What goes into making a Fast Company?

In reading this morning, I came across a post from "The Outhouse" about making companies honest. This is one of the things I can remember reading from a Fast Company Magazine article on what makes a Fast Company. So is the capability of being able to turn on a dime a quality of a fast company -- as it is called ". . . zero response time . . ."

The question I asked yesterday, at the end of my post, centered on the chicken-and-the-egg idea. Does a fast company come out of using particular software, or is a fast company already structured like that and the software then makes the company able to turn on a dime, be honest with its customers and move in a marketplace with rapid responses to customer requirements?

My experience in starting with NetSuite Australia more than a year ago suggests that building a fast company has nothing and everything to do with the software one selects. Yes, nothing and everything. "And what might that mean?" I hear you say.

This is the age old questions academics, scientists and well schooled people have asked for years; does having a gun (or any other technology) in my hand cause me, a human being, to kill someone, for example. Or rather, does a human being take advantage of the technology of the time and make things happen that are within the new capabilities of the human being because she/he now has added potential?

Marshall McLuhan stated that "The medium is the message" because it is the "medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action." This means to say that, in my humble little homily here, NetSuite software, or any software for that matter, shapes the potential a human has with regards to the actions possible. So while software does not make a company a fast company software does facilitate the making of a fast company should the people using it see the potential and use the potential the software provides.

This is in keeping with my experience at NetSuite Australia. When I started a little over a year ago, there were just 30 of us. We sat relatively closely, we talked a lot during the day, but we did also achieve a lot because we were able to collaborate a lot and get things done quickly when a customer needed something. In our down times we could talk about the success of things and redirect when it was needed. Later on when another 40 people entered the scene, gone were those days of interaction -- but now with NetSuite we keep that quick reaction through the all knowing all seeing NetSuite.

What has helped us to maintain that quick reaction is NetSuite. We all can see the data in the database. We can track when something is on target and when it is not. It is the software that has enabled us to maintain the fast growth, see when something needs fixing -- that is -- we have added potential, the type of potential to act that we had when we were small.

And what is more, none of those new employees include IT people to run an IT department. All of them are working on the core business of selling and servicing customers of NetSuite. We have in the USA dozens of employees there building and maintaining NetSuite -- and their work is added to the centralized NetSuite we all use as and when new elements are required, or when fixes for bugs are essential.

Yes, I think the mentality of being a fast company needs to be there first; but secondly, NetSuite is able to provide those people with the tools to maintain and build a company from its small beginnings to a rather large size.

The First Entry: About Being a Fast Company

I suppose the major reason for this blog is to explore the concept of "Fast Company" and what that means to people inside such a company and what it means to the business itself. Being written in the first person it makes this blog, in the first place, a personal exploration of being in a fast company, but secondly and of primary importance, I am able to explore how the software we use, advocate, and market to other companies, is involved in aiding us to be a "Fast Company".

Now that sounds all pompous and grand and I didn't mean it to be that way, it is just that I had a difficult time in wording it any other way. But that is what a blog is for -- I see a blog as a place where I can write ". . . off the sleeve . . ." as one might say. And I really don't like the idea of a blog as a place where other people can make comments. No, I say, this is my window and I will dress it the way I want and I will be pompous if I want to be, scathing if I am allowed to be, and your best friend, if I want to be. Let other people talk on their blogs. I will see it soon enough if you link to me -- say what you want on your blog and we will get along just fine.

So, what is this Fast Company thing?

Yes, we got on a list for being a Fast Company -- the Business Review Weekly list of companies that are Innovative and Flexible. Number 11 to be precise.

Being on the list doesn't mean much to me.

But I can tell you what it means to work in an innovative and flexible company -- and that is what got us on the list in the first place.

Let's take, for example, my Adwords Campaign. I created ten or so ads in the campaign, built some landing pages so that I could track the results of each advertisement. From where I sit I can see the leads coming in using my NetSuite tracking facilities. However, I can see right through to how those leads convert into prospects, and whether they convert into being a customer. I don't have to go and have a meeting with the Sales Managers, or the Marketing Director to see right through to a sale -- it is there in NetSuite.

I can evaluate the cost of obtaining each sale from an Adwords Advertisement, compare advertisements, and immediately stop those advertisements that are not above some threshold. I can tell in a day which advertisements give me the most prospects, and in a week I can tell which leads make it beyond prospect. So I have immediate feedback and can take action with the advertisements, change them, boost the display of the best ones, reduce the display of the worst ones etc. I can do all that without having a meeting.

And then best of all, if I think I need some more money for a campaign because it is doing well, my boss, the marketing director is just sitting in the next cubicle, and we make a decision in minutes. That is part of what being in a fast company is about -- immediacy -- we don't have to wait for a meeting -- or for someone to give us figures on the next weekly report.

I think in my next posting, I will consider the egg and chicken question . . . does being a Fast Company mean you will most likely adopt something like NetSuite? Or does adopting NetSuite make you a Fast Company?