Posted on

Growth During Downturns

One of the toughest challenges any business faces is cash flow.  That’s why capital ventures exist, as do loans from banks for solid business plans.

Many business owners will tell you when the chips are down its time to expand!  Ask anyone in real estate from the person just starting out to Donald Trump and they will tell you “when there’s blood in the streets, buy real estate.”

What if you don’t have cash on hand? Have you ever heard of “Gorilla Marketing?”   Remember a few years ago in Boston?  This very type of marketing caused a bad stir, closed down Boston Harbor half a day, all for a little cartoon show.  This happened for the wrong reasons, but it incidentally gave millions of dollars of airtime for what I imagine was a few thousand dollars.

I don’t agree with the scare that campaign inadvertently caused.  However, the point is get creative!  What can you do to expand your company’s profile in a seemingly falling market?  If it’s slow maybe you could streamline processes while you have the time?  Network and make new contacts?  Cold call more people, work older leads?

These are a few suggestions that may not all apply.  But the important idea is to do something to improve your business during slow periods.  Even if it’s a tiny thing that doesn’t cost physical money, it may give you that one percent edge you need on the competition.  We should never stop growing as people in life and business, even in downturns.

 

–Warren

Posted on

Define: Project Milestone

Project Milestone: A marker in time, usually indicating a the completion of a project task.

 

Project milestones offer a place in time to stop and analyze your progress.  Have you completed the tasks you had planned?  Is your project on track?

Project milestones are normally project tasks with zero-duration work.  That is to say, no work is expected for such a task, except to stop and monitor your current progress.  They often display in a Gantt chart with a diamond shape to indicate that stopping point.

 


Milestone task from Standard Time

 

–ray

Posted on

Special Features for Special Customers

Our company develops a line of products.  We sell the same off-the-shelf design to many customers.  They all essentially get the same thing: a downloadable product with a certain set of features.  But there is always somebody that needs something a little different.  That’s when they become “special.”

Developing special features for a single customer can pose special challenges to an off-the-shelf product.  This post discusses three of those challenges.

My biggest concern is punishing 99% of the customers with a feature that only 1% will use.  Suppose you add a new feature to the product that 1% of your “special” customers will use.  The other 99% may not understand it.  That’s a bad thing.  They’ll think they need to understand it, and will spend time studying it, only to learn that it does not apply.  My advice: make sure that doesn’t happen.  Bury it where only the most adventurous will find it.

The next concern is maintenance.  If you create a new feature for one customer, guess what…  You’ll have to make sure it stays working forever.  It will cost you money as long as you maintain it.  Make sure you get that money up-front, or in maintenance payments along the way.

Have you given any thought to the effect your “special” features have on the rest of the product?  In other words, will these one-off features break something else.  The more complex a product is, the more likely collateral damage will occur.

The upshot is that special features cost more money than you might think.  But you have to do them to gain new customers and satify existing ones.  It’s all part of the game.  Just make sure you are profitable doing it.

 

–newshirt

Posted on

How To: Use Master Projects

This post will discuss the simplicity of using master projects in MS Project.  The image below shows a master project with two subprojects under it.  Three MS Project MPP files are required to create the project below.  The master project file is independant of the individual subproject files.  Follow the steps below to create a master project with subprojects.  Notice the green icons next to Sub1 and Sub2.  They indicate the sub-files included in the main master mpp file.

 


Master project and two subprojects

 

To create a master project in MS Project:

  1. Create a new MS Project file named Sub1.mpp (see the example above)
  2. Add some tasks
  3. Create another mpp file named Sub2.cpp
  4. Add some tasks to it
  5. Create a third mpp file to act as the master project
  6. Click in the first row of the master project
  7. Choose Insert, Project…
  8. Choose Sub1.mpp
  9. Repeat steps 6 – 8 for the second subproject (the results should be similar to the image above)

 

–ray

Posted on

Define: Resource Utilization

Resource Utilization: Percentage of hours actually worked, when compared with possible working hours.

 

Formulas:
    Utilization = ActualWork / TotalHours
    EffectiveRate = ActualAmount / TotalHours

 

Standard Time® contains a resource utilization report that looks similar the to image below.  Notice the ‘Scheduled Hours’ value, and the ‘Actual Hours’ under it.  These number are used in the formula above to arrive at the ‘Utilization Percentage’ of 103.8%.  This person obviously worked an extra 1.5 hours.

The effective billing rate is related to these numbers as well.  In this case, the person worked on some high-value projects at caused his effective billing rate to be higher than normal.  That’s a good thing!

 

 

–ray

Posted on

The Vendor is Always Wrong!

We’ve all heard the saying, “the customer is always right.”  So when a customer and vendor disagree, it implies the vendor is always wrong.  I realize this is a customer service driven idea meant to teach us to take care of our customers.

However, I have seen companies blame vendors all too often, without examining their own shortcomings.  This is an epidemic in our culture, it’s always someone else’s fault and no one wants to be accountable!

Just this week I had an opportunity to do business with a major U.S. company.  A company most everyone has heard of but will remain nameless.  To my surprise I lost their business at the last moment.  In fact, one of the VP’s had stated just days before, “I am ready to cut you a check tomorrow.”  The deal was done, right?  Well, not exactly…after a lot of meetings and numerous discussions met with many delays.  I was told that we (the vendor) were missing a key component.  What’s ironic is that I did countless demo’s and was assured that the deal was done.  The missing feature was never mentioned.  Then bam, it’s over!

We may have been able to accommodate this last minute need, but we’ll never know! We will continue to do business and press forward and I will examine what I could have done differently. 

How can a major company have a year and a half of meetings, discussions, and reach the end of a path only to find out that they didn’t really know what they wanted and then simply brush it off as a vendor problem?  It always hurts to lose business, but the vendor isn’t always be wrong.

–Warren

Posted on

Fortune Favors the Brave

Something in Bill Gate’s interview has been hanging with me (see quote below).  I suppose he always says this, whether they are making risky bets or not.  And I suppose Microsoft can make risky bets all the time.  They can afford to.

We’re making sure we take some risky bets.

 

What’s hanging with me is the effect that ricky moves have on small companies.  The first thing to understand is that risk produces reward, just like the Roman poet Virgil said in 19 BC.  “Fortune favors the brave.”  That’s nice to know.  Its a special promise, just for the brave.  Not for the weak and fearful.

But that fortune can take years to realize.  What do you do in the meantime?  After all, you don’t just get brave on isolated occasions, and magically watch the fortunes roll in.  You must stay brave all the time.  So that’s the second thing you should know.  Staying brave is harder than it looks – a lot less glamorous than one might imagine.  And it’s boring.

Yes, boring.  You slog along through thick and thin, excersing your braveness along the way.  Nobody is watching.  Nobody applauding.  You just fight for your vision, and hope you were right.  Only time will tell.

But how do you inject bravado into your project team?  How do you energize them to fight when everyone else says give up?  The answer is simple: be a bright light in a dark world.  People will naturally follow.  No coersion is necessary, just a strong, clear vision.

 

–ray

Posted on

Telecommuting: Got Motivation?

Over half (51%) of CIOs and top leaders dislike telecommuting.  See the CIO Insight article below.  If I were asked, I’d favor it… but only under certain circumstances.

http://blogs.cioinsight.com/parallax_view/content/workplace/most_employers_resist_telecommuting_1.html

 

I’ve telecommuted for the past 15 years, and it has worked great for me.  My next-door neighbor, Dean, is an IT manager, and he works from home three days a week.  With a 100-mile RT commute, that’s no surprise.  Personally, I wouldn’t work fifty miles from my work unless they paid me a lot of money!

But telecommuting doesn’t work for everybody.  Unfortunately, a lot of people suffer from a lack of self-motivation.  I personally don’t, except at about 4 PM on Friday afternoons.  Working from home can be a lonely proposition, especially if your family is away, or if you have no family.  What keeps the motor running?  Why work?  You have to be personally vested in your project team’s success.  You have to love it so much you’ll split rails to get your work done.  In our affluent society, that’s not normally the case.

Another problem: project teams can’t easily meet.  Yes, there’s telephone, email, and GotoMeeting, but are you using those tools?  Does your team meet regularly?  And if so, are you just a laptop screen on a conference room table?  Where’s the group dynamic?

I favor telecommuting when there are solid, measureable heads-down project goals, or when employees are financially vested in the project.

 

–ray

Posted on

Build vs. Buy

Every company needs specialty tools to make their company run – little things to help make things easier.  For example, a cabinet shop might need custom-built jigs.  An auto mechanic may build a few of his own tools for jobs he performs frequently.  High-tech companies certainly build plenty of in-house programs to manage information technology – databases, data entry, customer records, etc.

The question I’m posing is this: when is it right to build those custom tools in-house, or when should you go out and buy a suitable tool instead?  For instance, should an auto mechanic build his own 500 piece wrench set, or go down to Sears and buy them?  Should a tech company build a time tracking product from scratch, or license something like Standard Time®?

Since I’ve personally worked in consulting for a number of years (in another life), I’ve seen it all.  I’ve seen companies build products that were available off-the-shelf for 1/100th of the cost.  And, I’ve seen people shoehorn freeware code and products into commercial use.  Both were mistakes.

I tend to say that companies should only build products that are much more expensive to buy.  In other words, don’t try to write your own compiler – Microsoft does that just fine.  Another reason to build is when you have exotic business needs.  One last reason might be if you have time on your hands.  If you’re not making money serving customers, maybe you’ll have time to write and maintain a few necessary tools.  But that’s a dangerous position to be in.

In IT, we ignore such advice because we know we can build everything.  But I suppose the mechanic with a little metal-working and welding experience does the same thing.  🙂

What tools have you built, and regretted it?  Post a comment and let me know!

 

–ray

Posted on

Fear or Fearless?

We’ve all heard the adage, “Afraid of change”.  It’s preached throughought the business world and even in our personal lives.  We are constantly told to step outside of our comfort zones, embrace change…don’t be afraid!  It is great advice that everyone has faced at some point. 

So why is it that as soon as the media starts telling us how terrible the economy is, we freeze up with fear?  Even in uncertain times we must press forward and get past our fear.  Yet it seems totally acceptable to use the economy as a reason to remain static.  This is bogus.  I agree that we must scrutinize our expenditures and evaluate new ideas, but we should do that in good and bad times.  What frustrates and kills businesses is doing nothing!

If you have an idea to save your company money and improve revenue, why let fear stand in the way?  During good and bad times we must always be prepared to step out and embrace change.  I can honestly say that I’ve had my wins and losses with fear.  However, it always comes down to a simple choice that we make…be controlled by fear or choose to be fearless.  I’d like to hear what you think? Are you driven by fear, or are you fearless?

–Warren