Contents:
1. Our Beliefs
1.1 Our Special Strengths
1.2 Ongoing Strength Development
1.3 An Important Challenge
1.4 Our Business Culture
1.5 Products and Services
2. Operating Principles
2.1 Planning Growth
2.2 Product Marketing and Development
2.3 Organization Structure
2.4 Risk Management
2.5 Special Outside Relationships
Our Beliefs
1
VI's business is based on the belief that each client and prospect counts; each person counts; each deed counts; and each contact between a client or a prospect and an employee counts. Each client and prospect is either prospective future business or a prospective loss, depending upon the quality of our products, services and employees.
2
Outstanding Employees are the key to our success. We are committed to attracting, motivating, empowering and retaining a team of exceptionally dedicated, talented employees who have a strong work ethic and results-orientation, who believe in and support our core values, and who reflect the diverse business environments in which we operate. We will offer our employees challenges, opportunities, advancement, competitive compensation and benefits, and personal training and development in an informal, fast-paced, non-bureaucratic environment that is sensitive to work, family and flexible schedule issues. We will provide technologies that enable our employees to continually meet our clients' ever-changing product needs and preferences. We want each employee to feel like an integral part of a team that is making a discernible positive contribution to VI's success. Our goal is to become the clear employer of choice for our current and future employees.
3
We are committed to achieving World Class Digital Aerial Imaging Technology and related products and services levels that exceed our clients' requirements and expectations by providing products and services that enable them to succeed in their businesses. We define service broadly, from initial contact with a prospect, to product quality, to anticipating client needs and preferences, to overall client satisfaction. It requires employees to treat every interaction with a client as an opportunity to enhance that client's perception of VI. We are committed to investing in state-of-the-art technologies to develop, deliver and support our products and services, and advance our World Class Digital Aerial Imaging Technology and related products and services vision. We see World Class Digital Aerial Imaging Technology and related products and services as a journey where, whenever we approach an identified destination, we increase our objectives and raise our goals in order to become even better.
4
VI seeks to achieve and maintain market-share leadership, primarily through internal growth of its core businesses. Internal growth will come from further penetration of our existing markets, extending our market opportunities through broader product offerings, increasing our client retention rates, and continuing our international expansion. Acquisitions and alliances will supplement our internal growth. We will continue to look for entry into new markets that capitalize on and leverage "Our Special Strengths".
5
Success is measured by increasing numbers of extremely satisfied clients, higher client retention rates, broader client relationships, increased market share, higher employee retention rates, and consistent implementation of our values and Corporate Philosophy resulting in ever-increasing revenues, earnings and shareholder value.
6
The Marketplace (Clients, Prospects and Competition) is the ultimate judge of performance. We want to be the market leader (in terms of quality, service, size and earnings) in each market we serve.
7
Our Shareholders expect and deserve growing profits and returns from their investments in VI. We strive to produce consistent earnings growth. We seek to maintain this consistent growth without sacrificing our other important principles.
Our Special Strengths
We have a number of strengths which we capitalize on and leverage to aid our growth, including:
• focusing on a growth industry based on our target to “Geoimage the World Online” by delivering the most economical, fastest, highest data collection capacity, highest quality, modular, scalable, “ultimately ubiquitous”, digital aerial imaging sensor in the industry;
• allied with companies that have a leading market-share position in the industries where our technology and services is leveraged;
• a clearly articulated set of core values and Corporate Philosophy.
Ongoing Strength Development
• Develop a powerful financial position from which to compete.
• Acquire, solid, time-tested "Operating Principles".
• Develop a strong client service orientation.
• Develop a superb direct sales capability.
• Develop a robust, powerful and well-controlled operations, production and communications capabilities.
• Develop a strong desire and commitment to be a World Class Digital Aerial Imaging Technology and related products and services company and an employer of choice; and Our most critical special strength, the key element in our success, is our worldwide team of employees. They share "Our Vision" and help us succeed in the marketplace.
An Important Challenge
Our business team needs to respond to constantly changing client needs, and changes dictated by the marketplace. Past successes do not ensure a successful future. Nothing can be taken for granted. Complacency is a powerful enemy. We must continuously anticipate, and adapt to, changing conditions. We must seize and exploit new market opportunities, and aggressively and consistently seek to implement "Our Vision" 100% of the time.
Our Business Culture
Our core values are the foundation for all our activities. Our ever-evolving culture is guided by our core values, by motivated, results-oriented employees, and by our desire to be a World Class Digital Aerial Imaging Technology and related products and services company and an employer of choice.
We must nurture a culture of ideas, questions, challenges, feedback and prudent risk-taking without the fear of occasional failure.
Learning must become a continuing process. We want on-the-job development of each employee supplemented with suitable training. We recognize the benefits of cross-training to provide additional perspectives and skills. It is important for each employee to participate in self-development and aid in the development of others.
We must maintain an environment for top performers to progress as rapidly as they can effectively. We are a BSC meritocracy where advancement is based on ability. We try to fill most new career opportunities by internal promotion, while also supplementing our environment with external hires.
Involved, knowledgeable, "hands-on" management is a desirable style. Each team leader regularly spends time talking to and visiting clients, prospects and other employees to get first-hand insights from them.
To encourage an open, informal flow of communications, we support an apolitical, candid environment that quickly responds to constructive input. We encourage lateral and vertical communications, both inside and outside of formal reporting relationships. We support an environment where constructive differences of opinion are encouraged and welcome. And in the end, after differing viewpoints have been clearly registered in interactive discussion, we also recognize the need for final decisions with effective communication and implementation.
We ask each employee for a more than usual amount of conscientiousness and flexibility, because World Class Digital Aerial Imaging Technology and related products and services to our clients requires us to accommodate client needs and schedules. We must always do what it takes to suit client convenience because VI is a critical information lifeline to most of our clients. While doing so, we should also try to minimize avoidable inconveniences to our employees and their families.
Employees are expected to respect the rights of fellow employees and others. Our actions must be free from all forms of discrimination, libel, slander or harassment. We are committed to offering each person equal opportunity regardless of age, race, sex, sexual orientation, color, creed, religion, national origin, marital or veteran's status, handicap or disability.
We treat business ethics no differently than personal ethics. The same high standard applies to both. Our commitment to the highest ethical standards is supported by effective enforcement mechanisms, including a company-wide ethics program and an ethics hotline. These ethical standards are more fully articulated in our Code of Corporate Responsibility.
We must continually be evolving to do things better. Each step has been exciting, rewarding, challenging, and a learning experience that we have collectively inherited. It is our goal to continue this exceptional journey to becoming a World Class Digital Aerial Imaging Technology and related products and services company and an employer of choice, taking pride in our excellent products and services and in the exemplary character of our employees.
We thank each of you for your talent, dedication and efforts, and for the superior results that you are helping VI to achieve. Your efforts and contributions make M7VI what it is today and what it will become in the future. It is your continued dedication that will ensure our success.
As a supplement to our Corporate Philosophy, we have evolved a number of operating principles. While they are not cast in stone, we feel that the following principles are critical to our ongoing success.
Products and Services
VI's obligations with respect to its products and services are governed solely by the agreements under which they are provided. For example, if you download software from this Site, use of the software shall be governed by the provisions of the End User License Agreement or other software license agreement that accompanies or is provided with the software. If you obtain a product or service from VI through this Site that is provided without an agreement, that product or service is provided "AS-IS" with no warranties whatsoever, express or implied, and your use of that product or service is at your own risk.
Operating Principles
Planning Growth
Strategic Directions: We are singularly interested in products and marketplaces of substantial potential, where we can be an ever-growing leader and industry standard by offering superior products and services and providing World Class Digital Aerial Imaging Technology and related products and services. We prefer markets where our products and services have significant value-added uses to clients (not mere commodity-like offerings), or where we are well-equipped to outshine competitors so that our success can not be easily emulated. We most favor directions where we have the greatest chance of becoming the market leader; because a casual or small participant can seldom maintain an adequate return on managerial and financial resources.
Innovation - Selectivity and Focus: New ideas and products are exciting. We need a continuing array of new ideas, and must recognize and reward the employees who produce them. At the same time, it takes focus and self-restraint to maintain the discipline of thinking and researching very broadly, while implementing more narrowly. Many organizations tend to pursue more projects than they can effectively handle. We must balance reward and distraction. Nonetheless, we will try more new directions than we need in order to leave room for the inevitable disappointments. And since major new projects or directions are especially difficult and uncertain, we must focus our best employees on these newer opportunities, as full-time champions.
Unless regularly challenged, many organizations tend to allocate resources by inertia and tradition rather than by priorities and results. Resource optimization requires sunsetting lower priority projects to make room for more promising opportunities.
Business Plans: Good plans help maintain consistent growth with fewer surprises. The specific objectives, priorities, strategies and processes in a plan should be initially guided by senior management, and then be directly created in more detail by each manager who must ultimately own responsibility for the results. The planning processes should be interactive and responsive to differing views.
Product Marketing and Development
Continual, high quality, rapid development of new products, internal systems and new technologies is central to maintaining and enhancing our competitiveness. We must create marketing and development environments that induce greater effectiveness and faster time-to-market. We must focus our energies on staying in tune with unmet client needs and proactively addressing them. We must explore the latest innovations so that we continue to be the market leader in all of our businesses. We seek acquisitions and alliances to supplement our internal growth whenever we can effectively telescope time and/or reduce risk in the pursuit of new markets, products, clients and technologies.
Organization Structure
In our business environment, the best people, best decisions, best attitudes and best efficiencies are usually attained through substantial delegation, empowerment and self-sufficiency. We encourage operational decentralization to the fullest practical degree consistent with World Class Digital Aerial Imaging Technology and related products and services, efficiency, and highly automated, standardized systems. While each business unit has the obligation to inform Corporate headquarters of important issues, decisions and problems, each business unit is responsible for making all day-to-day operational and client decisions, consistent with corporate guidelines. Corporate headquarters has the responsibility to be aware of all significant events.
We recognize that certain policies and functions should clearly remain centralized to varying degrees, depending upon the need for uniformity or specialized knowledge. Regardless of location, all functions must cooperate and work together to achieve our common goals. Excess layers of management increase costs and retard communication and responsiveness. We aim to keep working units lean, small and cohesive enough to empower employees and to give them a clear sense of their mission, their accomplishments and their accountability.
Risk Management
Risk vs. Reward: We want to pursue substantial, continuing, long-term revenue growth while preserving, to the fullest degree reasonable, VI's goal to have consistent earnings growth. This earnings consistency is worth protecting because it enhances our financial standing and predictability and is an important component of shareholder value.
Evolution vs. Revolution: In VI's businesses, most improvement is best attained in manageable increments by evolutionary changes, to ensure continued World Class Digital Aerial Imaging Technology and related products and services to clients as change is implemented. Conversely big successes in new directions, or urgent quantum gains with existing clients, will occasionally necessitate revolutionary strategic leaps. We favor the incremental approach where large numbers of decentralized activities and clients are involved, but only to a degree that does not unduly sacrifice our competitive position. We must continually challenge our activities and methods so that we aggressively upgrade our technologies, products, services and processes, and minimize the need for a catch-up revolution.
Role Before We Roll: Since many new ventures will fail, we will generally try to minimize the cost of failure to a manageable level by not acting on an unnecessarily large scale too soon. Changes that involve many clients and employees are particularly difficult and error-prone. As we change processes and automate labor, we must minimize the risk of a poor transition. We should role-model new products and approaches before we roll them out to many locations, clients or employees, without forfeiting windows of opportunity that require fast time-to-market.
Accounting Principles/Financial Controls: VI accounting should always be conservative. Financial statements are much more management tools than accounting documents. They require considerable effort to be accurate, timely and concise, with clear displays of trends and comparisons that help managers understand, control and manage the risks and opportunities surrounding their businesses.
Special Outside Relationships
Business Friends: Many prospects and clients are introduced to VI by third-party recommendations. We must maintain effective and proactive communications and relations with these business friends.
Suppliers: Suppliers who are good business partners are critical to our success. We expect suppliers to earn our continuing relationship, as we must with our clients. We expect the best service and prices that a supplier is offering to any equivalent customer. We, in turn, will fulfill our obligations promptly and deal in a forthright, open manner. We should always have back-up sources.
Community: We appreciate the good fortune that our society has made possible, and acknowledge our appreciation by supporting worthy sectors of our society with both effort and money. Our primary areas of philanthropy and leadership are education, health, the arts and social welfare.
With Sincere Thanks,
Armando Guevara
