Thomas M. Nies understands everything has a life cycle. So the longest actively serving CEO in the computer industry built his business on the notion of reinvention.
“Creating a long-term sustainable business is obviously something that is not done just once,” says Nies, founder of Cincom Systems Inc. “But it’s something that must be continuously done over time. The competitive advantage of one’s offerings has a limited time span — three years, five years, seven years — and the more high-technology-related the endeavor, the shorter the typical life span.”
Nies grew Cincom from its Cincinnati roots into an international software player. And he did it by staying in front of and adapting to changing industry and client needs.
“Creating a long-term sustainable business requires some type of entrepreneurial orientation to the business that is constantly reinventing itself,” he says. “New products, new technologies, new services, new offerings that continue to respond forward so as the initial products or services die off, the company doesn’t die off with them.”
To gauge the life span of your products or services or perhaps the need for new offerings, you must understand the marketplace and, as a result, your clients.
“One has to be constantly in touch with the marketplace to understand, ‘What is the opening we’re trying to take advantage of? What product or service are we trying to provide that customers really want? What unique value propositions can we offer them?’” Nies says. “If we don’t have unique value propositions that are pretty certain to gain some preference, the effort is probably going to fail.”
To understand those questions, Nies created a company culture and a method of inquiry that gives his 800 employees a role in understanding what the customer wants.
