Nestled in downtown Raleigh, hesketh.com's new office space at Pilot Mill (1101 Haynes St) is punctuated with eight-foot tall windows that flood the open floorplan with natural light. It provides a marked contrast to conventional, corporate office spaces. CEO Heather Hesketh was on a mission to find space that truly expresses the company's personality to further engage her team and to better attract the Triangle’s creative class.

As part of its commitment to the local community, hesketh.com is proud to announce the launch of the City of Oaks Marathon web site, effective today. In addition to providing complete information about event requirements and registration, the site provides detailed information about the course itself, training opportunities, and other events that will precede the actual race on November 4, 2007. Robb Hamilton, a hesketh.com employee, is co-marketing director for the event. 

It does not take a rocket scientist, psychic, or brain surgeon to realize that change is everywhere, that it is inevitable, and that dealing successfully with it is critical to organizational success. And improvement strategies, such as the implementation of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, is no exception.

Whether considering an initial Web investment or a redesign of an existing Web initiative, a crucial step in your process should always be to address the key components that help to create a positive user experience. These components include: Copywriting, Information Architecture, Interface Design, Information Design, Workflow, and Cross-platform Compatibility.

First, the bad news… If your Customer Relationship Manage-ment (CRM) system implementation fails, there is no one to blame but yourself. And with the average cost of a CRM package hovering at $125,000 and implementation failure rates of 50 to 70%, it is not an investment decision to be made lightly. Shopping for a CRM solution can be like walking into a car dealership on a Saturday morning. Oh, the choices…they're all so shiny and chock full of options. And the vendors, we can't forget the vendors — so knowledgeable, so helpful — and of course, they only want us to have the optimal technology solution for our organization and *wink-nudge* a little extra functionality thrown into the mix never hurts. But ultimately, the selection decision rests squarely on your shoulders, and it is imperative that you make an informed one with eyes wide open.

Let's face it — all businesses exist for the sole purpose of maximizing shareholder value. And in today's business climate where budgets are tight and competition is tough, it is becoming more and more challenging. It is no surprise that organizations are requiring potential investments be backed by business cases that are centered around quantifiable, reliable, and compelling estimates of Return on Investments (ROI). In a nutshell, ROI is an estimate of the financial benefit (the “Return") on money spent (the “Investment") on a particular alternative (e.g., an IT project). Because a company is foregoing the use of funds for the sake of the investment, the investment must not only return the original capital, but also return enough to compensate for what the funds would have earned elsewhere, plus an allowance for risk.

Are we truly the society of overweight, sexually challenged, gambling, class reunion addicts with a penchant for Nigerian philanthropy that our spam makes us out to be? Well, of course not. But it would be difficult to argue against upon reviewing the inboxes of the emailing population who receive anywhere from 11 to 100 spam emails each day and then spend another hour and a half each week to get rid of them. And it's only getting worse. According to Gartner Inc. analyst Joyce Graff, "by 2004, unless an enterprise takes defensive action, more than 50% of its message traffic will be spam."

The problem: too much spam. Unsolicited advertising email continues to account for untold business losses each year. To give you an idea of the scope of the problem, in 1998 AOL reported that of the approximately 30 million email messages its servers handled each day, between 5 and 30 percent were spam. Assuming that this rate is true for other email providers as well, spam takes a significant economic toll on business, not merely in terms of Internet resources, but in lost employee productivity as well.