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A New Year and New Approach to Evaluating Your Tech

February 13, 2013

We’re only a month into 2013 and if you’ve yet to make a resolution for your small business, consider assessing your technology. Evaluating how technology investments are serving your business requires a fair amount of thought and energy, but the pay-off is worth it since the process sheds light on exactly which changes must be made to increase business success.

When assessing your technology to determine how well it supports your business objectives, try structuring the process by analyzing the following three technology priorities:

Productivity and collaboration – Technology should help employees get things done, share information and work well as a team. Ask employees if they notice any patterns of inefficiency in workflow and their daily work tasks. Doing a thorough audit, will help you identify duplicate processes or tasks. Consider whether the programs they use integrate well with respect to internal and external communications. Also, observe how employees communicate with one another, which tools they use most frequently and if they spend unnecessary time determining if their colleagues are available. You may come to find that enhanced productivity solutions that work across various devices like tablets, PCs and smartphones will help your employees work better and smarter. (more…)

Bad Days, Family Wisdom, and Entrepreneurship

February 13, 2013

One of the joys of fatherhood is discovering the insights and blunt wisdom of children’s books. My eleven-year-old daughter, Truitte Rose, used to have a favorite book titled “Alexander and the Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Day” by Judith Viorst. I couldn’t read it to her enough. It chronicles a day in a boy’s life where nothing goes right.

I too had a bad day last week at my company, Corporate Rain. I hit my chair dealing with client crises, fighting a cold, losing a valued associate, dealing with a minor credit card fraud, and reading a dense legal contract. On the side of my desk there was a Mt. Everest of overdue sales calls I needed to get to. And this was before noon. I was frustrated. I was angry. I was having a terrible, horrible, no good very bad day.

As an entrepreneur, I’ve learned that a day like this can be dangerous, not because of the circumstantially difficult day, but because of my internal reaction to it. (more…)