To market, to market

When Gary Ross joined family-owned
Cott Systems Inc. as president four
years ago, the century-old company needed a makeover.

One-third of the Worthington, Ohio-based
company’s customer base had left in the ’90s,
Cott wasn’t selling any new products, and the
business was stagnating.

Ross believed the 90-employee company,
which develops and provides software and
information management services to
county government in 22 states, could
get a fresh start through the research
and development of new products.
Today, new products and services
account for 33 percent of the company’s total revenue.

Smart Business spoke with Ross
about how he reinvigorated his business
through research and development.

Q: How do you grow a company?

You have to look at your situation
and analyze it. The key for us was customer involvement.

Whether you have a declining base
— like we were faced with years ago
— or a stable base, it starts with
keeping your current customers. If
they’re leaving you, you’re going to
be out of business soon. You have to
make sure that you’re taking care of
them, and they’re giving you ideas
for growth.

We started a customer advisory
board in November 2004. We put
together five of our key customers
from around the country. We bring
them in once a quarter, and we have staff
meetings. We share information with them,
show them our new products that are in
research and development, ask for their
advice and listen to them.

Q: How have you benefited from that?

We have learned what our customers’
needs are and have responded to that. Our
customer advisory board members were the
first ones to adopt the new products that we
started launching in 2006. They started purchasing our new products and have set a real
example for us.

You don’t have to get real complex with a
customer advisory board: The customers will tell you simple things, and you deliver those
simple things.

Q: How do you communicate this message
to your staff?

I give a book to all our associates every
year. This past year, we focused on the
book, ‘Execution: The Discipline of Getting
Things Done’ by Larry Bossidy and Ram
Charan.

Many companies have a strategic plan,
and it’s all written down, but it never happens. Why doesn’t it happen? Execution is
the missing link.

We invested in this book, and in our management meetings, we had department
leaders stand up and talk about different
chapters — what they’re doing to change
their department and execute better.

One of the things you have to execute
on is your new product development.
When you brainstorm and come up with
new ideas, do any of them ever happen?
When you have new product ideas that
are on the table, how do you bring them
to market?

Q: How would you respond to executives
who say research and development is too
expensive?

It’s expensive if you don’t execute. How
do you execute? You need a process. We
made our process fun; we developed everything around a racing theme because we
wanted speed.

We called our new product ideas ‘Cars on
the Road,’ and we have a week full of meetings every month called Speed Week.

We have a wall in our conference room
that shows all these new products. We
take all those Cars on the Road — and
everyone who’s involved with those —
and we talk about what we’re doing to
advance them so that they launch.

Even launching is not enough because
the product may not be effective, it may
not be generating the growth that you
thought and you may not be getting the
return that you wanted on that investment. Even after it launches, we still do the
Speed Week meetings to make sure we’re
hitting the target we wanted. This process
is building innovation into the Cott DNA so
it becomes second nature to us.

You have to invest in new products and
services. Those will bring you the future
that you’re looking for. A product-driven
company has to change to a service-and-solutions company if you want to beat the
competitors and offer something different.
If you don’t, there’s not going to be any value.

We’re trying to understand our customer’s
need and how to adapt our solutions to fit
their need. You also have to understand your
customer’s customer: What are they looking
for, and how can we help our customer serve
their customers better?

Q: What advice would you share with other
executives of growing companies?

Executives who are trying to grow their
company should understand their costs, margins and cash flows. In a small company, balance sheets are so much more important to
understand.

You have to get involved in the numbers
because, in the end, your responsibility is to
deliver a financially healthy, long-term company to the owners.

HOW TO REACH: Cott Systems Inc., (614) 847-4405 or
www.cottsystems.com