1210

TRANSACT IONS CONVENE ACQUIRES ASSEMBLE DESIGN GROUP Convene has acquired Assemble Design Group to internalize their architecture and design capabilities. Brian Tolman, the managing partner of Assemble Design Group, was named the head of product for Convene. Tolman is widely recognized as a defining influence on contemporary workplace design. He was named to ENR ’s list of top 20 New York professionals, selected as a David Rockefeller Fellow, is a LEED accredited professional, and is licensed to practice architecture in 12 states and the District of Columbia.

Before founding Assemble, Tolman spent 18 years at STUDIOS Architecture , most recently as managing principal, leading the growth of the firm’s New York office. He has managed several complex national and international design projects, and is best known for bringing a sense of place and hospitality to large-scale office headquarters projects including Bloomberg, Coach, IAC, Tribune, and Time, Inc. “Bringing Brian, his dynamic team, and their design capabilities in-house accelerates Convene’s ability to scale and deliver a better

workplace experience for our clients,” said Ryan Simonetti, CEO and co-founder of Convene. “Today’s employees are more agile than ever – they want to choose where they work, when they work, and how they work,” said Tolman. “Landlords that have been disrupted by the changing preferences of their tenants can now collaborate with Convene and our incredible team of design professionals to create workplaces that spark a sense of connection, community, and dramatically improve tenant engagement.”

H. JOHN OECHSLE, from page 11

files. To put that in context, the ’86 Mac had enough space to store about one decent quality MP3 song file today. COMPLETENESS. Completeness is not just about knowing a customer’s address and birthday; it’s an across-the-board collection of customer information aimed at document- ing every individual customer interaction. And complete record keeping wasn’t always easy to accomplish through technology. In the late 1980s, computers were only begin- ning to make their way into mainstream life. By 1989, just 15 percent of U.S. households owned one and customer records were often kept tucked away in filing cabinets. Today, we’re fortunate to live in an age where we can keep an effortless record of emails, web analytics and online sales with the right technology. We can detail each interaction a customer has with any point of contact at the business, and that information can then be stored and shared so everyone has the same, complete information about the customer’s experience. It’s easy to make notes of face-to-face meetings and phone calls, too, with tools that have been developed for just that purpose – including pioneering software solutions like Act! that were laying the foundation for modern CRM technology all the way back in 1987. “Currency, correctness, consistency, and completeness are – and, arguably, have always been – the most effective path toward forging intimate, long-term relationships with customers.” With such effective and reliable technology available at our disposal in 2017, we are wise to take advantage. Bringing the four Cs together gives businesses the ability to mine information, examine trends, and forge lifelong relationships with their customers that enable the business to grow and thrive. And, at the end of the day, isn’t finding ways to connect and form relationships with our customers what it’s all about – both today and back in 1987? H. JOHN OECHSLE serves as president and CEO of Swiftpage. Oechsle has a track record of building highly profitable and sustainable revenue growth for emerging companies and established global leaders. Contact him at joechsle@swiftpage.com.

switch jobs and update email addresses. Social media ac- counts might be inaccurate or outdated. This all under- scores the importance of maintaining current and correct customer information. “As the technological complexity of customer relationships evolve, so must our approaches to them. The area is best tackled through the four Cs of customer information, which are crucial components of any business plan.” If customer information is kept accurately and up to date, it can prove to be invaluable when used with predictive analytics technology. It can help an organization learn a lot about customer trends and who to reach out to for a sale at what time and via which method of contact to give the company the best chance for a successful interaction – giving the business its best chance to retain existing customers while developing new customer relationships. We’ve come a long way since 1987, when the first version of Microsoft Excel was released for Windows. Excel was preceded by programs such as Lotus and VisiCalc, which were used to store customer data and other important company information. Before then, punched cards were a popular way to save information. Oh, and don’t forget the infamous rolodex, the original CRM. It’s truly incredible to think of the advances information management has made in such a short time period. CONSISTENCY. Consistency has always been a hallmark of helping businesses grow. After all, success is impossible if a business can’t maintain positive and long-lasting re- lationships with its customers. We have infinite options for storing detailed customer information. We use mobile apps, cloud servers, customizable CRM software solutions, email, Google Docs, Excel spreadsheets, and – gasp – pen and paper when we’re in a pinch! If the customer informa- tion is not consistent across all of them, currency and cor- rectness go out the door! It wasn’t always so simple to store all that information on a computer. Apple’s 1986 enhanced Macintosh computer had limited capacity and could store just 4 MB worth of

THE ZWEIG LETTER July 31, 2017, ISSUE 1210

Made with FlippingBook Annual report