Just a quick tidbit with a profound quote all professionals should consider:
“The natural state of communication is misunderstanding.”
The quote is from Larry Wilson and the hat tip goes to Kevin Stirtz, who has more context on AllBusiness.com.
Epicor has a great new white paper out on the changing trends in professional services. This affects not only how we work but how we market to professional service firms. Not surprisingly, technology is a huge driving force in this change.
Register to download the free white paper through IDG Connect.
With the new year here, one resolution every small business person should keep is keeping track of your mileage. Wherever you go, if it’s for your business, you can get a deduction on those miles you travel. A simple way to organize would be to keep a spare checkbook register in the car. When you start your engine, hit the trip odometer button on your dashboard, then when you get back home record the destination, purpose, and miles in the register. At the end of the year, you’ll have an accurate record of where you’ve been, and how much you should deduct from your taxes.
As a side note, for those of us who have been bad about tracking mileage this past year, go on MapQuest and lookup the mileage from your office to places you go regularly. Then using your calendar and credit card receipts, you can piece together many of your regular business trips. Put those numbers in a spreadsheet and give it to your accountant.
Working from a home office can be one of life’s great joys. It can also be a big pain in the neck. One of my favorite small business blogs, 10-Second Tips, had a great post yesterday recommending that you take one day a month to clean and organize your home office. The post also links to other articles on home office organization and mistakes that home office businesses can make.
Flat Creek is not just an outsourcing vendor, but an integrated operating partner, managing your back office and helping you keep track of all your vendor relationships. Often outsourcing gets wrapped up in the offshore debate between IBM and Dell and… well, seems like it has nothing to do with small businesses. To the contrary, this article on AllBusiness.com points out the benefits of outsourcing for small business. Not to spoil the surprise, but the benefits include:
These are all good reasons to outsource some of your business operations, but ultimately it’s about giving you more control over your company and giving you more time to do what it is you really want to do. To our clients, thank you for making us part of your vision. To readers who aren’t clients, let’s talk today about how your company can move forward with a solution from Flat Creek Management.
There are lots of good reasons to work for a small company instead of a large corporation, and one of the top has to be added flexibility. But how do you demonstrate that flexibility when talking to a sought-after recruit? One way may be to rethink how you offer paid benefits.
The status quo primarily puts benefits in two buckets: vacation time and sick time. This can encourage employees to take less days off, but often pushes employees to fake all kinds of illness when they need a personal day.
Why not put all of their days off into one bucket of "paid leave" then leave it to your employees to responsibly use them? But you may say "We can’t trust our employees to manage those extra days." Well, in that case you may have deeper issues to address…
The Triangle Business Journal details how some Raleigh-area companies are offering "a paid time-off plan" and it seems to be working. If you would like to learn more about paid time-off (PTO) plans, just let us know.
Small businesses struggle every day to keep up with large corporate competitors, especially in terms of hiring good talent. KPMG has launched a new program that may be relatively easy for smaller firms to add to their employee package – paid leave for volunteer activities. While this shouldn’t take the place of company-wide volunteer programs, encouraging employees to get involved in the community is a terrific way to boost employee morale, as well as appeal to top job prospects. While you may not be able to keep pace in terms of cash compensation, creatively thinking about your overall benefits package can be a deal closer for altruistic professionals.
Companies who have engaged in offshoring love that they can now keep programmers crunching out code around the clock, but the consequences are starting to wear through, as reported in this article from the Houston Chronicle. Can you imagine how hard it would be to basically shift an entire project over to a whole new team every 12 hours? According to this article, domestic IT staff have felt the impact in the form of “midnight teleconferences, 6 a.m. video meetings and the annoying ‘pling’ of instant messages and twittering cell phones all night long.” Stuff like this leaves even a 50-hour work week in the dust, resulting in hard and fast burnout for employees.
Of course, if this cycle continues, as domestic employees get burned out faster, then the labor pool shrinks, and companies feel compelled to push even more jobs overseas.
As part of our services, Flat Creek evaluates and purchases equipment for our clients. They rely on us to select quality products that will stand up to anything they can throw at it. What good is a $1,200 color laser printer if the output isn’t quality?
But selecting the right product isn’t rocket science. It really just takes some time – and that’s something very few of our clients have. But if you do have the time, here are some great resources to help you evaluate office technology products:
PC World – This page has a list of lists where they have evaluated computers, computer accessories, and home entertainment components. While the ranking system can be misleading, it’s nice to see what professionals think about a product before you go to Sams Club or Costco to buy it.
CNet – Similar to PC World, CNet provides professional reviews of products and gives a ranking or “Editor’s Choice” award to the best in class. Their site is more user-friendly than PC World, plus you get the added bonus of user reviews, which gives a more diversified perspective on your purchase decision.
Amazon – The traditional online bookseller has always made user feedback a centerpiece of its business model, and fortunately this has stayed true as they expanded to other product lines, such as electronics. While an Amazon.com product review is rare, the extensive user reviews can be very insightful.
Hopefully these sites will help you make better product decisions just as they have worked for us. But even if you decide on a product based on these reviews, there are still a lot of unanswered questions. How will it fit with what you already have? When you start putting pieces together, will they work? What’s the best way to buy and setup several units for a whole office? How long does it take to set up?
Well, in that case, I’d hope you’ll just contact us.
PC World has a nice round-up of inkjet and laser multifunction printers for personal/home office needs. These multifunctions can be a great workhorse as they combine several functions: printer, scanner, copier, and fax. As they saying goes, they can do all these things in one unit, but they can’t do them all well. For those who demand quality, I would suggest buying a separate scanner and printer, then using your PC’s modem to send faxes.
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