Whirlwind at NAVC!

It was great to see everyone in Orlando last week. NAVC had record attendance this year! Could this be an indication of an improving economy? We hope so.

Update on Astro

We had an overwhelmingly positive response to Astro, our new compliance and loyalty software platform for pet owners. Astro is an innovative web-based platform that enables manufacturers to share marketing programs with veterinary hospitals and clinics, which in turn are offered to pet clients. 

Astro delivers a platform and useful tools for launching marketing programs, tracking and reporting by pet owner, delivering and tracking fulfillment, mitigating fraud, and providing mobile apps for pet owners. 

Questions from you surfaced regarding Astro and the brand MyVet. Astro is the software platform. MyVet is the Astro brand name for the veterinary industry. We have similar Astro products and brands in the works for other industries that we serve. For example, MyPet is the Astro brand name for the pet specialty industry.

Look for more updates from the Astro team coming soon.

Best regards,

Chris Glaser
COO, Focus Technology Group

Salutation to Innovation

Happy New Year and welcome to FTG Insights, our new blog for clients, potential clients, business partners, and friends.

Jimmy Haverstick

It seems like yesterday that Chris Glaser and I sketched out a plan to provide a new business intelligence platform for the animal health industry. A decade later, Focus Technology Group is going strong providing dynamic solutions to real business needs for more than 50 clients in four industries—animal health, pet specialty, agriculture, and healthcare. We are grateful for your business and the opportunity to help you grow!

Innovation. That is why it is fun to work at FTG. We have great people, great ideas, and great clients, and we enjoy creating new tools to solve problems. At FTG we demand innovation from our people and require it for our clients. We will always challenge the status quo, provide new ways to do old things, and present solutions to problems previously unsolved.

To that end, 2012 will be a very exciting year for innovation at FTG. We plan to launch new products like:

• Astro Loyalty, a mobile app loyalty program for pet owners. 
• Geotastic, a GIS data analytics and mapping solution for better business decision-making.

Plus, we will release enhanced versions of current products such as ChannelLink, our versatile marketing automation system for optimizing channel sales performance.

Our success at FTG is measured by your success. As a client of FTG, you can always rely on us for services and solutions that will constantly help you adapt to challenges and elevate your business to new heights.

Please take a moment to read through our blog and see if anything captures your attention. Thank you for your business and we hope to see you at the upcoming trade shows in 2012.

Best regards,

Jimmy Haverstick

CEO, Focus Technology Group

Music City Blogging and Beyond

FTG Insights is a blog published by Focus Technology Group (FTG), an information technology and business intelligence firm based in Nashville, Tenn. Founded in 2001, FTG delivers data-driven technology products and sales and marketing solutions to clients in four industries—animal health, pet specialty, agriculture, and health care.


The mission of FTG Insights is to publish information, news, and content that is relevant to our clients and the markets that we serve. Our goal is to produce a quality blog full of compelling content that is useful, informative, resourceful, thought-provoking, entertaining, and easy to read. Fully integrated with our FTG website, FTG Insights serves as a hub and entry point for access to the company's online content, external communications, and social media.

Blog content for FTG Insights is mostly written by FTG executives in Nashville and Atlanta. Topics include best practices, market observations, data technology, marketing automation, supply chain, data analytics, sales strategy, industry solution, case studies, predictive analytics, cloud-hosted applications, data warehousing, EDI, online product training, industry trends, surveys, lessons learned, and more.

Blog content is delivered in multiple ways via articles, briefs, commentary, analysis, tips, lists, white papers, press releases, industry news, photographs, graphics, videos, slide shows, and polls. As a valued customer of FTG, follow our blog and add to the conversation, intelligence, and stream of content.

FTG By The Numbers

3,000,000 — POS transactions that we process monthly

$5.5 billion — Volume of sales data that we manage annually

25,000 — Product SKUs that we manage and organize

1 terabyte — Amount of data on our secure servers

A Call for Channel Interdependency in Ag

"The "middlemen" (dealers and distributors) can no longer be as independent as they once were. They must become more "interdependent" with their suppliers, working closely with their partners to meet the demands of the growingly sophisticated farm business and provide critical information about customers into the supply chain."

Dr. W. David Downey, Purdue University, Executive Director of Center for Food and Agricultural Business

Published in AgriMarketing. July-August 2011. Article title: "Farm Consolidation Challenges Traditional Distribution"