November 2022
Hello All,
It’s newsletter time again. Only 52 shopping days to Christmas! Only 21 days to Thanksgiving! Where did the year go? Wow, only two months to go to the end of the year and finish our year on a high! We are on track to meet our sales goal for the year and, though slightly behind, it is possible to meet our 2022 revenue goal as well. This will be a big year for us either way but meeting the 2022 goals will be a huge accomplishment and will get us one step closer to our BHAG, Big Hairy Audacious Goal.
Engage.
We did our Engage survey this week and we had a nice little increase in the overall score. We are doing better in a number of areas, but there are still areas that we need to pay attention to and improve. This survey is our best way to determine how and where we are improving and where we need to continue progress. The Engage survey is where it was suggested to have the newsletter on a monthly basis, and we are doing that. The Engage survey is where it was suggested we need an employee counsel, and we now have one. You should be hearing a lot about the counsel in the future. The Engage survey where we learned for the desire to have a career ladder so, when you join the team, you know all your possibilities for advancement within the company.
Which, as a side note, is anywhere you want to go! Talk to the Talent Development manager and plot a path to anywhere inside the company. We will help you make a plan, and we will provide the direct training or help you finance or in some cases, pay for, higher education so that you can achieve your goals. We want you to achieve your biggest dreams. If you can achieve it, other employees will see they can too. We want dreams to come true. It will make Lone Star a better place to work, and it will make Lone Star a better company. So, let’s make a plan!
Our next Engage survey will be in January, and it will have different questions than our previous surveys. We have been doing surveys every quarter for 3 years now, so as we start the next quarter, we listened to your suggestions and will be incorporating new questions. We don’t know the details completely yet, but there will be changes and you will have more opportunities to express your ideas. We are looking forward to that. I want to hear your ideas on how we can make things better or ways to improve processes. Of course, you can always send me an email, but if you don’t want to do that, you can share your ideas anonymously in the survey.
We had our two-day off-site strategy meeting October 18th and 19th. This was a very good meeting adding two new team members to the group: Jeff Kindig, Chief Marketing Officer, CMO, and Kenny Schiff, Director of Analytics. Lone Star is adding products and solutions to its product mix so that we can help customers in areas where we could only advise in the past. By adding analytics to our portfolio of products gives Lone Star the ability to analyze data and make informed decisions for the improvement of processes and workflows in our customers’ facilities. The planning meeting allowed us to reflect on the rocks and initiatives of last quarter and last year and assess whether they have been completed or if they need more attention and time to complete. A lot of our time was spent discussing the CareSight product and what that means to Lone Star Communications and how that will shape our future.
We set up four Rocks for the fourth quarter of 2022 to finalize the year. First, with the emphasis on CareSight, we set our first Rock at accomplishing the installation of 50 CareSight basic installations. This will be done by providing our existing customers, those that currently have SMA’s, with new services, specifically monitoring of servers and service processes. These new monitoring services will be a huge value add for our customers by providing them notification of services that may be down or offline. This Rock is the responsibility of Chris Andrus with the support of Kenny Schiff.
Our second Rock for the quarter covers Professional Services. We need to finalize the Close Out process for Professional Services and define testing and refine the implementation process. In addition, we recognize the need for sales education for Professional Services. If Professional Services is going to be part of our solution going forward, all groups in the company need to know what services are available and what solutions can be offered to our customers.
The third Rock is to launch a new Healthcare Marketing Plan. Jeff Kindig (CMO) will be responsible for this Rock with insight from Marquis Woodard. We need to finalize the brand promise statements and share that through our website. We need to redo the healthcare section of our website, reimagining the healthcare section completely and create an emphasis on CareSight. At the same time, we will resurrect social media channels by publishing a 30-day calendar each month with at least 3 posts per week. We also need to develop an events calendar for 2023 and identify what we will be sponsoring and what shows we will attend. Marketing will become a big emphasis in the final quarter of 2022 and throughout 2023.
Our final Rock for the quarter is an extension of our previous initiative, One Lone Star, and directed by Victor Gonzalez. Victor has shown outstanding guidance on this initiative and continues to lead the internal improvement process. Kevin Henderson still has a part of this Rock providing leadership around the project management standardization. Long term, all of these processes will become part of our Quality Management System improving what we have had in place for years. We are considering the transition from structured compliance, ISO focus, to process improvement and incorporating LEAN focus on practices: better, faster, cheaper. Joshua Hiett will be a part of these improvements along with the support of all the COOs. LEAN will be part of a 2023 initiative.
We have an ambitious fourth quarter, but there is a lot to do. 2022 has been a busy year with more than 65 million in sales with only two months remaining. Do you remember our BHAG? 1000 Rising Star Employees and to be the most In-Demand company in the Rauland network. Aggressive? Yes. Arrogant? No. We can do this. We have the right people, we have the right product, we have the right market. We are adding to the product mix items that we can sell whenever we find a product that is right for our customers. Also, we are adding something we can’t get right now from any other suppliers: innovation. That happens here. Innovation is going on every day throughout our company. Innovation is happening in R & D (Research and Development) of course, but it also happens in the office, it’s happening in Service, it’s happening every day in Corporate Services, Professional Services, in Sales; everywhere throughout the company innovation is happening every day. We are innovators. Lone Star Communications is becoming the leader in innovation. Thank you for all you do every day supporting these initiatives. Let’s have a big finish for 2022 and let’s make 2023 our biggest year yet!
Until next time, Ray
- Ray Bailey, President