Hk Benchmarketing

Harrison-Keyes End State Benchmarking 1

Running head: HARRISON-KEYES END STATE BENCHMARKING PAPER

Harrison-Keyes End State Benchmarking Paper

University Of Phoenix

End State Goals Benchmarking

MBA/590

Mr. Arthur Ward

Oct. 31, 2006

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Harrison-Keyes Benchmarking

Harrison-Keyes Inc. will have a network of people, places information and communications technology facilitates on-going connections between people in the field of life writing the books (authors) which will be used to build and maintain rich relationships, and to improve cooperation between management, sellers, writers, stakeholders, & shareholders (Cities Plus 2005).

In this benchmarking we will attempt to look at companies that were able to use networking for their company's benefits. Also we will attempt to look at companies that may have not been as successful by using networking to benefit their company. In benchmarking different companies we will attempt to look at if Harrison-Keyes Inc. could benefit from another the benchmarking.

Yo-Yo Nation Inc.

Yo-Yo Nation Inc. is a start up small successful specialty e-tailer company for hard-core yo-yo enthusiasts business based in New York City. Yo-Yo Nation Inc. specialty is what the name implies yoyo's. The company was the brain child of Weber Hsu and F. Patrick Cuartero who is the reigning yo-yo world champion. The owners Hsu and Cuartero, felt they could do better getting the message out to the yo-yo community.

Yo-Yo Nation used its web site to develop brand loyalty. So far it seems to work for their small company. Yo-Yo Nation has found that the forum used by the company is turning out to be far less costly than traditional marketing campaign. Yo-Yo Nation is seeing a double-digit growth every month and hope to be a million dollar company be the end of this year.

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Harrison-Keyes Inc. will be able to look at what Yo-Yo Nation has done being a small business and use that knowledge to understand that if you get the info out the loyal customers using the books that Harrison-Keyes publish each year will stay loyal and continue to buy, because the company will always reach their intended audiences.

Coe & Company

Coe & Company is a small accounting technology company of 19 employees based in Metairie, Louisiana. Charles Coe Jr. CEO listens to a change request from a technical manager who suggested that the company change the company's e-mail and Web site to Networks Solutions' off-site hosted service. Thanks to the prescient change in e-mail service and the adroit use of several other communications tools like Microsoft Dynamics software to identify key customers and Skype for conference calls Coe & Company was able to stay afloat when Hurricane Katrina hit the gulf coast.

After the storm Charles Coe Jr. was able to contact his employees on their handheld Pocket PCs and inform them where to go in the company's BlogSpot for more information. Charles Coe Jr. found out that the phones couldn't be forwarded because the switch was under six feet of water, but with Skype, customers knew the company was up and running (Q. J. 2006).

Harrison-Keyes Inc. can look at Coe & Company and the use of off-site system that was put in place by Coe & Company and use the information to keep their product and service going in the case the Harrison-Keyes loses power due to a natural or man made disaster.

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Motive

Motive is a broadband management software company that has landed BT subsidiary BT Retail as a customer. The company is going to be able to launch later in the year Motive's Home Device Manager. The program will enable BT Retail to remotely manage customer premise equipment (CPE) to instantly activate such new services as home networking, voice over IP (VoIP), small/medium business (SMB) networks and IPTV. The deployment of the software should drastically improve efficiency.

For U.S.-based Motive, the win at BT is highly significant and with signed contracts with 12 service providers worldwide for Motive's HDM software to manage their next-generation broadband service (BT Gets Motive-ated 2006).

Motive was able to acquire another company in BT Retail and use the company to help their company continue to grow and stay a major player in the world of broadband. Harrison-Keyes Inc. can look at what Motive has done by bringing another company on board that maybe able to assist in moving Harrison-Keyes forward.

Dow Corning and Nova Chemical

Chemical manufactures must operate a serious network of plumbing pipes, ducts, and valves to process, produce and transport millions of gallons and billions of dollars of valuable product.

Nova Chemicals of Pittsburg is applying intelligence from its IP network and data center to how it manages the physical control of the chemicals and pipelines that

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produce its products. Nova Chemicals uses software in both North and South America that allows the company look at the data as it moves their products to the customer.

Networking at Dow Corning, the company is extracting data from its centralized SAP system and putting it in the hands of salespeople with BlackBerries PDAs'.