The explosion of mobile devices have been a god-send to many small businesses. Employees acn stay in touch when working off site. Telecommuting gets a boost leading to space savings for many firms. Improving efficiency serving clients can readily turn into a sale you may have missed or an upsell simply due to having more info available on the fly.
What this boom of technology lacks in wiring to workstations is often made up in strings for small business owners. Employees may use the devices in ways you did not intend. (Are they keeping connected or Angry Birds leaders?) There also can be a slew of headaches trying to find someone to manage all connectvity so these items actually interface with your current network the first time and then every time there after. Any one who's ever learned of a Windows patch or iPhone software upgrade 1/2 thru a last minute synch knows the things are constantly receiving updates. Multiply that by 2-3 devices per user (smartphone, tablet and/or laptop) and the number of users and you see the time drain.
There is some excellent advice over on PCWorld.com for mobile strategies. They cover some great policy guidelines and plain language buying guides for hardware AND apps. Check it out!
For more small business ideas and articles, visit the OED Community.
Fostering the entrepreneurial spirit!
Showing posts with label operations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label operations. Show all posts
Monday, October 3, 2011
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Leveraging your natural talents for success.
John Walters of 1-2-1 Business Consulting urges small business owners to leverage their natural talents, and to more effectively leverage the talents of others for greater success.
As a small business owner you face many challenges including managing the “if I don’t do it, it won’t get done” syndrome.
Of course it’s true that as a small business owner you have to take on many diverse tasks in order to become successful, at least in the early stages, from Marketing, Order taking, Production, Invoicing, Accounting and more.
However, I want to challenge you to think a little more about whether you do in fact have to do everything for yourself. Is there a better way? Can you leverage your skills to be more effective?
Let’s say that you encounter a minor plumbing problem in your home. Could you tackle it? Perhaps, but the plumber armed with the appropriate tools can do the job much more efficiently, and so it is with many tasks.
You may be saying, so what, I can’t afford to engage specialists every time I need a minor repair or a small job performing within the home or the business. Well, guess what, neither can the other small business owners that you come in to contact with every day.
The thing is that we are all blessed with different skills, meaning that we perform some tasks better than others, and we all have things to do in the business that we would prefer not to do, therein lies the opportunity.
My message is that you should look for potential opportunities to work together with other small businesses in order to maximize your respective talents for mutual benefit.
Let’s suppose that you are a natural at Marketing, but you loathe dealing with the administration aspects of the business. Perhaps you know another business owner who really struggles with marketing, but is much more comfortable with bookkeeping etc. Is there an opportunity to use your respective talents to help each other out and thereby become more productive?
Yes, I’m referring to a form of bartering, which has been around forever, and can be an excellent way to leverage your skills in order to be more effective. And, so the next time you are thinking “if I don’t do it, it won’t get done, I want you to stop and ask yourself:
Implementing the above will certainly help to improve your business. Should you need additional help you should contact “121″. We have the tools, proven methodologies and experience and we are there to help you.
Find more scheduling and efficiency strategies in OED's Online Community, and via special events located at OEDGlobal.org.
As a small business owner you face many challenges including managing the “if I don’t do it, it won’t get done” syndrome.
Of course it’s true that as a small business owner you have to take on many diverse tasks in order to become successful, at least in the early stages, from Marketing, Order taking, Production, Invoicing, Accounting and more.
However, I want to challenge you to think a little more about whether you do in fact have to do everything for yourself. Is there a better way? Can you leverage your skills to be more effective?
Let’s say that you encounter a minor plumbing problem in your home. Could you tackle it? Perhaps, but the plumber armed with the appropriate tools can do the job much more efficiently, and so it is with many tasks.
You may be saying, so what, I can’t afford to engage specialists every time I need a minor repair or a small job performing within the home or the business. Well, guess what, neither can the other small business owners that you come in to contact with every day.
The thing is that we are all blessed with different skills, meaning that we perform some tasks better than others, and we all have things to do in the business that we would prefer not to do, therein lies the opportunity.
My message is that you should look for potential opportunities to work together with other small businesses in order to maximize your respective talents for mutual benefit.
Let’s suppose that you are a natural at Marketing, but you loathe dealing with the administration aspects of the business. Perhaps you know another business owner who really struggles with marketing, but is much more comfortable with bookkeeping etc. Is there an opportunity to use your respective talents to help each other out and thereby become more productive?
Yes, I’m referring to a form of bartering, which has been around forever, and can be an excellent way to leverage your skills in order to be more effective. And, so the next time you are thinking “if I don’t do it, it won’t get done, I want you to stop and ask yourself:
- Do I know someone that could perform this task more efficiently?
- Is there something that I could do for them instead?
- Is there an opportunity to barter for mutual benefit?
Implementing the above will certainly help to improve your business. Should you need additional help you should contact “121″. We have the tools, proven methodologies and experience and we are there to help you.
Find more scheduling and efficiency strategies in OED's Online Community, and via special events located at OEDGlobal.org.
Monday, June 13, 2011
Problem solving and the silver bullet
post by John Walters of 1-2-1 Business Consulting
I sometimes come across Small Business Owners who are looking for the one quick fix that will solve all their problems, you know, that elusive magic silver bullet that everyone talks about.
Unfortunately, instant remedies/one size fits all solutions seldom work. Yes, you may paper over the cracks, but often the problem re-emerges later.
Why is that? Well, quite often the quick fixes that we put in place are designed to fix specific problems, and too often the real problem is something that lies undetected at the time we implement the quick fix. In short, we don’t take the necessary care to ensure that we really understood the route cause of the problem before we jump in to try and fix it.
Let’s dig a little deeper and ask yourself the following next time you have a problem:
Good Luck.
Should you require further help please contact “121″. We have experience of designing and implementing tailored solutions that will bring about sustainable improvement. In summary, we care and we are there to help you.
Find more scheduling and efficiency strategies in OED's Online Community, and via special events located at OEDGlobal.org.
I sometimes come across Small Business Owners who are looking for the one quick fix that will solve all their problems, you know, that elusive magic silver bullet that everyone talks about.
Unfortunately, instant remedies/one size fits all solutions seldom work. Yes, you may paper over the cracks, but often the problem re-emerges later.
Why is that? Well, quite often the quick fixes that we put in place are designed to fix specific problems, and too often the real problem is something that lies undetected at the time we implement the quick fix. In short, we don’t take the necessary care to ensure that we really understood the route cause of the problem before we jump in to try and fix it.
Let’s dig a little deeper and ask yourself the following next time you have a problem:
- Do you really understand the problem?
- Should you be doing this task in the fist place? Peter Drucker once said “there is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all”.
- Do you understand the problem? If no, carry out further analysis until you have identified the underlying cause of the problem before you set about trying to fix it.
- Confirm that you really should be doing the task in the first place. Remember what Drucker said.
- Identify potential solutions to fix the problem.
- Evaluate the alternative solutions to find the most appropriate and cost effective solution.
- Implement the solution.
- Monitor the impact of your change to ensure that you realize the result you expected.
- Where necessary take additional measures to bring about lasting, sustainable improvement.
Good Luck.
Should you require further help please contact “121″. We have experience of designing and implementing tailored solutions that will bring about sustainable improvement. In summary, we care and we are there to help you.
Find more scheduling and efficiency strategies in OED's Online Community, and via special events located at OEDGlobal.org.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Scheduling for Success
John Walters of 1-2-1 Business Consulting is back with some great points about the scheduling discipline which is key to success, but often difficult for many entrepreneurs.
Every business and all individuals undertake scheduling in some form. It could range from creating a list of calls to make, things to do, through to more sophisticated demand/capacity planning.
Manufacturing businesses usually schedule: raw material requirements in order to manage the flow of materials to production, production scheduling to manage the flow of work, and shipping & dispatch to ensure that customer orders leave the facility in sufficient time to achieve on-time delivery to the Customer.
The point being that all businesses need to be able to schedule effectively if they are to be successful.
I’m sure that you can appreciate that as the number of variables: products, production orders, customers, and the number of people involved in the scheduling process increases, so does the complexity. It is for this reason that businesses spend considerable time constructing rules around scheduling in order to maximize efficiency and reduce waste.
Think about a company that uses expensive equipment and pigments in their manufacturing process. They want to maximize the available productive time of the equipment and they obviously want to avoid cross contamination (the effect of colors being mixed), and so they take great care as to how they schedule their production orders. It takes far longer for them to clean the machinery when they move from dark to light colors and so they try to schedule orders progressively from Natural to Black and then back to Natural to restart the cycle.
As you can see from the above scheduling requires discipline and order, and so companies develop scheduling guidelines/rules, and often try to automate the process as much as possible. Automation reduces the risk that Mary will interpret and apply the rules in a different way to Nancy, and so variation, a route cause of production inefficiency, is eliminated, but how do you build some flexibility into the schedule to accommodate the changes that will undoubtedly follow?
One technique is to build in a time slot into your schedule, but leave it unallocated and in that way you give yourself some flexibility to handle that last minute rush order that comes from your customer that is notoriously poor at forecasting his own demand. Everybody has at least one of these customers.
Spending some time thinking about your scheduling processes will often lead to significant improvement in your Operations. It can be amazing to see how creative people can get when they are being squeezed on capacity.
Imagine that you have a four Man work crew and that the individual tasks take 2 hours each. The total elapsed time if the jobs are done sequentially is 8 hours, but what if you could cross train the crew and that you could complete all the jobs in parallel, your elapsed time would only be 2 Hrs. Think of the potential impact on your scheduling and capacity.
I hope that you can see that scheduling processes are extremely important to all businesses as they can have a profound effect on results of the business. Take a moment to reflect on how efficient your scheduling processes are and take contact with “121” if you need assistance to evaluate and then improve your scheduling processes. We have the experience and we are there for you.
Find more scheduling and efficiency strategies in OED's Online Community, and via special events located at OEDGlobal.org.
Every business and all individuals undertake scheduling in some form. It could range from creating a list of calls to make, things to do, through to more sophisticated demand/capacity planning.
Manufacturing businesses usually schedule: raw material requirements in order to manage the flow of materials to production, production scheduling to manage the flow of work, and shipping & dispatch to ensure that customer orders leave the facility in sufficient time to achieve on-time delivery to the Customer.
The point being that all businesses need to be able to schedule effectively if they are to be successful.
I’m sure that you can appreciate that as the number of variables: products, production orders, customers, and the number of people involved in the scheduling process increases, so does the complexity. It is for this reason that businesses spend considerable time constructing rules around scheduling in order to maximize efficiency and reduce waste.
Think about a company that uses expensive equipment and pigments in their manufacturing process. They want to maximize the available productive time of the equipment and they obviously want to avoid cross contamination (the effect of colors being mixed), and so they take great care as to how they schedule their production orders. It takes far longer for them to clean the machinery when they move from dark to light colors and so they try to schedule orders progressively from Natural to Black and then back to Natural to restart the cycle.
As you can see from the above scheduling requires discipline and order, and so companies develop scheduling guidelines/rules, and often try to automate the process as much as possible. Automation reduces the risk that Mary will interpret and apply the rules in a different way to Nancy, and so variation, a route cause of production inefficiency, is eliminated, but how do you build some flexibility into the schedule to accommodate the changes that will undoubtedly follow?
One technique is to build in a time slot into your schedule, but leave it unallocated and in that way you give yourself some flexibility to handle that last minute rush order that comes from your customer that is notoriously poor at forecasting his own demand. Everybody has at least one of these customers.
Spending some time thinking about your scheduling processes will often lead to significant improvement in your Operations. It can be amazing to see how creative people can get when they are being squeezed on capacity.
Imagine that you have a four Man work crew and that the individual tasks take 2 hours each. The total elapsed time if the jobs are done sequentially is 8 hours, but what if you could cross train the crew and that you could complete all the jobs in parallel, your elapsed time would only be 2 Hrs. Think of the potential impact on your scheduling and capacity.
I hope that you can see that scheduling processes are extremely important to all businesses as they can have a profound effect on results of the business. Take a moment to reflect on how efficient your scheduling processes are and take contact with “121” if you need assistance to evaluate and then improve your scheduling processes. We have the experience and we are there for you.
Find more scheduling and efficiency strategies in OED's Online Community, and via special events located at OEDGlobal.org.
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