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Blogs

Posts covering best practices, trends, and insights.

Leveraging Technology & The Cloud

Historically, it is easy to see how technology has been adopted and how it has fundamentally changed a lot of key business practices around us. From the first commercial use of technology in an 1890 United States census (Source) to the mass adoption of Steve Job’s iPhone, technology has always pushed the limits of what is considered possible and opened our eyes to further opportunities. Today, that same sentiment still exists.

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Battling the pandemic on the Cloud

Running a business is never easy. When dealing with a global health concern, this difficulty rapidly expands and forces many business owners to adapt in order to survive. We have seen many changes made by business owners and have helped many others transition towards a system which allows organizations to become more efficient – even in such trying times.

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Smarter way for non-profit budgeting

A Smarter way for Non-Profit Organizations to Plan and Budget

Let’s face it -- spreadsheets are not automation. They can help with some calculation, but they can cause more headaches than they solve. To achieve organizational goals, you need financial budgeting and planning that’s effective, collaborative, and strategic, but many organizations don’t have the solution to work that way; instead, they’re trapped by time-consuming, error-prone, unsecured spreadsheets. The general rule is that if you have been using a spreadsheet for more than a year there is a 100% chance that there is an error in it somewhere.  So why do so many organizations continue to use them? Maybe it’s time to look at real budgeting and planning tools that are easy-to-use, powerful, and built for smaller businesses and organizations.

Imagine a budgeting world where you have control; where everyone works on the same current version; and where all changes are tracked. Think about the time savings that could be realized with collaboration and secure access to detailed information by all managers and department heads involved in the planning process. Imagine a dashboard that gives you all the critical information you need at a glance.

These systems are available.  They’re not that complicated, and they can easily pay for themselves within one budgeting cycle. Say goodbye to outdated and dangerous spreadsheet budgets and plans and move to a smarter way to budget. Freeing ourselves and our managers from the time-consuming tasks associated with spreadsheet budgets to focus on the more important strategic planning and management decisions may be the smartest decision we make.

Look at some of the options available and decide for yourself it they are a smarter way to budget:

Sage Non-Profit Financials/Budgets Click Here

Sage Intacct Budgeting and Planning Click Here

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Strategic Leadership Association – What I learn every retreat

I have been attending the SLA (Strategic Leadership Association) retreats for years now.  Each one has given me some new tools and techniques to better my business. The topics are always something useful to the business world but not why I attend.  I attend because of the wealth of knowledge in the room at each retreat.  The room is filled with business owners and managers that have a combined knowledge far greater than anything I could have imagined.  Being able to hear how they have improved their businesses, what has worked, what hasn’t worked and where they plan to get to in the future and how they will get there has been immeasurable in terms of value.

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Eliminate the Paper Chase

How many hours do we all spend looking for documents that we desperately need? How many countless dollars have we wasted on administration maintaining paper-based document systems? Document Management technology can solve many of these problems and save significant administration costs. Paperless office might seem difficult and a time-consuming task to move over to electronic format; the reality is that the value paperless provides in terms of time and cost savings far outweighs the initial costs and implementation time associated with changing procedures.

For construction businesses, you would gain control over your project documents with an easy way to store, retrieve, and route documents electronically throughout your business. You can automate your project routing and approval workflow processes to the correct individuals to improve communications on all jobs. Think of a document system where you can access all your project documents anytime, anywhere; including contracts, certificates of insurance, drawings, invoices and more. Think of the time and energy that you will be saving.

All businesses have documents, the way they store and retrieve these documents can be the difference between dominating their industry or falling short on customer service and ultimately letting work walk out the door. These same document management systems can link to your all your accounting transactions, such as purchasing and sales. You can manage invoices and other critical documents with efficiency and confidence.

We may not be able to completely get away from paper, but it is in our best interest to reduce the paper as much as possible. Both economically and environmentally.

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Commitment goes a long way

Real commitment to a project goes a long way to ensuring that a project is completed on time, on budget and to be considered a success. As stated by Zig Ziglar “Most people are about as committed as a, Kamikaze pilot on his 29th mission”.  So why is commitment such a problem. The short answer is that we all tend to sometimes be a little lazy. We don’t want to put in the effort that is required to successfully complete the tasks on time.

We were working with a non-profit customer recently that truly wanted to improve their business practices and related procedures and processes. They had carefully selected a Human resource/payroll software to handle the defined requirements. They started on the project conversion with the drive to finally solve this major organizational issue. Then things started to get difficult. The regular day to day problems started get in the way. The started to lose focus on what they were trying to achieve. The result was that, a year later and they are still working on a planned 3-month project.

Change is easy, but transitioning is difficult. If we are not committed to a project’s success it will likely never be completed. We will be transitioning for a long time, which can create even more chaos in are organizations. When the going gets tough we all sometimes take the path of least resistance and not complete the difficult tasks that need to be completed and the task/project at hand will ultimately fail.

Therefore, if you are not committed, don’t bother to start a project, it will end up badly.

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Stop Thinking and Just Do It!

Change is difficult. We all understand this. The main problem is that change for everyone is inevitable. The problem is that some businesses think that they are immune to change. They think they can simply keep doing things the old way.

I have been involved in many business discussions with owners, managers and controllers; where I know they can greatly benefit by modernizing their management systems and processes. Based on the requirements and from listening to the business owners and management it is clear that they have a areas that can be improved; so clear that we guarantee the value and solution in many cases. However, they are not always convinced and want to continue to handle things the same way as before. “They want to think about it”. These businesses wanted their new system to perform and look like their existing system because “that’s what they know” and are completely unwilling to embrace any aspect of “changing” their system.  The question is why? What was the point of going through all the stress and inconvenience of an upgrade if you aren’t interested in making your business more streamlined and improving the procedures and processes? The current versions of Sage or any software for that matter have way more functionality and flexibility than their predecessors. It is an evolving tool that changes as requirements, technology and people change.

So, our advice for these businesses and organizations is to continue to use their existing systems until ready to make a change. Ultimately, it is like any type of change, you must be ready for it and want it otherwise you will resist transitioning and it will ultimately fail.

Our best advice sometimes is the stop thinking and just do it. Inaction is not a solution.

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How Employee Engagement Drives New Business Leads

Studies have repeatedly shown that businesses that create an engaged workforce are more profitable, resilient, and able to cultivate growth. It is, therefore, surprising that so many organizations fail to provide the conditions necessary to promote growth through employee engagement. If your company is not exceeding your expectations, here's how employee engagement drives new business leads.

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