Jay Sachetti joined Jeff O’Brien, partner at Husch Blackwell and Dyanne Ross-Hanson, president of Exit Planning Strategies talked about the market for mergers and acquisitions, exit planning opportunities for companies that don’t end up for sale and how companies can maximize their eventual sale price during an early October panel at the first Upsize on Tap event at Summit Brewing Co. in St. Paul.
When the state Legislature passed a law requiring employers to provide paid leave and safe time for employees, Justin Bieganek started hearing differing details from friends, colleagues and peers.
business builder technology
by Tom Salonek
Keeping up with new technology options may seem daunting to busy business owners, but thinking hard about how best to use technology within your organization can yield big returns: Costs are lower, employees are more productive and management is more informed.
Let’s start with your most important asset: people. Using technology to boost their productivity is one of the smartest management moves you can make. Technology should be used to enable them to work wherever they are: the office, home with a sick child, on a plane or at a cabin in northern Minnesota, if need be.
Instead of plunking a computer down on their desks at work and giving them extensions on the company phone system, consider instead providing laptop computers and mobile phones. These technology tools can be used anywhere the employee happens to be and can increase their ability to get work done.
Many companies, still stuck in the “office is a place” mindset, grudgingly give employees a mobile phone and a laptop computer as a supplement to their office equipment. Usually employees have to plead their case before receiving this special privilege.
Or worse, the company keeps a few laptops in inventory for employees to fight over. Not only is this approach demoralizing to workers, but it’s also more expensive because you’re paying for the same equipment twice.
At our company, everyone receives a laptop and mobile phone as standard operating equipment. Internet-based portals give employees access to companywide or project documents from work, home, a client site or wherever they happen to be on a given day.
We frequently load our slide deck into our portal so everyone can see the same visuals at our monthly company meetings. Clients can access these portals, as appropriate, with company-issued security passes.
If you want to bring employees or clients together via conference call, explore www.freeconference.com. It’s reliable and your only cost is a long-distance charge.
Before you go out and buy laptops and mobile phones for all of your people, shop around. We’ve saved thousands of dollars by shopping out our mobile phone contracts, Internet T1 and land lines.
This is a commodity market, but be careful. There are groups who resell and can’t guarantee that you’ll have access to quality time on the network. When in doubt, check it out. It doesn’t take long before you get a theme about a particular vendor.
Getting more from tech
Now let’s talk about getting more life out of your existing technology.
Someone once said the key to anger management is precision: being angry at the right person, at the right time, for the right reason and at the right level of intensity. Good technology management follows these same principles.
Try to match technology tools to employees in the most precise way possible. For example, our developers and programmers receive the most up-to-date and powerful laptops available. It only makes sense since they’re doing highly technical work and need powerful computing tools.
When those laptops are a few years old, they’re no longer cutting edge enough for technical employees but they still have plenty of useful life left for folks handling sales or accounting functions. At that point, we “re-purpose” the older laptops and purchase the latest and greatest new laptops for our developers and programmers. Once the re-purposed laptops have exceeded their useful lifespans in sales or accounting, we either donate them to a nonprofit, sell them on eBay or to employees for home use by their kids. Sometimes we even spiff them up and give them to clients as gifts.
Another way to stretch your tech budget is to identify employees who already have and prefer to use their own personal equipment like a cell phone or laptop. For these folks, it’s more economical to offer them a stipend if they use their own cell phone versus a company-supplied phone.
Is it ever appropriate to spend money on emerging or somewhat untested new technologies? I believe as leaders it’s our job to stay abreast of the latest business trends, such as podcasting and blogging. Both are new ways to get your message to the world, but many people are just starting to learn about them. Another is phone convergence. It’s happening in a big way, from phone-based e-mail to Web browsing.
Setting aside part of your budget to explore emerging technologies is a useful technology strategy. Allowing your company’s thought leaders to explore new technologies, from big screens to tablet PCs to new software, can pay off big when your company adapts the fastest. Some of these investments will fizzle, but you’ll also reap bottom line benefits from truly useful new technologies.
[contact] Tom Salonek is CEO of Intertech Software and Intertech Training in St. Paul: 651.454.0013, ext. 12; ts******@***************re.com; www.intertechsoftware.com
