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July 31, 2008
So many way location helps
I found myself in a casual conversation with a senior executive of a long-established metals and forge company. Ever curious, our 'what do you do' conversation turned into a vibrant conversation around how to stimulate growth in such a traditional business.
Simply put, his 'customers' were involved in long chains of value add - from the end product back through multiple sub-contracted specialty machine-shops. Over the years this executive had accumulated more than 120,000 names and companies... But had no real way understand who worked where and with whom - the geographic context of this 'social network' solves a major part of this. Simply mapping these 120,000 - and seeing the 'customers of the customers' in their location context.
These machine-shops were, in effect, very much part of his customer relationship though in the absence of geography the connections were not obvious.
Location matters - directly or indirectly.
Posted by John D. Corbett at July 31, 2008 3:00 PM
