Rustic Canyon

Through the platform, merchants and business owners can share their expertise on a topic, city or region in the online space. Unlike the MerchantCircle Answers platform, which answers very specific questions from consumers, the LCS platform gives merchants more room to write about topics, businesses or places.

"Companies like Demand Media and Associated Content have proven that creating targeted content at scale meets a market need. Where these companies typically focus on niche topic articles that appeal to consumers across the country, MerchantCircle is focused on creating hyper-local content generation that connects nearby consumers to the local business community," said Andy Halliday, Vice President and General Manager of LCS.

Where content hubs such as Demand Media offer general advice on where to hike in California, for example, the LCS platform would tell consumers about the hiking trails in Redwood Forest and written by a local hiking guide. After two months in the space, the LCS platform has seen more than 40,000 pieces of copy created by 150 contributors. The content created includes place descriptions, destination information and information about businesses in a specific area.

"We're confident we can engage merchants to promote their own specialties and towns using this new system and further evolve our network into a dynamic publishing vehicle for business owners to expose their local and professional experience," said Ben Smith IV, CEO and co-found of MerchantCircle.

Hyperlocal business directory MerchantCircle is getting into the content game today with the launch of a “Local Content Studio.” Merchant Circle, which has been steadily growing, is a business directory for merchants in smaller towns and currently lists 1.3 million small businesses. MerchantCircle has local business members in 95% of the 24,600 U.S. cities and towns with populations over 200.

The Local Content Studio aims to bring bring short-format information and articles that focus on the long tail of consumer local interest. The idea behind the studio is to create in-depth local content designed to connect customers with merchants. And MerchantCircle is encouraging business owners on its site to contribute the content. A typical submission would focus on “the best fishing tips for Five Lake, in Talkeetna, Alaska,” written by a local bait shop owner.

Similar to AOL’s local content factory Patch, writer or local merchants can submit content to be reviewed for approval or corrections, and published to local and topical “Expert Pages” on MerchantCircle. The studio was soft-launched in May and have already seen over 28,000 city descriptions and nearly 12,000 accompanying local photosets. It’s unclear how MerchantCircle is paying contributors (the assumption is according to page views) but the company claims that some writers have earned as much as $700 in one week.

It looks like MerchantCircle has been looking to other startups and companies for inspiration on how to drive more traffic to the platform. Most recently, the company launched a Mayorshipfeature, which is a take on Foursquare’s network. And clearly, MerchantCircle is adopting a content model similar to Demand Media or Patch. But the content play could work to the company’s favor. According to Compete, MerchantCircle’s traffic has increased since May to 8 million unique visitors in July. And MerchantCircle may be looking to increase traffic as it possible preps for an IPO in the coming year.

Gates Corporation, manufacturer of industrial and automotive products, systems and components, has selected InSync’s iApp Builder to build and run an asset monitoring application for improving product and process visibility.

The machine-to-machine, Web-based application leverages RFID, GPS, handhelds and sensors to collect data that can be used to enhance operational efficiencies and assure product integrity and availability. The iApp Builder features device configuration, data filtering, alert and status notifications, and real time data visualization, all of which enable users to configure processes such as check-in/check-out, shipping and receiving and real time location plotting based on specific business rules.

Immediately after implementing Leads360's sales lead management software, Residential Finance Corporation has attained an 80 percent increase on Internet sales and a 100 percent increase within six months after implementation.

To tailor its lead distribution functionality based on the skill set of its agents, RFC employed Leads360's cutting-edge technology. RFC was also recognized in the industry as the Sales Department of the Year, having won the 2009 Stevie Award.

Founded in 1997, RFC, specializes in FHA mortgage refinance, and has multiple regional offices serving 29 states. It employs 120 highly-trained home loan officers and offers refinancing borrowers the security and great rates of government-insured home mortgage loans and works with borrowers to help them find the right home mortgage loan options to meet their unique needs.

RFC, in order to keep up with the changing mortgage industry and newfound demands placed upon it, takes great care to continually re-evaluate its processes to ensure its agents are well-trained, efficient and reactive to customers' needs. In this process it utilizes Leads360’s lead management software, which is designed to manage and streamline the sales process and make mortgage professionals more successful.

To maximize origination volumes in a controlled and manageable way, Leads360 provides an environment for lenders. Leads360offers solutions specifically designed to address the needs of the mortgage industry, with which Leads360 has been working since 2004.

Leads360, being a valued partner and trusted resource for more than five years, provides RFC with lead management software to easily track and manage the high volume of leads they receive on a regular basis. To optimize its lead distribution functionality achieve this goal, RFC has worked closely with Leads360.

RFC, to put into place a skills-based lead distribution system in early 2009, overhauled their lead distribution and lead management processes. Loan officers, prior to the overhaul, were assigned leads irrespective of ability and owned their leads for life. After the overhaul, loan officers with higher conversion ratios received higher quality and a greater quantity of leads. Owing to this, agents were driven to maximize contacts and retain leads based on time-bound rules designed to shorten the sales cycle and capitalize on motivated consumers. This resulted in an immediate 80 percent increase in conversion rates for Internet leads and in February, 26 percent of RFC's sales came from aged leads with two or more prior owners.

According to Jessica Manna, chief marketing officer and vice president of RFC, "Lead management is treated like any other marketing process -- optimized for continuous improvement to maximize the return on investment of our marketing spend. Our two top priorities are exceptional customer service and maximizing marketing return on investment -- both are directly impacted by the design, measurement and control of the lead management process."

Adds Manna, "Sales teams implementing a lead management solution like Leads360's should not just look at the solution as a technology implementation. This is business process management. In short, focus on how to leverage technology to solve loan officers' problems enabling them to reach new levels of success. The technology behind the software supports a business objective, but the bottom line is that sales managers have to see a return for their agents' time."

There are tremendous opportunities for mortgage companies that are well-prepared and able to positively differentiate themselves from the competition, amidst the current uncertainty in the mortgage industry.

To be present in the market, it is crucial for mortgage agents to be highly efficient, customer service-focused and to react quickly to opportunities that arise.

"As a software provider, it's important that the solution we provide is customizable and flexible to meet the needs of our customers," Jeff Solomon, Leads360 co-founder and senior vice president of product and marketing, said. "Residential Finance is a perfect example of how lead management software can be implemented in a business with great success."

In related news, in an effort to streamline the sales process and make independent insurance agents more successful, Leads360, the industry leader in sales lead management software, has partnered with Allied Strategy's SEMCAT quoting solution.

How does a Depression-era skyscraper go green? For the Empire State Building, which is in the middle of $550 million renovation that includes about $100 million in energy-efficient upgrades, all 6,514 windows must be replaced. And that’s no easy task.

As The Journal’s Anton Troianovski reports, the greening of the iconic 79-year-old tower has become a platform for Anthony Malkin, the real-estate scion who runs the building, to criticize as insufficient popular programs for assessing the environmental sustainability of buildings. If the world follows the U.S. lead on energy use, he told the audience at a real-estate panel earlier this summer, “We’re all going to die and we’ll go to war along the way.”

For the Empire State Building’s windows, Malkin brought in Serious Materials to handle a pane-by-pane upgrade. The Silicon Valley-based building materials company is transforming the old, inefficient windows into “super-insulating” units, a sort of glass sandwich that combines the existing panes with a mixture of inert gases and film. The finished product is a window anywhere from 250% to 400% more efficient than the windows they replace, according to the company.

“Dirty little secret: double-pane windows aren’t all that efficient,” says Serious Materials CEO Kevin Surace.

The replacement windows, which use what Surace calls a “suspended film system,” break up the convection current between the inside and outside of a building. That means less heat sneaks in through the windows on hot days when the air-conditioning is running, and warm air from inside has a harder time leaking out when it’s cold outside.

The team of workers tasked with the window upgrade spend their days removing, cleaning and re-fabricating the building’s 12-year-old double-pane windows. The process, which began in March and is expected to run until October, is projected to reduce solar heat gain by more than half and save $400,000 each year in energy costs.

The window work is being done on site, in an office-turned-workshop on the Empire State Building’s fifth floor. Malkin estimates that keeping the process in-house saves $2,300 per window. The Serious Materials workspace buzzes between 7 a.m. and 2 a.m., processing 75 windows per day in a space roughly the size of a Manhattan apartment. The room is so snug that engineers for the project had to shrink some of their equipment to fit in the space.

Keeping the workshop on site ensures the windows are out of their frames for just about 20 hours before the upgraded window is ready. The process is designed to keep waste at a minimum: just 4% of the building’s existing windows are being discarded, and only the gasket surrounding the original windows winds up in the trash.

Workers remove the windows from office spaces at night and bring them downstairs to the workshop. Once there, the windows are removed from their frames and peeled apart like Oreo cookies before being cleaned. The first cleaning is manual, using razor blades and pumices, followed by a wash with a chemical solution and finally water.

The deconstructed windows are then fitted with new steel spacers, treated with a metallized film and baked flat in an oven at 205 degrees. The windows are then sealed with a mixture of Kyrpton and Argon gas. Finally, the upgraded windows are put back — with the help of careful but firm malleting — into their original aluminum frames.

The on-site re-use and refabrication of the Empire State Building’s windows is unprecedented on a project of this size. But Paul Rode, the project executive from Johnson Controls Inc. who is overseeing the retrofit, believes it could become a popular model in the industry. “I’m never waiting for product. If a problem ever comes up, we don’t have to call someplace that’s 500 miles away,” he says. “Logistically, that’s just what you want in the construction business.”