.:RIMproInsider:.

Gary Tobiczyk, a long time veteran of the records management industry has recently launched an online learning and support site for the RIM service industry called the IMACenter. A comprehensive yearly subscription tool that gives owners and salespeople of record centers, vaults, imaging and related enterprises a significant amount of practical, useable learning content and tools to use. Gary also let me know that the content is always being updated and augmented. As a significant extra, users also have the ability to request email assistance from the IMA consulting team.

The cost for a yearly subscription is only $1,000 per user. In my opinion that is good value. Forget what the content itself might be worth, but if you sent just one email per month for advice, you would get a significant return on your $1000 investment. I really wish this resource had been available when I was first starting out in the records management business.

Check it out.

More regulations to ensure the long term success of your shredding operations.

[Federal Register: April 20, 2004 (Volume 69, Number 76)] [Proposed Rules]
[Page 21387-21392] 16 CFR Part 682

Disposal of Consumer Report Information and Records; Proposed Rule

SUMMARY: The Federal Trade Commission (“FTC'’ or “Commission'’) is proposing a rule regarding the proper disposal of consumer report information and records. The Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003 (“FACT Act'’ or “Act'’) requires the Federal Reserve Board, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Office of Thrift Supervision (collectively, the “Federal banking agencies'’), National Credit Union Administration, Securities and Exchange Commission, and Federal Trade Commission, in coordination with one another, to adopt consistent and comparable rules regarding such disposal.
DATES: Written comments must be received on or before June 15, 2004.

To Access The Rule Proposal use this link and then for search for “disposal rule”

Not sure if you saw the article in Business 2.0 this month about Ritz Carlton and the various companies that are sending their people to Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center (to the tune of $2,000 per person). As is usual, the “secrets” of Ritz-Carlton’s success are easy duplicate by any company in any industry, but it’s always the rolling out and implementation of these secrets that seem to trip people up.

Here is a brief overview of some of the main secrets they teach and live:

1. Make Customer Service an Elite Club (ask the right questions when interviewing)
2. Once You Have the Right People, Indoctrinate Them (spend the on training the, Ritz-Carlton spends around $5K per employee; how much do you spend?)
3. Treat Staffers the Way They Should Treat Customers (in the words of Tom Peters: “. . . if you genuinely want to put customers first, you must put employees more first.”)
4. Offer Memorable Service (complaints = opportunities; it’s just that simple and just that hard)
5. Talk About Values and Stoke Enthusiasm (reinforce core values . . . daily)
6. Eschew Technology, Except Where It Improves Service (automation doesn’t always equal better experiences; it’s finding the perfect balance between high tech and high touch)

For many in our industry “customer service” is a real selling feature. My question is, do you put on the Ritz for them?

In the April issue of Inc magazine, Docuvault of Denver is listed as #36 in their Inner City 100 listings. A great accomplishment for Bowen Banbury, president and founder of the company. The two line blurb accompanying the listing says…

In the early years, Bowen Banbury dispatched his one truck to loop around the city in hopes of making the document storage business appear to be bigger than it really was.

I called Bowen to hear more about those early days. Here is what he had to say.

Our trucks were black with a large red stripe in the rear of them. Visually they stood out. As we were not busy enough to keep our driver going all day, I told him to drive around and look busy. I remember talking to people early on, and I realized that the tactic had worked. People would say how they saw our trucks all over the place. Funny because we only had one truck. Our building was right downtown so we didn’t have to drive far.”

Times have been good for Docuvault. The company now boasts almost a 1,000,000 cubic feet of records under management, and over 100,000 media tapes in the vaults. All that in under seven years. Pretty impressive. Congratulations Bowen on your success!

Vecoplan has released their newest product, a mobile shred truck using the same shredding single-shaft rotary grinder technology that you find in their line of plant based machines. This adds some more valuable competition in the mobile manufacturer space.

Chris Hawn, Sales Manager at Vecoplan told me today that they have booked orders already and more on the way. He did not disclose how many. The new trucks will be displayed onsite at both the NAID and WasteExpo conferences mid May.

You can see details on the new shred truck by visiting the Vecoplan website.

“Success means never letting the competition define you. Instead, you have to define yourself based on a point of view you care deeply about.”

Tom Chappell, founder of the personal care products company Tom’s of Maine

The Cary McGovern / Fileman concept of a virtual corporation (record center in his case) where everything is outsourced is becoming more and more a successful idea in the broader business context. While many in this business have fought the notion, it is becoming a significant trend worldwide. In a recent article by Peter Freedman of the TimesOnline out of Britain entitled “The age of the hollow company” The brand is all — firms make nothing and outsource everything.

“It is a hollow corporation,” said Kjell Nordstrom, a Swedish business-school academic and co-author of Karaoke Capitalism, a new book on the changing nature of companies and business.

Metro International is just one example of a hollow company — one that is applying to the newspaper industry a business model already proven in, for example, the computer industry by Dell and in the furniture industry by Ikea. It operates, in effect, as a network orchestrator, buying the things that firms in its sector traditionally produced themselves.

“The boundary of the firm — the definition of what is inside or outside the company — has always moved back and forth,” said Nordstrom. “What is happening now is that the boundaries are moving more quickly; and they are moving in a particular direction, with companies shifting more and more activities out of the corporation.”

The result is that companies, both large and small, are performing ever fewer of their traditional functions and becoming “hollow”.

I would like to see someone who is doing this in the commercial RIM services area and how they do it. I know that some in the records side use this concept with shredding, scan on demand and evaulting. But is anyone doing it completely? Do you know them? How is it working? Comment on it here or send me an email.