When one thinks of American Communications Group Inc, a company with a thriving technical edge is not necessarily the first thing that suggests itself. while Jack Namer may not be your typical head honcho, he does understand the significance of utilizing technology to his benefit. Not only has modern technology helped ACG automate plenty of its operations, but in accordance with Namer’s all vital goals, has helped the company lower its costs.
‘Technology has made us much more productive,’ claims Namer. ‘With computers, fax machines, and cell phones we’ve got more productive time during the course of the entire day and can react to scenarios more immediately.’ Indeed, ACG’s computer system is a comparatively sophisticated one. With a wireless record of purchases, Namer can get into the systems of any of his warehouses anywhere in the world without ever leaving his desk, to check on such things as how one item might be selling during the day. ‘Sometimes we have so much information it’s more than we will be able to deal with,’ he asserts. ‘Our internet site and our e-commerce business are also worthwhile on a totally allotted basis, and that is somewhat of a milestone.’
Namer also welcomed the tenet of energy management and conservation early on, using technology to cut down on his energy demand. ACG stores make heavy use of skylights and controlled lighting based on the time of the day. They use high efficiency heating and air conditioning, and are venturing into photovoltaics, or the utilization of solar panels to generate electricity, and the utilization of cross-breed delivery lorries. On an environmental side note, Namer also gives subsidies to his staff who carpool or use monthly bus passes. He believes that these efforts won’t only benefit the communities in which ACG does business, but also the organization’s stockholders and members in the long run.
Despite Namer’s embracement of new technologies in his bid to make a lean and efficient operation, he is wary not to go too far. ‘Technology helps us become more efficient and productive but our business still has a lot of art versus exactly science,’ announces Namer. ‘The reason that the dot-com firms didn’t succeed is that they were excellent at the science end but they didn’t understand anything about the art of buying and selling product. They believed that was the straightforward part but it seemed to be the most difficult.’
Namer makes sure his ACG team understands that purchasing and selling products is the real business of their company, while everything else simply augments that facet of it. ‘If you do not have the right product in the right place at the right time you can forget about everything else,’ he says. ‘All the satellites in the world aren’t going to help you.’
no matter how much online business is moved in the future, Namer still sees the future of business. ‘People are still going to need to go out and have that social exchange,’ he asserts. To that end, ACG focuses all its energies – and technologies – on making that experience the best it can be.