Rolling Up Mystery Shopping: Market Force CEO Karl Maier (Part 7)

Sramana: How have you managed to bring together operations from each acquisition and roll them up into a single entity?

Karl Maier: We have been very happy with the results we have achieved over the past two years by running our business in accordance with our strategy map. We have it on one sheet of paper. The top of that paper has our big, hairy, audacious goal. Below that we have our single common goal, which everybody in the company is focused on for the next six months. Below that we have power strategies.

We use that strategy map to get all 380 employees in the company to understand what it is we are trying to achieve in the long term as well as what we are trying to achieve in the next six months, with very specific measures and metrics. Each employee can look at that and see how he fits in and which aspects of his job make an impact.

We have quarterly town hall meetings where we allow people to share results and see how other groups are doing. We have monthly management team updates on the strategy map. We have weekly commit calls with 15 members of the senior management team where I update them about my process on the three things I said I was going to do the previous week. This has developed collective accountability, and the results have been great.

Sramana: I like roll-ups, and I like that you have chosen a space that has a lot of self-funded entrepreneurs. That should make consolidation and scaling much easier.

Karl Maier: We like that as well. We did not want to go to a space where there was already a lot of venture money. That means a lot of smart people have already look at this and figured out how to make money. We looked for an area that had not been picked over.

Sramana: What role does technology play in the management of your mystery shopper process?

Karl Maier: It plays an enormous roll. We are a technology-enabled company. Everything we do revolves around technology. We recruit independent contractors through technology. We have a portal for them to sign up with a centralized database. Similarly, all of our clients access information via the Web. We have a Web portal for all of our clients via a common platform.

We are making new investments in technology in two areas. First, we are building the next generation reporting and analytical platform. If you look at business intelligence 15 years ago, companies had their internal data in various places. They have now pulled it together to create centers of intelligence. We are building the customer intelligence platform. We want to allow our customers to have one place to consolidate mystery shopping information, audit information, customer satisfaction surveys, and their own same-store sales financial data. We are also looking very hard at social media and mobile devices to see the new ways of collecting data from customers.

Sramana: You certainly have the opportunity to consolidate a lot of American income through this process.

Karl Maier: Absolutely. We pay contractor fees to 45,000 people every month.

Sramana: I have enjoyed your story and look forward to following your company.

This segment is part 7 in the series : Rolling Up Mystery Shopping: Market Force CEO Karl Maier
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