Archive for April, 2009

Succesful Implementations Even in Challenging Times

Monday, April 27th, 2009

The demands on management to successfully run day-to-day operations while also leading significant initiatives related to growth, quality, product evolution, changing leadership, economic pressures, and more, are greater than ever before. 

Today’s successful business leaders will incorporate many different perspectives to realize an organization’s vision:

  • Market, competitive and economic conditions
  • Product or service vision and organizational culture
  • Evolutions in management theory such as Six Sigma, Lean, IEE and Much more
  • System implementations – ERP, E-commerce, Business Process Management, hosted vs. owned appliances, package vs. custom software, etc and most have individual models for achieving success
  • The opportunities that come with outsource providers and partnerships with different core competencies such as Information Technology, HR, Finance, Marketing, Research & Development and more

Regardless of the approach or model, effective Project Management is critical to successfully getting things done.  Fulop Consulting incorporates the structure associated with being a Project Management Professional (PMP) with the cross-functional business acumen of a seasoned management veteran.  Fulop Consulting focuses on key areas to maximize success while minimizing risk:

  • Listening to client needs effectively
  • The Project being in line with the organization’s long-term business plan (alignment of improvement spending with business strategy)
  • Saving time, money and frustration while maximizing end results
  • Team integration for maximum productivity
  • Avoiding common pitfalls:
    –Project communication, cost or result is different from what stakeholders expected
    –All stakeholders are not identified, engaged and committed
    –Third party contracts inadequately negotiated and managed due to inadequate terms or scope of work
    –Documented Project Management best practices are not followed and the results are late, significanlty more costly, or do not perform as expected

So the next time your organization is facing a new project, mixed results from prior initiatives, or stagnating, call Fulop Consulting to maximize return while minimizing risk. 

Visit www.FulopConsulting.com or call Gabor at 760-683-4210

Update 4/26

Monday, April 27th, 2009

Apologies for no mid-week update this past week.  If anyone missed me, let me know so I can make sure to post more frequently in the future.

This week brought an interesting revelation, updates to my site, a different kind of blog post and a lot of unplanned work.  My revelation came from the book “The Power To Get In” by Michael Boylan.  I strongly urge everyone to read this book, because it can help you get a job, get in the door to present your idea, and more.  For me it meant changing my marketing approach.  Rather than blast 300+ letters to companies shotgun style, I decided to analyze the companies and narrow my target to around a dozen companies.  Hopefully there will be 2-3 groups of competitors that I can leverage.  The list is narrowed to 41 companies and detailed analysis is ongoing. 

Special thanks to those that gave feedback on the web site.  I received some great comments, like tips from Jason such as never using “!” and “Click Here”.  Received a great comment from an old friend, Lajos: “On the Services page, tell the reader what they get from the services offered”, and several more bits of great feedback.  I edited what I could (most published 4/26), but some things just weren’t possible with the tools that I currently have,,, perhaps for the next generation.

So this week, rather then mailing letters I read the book mentioned above, started narrowing the target list of companies, and wrote a different kind of blog post (please check it out).  This coming week, I asked a friend to help analyze all the companies and hopefully we can mail something to a list of specific individuals by the end of the week.

Until next time, thanks for reading,

Gabor

Website launch!

Sunday, April 19th, 2009

I’m proud to announce that www.FulopConsulting.com was published late last night.  Of course there are several links to this blog there.  Many thanks to those that have already given feedback and I look forward to more from others.  I forsee tuning & growing it continuously.  Constructive feedback is greatly appreciated.

Some of the immediate next steps for marketing and business development are: 

–Finalize press release, business cards and letter to CEOs (300+). 

–Gain copies of forms & applications to University case-study programs in the classroom

–Finalize elevator pitch and start calling folks, making sure to document every bit of information so that later I can refer back and better develop the relationship.

–Attend networking events, such as the MIT Sloan Forum, Connect events, etc. and invite potential clients where appropriate; or organize an event of my own

Thanks for checking in and more to come soon.

Sincerely,

Gabor

Tips for Marketing and Leveraging a Blog

Saturday, April 18th, 2009

The following conversation with Dean, fellow board member at the San Diego Oracle User Group, is giving me lots of ideas about growing my blog.  Between that, and the discussions on LinkedIn, WordPress, etc. I am even more excited about how quickly networks expand in reach, functionality and depth in specific areas across functions and professional responsibility (think Green, ProBono, etc.).  I see this as another component to my overall success building a firm and can hopefully benefit others.

 

Thanks Dean!

 

Dean wrote:  Have you thought about setting up your own wordpress blog, on your new website?

Dishing out tips that highlight your expertise or commenting on current events or things that you plan to consult on will give people an idea of your knowledge and experience. 

By setting up your own wordpress blog, you have more control over the optional features like pushing out RSS feeds, social network ratings like Digg, and others that will help drive other traffic to your site.

 

Also, you can register your blog on your linked in profile and it will automatically show up on everyone’s home page if they have the blog widget turned on.

 

Just a couple thoughts…. 

 

GF wrote:  So, I posted a link to the Blog on my LinkedIn site.  I’ve plastered it everywhere else I could think.  I started a WordPress blog that references the other one.   Now, I need your help to better understand: “By setting up your own wordpress blog, you have more control over the optional features like pushing out RSS feeds, social network ratings like Digg, and others that will help drive other traffic to your site.”  I created categories for Best Practice, E-commerce, in particular, for this info and any questions. 

 

Dean wrote:

As for the blog bells and whistles…when you installed the wordpress blog in your hosting account there should be some links that take you to third party and optional wordpress widgets.  You can download these and install them.  Once installed, when you go into your wordpress administration screens, you should have options to configure them or turn them on.   If you install the rating widgets, anytime someone clicks on the Digg, or other button to recommend your post, your site will become more visible to other people on Digg.com etc.

 

Also, using the rss widgets, you can configure your blog to automatically get pushed out and listed on feedburner and similar sites.  If you do a podcast, you can also use the rss widget to push your podcast out to iTunes.  So in addition to writing a blog you can record an mp3 file and attach it and voila you are a podcaster.  Or get fancy and record a video and you could be a vidcaster…. which is even cooler, because you can then post the video to YouTube, iTunes, and the others which can also drive traffic back to your site.   

 

oh… also one other site you might be interested in..  statcounter.com   it is free, and it allows you to track emails and click throughs like oracle marketing or Eloqua… so you can do targeted email campaigns and track statistics.  also may want to look at doing something similar for all of the links to your blog, this way you can see which sites are producing the most hits back to your blog.

 

I did a bunch of research on vidcasting, podcasting, affiliate marketing, blogs, including some hands on stuff etc.  for a couple of projects I was working on, but have put on the back burner.  While I am no expert, I am happy to share anything I have learned and help you in any way I can.

 

Dean

Progress update 4/15/09

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009

So far this week:

  • First draft of the corporate web site will be shared with a few associates for review and feedback, and will hopefully be launched for preliminary release by the beginning of next week.
  • If you want to hear a little about preparing for the PMP exam, check out my wire with Hicham Jellab.
  • A side discussion on tools available for marketing a blog site to get the most out of it are forthcoming.  We’ll make sure to add new Categories & Tags along the way.
  • The rest of this week will be focused on finalizing the press release, marketing letter, business cards, and envelopes for a marketing campaign.

Thanks for the continued feedback & discussions.  This is truly an amazing virtual office!  More to come at the end of the week.

Best regards,
Gabor

Categories

Saturday, April 11th, 2009

If you have any suggestions about categories in general, or have specific categories to create or build on, it would be great to hear from you.

Thanks,

Gabor

Tags in a blog

Saturday, April 11th, 2009

Could someone please boil down what Tags are and how to use them in a blog?  When I clicked the link “Choose from the most popular tags” about 2 inches to the right from where I’m typing, I get a “No tags found!” message.

According to http://technorati.com/tag, “tags are labels that people use to make it easier to find blog posts, photos and videos that are related.”   So, I am adding “Blog”, “Business”, “Start-up”, “Start up” & “consulting” tags to some of my posts.

Gabor

Wow!

Friday, April 10th, 2009

Wow!  Thanks for all the great feedback!!

I am proud to announce that I PASSED the exam today and will receive my certificate within 6 weeks!  I also learned of some areas to focus my professional development on =)   

The Exam itself was not bad, but there are some really tricky questions, especially if you don’t know how all the Knowledge Areas, Process Groups, Inputs, Tools, and Outputs tie together. 

Deb, Thanks very much for the great tax comment, it is nice to provide benchmark best practices related to start-up and beyond!

All, I truly appreciate everyone’s input towards what could potentially become a Blueprint Case Study for others to benefit from.  We already have tax, cash, & e-commerce management tips/advice.  We can create categories to group the information, for others to learn from and interact with. 

I look forward to working/blogging with you all!  Clearly the potential power of this blog is INCREDIBLE! 

Sincerely,

Gabor

Introduction

Thursday, April 9th, 2009

Hello, My name is Gabor Fulop and I am starting my own Consulting practice after getting laid off about 6 months ago.  Since then I spent 3 months at a previous employer as the Business Readiness Project Manager for the integration of an acquisition.  I spent another month studying for the PMP which I will be sitting for tomorrow, 4/10.  In addition,  I’ve built a rough draft of my web site, press release, and a marketing letter for attaching to the press release when I send it to 300+ CEOs in San Diego.  I thought it would be fun to start a blog about my experience and see where it takes me.  I am open to questions, comments, suggestions, and client & partner inquiries.  I also thought that it might force me to accelerate my effort and build even greater momentum.  If you know of a similar blog, please let me know. 

Best regards,

Gabor