Think Global, Appear to be Local.
“Please ring me back. It’s a local number.”
Jorge Valdez had grown his small local janitorial operation from a one-man shop in his hometown of Barcelona to seven crews that covered the entire metro area. He had understood that his business' growth would be limited if he relied only on his own hard work. He developed a system.
He established crews of sub-contractors. Each crew had a leader that was responsible for the punctuality of his or her employees and the quality of the work on site. Jorge was freed to develop customer relationships, attain new contracts, market the business and manage the bookkeeping.
The formula succeeded and eventually, Grupo Valdez had captured as large a market share as they could effectively service. Reaching a point of diminishing returns, the firm needed to expand beyond Barcelona.
Jorge's business had succeeded on value for the price. By keeping overhead expenses low and negotiating volume buying agreements with suppliers, he had been able to bid aggressively and undercut competitors. Maintaining branch offices in other markets would diminish his competitive edge.
Enlarging the network.
Jorge called his friend, Victor Gevalia, a computer network consultant, project facilitator and parts supplier. "How can I use the Internet to help me establish a branch office in Madrid?" he asked in an impromptu brainstorming session.
"Why do you need a branch office?" Gevalia queried.
"I believe the facilities managers and property owners I deal with prefer to hire services locally," Jorge explained. "If they're shopping, local companies have the edge. An out of town phone prefix, even a toll-free number can eliminate you."
"Do customers ever come to your place?" Gevalia asked as he chewed a thin plastic cable tie.
"Never. I always close deals at their place if not over the phone."
Gevalia smiled. "I think I know how you can be in Madrid without going to Madrid."
Virtually there.
"IP telephony eliminates physical place," Gevalia elaborated. "By creating a 'point-of-presence' on the Internet, you can have a truly local number in Madrid, though you answer in Barcelona. After all, you have a crew in Madrid, right?"
"I will have," he said. "And if we could dispatch them from right here… I expect that's expensive to do, though. Isn't it?"
"It used to be with the old telephone network," said Gevalia, "but with IP, you can contain costs. You eliminate long distance charges. You have no leased space of any kind. Hardware investment is limited; you can use your existing phones. For the cost of an E1 line, you can have 'offices' all over Europe."
Bueno, Allo, Pronto
Within a year, Grupo Valdez had expanded throughout Spain and into other cities in Europe. Building managers in each market called a local number that was actually answered in the little warehouse facility in Barcelona by multilingual agents. The company receives supplies drop-shipped from strategic distribution centers.
Assuming he can recruit quality subcontractors, Jorge has expansion plans across all of Europe and possibly to other continents. Dare we say it? His janitorial business is "cleaning up."
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