MARSHAK, Ronni T.

PERSONAL:

Married; husband's name David.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Patricia Seybold Group, 210 Commercial St., Boston, MA 02109-3504. E-mail—rmarshak@psgroup.com.

CAREER:

Patricia Seybold Group, Boston, MA, senior vice president and principal consultant/analyst.

WRITINGS:

Electronic Typewriters—Getting Started for Less Than $2,000: A Report Designed for the Boss/Secretary Team, Evaluating Low-Cost Electronic Typewriters, Seybold Publications (Media, PA), 1983.

(With Bernard A. Banet and Judith R. Davis) Data Base Management Systems: The Desk-Top Generation, McGraw-Hill (New York, NY), 1985.

Word Processing Software for the IBM PC, McGraw-Hill (New York, NY), 1985.

(With Patricia B. Seybold and Michael D. Millikin) Integrated Desk-Top Environments: Symphony, Visi On, and DesQ, McGraw-Hill (New York, NY), 1985.

(With Patricia B. Seybold) Customers.com: How to Create a Profitable Business Strategy for the Internet and Beyond, Times Business (New York, NY), 1998.

(With Patricia B. Seybold and Jeffery M. Lewis) The Customer Revolution: How to Thrive When the Customers Are in Control, Crown Business (New York, NY), 2001.

SIDELIGHTS:

Since the mid-1980s Ronni T. Marshak has been working in the technology industry, consulting to businesses on how to integrate and market new technology in order to improve both productivity and customer service. As the information technology world expanded, so did Marshak's scope of interest, from a report on electric typewriters in 1983 to word-processing software in 1985, to navigating the tricky world of Internet commerce in the late '90s. For much of that time Marshak has been associated with frequent coauthor Patricia B. Seybold and her company, Patricia Seybold Group. Marshak wrote the technical guides Word Processing Software for the IBM PC, which Robin Kaplan of Library Journal called "well-written," and cowrote Integrated Desk-Top Environments: Symphony, Visi On, and DesQ with Seybold and Michael D. Millikin. Both titles were part of the Seybold Series on Professional Computing. Marshak is a renowned and much sought-after speaker. She demonstrates to audiences worldwide how leading companies improve revenues, increase profitability and enhance customer loyalty through their e-business strategies.

In 1998, as the "dot.com" revolution was in full swing, Marshak and Seybold published their first mainstream effort, Customers.com: How to Create a Profitable Business Strategy for the Internet and Beyond. The book embraced what is now commonplace: the use of the Internet for both marketing and commerce, as it showed businesses how to wade into the dot.com marketplace while improving sales and profits. Booklist's Nancy Spillman commented on the book's sensible details and noted that the authors "make a good case for blending marketing and electronic-commerce strategies." A Publishers Weekly reviewer found Customers.com to contain "a wealth of information on how to link businesses to the Internet," and noted, "While much of the detail about particular Web sites will be outdated before long, of more lasting value are the lessons regarding insightful marketing, innovations and just good business sense—regardless of medium."

Three years later, on the other side of the dot.com bubble, Marshak and Seybold, along with coauthor Jeffery M. Lewis, followed up Customers.com with The Customer Revolution: How to Thrive When the Customers Are in Control. By 2001, Marshak et al noted, "Thanks to the Internet and to mobile wireless devices … customers are challenging and disrupting the standard practices in virtually every industry." A critic for Publishers Weekly found that "like any true believer, Seybold tends to get carried away," when she suggests that companies' customer relations may soon be assessed by Wall Street investors, but that "her worthwhile central points come through loud and clear, and her arguments could help frame future market debates." In Library Journal Bellinda Wise found, "The author is on target and provides sound, practical business advice; however, the material could have been abbreviated."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, November 1, 1998, David Rouse, review of Customers.com: How to Create a Profitable Business Strategy for the Internet and Beyond; August, 2000, Nancy Spillman, review of Customers.com, p. 473.

Library Journal, June 1, 1985, Robin Kaplan, review of Word Processing Software for the IBM PC, p. 137; April 1, 2001, Bellinda Wise, review of The Customer Revolution: How to Thrive When the Customers Are in Control, p. 112; June 15, 2001, Dale Farris, review of The Customer Revolution, p. 120.

Publishers Weekly, October 12, 1998, review of Customers.com, p. 70; March 5, 2001, review of The Customer Revolution, p. 70.

ONLINE

Patricia Seybold Group,http://www.psgroup.com/ (September 29, 2003), author biography.*