With only a month left in 2008, I wanted to take a moment that look back on where we’ve come from and to let everyone know where we’re headed.

Blue Phoenix Consulting was started to do one thing; help companies to get more from their website. And when I say more, I mean more positive impact on their bottom line. In particular, we focus on online marketing to help generate sales leads and application development to help automate whatever business processes we can. Now, the plan was that we would be a consulting firm. Clients would hire us to come in and speak with them about where they are and where they want to go in regards to their website and their Internet presence in general. Then, once we get a feel for their situation we would help them plan out their online marketing, recommending changes to their existing website, writing specs for a web application to improve efficiency in some area, etc.

Unfortunately, many of our clients won’t let us operate in this capacity. As a result, they are in the very boat that we’re saying we can get people out of. They have websites that don’t do anything!! Client comes in, says ‘I want a website that does x, y, and z.’ We talk with the client, get a feel for the situation and then recommend a, b, and c instead. The client refuses, so we go ahead and build them a site that does x, y, and z. The result? The client is happy because he got what he wanted. But I’m not, because the client didn’t get what he needed; and believe it or not that sort of thing bothers me. It keeps me up at night. I started this company to help clients to do better. It’s like Henry Ford said, “If I’d asked people what they wanted, they would have asked for a better horse.” So many times people come in asking for better horses and just won’t let us sell them the Model T that would help them so much.

This past September, Blue Phoenix Consulting crossed over the two year mark. From what I’ve read, supposedly 33% of business fail before their 2nd anniversary, so the fact that we’ve made it this far seems like a reason to celebrate. I guess we sort of cheated though, since many of our clients have been since before Blue Phoenix was formed. Some clients, such as McKimmey Associates Realtors, have been with me for quite a few years. But, back to my point, I’m ecstatic that we’ve made it this far and have done this well, but there’s more to be done. There are changes to be made. With that thought in mind, I wanted to share my vision for 2009.

First priority is that we’re making changes to our own internal systems. We’re always working on client systems and haven’t slowed down to look at our own. So, starting with the mailing of the January invoices we’ll be using a new system that will offer greater flexibility, reliability, and security. This was something that’s been debated back and forth for a while but the scale tipped this last month when invoices when out late to several of our clients. We’re also implementing a support ticket system, which should be online in late December. I know some people aren’t going to like using the ticket system, but I promise it’s a good thing. It’ll provide a way to track issues and help us to ensure things are handled in a timely manner. That said; yes, you can still call us or send an email to our support address. Of course we’re just going to go create a ticket and input whatever you emailed or said, so that we can track it.

Our other goal is stay in touch with our clients more and try to get back to our consulting plans. One way that we’re going to do this is by starting this blog that you’re reading now. We are going to start posting articles on a quasi-regular basis. The articles will be on topics that we think will helpful to our customers. Additionally, we’re going to work to create white papers that break things such as SEO down so that everyone can understand it.

So, as I end the first of what will become many, many blog posts, I just want to thank all of our clients for your support in helping Blue Phoenix Consulting make it past the two year mark.