In today’s edition (the first one I think) of Stupid Proposal Tricks, I discuss how to change file names for proposal drafts.
It will help to understand my original working process:
I edit files that include “DRAFT06” in the name.
I zip all the “DRAFT06” files, distribute them to reviewers, and archive them.
I then manually edit every file to change “DRAFT06” to “DRAFT07.”
This is a pain.
So I asked my buddy Google Gemini for help.
“In Windows 11 File Manager or whatever it’s called today, is there an easy way to edit a collection of filenames to change the filename text “DRAFT06” to “DRAFT07″?”
Google Gemini gave me two options, and I chose the first.
“You can run a quick one-line command to swap the text across every file in the folder without installing anything.
“Open the folder containing your files in File Explorer.
“Click on the address bar at the top, type powershell, and press Enter.
“In the blue/black PowerShell window that opens, copy and paste this command and press Enter:
When I manage projects for Bredemarket clients using Microsoft Excel, my workbooks contain targeted worksheets that may or may not interest all the client stakeholders. I’m finally recognizing this and acting accordingly.
Whether you use Excel or something else, data filtering always benefits your stakeholder customers.
A sample Excel project management workbook
Google Gemini.
Lately I’ve fallen into the habit of organizing Bredemarket client projects in Microsoft Excel. Why? Because my stakeholders (even in Google shops with Sheets) already have the software to read the files.
Excel and many other applications organize their data in one or more tabs (worksheets). Each tab features different data, presented in different ways at the discretion of the project manager. For example, a product marketing workbook may contain these worksheet tabs:
A summary view (Product Summary) of a product’s base offering, options, and prices.
A more detailed view (Product Detail) of the product base / option prices and costs.
An even more detailed view of certain supported features (Product Features) mapped to the base and options, along with detailed descriptions.
Candidate features for product versions (Candidate Features), and their statuses.
A view of prospects and the features they desire (Prospect Features), highlighting the desired features covered and not covered in the product.
You can see how all these worksheets could tie together. A prospect’s feature on the last tab that is approved and completed (double blind fingerprint verification) will ripple through all the other tabs. But an unapproved feature (geolocation in latitude-longitude at which a latent print was captured) would only appear on the last two tabs.
So what if recipients get more than the targeted worksheets?
Google Gemini.
Because of some things that have happened over a recent period, it finally penetrated my thick skull that just because all this data is critically important to ME to manage the project, some of it may bear no importance to OTHERS.
For example, the stakeholder that simply wants to know how much the product base and options cost doesn’t care about the features we never implemented for the Bullhead City Police Department.
At the same time, an outside developer is only interested in the features that we want to implement for the 1.3 release. Other than as background information, the developer doesn’t care which prospect(s) want the feature. And the developer doesn’t care—and perhaps shouldn’t even know (because privacy and security)—how much we price an option containing a particular feature.
Then I acted to only distribute targeted worksheets
Before all of this penetrated my thick skull, I would distribute entire workbooks and tell selected stakeholders to check the third and fourth worksheets and ignore the rest.
That’s dumb.
Why not give these selected stakeholders ONLY the targeted worksheets that are pertinent to them? More work for me to preserve the full view (all worksheet tabs) AND the targeted views, but much less work and much less confusion for the stakeholders.
I’m already doing this with one client. When it’s time to discuss features for future product releases, I’m only distributing the equivalent of the “Candidate Features” tab. This helps focus the discussion.
(I’m also filtering the rows that appear in the tab, but filtering is a topic for another discussion. And I’m also using Date of Last Update, Show/Hide, and conditional formatting as previously spoken by the wildebeest.)
In practice, and taking my 2022-developed Y2K-unfriendly document numbering system into account, I may store the following files in my client’s Microsoft or Google repository (or Bredemarket’s own):
BlueWidget2609a-All (all tabs, not distributed to anyone but kept on file)
BlueWidget2609a-ProductSummary (just the first tab, sent to Bob and Judy only)
BlueWidget2609a-CandidateFeatures (just the fourth tab, sent to Judy, Chris, and Tina)
What if I’m a REAL project manager and don’t use Excel?
Now I know some project managers tuned me out when I used the E word in the title.
But the same principle applies if you use Microsoft Project, or Microsoft Teams, or Asana, or Slack, or Jira, or InsaneBambi.AI.
(Whoops, InsaneBambi.AI is still embargoed. Forget I mentioned it.)
All of these apps support views, letting you create the equivalents of targeted worksheets so certain stakeholders only see certain things about the project.
Use your favorite app’s view capability to only display information necessary for your stakeholders.
Your stakeholders are your customers. Maintain a customer focus.
But what about you?
How do you curate project views for your stakeholders? Do you send filtered spreadsheets or rely on tool-specific dashboards? Let me know in the comments.
And if you have an identity, biometric, or technology product marketing project that could benefit from Bredemarket’s expertise, let’s talk.
Can you let generative AI edit your Word document? Sure, if Track Changes is on. But there’s a cost.
An analysis need
I had a multi page Microsoft Word document, originally written by a client and subsequently edited by me in two separate sessions. This version, 1.2, desperately needed a sanity check—analysis, if you will.
First, to see if it made sense.
Second, to see if it properly addressed two distinct sets of hungry people (target audiences): the business audience interested in the brief introduction, and the technical audience interested in the main body of the document.
I wanted to use a tool to perform the work, but I didn’t want the tool to just make the changes on its own. All I need is one buried hallucination and my client’s credibility would be ruined.
Google Gemini.
Suggesting the changes
So I told the tool that I wanted to create a version 1.3, and to compile a list of suggested changes for my review, describing the two sets of hungry people for portions of the document, and capping the list of suggested changes at 40.
It created a list of 38 suggested changes, within my self imposed limit.
Google Gemini.
But before I could review the list, the tool asked me a question (paraphrased):
“Do you want me to apply the changes and create a marked up version 1.3?”
Making the changes
Those words “marked up” gave me joy. If you haven’t worked with Microsoft Word, it has a “Track Changes” feature to let you know every change someone (or something) made to a document. You can either accept them or reject them.
Google Gemini.
For me it was the best of both worlds. The tool could automatically make the changes without forcing me to make them manually. And I could review its work.
So I let the tool make the 38 changes, and I waited. And waited. (And spent an inordinate amount of tokens.)
But the tool delivered my 1.3 document, all marked up.
Google Gemini.
Reviewing the changes
I accepted most of the changes, with one major exception.
You see, in my first round of manual edits I had changed most of the section numbers, failing to realize that the text included hard-coded references to the old section numbers.
The tool fixed these so that the hard coded references were now directed to the new section numbers. That was fine.
But then the tool inserted hard coded references to the page numbers. That was NOT fine, since this is a living document that may expand or contract, changing the pagination.
It cost you
But all in all the markup looked good, was accurate, and saved me and my client time. But it did have a cost.
Google Gemini.
Now I just have to decide when to spend tokens and let the tool create a marked up version.
By the way, here’s a video summary.
Let Me Do It. Google Lyria. Public Domain.
So what?
Of course, my view of generative AI use falls within these two extremes.
If you even think of using generative AI in any way, you will never consult for us again.
Your performance is measured by the number of tokens you consume.
Yet in reality, my use or non-use of generative AI is extremely inconsequential. The much more important factor is my expertise in identity, biometrics, and technology.
If you want to harness that expertise for your firm, talk to me.
The difference between working FOR one company and working WITH multiple companies is that one company—sometimes—does things one way, while multiple companies definitely don’t.
Well, unless Bredemarket were so ginormous that I could dictate to every client and prospect that I only work in a single way.
When Bredemarket becomes ginormous.
I’m not, so I don’t.
One example: when I worked for Incode 3-4 years ago, we primarily used one communication tool and one project management tool. After I left Incode, my Bredemarket clients and I have used a multitude of communication and project management tools, to say nothing of all the other tools Bredemarket uses with its clients. Microsoft Office vs. the Google equivalents. WordPress vs. other apps I can’t even access. SharePoint vs. Google Drive. KnowBe4 (yes, I work frequently enough at one company that I have to complete mandatory training). And, most importantly for Bredemarket’s bank account, different invoicing and payment systems. (Gotta learn those.)
It’s comparable to the months before I joined Printrak, when I was working with a multitude of firms. (Printrak was supposed to be one more firm, but I stayed there for over 25 years.) Most notably, one client was standardized on OS/2. I had never used it before, and would never use it again.
Bredemarket clients use lots of apps.
But I learned all the systems before Printrak, at Printrak, at all the other companies, and at all the Bredemarket clients.
I intentionally waited two days to write this. Let’s pick up the story from Monday.
Monday afternoon
The second technician arrived at my house and ended up replacing ALL the cabling between the utility pole and the (new) modem. Among other issues, there was water in the cable. And I don’t need to be a coaxial product marketing expert to know that water in a cable is not a good thing.
Oh yeah: coaxial. Because my internet network is NOT a fiber network. It’s a hybrid network that starts as fiber, but then becomes coaxial for “the last mile.”
And this is relevant, because even after he re-cabled everything, he said there was an amplifier issue down the street. If I had been on fiber, there would be no need for a nearby amplifier.
And no, he wasn’t talking about a Spinal Tap amplifier.
I prompted Google Gemini for an explanation of network amplifiers, but I’m not going to reprint it here. Suffice it to say that the ISP needed to perform some work, but it wasn’t customer-facing work, was apparently super-secret work, and I would never be informed when the work was done. I was then told that if I still had problems on Friday (4 days later) NOT to contact the ISP’s regular support line, but to instead call his boss directly.
The tech restarted the modem at 2:55 pm.
He left at 3:13 pm.
My wi-fi went down at 3:29 pm.
Tuesday
It had been a week since my wi-fi started failing, And since the second technician had left on Monday afternoon, the wi-fi hadn’t stayed up for more than 45 minutes at a time. I finally gave up trying.
Then I disobeyed instructions.
Early Tuesday morning I texted “the boss.” No answer.
Then I called the boss. No answer.
By early afternoon I contacted my ISP, but not for customer support. I called the “Retention Department.” Yeah, the department that you call to cancel your service.
The man I spoke to had no visibility into the scheduling of our local amplifier repair, but he promised someone would call me back within the hour.
A woman called me 20 minutes later. She had no visibility into the super-secret amplifier repair schedule either.
She asked if the second technician had reported the issue to maintenance or construction. I didn’t know. Turns out this is critical information; if construction had to get involved, city permits would be required before construction could even begin. Who knows how long that would take.
But she had a solution.
Send a third technician out.
Have the third technician tell me whether they would report the issue to maintenance or construction.
If it was maintenance, then the super-secret group would perform maintenance. Maybe by Friday. Maybe later.
I kept my mouth shut, but this sounded like a colossal waste of time. As you will see, it wasn’t.
After I got off the phone I made a decision. Since this problem was going to persist until the ISP fixed it—or I got a new ISP—I was going to have to work around it. So I set up a TV table in front of the love seat next to the modem, then moved my laptop to the TV table. That way if my laptop lost wi-fi I could immediately restart the modem, and hopefully my laptop soul reconnect to wi-fi and I wouldn’t lose anything.
So here’s how THAT worked out:
Tuesday afternoon 2:01 pm: Set up laptop near the modem.
2:21 pm: I lost wi-fi while submitting an online form.
2:26 pm: After a modem restart, successfully submitted the online form.
2:44 pm: I lost wi-fi while in mail.
2:50 pm: After a modem restart, I refreshed my mail tab and everything appeared.
5:30 pm: By this point I had enjoyed uninterrupted wi-fi for over two hours. I had stopped working on my laptop and was writing a Bredemarket blog post on my phone (like I am doing right now).
5:50 pm: I lost wi-fi and restarted the modem.
6:03 pm: There was an election in the city of Ontario that day, so I left the house to vote.
6:30 pm: By the time I returned, the wi-fi was down.
A pain, but I could limp along. But by that time I was done working for the night.
Me for several days. Google Gemini.
Wednesday morning
After a few modem restarts during the night, I restarted it at 7:11 am and started working at 7:29. (Incidentally, I highly recommend Toggl Track.)
I got a lot of work done until 10:00 am, when I lost wi-fi while working on a file in OneDrive.
I restarted the modem and made sure OneDrive synced, then worked merrily along until losing wi-fi at 10:22 while working on a Bredemarket client PowerPoint.
I lost wi-fi again at 10:28.
And 11:09.
And 11:26.
But by that time the third technician was on his way.
Wednesday afternoon
I was under the impression that the third technician would climb the utility pole, check the signal-to-noise ratio issue on the amplifier (but he called it a node rather than an amplifier), and go from there.
But that isn’t what he did. He brought his test equipment into the house and started running the (new) modem and (new) router signals through the test equipment.
But he had some news for me.
“The node has improved already, so someone has been here.”
So the super-secret people had completed their mission. Now what?
The technician kept testing. 20 minutes later:
“Coax looking good.”
He was mostly testing in the house, but also testing in the backyard and running to his truck. Ten minutes later:
“The signal’s good.”
Eventually I noticed that he had grabbed a new modem from his truck, but I assumed it was only for testing.
By 12:59 he had to leave for his state-mandated lunch break, but before he left he restarted the modem one more time. He said he’d check it when he returned from lunch.
So I ate lunch myself, although Bredemarket is not subject to state work break requirements.
When he returned at 2 the wi-fi was still up. That’s when he told me that he HAD replaced my new modem (which the ISP store gave me a week ago) with an even newer modem (from his truck). Apparently the connection from the utility pole to the coax cable end was fine, and the connection from the Ethernet cable end to the router was fine, but the new modem itself had issues that the even newer modem didn’t have.
He left, and the wi-fi went down…
…actually it didn’t. As I write this I have enjoyed wi-fi for over 50 hours without interruption.
I even moved my laptop back to the Bredemarket world headquarters.
And if you’ve read all the way to the end of this post, this is actually the SHORT version. Trust me.
The really short version
My summary of what happened between Tuesday March 17 and Wednesday March 25 between two ISP store visits, three technician visits, and countless support chats and calls:
2 modem replacements 3/18 (new modem), 3/25 (even newer modem).
1 router replacement 3/20 (not counting my second Google router 3/19).
2 cable replacements 3/23 (black cable from pole to southeast corner of house, white cable from there to modem in northeast corner of house).
1 apparent node fix (date unknown, maybe 3/24 or 3/25) to fix signal to noise ratio SNR issue.
And yes, this started with a modem replacement and ended (hopefully) with a modem re-replacement.
Even though the Just Walk Out system was a model of zero friction, it was also a model of zero information.
“It’s masterful, really. You just throw your purchases into your cart, and a battery of cameras record and price everything automatically.
“In reality, a battery of cameras and third world workers record and price everything semi-automatically. But I digress.
“Anyway, all your purchases are recorded and totaled, and your payment method is charged as you just walk out.
“THEN you find out how much you just spent.”
Too late?
In contrast, the lower tech Dash Cart solution—shopping carts with scanners—allows customers to “scan items as they shop, view their basket total in real time, and pay using contactless payment at the end.”
High friction because the shopper has to scan every item instead of letting “AI”—either cameras or low-paid remote employees—do the work.
But the shopper has immediate information.
Writing through the words
And I need immediate information while performing Bredemarket work.
…I currently charge $500 for the short service and $2.000 for the other. And if a particular work product falls between these two word counts, I charge accordingly.
The upshot is that I have a vested interest in knowing the number of words in my Microsoft Word documents.
I can go to the Word Count menu item and get the word count.
Or for working documents in which the seven questions (and more) are embedded in the bottom of the file…
…I just select the portion of text that contains the work product itself, go to the Word Count menu item, and get the word count of only the selection.
Or I can use fields. On a recent project, I used a Word field, NumWords, to display the word count without requiring me to go to a menu item or select anything.
There’s only one problem with using fields: NumWords is static and requires me to manually refresh the field to update the current word count.
But Microsoft Word lets you do things several different ways.
I could bypass menu items and fields altogether if I would simply remember to look in the lower left corner of my Microsoft Windows desktop app for Word, where the word count has been displayed all along.
Microsoft Word page and word counts, automatically updated.
For all but one Bredemarket client, I provide my deliverables via email. The deliverables usually consist of items such as Microsoft Word documents, Microsoft Excel workbooks, and Portable Document Files.
As I mentioned above, Bredemarket often performs market/competitive analyses. In fact, one of my clients likes my analyses so much that they keep on coming back for more analyses to cover different markets.
For the last three analyses for this particular client, my deliverables have consisted of the following:
An overall report, in PDF format.
The raw data, in XLSX format.
Extracts from the raw data, in PDF format.
The raw text of the report, in DOCX format.
Not a real Bredemarket report. By National Highway Traffic Safety Administration – National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Publication Number: NHTSA-DOT-HS-5-01160, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6709383.
In my analyses I referred to the companies’ publicly available websites to gather information on the competitor products, as well as the markets they address. (Using a made-up example, if my client provided its products to convenience stores, and a particular competitor ALSO targeted convenience stores, my client would obviously want to know this.)
The opportunity
But for this third analysis I didn’t just look at the websites. I also looked at the product brochures that I could download from these websites.
Since I was downloading all the publicly available brochures from the various competitors, why not provide all of these brochures to my client?
It seemed like a great idea. Since I had gone through all the work to collect the brochures, might as well let my client make future use of them.
The problem
So as I wrapped up the project and prepared the deliverables for my client, I discovered that I had amassed over 100 megabytes of brochures. (That’s what happens when you analyze over 100 competitor products.)
So my idea of zipping all the brochures into a single file wouldn’t work. Even the zip file exceeded the attachment sending limits of Bredemarket’s email service provider, Google. (And probably exceeded the attachment receiving limits of my client’s email service provider.)
And if you’ve already figured out the obvious solution to my problem, bear with me. It took me several days to realize the obvious solution myself.
Anyway, I hit upon a great solution to my problem…or so I thought.
The solution, first attempt
But that wasn’t a problem for me. Along with my email account, Google also provides Bredemarket with Google Drive. While the contents of my Google Drive are private to the employees of Bredemarket (all 1 of us), I can designate individual files and folders for access by selected people.
So I set up a designated folder for my client’s access only, uploaded all the deliverables including the 100+ MB zip file to the designated folder, and provided my client’s contact with access.
I then told my client that all the deliverables were in the Google Drive folder and asked the client to let me know when they were downloaded.
Which is when I encountered my second problem.
For security reasons, the client’s IT department forbids employees from accessing unauthorized Google Drives.
So I jumped back to Plan A and emailed all the files to my client except for the one 100+ MB zip file.
Now I just had to get that zip file to the client.
The solution, second attempt
That’s when I recalled the Dropbox account I set up for Bredemarket some time ago.
It was a quick process to upload the single 100+ MB zip file to a designated folder in Dropbox and give my client access.
But the client isn’t allowed to access Dropbox from work either.
The solution, third attempt
By the time that my client was contacting his IT department for a possible fix, I realized the solution that you the reader probably realized several paragraphs ago.
Instead of emailing one zip file, why not email multiple zip files in multiple emails, with each zip file under Google’s 25 MB limit?
So I sent six emails to my client.
This FINALLY worked.
I should have divided and conquered in the first place.
Can you use Bredemarket’s deliverables?
Do you want Bredemarket to send you 100 megabytes of brochures, now that I know how to do it?
More importantly, do you want Bredemarket to send you a market/competitor analysis to your specifications?
Talk to Bredemarket and discuss your needs. Book a meeting with me at calendly.com/bredemarket. Be sure to fill out the information form so I can best help you.
I’m going to describe one example of how Bredemarket has helped its customers, based upon one of my client projects from several years ago.
Stupid Word Tricks. Tell your brother, your sister and your mama too. See below.
I’ve told this story before, but I wanted to take a fresh look at the problem the firm had, and the solution Bredemarket provided. I’m not identifying the firm, but perhaps YOUR firm has a similar problem that I can solve for you. And your firm is the one that matters.
The problem
This happened several years ago, but was one of Bredemarket’s first successes.
The firm that asked for my help is one that focuses on one particular biometric modality, and provides a high-end solution for biometric identification.
In addition, the firm’s solution has multiple applications, crime solving and disaster victim identification being two of them.
The firm needed a way to perform initial prospect outreach via budgetary quotations, targeted to the application that mattered to the prospect. A simple proposal problem to be solved…or so it seemed.
Why the obvious proposal solution didn’t work
I had encountered similar problems while employed at Printrak and MorphoTrak and while consulting here at Bredemarket, so the solution was painfully obvious.
Qvidian, one proposal automation software package that I have used. But there are a LOT of proposal automation software packages out there, including some new ones that incorporate artificial intelligence. From https://uplandsoftware.com/qvidian/.
Have your proposal writers create relevant material in their proposal automation software that could target each of the audiences.
So when your salesperson wants to approach a medical examiner involved in disaster victim identification, the proposal writer could just run the proposal automation software, create the targeted budgetary quotation, populate it with the prospect’s contact information, and give the completed quotation to the salesperson.
Unfortuntely for the firm, the painfully obvious solution was truly painful, for two reasons:
This firm had no proposal automation software. Well, maybe some other division of the firm had such software, but this division didn’t have access to it. So the whole idea of adding proposal text to an existing software solution, and programming the solution to generate the appropriate budgetary quotation, wasn’t going to fly.
In addition, this firm had no proposal writers. The salespeople were doing this on their own. The only proposal writer they had was the contractor from Bredemarket. And they weren’t going to want to pay for me to generate every budgetary quotation they needed.
In this case, the firm needed a way for the salespeople to generate the necessary budgetary quotations as easily as possible, WITHOUT relying on proposal automation software or proposal writers.
Bredemarket’s solution
To solve the firm’s problem, I resorted to Stupid Word Tricks.
I created two similar budgetary quotation templates: one for crime solving, and one for disaster victim identification. (Actually I created more than two.) That way the salesperson could simply choose the budgetary quotation they wanted.
The letters were similar in format, but had little tweaks depending upon the audience.
Using document properties to create easy-to-use budgetary quotations.
The Stupid Word Tricks came into play when I used Word document property features to allow the salesperson to enter the specific information for each prospect, which then rippled throughout the document, providing a customized budgetary quotation to the prospect.
The result
The firms’ salespeople used Bredemarket’s templates to generate initial outreach budgetary quotations to their clients.
And the salespeople were happy.
I’ve used this testimonial quote before, but it doesn’t hurt to use it again.
“I just wanted to truly say thank you for putting these templates together. I worked on this…last week and it was extremely simple to use and I thought really provided a professional advantage and tool to give the customer….TRULY THANK YOU!”
Comment from one of the client’s employees who used the standard proposal text
While I actively consulted for the firm I maintained the templates, updating as needed as the firm achieved additional certifications.
Why am I telling this story again?
I just want to remind people that Bredemarket doesn’t just write posts, articles, and other collateral. I can also create collateral such as these proposal templates that you can re-use.
Time for me to make a cryptic LinkedIn post. Although now that I’m sharing the secret here, I’ll have to lower the score to 89.
Bredemarket’s first rule
But before I share my revised Phineas-Hirshfield score, I need to share the first Bredemarket Rule, the Bredemarket Rule of Corporate Tool Adoption. (Copyright 2023 Bredemarket.)
In any organization, the number of adopted tools that perform the exact same function is always in excess of one.
In other words, if there’s someone in your organization who is using an iPhone, there is someone else in your organization who is using an Android phone.
Or someone has a Mac, and another person has a Windows computer.
Or someone has one brand of software, while someone else has the competitior brand.
Even if an organization dictates that everyone will use a single tool, there will be someone somewhere who will rebel against the organization and use a different tool.
Presumably the first panelist was exposed to Asana at one point and liked it, while the second panelist was exposed to Monday and liked it.
Or, since the panelists were from two different companies, maybe each company standardized on one or the other. Or maybe the departments within their companies standardized on a particular tool, but if you poll the entire company, you’ll find some Monday departments and some Asana departments.
Multiple tools in a single department
Even in the same department you may find multiple tools. Let me cite an example.
Several of the people who were in the Marketing department of Incode Technologies have since left the company, and I’m working with one of them on a project this week.
I had to send a PDF to him, and was also going to also send him the source Microsoft Word document…until I remembered from our days at Incode that he was (and I guess still is) a Google Docs guy.
Of course, there are times in which an entire organization agrees on a single tool, but those times never last.
My mid-1990s employer, Printrak International, was preparing to go public. The head of Printrak determined that the company needed some help in this, and brought several staffers on board who were expert in Initial Public Offerings (IPOs).
One of these people took the role of Chief Financial Officer, preparing Printrak for its IPO and for two post-IPO acquisitions, one of which profoundly and positively impacted the future of the firm.
Along the way, he established the rule that Printrak would become a Lotus Notes shop.
For those who don’t remember Lotus Notes, it was one of those Lotus-like products that could do multiple things out of the box. And because the CFO was the CFO, he could enforce Lotus Notes usage.
Until the CFO left a couple of years later to assist another company, and the impetus to use Lotus Notes dropped off significantly.
And that, my friends, is why my former colleagues in IDEMIA aren’t using HCL Notes (the successor to Lotus Notes and IBM Notes) today.
So how do you settle the Tool Wars?
Do you know how you settle the Tool Wars?
You don’t. It’s an eternal battle.
In the case of Bredemarket, I can dictate which tools I use…unless my clients tell me otherwise. Then the client’s word is law…unless there’s a compelling reason why my tool should be used instead of the client’s tool. In Bredemarket’s 3+ years of existence, I haven’t encountered such a compelling reason…yet.
Just be flexible enough to use whatever tool you need to use, and you’ll be fine.
When talking about marketing tools, two words that don’t seem to go together are “marketing” and “Excel” (the Microsoft spreadsheet product). Because I’m in marketing, I encounter images like this all the time.
It’s true that marketing analytics requires a ton of Excel work. I’m not going to talk about marketing analytics here, but if you have an interest in using Excel for marketing analytics, you may want to investigate HubSpot Academy’s free Excel crash course.
As I write this, Bredemarket is neck-deep in a research project for a client. A SECRET research project.
By Unnamed photographer for Office of War Information. – U.S. Office of War Information photo, via Library of Congress website [1], converted from TIFF to .jpg and border cropped before upload to Wikimedia Commons., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8989847
While I won’t reveal the name of the client or the specifics about the research project, I can say that the project requires me to track the following information:
Organization name.
Organization type (based upon fairly common classifications).
Organization geographic location.
Vendor providing services to the organization.
Information about the contract between the vendor and the organization.
A multitude of information sources about the organization, the vendor, and the relationship between the two.
To attack the data capture for this project, I did what I’ve done for a number of similar projects for Bredemarket, Incode, IDEMIA, MorphoTrak, et al.
I threw all the data into a worksheet in an Excel workbook.
I can then sort and filter it to my heart’s content. Ror example, if I want to just view the rows for which I have contract information, I can just look at that.
Bredemarket as an identity/biometric research service
For one organization I created a number of different worksheets within a single workbook, in which the worksheet data all fed into a summary worksheet. This allowed my clients to view data either at the detailed level or at the summary level.
For another organization I collected the data from an external source, opened it in Excel, performed some massaging, and then pivoted the data into a new view so that it could then be exported out of Excel and into a super-secret document that I cannot discuss here.
Now none of this (well, except maybe for the pivot) is fancy stuff, and most of it (except for the formulas linking the summary and detailed worksheets) is all that hard to do. But it turns out that Excel is an excellent tool to deal with this data in certain cases.
Which brings me to YOUR research needs.
After all, Bredemarket doesn’t just write stuff.
Sometimes it researches stuff, especially in the core area of biometrics and identity.
After all, I offer 29 years of experience in this area, and I draw on that experience to get answers to your questions.
Unlike the better-bounded projects that require only a single blog post or a single white paper, I quote research projects at an hourly rate or on retainer (where I’m embedded with you).
