Results-oriented business analysis looks at a company's strength and challenges (weakness). This is much more than what a company does; the when (pipeline), the how (team management), and how much (profit). Leave that to the CPAs and auditors.

Results-oriented analysis begins with where are you strong and where are you not.

"Strong" can be "stronger than before." You are trending upward and that is good.
"Strong" can be "not as strong as before." You are trending downward - not so good.

The up or down trends of both your strengths and weaknesses need to be tracked to confirm the direction of these dynamics - focus in on these.

Once you have Focus on the dynamics of the up or down trends of both your strengths and weaknesses, pick goals that appear only slightly out of reach for both advancing your company's strengths and reducing your weaknesses. Set dates for both. These are your Targets.

Next create and implement two Game Plans that your focus dictates must become operational. Your first Game Plan builds on your strengths and advances them. Your second Game Plan minimizes your weaknesses and reduces them.

Measure and track your progress to both of these Targets.

SHORT FORM -
1. - Focus on the dynamics of where you are strong and where you are not.
2. - Implement two plans that will necessitate change. One advances strengths, the other reduces weakness.
3. - Pick targets with dates, for both plans. Track progress.

We welcome your comments.

(This article was originally posted on 2011-08-24 11:01:41 -0500)

You can gain an important marketing edge in your web strategy, simply by the way you design your website and present your message.

New visitors to your site will allow you about 3 seconds on average, to gain their attention. Can your site do that? Answer is of course, yes. Successful sites immediately give viewers what they are searching for. This is found in the search words they use to find your site. Find and study these search words in your site reports.

Once you attract a visitor's attention, craft your message so that it is short, clear, and correct: grammar, punctuation, promises, etc. Always remember - less is more. So rewrite to shorten and always eliminate passive voice such as, "We hope that you will consider trying our survey." Instead write "Try Our Survey!"

Restrict text to three-line paragraphs ending in a Read More link when needed. Use brief videos, moving still photos that transitions one to another, and audios click-and-listen. Avoid auto plays that can be annoying on the third visit.

Use a narrow format (for mobile devices) with little or no scrolling.

SHORT FORM - "A - T - P"

Attract first time visitors with immediate presentation of what they are searching for.
Tease their curiosity with short phrases, quick 15 - 30 second videos and/or audios, that lead them to more of what they are searching for, and
Promise that when they take an easy action step, (join a private non-spam email list or subscribe to your RSS) they get more of what they are searching for.

Make it fun! (Attract, Tease, Promise - note similarities with dating).

Gain an edge simply by design - 1) design the look - 2) design the message - 3) make it easy and straight to the point.

Outsourcing... the “O” word. That was then - this is now.

Not long ago jobs seemed to have a one-way ticket to anywhere but the US. Cheap labor was the lure and the stampede off-shore was troubling both to patriotic business leaders who needed to compete in a global market and to a labor force already hurting from “post industrialism”.

First, heavy manufacturing, then light manufacturing left. Then service jobs – call centers, financial services, even medical procedures disappeared at a quickening pace. Many said the handwriting was on the wall.

And yet even as the pace quickened, there were counter trends. Automobile plants were being built in the US and proving profitable; one of the the latest, a billion dollar KIA plant built in Georgia. We know why so many jobs left but why did the trend slow and in some cases, reverse itself?

In manufacturing, the premise seemed simple enough. You build a plant in Indonesia or in Bangladesh and staff it with two-dollar an hour workers, or half-dollar an hour workers and harvest the labor savings. But what is the cost of the new plant vs. the labor savings?

As long as manufacturing has a sizable labor intensive component, at some point when the plant's investment is paid off, the labor savings are free and clear. But when is that day - that magic 'home-free” milestone? In many cases it never fully materializes. Here's why.

As plants age they depreciate while at the same time, replacing parts and maintenance costs rise at increasing rates. Newer plants are progressively less labor intensive, so the competitive edge of older plants tends to evaporate versus newer ones. Older plants becomes obsolete.

Today, we are historically at a point when the labor component in manufacturing can, with proper planning, diminish to a minor role. This is true not only for mega-plants with a huge set-up cost. It is also true for lean, small manufacturing using CNC (Computer Numerical Controlled) machines.

These have been around for over 25 years but their development http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsmiIeAkE-o&feature=related has reached a point where the labor component is almost minuscule. Add 3-D printers (also CNC), and the new reality is, why chase cheap labor when you don't have much labor in your operation?

For those selling in the US market, you save on transportation costs which have risen over 400% in eleven years and are climbing. And utilizing fast paced communicating with native speakers, including first generation Americans, is quick and easy rather than cumbersome and problematic. Add to this, better business ethics, protection of a legal system that is 95% predictable, and $600 air fares to put out brush fires instead of $6,000 ones.

Manufacturing is returning (or not leaving to begin with) and even helping re-paint the so called “rust belt” with stainless steel and computer savvy jobs.

In service industries, call centers were perhaps the first to go and the most numerous type of service operation to off-shore. As some of the biggest names in American business anchored customer call centers overseas, those companies soon began losing market share because US customers could not or chose not to, understand agents whose English, though technically proficient, was not native to North America.

British idioms and non-native speech patterns in some areas, contributed to make communication stressful and counterproductive to helping customers.

Overseas operations also harbored hidden costs that were never calculated in the lure of "cheap labor". Those costs, often substantial and recurring, were usually coupled with the frustrating inability to get almost any issue resolved.

"Pay a whole lot more, time and time again, to get absolutely nothing fixed," is how one frustrated executive summed it up. Broken promises and missed milestones proliferated. Call centers who outsourced to Ireland and Canada fared much better and kept their customer base intact.

Call centers are returning to these shores. Quality agent training in customer relationship management is playing a strategic part in recapturing market share.

Light and even heavy manufacturing is returning. A steel plant recently opened in Youngstown, Ohio. US manufacturing grew at more than four times the economy as a whole, the first quarter of 2011 after dropping for the past thirteen years.

American quality and ingenuity is back and growing. Imagine that! What an interesting American century this is already proving to be.