Tag Archives: Elaine Appleton Grant

About 4463 days ago E-Commerce

Everything New Is Old Again

User’s Guide There’s an awful lot of smugness out there these days. The number of people walking around saying “I told you so” about dot-com failures (confident in their ability to perceive the past accurately) is nauseatingly high. It’s easy to look back now and see that the rules of the old economy never changed. But frankly, it wasn’t so easy to see then. If we had all known what we know now, we never would have bought into business principles that simply made no sense. Right? Which brings me to this issue of Inc. Technology. The current thinking that all dot-coms will fail is as flawed as the idea was that all dot-coms would succeed. Good businesses are good businesses, regardless of whether they live on terra firma or not. So a few months ago, we set out to look beyond the smug factor and find dot-com entrepreneurs who had built sustainable companies. A “realbusiness.com” would meet commonsense criteria. First, its business model would be intelligible — companies with 16 revenue streams need not apply. Its leaders would have industry experience and would grow the business conservatively, using cash flow and limited outside financing. It would be either profitable or on track to earn a profit soon. Its owners would employ no hockey-stick trend lines in their financial projections. And finally, the business would be in it for the long haul. We would look for companies for whom an IPO (or any other get-rich-quick exit strategy) was not the end goal. But it turned out to be surprisingly hard to find such commonsensical companies. Witness, for instance, my meeting with Gary Conley, CEO of FlyteComm. We were certain enough that the company met our criteria that I flew out to talk with Conley at his office in San Jose. FlyteComm makes software that lets Web surfers track airplanes in flight, thus determining their arrival and departure times. It solves a real problem for real customers, from people awaiting traveling spouses to business managers tracking their freight. And Conley, a crisp, polo-shirted private pilot, is an experienced, financially prudent leader. Founded in 1994, FlyteComm has grown slowly, reaching revenues of more than half a million dollars last year. So far, so good. On my visit, I checked off our criteria. Revenues? History? Management team? All as reported prior to my trip. “And you’re profitable, right?” Here Conley cleared his throat and looked uneasy. “We were profitable until April,” he said. That’s when he and his adviser Rich Okumoto had decided to shop for VC funding and invest heavily in new hires, new products, and new markets. They weren’t planning on breaking even again until shortly before their newly devised IPO, at least two years away. At some point FlyteComm would be able to track anything that moves, from airplanes to automobiles to ships to lightning. And, said Conley, “we see ourselves today as a half-billion-dollar company.” “Half a billion?” I asked. “Are you sure?” He was sure. And I was, too, but of something else. Despite the real appeal of a business that seemed destined for growth, this formerly bootstrapped and profitable company no longer looked to me like a “realbusiness.com.” Not that Conley’s vision is unattainable. But for me, FlyteComm no longer fit our built-on-fundamentals mold. We kept searching. After a couple months of research, we selected the six promising companies we profile here, representative of hundreds of businesses that are generally flying under the radar but are worth learning from. These entrepreneurs haven’t tried to reinvent the world to match their business models. And so it’s likely that they will still be here tomorrow. Hey, nothing’s guaranteed. But in our estimation, given some time and some luck, each of our “real” businesses will have something to be smug about. – Elaine Appleton Grant, Editor Please e-mail your comments to editors@inc.com.

About 4583 days ago Online Marketing

Digging for Gold

User’s Guide The third week in September was a long, hard, gray week at the Inc. offices. Too many of us had stayed up to the wee hours slavishly watching the Olympics. Like my colleagues, I couldn’t tear myself away from the games, despite our many criticisms that this year’s contest was overproduced. I had to keep watching as the Romanian women took the gold in gymnastics, pushing the Russians out of first place. I was alternately fascinated by Svetlana Khorkina’s good hard sulk after she slipped off the uneven bars and cheered by the open smiles on the Chinese women’s faces as their bronze medal was announced. But through the next few tired days, struggling to concentrate through the dim fog of my Olympics-laden brain, I started to wonder: What are contests good for? Why do we care so much? Beyond the sheer joy of winning — and the curiosity that grips most of us about who’s first, best, strongest, fastest — awards should be good at illuminating what works. At the extreme, the Olympics showcase world-class techniques for running, swimming, and swinging over parallel bars with grace, efficiency, speed, and creativity — not to mention good sportsmanship. In business, by observing how the best operate, we should be able to glean how to run our own companies with more grace, efficiency, speed, and creativity. And amid some wincing, we should also learn a lot from the mistakes of the losers. For the second year in a row, Inc. Technology readers submitted their companies’ Web sites for rigorous evaluation. This year we asked a panel of outside judges — all experts in their fields — to assess how well the entrants’ sites supported their businesses. We identified five broad but fundamental categories in which Web sites could help entrepreneurs grow their companies: customer service, marketing, return on investment, innovation, and community. What we learned — with a few hurrahs and winces of our own — were the following six invaluable lessons for creating a world-class bricks-and-clicks business: You cannot succeed at what you do not measure. Entrants in the return-on-investment category had to show that their sites provided a significant bottom-line impact or that they allowed the company to introduce a profitable new product or service. But most entrants — and even the winners — were not nearly thorough enough in their measurement of ROI to satisfy accountants or potential investors, at least according to judge Nicholas DiGiacomo, former vice-president at Internet-strategy consulting firm Scient Corp. “Saying ‘I got a lot of new business when I put up my Web site’ is not the same as saying ‘I measured a 23% yearly increase in my bottom-line profits after taking into consideration all the fixed and recurring costs of establishing my Web presence,” he said. He counseled the need for the nominees to calculate the numerous ongoing costs of running their sites, including customer-service outlays, for one example. He stated sternly: “If they ignore the cost of their own time, they can’t calculate their bottom line. Such businesses will not survive for long.” Most banner ads are like diamond-studded dog collars: expensive and useless. Raymond K. Lemire (a.k.a. the “Big Parmesan”) spent a whopping $30,000 on banner ads for his pasta-club site, www.flyingnoodle.com (which took second place in marketing), only to discontinue them when he discovered they weren’t producing any visitors. All traffic is not equal. Thomas Neckel Sr., CEO of Sumerset Custom Houseboats (the general-excellence winner), does use banner ads, but he places them where they’ll do the most good — in his case, on sites that attract his affluent (and water-loving) demographic. Forget “share of market” (unless you’re selling cereal or toothpaste). In the words of judges Don Peppers and Martha Rogers of One to One Manager fame, it’s “share of customer” you should go after. In other words, solve your customers’ problems, and those customers will be loyal forever. Hence, they will buy more and more products and services from you. Toward that end, you should offer goods and services to your present customers that allow them to do things they haven’t been able to do before and cannot do elsewhere. Treat your customers personally. The more you can do to make your customers’ lives easier, the happier they’ll be. Consider, for instance, the way real estate agent Elizabeth Gray-Carr saves time and hassles for the people whose homes she sells. Each seller gets a personal Web page on which he or she can review advertising schedules, home visits, and even the reactions of visitors. Sellers can even fill out the necessary paperwork on their personal Web pages. For anyone who’s ever suffered the headaches of selling property, that kind of convenience — not to mention the personal attention — is incredibly appealing. Innovation and glitz are not synonymous. We should all know that by now (but apparently we don’t). Sites that opened with animated intros and other media-heavy graphics annoyed the judges. The truly innovative sites presented new ideas and services in more down-to-earth ways. Dandelion Moving & Storage, for example, won third place in innovation for CEO Bret Lampere’s DickerABid service, which allows small moving companies to bid, in reverse-auction style, on cross-country jobs. Although there’s nothing flashy about DickerABid, the new service is an inspired idea that’s proved to be profitable for Dandelion and useful to small regional competitors. The Web Awards program required a concerted effort by a large number of people over many months. Special thanks go to Cheryl McManus, Inc.‘s editorial administrator, for taking on the mammoth task of entering into a database hundreds of applications, and to the staff of Inc., many of whom spent days and nights reading incredibly detailed entry forms and evaluating Web sites to choose the finalists. To our panel of judges, who took time from their own work to select the winners, thank you — and please don’t hang up when we call you again next spring! For the skinny on the winners, click here. And please visit www.inc.com, where you’ll soon find instructions for entering the 2001 awards. Start training now. – Elaine Appleton Grant, editor Please e-mail your comments to editors@inc.com.

About 4583 days ago Telecom and Wireless

Web Awards 2000: Community

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. Third place Automating an Automaker Company: Badgett Constructors LLC Web address: www.iceas.com Why it won: The site offers a better — and cheaper — way to keep construction projects rolling. Revenues: $26 million Site launch cost: $100,000 Judge’s view: “The best application for any business is to build the business processes online, so everyone can ‘live in the data.” –Randy Hinrichs When it comes to changing course, the turning radius of a corporate giant like Ford is probably closer to that of those unfortunately large Excursions than, say, a diminutive Escort coupe. It took a small company, Badgett Constructors, in Louisville, to grab the wheel and bang a U-ie with its project-management extranet, called the Internet Contracting, Estimating and Accounting System, or ICEAS for short. Badgett, which manages construction at Ford’s Louisville assembly plant, has automated the way projects get done and set a new standard for Ford contractors in the process. The guy in the driver’s seat is Gerald Carrico, Badgett’s project manager for the plant. Carrico thought that giving Ford access to electronic versions of job cost estimates, invoices, minority-worker data, and project-status reports would save his team a lot of photocopying — not to mention saving the company a pile of money. He also wanted to improve communication and accountability. “Sometimes engineers would tell us about a project they wanted us to estimate, but a lot of information would be left vague,” Carrico says. “I wanted them to write up a scope.” Carrico called on O’Bryan Worley, who happens to be the daughter of Badgett owner and manager Kurt Broecker, and who is now a professional Web designer. Worley had the site purring like a kitten in just two months. One early speed bump: getting the engineers to use the site. Some of them didn’t even have Internet access at first, so Ford had to hook them up. Within eight months, some 300 Ford engineers and other contractors at 10 plants were entering data and retrieving reports. When anyone adds new information, the site automatically sends out an E-mail to all the appropriate people, which helps to ensure accountability. Carrico estimates that ICEAS saves his company $75,000 a year in such things as photocopying, materials, and manpower, including 15 to 20 hours a week in clerical time. Ford gave Badgett a best-practices award, and Worley is now operating the site as a separate business that serves Badgett and 11 other construction companies. –Jill Hecht Maxwell Conversation with Randy Hinrichs Judge: Community Think intranets are dull? Listen to Randy Hinrichs for three minutes and you’ll never feel that way again. To the exuberant Hinrichs, author of Intranets: What’s the Bottom Line?, an intranet is no less than the foundation for a company’s success. Hinrichs knows a thing or two about creating powerful virtual spaces. He manages a team of developers who are creating next-generation learning environments at Microsoft. His mission is grand: to democratize learning and make it available anytime, anywhere, for anybody. Here’s Hinrichs on the awards: On his favorite site: “Badgett Constructors has created collaboration and communication and seamless workflow [mechanisms] that allow them to constantly improve work process and relationships, which is even more profound than improving communication.” On getting results from your site: “If I had to pick one thing that makes a Web site successful, it is that there’s always a feedback mechanism from the average user, and that the average user gets a response — not just ‘I heard you,’ but ‘Check this out.’ And that’s what Badgett is doing. You can bid online, order online, interact online, and everyone can see the results of your work.” On building a business: “You’re not going to be a good E-commerce site unless you’re good inside. If you want to go out and be a company that says ‘Our products rock,’ [you have to say] ‘Come inside and see the way our business rocks.” –Elaine Appleton Grant Annual Web Awards 2000 General Excellence Marketing Customer Service ROI Innovation Community Judges Please e-mail your comments to editors@inc.com.

About 4583 days ago E-Commerce

Web Awards 2000: Customer Service

First place Sumerset Custom Houseboats (See ” Web Awards 2000: General Excellence.”) Second place Help Yourself Company: Ives Development Inc. Web address: www.teamstudio.com Why it won: Robust personal-account management treats each customer as an individual. Company revenues: $7 million Site-launch cost: $75,000 Judge’s view: “This software company has developed innovative, cost-effective ways for getting upgrades to clients and performing complex customer service.” –Evan Schwartz Individual preference is the order of the day at Teamstudio.com, the Web site for Ives Development Inc., a software vendor in Beverly, Mass. Users of Ives’s software-engineering tools can elect to serve themselves in a variety of ways. Customers can send E-mail queries or get free telephone support. They can also search the Ives KnowledgeBase or post a question to one of two discussion forums, where peers as well as tech-support staffers answer questions. Customers appreciate those options — which many software-company sites offer today — although Ives CEO Nigel Cheshire, 41, ruefully admits that most users tend to pick up the phone the minute they have a problem. Human nature being what it is, Ives may never succeed in training its customers to fully help themselves with support issues. So the company has managed to slash costs in other ways. All Ives software is available for downloading on the site, which dramatically reduces CD production and distribution expenses. And customers get an automatic E-mail message when new releases of their products are available, which eliminates snail-mail costs. Personal-account management is by far the best self-service feature on the site. Customers can manage their accounts online, seeing at a glance which products they have licenses for, how many licenses they’ve bought, and when the maintenance agreements on their licenses are due to expire. “In the near future, our customers will be able to link to a page within an E-mail message and renew all their agreements in one place,” says Cheshire. Anything to make life easier for a beleaguered software developer. –Lauren Gibbons Paul Third place PostNet International Franchise Corp. (See ” Web Awards 2000: Community.”) Conversation with Martha Rogers Judge: Customer Service There’s nothing Martha Rogers hates more than being treated like everyone else. And that unfortunately is how most companies treat their customers — like peas in a pod. Ask Rogers for examples of companies that treat her differently from other customers, and she cites American Airlines, which “remembers” what she tells the airline every time she calls or logs on to its Web site. Consequently, American offers her individualized information — not just what a flight to Reno costs this week. “They know my zip code and what school system I’m in, and as a result, they send a message that says, ‘Welcome back, Martha, we’d like to offer your family a vacation package for spring break.’ This is customer service on steroids,” declares Rogers, who is a partner at the Peppers and Rogers Group. How can a company that’s a fraction of the size of American Airlines reach such a lofty standard? Rogers offers these pointers: Identify your customers individually. “If I can’t remember the problem you had six months ago, or I don’t learn from this transaction a way that will help me consistently serve you better in the future, then it’s an isolated incident,” says Rogers. “That’s better than nothing, but it’s far from building a relationship. So the first thing I need to be able to do is identify you as you every time you come in, through any channel.” Determine the value of your customers and treat them accordingly. “This means I recognize that you are of greater value than Martha is, and therefore I’m going to make different offers to you or spend more resources on you.” Get your customers to interact with you. “If I can learn something from you, I can give you what’s best for you and give your next-door neighbor what’s best for your next-door neighbor.” Use that information to customize your site. “I’d like to see these sites go beyond ‘Welcome back, Martha.’ I’d like them to pull together an automated message that’s relevant to me based on information I’ve given them, not based on everything that’s true about my demographic group,” says Rogers. –Elaine Appleton Grant Annual Web Awards 2000 General Excellence Marketing Customer Service ROI Innovation Community Judges Please e-mail your comments to editors@inc.com.

About 4583 days ago PCs, Laptops, and Notebooks

Vera Goes Digital

Road Warrior Our road warrior test-drives the latest in digital personal assistants. The bottom line: don’t fire your secretary yet In movies from the 1940s and 1950s, you can tell a corporate titan by his secretary. This woman had to do much more than type and file; she was an extension of her boss’s will, a personal assistant paid to drop everything and attend to his every need. “Vera, get me the latest figures on borax futures,” he would command. Barely had Vera reappeared at her desk, pencil in mouth, arms loaded down with manila folders, when her boss would be back on the intercom: “Vera, have a dozen roses delivered to my wife.” “Vera, make lunch reservations for two at Delmonico’s.” “Vera, get me Smithers on the line.” That last one always killed me: here was a man too busy to flip through his address book and dial the telephone. You hated him, and yet you envied him. What must it be like to have someone at your beck and call like that? I’ll be able to tell you shortly. I recently signed up with Quixi, a sort of digital secretary for busy travelers. For about $20 a month, I can pick up my cell phone, press a rapid-dial key, and bark my wishes to a Quixi “helper.” The helpers can tell me, say, how to get back to the airport from my hotel. They can charge flowers to my credit card and have them delivered. They’ll also do “M-commerce” (the M standing for mobile) Web searches for whatever I absolutely must have, ASAP. To date, Quixi subscribers’ M-commerce requests have ranged from the sublime (a 1985 Bordeaux) to the ridiculous (a desktop dartboard). Best of all, I can say, “Get me Smithers on the line,” and lo and behold, they get him. In the age of cellular phones, getting Smithers on the line has become less a matter of status than of convenience, not to mention safety. When I’m driving 70 mph down the freeway, I don’t want to be rummaging through my briefcase for my PalmPilot or the file containing Smithers’s phone number. How does the Quixi helper know Smithers’s phone number? Because when you signed up for the service, you downloaded Quixi software that enabled you to electronically dispatch the contents of your address book — be it on a Palm device or in an E-mail program such as Outlook Express — to Quixi’s virtual switchboard. Keeping the listings up-to-date is a simple matter of clicking on the Quixi icon on your cell phone’s screen and then clicking Synchronize, whereupon any new names and numbers are sent, through the Internet, to Quixi. (The process is similar for users with PDAs and contact-management software.) I tried out my personal assistant last week, en route to a backpacking trip in the mountains with my husband, Ed. In the course of our meandering conversations, we came up with a list of things we wanted to know right then and there, our own version of borax futures: What percentage of one’s body weight should a backpack weigh? What is the highest elevation from which a human being has jumped from a plane into the ocean and survived? Why was Password host Allen Ludden buried in Mineral Point, Wis.? I started with the last one and contacted Quixi. The clicking sounds of someone typing on a keyboard could be heard in the background. I imagined my helper whizzing around the Web, scanning Allen Ludden fan sites. Finally, she said, “We can’t call anyone that’s not on your contact list.” Apparently, she had been searching my contact list for Allen Ludden (or perhaps Betty White — who knows?). It turned out that, aside from taking M-commerce requests, Quixi wouldn’t do anything on the Web for you. It was as if Vera, when asked for the borax figures, had looked up from her typewriter and said, “Get it yourself.” Undaunted, we then asked for directions. “Ask them where the closest Dairy Queen is,” suggested Ed. Ed has a soft spot for soft serve. “Tell them we’re on 580 East, somewhere before Modesto.” Aside from taking M-commerce requests, Quixi wouldn’t do anything on the Web. It was as if Vera had looked up from her typewriter and said, “Get it yourself.” My helper said it would take from one to four hours to get back to us with directions of any kind. Ed looked glum. One to four hours was a long time to wait for an ice-cream cone. The helper explained that Quixi could not yet provide real-time directions, only pretrip directions. The real-time program is in its pilot phase, and apparently the pilot is still flying paper airplanes in the backyard. Quixi plans to be real-time-ready by early 2001. But you may be able to do Quixi one better before then. More and more cars and SUVs are being outfitted with helper systems, consisting of a built-in global positioning system (GPS) and a cellular connection to a 24-hour adviser. General Motors Corp. has 32 different cars outfitted with such an adviser, called the OnStar system. With it, drivers press a button and ask a live adviser for what they want. Using the car’s GPS, the adviser will be able to locate drivers on the road and provide them with real-time directions, heard over the car’s stereo speakers. The adviser can also make reservations, and an OnStar concierge will book same-day tickets for popular shows. Starting next month, the 2001 GM line will come with the option of a voice-activated cell-phone and Internet connection, called the OnStar Virtual Advisor. The service enables drivers to talk on a cell-phone connection hands-free. In place of Vera at her desk in the next room, there’s a microphone hidden in the car’s ceiling or in the rearview mirror. At the push of a button, a voice prompts you for a phone number, which you tell to your mirror, feeling only mildly silly, and then the number is dialed for you. And voilÃ, Smithers is on the line — or rather, on your car speakers. There’s even a text-to-speech engine in the system that will, at your command, translate E-mail into a digitized voice and read it aloud to you while you drive. Somewhere past Modesto, I wanted to call my editor to ask whether maybe we should be doing a column on the 2001 GM line instead. I pressed my Quixi speed-dial number. “Get me Elaine Appleton Grant on the line,” I said. My helper couldn’t find the name. “When did you insert that name, ma’am?” she asked. “Because it can take up to 24 hours to show up.” “I synchronized my contact list on Monday,” I said, sounding very James Bond. It was now Wednesday. “Hunh,” she said. Then she said that in fact none of my contacts were coming up on her screen. I asked to speak to Quixi’s public relations man, Alex Pachetti, and ruin his day. “There’s no Alex here,” said my helper. “Maybe he’s in the New York office.” “Could you put me through?” “Of course,” she said helpfully. “What’s his number?” “I don’t have his number.” My voice was beginning to take on a certain strident edge. “I left his number at home because I thought I had this wonderful new service whereby I could just press a button and get Alex Pachetti on the phone.” “You do have that service,” she said brightly. “There just aren’t any listings coming up for you.” I turned to my rearview mirror. “Can you believe this?” As it turned out, I’d been sent the wrong version of Quixi’s software, and my contact list had failed to upload. I installed the new version the day my husband and I got back from our trip. The next afternoon, driving home from work, I pressed the Quixi speed-dial on my phone. “Get me Smithers on the line,” I said. Under the name Smithers in my address book, I had entered my husband’s phone number. “Mr. Smithers for you,” said the woman promptly and courteously. It was worth 20 bucks. When she’s in her office, new Road Warrior Mary Roach can be reached at roach@sfgrotto.org. Please e-mail your comments to editors@inc.com.