Robert Brodo

Robert Brodo is co-founder of Advantexe. He has more than 20 years of training and business simulation experience.
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Recent Posts

What Killed Customer Service? A Business Acumen Perspective

By Robert Brodo | Apr 28, 2022 8:05:49 AM

If you have started to get reacclimated to what you thought was the “normal world” before the COVID pandemic, you are in for many surprises. The new normal is not the old normal. Things are very different and many of the things you took for granted, like basic customer service, are mere ghosts of themselves.

One of the first places you will find things very different is airports. During the past several weeks, as I’ve been flying again to visit with clients and to deliver the live portions of our blended business simulation-centric learning solutions, the lack of customer service in the ticket lines, the restrooms, and the restaurants is astounding. This week alone I tried to eat dinner at a higher-end (not fast food) airport restaurant only to find it impossible. The first time I had to wait almost 40 minutes and my meal never came. The second time it took more than 45 minutes and I had to have my salad packed as a to-go meal.

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3 Secrets to Understanding Your Own Company’s Earnings Calls

By Robert Brodo | Apr 22, 2022 7:59:35 AM

Its earnings call time again! One of my favorite times of a new quarter where executives share the results of their previous quarter and talk about the business outlooks for the rest of the year and beyond.

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Dealing with Virtual Business Conflicts

By Robert Brodo | Apr 12, 2022 7:55:33 AM

When “it” happened, nobody really knew what to do. The playbook for doing business virtually during a global pandemic hadn’t been invented yet. As I think back to those early days of May, June, and July of 2020, it was surreal. Virtual meetings started to expand around the clock, the work accelerated as we all realized we had so much more time in a day thanks to no commutes and no travel. And the best part? People were so nice! There was an incredible sense of unity and purpose. The virus was after us all and we all came together to figure things out and keep the business world going. Some industries obviously had it a lot harder than others in terms of exposure and the closer you were to the actual supply chain of basics like food, water, and healthcare the more difficult it was. We at Advantexe had an interesting view working with clients across the global supply chain and despite the hardships, most people were still very nice.

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Year 3 of Virtual Learning: 5 Things We’ve Learned

By Robert Brodo | Apr 5, 2022 7:50:04 AM

On the 2nd anniversary of “the great disruption”, I thought it would be interesting to take a moment to reflect on what we have learned and where we are going in year three of the shift to virtual learning.

It was two years ago this week that everything changed. I was in Arizona having just completed what was to be the last in-person business simulation-based training program for quite some time wondering if we would get home before they shut down all commercial flights. By the following week, all the in-person training sessions we had scheduled started to convert to virtual. For us, the conversion was flawless as we had started to build all of our assets for virtual delivery more than 2 years prior to the pandemic. Since those first few months, a lot has changed, and the industry has evolved tremendously. Here is one person’s perspective of the 5 things we have learned about virtual learning over the last 2 years:

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What You Need to Know about Omnichannel Marketing

By Robert Brodo | Mar 22, 2022 7:53:03 AM

I recently delivered a virtual Business Acumen training program to a great group of mid-level leaders at a technology company who were focused on improving their understanding of how their company makes money. About half the group came from non-commercial roles and they were given the opportunity to learn about business by running a simulated business. In the simulation experience, small teams take over a digital case study that comes to life and makes decisions in all areas across the enterprise. When it came time to making the Marketing decisions, the group, especially the non-commercial folks, really struggled with our updated-for-2022-and beyond decision and output set. More specifically, the concept of Omnichannel Marketing was difficult to understand, so I developed some content to share insights and foundational knowledge about what is happening in Marketing and Omnichannel Marketing.

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