June 2011 - Succeeding in Communication
Early last year when I penned the very first CEO Corner, the initial topic was communication. Not particularly shocking, given it was, in fact, a new form of communication aimed at our customers and Partners. Since that first issue of CEO Corner, communication seems to have been a dominate topic, consuming more words than any other topic, to date. Well, I will add to that topical dominance once more by making this issue focus on communication. We are very serious here at Retail Pro about improving the quality, clarity and usefulness of our communication to both our customers and our Partners. We have improved the look and feel of our communication templates, along with making sure the readability is greatly improved. We have broadened our content and purposely been more open and transparent about Retail Pro, past, present and future. We have established a blog on the www.retailpro.com site. We are actively investing in our social media marketing strategy. All of this, I believed, was significantly moving us collectively forward on establishing meaningful communication and properly "telling the Retail Pro story".
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March 2011 - A Measure of Progress
In the last few weeks I have been lucky enough to be the recipient of a great many compliments and kudos on the depth of functionality and stability of our newest software release, Retail Pro Version 9.2r4. The comments primarily came from our partners, but also from a few early adopter customers who are using the product in their retail environment. One comment from a North American partner touched me the most; he had reviewed the product and was particularly impressed with the many important added features and how well they stacked-up against our competitors in the marketplace. He specifically commented on how we were delivering exactly what we had promised when I took over the reins of the company and outlined our go-forward vision and strategy. Nothing could be more pleasing or affirming to me than this observation. As CEO, I report to the Board of Directors. I am judged by the BOD on a number of metrics, including revenue, cost control, and of course EBITDA(earnings). Though these are important metrics, I do not think they are terribly meaningful to you, our Partners and Customers. I am much more fulfilled and validated when I hear that something we are producing is making a significant contribution to your businesses. This, to me, is the true measure of progress. I am proud of our recent progress and will now unabashedly make a sales pitch for why I think it is time for everyone in the Retail Pro ecosystem to take a long hard look at what Version 9 has to offer.
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September 2010 - Communication - A two-way street
In late October, Retail Pro International will hold its 2010 Global Conference in Orlando, Florida. This will be our first formal Partner and Client conference in two years. It is no small task to organize, fund and execute on an event like this one, and we spend most of our time and energy on the content. We at RPI view the conference as a rare and valuable time to be face-to-face with our Partners and Clients; therefore, we put our best foot forward in refining and strengthening the value of the content we present. Which leads me to the other side of this two-way street: having an audience. If you are a Retail Pro Partner or Client, you have already invested a great deal of time and money in your business and in how Retail Pro positively impacts your operations. We at RPI believe that to maximize your return on this investment, you really must attend the annual conference.
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July 2010 - "All roads lead to Rome" or possibly Aruba
This month's CEO Corner begins with a thank you to our clients and Partners for taking the time to read my ramblings. I try to make the topics timely, meaningful and appropriate.
There have been many positive changes in our product delivery, product vision, and product quality in the last year. We delivered a new release of Version 8 Retail Pro and announced that we will produce yet one more release for Version 8, with even more enhanced and useful features. We delivered a fantastically enhanced and extremely stable release of our Version 9 Retail Pro product and produced PCI compliant versions of both products long before the stated deadlines for retailers to meet all the PCI compliance issues. We also announced and debuted our next generation family of Retail Pro solutions code named Aruba. Aruba is a completely new and different line of POS/Retail Management solutions that will allow the retailer to choose a centralized, decentralized or SaaS IT architecture (you can read more about Aruba in the Retail Pro Roadmap document available through your certified Retail Pro Business Partner). So, with all these current and future products in the mix, what is the path to the future for retailers using Retail Pro today?
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