Worcester Business Journal

www.wbjournal.com February 1, 2016 • Worcester Business Journal 9 WORCESTER • WEST YARMOUTH • FRAMINGHAM • MILFORD Accounting and Tax Services | Business Consulting Services | Business Transition / Exit Planning Financial Services and Retirement Planning It's Tough to See ings Clearly ese Days Knowledge, experience, and expertise to help you see more clearly. S&G's best practice business solutions provide greater profitability today and greater business value tomorrow. Call Ronald Masiello at 508-757-3311 to set up a no obligation meeting. Services Delivered with Fanatical Customer Focus... Guaranteed! (508) 757-3311 • www.sgllp.com Learning the digital economy, the Girl Scout way Learning about business Last year, scouts in the GSCWM council were the first in-person beta testers of Digital Cookie. The council is one of more than 50 nationwide offering Digital Cookie –- Eastern Massachusetts is not one of them. In its pilot year, online sales account- ed for just 5 percent of GSCWM's overall cookie sales, Rowan said, but it allowed girls to sell to places they otherwise wouldn't have been able to. "What's fun is looking at a map and seeing all of the states that girls in Central and Western Massachusetts have sold cookies in because of the digi- tal program," Rowan said. "Of course, you see tons of Florida [because of grandparents], but you also hit most of the other states." During this cookie season, which goes until March, Rowan said she hopes anywhere between 600-1,000 of the council's 7,000 girls will set up online stores. It typically takes two to five business days for online shoppers to receive their cookies, depending on where they live, she said. Digital Cookie has been useful for Maria Matys, a sophomore at Quaboag Regional Middle High School in Warren, largely because it gives her a way to keep track of the 2,016 cookie boxes she plans to sell this year. Matys, a board member at GSCWM and 10-year Girl Scout veteran, got to test out Digital Cookie during its pilot phase last year and was one of the first to check out the 2.0 version. "It's a good start for learning how to manage stuff. They made it really sim- ple," Matys said. "It's a lot more efficient, and I have more time for offline sales." Online safety Digital Cookie isn't just a selling plat- form. It also has informational videos about Internet safety and etiquette, with the goal of teaching girls how to conduct themselves online. The all-inclusive nature of the portal represents the challenge of introducing children to the Internet, Tucker said. "The reasons the Girl Scouts have to keep these sites within a walled garden is that as well as it [is] making it easy for children to find good things, the digital environment also makes it easy for them to find out about things which are less desirable," she said. The website does give girls a lot of independence, but parents are heavily involved in the process, Rowan said. Children under 13 years old have to use a parent or guardian's email address for the website, and kids over 13 have to get parental approval for everything they put on their pages. Troop leaders and council members also have access to the girls' sites. As an extra safety precaution, GSCWM also opted out of allowing girls to deliver purchases made online in per- son, Rowan said. "Typically, girls are sending out emails saying, 'Hey, fantastic news, you can buy cookies online' to friends and family, but sometimes an email can get forwarded to someone a girl doesn't know. We wanted to avoid situations where strang- er can order from a girl," she said. But learning how to navigate the digi- tal economy has made the safety precau- tious worthwhile. Matys said selling cookies has taught her a lot about money management and sales and having an easy online ordering portal will allow her to focus on in-per- son, offline sales, something she'll have to do to reach her hefty goal. Digital Cookie allows girls to enter their offline sales into the portal -- it even reminds them to do so. "I need all the sales I can get to reach my goal," Matys said. n >> Continued from Page 7 On top of online sales, Digital Cookie gives the Girl Scouts the chance to teach about Internet safety. P H O T O / C O U R T E S Y

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