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Page 122 GO IT ALONE!
trumps fixes that will marginally impact sales. Once again, this idea is admirably brought home by Jason Jennings and Laurence Haughton in the pointed title of the best-selling book It's Not the Big that Eat the Small...It's the Fast That Eat the Slow
Mass customization will probably eliminate your problems over time. In Chapter 4, “Do What You Do Best,” I described how firms are working toward the integration of one ASP with another and increasingly customizing their ASP offerings. So you can now take this perspective: If you get it up and going today, you can confidently expect that over time, service providers will take you from 60% to 80% of your service goal. Over time, almost any function can become routinized. As a consequence, many go-it-alone firms are heavy users of part-time workers, such as stay-at-home parents, operating at different locations who handle time-consuming tasks. These workers can typically be located anywhere, with e-mail and Internet services serving as their link to your office.
BUILD FOR FLEXIBILITY Today’s dramatic pace of change in the business world means that in effect, you must plan for a fluid situation in which you can’t plan. This is not an oxymoron. In fact, this is good planning! The way to plan for a dynamic market is to build the business infrastructure, from the start, with tremendous flexibility. This is yet another reason why the ASP model is so powerful as a support structure for entrepreneurs. ASPs are typically based on monthly subscriptions. This gives you extraordinary flexibility to shift the infrastructure of your business as it evolves. If you find that you need an additional support service, it can be quickly and cheaply obtained. At the same time, if you find that
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GO IT ALONE! Copyright 2004 by Bruce Judson. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.
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