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Issue No. 26 - December/January 2005/06
Local knowledge makes IT happen
by Dr David Corkindale
There has been a lot of robust discussion in our daily press recently about the need to foster local innovation. Government and big business have been flayed for refusing to buy locally.
In one example, an Adelaide innovator pitching our national carrier for business was blatantly told: “We can’t find fault with your technology, we’re just comfortable with the Americans”.
Ouch!
No, we don’t have a shortage of creative thinkers: an extraordinary 19 South Australian companies won places in the finals of this year’s national IT Secrets competition. The only State with more was New South Wales, with 20, out of a possible 66.
But as a wise woman once told me, “Ideas are 10 a penny. Making it happen is what counts.”
Likewise, awards are great for raising profile, but sales are where the rubber hits the road.
Here are some practical solutions that can help your own marketing efforts and meanwhile could provide valuable reference sites to prove up our innovators’ technology for expansion interstate or globally.
Any or all of these powerful homegrown products could be increasing profits for your business or cutting your own time to market right now.
Leads from your desktop
Cathy Allington has appropriately named her technology Grow Your Own Business. It’s a play on the famous MYOB accounting package.
GYOB is an easy to use, smart customer relationship management solution. With the click of a button on your familiar Microsoft Outlook toolbar, GYOB imports filtered customer information and sales data from MYOB Retail Manager and MYOB accounting packages into a customised form.
You can then start to develop highly targeted one-to-one marketing tools, including personalised email and letter campaigns for up-selling, cross selling, nametags, response sheets, surveys and so on, without having to create a separate customer database.
“Most people don...
