Improving Sales At Starbucks And Other Retail Outlets With A Kiosk Ordering Function

I believe the following setup could be applied to a number of retail "counter" establishments in an effort to improve sales and quality.

Retail establishements where you place an order with a "sales person" behind the counter should adopt a kiosk method of ordering. Upon walking into the store, the customer would have the ability to enter their order into a free standing kiosk. The kiosk presents the choices of product and using the touch screen the customer selects their order. The customer pays for the item at the kiosk. The components are transferred to the counter, where they are assembled by the counter representative.

I believe the following advantages would be generated from this setup:
A)Accuracy. The customer is placing and confirming their order. The finger pointing of who placed or heard the order wrong is removed
B)Upsell. Using the Kiosk, the customer could be presented with upsell choices to add to the product.
C)Sharing the variety of product with the customer. Many customer's get the same thing. This would be a chance to present other ideas for the customer.
D)If the customer signs into the kiosk with a rewards number, we can begin to track when they order their product, i.e. date and time. From there we can control inventory for freshness. Perhaps we don't need to keep lemondae fresh on Monday's at 2PM since nobody orders it in Wellesley, MA?
E) We can add an Iphone app, so that customer's upon entering the store or on their way, can place their order and have it ready for pickup. Keep in mind, they have paid for it during the ordering process and if they don't pick it up, we have still be compensated for it and have no revenue loss.
F)Privacy is solved in this scenario, as a cofirmation number can be printed and announced so the customer can pickup their correct order and the "name taking" can be eliminated.

It is my believe that this would improve the customer service experience at Starbucks and other quick service restaurants. Currenly, my customer sevice experience at Starbucks has not been the most positive experience. It is believed that this setup would allow the representatives to focus on the quality of the beverage and eliminate the barista function from the sales function.

If you or your organization would like additional information on this system architecture setup, please feel free to contact me.

JJD - Improving Sales...

Recruiting Industry Should Be Like Hollywood Agents

The recruiting industry needs to rework their business model and work like Hollywood Agents.

Here is how I see how recruiters work today:
A recruiter will "Find" a candidate for a potential job they have at that moment. If the candidate is interested, the recruiter will send the resume off to the company and perhaps it will be something of interest. More likely than not, the position will not work out. The recruiter will let the candidate know that they will keep looking around for them.
A few problems with this that the candidate and recruiter should fix:
1. When the candidate decided to send their resume to the recruiter, the candidate should recognize that they are now represented by that recruiter and that recruiter only. In the euphoria of sending their resume, did the candidate do their homework to see if this is their "Hollywood Agent" that they want to represent them? If they got caught up in the moment, most likely not. The candidate should now recognize that before they apply to another job they need to clear it with the recruiter. Furthermore, they can not send their resume to any more recruiters until the terminate the relationship with the first one.

Here is how I believe the industry should remake itself. They should work like Hollywood Agents. The recruiters choose whom they want to represent and candidates choose the recruiters to represent them. At no time should a candidate share his resume with another recruiter without terminating the relationship with the first agent. Furthermore, the recruiters should create a "brand" with the candidates they represent. If an employer calls for a position, refer them to your "agent".

With this model, it eliminates the issue where a candidate gets overzealous and shares his resume with two recruiters, yet forgets to tell each of them about each other. From there the recruiters both submit his resume to the same position. In this scenario, the candidate is most likely deemed unfit,as the hiring company is not going to spend time to figure out which recruiting firm has the candidate.

When you sign on with an agent, remember, you can not go chase a "deal" unless you clear it with them first. Circumventing the agent, because you have another way in, will not be looked favorably upon. Therefore, before you choose an agent, make sure you have exhausted your current network before you sign on with an agent.

If we can all work to switch the model where candidates have agents, we would create an environment with a better lineup of skills to the position and the fulfillment of only actual positions that exist, not the fictional ones that we are all chasing on the job boards, but more about that in our next episode.

Marine Industry Alternative Fuels

The Marine industry needs to get moving on developing products that use alternative fuels. Just think if they can lower the cost of operating a boat, that will lead to more people that can afford to buy a boat.
Where are the diversified products for using alternative energy in the marine industry? A recent review of Hatteras, Sea Ray and Boston Whaler shows no evidence of anything even on the drawing board.
I would like to own a boat, but the ongoing cost of the fuel makes it prohibitive.

Airline Security - American Idol Style

Here is my idea to improve airline security.
The passengers get to vote who is on the plane and who is not on the plane. Similar to American Idol. If you don't like somebody or something in the seat next to you, you push a button to call a "vote" for the other passengers on the plane. The other passengers are alerted and can also decide whether to vote the person in question off the plane. Majority rules.
If you have been voted off the plane, you get a 1 minute rebuttal in front of the plane to make your case.

Catholic Church - Is their an app for that?

Why is it taking the Catholic church so long to adopt technology in their environment?
Let's start with donations.
Yesterday, they had the bishop's lenten appeal. They pass out envelopes and pencils for the donation commitment.
I believe, that if their were an "app" for that, we could generate more funds for them. The way it would work is this:
Each church as their own "App" for Iphone or Blackberry. When you walk in, you use the app to make a donation while there in church. For myself, when I heard about the envelope process I cringed, I just wanted to pull out my blackberry, launch an app, make the donation then and there and be done with it. Now I am going to get something in the mail, have to fill it out and send it back. Seems to cost more money.
Furthermore, the church should adopt more video delivery of messages in the building. Monitors should hang on the sides that broadcast the church bulletin (bonus to those that have taken an ad out on the back of the bulletin) and the monitors should be used so that the homilies finally use power point in order to keep the speakers on track for their message. After all it is all about the delivery of the message.

The Science Of Biotechnology Book Review

I am on my way toward finishing the book entitled "Science Lessons - What the business of biotech taught me about management" by Gordon Binder, former CEO at Amgen and Philip Bashe. While I have not finished my full review, I did want to share the following.

One of the key phrases that struck me today was the statistic he calls out on page, 196 when he recounts the statistic from the US Department of Labor and states "that by 2010, at least 10 Million positions will go unfilled."
Just once in a while I would like an author to come out and state that they "Were wrong" about using a quote and believing what somebody told them. Here is today's unemployment number showing the 10.6% rate of unemployment as of February 21, 2010 http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=usunemployment&met=unemployment_rate&tdim=true&dl=en&hl=en&q=unemployment+rate+united+states
Maybe Mr. Binder and the US Department of labor meant to say, their will be ten million positions not available for people. Just a thought.

The Straf Model

If you work in the area of designing an enterprise class application, use the following model before to document the characteristics of the system. The model can be remembered as the STRAF model.

Before you put a disk in a machine, consider the following:
Security - How will the security of the application be considered. Analyze all of the audit requirements ahead of time to make sure you capture them in the system. Make sure on day 1, the system meets these requirements. Too often systems are audited later on to discover that they do not meet the security requirements and whole changes are necessary. Make sure their are no shared accounts and the system uses complex passwords for the logons.

Transactions - Before you buy the hardware, analyze how many transactions you expect the system to process at the peak load. Purchase hardware that you will grow into, this includes the CPU characteristics along with the storage

Reporting / Remote Management - Consider how the system will report it's availability and other metrics, including capacity planning. Will it feed to something as simple as Hobbitt or more advanced like HP Open View? The reporting should include every measurable component including the power consumption on the circuit.
The system should also have the capability to be remotely managed. This includes use of the devices such as the Dell Remote Access Card, IBM Remote Supervisor or HP ILO. Don't scrimp and fail to get remote manageability. For other devices such as routers, consider a console server.

Automated - The system you design should take into consideration how the components will continue to work automatically if they fail. For example, if you are designing a VMWare system, then buy the VMotion component so the images automatically fail to another node if need be. In designing storage, make sure a hot swap disk is automatically inserted into the Raid group if necessary.

Failover - Design systems so that they will failover within themselves and remotely. Make sure redundant power is in the server along with other components, such as generator availability. Furthermore, the entire system and/or application should automatically fail over to another site in case of a disaster. Use DoubleTake for Exchange replication and Data Guard for Oracle situations.
One of the key characterisics of fail over is to get the phone system to automatically fail over as well. Consider the VOIP alternative open source solutions such as Asterisk and repoint your 800# to it.

Following the STRAF model would help people design systems that keep their business operational during periods of maintenance and prepare for disaster.

If you can take it a step further, design the system so that both sites can take transaction volume and avoid the cost of 50% of your assets sitting there doing nothing.

Introduction

I have finally resorted toward the blog activity in order to expunge thoughts that I have that I believe are common sense and do not see them being executed in a variety of environments. I believe if they were the world would be a better place. These are just the random thoughts and disagreement is welcome.