Catching Up On Readings: Outsourcing — What It Takes

Here is a summary of the posts from this past week, in case you missed them. >>>

Outsourcing Your Back Office

By Guest Authors Richard Hooker and Steve Monas

[Richard and Steve wrap up their series of excerpts from their book “Shoestring Venture: The Startup Bible” with a post on the advantages and concerns of outsourcing the many tasks that any business’s back office takes care of.]

A business’ internal capabilities are the stuff that strategy is made of, so outsourcing many — if not nearly all — of a business’ critical functions seems to create dangerous dependencies. Forgivable, perhaps, in a startup, but risky in a growth-oriented company, no? In this excerpt, we weigh the pros and cons of outsourcing a sizable chunk of the critical back office functions rather than developing the capabilities in-house. >>>

Your Personal Assistant: Rearden Commerce CEO Patrick Grady (Part 4)

SM: How long did your efforts to revamp venture capital go on?

PG: I did it for almost a decade. In 1988 I sat down with Burt and told him I was tired and despondent, which was completely against my nature. I was not helping my companies or doing anything I set out to do. >>>

Building Your Brand Experience for Hard Times (Part 2)

By guest authors Charles W. Bush and Kathy Hwang of 3Strand, a brand and business strategy consultancy.

Design the entire experience, not just singular marketing points.
Most companies think of branding as what gets your customer in the door. A fancy logo and some nice marketing materials and you’re set.  Not quite. Companies who do it best are able to design a cohesive brand that incorporates all customer touchpoints to create an overall experience. Touchpoints are points of contact your customers have with your company that start to mold their impression of the brand.  They can take the form of the product, website, packaging, user interface, environment, customer service, etc. Think about how your brand can stand out through the following touchpoints: >>>

Outsourcing: What It Takes

By Guest Authors Richard Hooker and Steve Monas

[Last week, Richard and Steve explained why businesses of all sizes should outsource and stressed that organization is a critical part of outsourcing. Today’s post covers more skills entrepreneurs need to manage a successful outsourcing relationship.]

As in every other aspect of starting a business, your biggest enemy in outsourcing is you. Outsourcing is not just a way of saving money, or an excuse not to organize critical tasks, it is an entire set of management skills and knowledge that outsource entrepreneurs have to master. In this excerpt from our book, “Shoestring Venture: The Startup Bible”, we go over the skills and requirements vendor relationships require. >>>

Your Personal Assistant: Rearden Commerce CEO Patrick Grady (Part 3)

SM: Where did you gain traction? What types of investors were willing to support you?

PG: I started working with other investment banks and high net worth private client groups. We started scaling up and investing in companies. >>>

Murdoch’s Next Steps?

Continuing our analysis of media companies’ results, today we discuss Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp (NASDAQ:NWS) and a potential acquisition for it, Monster (NYSE:MWW). For News Corp, revenue for the quarter fell 16% to $7.4 billion and was marginally short of analysts’ expectations of $7.71 billion. EPS of $1.04, however, was higher than the previous year’s $0.91. >>>

Forbes Column 2009: The Next Frontier In Search Marketing

Zero-In looks into a new pillar of search marketing that is about to open up in a big way. Read The Next Frontier In Search Marketing.