The Cerium Group is looking forward to working with Karen Flaugher Sat Feb 6 @ the Upper Valley Mall providing a free T-shirt for every $20 donated to rebuild the “House of Hope Orphanage” in Haiti. We believe the T-Shirts, “Kids helping Kids” sends a valuable message of “thanks” to the young people in our community – reaching out to the young people in Haiti. Thanks for letting us be a part of this free community concert to watch local children perform.  Tracy Dunsdon and Lynette Amato will be volunteering … come by to see them !

This has been a really cool year for us, in addition to being nominated for the Wittenberg Entrepeneurial Business Award we have also been nominated for the Greater Springfield Chamber of Commerce Small Business of the Year for 2010!

We have some awesome competition, including Littleton & Rue Funeral Home, Springboard Group and Gillam Lawncare & Landscaping.

The Small Business of the Year award will be presented at the Chamber’s Annual Meeting on February 25th, along with awards for Business of the Year and Minority Owned Business of the Year.

Thanks again to all of our customers and vendors as this recognition would not be possible without all of you!

I am often asked, because I have gotten to a little over 1200 followers on Twitter (@ceriumgroup if interested), how we use Twitter…and social media in general.

First, I have to give credit to David Zak, Vice President of Economic Development at the Greater Springfield Chamber of Commerce, for much of what drives our philosophy on using social media for our business.  He has been and remains a bit of a pioneer in our community on using these types of communication mediums.

We seek to accomplish a few primary things through social media:

1.  Be generous – promote things our customers want people to be aware of or significant development or happenings with them.

2.  Deliver value – provide useful content about the use of promotional products, printing and apparel or marketing in general.

3.  Keep people up to date – distribute the blog or links to our Elements email about new developments, Kiosk updates, award nominations, staff happenings or anything else happening at Cerium.

4.  Get personal – mix in who we are as people to allow you to get to know us on a deeper level.

Using these 4 main objectives, we have developed an editorial calendar that dictates we will distribute “Elements from The Cerium Group” monthly to deliver offers to our customers as well as a weekly blog entry and ongoing updates based on what’s going on to our accounts on Twitter, Facebook etc.

Our market is changing, getting younger every day and it will continue to change from here to eternity.  Most folks are transitioning from getting their news, content on topics that interest them etc. from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIN and the like.  As a result of this, when you develop content, you need to distribute it into those places because there are groups of people that prefer one over the other.  You need to be sure you have the content where people are looking.

While our plan on the use of these communication platforms will continue to evolve, it will always be derived out of our foundational desire to deliver value to our customers.

The Cerium Group is excited and honored to be nominated for the 13^th annual Entrepreneurial Business Award (EBA) through the Wittenburg Center for Applied Management (WittCAM). On Friday January 15^th, we were informed we are 1 of 7 finalist for this award.

The Entrepreneurial Business Award (EBA) recognizes and encourages the entrepreneurial spirit and practices of local-area companies by recognizing businesses that have implemented innovative ideas to better serve their customers, enhance the skills of their employees, improve their competitiveness or benefit the community. This award is a student directed and managed project through the WittCAM program. We are hopeful to be awarded this honor by WittCAM and will keep you all updated as the process unfolds.

Here is what we are currently working on to bring you even better service:

CARS – Central A/R System

While CARS is primarily an internal management system, it will bring benefits to our clients, such as:

• Provide a single point of invoicing from our various services (Kiosk, Mobius, and in the future myCerium)
• Access to account history and pay any invoice online
• Ability to turn off receipt of paper invoices via US Mail (or disable emailed invoices)
• Allow us to provide additional services that require automatic rebilling, such as monthly hosting fees
• Enable us to bring eCommerce to myCerium

CARS is currently in active development and expected to be operational on April 5, 2010.

myCerium

You may have already visited myCerium and noticed our “excuse our dust” message. We continue to develop the service, adding new features and tweaking the look and code to provide you with the best system available for searching and quoting of promotional products. We have a number of things planned, and much like Kiosk, myCerium will always be in a continuous state of development.

The features we will be adding include:

• eCommerce for select promotional products
• EZ Reorders for most products previously purchased, even those that were not ordered online
• On Demand apparel
• Special Offers including a Deal of the Week

Kiosk Virtual Stores

Kiosk Stores just received another significant upgrade, but we are not content to just stop there. We have more ideas than we have time to accomplish them all, but that does not mean we will not try.

Coming to Kiosk over the next year:

• A new look and feel. It has been a few years since Kiosk has had a visual refresh, and we think it is about time to provide at least another option. We have begun this by developing a new store template, 2010, that we will complete and refine over the next year. Our goal is primarily to enhance ease of use and navigation while making it look great too.
• Product catalog upgrades. Including more ways to browse, search, and refine products to find exactly what you are looking for.
• Additional product offerings for printing and promotional products, and a method for store owners to add product selections to their store.
• A revised, streamlined checkout process including quick checkout.

Feel free to add your comments, tell us what you would like to see added to these services.

Have a great day,

Scott Winkle
VP Technology

This week we released version 4.9 of Kiosk Virtual Stores. As always, updates to all stores are free and automatic.

The new features include:

• Proofing – we will begin sending proofs and requiring approvals for custom print jobs such as business cards.
• Imprint options on print and promotional products – to allow for different logo options on identical product, rather than having 1 catalog item for each logo.
• Additional user level – Administrations can now specify users as ‘User Level 2′ and provide them with access to restricted products in the catalog.
• Blank Items – Users will soon be able to purchase select items blank, such as scrub pants, work pants, waist aprons, etc. We need to add the items to our database, but the capability is now there.
• Payment history per invoice for billing admins – Billing admins may now see a per-invoice payment history in the store billing control panel. This data does not exist for all invoices, especially those prior to 2009, so some invoices may be lacking this information.
• Added a view cart button to print/promo items.
• Added ability to title the url for a client website to something other than the kiosk store title.
• Size Guide should no longer appear on stores without apparel.

Fixes/Improvements include:

• In some cases, carts would not be saved to the user upon login, thus being lost when the user returned. This has been fixed.
• Product Sales Counts (admin feature) – in a few cases, counts were including demo orders. This has been fixed.
• Internal code changes/corrections as part of an ongoing effort to the kiosk user experience.

Today The Cerium Group launches a promotional products kiosk for Communicare Health Services, to allow the owners/managers, a user friendly way to purchase CHS products.

CommuniCare Health Services owns/manages numerous specialty care facilities, rehabilitation centers and assisted living communities throughout Ohio, Missouri, Pennsylvania and Maryland. Since 1984, CommuniCare Health Services has provided superior, comprehensive management services for the development and management of adult living communities. Learn more about the CommuniCare Health Services Family at:  http://www.communicarehealth.com/index.htm

The Cerium Group, LLC has activated an on line store to manage promotional products for
all CHS facilities.

1) The CommuniCare on line store provides centralized management of-
• identity in use
• budgets / expenditures by locations or individuals
• promotional items in use by each location
• ideas / concepts for marketing and HR managers
• rapid order placement

2) Benefits of this system are-
• consistency of identity by the entire organization
• precise expenditure control
• On Demand reports by location or individual
• more effective flow of ideas / information between marketing and HR people
• significant time efficiencies

Visit the CommuniCare stores at: http://communicaregear.com/

Really excited about our “new” new site, we feel this site provides a much better framework for us to grow into as well a superior structure for our soon to be launched MyCerium system.

Check out the new site at:  http://home.theceriumgroup.com/

Or see the screen shot of our new home page below:

The Cerium Group has partnered with Cisco & Co., http://www.ciscoco.com/index.php, by launching a Kiosk store that provides the distribution channel for their healthcare promotions.  Cisco & Co., founded by Patty Cisco, MBA, helps healthcare leaders and organizations maximize their goals by creatively connecting with their customers, implementing proven methods to drive revenue and build their business.

Cisco & Co. offers an extensive selection of strategies to help you creatively connect with your customer. We can help you share your story by using clear, compelling and convincing messages through multiple strategies. This creates the consistency you need to build your business and increase your revenue stream.

• Marketing & Sales Strategies
  • Do you want to grow your “potential” customer interest base with creative connection strategies?
• Brand Image Strategies
  • Are you ready to gain a competitive edge by creating an experiential brand difference?
• Coaching & Training
  • Is developing exceptional leaders and front-line staff important to your organization to remain vibrant, effective and competitive?
• Speaking Engagements
  • Are you seeking an engaging and motivational speaker who presents topics relevant to the challenges healthcare leaders face in today’s ever changing competitive environment?

We are proud to be in the 4th week of our 12 Weeks of Christmas promotion!  The topics for each week are below:

Week 1 -Holiday (Halloween & Christmas)

Week 2 – Calendars

Week 3 – Clocks & Watches

Week 4 – Tools, Knives & Flashlights

Week 5 – Padfolios, Journals & Jotters

Week 6 – Technology

Week 7 – Writing Instruments

Week 8 – Drinkware

Week 9 – Health & Personal Care

Week 10 – Apparel

Week 11 – Home & Kitchen / Food Gifts

Week 12 – RUSH Items!

This promotion is designed to help our customers consider the entire spectrum of gift options available to them for their customers and/or employees.  We are so pleased to be able to offer quality brands such as Cutter & Buck, Wenger/Swiss Army, High Sierra, NIKE, Adidas, Skagen and many many more.