Making Opportunities For Your Business

The right sort of man doesn't have to find opportunities; he makes them," J. Ogden Armour once said. J. Ogden built the Armour meat packing business into a conglomerate with over 3,000 products. This approach of "making opportunities" is practiced by many successful channel members. Everyday, VARs and integrators are generating new business for themselves. And vertical markets are playing a large role in their success.

Addressing All Of The Technology Needs Of A Vertical Market
Take this month's cover feature (p. 44), for example. Tri-Cord Healthcare Information Systems (HIS) provides enterprise-wide software to hospitals with 80 to 150 beds.

The integrator takes a "solutions approach" addressing the needs of the financial, laboratory, inventory record and clinical departments. Tri-Cord HIS provides handheld computers, time and attendance terminals, bar-code printers, document scanners, and computer storage as part of its total solution. This integrated, enterprise-wide technology provides customers with a greater return on investment (ROI) and Tri-Cord HIS with better margins.

Some hospitals would have to turn to an enterprise software vendor, AIDC VAR, time and attendance reseller and a document imaging integrator to obtain this type of comprehensive solution. However, Tri-Cord HIS made its own niche as a total solutions provider of technology for the healthcare market.

Looking For Complementary Markets
Another example this month is Leo McMillian (p. 56). McMillian founded an electrical contracting company that now has gross sales of about $16 million. He wanted to start another business in a related market. McMillian identified a need for security systems in many of the companies he provided electrical contracting services to.

So, he started McMillian Technology, to resell different card and security technologies. That business will earn gross sales of $20 million this year – more than his electrical contracting company. McMillian looked for additional technology needs within the markets he was already working with. In addition, McMillian Technology has expanded into other vertical markets.

Taking Technology To A New Market
An installation review (p. 68) featured this month shows the value of entering new vertical markets. First Wave, a manufacturer and integrator of kiosks, provides its technology to a number of traditional markets for kiosks.

First Wave was turned on to a new market by a local car dealership. The car dealership needed a way for customers to learn about the used cars it offered on all of its five geographically-separated lots. First Wave was able to develop a kiosk application, where customers could look up information about all of the different cars offered by the dealership. Now, the integrator can take this solution to other car dealerships.

Focus Brings Opportunity
These three VARs made opportunities by identifying the technology needs of vertical markets. "When a man's undivided attention is centered on one object, his mind will constantly be suggesting improvements of value, which would escape him if his brain were occupied by a dozen different subjects at once," P.T. Barnum, the famous showman, once professed a speech titled "The Art Of Money-Getting."

Are you meeting all of the technology needs of your customers in a vertical market? Are there vertical markets with similar technology needs that you could be selling to? I'd like to know. E-mail me at ShannonL@corrypub.com.