Develop your strategic IT plan
The role of technology is expanding and, as the pace quickens, technology’s impact on all aspects of business is increasing significantly.
Now more than ever, business executives of emerging, middle-market and Fortune 1000 companies need to use information technology (IT) to increase their companies’ productivity, effectiveness and competitive advantage.
The key to success is developing a proactive strategy for incorporating IT into your organization, keeping in mind that technology should help solve business problems – not exist for its own sake.
Begin by examining the forces affecting your business and by articulating
a clear vision for your
company’s future.
Here’s a three-step framework for developing a strategic IT plan:
Vision – define your business needs and IT goals.
Strategy – allocate resources to maximize your company’s technology investment and improve performance.
Implementation Approach – identify IT initiatives to maximize the progress of your plan and vision.
You should focus on how using information technology can benefit all aspects of your business. The following steps are guidelines to help you begin the planning process.
Start with the vision
You must begin by examining the forces affecting your business and by articulating a clear vision for your company’s future. That vision should align your business needs of sales and marketing, operations and the marketplace, with your IT goals.
Technology’s traditional role of data collector, information gatherer and communicator has shifted to decision-maker, knowledge manager and collaborator. Keeping that in mind, you must define the role that IT is going to play in your business. In doing so, it is important to understand the organizational, social and technological trends that are shaping this evolution.
Eight trend shifts shaping IT, according to The Gartner Group, a research firm that specializes in information technology, are:
1. Data, to decision support
2. Communication, to collaboration
3. Information, to knowledge
management
4. Network computing, to
ubiquitous computing
5. Graphical, to cognitive
user interfaces
6. Situated, to mobile
7. Physical, to virtual
8. Business, to consumer
Utilizing information technology as a strategic component of your business is the key to success and, in order to do so, it is important for you to understand where you currently are in this shift and where you need to go to remain competitive.
The strategy
While the vision identifies your business goals, the strategy portion of your plan outlines how you will move toward this vision. Historically, cost has driven IT strategy development. However, businesses’ reliance on IT to improve productivity, effectiveness and competitive advantage has shifted the focus to how IT can increase business value.
The Gartner Group expects businesses in the United States to increase their IT spending by 7.5% in 1998 and 8.5% in 1999. The group bases its prediction on three factors, outlined as follows.
Factors influencing IT spending
Many companies are only now beginning Year 2000 compliance projects. Spending patterns are thus shifting from business as usual to a concentration on strategic IT plans and Year 2000 compliance – and nothing else.
The rise of the Internet and the availability of mobile communication technologies make it possible for enterprises to compete globally.
Technology convergence, coupled with organizational shifts in IT spending to business units, masks this increase.
This strategy step establishes the direction your business needs to take to get the best return on its IT investment
Using information technology as a strategic component of your business is the key to success. You need to understand where you are and where you’re going.
and improve performance. Each strategy within your plan, whether it be outsourcing, network consolidation or standards adoption must be developed around available resources so that you can determine a realistic approach.
Implementation approach
The implementation portion of your plan sets the parameters for accomplishing your IT goals – what needs to be done, how much it will cost and how long it will take. Those parameters should take into consideration your corresponding projects, technology investments and organizational improvements. To avoid a disconnected plan, which only limits progress, you should keep your initiatives to a minimum.
Reaping the value of information technology begins with a clear and focused strategic IT plan, composed of vision, strategy, and implementation components which management will champion and which your entire enterprise will follow. Your strategic IT plan is only what you make of it. Unless it’s implemented and referenced, it will be another document with limited value.
Bob Landgren is a partner and the Milwaukee branch manager for Whittman-Hart, Inc.. He can be reached via e-mail at bob.landgren@whittman-hart.com.
June 1998 Small Business Times, Milwaukee

It’s tough to find quality employees in today’s market

Question:
Like many companies, we’re having a hard time hiring qualified workers. We’re also seeing a trend in which employees we hire don’t stay with us very long. This means that we’re continually filling the same positions, which makes it pretty hard to build any kind of consistency or teamwork. Do you have any suggestions about what we can do?

Answer:
Your situation is an increasingly common one. Unemployment remains low, particularly in southeastern Wisconsin. Job seekers, especially those in “hot” fields such as computing, often have their choice of positions.
From the point of view of the employer, this often means that they have to “sweeten the pot” in order to attract the candidates they desire, sometimes at a higher compensation level than they’re comfortable paying.
A recent survey of employers in Nation’s Business magazine revealed that 80% indicated that they were having difficulties finding qualified employees over the past year. So, you are not alone.

Interestingly, the same poll indicated that attitude and work behavior were the areas in which job applicants were deemed to be weakest. That suggests that people are being hired primarily on the basis of their technical or subject matter expertise.
Yet, the ability to work effectively with other people is at least as important as job know-how. That highlights the importance of the training/development function of the organization which I have discussed in some of my recent columns.
As a starting point, I would suggest that you examine your present employee-selection practices. Do you have a clear idea of the position requirements? With frequent changes in work technology and processes, job requirements sometimes outpace job descriptions. As a result, as we solicit job applications we may be out of touch with what the demands of the position really are. That can lead employees to become disenchanted when they come on board and find out that the job is more (or less) than they bargained for.
What are the competencies which are critical to success on the job?

That focuses on the human dimension of the employment equation. The basic thrust here is to make sure that the attributes which you are targeting are the ones that really matter.
As the survey we discussed above makes clear, job know-how matters; most employers say it is the most important thing they look for. Yet other attributes which must be considered have to do with the context in which the person will operate. For instance, a strong team environment demands that interpersonal and communication skills be assessed during the screening process. So, be careful to avoid being one-dimensional in your approach.
Is everyone involved in the hiring process (e.g., HR, department manager, interviewers) “reading from the same book”? Sometimes employee selection is “owned” by more than one individual or department. Human resources might develop the position advertising and do the initial screening, including one or more interviews. Subsequently, the manager who will supervise the individual will get involved and conduct a Pre-Employment Assessment before hiring a candidate. Some organizations make use of team interviews in which employees (peers of the person ultimately chosen) carry out the entire selection process. Some organizations make use of external consultants who interview or test prospective employees at some point in the application process.

Regardless of what approach is used, it is important that agreed-upon criteria guide the process so that “apples” can be compared with “apples.”
Does performance during the selection process correspond with performance on the job? If you are making use of sound selection strategies (e.g., reliable, valid interview approaches, simulations/work samples, etc.), then the way an individual “looks” as a candidate is likely to be the way they “look” as an employee.
Of course, when good candidates are few and far between, the inclination may be to lower standards just to get a “warm body” in the door. However, employing “pulse rate” criteria brings along with it great potential to be disappointed. It’s been my experience that very few candidates who come across as corpses develop into superstars once they have been hired.

Set a standard below which you will not drop. Painful though it may be, my sense is you’re better off in the long run sticking to your guns, as opposed to bringing on board candidates who are “projects,” at best.
You may want to consider some non-traditional approaches, as well.
How are you obtaining applicants? Are you making use of the Internet to solicit applications? Is your organization a participant at local job fairs? In light of W-2, are you looking to former welfare recipients as a pool of potential employees?
Are you offering your incumbent employees a bonus or reward for attracting new employees to the organization? Are you paying employees an incentive once they’re on board for performance and/or regular attendance? How does your compensation package compare with the competition?
Although these suggestions may be anathema from your vantage point, in light of the present employment climate, you may do well to explore them.

HR Connection is provided by Daniel Schroeder, Ph.D., of Organization Development Consultants in Brookfield. Small Business Times readers who would like an HR issue addressed in this column can contact Schroeder at 827-1901, fax is 827-8383, or via e-mail at odc@execpc.com.
June 1998 Small Business Times, Milwaukee

In the eyes of your customer, which one are you?
I frequently make the point that customers will perceive your value based much more on how you sell than merely on what you sell.
At the lowest level, they see you as a vendor. Moving up just a little, you become in their eyes a problem-solver. I see scant difference between the two.
As a salesperson, you take a quantum leap when you become a business resource to your customers. As a business resource, life is good and your margins are high. But you can’t just will yourself to that level. Becoming a business resource requires business acumen, organizational savvy and discipline.
Take this quick test to see if you’re there – or if you have what it takes to get there. Which one are you?
You’re a vendor/problem-solver …
If your motto is “look for the decision-maker” – overlooking the complexity of decision-making processes in customer organizations, where crucial purchasing decisions turn on the ebb and flow of shifting influence and evolving business conditions and goals.
You’re a business resource …
If you recognize that making decisions in the real world is complex and subtle. You understand that title and influence don’t always go together, and make it your business to figure out who in the customer firm may have high influence despite having a low title – and vice versa. One question you never ask: “Who makes the decision.”
You’re a vendor/problem-solver …
If you dismiss the importance of selling to senior executives. “I’ll alienate my contact,” you may say. Or, “The decision just goes to senior management for a rubber stamp.”
You’re a business resource …
If you’re executive credible. It’s your standard operating procedure to approach senior management, usually early in the sales cycle. You prepare thoroughly and understand what it takes to be viewed by the customer executive as a Business Resource.
You’re a vendor/problem-solver …
If your principal sales tool is the proposal, ignoring that most are about as inspirational as a consumer brochure on aluminum siding. If you lose a sale, you have a ready excuse: “What can I say, boss? They just didn’t like our proposal.”
You’re a business resource …
If your principal sales tool is the business presentation. You know that nothing has a higher impact in the sales cycle, and that an effective stand-up presentation is much more sophisticated than sitting across the table discussing your product, solution or company. And you know that the proposal is nothing more than a confirmation tool.
You’re a vendor/problem-solver …
If you rely on your gut feelings and hunches to qualify opportunities. You spend way too much time on sales opportunities that you end up losing (“Nothing ventured, nothing gained” is your philosophy) rather than undertaking a cold, hard evaluation up front about the likelihood of winning them.
You’re a business resource …
If you force every sales opportunity to pass a three-part test: 1) Should we pursue? 2) Can we win? 3) Will it be good business? You have objective criteria for your sales campaigns and your competitive situation that you can use to answer those questions. You apply those criteria throughout the sales campaign, not just at the beginning.
You’re a vendor/problem-solver …
If your objective is sales activity. You rack up stacks of proposals, fire off quotes, wear your index finger out making phone calls and figure it will all help you make the customer’s short list or even close the sale. Nobody can say you don’t work hard.
You’re a business resource …
If your goal isn’t mere activity, but to own the customer – to reach a relationship in which customers will turn to you first whenever they have a need that you can be reasonably expected to fill. You strive to be seen as having much broader value than a vendor, and you know you’ve reached that level when a customer gives you the right of first refusal.
You’re a vendor/problem-solver …
If you are content with fulfilling known opportunities with nominal solutions. “Is there a budget?” you ask, then try to show the customer that your solution is the best one within that constraint. You learn about your own product line so you can proffer it as the answer to your customer’s problems.
You’re a business resource …
If you create opportunities. You understand that if you know the customer’s business well enough, you may perceive a need before the customer does. You know that when a company wants to do something, it won’t be limited by existing budgets but will find the budget dollars. Instead of product knowledge, you focus on a deep knowledge of your customer’s business, and on gaining access to the executive levels where budgets are created.
You’re a vendor/problem-solver …
If you like nothing more than a good competitive fight. You’ll outsell competitors on whatever grounds they choose: price, product specifications, quality – who cares? Or if what you’re selling is little more than a commodity, then you try to win by force of your personality.
You’re a business resource …
If you know the real contest isn’t about price, specifications or quality, but strategy. You know when to go head-to-head against the competition and when to divide and conquer, or even when and how to change the ground rules.
You’re a vendor/problem-solver …
If you are a talker. Schmoozing customers, you listen for signs of a need that will give you an opportunity to pitch your product. Or, at best, your conversations with customers are the traditional problem/solution dialogue.
You’re a business resource …
If you’re a listener – and more. You listen with a strategic sense of curiosity and discipline, applying business acumen and analyzing what you hear. Most important, you listen for the need behind the need.
You’re a vendor/problem-solver …
If you sell tangible solutions, with a value that can be measured in return on investment, superior technology, price for performance, speed or savings to the customer.
You’re a business resource …
If you sell intangible value, and can communicate to the customer the value of having a business relationship with your company.
You’re a vendor/problem-solver …
If you see the customer as your friend and focus on building rapport.
You’re a business resource …
If you see the customer as a business peer, and live out the confidence you have that you have the ability to bring business value to your customer.
You’re a vendor/problem-solver …
If you understand the customer’s business – but only up to the point that it applies to what you’re selling. Your efforts to understand the customer’s problems are simply a search for opportunities to sell your product.
You’re a business resource …
If you focus on the customer’s business – in depth. You temporarily forget what you’re attempting to sell as you learn the customer’s business, its context and its environment. You’ve developed that unique ability to align the value your company brings with the business direction of the customer company.
Jerry Stapleton is president of The IBS Group, a large-account sales consulting firm based in Brookfield.
June 1998 Small Business Times, Milwaukee

“People [in Boston] always express surprise when I tell them all of the big companies that are located here, like Northwestern Mutual Life and Johnson Controls.”
Kate Krill, a Milwaukee native who just moved back from Boston
“Milwaukee is not people’s first choice. When you are trying to get people to move from a place like the Silicon Valley to Milwaukee, it can be an obstacle. But once they bring their families, they like the values and the lifestyle.”
Ron Roth, Manhattan-based executive recruiter
“It appears that people on either coast have difficulty pinpointing locations in the Midwest. I’ve had people say to me, ‘Oh, Milwaukee … Isn’t that on Lake Superior, or across the river from Minneapolis?’ We are terra incognita to these people.”
Jude Werra, Brookfield executive placement specialist
“The major obstacle with Milwaukee is climate.”
Ron Roth
“My impression coming here is that it was going to be a small town, that everyone would be from here and that it would not be a very cosmopolitan city in the sense that it would have no great restaurants, nightlife or people coming here from all over the place. At the same time, I also expected it to be a very friendly city, and a place that was livable and affordable. To some extent, these are still my impressions, although the restaurants are actually better than I expected.”
Stacey Watson, a 31-year-old market analyst with Harley-Davidson who moved here last September from the East Coast
“I showed one of my co-workers this picture of the downtown lakefront, and she said she had no idea it was that beautiful. They (former Boston co-workers) all want to come and visit me because I have talked about it so much.”
Kate Krill
“I like to call Milwaukee the land of milk and honey.”
Ron Roth
“My boyfriend, who is from Pittsburgh and lives in Chicago, has a very negative impression of Milwaukee. But, he has never been here.”
Stacey Watson
“If Governor Thompson ever gets tired of it, I’ll take up the mantle as the state’s number one cheerleader. It’s a great place to live, and it’s not superficial. The people here are real.”
Dick Tilmar, a Milwaukee native and CEO of the T.E. Brennan Co. who lived in Southern California for eight years before moving back
“There is an inferiority complex built into life here that is detestable. There is a negativity that creeps in. The message seems to be one of ‘You ought to come back and give us a try.’ That’s called leading with your chin.”
Owen May, former Channel 4 television reporter and general manager of Metro Video Services in Wauwatosa who moved to Milwaukee in 1988 from Boston.

Controlling doctor behavior is path to controlling costs
Milwaukee dermatologist Kathleen Stokes listens with envy when her father-in-law reminisces about practicing medicine in “the good old days” before managed care.
He made house calls and treated patients “with no one looking over his shoulder, judging his efficiency, or checking his treatment outcomes,” she recalls.
Traditional indemnity insurance of his day paid practically any bill submitted, allowing him to try whatever he thought best to cure his patients’ maladies. Even patients with no money and no insurance were no problem. Before managed care, doctors could “cost-shift” by charging their insured patients rates designed to cover their overall costs. Consequently, everybody could trust his or her doctor to provide the best medical treatment available.
Managed care changed the rules and fundamentally changed the way doctors practice. While most doctors say they still strive to do whatever is in the best interest of their patients, managed-care organizations have finally succeeded in controlling costs primarily by influencing doctors’ behaviors.
Managed care has tightened the purse strings through financial incentives, administrative strategies such as utilization reviews, referral requirements, and profiling systems linked to administrative sanctions.
Medical directors for managed health-care organizations say they are forcing doctors to consider economics when making medical decisions rather than giving them a blank check.
Doctors say the economic pressures do impact the quality of health care provided.
Booming health-care inflation heralded the new era of managed health care which began in Wisconsin with the introduction of HMOs in 1972.
Since then HMOs and their off-shoots (an alphabet-soup of health-care options including HMOs, IPA-HMOs, open HMOs, PPOs, and POSs) continue evolving as they strive to answer the market’s demands for cost-effectiveness and quality service.
The array of managed care options grew from the original staff-based models that pioneered the state’s managed-health frontiers. Staff-based HMOs use salaried doctors at specified medical centers. They bring several systems under one roof: medical, financial, and administrative. With their closely-knit operations, these HMOs have proved most effective in controlling costs and maintaining low monthly payments.
However, for consumers who were used to seeing any doctor they like whenever they wanted, the controls seemed too restricting. To keep their employees happy, employers asked for more options. What they got were new HMO structures aimed at bringing in more health care professionals, such as IPA-HMOs and group and network HMOs.
Preferred-provider organizations (PPOs) sprang up in the mid-1980s as an alternative providing more choice while controlling costs. Employers found that groups of hospitals and doctors would be willing to cut prices in return for assured volume of patients. For employers, they provide a cost-saving compromise for workers who resist joining HMOs.
Soon hybrids of those forms appeared, among them open HMOs or point-of-service plans. They allow patients to go outside the plan’s HMO providers when they choose to share in the cost through co-payments and deductibles and take responsibility for filing claims.
Today managed care accounts for 85% of employer-based insurance enrollment. Traditional indemnity plans are down to 15% of active employees.
Evidence shows managed care has succeeded in controlling costs. For the fourth year in a row, the 1997 costs of providing health benefits to active and retired employees by US employers with 10 or more employees increased more slowly than the medical component of the Consumers’ Price Index (2.8 in 1997).
While some predict premiums will rise this year and next, managed care controls are expected to keep tight reins on increases. Thanks to managed care, more companies can afford to provide health benefits to employees.
Employers, who foot much of the bill, are glad someone has lassoed runaway health care costs. But lower medical inflation doesn’t necessarily mean better value. As one doctor put it, “you wouldn’t buy a Yugo and think you’re getting a Mercedes-Benz.”
Consequently, concerns are being voiced about the quality of medicine available under managed care. State and national initiatives to regulate managed-care organizations are being debated.
June 1998 Small Business Times, Milwaukee

There’s a new twist on accounts receivable financing
When businesses think of accounts receivable factoring, they can conjure up unpleasant thoughts of insensitive third parties beating on their hard-won customers for payment.
But most small business people know very little about factoring because it has historically been limited to certain industries such as textiles and apparel, and to larger companies. Recent technological and software advances have spawned factoring programs for smaller businesses that are strapped for cash.
Factoring has been used since colonial times in the Americas and even before that in Europe. Factoring involves the sale of accounts receivables to a factoring company. Prior to those sales, the factor will have approved the credit and set credit limits for the customers.
Thus, there are three parties in any factoring arrangement: (1) the seller who sells both the merchandise to (2) the customer and the receivable to (3) the factor.
Factoring arrangements can be set up for notification or non-notification, which governs whether the customer is notified that the account has been sold to the factor.
Also, factoring arrangements can be recourse or non-recourse. When the factor has recourse, the factor can look to the seller of the accounts receivable if the customer does not pay in 120 to 180 days. The non-recourse factoring arrangement has been the arrangement with which most business people are familiar.
The normal steps in the factoring of an account are:

Going from DOS to Windows-based accounting system
You’ve had the kickoff meeting with staff and consultants. The initial schedule that covers every moment of time involved in the conversion is in place. All accounting coding schemes from your new chart of accounts to vendor, customer, inventory and employee IDs have been redesigned. The server, workstations and software has just been installed. What could go wrong?
Sunstone Financial Group, Inc., a company that provides fund accounting and administration along with shareholder servicing, distribution, marketing and advertising support to investment companies, mutual funds and their advisers, recently made the switch to Solomon IV for Windows and is currently in the process of running parallel. The company is dealing with some typical situations that commonly occur during a transition to a new financial software application.
Sunstone controller Christine Mortensen had the following experience after returning from vacation:
“I waited until late Friday to call in and get my messages. One after another was about the problems they had with one of the servers going down and the domino effect it had on the Solomon IV users. Keep backups. Keep daily backups. The data was all there. It really wasn’t so much of a problem. But you don’t know that at the time it is happening.
“Time constraints are placed on everyone. No matter how realistic you think you are, you aren’t. That is stressful and draining on you and your staff. It’s also a shock to know that other system errors – like the server crashing, totally unrelated to your financial software application – still interferes with your processing time. Teach as many users as you can similar functions. And do what I did – take a vacation in the middle of it all. It puts everything in the proper perspective.”
Truthfully, you should expect nothing less then a ride on a bucking bronco.
System, software
& staff troubles
Training begins and instantly, as anticipated, some staff members are reluctant at the extra work hours needed in running parallel. Performing some job functions is bad enough one time through, but having to do it twice is a nightmare. There’s operating system trouble. Workstations or servers crash, and no one seems to know why. That may cause software trouble. You and your staff are bothered by the unexpected errors that never occurred during the smoothly executed demos.
Some users are slower than others. Or, it seems they missed everything covered in the training sessions, causing additional software problems and incorrect data entry. This takes additional staff time to correct. Consider using a Buddy System. If you pair employees together, slower with faster learners, you will increase the learning curve for all and come up to speed quicker.
Communication through formal and informal meetings will also improve workflow. Consider purchasing customized procedure manuals to reinforce training. Manuals also ensure quality retraining if turnover occurs.
Software support & documentation
Know where your software support is coming from – directly from the vendor or from your consultant – and who specifically has been assigned to handle your account. Designate the most knowledgeable employees as system record keepers. You should keep a detailed log of software arrors, documenting how they occurred and at what moment in processing. It’s helpful to paste error screens into Word documents so that you can print and fax them, if requested, to your support person. When resolutions are delivered, log them as well. Share these problems and resolutions with all involved in similar job functions. What one employee learns through trial and error can be an important lesson for all.
Data pumping &
report generating
The initial focus in bringing your system to life will be data entry, pumping information into each of the financial modules, and matching account information against your old system during the parallel run. Beyond matching the general ledger, you’ll want to see the reports which display the information completed in data entry. Bring sample reports to the training sessions. Analyze those reports at the front-end to determine the exact information you are looking for. Your consultant will be able to demonstrate where those reports reside in the new system and can walk you through how to customize existing reports if they need to be modified to meet your specific requirements.
Positive attitude
The most important area that can make or break the use of the new system is holding onto a positive attitude during initial training and solo runs. Understand that the problems you encounter weigh heavily on your employees who may be easily influenced and in a vulnerable frame of mind at this early stage of using the system. You cannot gain total functionality within a week or two; the struggle typically ranges from three to six months. It takes a number of cycles of using the system before you and your staff know the best way to maximize its potential.
Going live
Determine the appropriate moment in time to run live. Clearly, you’ll want to be positive that the parallel systems are balancing, that checks and invoices are printing correctly, that the financial statements are complete and accurate. Once the decision’s been made, ask your consultants to be on site to address any problems quickly. I recommend that, shortly after going live, you retrain your users again. Training after going live pulls everything together.
Over time, each user will gain a broader-based background of the available functionality of this software. Financial application software built to run in Windows brings a new world of possibilities if you are up to the challenge. Stay educated, keep informed and congratulate yourself and your staff for a job well done.
June 1998 Small Business Times, Milwaukee

Milwaukee’s Cybertoons is on the digital edge
Milwaukee will never be confused with traditional high-tech hotbeds such as Seattle, Boston, or California’s Silicon Valley.
But a small, relatively unknown software development company may be on the verge of putting Milwaukee on the digital map.
Cybertoons Digital makes software that enables people to build Websites without having to learn complicated Web publishing procedures. Forget about FTP’ing to your remote file server. With Cybertoons’ MyCyberWeb software, all you do is point and click. The process literally takes only minutes, and presto! You’ve got an instant Website.
Cybertoons’ proprietary software made its debut in February when it was licensed by M&I Bank. Bank customers who sign up for Internet banking automatically receive the ability to develop their own Website free of charge – sort of the digital equivalent of the free toaster.
“It is going over very well with our customers,” says Paul Steger, M&I vice president of corporate marketing. “The ease of use with their system is readily apparent, and right now, is out-front compared to anything else on the market.”
Cybertoons’ former stock-in-trade – creating impressive three-dimensional video animation for clients like ESPN – today represents only 15% of the company’s business, says Andy Flessas, the 28-year-old whiz who is the creative brains behind the company, and who, with his horn-rimmed glasses, appears to be a cross of Buddy Holly and a not-so-mad scientist.
The shift from 3-D animation to software development was a natural because the MyCyberWeb software offers so much more promise, and the 3-D animation field is saturated, Flessas explains.
As sometimes happens, Flessas and Cybertoons arrived at the concept of the MyCyberWeb quite by accident.
Three years ago, customers started to ask if Cybertoons could build Websites for them to enable the 3-D images to be delivered in dedicated fashion. Flessas and a small team of software developers built Websites for Appleton Papers, Navistar International and Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance. Then, some of its customers started to ask if Cybertoons could develop a means so that they could change their Web pages on their own.
“So, we developed software with back ends on it that would allow non-technical people to make changes to their own Websites without having to come to a technical person to do it,” says Cybertoons president Steve Sinicropi, who left the general manager’s position at Milwaukee radio station WLUM-FM one year ago to join this promising medium.
A shift in strategy
The next logical step for Cybertoons was to develop software with a specific design that would allow any non-technical person to build and maintain a Website. And thus, the MyCyberWeb software was born. The proprietary design is built on a platform developed by Oracle Corp.
“So now with this software, any individual or business can build and maintain a corporate quality Website with point and click ease,” Sinicropi says. “All it takes is a simple Web browser and an Internet connection, without having to download any software.”
The software is designed primarily for banks and other financial institutions who want to create “communities” consisting of their customers. By offering the free Websites, banks such as M&I are free to offer their customers other products through the Internet.
Based on a prediction by The Gartner Group that 50% of all banking will be done online by the year 2003, it would appear as if Cybertoons is on to a good thing.
“This is where banking is headed,” adds Steger.
What differentiates Cybertoons from the competition is that it gives people more tools than they can figure out. Flessas’ strategy is to always give consumers a little more than they can use, so it buys time until he can develop something new. The strategy is akin to keeping a small child happy with a toy.
“We are the only one doing this on the planet,” Sinicropi says. “We developed this software using Oracle technology. It’s powerful, it’s scalable, and it does all the things that a business wants it to do. We own this software, and it’s very powerful.”
Another advantage is that all of the Websites are hosted by Cybertoons, which means that you are not tied to an Internet Service Provider (ISP) who hosts the site. If you are an M&I customer, you can access your Website even if you’ve just switched your ISP from America Online to Exec PC, for example.
The software allows the user to import visual images and add additional Web pages in a way that competing offerings cannot match.
“I think the way they have done it is more robust,” Steger says. “There are other site developers like Geocities. But, when you look at what they give you, versus what MIWeb gives you, they are out ahead.”
Cybertoons has also developed an electronic commerce module which allows businesses to set up Websites in which customers can buy products from them online. This is an ideal arrangement for retailers who want to minimize overhead, Sinicropi says.
“If you are going to open a store, you’re going to have to get a lease or build a building,” he says. “Then, you
“If I can do what I do now with 14 guys, imagine what I can do with 400. The IPO will give us the kind of brute force we need.”
– Andy Flessas, Cybertoons Digital
have to stock it with inventory and you have to hire employees. So, you’ve got all of this capital tied up in infrastructure.
“But, if you build one Internet store, it is open 24 hours a day and you don’t have to have any people and you don’t have to stock inventory,” Sinicropi says. “People can buy whatever they want at times that are convenient for them from the privacy of their own homes. It’s always open and it’s always easy.”
To support his contention, Sinicropi points to Egghead Software, which recently closed all of its retail outlets. Amazon, which is the world’s biggest bookstore, does business solely over the Internet.
Store owners using the Cybertoons e-commerce module can alter product offerings with the same point and click ease. Current users of the e-commerce module include Hal’s Harley-Davidson and Car Phones Plus.
Small business can buy into the software for as little as $2,500 without the commerce module included, and $7,500 with it. The ability to offer a community of Websites starts at $50,000 and up, depending on the particular needs of the business, Sinicropi says.
The next big thing
Since last year, Cybertoons has grown from six employees to 22, with the majority coming in the form of computer programers. So, how does Milwaukee stack up to the big boys when it comes to attracting top-notch software developers?
“As far as being competitive, our guys stack up,” Flessas says. “They are as good or better than what is out there. They (the traditional hotbeds) certainly beat us in sheer numbers. But, you can put us up against any team anywhere, and we’ll kick their butts. We can move quicker than larger corporations. We can engage faster because we are not bound by linear corporate structure.”
If Flessas has his way, the company will grow exponentially. An initial public offering is planned within the next three years, he says.
“The IPO will give us access to massive amounts of R&D money, and give us the kind of brute force we need,” Flessas says, adding that he would like to have a team of 400 software engineers at his disposal. “With that kind of crew, I can make the kind of strike that I need to make. If I can do what I do now with 14 guys, imagine what I can do with 400.”
In the digital arena, what was a hot new technical advance can become obsolete virtually overnight. There is pressure to come up with the next big thing.
For Cybertoons, that means intelligent digital agents. Programers are currently working on Internet software that will act as an intelligent digital assistant. This is considered the next step in tapping the vast potential of the Internet and making it easier to use.
“It says ‘Hello Andy, what are you interested in?'” explains Flessas. “The software talks to me in text. I can respond to it and tell it what my intentions are. It is an expert system that is hung off the Web with an inference engine. The users interact with this almost like they would with a search engine.”
The intelligent agent is the equivalent of walking into a library and asking the librarian for help instead of blindly searching the volumes.
“This is really cool, because it works 24 hours a day, there is zero variance,” Flessas says. “Through interaction with this thing, it will log what it doesn’t know. This allows us to make this thing smarter.”
Expect to see an intelligent agent software product coming out of Cybertoons sometime this fall.
What kind of face will Flessas & Co. put on the intelligent agent?
“The philosophy here is, instead of putting a character’s face on the agent, we want to the user to perceive the agent like you would a character in a book,” Flessas says. “You visualize that character. This way, the user will tend to perceive the agent something more toward themselves. That will make it more successful.”
Flessas and several Cybertoons engineers were recently invited to Oracle’s R&D testing facility in New Hampshire. While Flessas can’t discuss what he saw and toyed with, it’s safe to say he has seen the future of Internet technology two years out, and it’s impressive.
What Flessas fails to mention is that not just anyone gets invited to gain a glimpse of the technofuture according to Oracle. You have to be an innovator.
It is safe to say that Flessas and Cybertoons have earned a place among the software innovation elite, as they seek new ways to open up the Internet to the masses.
June 1998 Small Business Times, Milwaukee

Managed care has controlled costs, but at what price?
In a recent airing of the television drama ER, emergency room physician Carrie Weaver took up the case of a patient who required an experimental drug to cure his malady.
Weaver argued vehemently with a managed-care benefits approval supervisor that administering the drug would cost only $400. Without the drug, the man would require hospitalization to the tune of $10,000, she pleaded.
Weaver lost the telephone argument on the grounds that the man’s managed-care plan did not allow unapproved drug treatments.
While that example is fictitious, it is being played out daily in hospitals and medical clinics across the country as managed care gains a stranglehold over modern-day medicine.
Nobody can dispute the claim that managed care has brought spiraling health-care costs under control. But sometimes, critics contend, necessary medical treatment is delayed or denied by managed-care cost-control protocols. When that happens, things can get ugly.
Milwaukee internist James Buck had a patient hospitalized with pneumonia. When the patient’s allotted days of treatment were up, her HMO refused to allow her to stay in the hospital.
But she had chronic arthritis. After days in a hospital bed, she couldn’t walk. She didn’t have anyone at home to care for her.
“She would have been in horrible straits if she were sent home,” Buck recalls.
Buck had to prove medical need. Fortunately, the HMO “used common sense in this case,” he says.
Milwaukee dermatologist Kathleen Stokes’ patient was not so lucky. A 40-year-old woman came into her office with a lesion on her nose. Her referral instructed: “Diagnosis only, no treatment.”
Knowing it could potentially develop into cancer, Stokes called the HMO to get the referral changed. It denied the request.
“It took persistent effort before finally getting approval two months later,” Stokes recalls.
By then, the lesion had developed into cancer and had to be cut out. Today, the woman lives with a visible scar, serving as a visual reminder of the rigidity of today’s health-care environment.
Bottom-line financial issues overriding medical concerns is becoming an increasing strain on doctors who are charged with providing the best possible medical outcomes to their patients.
This inherent conflict led members of the Medical Society of Milwaukee County to issue guidelines last year to help physicians sort through ethical challenges raised by managed-care plans.
The guidelines reiterate physicians’ duty to inform patients of the most beneficial method of treatment and to serve as an advocate for patients to ensure they get it.
For doctors, that’s a tough order. Physicians often deal with multiple managed-care organizations that have radically different methods of contracting. Milwaukee oncologist Kurt Oesterling is not alone in contracting with 426 separate managed-care and insurance organizations.
“All have different requirements,” Oesterling says. “Some need pre-authorization for treatments; others require co-payments. The main issue for me as a physician is the increased time involved in administration,” he said. “It takes away from time I could spend with patients.”
It has also pushed solo practitioners into physicians’ associations, observes Robert Straub, president of the Columbia-St. Mary’s Physician Association.
“One needs to be affiliated with an organization to feel support negotiating contracts and surviving in the managed -care environment,” Straub says.
Management strategies
Strategies like pre-authorization requirements, case management practices, approved pathways or guidelines, formularies, and electronic reminders give physicians specific instructions on
“The pressure in a capitated system is enormous. If, as a physician, you go over your budget, you eat it.”
Kathleen Stokes,
Milwaukee dermatologist
what a physician should do in a given situation. They make doctors work within the limits of the system.
As a family practitioner, Straub gets approvals to refer patients to specialists, but “it requires a little extra effort. Managed care requires more work and pays less,” he notes.
“Being a gatekeeper is a mixed blessing,” Straub says. “It gives family physicians and pediatricians the ability to get their patients to the right place for appropriate care.”
On the other hand, it can drive a wedge between patients and doctors if patients think their doctors’ bonuses depend on limiting referrals.
“Some ethical doctors find themselves squeezed – having to petition health-care plans every step of the way,” Buck notes. “The people we deal with initially are often non-physician administrators, using cookbook guidelines for each diagnosis.”
Oesterling, president of the St. Joseph’s Physician Association, considers the red-tape of managed care “a necessary evil.”
Sometimes, doctors learn how to work the system. “Unfortunately, there are some physicians who will take advantage of the situation,” Oesterling notes.
“If one has an unlimited budget, there is an incentive to do more,” agrees Buck. “Just as a minority of physicians padded their bills in the old days, these days, greedy doctors can do better by limiting care.”
For Buck, the most difficult aspect of practicing under managed care is having to make compromises.
“Trying to give the best care I can give within the limitations of the system,” Buck says. “The tremendous improvements in available health care run head-long into capitation.”
The strongest pressures to limit treatments are felt in capitated systems, in which doctors’ compensation is based on numbers of patients rather than services provided.
“The pressure in a capitated system is enormous,” Stokes says. “If, as a physician, you go over your budget, you eat it,” she says.
On the other hand, full capitation give physician organizations the flexibility to experiment with innovative care delivery systems that might incorporate different resources such as nurse practitioners and outreach services that were not always reimbursed under the fee-for-service system.
“We still haven’t found the ideal reimbursement system,” adds Milwaukee allergist Toby Enright. “The payment system of the future must reward outcomes. Is the patient better? The best medicine is the least expensive in the long run.”
The difficulty of devising an outcome-based compensation system comes from the nature of medicine.
“In cases like cancer, regardless of how heroic the doctor has been, the patient still dies,” Enright says. “It’s the natural course of the disease.”
The results
Contrary to the ER physician’s complaint that bureaucrats are creating arbitrary rules that determine who gets a certain level of care and who does not, there is solid evidence to suggest that health care is better with managed care than without it.
Managed care seems to do a better job of finding some cancers – such as breast, cervical, colon, and melanoma – sooner than traditional indemnity plans, according to a study in the American Journal of Public Health.
The biggest impact of managed health plans have had on the practice of medicine is the introduction of
“We still haven’t found
the ideal reimbursement system. The payment system of the future must reward outcomes.”
Toby Enright,
Milwaukee allergist
accountability, says Nancy Wenzel, executive director of the Association of Wisconsin HMOs.
“In the past, doctors treated patients in isolation,” Wenzel says. “Now they have to provide data that shows they are delivering quality care.”
It also give patients somebody to hear their complaints, says Lorena Chicoye, medical director of PrimeCare.
“Before managed care, short of litigation, who could you complain to? Nobody,” Chicoye says.
Some of managed care’s best impacts are preventative.
“The resources of managed care can be used to provide education, to teach patients to maintain their health and reduce their risks,” says James Ketterhagen, senior vice president and medical director of Fortis Health.
Disease management programs offered by managed health organizations for patients with chronic illness have proven effective. Also, educational services like 24-hour nurse lines help patients take care of themselves.
“These direct approaches to customers are the way of the future,” Ketterhagen predicts.
Doctors and other health-care providers say managed care has forced them to focus more on the outcomes of treatment, and that’s good.
“Managed care has helped make mental health treatment much more solution-focused, time-limited, and efficient,” says Milwaukee psychotherapist Poul Sandersen. “We can focus on getting clients through a problem rather than encouraging them to develop a long-term dependency on their therapists.”
On the other hand, managed care emphasizes a focus on the bottom line that can test the moral fiber of physicians and medical care providers.
Psychotherapist Marilyn La Court quit accepting managed care patients last year, in spite of the financial repercussions, because of new requirements to limit service to those of “medical necessity only.”
That would have required her to diagnose clients as mentally ill if their therapy was to be covered. La Court says such a diagnosis would limit their employment options, life and health insurance benefits, and their ability to adopt a child or maintain custody of their own children.
“Insurance companies have the right to limit their coverage,” La Court says. “But the result is a segment of the population can’t get counseling unless they are given a diagnosis that will follow them for the rest of their lives.”
Fortis Health’s Ketterhagen often speaks to physicians about working in the managed-care environment. If he could give physicians only one piece of advice, Ketterhagen would urge them to maintain a focus on the patient.
“If we managed health-care organizations, and physicians realize that serving the patient as efficiently as possible is our common goal, it will be easier to work together,” Ketterhagen says.
June 1998 Small Business Times, Milwaukee

Dudley Johnson does it his way
Sitting on a desk in the south side Milwaukee office of Dr. W. Dudley Johnson is a dollar-bill-sized clear piece of plastic encapsulating what looks like a small branch of a plant.
But the five-inch-long, yellow substance isn’t from Johnson’s vast gardens at his Germantown farm.
It’s plaque from a patient’s coronary artery, painstakingly removed in a lengthy procedure that Johnson, 68, and his colleagues at the W. Dudley Johnson Heart Care Center perform.
In a technique called endarterectomy, Johnson cuts a diseased artery lengthwise and very carefully removes the buildup, and then uses a leg vein to stitch over the now-clear artery.
The momento on Johnson’s desk is a stark reminder to those who would eat to much of food high in saturated fats.
But to Johnson, it’s a reminder of what he’s been able to do with high-risk patients who might otherwise face death from their cardiovascular disease.
Early in 1968, Johnson made medical history by pioneering the coronary bypass technique of removing a vein from a patient’s leg and revascularizing the heart by implanting the vein into the blocked right artery.
Later that year he performed the world’s first double bypass, and was part of the surgical team that performed a heart transplant on West Allis resident Betty Anick, who, until her death in 1977, was the world’s longest surviving heart transplant patient.
His list of “firsts” in the field of heart disease treatment has since expanded, making him internationally renowned – Johnson and his associates have had patients from almost every state and from 35 foreign countries.
Now, he’s adding two more innovative procedures to his arsenal against cardiovascular disease, lending support to those who call him “Dr. Hope” – the specialist they turn to when all other medical options have run out.
One of the new procedures will treat persons with chronic atrial fibrillation which is the second leading cause of cardiac death and the single leading reason for hospitalization.
“About 15% of our nation’s health bills are because of strokes,” Johnson says. “Atrial fibrillation is the second-leading cardiac cause of death, and causes 25% of the strokes.”
Stroke patients often spend more days in the hospital than the population without atrial fibrillation, he adds. And people with atrial fibrillation have a stroke rate five times higher than the general population.
When the atrium quivers, a lack of contractions can cause blood to stagnate and clot. Drugs and blood thinners can be used as treatment in some cases.
But Johnson’s new approach will be very different. He’ll staple off the appendage, preventing the clot from traveling and thus from becoming lethal. And Johnson expects to see dramatic results on patients who get the patented treatment.
Getting to the point where he can do the procedure hasn’t been an easy road to travel. “The politics of getting a new operation off the ground are phenomonal,” he observes.
Johnson tracks patients over the long haul in a rather detailed way to prove the value of the procedures he undertakes, even if those procedures may be more time-consuming and more costly than those proscribed by others in the field, or more costly than managed-care organizations would like to pay for.
Johnson is a maverick. He is affiliated with no managed-care plan.
“I’m far more concerned about how many of my patients are going to be around in 15 years than about how long they’re going to be in surgery or whether they’ll be in the hospital an extra day or two,” says Johnson, a Madison native who now lives on a farm in Germantown.
Johnson’s character and aggressive approach to his work have won him some detractors, and he’s not shy in his criticism of other health-care practices in Milwaukee, nor of managed care, which, he says “has no concern for quality.”
He earlier passed up an opportunity to move his practice to California – a decision he now regrets.
No matter what others say about him, Johnson retorts that he has the evidence to prove that what he does works and that because of that work, his patients – people who suffer from chronic, complicated and diffuse heart disease and who are in high-risk categories – live better and longer lives.
That’s why he’s in business.
He and his colleagues at the W. Dudley Johnson Heart Care Center have been tracking patients since 1968. (The center is kitty-corner from St. Francis Hospital on South 16th Street in Milwaukee). Based on a national scoring form, the center’s patients are exceeding their long-term outcomes of pain-relief, re-operation rate and survival rate.
The second new procedure which Johnson is perfecting will aim to revitalize tissue through use of growth stimulants. The treatment will be an expansion on the Vineberg mammary artery graft procedure he’s long used to revive arteries.
With the mammary artery implanted into a long tunnel in the heart muscle, genetic material will be injected to, hopefully, stimulate growth of new blood-carrying vessels.
For diversion, Johnson turns to his farm where he’s organically growing apples, asparagus and other plants. He takes pride in pointing out that a Chicago market which buys his asparagus “can’t get enough of it.”
June 1998 Small Business Times, Milwaukee

People from around the country tend to think of Milwaukee in terms of beer and brats, if they think of us at all. But once they come here, they don’t want to leave. What should be done to overcome our national perception problem?
When Ray Long agreed to come to Milwaukee for a job interview last December, he knew little about the city.
The little he thought he knew, however, wasn’t flattering.
The lifelong East Coast resident had never been to Milwaukee before and was expecting to find himself in a dingy rustbelt town. But what Long found here surprised him.
“I had never heard anything about Milwaukee other than the beer and the Brewers,” says Long, a printing industry executive who made the trip up from Charlotte, N.C. “My initial thought was that I was going to see something like Detroit. But it is one of the cleanest cities I’ve ever been in. People here are extremely friendly and accommodating.”
No surprise, then, that Long ended up taking the job as president of Alphagraphics, a downtown print shop. His experience is fairly typical of the transformation many people go through when they relocate to Milwaukee, says Jude Werra, a Brookfield executive recruiter.
“I remember talking to a guy in the search field from Atlanta, and he called Milwaukee ‘a black hole,'” Werra says. “What he meant by that is, it takes all sorts of energy to get people to relocate here, but, once they come, they don’t want to leave.”
Milwaukee has plenty going for it. The cost of living ranks 22% less than San Jose, 11% less than Boston, and 5% less than Chicago. The average commute here is only 22 minutes. The metro area has the fourth lowest crime rate, based on 1995 FBI statistics. Only one other city, Los Angeles, raises more money for the arts. And, for those fed up with the transient nature of Sunbelt cities, Milwaukee is rock-solid in that three-fourths of its adult residents were born here, while 90% have lived here for more than 10 years.
The perception problem
While some of those who have moved here from other parts of the country are well aware of Milwaukee’s high quality of life, the majority are not. This national perception problem makes it difficult at times to recruit executive talent, and can have a detrimental effect on business expansion and relocation decisions, says Tim Sheehy, president of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce.
Almost universally, unless they have lived here or visited, people on both coasts often have little or no idea where Milwaukee is located. Kate Krill, a 34-year-old Milwaukee native, ran into that repeatedly when she lived in Boston.
“The people there kept confusing Milwaukee with Michigan,” says Krill, a technical writer with M&I Data Services who just moved back to the city after several years on the East Coast. “They have no idea that Milwaukee is on a body of water, or how close it is to Chicago.”
Tim Hoeksema, the CEO of Midwest Express Holdings, Inc., has discovered in his travels that the image most people around the country have of Milwaukee is really no image at all. Others concur with that assessment.
“Nationally, I don’t think there is a definitive impression,” adds William Hanbury, president of the Greater Milwaukee Convention & Visitors Bureau (CVB). “I don’t think people have high negatives or positives about Milwaukee.”
If people from around the country have a mental image of Milwaukee at all, it was shaped by the LaVerne & Shirley/Happy Days television sitcoms from the early 1970s: That we are a simple folk who are content to live lives centered around beer, brats and bowling, says Milwaukee public relations executive Mike Mervis.
That, suggests Mervis, is reason enough that Milwaukee is overdue for an image overhaul.
“We’ve got to get rid of our loser image,” Mervis contends. “We don’t have a cockiness, or even a polite arrogance. We lack a certain civic pride that we are entitled to. We’ve got a halfway decent offense, but we’ve got no defense. We need to crank it up a notch and take our show on the road.”
Our own worst critics
While there are many views as to what should be done to shore up the city’s image, Mervis says that without a clear, consistent message, Milwaukee will continue to suffer in comparison with other cities such as Cleveland, Baltimore and Indianapolis, all of which have succeeded in reinventing formerly negative images within the last 10 years.
“Milwaukee has to define itself,” says Mervis, who moved here 30 years ago. “The mayor, to some degree, needs to be our head rah-rah person. I think he is capable, but I don’t think he is comfortable with it.”
For his own part, Mayor John Norquist believes Milwaukee’s understated image is a reflection of the city’s central European heritage. Norquist himself is a good representation of the modest, self-effacing nature of his constituents.
“I advocate for Milwaukee, but I don’t want to be like a carnival barker,” Norquist says. “Besides, I would rather be in a position where you are better than your image, than the reverse of that, where the reality does not match the hype.”
While there are plenty of efforts dedicated to elevating Milwaukee’s national image, Mervis and others such as CVB’s Hanbury contend that Milwaukeeans tend to be some of their own worst critics.
“I moved here four years ago, and I never had a bad impression of Milwaukee, but I found out that some local residents do,” Hanbury says.
Owen May is a former WTMJ-TV reporter who moved here from the East Coast in 1988. May is incensed by the “poor me” attitude that many Milwaukeeans seem to have about themselves in comparison to the rest of the country.
“I am so tired of hearing people here in Milwaukee, the Milwaukee media especially, in subtle ways putting down their own city, suggesting the rest of the world thinks we’re a bunch of cheeseheads,” says May, the general manager of Metro Video Services in Wauwatosa. “And, it’s not true! I think people here should celebrate and be genuinely proud of what they’ve got here.”
Adds Mervis: “I wish there was a community psychiatrist who could put us on the couch. We tend to have this built-in inferiority complex. If you are going to change your image, everybody, and I mean everybody, has to feel good about our city.”
According to CVB public relations director Maggie Jacobus, a critical element of the turnaround in Cleveland, Baltimore and Indianapolis was getting local residents to buy into the idea that their city was special.
“We can sell this city until we are blue in the face, but if we don’t believe it ourselves, there’s a disconnect,” Jacobus says.
Because research indicates that more than half of the five million leisure travelers who visit Milwaukee annually stay with family and friends, “That means we need to get to the locals and make sure that they are showing them the city and conveying this sense of civic pride,” Jacobus says. “It becomes a matter of exciting the resident as to what is going on here to get them to be an active participant.”
And there is plenty going on to get the locals excited, civic leaders say.
There’s the $172 million Midwest Express Convention Center opening this summer, the debut of Miller Park in the year 2000, and the dramatic $50 million addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum at the lakefront designed by internationally recognized architect Santiago Calatrava. Add to that the Department of City Development’s ongoing efforts to foster development of an entertainment district along the Milwaukee River downtown, a host of new and renovated downtown hotels, and unprecedented development of downtown buildings and factory and warehouse lofts into residential units, and it’s clear that Milwaukee has reason to tout itself.
“Now we have a story to tell,” says Hoeksema, who is playing a lead role in a newly formed civic organization called Spirit of Milwaukee, a non-profit dedicated to improving the city’s image as a business and tourism destination. “We’ve got a great story, but now we’ve got to tell it.”
A Great Place
on a Great Lake
Bob Kraft is a Detroit native who moved here to form RWK Enterprises, which includes Alphagraphics and Electronic Printing Systems, a specialty printing operation focusing on the automotive industry. Because he is constantly bringing automotive executives here from around the world, it is important that the city convey a good image.
Kraft says downtown Milwaukee plays to rave reviews from his international clientele.
“People are very surprised when they to come Milwaukee for the first time,” Kraft says. “They are surprised at the cleanliness, the proximity to the lake and the old-world architecture. We have clients from L.A. living downtown at the MAC, and they love it here. They say the people here are friendly, there is no traffic, and the city has a European feel with good restaurants.
“We’ve got another fellow here from London who has never been to the Midwest before, and he can’t get over it,” Kraft continues. “We have had folks here from Germany, Japan – all over the world, and they always end up wanting to come back. And that’s good for me because it means they are going to spend money.”
Kraft lived in Lake County, Illinois, for nine years before moving here, and had a daily 90-minute commute to his former job near O’Hare International Airport. He says he would never go back.
“We are like a smaller version of Chicago, except you can get around,” Kraft says. “I don’t think the people who live here really realize what a great place this is. I have traveled all over the world, and I’ve seen a lot of great places, but I haven’t seen a city I’d rather live in.”
Attracting key employees is the defining factor for success in business today, Hanbury maintains. And quality of life is a trump card Milwaukee area employers can play when they are playing the executive recruiting game.
“When it gets right down to it, what keeps people here is the quality of life and the quality of the community,” says John Howman, CEO of Allied Computer Group in Milwaukee. “A lot of the things that we tend to take for granted, other communities don’t have. We tend to have more [executive recruiting] success when we put emphasis on those areas.”
Ron Roth, a New York-based executive recruiter who has placed numerous executives with G.E. Medical Systems in Waukesha over the last 12 years, says it is harder to sell prospective recruits on Milwaukee than it is some of the more high-profile areas of the country.
“But, once they bring their families there, people like the values and the lifestyle,” Roth says.
Apart from lifestyle considerations, Milwaukee is a substantive kind of place with down-to-earth people, adds Dick Tilmar, CEO of the T.E. Brennan Co., a downtown Milwaukee insurance risk consultant and employee benefits company.
Tilmar moved to Los Angeles from Milwaukee in 1985 to climb the corporate ladder in the insurance business. After switching jobs twice due to downsizing, he decided in 1993 he had had enough of Southern California.
“When my wife asked me after the second downsizing what I wanted to do, I said ‘I want to go home’,” the 54-year-old Tilmar recalls.
“There is an expression about people in Southern California: They either wear it, live in it or drive it,” Tilmar says. “It’s the big-house-with-no-furniture concept. I saw a lot of people out there who only cared about how they looked, or who drove a big expensive car so they could get two front seats – stuff like that.”
Tilmar makes it clear that he didn’t leave California for financial reasons. The truth is, he made substantially more money there. The tradeoff, he says, is lifestyle, familiarity and ease of getting around.
“The depth of character and the basic principles are far more ingrained in the people here in the Midwest,” Tilmar adds. “Out there , you were someone’s friend as long as you could buy their services or contribute to their favorite charity. The attitude was one of, ‘I’ll take anything I can get as long as I am moving forward.’ The difference here is, I think people actually care about people beyond what they can do for them.”
Ease of living is something many Milwaukeeans take for granted. But for those who have lived in another major city, they can appreciate the difference. Until she moved back here recently, Kate Krill essentially had no closets in her Boston apartment. So she stored her coats in U-Haul moving boxes. That’s the sort of inconvenience Bostonians have learned to live with, Krill says.
“I found that intolerable, but people there aren’t fazed by that sort of thing,” Krill says. “You have so many hassles in a city like Boston; just the day-to-day things like going shopping are stressful. By contrast, you can have a sane, manageable life in Milwaukee. You don’t need to earn $70,000 a year before you attain a comfort of life.”
Future looks bright
From where Bill Hanbury sits, the future of Milwaukee looks bright. Even though his job is to project a positive image of the city to conventioners and tourists, the numbers would seem to support his contention.
Back in 1994, the CVB’s consultants said that by 1997, CVB officials should have been able to book seven new national pieces of convention business. By the end of last year, the CVB booked 34 new national conventions that require more than two hotels to house all the guests, Hanbury says.
Another key indicator shows that Milwaukee did 269,000 room nights per year last year, up from 210,000 in 1994.
“For so long, when major national conventions decided that they wanted to go to the Midwest, Milwaukee was seldom on the radar screen,” Hanbury says. “Now, with the new convention center and new hotel developments going on downtown, that has changed. Now we are on the short list.
“There is a whole new energy and sense of rebirth going on in downtown Milwaukee,” Hanbury says. “That is why I get incensed when I hear the talk-radio guys slam what is going on here.
“We know what the future looks like at the CVB, and it is very, very positive,” Hanbury adds. “We look out to the years 2001 and 2002, and we are in an almost sold-out position. We will have a constant flow of convention and event delegates. It creates a whole new economic tool for the community that previously did not exist.”
You gotta believe
Allied Computer’s Howman says new marketing efforts should focus on the “new” Milwaukee – which is one of a manufacturing city in transition to a more technology-based economy – and less on the old Milwaukee.
“Milwaukee is no Chicago, but we have some very high-tech companies here, and some big-time companies in the area,” Howman says. “As business people and government leaders, we have to put more emphasis on the newness of what is going on here rather than what we have been known for historically.”
But old, ingrained attitudes can be hard to break. The beer-and-brats image can be difficult to overcome when one of the only images people from around the country have of Wisconsin is that of the frozen tundra, Werra says. That perception likely stems from nationally televised images of Packer fans wearing cheese wedges on their head, eating sausages and drinking beer in chilly stadium parking lots.
All the same, Todd Robert Murphy believes Milwaukee is the best-kept secret in the Midwest. If anything, the outspoken advertising/marketing executive thinks too many here are predisposed to negativism.
“I don’t think we are doing enough,” Murphy says. “I think there is much more that needs to be done. But before we tell people around the country how great we are, we need to convince our own people how fortunate they are to live here.”

Company needs to regain strategic focus
Roadblock:
A distributor of industrial components faced a rapidly changing marketplace. Competition was becoming more aggressive as small competitors merged and offered advantages the company was unable to match. The firm lost two of its largest accounts, significantly affecting cashflow.
Morale was declining throughout the company. People who left were not replaced, adding additional work and increasing the stress level of those who remained. To provide at least minimum coverage in every area, some employees were moved into positions for which they were not suited and did not like.
The company’s sales representatives were very technically competent and had the knowledge and experience to offer solutions to the customers. Yet the pressures they faced from their buyers convinced them the only way they could compete was by lowering prices. As a result, the company was losing profit margins along with market share.
Problem:
The leaders of company were not perceived as being in control of the company’s future. A second problem was the failure of the veteran sales reps to update their sales approach.
Solution:
The leader’s first actions should be to develop a vision, prepare a strategic plan for the company, and share both with his people. The people must regain their confidence in the future of the company and the security of knowing their jobs are not in jeopardy. Until the employees know that the company is operating by plan rather than reacting in desperation, they will question and resist every move and directive – if not depart for employment elsewhere.
While all areas of the company do affect customer satisfaction, the sales team is the front line and responsible for bringing in business. The ability of those sales reps to build relationships with both existing and prospective buyers is crucial to counteract the barrage of new competitors. Professional selling skills must be honed so the reps become expert at selling the value being added to their product lines.
Each sales rep must have a written plan directing the activities that will bring him or her the desired results. The niche they fill must be identified so they know where to prioritize their time. Every aspect of their sales effort should be sharpened and focused. This requires training. But it requires the ongoing direction and support from the leaders as well.
“Roadblocks” is provided by The Performance Group inc, a Brookfield training and consulting firm. Small Business Times readers who would like to see a “roadblock” address in this column can contact the company at 784-2922, or via e-mail at perfgrp@execpc.com.
June 1998 Small Business Times, Milwaukee