Clement Valla: Postcards from Google Earth
These surreal pictures by artist Clement Valla are taken from Google Earth. When the viewpoint is in just the right position, the program shows warped linear figures such as roads and bridges in its effort to convert 3D space to a 2D screen.
via Clement Valla: Postcards from Google Earth | Apartment Therapy New York.
In this day and age, when information flows freely and data capture requires the advanced skills of copy and paste, there’s no excuse not to use a CRM for your business. Price isn’t an issue – there are free and low cost systems out there that offer 80%-90% of the functionality of the top end systems. Here are a few options and some of the tradeoffs:
Salesforce.com. Salesforce is the 800 pound gorilla in the world of CRM, and for good reason. It offers an incredible amount of power, but that power comes at a price. Salesforce isn’t cheap (as much as $150/user/month), and it’s a bear to set up well. Out of the box, it’s okay, but it requires extensive configuration and expertise to make it sing. If you do set it up well, however, you will find that Salesforce can make a huge improvement in your business profitability.
I have to totally agree with Chris Penn on his recommendation that businesses of all sizes use a CRM – but not just for one aspect of the business. When you are considering a tool like Salesforce or Zoho CRM or Sugar CRM, think about the breadth of the tool. If you just adopt a software tool for a limited number of users in one department the usefulness of the tool is mitigated. As important as having a CRM is giving access to everyone in your corporate sphere. This may even mean considering ways to share a limited access version of your CRM for your partners and customers. Some information is meant to be shared – and it will hurt your brand if you implement yet another data silo.
So when considering how this recession is emotionally or physically affecting us (in economic terms), it’s impact is less dramatic in the U.S. just based on the economies of scale and mechanized agriculture that we have built up over the past 30 years. This, and the U.S.’ status as the consumer of last resort, means that it gets food stocks that other countries may not immediately get offered. While the morality of this or any macro economic global decision can be debated, what cannot be debated is that while many in the U.S. are unemployed or underemployed, it affects the psyche & savings accounts more than the stomach.And compared to other countries, there’s no other place on the planet that has cheaper food than the U.S. (2008 data here). The 5.5% of disposable income that Americans spend on food at home is less than half the amount of income spent by Germans (11.4%), the French (13.6%), the Italians (14.4%), and less than one-third the amount of income spent by consumers in South Africa (20.1%), Mexico (24.1%), and Turkey (24.5%), which is about what Americans spent DURING THE GREAT DEPRESSION, and far below what consumers spend in Kenya (45.9%) and Pakistan (45.6%).
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