportunities brought in the new economy.

This blog is also the continuity of an other blog launched few weeks ago in French. Both blogs in French and English should flourish in the next few weeks through the contributions of communities of practices composed of sales and marketing managers, export consultants, business association managers.

As this blog is meant to inform the members of communities of practices in the export of innovative products, solutions and technologies, is will highlight a section of the innovation process that is often neglected by small and medium size businesses: commercialization.

Our goal is to convert new ideas, new products, new technologies with a competitive edge and to convert them into benefits.

Finally, the launch of this blog coincides with the begining of the recruiting process of affilaites for several companies. It will be a way to interest whoever wants to be part of an export cluster or launch its own export cluster.

As we have access to databases extremely rich in information and business opportunities, I invite you to contact me for collaboration so you can benefit the most of the work that has been done.

Pierre