What Now Henry V?

by Paul Negus, Managing Director, The Microfilm Shop

In my last article, "Agincourt Revisited", I set out the reasons why we could all allow ourselves a little celebration. Well, we have done that (I hope you did too) and when the red wine mist had finally cleared I got to thinking of what on earth do we do next? It is all very well and righteous winning the moral victory but life must go on and we still need to eat.

What did Henry V do after Agincourt for example?

Well, his immediate response was to return to England and have a party (we've done that bit). After that he quickly consolidated his position of strength, he made sure his family and friends were in a prosperous position and he started planning a campaign of conquest. Now that seems like the sort of plan we could all profit from.

What are our strengths?

The enemy (our lack of conviction in the future of our product - you know, the "M" word!) has been soundly defeated. What we thought was our enemy (the new digital world) is really our best ally. Our army has been battle hardened, retrained in modern warfare and the weak, the weary, the plain unlucky and the disbelievers have gone to the wall or just disappeared. Better still, we have all stopped fighting each other (well nearly and the more prosperous our industry gets the less this needs to happen).

So, how do we consolidate this new wonderful situation?

At times like this I usually resort to the five most logical words in the English language - Why?, What?, When?, Who? and How?

Why? Simple question and answer - because if we do so our business, staff and families will become more prosperous. After the last 5 years you may even get a smile from your bank manager.

What? Microfilm, microfilm, microfilm. The Imaging market (a $225 billion per year market) needs it. The warehouses full of documents need it. All those good old sales and purchase invoices need it, for all the perfectly valid (now more so than ever) reasons we have stopped telling the market about - security, space, definite legal admissibility, technological obsolescence, migration costs, migration errors, total costs etc.

When? Right now! It can be a 9 month selling cycle for a new system. If you want new business next spring then now is the time to start pushing.

Who? You, you and you. If you, as the manager of your business or sales team don't do it, then nobody else will, except for the competition that is!

How? Selling, marketing, literature, advertising, talking to prospects. There is no other way and it isn't easy. The Microfilm Shop in conjunction with The Micrographics Marketplace, the DAA and other relevant organisations intend to promote microfilm very hard over the coming months. Shows, exhibitions, seminars, mailshots, web sites and joint ventures are all being factored into our marketing programme.

So the future depends on ourselves. We know that microfilm is the answer for long term digital and paper storage. All we have to do is work extremely hard on the sales basics and talk about microfilm again.

Henry V did this and within a few years he'd conquered most of Normandy and Northern France.

So come on, grab your flying pointy sticks and have some fun. The framework for what you need to do has already been done and is sitting on http://www.genusit.com/data.htm - take
15 minutes to read what the future of microfilm is and then adapt it to suit yours or your customers requirements.