Financing College: Taking Control
Corrections or additions?
These articles were published in U.S. 1 Newspaper on November 10, 1999. All rights reserved.
Recycling Computers
The Trenton Waste Exchange has set up a permanent
drop-off
site for used electronic equipment at 800 New York Avenue in Trenton.
Small businesses and residents of Mercer County can deliver used and
obsolete equipment to be re-manufactured and recycled on Wednesdays
from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Recycling a monitor will require a $5 handling
fee, but for nonprofits this fee will be waived. The Trenton Waste
Exchange is a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving the
environment
by keeping unwanted equipment out of the waste stream. For information
call Carol Royal at 609-921-3393.
It took Ivory three decades to carve out a place in
the minds of American consumers. Priceline.com, the bargain basement
website, did it in just a few months.
Is it just Internet hype? Not exactly, says James L. Dettore,
founder of the Brand Institute Inc. “They were able to reach
megabrand
status in a great campaign with William Shatner as their
spokesperson,”
says Dettore. “People always like to see a face to a product,
especially around a success story. I think you’re going to see a lot
more of that in the future.”
Famous faces and punchy names, says Dettore, a fast-talking Harvard
Business School graduate who speaks at the American Marketing
Association’s
meeting on Monday, November 15, at the Somerset Hills Hotel in Warren.
Dettore’s subject: “Brand Building — The Challenge of Creating
and Growing Equity.” Cost: $40. Call 908-497-2339.
“Look at Yahoo, E-Bay, those are truly breakthrough names,”
Dettore continues. “It all started with Apple: what did a fruit
have to do with a hardware product? For the first time, MacIntosh
came through with developing a brand for a product that was not
product
specific.”
There’s a war for words waging in the .com world, says Dettore, who
launched the Brand Institute six years ago and holds accounts for
J&J’s Accuvue, as well as Proctor & Gamble’s Bounty and Pampers
products.
“In the virtual world, you’re just another me too,” he says.
“The Internet has brought advertising to a global level, where
you can be cost effective, but you have to be very creative in your
naming. Every word in every dictionary is taken with .com or .net,
so no longer can you have one real word.”
Baseball took Dettore briefly to the University of Hawaii but he
received
a degree in communications from Florida State University, Class of
1975. He has worked in sales and marketing for Ralph Lauren and Pepsi
Co., and earned an MBA from Harvard. He estimates three years before
taking the Brand Institute public.
“The media has escalated branding up to a period of months,”
he says. “The power of branding is that a brand becomes synonymous
with the customer’s perception and their want and need for that
brand.”
When choosing names for an Internet start-up, neologisms (made up
names using two, three, four words that make one non-real word) will
come in handy, but Dettore warns that names shouldn’t be too specific
or limiting: “You have to think what names are going to capture
the institutional sector as well as the retail sector.”
Top Of PageOn Your Desktop:Marketing Toolchest
Are you getting the best marketing mileage out of your
PC? That PC in your home or office is a marketing powerhouse in
disguise
— you just have to learn to use it more effectively, says Ed
Keenan, president of Document Depot, 126 Stanhope Street, Forrestal
Village. Keenan will discuss “Your Desktop Marketing
Toolchest,”
for the Princeton Chamber on Wednesday, November 17, 7:45 a.m. at
the Holiday Inn. Also speaking is Robert Obusek from Innovative
Computing & Networking. Cost: $21. Call 609-520-1776.
Most PCs come with the Microsoft Office suite of computer software.
The challenge is not only learning how to use the programs, but to
use them effectively. Says Keenan: “Outlook, PowerPoint, Word,
Excel, and Access are very powerful tools for contact management,
word processing, Internet software, and databasing. And a lot of
people
don’t know how to take advantage of the software they have on their
computer.”
“Marketing is about being in contact with your customers,”
says Keenan. An important part of marketing is effectively managing
those contacts. “Your contact list can be used for periodic
contact
and scheduling with customers and prospects. And you can use the
information
in your contact management software, be it Act, Goldmine or Outlook
on a home PC or a Palm Pilot (an electronic organizer), to get in
touch with your customers through other computer-related
communications
tools like broadcast faxes, E-mail, and mail merge.”
It could be that for small businesses and those in sales, the race
for new customers will be won by those who are the most organized.
“Used to be that salespeople kept index cards in a file or
business
cards on a Rolodex. When it came time for a mailing they had to wade
through this sea of paper. With the computer and the Palm Pilot, as
you meet people you can enter their data in your contact software.
Then when you need to get in contact with them, either one-on-one
or as a segmented group, it’s simple to do. And that’s the power that
the computer grants to marketing professionals.”
Keenan is a 1985 graduate of Fordham University with a BS in
accounting,
is married and lives in East Windsor. After graduation, Keenan worked
in public accounting for six years serving the needs of small
businesses
and small business owners. He received his CPA designation in New
York in 1990. In 1996, Keenan moved to Philadelphia to accept a
position
as operations manager for Office Tech, a Konica dealer in Bellmawr,
NJ.
Document Depot (E-mail: documentdepot@att.net) was born in
August
of 1998 and based on Keenan’s belief that there is a need in the
marketplace
for value-added copy services. “The copier industry is changing,
machines are becoming digital, and this is creating new opportunities.
I felt that there was a need for graphics and print services where
we can add value relating computers to the printing area.”
Keenan is bullish on the marketing opportunities for small businesses
represented by today’s computer contract management software. “I
want to stimulate people’s imagination as to how they can use their
own computers. The tools on your computer are very powerful and can
be very useful if they’re used correctly. You can do anything on the
computer with the right knowledge.”
— Jeff Lippincott
Top Of PageFinancing College: Taking Control
Have kids or planning to? Then there’s a good chance
that the largest purchase in your entire life will be their education.
Some four-year private colleges now cost more than a four-bedroom
home in a posh neighborhood.
“Need-based” financial aid may not sound like an option if
it so happens you can afford that four bedroom home, but don’t rule
it out just yet. College may be getting more expensive, says Kevin
Simme, a college funding specialist, but there’s plenty of money
to go around. “I’ve seen clients who earn six figures actually
get some kind of need-based aid,” says Simme, who walks anxious
parents through the harrowing financial aid process on Thursday,
November
18, at 7 p.m. at the Plainsboro Public Library. The seminar is free
by reservation. Call 609-275-2897.
There is more than $80 billion in financial aid and only 1.5 percent
it is available through scholarships, says Simme. So when it comes
to competing for financial aid, “parents shouldn’t take themselves
out of the ball game,” says Simme (College Funding Alternatives,
609-452-0252). “Parents spend a lot of time and money looking
for scholarships when they really should be spending more time looking
where the money comes from.”
Simme received a BA in history and business from Houghton College,
Class of 1985, and worked for a college marketing company before
becoming
a personal finance consultant. It was there that he discovered an
untapped niche within his industry. “People kept asking if I knew
anyone who handles college funding,” he says. “I thought they
meant saving when the child was two, but they were talking about the
financial aid process.”
In the financial aid process, parents generally lose control to
colleges
because there’s no one to turn to, says Simme. Although the Web is
a good place to start (Simme recommends the College Board
https://www.FinAid.org and the Princeton Review https://www.review.com),
the Internet can bog the overwhelmed parent down even more.
“There’s
a lot of information on the Internet about financial aid. But the
concern I have for parents is that the whole process is overwhelming.
When you have more information that can overwhelm you to the point
of overload,” he says.
An important thing for parents to consider: “Whether you’re
applying
for need-based aid or merit-based aid you have to fill out the same
forms and go through the same process,” says Simme. He suggests
parents keep the following in mind:
The financial aid process is first come, first serve sodon’t procrastinate. “Get forms in early,” says Simme. Anotherthing to consider: the Department of Education estimates that 90percentof financial aid forms are turned back due to error, which means 9out of 10 applications get bumped back in the first-come, first serveline-up, says Simme.Many colleges offer less and expect to negotiate. “Thecolleges don’t want you to know this,” says Simme, “but manywill under-award you or mis-award you.” Parents need to learnwhen to say a financial aid package is unacceptable and how tonegotiate.College aid scams generally guarantee a certain award.When seeking professional help in the financial aid process, watchfor promises. “If someone is guaranteeing you a particular amountof money in return for a fee, that’s one thing that you might wantto stay away from,” says Simme, who offers a simple satisfactionguarantee. “Anybody who has any expertise in the area or is agood risk is going to do a very simple satisfaction guarantee,”he says.If college costs don’t scare you now, consider that the costof college is rising nationally at about 7 to 8 percent per year (NewJersey claims a low 5.4 percent inflation rate). Simme can also tellparents about some loopholes that will help them save for the future.”No matter where you go to school costs are going to continueto rise because professors need increases in their salaries, overheadis huge, and schools need to keep dumping money into technologybecausethey have to stay up with it.”Top Of PageBetter Businesses OnlineBusinesses that use the Web have higher annual revenuethan those who don’t, according to the U.S. Small BusinessAdministration’slatest report, “E-Commerce: Small Businesses Venture Online.”The report shows that small businesses that use the Web had averagerevenues of $3.79 million in 1998, compared to $2.79 million for othersmall businesses.”Small Businesses built Main Street, and they will likely leadthe way in E-Commerce,” said the SBA’s chief Council for AdvocacyJere W. Glover in a press release. The report, which surveysthe practices and attitudes of small business (fewer than 100employees)who have websites, is available athttps://www.sba.gov/advo/stats/e_comm.pdfor by calling 202-205-6530.Business-to-business trade, the report indicates, is the largestcomponentof electronic commerce, with anticipated revenues of $327 billionin 2002. Studies by other research groups, including Cahners In-Stat,ZDNet, and Giga Information Group, yielded the following otherfactoids:The minimum initial investment in an E-Commerce site is about$10,000 (Giga Information Group).Small businesses can expect to spend 20 percent of the launchcost for annual maintenance and support of their website (Mehling,1998).Online retail marketing is reaching 200 percent annual growth,and online traffic doubles every 100 days.Among the biggest barriers to going live, businesses reported:a lack of personnel to maintain the website. Roughly 76 percent ofsmall companies see the lack of available workers as one of thegreatestpitfalls (Pricewaterhouse Coopers). Bad news for small businesses,and good news for IT professionals.Top Of PageEffective WebsitesBusiness-to-business companies are generally slowergetting to the Web, says Mike LaCourte, of Amper Consulting.”They think that they’re not going to increase their market share,and really there are a number of other reasons to be there.”For example: breaking geographic sales boundaries, learning more aboutyour consumers, and fostering corporate image, says LaCourte, whodiscusses “Effective Implementations ofE-Commerce/E-Business,”a free seminar by Amper Consulting, on Thursday, November 11, at PinesManor in Edison at 8 p.m. Call 732-287-7849.”It used to be people would turn to the Yellow Pages and basedon how large your ad there was they would make certainassumptions,”explains LaCourte, who holds a BA in accounting from Rider, Classof 1971, and is earning his CIS this year. “Now they go to theirwebsite. You can also capture a lot of information about the users– who they are, what their interests are, where they spend themost time, where they spend the least time.””You can still get a competitive edge, but you can’t do it byputting up a haphazard site,” LaCourte continues. “There needsto be a lot of planning to determine the purpose of the site, andthe tools that will be most effective.”Top Of PageWhy Microsoft 2000An expanded Active Directory and better audio and videodownloads to the Internet are just two reasons why Windows 2000 isa vast improvement over Windows NT, says Dennis Sheil, chieftechnologist and one of 18 trainers worldwide handpicked and trainedby Microsoft to teach Microsoft consultants and technical staff aboutWindows 2000. “It addressed a lot of things that were wrong withNT — scalability for big companies, enhanced security, and there’salso a much tighter integration between the Windows 2000 server andthe desktop version so that it’s definitely much simpler to managewhat kinds of programs are deployed on desktop.”IT professionals can get a jump on their Microsoft 2000 training (ifthat’s the platform you choose for the new millennium) by joininga free special interest group led by Sheil on Wednesday, November17, at Delta Corporate Services at 129 Littleton Road in Parsippany.The group will meet monthly. Call 800-335-8220.With NT, Sheil explains, the directory was limited and it was hardto manage a large environment. “If you had more than 20,000 or30,000 users on the system you would have to start playing games,”he says, “creating additional NT domains — it got complexand hard to manage. The biggest reason why a company will be lookinghard at Windows 2000 is because they’ve done a good job integratingeverything into the platform.””Active Directory is the center of Windows 2000,” says Sheil.”It gives a business a central point for storing information.Programmers can write routines to access information in ActiveDirectory.Now you can store all of the E-mail information you used to have tobuy Exchange for and you can potentially store just about anyinformationthat you want. A programmer who’s developing an application can nowuse Active Directory as a data source just like a normal database,like Sequel Server or Oracle.”Video and audio feeds through the Internet are also smoother on thenew platform because of a feature called Quality of Service. “WithNT one of the typical problems is if the network is busy, the qualityof video feed is poor,” he says. “But Windows 2000 hassomethingbuilt in that allows the network hardware, software, operatingsystems,and applications to communicate and determine how much of networkbandwidth is needed and to guarantee that amount of bandwidth isavailablegoing across.”Microsoft 2000 should be available by February, but now is the timeto start training, says Sheil. “This is not something you’ll doin a week,” he says. “Most companies will be spending years,determining if it can be deployed, what applications are going towork, what parts of the network need to be upgraded, if any, and wefeel its important for companies to start looking now. There arecompaniesthat are already deploying it even though it’s in beta now. Thecompaniesthat start now will have an advantage.”Top Of PageCorporate AngelsEckerd Corporate is writing a check to the SalvationArmy for over $100,000 to support “Project Bundle Up.” Themoney was raised from Eckerd’s Celebration of Lights. Call727-395-6397.Princeton Township turned over a house at 52 Leigh Avenue to Habitatfor Humanity for the price of $1. Terry Smith of Richardsonand Smith Architects, and Kurt Schulte of Schulte Restorationboth volunteered their services. Habitat needs more volunteers forcommittees and construction work. Call Peter Madison at609-924-7792.Previous StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
