Got my Blackberry on, thumbs engaged
No missed emails at any stage
We’re gonna work around the clock tonite
We’re gonna work and text ’til broad daylight
We’re gonna work work work around the clock tonite (and tomorrow, and tomorrow nite, etc.)

In a previous post I dealt with some obvious consequences of being always connected, but I must admit I hadn’t thought of the issues that this article raises. For some years now the concept of a standard work day / week has been diminishing for knowledge workers, as email, telecommuting and smartphones have respectively entered the arena of workaday tools.

While some (most?) Smartphone addicts reflexively check and respond to emails in real time of their own volition (or addiction), seems that some employers are now making this a condition of employment. This effectively means that you are on duty 24/7 – but as you’re not actually working 24/7, what are your true work hours? And if you’re expected to respond to email outside of work hours, is it then OK to do personal chores during work hours? And if not, why not?

Remember when we actually believed that computers and technology were going to free up our time? Those were the days, my friend.

As an iPhone user who only checks email sporadically when not working at the accounting software company, I’m curious about others.

Are you required to be available 24/7?

And are you addicted to your Smartphone?

However, like most things in life, after a while the novelty wears off. And while detail-oriented people will diligently use the dashboard on a daily basis, it seems (to me) that many executives and business owners do not. After a few weeks, they tend to briefly glance at the dashboard an on infrequent basis, and unless something really jumps out at them when they’re not thinking of something else, not much gets noticed.

I have no statistically sound survey to back this up, just my own observations (about myself as well as others). I’ve arrived at the conclusion that dashboards are not ideal tools for entrepreneurs and many executives – which ironically is the exact audience they target. Perhaps those who report to them will alert them to any specifics they need to know or act upon.

It says here that having bare-bones information and exception reports pushed via email is more effective. I know that approach works well for me (as long as the emails are not predictably repetitive).

Have your dashboards become invisible to you? Or do you actually use them on a daily basis?

“Companies are dilating their business with ERP…”

“ERP is hastily replacing reluctant technologies, whacking almost all small and mid size companies to come out of their shell.”

“Information flow across boundaries experiences least viscosity…”

“The book is perhaps the most basic services by entrepreneurs.”

“If the plant is working stations, a computer and accounting software was done using, it says ‘On-site records.’”

“New songs, these issues are not well understood, including the software and real-life accounts.”

Interestingly, some of the sites on which these gems were located seem to contain a mish-mash of articles, some coherent and well-written, and others apparently contracted out in some alien language.

I hope you enjoyed this brief flow of viscous songs, and trust this post did not whack your company’s shell!

But I digress (actually, I do that quite frequently – it’s a problem. See, there – I just did it again).

Back on topic – having upgraded to Office 2010 a while back, as a typical user I’ve been slow to learn what’s new, other than the very obvious, in-your-face changes. But this upgrade – Outlook specifically – is worth spending some time on, learning about new features and capabilities, because like many of you, I spend a significant chunk of time each day face to face with Outlook. So anything new that saves time or improves my experience in any meaningful way is like striking gold. Well, perhaps silver, but still good.

Thing 1: Quick steps

No, I’m not inviting you to dance. Quick steps are available from the ribbon (new to Outlook, but introduced in Office 2007 for Word, Excel, etc.) and can perform multiple actions with a single click. For example, several times a day I receive emails that I handle this way: I create  a task from the email (using drag and drop), I reply to the email, and I move the email from my Inbox to another folder. I have now created a Quick Step that does all three of these with a single click. This (together with other Quick Steps) is saving me so much time that I can now write blog articles like this one.

Thing 2: People Pane

Not the same thing as people pain, this new email message feature appears both in the reading pane and when you open an email. At the bottom, you have a collapsible additional pane with a number of resources relating to the person who sent the email. These include all emails exchanged, attachments sent and received, and meetings. You can also connect Facebook and LinkedIn accounts to this pane.

This one also saves me a lot of time, whoch (jesting aside) get reinvested in the wholesale distribution software business instead of the “search for emails and attachments” business.

So there you are: 2 things about Outlook 2010 which I like, and would love if Outlook was, in fact, soccer.

Virtually every vendor will tell that you data migration is no problem. And usually that’s true – but frequently only for the vendor. For you, it can be a big problem. Here are 5 tips for planning data migration:

1. Evaluate and understand your existing data

Think about all the types of data you currently have, that you’d need or want in the new system. Consider reports and on-screen inquiries, and both current and historical data. And review the quality of your existing data: do you have a lot of duplicated customer records? Are you satisfied with your existing product codes? How about your chart of accounts? If you want to change anything, now’s the time to do so.

2. Determine what data needs to be electronically migrated

At a minimum, think about customers, vendors, products, bills of materials, sales history, financial history, and of course current transactions – these include unpaid / opening balances and open sales and purchase orders. What about quotes? Leads?

Think also about some of the subsidiary data – for example, an inventory management system may also track things like serail numbers, or lots and their original and remainingh quantities if you’re a food distributor. You don’t want to have to manually re-build that data, do you?

In each case, look at quality and quantity. If you have very poor quality data, you may want to manually clean it before electronically transferring it. And if a particular file is small (example – you only have 25 vendors), then it may make more sense to simply manually key these into the new system instead.

3. Understand when data needs to be migrated

Timing is important. Customers and products for example, can be migrated any time ahead of go-live, with any new additions manually updated (you need a good process for tracking this). Or they could be migrated at go-live (assuming you do a test migration ahead of time to validate). Current / open transactions and balances usually need to be migrated at point of go-live, and so can be the bottleneck (there are ways around this). But for historical data such as sales history, timing is much more flexible – you could import sales history any time after you’re already live on your new system.

4. Clean up your data

Plan on taking responsibility for cleaning up bad or poor data, before turning the data over to the vendor (or the vendor’s import utility). A common example when migrating from certain older or lower-end accounting systems is with customer addresses – where the city and zip / postal code are not stored in a consistent place – but the new system maintains separate fields for these and uses them for reporting, sales taxes, etc. In such a  case, extracting the data into a spreadsheet, and moving those elements to their own columns, is a great idea. Usually the vendor will be able to supply you with a template that can then be imported into the new system.

5. Clearly define who is responsible for which activities

 Some vendors will give you a fixed cost for data migration – but please read the “fine print” on what that excludes. Similarly, some will tell you that you can use their import utility to import your old data without intervention from them. This may be technically true, but you likely do not have the depth of knowledge of their system to understand the implications of the choices you make using the import utility – sadly by the time you find out the consequences of a poor choice, it’s too late.

Others will charge you an hourly rate for data – in this case be very careful to get details of what they propose doing, an agreed upon maximum number of hours, and a process to limit the costs and review progress in advance of any scope creep.

It’s usually best to keep the vendor responsible for providing guidance on data types and formats, and for the actual import process, while taking ownership yourself of the quality of the data. Either dump your data into a spreadsheet yourself, or get the vendor’s assistance in so doing, and use the spreadsheets to review and clean the data.

• The need to maintain personal relationships as part of the customer’s supply chain.
• The need to be able to upsell and cross-sell – which is supposedly easier by phone
• Cost-benefit analysis – it costs too much to implement for too little benefit

Now I’d agree to this extent: if faced with tens of thousands of dollars to implement an e-commerce solution that would reduce my ability to upsell and cross-sell, and not do anything for my bottom line, I’d probably also take a pass. But (with apologies to Bruce Hornsby) that’s not The Way It Is.

If properly implemented, a B2B (business-to-business) e-commerce solution can be a very cost-effective addition to the array of tools you make available to your customers, making it ever easier for them to do business with you. And an increasing number of people in the workforce simply except to be able to do business with you online. And yes, I do mean specifically you. It may also cost a lot less than you think.

Music Distributor D'Addario Canada wins with B2B

 Here’s an example of a company in the music distribution business, and their experience in implementing e-commerce as an add-on to their Inventory Accounting software. Note in particular the paragraphs headed “Benefits” and “Conclusion”. Please also feel free to visit the company’s website.

Bold prediction: within the next 2 – 3 years, if your customers cannot do business with you online, at least some of them will go somewhere else where they can do that.

My Question To You: what’s the obvious flaw in this post?

It seems a similar situation to what we frequently find here in North America. There are very few vertical-focused ERP solutions targeted at small and medium-sized businesses (“SMB”), that provide depth and flexibility on both the logistical and accounting fronts. There are some exceptions, and quite honestly as my expertise is strictly in the field of Wholesale Distribution Software, perhaps there are many exceptions in the manufacturing or professional services arenas.

Here’s what I think tends to happen: the SMB, when looking at software, is typically focused exclusively on improving operational efficiency, because that’s usually the bottleneck, particularly in a growth phase. So little or no emphasis is placed on the financial modules. Of course, this comes back to bite the business owner later on, because no matter how efficient you become operationally, you still need to collect your receivables, pay your vendors (sometimes), and be able to measure and monitor your business performance, profitability, liquidity, etc.

The obvious conclusion is that the SMB should pay attention to that financial accounting functionality as well – but that’s easier sad than done. That’s because many SMBs do not have sufficient qualified or experienced accounting personnel in-house to truly assess prospective vendors.

Question: how can the SMB effectively assess accounting functionality when selecting an ERP solution? Please make your suggestions in the comments section below.

I’ve been in South Africa for over 2 weeks now, and been blown away (in a completely positive way) by just about everything I’ve seen and experienced. Arriving at O. R. Tambo airport in Johannesburg was the perfect start – the most impressive airport arrival experience. The stadia I visited, the spirit, the people, the whole experience – just perfect. To all those doomsayers who predicted disaster, especially those I heard on CFRB talk radio in Toronto, I say time to stand up and apologize – you were just plain wrong.

I’ve also had no problem keeping in close touch with everything at work. High speed Internet was readily available via cellular providers, leaving me no excuse for neglecting this blog for so long – for that I plead the sheer absorbtion of the World Cup experience here in South Africa.

This is the 3rd World Cup I’ve experienced, and it;s by some measure the best in most respects. Here’s an article that sums it up as well as anything else I’ve read. And the vuvuzelas really did add to the experience.

Well done, South Africa!

There’s a new free download for Outlook from Microsoft Office labs – Forgotten Attachment reminder. Once installed, it scans the text of your message when you hit send for references to an attachment, and if it finds such a reference but no attachment it warns you thus:

As my colleague at the accounting software company said, “An excellent way to avoid looking like a dolt!”

You can download it from http://www.officelabs.com/projects/forgottenattachmentdetector/Pages/default.aspx

• your daily backups haven’t always completed successfully
• the weekly offsite backup tapes weren’t taken offsite last week
• the previous week’s offsite tapes are stretched and won’t restore properly
• all the other tapes were left on top of server, and have gone up in smoke

The good news: you can easily re-install the software. The bad news: your data for the last 4 weeks is gone – forever.

Sounds far-fetched? Hardly – the above scenario is a composite of two actual situations faced by customers over the past few years. It is for this reason that, in my opinion, all businesses should at least consider using an online backup service. No matter how good your in-house backup process may be, if you are backing up to on site media you are always vulnerable to human error (or omission), and to media failure.

The use of an appropriate online backup service removes these risks. At a minimum, a robust business-oriented online backup service will provide automated incremental backups of all your key data, once daily or more frequently, and will store redundant copies of your data in different physical locations. The data will ideally be double or triple encrypted to ensure that no-one but you can ever actually use it. And this will usually cost way less than you likely currently pay for insurance against data loss.

Not convinced? You’re not alone, and I’d be really interested to hear your reasoning. Please feel free to post a comment below.