Information Technology Advice for Polk Businesses

I spent two weeks this summer in Japan, which was my third trip to the country in the last seven years. My wife is from Japan (and also our translator and localization specialist) so I always enjoy going back to visit family. My father in-law is the president of the chamber of commerce in his city (Nagayama), and I try to learn whatever I can from him when it comes to business in general. Basic business concepts are the same no matter where you are.

As a small software development and consulting firm, you might not think that we need a CRM solution designed for the mid-market to market and deliver our solutions. In a tougher market like we see today, I made the decision that we are going to follow the advice of top sales and marketing experts. That means a consistent and repeatable approach to the entire marketing, sales, and service cycles. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 was just the tool and a very affordable solution.

This post will examine data from the U.S. Census and demonstrate what challenges Lakeland faces when it comes to higher education. It will also examine what we have going for us. As much as I enjoy it when people read my posts, the title of this blog is not to be an alarmist - it is based on fact. If you are alarmed after reading the data, you should be.

72% of Lakeland residents over the age of 25 have no college degree. 17% of these residents haven't earned a high school diploma. Only 21% of Lakeland residents have a bachelors degree or higher. I'm sure you may have heard statistics like this for years, so we must have improved our averages, right?

As a business person in downtown Lakeland, I am interested in our growth. Yesterday I received an email from the Downtown Lakeland Partnership in regards to their efforts to improve and market our city; attached was a survey from a marketing firm hired to help with that task. Kudos to them for driving this initiative.

This survey really got me thinking about what I would do to grow and improve our city. On the top of my list is attracting high tech businesses downtown and specifically a Technology Incubator.

Most businesses start tightening their purse strings during challenging economic cycles and IT investments are quite frequently the first to be cut. This isn't a new phenomenon or a revelation, but rather obvious to most business people.

When your company goes into survival mode your choices are to focus IT spending on saving money through reducing inefficiencies or creating money by being innovative, or both. Most decision makers appear to focus their energies on cost cutting IT projects and the appetite for risk is much lower than usual.