“Boot camp” without the pushups

Series of one-day workshops provide STAFDA members with basic training in technology -- Industrial Distribution, 4/1/2001

By Doug Harper, Contributing Editor

For those of us who served in the military the term “boot camp” conjures up images of reveille at dawn, training from sunrise to sunset and rigidly enforced discipline. But under the auspices of STAFDA, boot camp has taken on a kinder and gentler connotation.

From January through March the Specialty Tools & Fasteners Distributors Assn. based in Elm Grove, Wis., sponsored a series of seven “E-Commerce Boot Camps” described by the organization as “one-day crash courses in e-commerce, doing and developing business on the Internet, and making the most of your company’s brand identity on the Web”.

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The courses were conducted by Steve Epner, STAFDA’s computer consultant who also coordinates the Technology and Consultants’ Fair at STAFDA’s annual convention and writes the organization’s “Computer Advisory”.

According to STAFDA Executive Director, Georgia H. Foley, despite the fact that e-commerce has “taken a beating over the last six to eight months we saw a growing need within our membership for e-commerce and e-business information.”

She notes that many STAFDA distributors were initially concerned that e-commerce could potentially generate competition for them and viewed it as a threat “but as we looked at Steve Epner’s program a little more carefully we realized that this is something we could bring to our members so that instead of being threatened by e-business they could integrate it into their company’s overall program.”

The main thrust of the boot camp, says Foley, was to demonstrate to participants how they could exploit the potential of relatively “low-tech” tools including fax machines, contact management techniques and interactive voice response.

Foley says that the feedback from boot camp attendees has been very positive. “They came away with some serious take-home and felt less threatened by e-commerce. And now they have new ways to implement technology at their fingertips,” she says.

But if Georgia Foley is the company commander of STAFDA boot camps then Steve Epner is the drill sergeant. Epner, president of BSW Consulting Inc., based in St. Louis, notes that although STAFDA calls the session e-Commerce Boot Camps, they are in reality e-business boot camps and the difference is more than just one of semantics.

“E-Commerce is the ability to do transactions in a computer-to-computer environment but that’s just one small piece of e-business,” Epner states. He says that his philosophy is to “step back and first of all relate the world of ‘E’ to what we really do in business. So there’s ‘e’ marketing, ‘e’ selling, ‘e’ commerce, ‘e’ procurement, and ‘e’ management. And what I want people who attend to understand is that all these ‘Es’ are really just good basic ways of doing business that we have tried to make more effective and efficient.”

No “super-geeks” at STAFDA

Epner says that the need for workshops and boot-camps arises from the fact that business owners are overwhelmed by the complexity of technology.

“And so they go to meetings run by some super-geek who is sitting at a computer and typing away so quickly that you can’t see his fingers moving and stuff is just flying around the screen. And when the participants leave they have no idea what they have just witnessed,” Epner stresses.

In contrast, Epner informs boot camp participants that he has no intention of showing them how to write code or configure software but rather how to apply basic e-business concepts and tools to their own companies that they can use almost immediately in even the lowest tech environment.

Among the “new recruits” attending the first boot camp in January was Christine Michaelis, an accountant with Stabila, a manufacturer of levels based in South Elgin, Ill., and a STAFDA associate member.

“I thought the boot camp was extremely interesting and useful,” says Michaelis. “Steve Epner introduced a number of new ideas and paths that we should be taking that we hadn’t thought of because we’re still babies as far as e-commerce is concerned,” she says.

Michaelis adds that although Stabila is not currently using EDI, it plans to do so in the near future, and this provided the firm with the impetus to attend the boot camp. But one of Epner’s decidedly low-tech tips at the workshop that caught Michaelis’ attention was his observation that most companies waste the space on their fax cover sheets rather than using it to promote themselves or their product lines.

“It’s such a simple, obvious idea that everyone should be aware of it but for some of us it required somebody else pointing it out and then suddenly the light bulb came on,” says Michaelis.

She adds that many STAFDA members tend to be on the low-tech to no-tech side of the spectrum. “Some of them don’t even have a fax machine much less a computer so obviously for a lot of them EDI is out of the question,” says Michaelis.

Another satisfied boot camp graduate is Reid Beyerlein, operations coordinator with B-Line Machinery and Supply Co., a fastener distributor in Oak Park, Mich.

“The seminar was entirely based on e-business which goes far beyond e-commerce,” emphasizes Beyerlein. “In fact it was much more about the non-Internet technologies that most companies have but often fail to use to their full potentials. And the boot camp focused not on just selling but on ways to expedite internal paperwork together with giving practical tips and hints on how a company can manage better.

Beyerlein, who attended the STAFDA boot camp with his father Kerry —president and CEO of B-Line— said that they left the session with “ten or fifteen things that we plan to implement almost immediately”. Beyerlein adds that the workshop left him “overwhelmed” with possibilities. “I came out of it saying ‘I’ve got the tools sitting right here in my office and we should start using them properly’,” he says.

And in an age when it is almost necessary to have a degree in computer science to comprehend the latest technological developments, it is to STAFDA’s credit that it hasn’t forgotten the untapped potential of the humble telephone and fax machine. But the most revolutionmary part of the STAFDA boot camp was that attendees who could not answer questions were not required to get down on the floor and do 20 push-ups. Thanks to STAFDA, boot camp has changed dramatically.