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In its initial business model, Iron Mountain focused on providing safe, secure storage of electronic records inside a large cave. This was a requirement of many auditing firms for their accounting clients. With lots of space in the cave, it was natural that Iron Mountain would eventually offer paper storage. Discovering that many national firms wanted to work with one storage company for all their sites, Iron Mountain bought up operations everywhere. The breakthrough it sought, however, was to become the first national operator in the United States.
Iron Mountain realized that it was not enough to be a national supplier. The company also had to improve its coverage of the United States so that all of a company's storage needs could be served. The company primarily used acquisitions to accomplish this, often making 18-20 purchases a year of local and regional storage companies. This consolidation reached a new level in 2000 when Iron Mountain purchased Pierce Leahy, one of the company's largest competitors for paper storage.
But large companies also do business around the world these days. Recognizing that trend, Iron Mountain expanded its acquisition program in 1999 to move towards providing a worldwide capability. Europe and Latin America were the initial focus of this program. By the end of 2000, the company was clearly the world's leader in records and information management services.
In this business, customer turnover seldom occurs. The average account lasts for 50 years. As a result, Iron Mountain is building a fine reputation for its brand with customers that enables the company to add new services. These services build on its knowledge of how the customer uses storage and information, and also serves to make accounts and acquisitions more profitable.
All employees within Iron Mountain are given gain-sharing incentives reflecting both the performance of their unit and the entire company. This stake in the company's overall success may have helped encourage service innovation in support of the company's business model.
As examples of these new services, the company is working on ways to ensure that digital records can be read and used when they are retrieved from storage. Iron Mountain will also do confidential shredding and disposal of outdated paper records in its secure sites. Its consulting services are always adding new ways for customers to reduce records cost while increasing the integrity of those records.
As you can see the company's success built on its initial breakthrough to provide much more fundamental forms of added value for its customers through going beyond records storage to helping customers gain low-cost access to their histories.
Copyright 2008 Donald W. Mitchell, All Rights Reserved
Donald Mitchell is chairman of Mitchell and Company, a strategy and financial consulting firm in Weston, MA. He is coauthor of seven books including Adventures of an Optimist, The 2,000 Percent Solution, and The Ultimate Competitive Advantage. You can find free tips for accomplishing 20 times more by registering at:
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