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Print Edition StoriesFriday, May 22, 2009
Inside Growth Strategies
New England economic data points
MHT's Efrain Viscarolasaga: Tech companies may have to wait for stimulus funds
MHT's Doug Banks: 10 Women to Watch in tech
MHT's Jim Connolly: Pink slip parties make a comeback
Keep ‘em coming back
Gartner Inc. offers five tips for cost cutting in e-commerce without losing customer loyalty:
• Use off-the-shelf products, not custom-development for commodity functions. Eliminating custom-development for functions such as search and product merchandising, large companies can save 35 percent in ongoing maintenance and license costs, while smaller companies can save 25 percent this year and 20 percent going forward.
• Extract more return on investment from technology that you own. Consider eliminating any established technology that doesn’t achieve a use rate of more than 95 percent, saving 15 percent in large companies and 10 percent in small.
• Focus rich Internet application tool development on sales efforts with higher conversion rates, and leverage community websites rather than building communities in your organization’s site. Large organizations can save 10 percent, and smaller companies 5 percent.
• Negotiate hard with e-commerce software vendors. Skilled negotiators can save 20 percent to 50 percent on license fees in 2009, and 3 percent to 4 percent in the long term.
• Make organizational changes to eliminate redundancy in job functions. For example, if you have separate marketing people for online and brick-and-mortar operations, combine the roles to produce human resources savings of 10 percent to 15 percent this year.
Source: Gartner Inc.
“Cost Cutting in E-Commerce, 2009”
Change in the air for web retailers
The poor economy has forced online retailers to change their marketing tactics, according to a survey of 117 online retailers by Forrester Research Inc. of Cambridge:
| 54% of retailers expect overall retail growth to slow during the next 12 months |
| 57% say the economic slowdown is hurting their profitability |
| 80% say the web is better suited than other channels to withstand the recession |
| 30% are spending less than planned on web retail operations |
| 88% of those cutting costs will scale back hiring and staff plans |
| 88% list e-mail as a high priority, largely to retain customers |
| 56% of retailers will spend less on search |
| 24% will spend more on online business than planned |
Source: Forrester Research Inc.
Fastest growing industries
The industries that made up the 2009 BBJ Pacesetters list of fastest growing private companies
| 10% Other |
| 13% Staffing |
| 20% Construction/Engineering |
| 25% Professional services |
| 32% Technology |
Source: Boston Business Journal Research
Slow and steady
The Mass High Tech/Bentley University New England Tech Stock Index, like the Nasdaq and Dow Jones indexes, has been trending up since mid-March after its February plunge.
| Jan. 9 | 53.61 |
| Jan. 23 | 53.17 |
| Feb. 6 | 57.62 |
| Mar. 6 | 45.57 |
| Mar. 20 | 49.88 |
| Mar. 27 | 53.45 |
| Apr. 01 | 56.01 |
| Apr. 24 | 54.07 |
| May 8 | 57.52 |
| May 15 | 55.10 |
Source:MHT/Bentley New England Tech Stock Index; http://www.masshightech.com/netsi
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