As if they needed more stress, organizations are facing evolving and increasingly stringent compliance regulations from the Payment Card Industry, as well as Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA and others. Here are a few security compliance products that can make the audit process less excruciating.
Here are 10 of the distributor's hottest new offerings winning over solution providers.
New smartphones from Sony, Motorola and the first-ever Twitter-only mobile device -- the TwitterPeek -- headline a busy week for handset makers as the holiday shopping season heats up.
1. Remember, you are the customers you keep. Sage business advice is to encourage repeat customers rather than reinventing the wheel for every sale. It's cheaper than cultivating new clients, and well cared-for customers can save companies tons of money in marketing. It may already have started paying off for EarthLink, as sales and marketing expenses fell to $22.2 million, compared with $71.6 million in the third quarter of 2007. EarthLink chairman and CEO Rolla P. Huff, said in a news release that the positive financial results stemmed from increased focus on "more tenured customers." He still has some work to do: EarthLink had 3.02 million subscribers at the end of the third quarter, compared with 4.13 million at the end of the third quarter of 2007. It's still bleeding -- but not hemorrhaging -- customers.
2. Cut expenses. That means more than shopping for the cheapest office supplies. For Earthlink, the layoffs have been dramatic: In the third quarter of 2007, it had 1,405 employees, while the end of the 2008 third quarter, it had slightly more than half, 789.
3. Get out of bad joint ventures. That can be tough, particularly if there is a personal attachment. In 2006, EarthLink founder Sky Dayton launched Helio, in partnership with SK Telecom. Designed to be a hip alternative to other wireless carriers, Helio never took flight. Within a relatively short time, it became clear that the venture wasn't going anywhere. The investment in Helio began to drag heavily on EarthLink, which decided to dump it a year ago. (SK Telecom this year sold the service to Virgin Mobile.)
4. Get real. For EarthLink, that meant looking harshly at a business segment it had gotten alot of press on: municipal Wi-Fi. It had to ask: Does municipal WiFi service really make financial sense? And then, it had to come up with the harsh reality: Until a business case can be made to city governments (and their taxpayers) to foot this bill, building muni Wi-Fi is not going to rake in profits. Someone has to bear the expenses of building and deploying the network. EarthLink put muni Wi-Fi on the map after it built Philadelphia's wireless network. It then was granted 13 other city Wi-Fi contracts. But, Philly's funding plan is complex, and it is supported in part by a non-profit organization, and by homeowners, who pay a modest fee for service. The notion of totally free service -- which cities like San Francisco had -- is just not feasible, as EarthLink has since learned. To that end, it has scaled back on this segment of its business considerably, which is (another) big reason for the ISP's turnaround.
Were the steps EarthLink took unpopular and tough? Certainly. But, maybe a sports metaphor would help put this into perspective. Coach Mike Singletary took out the 49er's quarterback J.T. O'Sullivan this weekend. Singletary has another unpopular, tough job. But in both cases, management made the right decisions, for the sake of their respective teams. Each still has a ways to go before claiming victory over their competitors, but they are clearing the way.
Subscribe To This Feed
