The Array Group

Here is a great blog post from the Church of the Customer blog that I encourage everyone to read. It’s about word-of-mouth, ultimately, the only type of advertising that consistently works. It talks about how companies achieve word-of-mouth advertising. It’s pretty simple. Do good, be good.

So I just finished speaking to a competitor. We had a friendly chat about business. The impression I took away was my competitor’s single-minded focus on their own bottom line and their focus on tweaking their account to maximize profit.

This is all well and good except that it didn’t sit well with me. Profit is good but it should not be your primary focus. I’m not a numbers guy, never have been, never will be. I couldn’t tell you whether I make more money from client a than from client b. My only concern is knowing whether clients a and b are happy and if they will call us back.

I’m not in this business to become a billionaire. I am in business to be my own boss, make my own decisions and be accountable to no one. I am in business to deliver a valuable service, actually a remarkable service. As far as I know, from what I’ve heard from over 200-plus clients, no one out there is delivering service on our level. It’s hard to advertise and promote intangibles.

I’ve been thinking about the ideal retail setup.

If I were to open up a store today, everything in my store would be available online. As soon as something sold at the store, I’d remove it from the online inventory. As soon as something sold online, I’d remove it from the store. Yes, you would know instantly when something sold online.

You get the best of both worlds. You don’t need to save up 10K to put into inventory that will move slowly as your online store picks up speed.

I am setting up an online store right now using Vendio.  You can set up your store for free. They charge $10 per month if you want to cross-list your items in Amazon and eBay at the same time. Seems like a good deal. I’ll post updates about my experience. In the meantime, go buy some shoes at Old Baltimore Vintage or some books or cds at An Array of Books!

Our tag line, More than a solution. A strategy, is our purple cow, our free prize. It reflects the fact that most people call us to resolve a problem with their computer but end up getting a whole lot more. Our clients get advised on better, easier, less expensive, more efficient ways to do things. For free! We resolve the immediate problem. That’s the easy part.

But the more interesting part to us is finding out more about you, your workflow, your business, your organization and your challanges. We love a good puzzle and we love to help you figure out how to do things better. Because we have over two hundred clients, we have a great deal of experience seeing what works and what doesn’t. We take the long view and base our recommendations on the most efficient solutions for the long haul. In essence, not only do we solve your immediate problems quickly, but we provide you with a strategy, a roadmap if you will, for your IT investment.

Welcome to The Array Group’s new web site. Notice the sparse look. It reflects our philosophy: less is more.

We have been running a successful business since 2002 helping individuals and organizations with their computer needs. What today is referred to as Information Technology. It’s a big category. Look for examples of what we do in our Portfolio.

We help people do more with less. We reduce and simplify. We put things in order. We focus on the basics. Bottom line: we save you money. You will find examples as we go forward.

We love start-ups. It is much easier to do things right the first time than to come back and fix them. We show you how to do it better and do it for less. We tell you exactly what you need. Nothing more, nothing less. Look for our evolving recipe, checklist, outline, guide, or whatever it turns out be, to starting your own business today.

Fair warning: we’re Mac-centric. Though we’re experts on Windows, especially integrating both platforms on the same network.