Columbus Chamber Blog: Columbus Business News

The Common Sense Initiative: An Update from the Lt. Governor

This post was originally published on the State of Ohio website.

by Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor

You may have read in the news that "Chief Executive" magazine recently released its 2013 rankings of the best and worst states for business. Ohio made the largest jump, improving 13 spots in its annual poll of CEOs. The CEO comments included in the article focused on Ohio's turnaround and efforts to make the state more business friendly and to solve business problems. Among the efforts Governor Kasich has initiated to do this is the Common Sense Initiative (CSI), which he created in 2011 to reduce and streamline Ohio's business regulations. Governor Kasich appointed me to lead CSI the same day I was sworn into office.

CSI has been designed to operate along two tracks. The first track is focused on the administrative rules adopted by state agencies. Since January 1, 2012, all administrative rules that impact business must be submitted to the CSI office for review along with an analysis to demonstrate that the regulation justifies the impact to business. In 2012, Ohio's rule filings were 44 percent below the state's historical average, largely due to the fact that the CSI reviews have forced agencies to pause and ensure that they have met the CSI criteria and will be able to justify any rules they propose. The CSI Office has also worked closely with agencies to minimize business impacts, resulting in rule packages with better justifications and often changes to the rules themselves.

In addition to the rule review process, CSI operates along a second track which allows it to work directly with businesses to resolve issues that are affecting them.  In one recent example, CSI was able to assist a small restaurant that was looking to expand but struggling with the state permitting requirements. With CSI's help, the restaurant was able to add 40 new seats and four employees. Other examples of CSI's successes include assistance to an asphalt company as it fought duplicative and expensive emissions testing; helping a small business avoid a six-month delay in receiving a $65,000 refund for overpaid sales taxes; and helping local pharmacies navigate the Medicaid system to open new locations in underserved areas.

For more information on Ohio's Common Sense Initiative, visit www.governor.ohio.gov/CSI or call (614) 466-3396.

Columbus Chamber Webinar: Intellectual Property Strategies for Small Businesses

Presenter: Vance VanDrake, Patent Attorney at Ulmer & Berne, LLP and President of the Greater Cincinnati Venture Association

All businesses have intellectual property, some just choose not to protect it. The ability to identify and distinguish between patents, trademarks, trade secrets and copyright is often overlooked, yet adds important precaution in protecting your business. Tune in for a webinar to understand how to “issue spot” intellectual property that already likely exists within their business and how to effectively (and cost-effectively) protect this property.

 

 

About Our Webinars: The Columbus Chamber is proud to host the Smart Edge Professional Development Webinar Series in 2013. Our monthly webinars provide consistent, easy access educational opportunities for members—by members. Watch for them every second Tuesday at 10 a.m. Each lasts 30-45 minutes. You can also watch past webinars on demand.

Register for Social Lending - Funding Your Loan Through Your Customer Network.

Member Insights: How to Cultivate a Culture of Caring

By Robert Shenton, managing partner of Plante Moran’s Columbus office, FORTUNE Top 100 Places to Work Winner 15 Years Straight

Want to set a higher standard of performance for your company? Want to edge out the competition? Then start by making coffee for the line workers on the factory floor or the account executive down the hall. Try sending a graduation card to the daughter of your plant manager.

Yes, building a strong, lasting relationship with your customer base starts with building a thriving, supportive culture in your own workplace. Building a positive company culture is good for business because it creates an atmosphere of excellent customer service.

When workers see the CEO or an executive vice president making copies for a presentation or cleaning up after a meeting, the atmosphere becomes contagious. This culture of caring recognizes that we are all in it together and forms the basis of the Golden Rule at Plante Moran.

Many business leaders see company culture from the cost side of the ledger. And they’re partially right. A workplace where employees love their jobs cuts down on turnover, employee training and the cost of recruitment. You can save money in a happy workplace.

But company culture also adds to revenue.

Let’s say that your company has two competitors that make the exact same product or offer the same service. Would customers rather do business with the supplier that takes extra steps to ensure they’re satisfied and are great to work with or would they pick the company that doesn’t return phone calls in a timely manner and requires vendor management?

There are a number of companies that belong to the Columbus Chamber of Commerce that understand the value of a positive company culture. They’re the ones that have been in business from generation to generation, or the ones with a growing client list. Those companies are to be applauded for getting it right.

The reason why a strong company culture works is that it’s a commitment to service, to staff, to clients and to the community. This is what successful businesses are all about.

So the next time you think your company environment needs a reboot, start with a cup of coffee. But make sure you take the cream and sugar with you as you walk down the hall serving it to your colleagues.

Connecting Talent: Is Technology a Problem?

By Michael Dalby, President and CEO, Columbus Chamber

We’re a Chamber of Commerce with about 2,000 members. We meet one-on-one with about 500-700 individual business owners/managers each year. The number one “need” they express is frustration over trying (and failing) to “find qualified workers.”  The job openings are in all kinds of categories – IT, sales, customer/client support, manufacturing, etc. But I question whether it’s really a people problem (the people with these skills don’t exist) or a systems problem (the connecting system for posting jobs and applying for jobs is broken). Is there really no one out there that can do the work, or are we just not efficiently connecting the talent to the work?

I have a sneaking suspicion that the Internet, as wonderful as it may be, may be part of the problem. Thirty years ago if a business had a job opening, they took out an ad in the local newspaper classifieds. If you were looking for work, there was one place to look – the classifieds. Now there are dozens of options to post a job opening, and if you don’t post in the “right” place, your job might not be seen by the “right” audience.

And looking for a job has also become more – not less – complicated. Those same multiple places to list a job opening are confusing for job seekers, and the use of electronic means to sift through and rapidly eliminating candidates (key word searches, multiple different types of applications, etc.) leave little room for finding the truly unique candidate.  Do you really need a bachelor’s degree to be a top sales person? Is it possible for a college dropout to be an ace programmer? Could someone with a degree in 19^th Century British Literature become a great engineering project manager?

I think we all know the answer to those questions. But I think there are other questions we should ask before just assuming the problem lies with one institution (schools not doing their job) or the other (businesses demanding an unnecessarily narrow set of skills yet not willing to pay enough to hire the talent). The problem may lie with the very tool we assumed to be the solution – technology.

So how do we address that? How do we make it better?

I invite you to share your thoughts with us.

Member Insights: The Future of Marketing: What Tools Will We Lose?

By Laura Evans, VP, Digital Commerce, Resource

In September I had the pleasure of attending Shop.org Annual Summit, which is always a whirlwind of great content, new thinking and reunions with industry friends. Somewhere in the middle of the craziness, I had the opportunity to moderate a panel on the Future of Retail with panelists Deena Bahri, VP of Marketing for Birchbox, and John Caplan, CEO of OpenSky. Birchbox and OpenSky are both testing new ways to engage consumers and Bahri and Caplan were able to share a wealth of knowledge and lessons learned. Our panel discussed several strategies and tactics including the social graph, mobile and loyalty programs, each of which was exciting to consider, but it was a question from the audience that really got me thinking. While we spent time discussing all the things we could do and the emerging technology that is coming our way—what in our marketing tool kit won’t exist one day? So here are a few tools to think about that may not always be at our disposal:

• Email. It has become that tool we know we can count on—send an email with a promotion and sales go up. But when I talk with my daughters, ages 17 and 13, they don’t use email unless they have to. The next generation doesn’t email; they tweet. So we will need to consider how to evolve from email to tweets.
• Pinterest. While “pinning” has become an engaging, fun way to see new products shared with me by my network, it’s not as easy to buy them—or, let’s say, it could be easier. While interest in Pinterest may fade, I expect that its impact on marketing will be how commerce interfaces will evolve to take a more visual shopping style. Just take a look at the teaser for the new eBay interface and you will see what I mean.
• Websites. The introduction of distributed commerce will drastically change how we leverage the commerce website in the future. As we get more mobile, more connected, more data-driven and more real-time, the need and desire for a traditional web commerce experience may dwindle. Ultimately, as commerce becomes more distributed, it will become less about the website.

All of us know there is an endless list of emerging technology we can test and try, but the harder decisions are always what NOT to do. What do you think will be gone from your marketing plans within the next 5 years?

This post is part of our Member Insights blog series. The Columbus Chamber’s goal is to provide connections, resources and solutions to help businesses thrive. That’s why we’re offering the opportunity for Growth and Elite Connect level Chamber members to share their business expertise on our blog. Do you have helpful tips or advice for other members? Growth and Elite members can submit content for this series. Posts must be 250-400 words and must be educational, not promotional, in nature. All posts must contain original content, and members can submit up to two posts per year. Posts will be selected based on relevance and the order they are submitted. Submissions can be sent to jessica_miller@columbus.org for consideration.

Brand Insights from White Castle

By Lynn Blashford, White Castle Marketing Director and Branding panelist for the Columbus Chamber Business Summit 

I appreciate the upcoming opportunity to share insights on “Building A Breakthrough Brand” from White Castle’s perspective. Some people probably think of “breakthrough” in terms of recent times. For White Castle, we are so fortunate to have built decades of loyal Cravers.

For years White Castle would receive a multitude of letters and calls from customers who had such great memories of their experiences with the brand. Through this outpouring of stories the Cravers Hall of Fame was born. Since the inception of the annual event in 2001 we have received almost 10,000 letters from Cravers who have gone to great lengths to satisfy their crave or to share their love of Sliders with family and friends.    

Just last month we celebrated the induction of 11 more Cravers. In thinking about our annual Hall of Fame and its application to the panel discussion topic - for White Castle it has purely been about listening to our guests and providing them a forum to share their stories of devotion. We also recognize it is our Cravers who will continue to build the brand for generations to come.

I look forward to participating in the Business Summit and learning from all the panelists and speakers.

Time is running out to register for the Columbus Chamber Business Summit. Register now to hear insights from marketing, branding and business experts. The Columbus Chamber Business Summit is presented by Commerce National Bank, Presenting Partner Columbus C.E.O. Magazine and Honorary Chair Mike Rosati of Rosati Windows.

Member Insights: Innovation in the Midwest – A Self-Improvement Guide

By Cathleen Hare, Plante Moran Partner, Columbus Office

Finding ways to sustain and grow a business is a challenge at the best of times, and it becomes even more challenging during difficult economic times such as the recent downturn. To push an organization beyond a survivor’s mindset to one that promotes growth and change requires innovation. Most importantly, organizations that innovate successfully can reap significant benefits. That’s according to a survey of public and private sector companies in the Midwest including a number of members from our Chamber.

The findings can be found in Plante Moran’s second annual Innovation Quotient (IQ) survey that, with the help of business educators of NewNorth Center, assessed more than 500 innovators from business, non-profit, health care and public sector organizations.

The survey identifies four tiers of innovators – accidental innovators, disciplined innovators, top innovators and superstar innovators – and demonstrates how organizations that move up the innovation ladder can improve their financial results. The innovation superstars have innovation in their DNA:  Their organizations look beyond the next horizon and make a deliberate choice to build and nurture innovation.

On average, survey respondents said they generated 16 percent of their revenue from new products or services introduced in the last three years. However the elite tier of superstar innovators was shown to adopt deliberate innovation practices that included budgeting for innovation to meet strat­egy goals and publicly rewarding ideas that emerge. This select group innovates in all methods and was rewarded by products/services introduced in the last three years that accounted for 23.3 percent of their revenue.

Those who achieve superstar status have innovation-hungry cultures we can all learn from, but a strategy is needed that includes the following tactics:

• Establish clear and measurable expectations
• Monitor progress on those expectations
• Alter the plan when necessary
• Abandon when not generating results

Innovation is a long-term investment and it takes leadership from the top down. A participant from the health care industry put it best when he said – “With or without legislation, we should continue to look for innovations and efficiencies in health care because it is the right thing to do.”

To see the complete survey results, click here. Thank you to those members who participated in the survey this year, and we look forward to continuing the innovation conversation with all of you next year.

This post is part of our Member Insights blog series. The Columbus Chamber’s goal is to provide connections, resources and solutions to help businesses thrive. That’s why we’re offering the opportunity for Growth and Elite Connect level Chamber members to share their business expertise on our blog. Do you have helpful tips or advice for other members? Growth and Elite members can submit content for this series. Posts must be 250-400 words and must be educational, not promotional, in nature. All posts must contain original content, and members can submit up to two posts per year. Posts will be selected based on relevance and the order they are submitted. Submissions can be sent to jessica_miller@columbus.org for consideration.

Member Insights: Let Your Company Culture Inspire Your Brand

By Sandra Fekete, President, Marketing Works

Does your external brand drive your culture or is it the other way around? Imagine turning your brand inside out, so your internal brand takes precedence over your external brand.

In June, I had the opportunity to present a webinar for Chamber members discussing how our culture (internal brand) influences our external brand. Put in human terms, we learned that in organizations, as in life, beauty is only skin deep; it’s what’s on the inside that counts.

It’s important for leaders to articulate and reinforce what’s on the inside — core mission, vision and values because those elements directly impact what happens on the outside — how well we get and keep customers. When every employee understands why the company exists, its purpose beyond making money, and what it values/believes, that internal culture guides decision making (choices) and behaviors (actions). Those choices and actions create a lasting impression, positive or negative, in the minds of the people who experience them.

Creating synergy between your company’s core (what it stands for and how it behaves) and its external brand promise and brand position is critical in the wake of consumers demanding authenticity and transparency from those they choose to do business with.  Actions do speak louder than words and social media makes sure we hear them — the good, the bad and the ugly.

During the webinar, we discussed in-depth the five keys to brand synergy:                                               

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We discussed examples of organizations that are not fulfilling their brand promise and those that are living out their brand to the fullest. What companies have you encountered whose behavior is not consistent with their brand promise? (Delta, GM, Comcast, Bank of America.) What brands do you think of that live their brand promise every day in every way? (Southwest, Apple, Starbucks, Zappos.)

Your brand means nothing if your internal culture does not reflect it every day.  So, turn your brand inside out – see it through the direct experiences of your employees and customers. It’s the first step toward clarity and consistency in decisions and actions that empower everyone in your company to deliver its brand promise.

Click here to watch this webinar.
Click here to learn more about assessing your company’s culture.
Click here to learn more information about brand alignment.

This post is part of our Member Insights blog series. The Columbus Chamber’s goal is to provide connections, resources and solutions to help businesses thrive. That’s why we’re offering the opportunity for Growth and Elite Connect level Chamber members to share their business expertise on our blog. Do you have helpful tips or advice for other members? Growth and Elite members can submit content for this series. Posts must be 250-400 words and must be educational, not promotional, in nature. All posts must contain original content, and members can submit up to two posts per year. Posts will be selected based on relevance and the order they are submitted. Submissions can be sent to jessica_miller@columbus.org for consideration.

 

Member Insights: Time is Money – Stop Wasting It

By Tiffany Crosby, Petra Learning

If you could get more done each week without putting in more hours in the office, would you? If you could get more work out of your employees without negatively impacting morale, would you? You probably answered, of course, I would. But I’m not so sure. Did you know that wasting 1.5 hours each day equates to about 8 hours per week or one work day? Now, you may find it hard to believe that you waste 1.5 hours a day. In my time management class, I go over at least 10 time wasters that most of us are guilty of doing on a pretty regular basis. In this blog, I’m going to share 5 of those time wasters.

Unscheduled or poorly planned activities

1. Impromptu team lunches – team bonding is a wonderful thing and sharing a meal together is a great way to do it. However, when these lunches are done on a whim, they waste a significant amount of time.
2. Impromptu brainstorming sessions – getting different perspectives on issues and brainstorming ideas to solve problems is a critical element of innovation and contributes to a healthy work environment. However, without proper planning, these sessions are often unfocused and unproductive.

Scheduled but unnecessary activities

1. Recurring (standing) meetings – it’s on the calendar, so we are going to have this committee or team meeting. We waste time on the agenda. Attendees waste time trying to prepare for it. After all, they need to have something to say. No real action occurs but it’s a good meeting because you got through the agenda on time.
2. Paper shuffling – Rereading emails, letters, or other documents because we failed to act on it the first time or then 2^nd time or maybe even the 3^rd time is a huge waste of team. Procrastination occurs for very specific reasons that are often fixable with appropriate trying (e.g., avoiding delivering a difficult message or task complexity).  
3. Wheel spinning – hours spent researching on the internet trying to find that one elusive thing that is going to answer your question is the wasteful bane of this information age.

How big is this really? If you have 10 people that waste 1.5 hours a day, that equals 3,840 hours a year or 2 FTEs. If your average salary is $50,000; that’s $100,000 per year wasted. Time truly is money and it’s not difficult to waste it.

This post is part of our Member Insights blog series. The Columbus Chamber’s goal is to provide connections, resources and solutions to help businesses thrive. That’s why we’re offering the opportunity for Growth and Elite Connect level Chamber members to share their business expertise on our blog. Do you have helpful tips or advice for other members? Growth and Elite members can submit content for this series. Posts must be 250-400 words and must be educational, not promotional, in nature. All posts must contain original content, and members can submit up to two posts per year. Posts will be selected based on relevance and the order they are submitted. Submissions can be sent to info@columbus.org for consideration.

Member Insights: Columbus Has Healthy Eyes

By Swen Carlson, VSP Vision Care

Columbus, we can rest (our eyes) assured because we were just ranked sixth in eye health across the nation. VSP Vision Care, whose Eastern Operations Center and optical lab are located here in Columbus, created an Eye Health Index to rate cities on their “eye healthiness.”

What exactly is eye healthiness? That’s a good question. We looked at all of our members—more than 57 million (a good chance you’re one of them)—and checked to see which cities had the most members get an eye exam in 2011. Then those cities were ranked accordingly.

If you didn’t get an eye exam last year or need some more convincing as to why having healthy eyes is important, consider this: eye exams, of course, help us get glasses and see well, but they also are an easy way to see signs of serious health conditions like diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. In fact, eye doctors are often the first to detect signs of these diseases:

• Diabetes: 20% of the time
• High blood pressure: 30% of the time
• High cholesterol: 65% of the time

These conditions currently affect more than 140 million Americans, and early identification and treatment can be a big relief for your future health (and your wallet).

For the complete list of ratings or for more information on the Eye Health Index, see the VSP Blog or press release.

Swen Carlson is the Vice President of Operations, Central Region for VSP Optics Group. He oversees the optical labs in Columbus, Ohio, and Lewisville, Texas.

This post is part of our Member Insights blog series. The Columbus Chamber’s goal is to provide connections, resources and solutions to help businesses thrive. That’s why we’re offering the opportunity for Growth and Elite Connect level Chamber members to share their business expertise on our blog. Do you have helpful tips or advice for other members? Growth and Elite members can submit content for this series. Posts must be 250-400 words and must be educational, not promotional, in nature. All posts must contain original content, and members can submit up to two posts per year. Posts will be selected based on relevance and the order they are submitted. Submissions can be sent to info@columbus.org for consideration.