Most of you may remember me going to work for an internet company called How2.com. We were How2.com when we were in the business of serving the needs of end consumers (called a "business-to-consumer" or B2C business model, like Wal-mart or Sonic or McDonalds). If someone goes to the store, or shops on the internet, to purchase something, that was the person we served. Our idea was to provide step-by-step instructions on "how-to" do things. If a customer needed to know how to upgrade their computer, it was our job to tell them "how-to" do it. We used multimedia videos and MP3 (to learn more about MP3s go to AudioGalaxy) audio files to detail what our customer needed to do to get what they wanted done, done. Do you see the pattern here? We showed customers "how-to" everything, hence our company's name How2.com.
We are a relatively young company. We were founded in 1998 as a spin-off from Citidel Technologies, Inc., a new-company incubator. Citidel provides funding for new companies and grooms them in preparation for an Initial Public Offering (IPO) to sell stock shares on the New York Stock Exchange. As time went by, we bought other companies that has similar plans, but weren't really making it. We bought 2LineMedia, Inc and Forward Co. to name two. However, it became very clear early on that this was a market that was already saturated with thousands of other companies competing for the same dollar spent. Instead of spending countless marketing man-hours and millions of dollars trying to recruit our competition's customers, we simply decided to bow-out gracefully from that market. As we evolved, our business model changed to one providing services not to end consumers, but one providing services to other businesses who in-turn provide services to their customers. This is called a "business-to-business or B2B business model. Because these changes happened in a very short period of time, we decided to cancel our IPO that we had scheduled for the 1st quarter, 2000 and we re-wrote our business plan to reflect our new practices. Another result of our evolution is our new name. Parago, Inc.
Parago is a Greek word meaning "behind the scenes". It also has a Latin meaning, "stealth". In a word, Parago reflects what our position is in providing services to our newly defined customers; other businesses. Now we are dedicated to making the nation's businesses serve their customers better. I'll give you a short example:
Bill = Customer.
Bill goes to Staples to buy a new printer.
Bill's choice for a new printer is currently on special carrying a manufacturer's rebate of $50.
Bill buys new printer.
Bill completes the rebate form and mails it in with his receipt and proof-of-purchase to a Staples Rebate Center address.
It just so happens that the mailing address for the Staples Rebate Center is us, Parago. We provide Staples with a world-class rebate center. We provide the work, we provide the website on our servers, we process the rebate, we send out the rebate check, MAYBE (I'll explain in a second).
Bill gets an e-mail letting him know that we have received his rebate request. This e-mail also points him to a Staples website (which we maintain) that allows him to check on the status of his rebate.
Bill decides to check out the status of his rebate.
Bill logins to the Staples website and is now faced with a decision. He can choose to have his rebate check sent to him or apply his $50 on the purchase of $70 worth of ink for his new printer (what I meant by maybe, earlier). This is known as an "up-sell".
If Bill selects to have his check mailed, we cut the check and mail it to him.
Otherwise, Bill gets a substantial discount on ink and he is happy.
We get a small fee for processing the rebate regardless what Bill decides. However, if Bill decides to go forth with the ink purchase, we get a much larger comission!! We are not really in the rebate processing business. We would rather "up-sell" Bill and collect a far greater dollar amount.
That's a good example of only one of the services we provide other businesses.
We also maintain databases (currently over 2 terabytes of raw data: 1024 bytes = 1 megabyte: 1024 megabytes = 1 gigabyte: 1024 gigabytes = 1 terabyte: 1024 terabytes = 1 petabyte: 1024 petabyes = 1 exabyte, in other words a lot of data!!!) on all of our clients' customers and, as another service, sell them a complete set of tools that allows them to "mine" this data from our data warehouse.
You may be familiar with GE's warranty program. We manage that program as a service to GE.
There are several other services that we provide, but these examples are enough.
I hope this has allowed you to realize what Parago does as a company providing B2B services to other businesses.