The Foundation for Educational Choice is a not-for-profit founded on the ideals of famed economist Milton Freidman that promotes educational choice to any and all who seek it. By acting as a sort of repository for nationwide news relative to the subject, Ed. Choice has the ability to keep students, parents, teachers, legislatures, and everyone in between informed of new scholarship opportunities, legislation passed, or bills created that help students seek the schooling they desire.

While they are not solely web-based, a lot of their information is passed along via the web, and their current website was hindering them from effectively managing all the information that they had. In order to help them better educate the masses on educational choice, we here at BitWise Solutions developed a means to easily deliver research, news, legislation, and other documents that directly affect each state. Their content management system wasn’t ideal and made it difficult for the Foundation to easily edit content on their site, as well as provide organized content for their audiences. With a brand new content management system and research and legislation modules, they will now have complete control over what content is displayed on their site, and that will allow them to keep it up to date in the manner they need.

Now that the new site has launched, the efficiency and ease with which they can reach their audience will increase greatly, allowing them to more effectively serve the students and parents that subscribe to educational choice.  

Yesterday a longtime client of ours, Ice Miller, celebrated its 100 year anniversary.  This is a huge accomplishment, not just for a legal firm, but for any company!  Ice Miller, based in Indianapolis with offices around the country, was founded on a commitment to provide personal service and valued legal counsel to its clients and after 100 years, that hasn't changed.

With a focus and belief that technology and rapid information retrieval is a critical component of their business they rely heavily on applications and Web centric technologies that allow their lawyers and staff members to be connected and accessible.  The work we have done for them, including their Website and custom built proposal generator help their team members be efficient and provide the best service to their clients.

We are proud that we have had the opportunity to work with such an upstanding firm and we highly regard the relationship we have developed with Ice Miller over the past decade.  We are honored to be able to provide our Website design and custom application development services to Ice Miller and are thrilled about the fact that we have been able to help them succeed as a business and continue to provide their clients with the outstanding services they provide.  Ice Miller – we hope you have 100 more years!

I heard an awesome speaker on Tuesday – Clayton Christensen of Harvard Business School (see: www.claytonchristensen.com).  Clayton is the author of several books (Disrupting Class, Innovator’s Dilemma, etc.).  Clayton described a very interesting lens through which we can look at and address business problems.  He challenged us to consider just how small, startup type companies can ultimately eat the lunch of more established and “up market” firms. 

For example, it would be easy for an experienced and time-tested Web development firm such as BitWise to rest on its laurels, leveraging our experience and reputation in the marketplace and continually service the crème-de-la-crème clients.  We are blessed, multifold, by having a large stable of really terrific companies and wonderful people with whom we work on a daily basis in our client’s firms.  Please, don’t take me wrong, we are VERY grateful and thankful for our loyal and trusting clients… but we must never consider ourselves cemented into those relationships.  Those relationships must be nurtured and earned daily. 

Clayton’s perspective is that many firms grow to a comfortable level, continue to make money year after year serving the increasingly larger customers.  In doing so, they begin to walk away from the smaller, lower margin opportunities to do business with new customers because of, perhaps, greater profitability.  Nothing wrong with this approach, right?  In a real-world analogy, most adults find it inconceivable to bend down and pick up a dime, nickel or penny.  But would you stoop to pick up a quarter?  Businesses need to be cautious as to think that picking up the pennies and nickels is simply beneath them to do so.  I submit, as does Mr. Christensen, with such a mindset comes hubris, arrogance, and ultimately failure.  Do you know companies who fit this profile? 

So, as I write this blog post, a select group of thought leaders within our firm is meeting to craft strategies which will enable us to be mindful of those nickels and dimes.  In Clayton’s model, firms who cease being mindful of those nickels and dimes are soon eaten by those firms who will do whatever it takes to pick them up.  BitWise is mindful of the propensity to “be comfortable in our up-market saddle” as a seasoned firm, but make no mistake, we are equally determined to not drink so much of our own Kool-Aid and forget how to successfully take on those smaller engagements.   

I am thankful for the fine group of folks on our staff who are continually seeking to ensure we remain nimble as a firm.  In doing so, they are helping us to continue to be the best business partner possible for our clients.  Leaving such intricate and forward-thinking work to just one or two individuals within a firm is asking to be blind-sided.  Does your business have a strategy and an executable model to pick up the dimes or are you simply trolling looking for a lost silver dollar?