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E

Electronic mail or e-mail Method of communication whereby an elec-
tronic message is sent to a remote, or not so remote (people sitting at adja-
cent desks have been known to send each other e-mails), location and
received by another user at a specific e-mail address. Internally in many
companies the novelty and convenience of e-mail has led to its use for
numerous non-business communications to the degree that workers,
encouraged by the press and to the delight of consultants are complaining
of “e-mail overload”.

Opt-in e-mail where your customers invite you to keep them up-to-date
with news about products or services on a regular basis is a key feature of
e-commerce. But as the billion dollar industry of e-mail marketing contin-
ues to grow at a massive rate, be sure that you ask the right questions to
assure yourself that “opt-in” really is opt-in and not a meaningless
response to novelty.

Equity The capital invested in a company by its owners. Investment
bankers and venture capitalists buy equity in the business when they
invest the millions that we business owners always think that we need. If
you look briefly at a balance sheet and deduct what a company owes from
what it owns the resulting figure is the owner’s equity. This creates an
imbalance in something that must balance and so the mystery of why
“goodwill” appears as a liability is solved.

F

FAQ (Frequently Asked Question) Lists of frequently asked questions
(and their answers) covering all manner of topics can be found across the
world wide web, allowing the user to search for a query to which somebody
has already found the answer. In marketing off-line as well as online, we
often use (or invent) FAQs as an apparently transparent, unbiased way of
passing information to the customer.

First-to-market advantage The theory that the first supplier in any
market can build and sustain competitive advantage, but only if they are
able to deliver high customer satisfaction rather than pursuing high short-
term profits. But let us add a note of reality about short-term profits and
particularly about early positive cash flow. Investors are becoming increas-
ingly impatient to get a return on their investment. Management is under
increasing pressure to achieve rapid results. Short-term thinking may be
more and more frequently an essential prerequisite to surviving long
enough to enjoy the long term.

Fixed assets Those assets of a business that are held, not for conversion
into cash, but as a semi-permanent resource for enabling the business to

236 Key management questions