You have made a tremendous impact upon CURAFLEX; one which will go a long way to achieving our bottom-line results for many years to come.

As always, your presentation skills were phenomenal and you kept people on the edge of their seats for every minute of every hour.

Today, all businesses - large and small, manufacturing and service, financial and health institutions, domestic and international - must immediately begin addressing a fundamental question...what is their business without the underlying foundation of a Business Operating System Standard (BOSS)?

What would a computer be without the underlying foundation of an Operating System? Without Windows 95 or 98 for example, what benefits would there be to having the latest and greatest spreadsheet, database, contact manager, word processor, internet navigator, or any other application?

The lack of a business Operating System is the detriment of many once-successful businesses. In the short run very logical, and well planned initiatives fail such as sales force automation, web site development, quality improvement, sales force development, and a host of others. In the long run, very well known and established businesses which once owned the market, today are only a fraction of what they once were, or are completely gone due to the fact that the Operating System of the business was either flawed or completely nonexistent. In a sense, they "crashed."

The Business Operating System Standard (BOSS) of those businesses which will survive in the new millennium consists of eight critical success factors:

1.	Customer Focus Business Strategies	5.	Marketing of Customized Solutions
2.	Competitive Products	6.	Maintaining & Raising of Standards
3.	Value Added Services	7.	Continued Improvement
4.	Competitive Skills	8.	Entreprenuership Mentality

Customer Focus Business Strategies

Customer focus has become a buzz word much like "empowerment" and "re-engineering" and that is unfortunate. In reality, however, customer focus is a survival issue which mandates a posturing, a commitment, and skills "top to bottom," to identify and then satisfy the customer's needs...profitably.

Competitive Products

Sustained success dictates that our identity in the customer's eyes transcends our product because of a fundamental rule of business - we will never again long-term have a competitive advantage in product or price. Said another way, the day your identity is synonymous with your product line, you're beginning to lose your business.

Value Added Expertise

The customer never needs your product. Think about this - the customer can get the same product somewhere else cheaper! In almost every case, only forty percent of the customer's reason for buying from your company is specification and price. Sixty percent of their reason to buy is based on your value added offerings.

Competitive Skill Sets

Today's economic environment is luring many individuals (and companies) into a false sense of security. History proves good times camouflage poor performance. If we are selling in the same way we did just thirty six months ago, for example, the salesperson is no longer effective or competitive. If we are managing our personnel as we did just twenty four months ago, our people have plateaued in skills and abilities.

Marketing of Customized Solutions

Make no mistake, sustained and profitable relationships with customers are built around your ability and desire to bring tailored ideas and solutions to specific customer needs. Today we must immediately STOP selling product and BEGIN marketing unique systems which are customized to the specific needs of each individual customer. This requires an in-depth understanding of the customer's business, its needs, challenges, and opportunities, in addition to superior creativity, problem-solving skills, and an integrated team selling psychology.

Standards Which Raise the Bar

Being "as good as" is no longer good enough. Standards must be set to insure that we are "better than" the competition and this requires utilizing role models from outside our own industry. And once those standards are set to the new benchmark, they must be carved in stone with a mandatory goals attitude where 99.9 percent is not good enough.

Entrepreneurial Mentality

While the dictionary will define an entrepreneur as "someone who is in business for themselves," relative to competing in today's marketplace, it is a limiting definition. Functioning in your business as if it were your own business is the best definition of entrepreneurship. Factually, entrepreneurship is a "crisis to perform." It is a mentality of "how do I plan to perform within this environment in spite of all the obstacles."

Continued Improvement

Gold medal gymnast Mary Lou Retton, when asked if she could repeat the winning performance in the next Olympics, responded, "A gold medal performance in one Olympics will only be routine in the next." A "grow or go" mentality in business is mandatory today because the bar is continually being raised. Survival in today's world markets mandate we remain in a constant state of growth and improvement.