Internet-Based Software Helps Political Candidates to Get Out the Vote and Cut Campaign Costs by 80 Percent

Internet-Based Software Helps Political Candidates to Get Out the Vote and Cut Campaign Costs by 80 Percent: "Voter Lists LLC announced a new Internet-based service today called GOTVoters Online(TM) that helps political candidates to Get Out The Vote (GOTV) on Election Day. GOTVoters Online(TM) cleverly combines state-supplied registered voter records with Internet-based software developed by Voter Lists LLC.

Brunswick, ME (PRWEB via PR Web Direct) June 22, 2006 -- Voter Lists LLC announced a new Internet-based service today called GOTVoters Online(TM) that helps political candidates to Get Out The Vote (GOTV) on Election Day. GOTVoters Online(TM) cleverly combines state-supplied registered voter records with Internet-based software developed by Voter Lists LLC.

Public voter data and our GOTV Internet software make it even more critical for voters to vote often. Political campaigns are evolving to target only those who vote regularly and to safely ignore those who do not vote. Only the interests of frequent voters, not those of the general population, will be represented by elected officials.
GOTVoters Online(TM) allows political campaigns to manage voter information online. Campaign managers can filter voters by gender, ethnicity, age, and other criteria and assign them to campaign volunteers, who gather voter opinions on key issues. Candidates then use the data to get only their supporters to the polls on Election Day.

Online at http://www.voter-lists.com, the new service cuts political campaign costs by allowing political campaign workers to use their own computers, Internet connections, and phones. GOTVoters Online(TM) eliminates the need for large campaign offices with dozens of phones and computers. GOTVoters Online(TM) works with any computer through any Internet browser.

GOTVoters Online(TM) targets candidates with 5,000 to 200,000 voters. Those mid-sized political campaigns have never before had access to advanced Internet-based technology. Typical costs, which include both the Internet-based software and many states' voter lists, are about $1,600 for a small mayoral campaign with 5,000 voters or $5,500 for a large judicial campaign with 200,000 voters."


And the marketplace will supply the technology to get to most valuable customers, better, faster, cheaper.

RIC - News and Events

RIC - News and Events:

"Cranston Mayor Steven Laffey is in a virtual tie with U. S. Senator Lincoln Chafee for the party’s nomination for Senate in the September Republican primary, according to a new statewide survey of 256 likely Republican primary voters conducted by the Bureau of Government Research and Services at Rhode Island College. If the September primary for the U.S. Senate election were held today, 39 percent of voters would support Chafee while 38 percent would back Laffey, if half of those voting in the primary are Republicans and the other half unaffiliated voters. One in four likely primary voters say they are undecided.

Among men, Laffey leads Chafee by 44 to 34 percent, while Chafee’s lead among women is only 37 to 35 percent. Regionally, Chafee appears to be strongest in Providence (73 to 27 percent), western Rhode Island (43 to 21 percent), and in the East Bay (44 to 33 percent). Laffey is strongest in Blackstone Valley (50 to 40 percent), Newport County (46 to 23 percent), and in the Providence suburbs south of the city (39 to 31 percent). Among age groupings, Chafee is strongest with voters older than 64 (49 to 37 percent), while Laffey’s greatest strength comes from voters 39 or younger (55 to 33).

According to the survey, the key to the primary outcome will be the number of unaffiliated and Republican voters coming out on election day. "


In a protected low growth market, you have to focus on your most valued customer. Every smart business knows that.

Multinational Corporation Out - GIE In

IBM chief calls for end to colonial companies:

When the Chairman of IBM, invests $6billion in India, then announces that IBM is not a multi national corporation, but a global intetgrated enterprise, something is going on. It might just be spin, but it could be something a lot more important.
From yesterdays, FT.com,

"Sam Palmisano, head of IBM, on Monday called on multinationals to evolve into a new type of corporation if they are to avoid an anti-globalisation backlash that leads to the election of governments hostile to the interests of big business."

He says traditional multi-national companies were designed to deal with the “protection and nationalism” that held sway in the 20th century. The modern company, Mr Palmisano writes, is a “globally integrated enterprise”, which spreads its strategies, production capacity and management around the world in order to be close to markets and customers.

“The globally integrated enterprise is an inherently better and more profitable way to organise business activities – and it can deliver enormous economic benefits to both developed and developing nations,” he writes.

In the GME the most valuable commodity is time. The most dysfunctional aspect of the multi national "colonial corporation" is that it's not built for speed, but for risk management. Perhaps the GIE (global intergretated enterprise) can solve that problem for business. And has implications for the rest of us.

The issues raised have been articulated at least 15 years ago. In 1991 Robert Reich, in The Work of Nations said

In the United States and probably in Canada as well, there is the supposition that national competitiveness is tantamount to the profitability or world market share of the nation’s major corporations. That is no longer the case. Corporations head quartered in whatever nation are rapidly going global and employing large numbers of non-nationals, often to do complicated work. To the extent that a corporation is profitable or enjoys a large world market share, the citizens of that nation may or may not benefit. Perhaps some of them will benefit by having larger dividends, but they may not be getting the best jobs or the most important experience. The “us” is the nation’s people and their intellectual capacities.

If Mr. Palmisan is correct, maybe the implications for the welfare of national populations of GIE's are more promising than within the context of Multinationals.
According to him, the model is no longer, keep the high paying jobs here, and the low paying jobs there, but rather level the playing field. Jobs are located where they create the most value, the customer defines the value created, and the challenge is to deliver value at a profit.

In the GME, the only valuable commodity is time

FT.com / World - US workers challenge value of being overworked:

And now the workers, and their lawyers confirm it.

by Patti Waldmeir in Washington
Published: June 8 2006 18:29 | Last updated: June 8 2006 22:49

"Increasingly, US workers are banding together to demand payment for all the hours they work, including unpaid overtime, work done during meals and time spent walking around on the job. Collective lawsuits involving wages and hours are growing exponentially, according to a recent study by the law firm Seyfarth Shaw, which found that mass litigation over pay and working hours outnumbered any other kind of workplace class action last year, including gender and other job discrimination lawsuits."

“Certainly this kind of suit is not as glitzy or sexy as some other kind of claims,” he says, but adds that entrepreneurial plaintiffs’ attorneys have discovered that such suits can be very lucrative. Many legal experts say plaintiffs’ attorneys are driving the rise in litigation, because they can earn large settlement fees.

But worker advocates disagree, saying that as employers try to cut labour costs, they are increasingly violating the law, while state and federal agencies charged with enforcing it are not doing so aggressively. “There’s been a decline in enforcement actions by the public agencies . . . and the private bar has stepped in and taken over the responsibility of enforcing the laws,” says Cathy Ruckelshaus of the National Employment Law Project, an advocacy group for low-wage workers.

“....We want people to be eager beavers, so it goes against the grain to say ‘work to rule’: but if he doesn’t sue you, somebody else might!” says Mr McCormick. The same is true of the secretary who answers phone calls on her lunch break, or reads a book while waiting for dictation.

Every day, the rules of the game change. The incentives for independent contractors working by project, rather than by hours has just increased.

Supply Chains in the GME

From the FT.. Mastering Risk - Coping with complexity and chaos:

"Achieving supply chain resilience
Because even the best-managed supply chains will hit unexpected turbulence or be affected by events that are impossible to forecast, it is critical that resilience be built into them. Resilience implies the ability of a system to return to its original or desired state after being disturbed. Resilient processes are flexible and agile and are able to change quickly. Supply chain resilience also requires at those critical points that can be adversely affected by changes in the rate of flow.Supply chain resilience depends on rapid access to information about changed conditions. Through collaborative working with partners, this information can be converted into supply chain intelligence. Because networks have become more complex, they will rapidly descend into chaos unless they can be connected through shared information and knowledge. The aim is to create a supply chain community where there is a greater visibility of upstream and downstream risk and a shared commitment to mitigate and manage those risks.Ultimately, it may be necessary for companies to re-engineer their supply chains not, as in the past, with cost minimisation in mind but to maximise their flexibility and agility. Today's changed conditions are forcing companies to question past decisions on sourcing, outsourcing and the pursuit of Clean solutions. Responsiveness and resilience must be the twin goals of supply chain design and management."

In the rush to cut costs, the risks are often overlooked. In the GME, risk management has to be an essential part of logistic excellence. It has to be faster AND better. Better means safer.

Google-Mart in the Print Industry

Dr. Joe Webb is one of the few in the print industry that seems to consistently get it right.

I spent 30 years on the ground in that industry before going into education and consulting. It's a great context to watch the play of GME forces.

Printing always been one of the largest manufacturing industries in the US. Yet, it has always been organized in a small units - average size, at least until recently, of about 20 people per location. As other industries are now trying to grow models of networked production, the print industry historically has always thrived with a connective tissue of job brokering, dynamic specialization, and local customer focused small enterprises.

The industry is now moving from a customized manufacturing system held together by managing client risk through trust built on reputation and customer loyalty. But risk has been mitigated by constant improvements in technology. Once the value added of risk management is taken away, margins have eroded. Add to this the crisis in advertising, information management, and marketing, and it really gets interesting.

Another factor is that print might be an industry that partially shielded from global outsourcing because of the time requirements and the need to deliver physical product.

Reading Dr. Joe's updates with fact based research and at the same time watching the common wisdom move to and fro is a great learning experience. It's a perfect place to see the GME wave hitting the ground and how small manufacturing business units are responding to it.

From PrintForecast Perspective Archives

It was recently announced that data base provider Harte- Hanks purchased a digital printing business, PrintSmart, located in Southeastern Massachusetts. For all of the talk about printers getting into the data base business, this is a data base business getting into printing.....

And after a discussion of the benfits of outsourcing, he gives the following advice to printing companies, his primary audience.

This brings out the most important and unrenewable management resource: time. Time cannot be replaced. Outsourcing implementation tasks creates time for corporate management because they can apply their managerial time elsewhere, and access expertise in implementation that they could not acquire personally or would have to hire at great cost.

Printing companies have significant opportunities to lift burdens and create time for their clients. Knowing how their clients use print, or would use print if they could, and what other information distribution methods they need to tie into, has been hard for many printers to understand. It's essential to focus not on getting ink onto paper, but on translating client ideas into actions. It will be quite interesting to see how (or if) Harte-Hanks expands their services in this way. It will be also interesting to see how many printers also view this as a core strategy for their own businesses. There are hurdles: clients typically do not think of their printers in this way.

Which printers will hear this clear and good adivce?

My own instinct is that most won't or can't. Only a few printers have the culture to recognize that a potentially huge source of value creation might come from knowing their customers - not in the sense of "owning" the relationship - but the granular knowledge of their customers' business problems and systems. Printers' problem is not having the time or capabilty to leverage that asset.

The most likely mix is that some printing companies will get it, while others will build on network partnerships, and many will do neither. Most printers' core skill is printing stuff. There are many other centers of expertise that will face the customer to create value and print will continue to be hidden from view in the middle of the value chain.

This is not bad news for any particular printer.

In fact, those that concentrate on dynamic specialization ( as described in The Only Sustainable Edge and www.edgeperspectives.com ) have the opportunity to do better than ever.

Even the big companies can get it right.

Andrew Ward, FT May 30.":

"One evening last October, an empty freight trailer was stolen from a truck park in Stockholm, Sweden, and driven north towards the border with Finland. Within two days, the vehicle was in Vyborg, Russia, more than 1,000 miles away.
...By the time the theft was reported, the trailer was in Russia. But TIP was able to use the tracking device to guide Russian police to the freight yard where the vehicle was parked. Within hours, the trailer was recovered and the thieves arrested.
... TIP is the European trailer-leasing business of General Electric. Many of its vehicles, including the one in Stockholm, are fitted with a satellite tracking system, developed by GE's equipment services division.

GE continues to change and seems to be getting it right. In addition to heavily investing in "green" initiatives, Jeff Immelt is changing the corporate culture. The basic insights of the GME seem to be consistent with his decisions.

More from Mr. Ward's article..
GE's lead in such a promising but unproved market is a symbol of how the group has become more innovative and daring since Jeff Immelt replaced Jack Welch as chief executive nearly five years ago. During Mr Welch's 20-year reign, GE was famous for its laser-like focus on growth and ruthless intolerance of failing managers. The approach made GE one of the most disciplined and reliable performers in corporate America. But critics believe it also spread a fear of failure that stifled risk-taking.

Mr Immelt has sought to inject a more adventurous spirit by increasing investment in research and development and linking management bonuses to innovation. Shortly after taking charge, he challenged senior executives to generate three new business ideas a year, each with the potential to deliver at least $100m (£54m) in annual revenues. VeriWise, developed entirely by GE scientists at the group's main R&D centre in Niskayuna, New York, provides some of the clearest evidence to date that Mr Immelt's cultural revolution is bearing fruit.

"It is an example of the imagination breakthroughs happening across GE," says Thomas Konditi, president of asset intelligence for GE Equipment Services. "In the past, going into a new technology such as this would have been seen as risky. People would have said, 'Let's not take too big a swing.' But we have proved that we can be a leader rather than a follower in innovation and we can move fast."

They had the customer relationship, gave their top people an incentive to think about what the customer needed, invented a solution that played to GE's core strength both in technology and relationships, and implemented a solution that increases transparency,accountability and takes friction out of a logistic chain.

Barcodes to Amazon via Mobile Phones.

FT.com/ Marketers stealth on web will not pay for long:

By Ben Richards and Faris Yakob, in today's FT

"In an age of unprecedented access to information, attempting to deceive consumers is more dangerous than ever before. Rather than trying to dupe consumers into receiving their messages by stealth, brands should do the reverse: to strike an open and honest bargain with the consumer, providing content, tools and experiences in return for engaging with their brand.Smart companies understand that today's web-savvy consumers can be as stealthy as brands.

"These stealth consumers set their web browsers to block advertisements; they use Epinions to find them the best products; they use Kelkoo to find the best prices. If a brand does not deliver, they use the web to air their grievances.

And here's the punch line...

"..It is the brands that embrace this stealth consumer that will thrive. Take Amazon in Japan. If you have a web-enabled camera phone (and almost everyone in Japan does), you can take a picture of a barcode on any product and send it to Amazon.co.jp. Amazon compares the code with its online database, and if it stocks the item, it will send you back the price, which is typically lower than the in-store one, and offer you the chance to place an order."

So... does it really make sense to spend advertising dollars on advertising, or maybe it makes more sense to spend the money on making a truly great product and delivering it with the minimum of hassle?

How can you recognize a tipping point?

Advertisers are struggling to reach webwise teens

Money talks, .......everything else follows.

Aline van Duyn, reports in the May 23 FT.
"A key moment of realisation for the industry came last year when Mr Murdoch grasped how dramatically the internet was changing the media business. Since his very public damascene conversion, embracing digital media has become a priority for all News Corp’s businesses, from television to newspapers to movies. The media mogul has spent around $1.5bn on acquiring internet companies.

On the same page, Richard Waters asks from San Fransciso...
"Are the drab text advertisements that appear on internet search engines a harbinger of what lies ahead for the entire $600bn global advertising industry? "

“...When people look back at search, it will be seen as one of the pivotal things that shifted how people think about advertising,” says Mr Armstrong.

"...Google has experimented with buying advertisements in print publications on behalf of its customers. This year, it bought a company that places advertisements on radio stations – a highly fragmented, difficult-to-reach market that in some ways resembles the search engine world."

And now for some of the Google- Mart implications. Same article,

"...Led by Wal-Mart, a group of advertisers under the auspices of the Association of National Advertisers this month set out to raise $50m for a pilot project to launch their own joint market for television time."

"...In a world where advertisers are used to buying in online auctions, things should be different. Media buyers such as Publicis, however, respond that advertising space is not a commodity and advertisers still want control over where their messages appear."

No doubt that advertisers want control over where their messages appear, but exactly why is advertising space not a commodity? Aside from the fact that the revenue stream for media buyers comes from their superior information about the marketplace.

"...Whether the traditional advertising industry is ready for the greater level of efficiency and accountability this implies is another matter. There is a general perception, says Mr Armstrong, that the industry “is overweight and a bit mushy. We’re replacing fat with muscle”.

So, maybe in the long, or maybe not so long, run, advertising dollars will be put into enhancing the customer experience. Making it better, faster, cheaper, more elegant, easier to use, taking less time and hassle.

The GME threatens any industry that is based on a control of information. We've been hearing the rumbles for the last few years, but it sure feels like the fault lines are going to erupt pretty soon.

Straight from Google's CEO

FT.com / Eric Schmidt, CEO Google- Let more of the world access the internet

Eric Shmidt talks about access in the FT. He says, "The democratisation of information has empowered us all as individuals. We no longer have to take what business, the media or indeed politicians say at face value. Where once people waited to be told what the news was, they can now decide what news matters to them, and increasing numbers are actually commenting on events themselves – creating blogs every second of every day."

And later in the column, "But people in general are extremely adept at telling the difference between products that are good or bad – or information that is right or wrong. Indeed it is the liberation of end users that has made the internet the success it is today."

And has created the threat to any enterprise that depends on an information advantage for it's success.

If you're not selling to consumers, you're selling dog food.

FT.com / By industry / Consumer industries - P&G upbeat over Wal-Mart strategy

Sorry but the FT only lets you read the first graph for free

The dog food business is a catch phrase for business that have revenue streams that are not connected to the value of their product to the consumer.

Some dog food businesses are very profitable, and have been very stable. But in an era of rapid change, they have a special problem. Like any well run business, dog food businesses (most of the B to B market) will be pushed to innovate primarily to better serve their customers. If their customers are not consumers, they are locked into the level of innovation demanded by their organizational customers.

The problem is that they are then dependent on sometimes a very slow moving intermediary. A good example in the automative space might be Delphi. Locked into GM, they are now being penalized for that symbiotic relationship. Perhaps they would have been better off if they were part of the Toyota value chain.

The printing industry has a similar problem. Some publishers get it, many don't. But if you're customer is a publisher, the only responsible thing to do is to produce what the publisher is asking for. The problem arises when the publishing business model changes.

Wal-Mart and P&G are more exposed to the consumer market than most businesses. They both are driven towards ever imporving efficiencies, by competing in an open, transparent marketplace.

In The GME, business models that make their money from consumers are most incented to sustainable innovation..

Make things people want, and make it fun to buy it.

Let them eat bread.

Panera Bread, one of the leading "fast casual" restaurant chains in the US, will on Friday unveil plans for 25 per cent long-term earnings growth, marking the first time it has committed to such a target since going public in 1991.

...Its business model is based on growing demand for “speciality” or “artisan” breads, for which it can charge a premium price as consumers increasingly trade up from cheaper chains.

Panera bakes all of its bread at each of its almost 900 stores, which the company claims have more average sales per unit than Starbucks or dining chains such as Outback Steakhouse.

They place to watch for leading developments in the GME are the companies whose primary revenue source is consumers.

They have to satisfy the folks who are suppying the revenue stream. Those that find or create a profitable niche will do just fine.

World's Simplest Marketing Plan

Guy Kawasaki nails this. Note: This is a link to an MS-Word document.

Supply-chain and stock price

Interesting blog post from Christopher Koch about how investment analysts are taking a closer look at operational effectiveness. This post focuses on supply chain, but we expect to see this touch all industries, including financial services. Managing logistics (a la Wal-Mart) is a key locus of institutional value.

The Ultimate Question

Always insightful blog Adventures in Capitalism blogged a review of Fred Reichhold's new book "The Ulimate Question." It's a good summary and worth checking out. Essentially, it says the best metric for any business is the percentage of customers that would recommend it to a friend.

Reducing customer service costs through product focus and simplicity

The NYT had an interesting article today about GetHuman.com a website that publishes the secret codes that get you out of a phone tree and to an actual operator when you call big companies. A great example of the transparency of information in the GME. But even more interesting where these to quotes in the article from a Customer Service expert and a Banker:

'The reason people are dialing the 1-800 number is that they're having a bad experience in some other channel,' said Mark Hurst, founder and president of Creative Good, a consulting firm that advises companies on how to improve the customer experience. He is amazed, he said, at how difficult it remains on most Web sites for customers to do little things like revise an order or track a shipment. 'If e-commerce were much, much simpler,' he said, 'a huge percentage of these calls would never be made.'

JIM KELLY, chief customer service officer at ING Direct, the online bank with 3.5 million customers and deposits of nearly $40 billion, takes the case for simplicity a step further. ING Direct keeps its entire product line simple. It offers a small number of easy-to-understand products such as savings accounts, certificates of deposit and no-frills mortgages. The savings programs entail no annual fees or account minimums.

As a result, the average ING Direct customer calls the bank only 1.6 times a year. The calls that do come in are answered by full-time employees who don't rely on scripted answers and don't work under strict time limits.

'The key word for us is simplicity,' Mr. Kelly said. 'If you eliminate service charges and hidden fees, you eliminate most of the problems and complaints. Then the only reason for people to call is to do business. And those are calls you're eager to take.'

So, if your product is not confusing, people won't call with dumb questions. Sounds good to us!

Information Disadvantage and Value Added

Any part of any business that is based on information disadvantge is threatened. That includes both the large and small. Textbook publishers, traditional education delivery systems - including Universities, Colleges, Community Colleges and K-12, and of course newspapers are in danger of radical transformation.

Clay Christiansen,et al. outline a theory and strategy for thinking about sources of innovation, in Seeing What's Next. The chapters on the health and education business are particularly interesting.

So...business has to figure out how to "add value". Sometimes this concept becomes unduly complicated. "Value creation" is actually pretty straightforward. What can your business do for $x, that people will gladly pay $(x+y)?

The basic rule is that "better, faster, cheaper" always wins. But, as Apple has shown with the iPod, and that Starbucks has shown with their coffee, "cheaper" can be a very complex concept.

In the GME, in the developed world, people will gladly part with $, in order to pay for an experience they want.
And in the developing world, P&G has shown that you can make lots of money by selling single use shampoo in China for 2 cents.

The right product, for the right person, at the right time for the right price - produced and delivered at a profit.

The end of information disadvantage business models

Real estate agents, like travel agents before them, are under seige. As the Freakonomics guys pointed out in their book, real estate agents take advantage of their control over information (buying and selling prices in a particular area) to encourage their clients to sell as quickly as possible.

However, check out Zillow.com, which is seeking to end this monopoly.

The age of the knowledge-hoarder is over. Agents of all kinds must focus on services and other value adds...

Apple Enters The Education Market

According to published reports in the FT, Podcast pedagogy divides opinion at US universities, Apple is turning it's attention to education delivery systems.

Rebecca Knight reports that

For Kathryn Bowser, a 19-year-old biology student at Drexel University in Philadelphia, the best time to sit through a lecture on organic chemistry happens to be when she is riding the exercise bike at the gym.

The right product to the right person at the right time. It's the oldest rule about making money in the marketplace.

The core value of higher education is not the lecture series. Rather it's the continuing real world conversation among students, faculty and others in the community and the rich networks that grow in the college experience.

If the lecture can be delivered faster, better, and cheaper using new technology, it's not surprising that an innovative company is figuring out how to do it. And not surprisingly, there will be many Universities that will be frightened at the idea of reliquishing "control" of their "content". As were music companies, and book publishers.

But the relentless logic of the GME redefines value creation and disaggregates value packages that worked well in the last century, but have become less valuable in this one.

A central concept of the GME is that the monetizable value is timeliness and effectiveness. Any entreprise that can save time and increase effectiveness at the appropriate cost will find a sustainable business model. It just may not be the one they presently have.

If educational content can be delivered in less time, and be available when the student (consumer) is most ready to absorb it a business model will probably emerge that will allow that to happen.

Can Wal-Mart Become the Good Guys?

In yesterday's Financial Times there is a report entitled Wal-Mart Picks a Shade of Green

Jonathan Birchell reports,

"What if we used our size and resource to make this country and this earth an even better place for all of us?" asked Mr Scott, as he announced targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and cutting waste. He also committed the company to working with its suppliers to promote good environmental practices.

"That speech was the single most groundbreaking speech from the CEO of a major US company on the environment that I have ever heard," says oneleading US environmental activist.

This company has "customer-first" in it's DNA. In the 20th century "low prices everyday" was enough. A single focus and flawless execution wins.

When Wal-Mart starts changing it's tune, and presumably it's operational focus, something big is going on.