These companies' extraordinary ability to link people with information has earned them the top spots in the Community category of the 2000 Inc. Web Awards.
First place
Posted Notes
Company: PostNet International Franchise Corp.
Web address: www.postnet.net
Why it won: Its sophisticated extranet helps franchisees help themselves.
Company revenues: $5 million (excluding franchise revenues)
Site-launch cost: $10,000
Judge's view: "If you can do something constructive at a site that enables you to see your results quickly with lots of high customer-service touch, you've got a winner." --Randy Hinrichs
"Help! How can we promote our color-copying service?" "What are the rules and regulations for shipping wine?" "Does anyone offer cell/pager service?" "Do you provide health insurance for employees?"
Those are the typical sorts of questions that roll into PostNet International Franchise Corp. every day. Once upon a time, the Henderson, Nev., company's 31-person staff would have handled them one by one. Today hundreds of volunteers -- the company's own franchisees -- share the load. PostNet's Franchisee Web allows PostNet, which franchises postal- and business-service centers, to harness the energy and knowledge of its business licensees in more than 25 countries worldwide. In addition, the company uses the Web to deliver a wide array of services to its customers -- those same 700-plus franchisees.
The Franchisee Web message boards give users a chance to solve problems, celebrate triumphs, and sometimes just vent. More than 90% of the franchisees regularly visit the message boards, says PostNet executive vice-president Brian Spindel, who cofounded the company in 1992. But a core group of 50 or 60 users provide 80% of the input. Message boards provide PostNet's management with critical feedback, says Spindel, who checks in four or five times a day but usually doesn't participate. When franchisees want input from headquarters, they'll request it. "Then we'll know it's time to jump in with both feet and let them know what we really think," he says.
The password-protected message boards were the first feature available when PostNet launched the Franchisee Web, in 1997. The company later added many functions in response to users' requests. Now the site houses archived newsletters, links to approved vendors, and downloadable marketing materials (including TV commercials and jingles that can be sampled online). In addition, it lets franchisees upload customer databases to a central server. Using that information, PostNet handles direct-mail campaigns on its franchisees' behalf, a utility that Spindel calls the company's "killer marketing app."
Such efforts have paid off in increased franchisee communication and involvement, Spindel says. And consequently, revenues have grown, according to PostNet president, CEO, and cofounder Steven Greenbaum. "In the last few years," he explains, "our annual increase in same-store sales has been in excess of 20%, and we think that's a direct result of [franchisees'] ability to learn and share."
Most of the creative and design work on PostNet's extranet has been done in-house. Spindel and Greenbaum chose the features, based on franchisees' feedback, and PostNet's two-person graphics department designed the user-friendly look and feel. The company has outsourced most of its programming to a local Internet service provider, which also hosts the site. In the future, however, PostNet plans to handle those tasks on its own. "We'd like a bit more control," Spindel explains.
That's not all that's changing. Last year the company invested $10,000 in developing a new site, PostNetOnline.com, that drives profits from E-commerce, such as online orders for business cards, to franchisees. This year PostNet is building individual franchisee Web sites and plans to add an HR section to the Franchisee Web.
Meanwhile, the site remains a work in progress. "Any time I'm on a Web page," says Spindel, "I look at it, and I kind of steal ideas." --Mary Kwak
Second place
Track It Down
Company: Northwest Research Group
Web address: www.nwrg.com
Why it won: A password-protected site gives clients access to research 24 hours a day.
Company revenues: $2.3 million
Site-launch cost: $10,000
Judge's view: "This is what the Web was intended to do -- link information and people." --Randy Hinrichs
Don't try telling Rebecca Elmore-Yalch "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach." The founder of Northwest Research Group, a custom-market-research company with offices in Seattle and Boise, Idaho, has prospered as both a doer and a teacher. In the mid-1980s, when Elmore-Yalch was teaching marketing research at the University of Washington, people started coming to her for help with research projects. "I fixed a few and suggested that maybe they should have me start from the beginning and do it right," she explains.
Fifteen years later, NWRG has conducted telephone surveys, run focus groups, and buttonholed straphangers for customers like the city of Seattle, the Chicago Transit Authority, and Amtrak. As part of its contract with Amtrak, NWRG built a password-protected addition to its Web site in 1997. The Research Site, as the area is known, allows Amtrak staffers to search all of NWRG's reports online. Some 30 users regularly visit the site, usually looking for the key fact or finding -- for example, that 30% of Amtrak travelers are first-time riders -- that will turn a run-of-the-mill presentation into a home run.
The Web site also provides answers to routine statistical queries, which frees NWRG's 10-person research staff to address higher-level issues. Now when customers call the researchers, it's usually for a more interesting discussion about what the data actually mean. And because customers can find facts on their own, NWRG no longer has to charge for looking things up. "It doesn't look like we're nickel-and-diming them every time they have a question," Elmore-Yalch says. But the real payoff for NWRG's customers, she believes, has little to do with money. "It just makes them look really smart, and that's what our business is about," she says. --M.K.
