 January 2011 |
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BRUCE NAGLE, CEO 2010 was an exciting and productive year at RW3! We welcomed a number of new faces to our team, some new clients and introduced a variety of new capabilities. As we start off 2011, our InStore Group continues to invest in our mobile platform to leverage capabilities for the Google Droid environment. One of our enhancements to be unveiled later this year uses the Droid GPS capability to create a prescriptive auditing process by automating a selection of stores to be audited within a geographical area. It will focus on stores recently called on that can move the needle on your products. Our IT group has invested in a RW3 Private Cloud which allows us to respond to client requests for new services much more quickly and with significantly improved overall processing performance. The InSight Group is working on delivering whole data sets to our clients in a more effective manner than ever before. Extending the delivery of POS data in a user friendly and actionable way enables folks in the store to successfully solve issues and increase sales. Reporting capabilities continue to evolve to insure the data collected is used to indicate actions needed, and allow management to quickly note trends and effects of action taken in-store. As we evolve new capabilities this year, we are anxious to enable client solutions with additional functionality. If you are interested in a Smart Phone Audit Process, please call me, Cal or Tom to discuss your thoughts. I am looking forward to working with you in 2011.
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When people see the word Audit, the response is usually the same: negative. Whether it involves the IRS or a supervisor evaluating his or her sales rep’s stores, the prospect of an audit is typically met with a sense of foreboding. It does not matter if all paperwork has been reviewed extensively before filing, or in a more relevant example, if the shelves are stocked full, and the displays set up perfectly. Perhaps the response is the same when one is confronted by the thought of their annual health exam, because really, that is what an audit is: a proactive and collaborative check-up on how you or your organization is doing.
Audits have been quite undervalued, and they are finally beginning to gain steam in the industry. Several organizations drive performance through standard KPIs - Distribution, Sales, New Item Performance, and Coverage – but Audits remain as mere evaluation tools, rather than opportunities to develop relationships, identify best practices in addition to coaching opportunities, and improve long-term organizational performance. Read more...
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How can you ensure your retail teams are calling on the right stores at the right time with Coverage Analysis – Phase I RW3 can help you create and implement a Store Routing Optimization and Coverage |
Employee Spotlight: Tracy Caraway Tracy Caraway joined RW3 in 2009 with nearly twenty years experience in customer service. She began her career spending over 10 years in the travel industry, working with Atlantic Southeast Airlines (a commuter for Delta Airlines) and as a Travel Agent. Both of these jobs required continuous and ongoing interaction with customers and stakeholders, valuable skills Tracy brought with her to RW3. After 9-11, Tracy went to work at Fort Hood in their Physical Security Department, where she began working with networks and communications, and maintaining databases. In 2009, she relocated to Austin and began working with RW3 in Customer Support. Tracy not only administers several of RW3’s customer systems but also provides front line customer support. Tracy is very dedicated to her customers and has taken an interest in learning the idiosyncrasies of each of the systems including business rules, goals and requirements. This allows her to deliver superior service, as evidenced by ongoing compliments she receives: “Thanks Tracy….you’re fast and accurate consistently..."(ConAgra); “Tracy is GREAT!” (NTC); “It is a pleasure working with RW3 and especially Shauna & Tracy. They have both worked very hard for us this year and I appreciate their commitment to our account” (Timex). When she is not expertly assisting RW3 customers and sales reps, Tracy loves to travel, go camping and plays a mean hand of Texas Hold ‘em. Back to Top _________________________________________________________________________
Employee Spotlight: Jerri McLerran Jerri has gotten to know RW3 from the inside out during her over 10 years of employment with the company. She began her tenure as a technical writer on the development team, writing user guides for RW3’s software products. She then added second and third “hats” as a business analyst and project manager on the development team. As systems evolved and customers became more sophisticated, Jerri’s writing skills were tapped and put to use full-time once again on the Support Team, where she currently continues to write user guides as well as product specification documents. Jerri began her career doing archaeological fieldwork after earning a BA in Anthropology from University of Texas – Austin. She also received her State of Texas secondary education teaching certification in earth science and history. Her interests led her to several years of writing, editing and producing books highlighting the results and analysis of archaeological investigations prior to her time at RW3. On weekends, Jerri manages a small cattle ranch west of Austin and enjoys spending time outdoors there. Back to Top Working Outside the Box Innovation is a constant theme with the RW3 Development Team. Great strides were taken in 2010 to innovate around RW3’s business, processes and products – all with the goal of improving and evolving our client system capabilities. Our Agile development process creates intrinsic and immediate value through a cycle of retrospective and evaluative steps, separated into iterations (releases). This process allows for continuous improvement and optimization of resources, minimizing waste (both financial and human capital). Customer satisfaction is high as systems evolve to meet the most discerning needs and requirements, prospects are matched quickly to the right product, and deliverability is fast and reliable. Back to Top On the RW3 "Cloud" In preparation for 2011, RW3 has made a significant investment to create a private cloud providing accelerated performance and increased scaleability in our data center. This is already improving service to our clients, enabling all systems to be fully fault-tolerant and highly-available. Customer systems can be scaled out (size) or up (processing) in a matter of minutes (instead of days or weeks). New systems provisioning times are drastically reduced, which allows for very fast deployments. Proactive monitoring and performance management is now in place for all systems. RW3 is now fully “cloud ready” and able to leverage public cloud capabilities if needed. This provides us more elasticity, reduces our carbon footprint by 85%, less down time for updates and fixes, and overall more consistent performance and faster diagnosis of problems via rich reporting. Back to Top RW3... Insights. Innovation. Real World Solutions. Upcoming
Events FMI MidWinter Executive Conference – Phoenix, AZ (January 23-25, 2011) Join us on |