VERN: Hello, this is Vern Dosch, and this is the seventh in a series of blogcasts that we're doing to help our employees understand what the acceleration strategy means for the respective divisions within NISC. I've had a chance, Jasper, to talk to six of the other Vice Presidents, and we continue with that discussion until we work all the way through the nine of them. But a couple of things that I wanted to talk to you about because certainly, your division is front and center on what we mean with acceleration. I think one of the most effective things our Board of Directors has ever done, and we need to give credit to our Board because that's exactly where the idea came from, was the concept of the Regional Business Managers. Under David's leadership and most recently under your leadership, you have built out an extraordinary team of Regional Business Managers that are spread across the country. And their primary goal is to be the liaison within NISC to make sure that we're taking care and we're listening to those Members. Now, this last year we instituted what we called blocking and tackling. You deployed those RBMs out literally to every site of NISC, all 800 and some. An enormous effort but we gathered such good information. And now you've built on that; you have strengthened that agenda for when the RBMs go into our Member's office. There's a format that we follow. There's a report that comes out afterward that keeps us all informed. There is a Member metric that tells us how engaged that Member is. When I think about acceleration, I think about what we're doing in that area to better serve our Members and to make those RBM visits more effective and something that really bring value to our Members. As you're thinking about acceleration and as we've been working on this and you've been talking with your staff, tell us, Jasper, how you think this is going to enhance your ability to really make those RBMs effective? JASPER: This is such an exciting time to be a part of NISC, Vern, and when I think about the Board's guidance earlier this month with the acceleration and the vision of you and the Vice President team to seize the day, I am so thankful when I look back over the past six to 12 months that we are this far along with the realignment and doing things like we did with the RBM team in asking them to focus on the Member. This is such a dynamic organization and exciting time. I think we can have our cake and eat it too. I think we can absolutely go out and capture the market opportunities that are in front of us but serve the Member in ways that we never have before. We have a dedicated Regional Business Manager team today whose sole function is the care and feeding of our Members. We've just upgraded the team tremendously with some new talent assisted by some real veterans on that RBM team, and they're armed with tools that they didn't have before. You know we're a data organization. You mentioned the Member metric, Vern. You think about the data that we have available on our Members through Salesforce, iVUE Support, the Community. We can make for a higher-valued site visit. And this is a continuation of the Member engagement initiatives three years ago with the establishment of the Member Engagement Division, two years ago with blocking and tackling, and this past year with a dedicated RBM team now armed with new tools. We're serving the Member in ways that we haven't before because we're utilizing that data we have with them to make for a more engaging conversation, providing more value. When we can walk into a Member site, Vern, show them this is how we measure you internally, we can look at them and say this is how you're competing with your neighbors. This is why you're scoring as such. By the way, one of the ways you could increase your score - there is a regional workshop just down the road that your folks could attend. There's one coming up. There's a CEO webinar coming online. There's Pathways available to you. There's the MIC. Perhaps you're interested in running for a Board seat. These are CRs that are open, but by the way, these are the CRs that have closed. We have all that data accessible to us today, and thanks to some clever tools, we now can make that available to the Member as well. VERN: We've made such great progress. I'm so proud and so appreciative of that group and the impact, the positive impact, they are having on our Members. You know, Jasper, as I travel around the country and talk with our Members, inevitably the CEOs, in particular, will bring up the RBM visit and how grateful they are for the RBM visit and what a good meeting it was. You know it's not always positive. Right? I mean sometimes the RBMs are out there, and they uncover something that's a frustration for our Member. But at least we're uncovering it, we're identifying it, and we're able then to put some things in motion to take care of it rather than just letting it fester out there. That's just a cornerstone to good service to our Members. JASPER: Yeah. Mission critical positions. They're the face of our organizations out in the field, and they're interacting with our Members on a daily basis, We've just got a great team of men and women that are doing it every day. VERN: So let's shift gears a little bit, and let's go to your sales force. As you said, a dedicated sales force. It used to be they were sales/RBM, and they were kind of conflicted because are they taking care of our Members or are they selling. We said "well both" and we know that doesn't work very well. So you've gone through the process of dividing those responsibilities. I think that's going to be really important. But some really fascinating changes in our industry particularly as it relates to our competitors. We see some of our competitors that literally, we've competed against for 30 years fading. Right? I mean we're picking off their customers, their members, one at a time. We've seen a situation where one of our competitors just sent a letter to all their customers saying we're getting out of the business. You guys are on your own. Find your way. All of that creates opportunities for us. And we've seen one of the major competitors on the electric side of the business purchase another competitor. So they're realizing now what we did perhaps in 2000 that you need economies of scale; you need to bring those organizations together. I'm really glad, Jasper, that we have about a 17-year head start on this. So you've got a focused sales staff. There's tremendous opportunities in the marketplace. We know the importance of continually improving our economies of scale. You guys are on the leading edge of that. When I look at you at the Vice President meetings and say "Jasper, we've got this huge army of people that install software, a tremendous capacity to install software, is the pipeline full? Are we going to be able to keep these people busy out into the future?" And your response to that is... JASPER: Absolutely. And economies of scale is the keyword, Vern. You look at the market opportunities that are in front of us. But the growth that NISC has experienced, it'd be easy for someone to say why keep growing. Haven't you had enough? We have an obligation to our Membership. They have invested in this software year after year. If we can take that software and share it with their peer systems and maximize the revenue and grow our economies of scale, that has absolute benefits to our Members. Whether it's keeping their rates in check, allowing us to fuel our R and D budget, to continue to innovate on their behalf. We're seeing the success of that. You mentioned the 17-year headstart. Our market position, the realization of iVUE Connect, a true unified platform, that was the real vision of the consolidation 17-18 years ago. We are here, and it's happening precisely at a time where we're seeing an acceleration of things like utility broadband. And NISC is in such a strategic position to pounce and take advantage of those opportunities, not for the sake of going out and winning and saying we've increased our sales goals and revenues, but absolutely to the betterment of our existing Membership. And you look across the market opportunities, whether it's in the utility industry or the telecommunications space, we are at such a strategic advantage to grow this organization - not aggressively. This is going to continue to be organic growth; we're going to pick our partners carefully. But one by one we're going to continue to grow and NISC's Membership both in the utility and telecommunications space, and we're going to be a better organization as a result as our Members. So this is an exciting time, Vern. I know our dedicated sales team on both the telecom and utility space are excited to get to work. Frankly, the folks that have developed iVUE Connect in RDQ and product, it's a pleasure to go out and sell that product. It shows so well our Members are asking for it. Prospects love it. These are exciting times, and we have to be prepared these next couple of years to take advantage of the opportunity that's there in front of us. VERN: Well said. You know, Jasper, one of the things that I think about is where we've come from in regards to the staff we have to tell the NISC story. You know it wasn't that long ago that we didn't have any communications people. We all thought we were writers. Right? We all thought we could do that on our own. We produced the newsletters on our own and things like that. We really have come to understand the value of the communications people we have of being able to tell the story of NISC and to be able to get the word out on new products and new initiatives. I look at even communication within People Services of what has been done to better communicate with our employees and better onboard our employees. We have done an extraordinary turnaround in improving the way we bring new employees on, and it's all about communication, it
