Category: General

  • Process Improvement On A Budget

    Process Improvement On A Budget

    While there are plenty of reasons to embrace large-scale process improvement projects to simplify, integrate, and automate your business, there are options for a budget or with less risk. The rise of tools like Zapier, IFTTT, Make, and native workflows in almost every tool put expensive and complex changes in the hands of nearly anyone. However, there is a danger in diving into these tools, so a plan is the best way forward.

    Select one of the above tools and attempt to reduce the pain involved with one of your most common business tasks.


    Examine and understand your processes

    This is critical, no matter whether you are aiming for a small “tweak” or re-writing the guts of your business. There are many leaders who have learned that automating a bad process can generate too much trouble to handle. The best way to start is to break down the steps of the process you want to improve and detail the ins and outs of each step. This task can become challenging with complex processes, so start small and simple.


    Eliminate Steps

    Look for ways to improve a step by potentially eliminating it, getting it done faster, or doing it in tandem with another step. These are your guides to process improvement that can be applied almost everywhere.

    Verify

    Test your hypothesis. Once you have an idea of how to improve the process, try it out on a small scale. It’s also important to do this in a controlled environment. If you have a sandbox or test environment, make use of it. The goal is to be able to confirm your improvement before implementing it for real.

    Launch and observe

    Once you are comfortable your improvement will work, then watch it closely for a while. It is easy to miss outliers and other problem causing inputs during initial testing. Those can cost you any time an improvement would have gained if you do not catch and address them early on.

    Repeat The Process Improvement Steps

    Finally, rinse and repeat. The first time is the hardest. Once you get comfortable with what these tools can do, you can start to feel out where you can leverage them to help your business or where you want to bring in other resources to get the job done. The vital point to know is that you do not have to commit to years of development and untold costs to achieve valuable improvements.

  • What Is Your Budget? Setting Constraints For Your Solution

    What Is Your Budget? Setting Constraints For Your Solution

    This question is one of the primary ones to answer for any project or endeavor. Your budget is a crucial constraint and a guide to building the perfect solution for you. Of course, we all want a good deal and are happy to have our needs met for a lower cost than we expect. However, we also go into a project with an idea of what the solution is worth. That means we would be better off spending our budget on a complete solution than less money on a sub-par solution.

    Your Budget Provides a Target

    Think about any large project. For our purposes, we can use building a house. The budget is a critical part of the limitations to design. The architect cannot properly design your home without having the budget in mind. You might only be able to afford a small one-bedroom with one bath, or maybe, you want dozens of those and high-end interior design. Whether they undershoot or overshoot your budget by a lot, you are likely to be disappointed at the very least.

    Match Vision To Reality

    The challenge in matching your budget and vision is knowing what various features will cost. For example, you might want an extra bathroom for your house but need to know the cost of that over another closet. Software is the same in that fashion. Your project will be more likely to match your vision when you clearly understand the features available and their respective costs. That includes time as well as money. The maintenance costs may also be a factor in your decision, so a long-term budget is helpful.

    Factors To Consider

    Yes, we brought up the “M” word. There are costs for your solution that go beyond the initial costs. Those can include items we easily miss.

    • Recurring license fees
    • Hosting and Backups
    • Updates and Security
    • User Support and Administration
    • Data and Integration Updates
    • Bug Fixes Beyond the Initial Contract

    If any of these are confusing to you, make sure they are part of the discussions with your provider. You can also reach out to us for more details on what these recurring costs can look like. On the other hand, we have many similar areas where we need to be aware of options that can dramatically impact a solution. Those are a longer and more granular list.

    • Support for multiple users
    • Security considerations (external attacks)
    • Compliance requirements (HIPPA, Sarbanes-Oxley, GDPR, etc.)
    • Administration screens and tools
    • Training and Documentation
    • Online Help
    • Internal Security and Permissions
    • Data backups and Disaster Recovery
    • Platforms supported (web application, mobile support, desktop application, etc.)
    • Multi-lingual support
    • Remote Access
    • Functionality While Disconnected (i.e., no Internet)
    • The list goes on…

    Many factors can impact the cost and, thus, your budget. While you do not need to understand all of the above cost factors, you need to know how flexible your budget and vision are. There will be trade-offs. Thus, the more you have a general idea about the available features, the more you can adjust your vision. Of course, if you have an unlimited budget, it simplifies some of these questions.

    Making the Trade-Offs

    The other questions we have to answer for our project to be successful will help us adjust or conform to our budget. Decisions require us to eliminate paths or options. Therefore, we must be sure of our objectives to avoid choosing an approach that makes a goal impossible. There is also a cost associated with refactoring and change requests that we can avoid when we do a better job of scoping things out from the start. Finally, when our budget is tight, we need to aim for a more straightforward or less complete solution to avoid spending too much on one feature at the cost of another. The simple solution may be the only one we can afford. All of this again points to finding a partner who understands software development, your business, and your vision and can give you the details needed to make informed decisions.

    Signing Off On This Question

    You can think of this question as a box you are filling up. The objective is to decide on the size of the box. Then, you get to start filling it with features and determine if you want breathing space or are ok with a box about to burst. The important part about this is to realize that what you can fit in the box will vary, and you want to know the size and shape of the box when you start. When you decide to go with a different box somewhere down the road, you will need to unpack the one and then repack it to fit the new package. Do not be afraid to share your budget with your vendors or partners, as it gives them a lot of insight into what is possible for you.

    Improve Software Success

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  • Success In The Bad Times – Profit From Chaos

    Success In The Bad Times – Profit From Chaos

    There are stories of leaders and entrepreneurs that always seem to do well. They can advance in the good times as well as the bad. For example, when the stock markets are going down, there are almost always stocks going up. Likewise, other financial systems will benefit from a market downturn. We need to identify and embrace the signs of chaos and downturns to make the best decisions. It may seem counterintuitive. However, we can ride the turbulent waves to success and profit from chaos.

    More Pain Equals More Opportunity

    The technology world is based on solutions. We find pain points and then craft ways to alleviate those discomforts. Entrepreneurs work in almost the same way. They build companies that provide solutions. In a perfect world, we would all be out of business. No one would pay for help doing something that they can do quickly and painlessly. Likewise, we do not want others to do things we like. There is no market for getting paid to go on vacation for others.

    All that is to say that troubled times bring opportunities. These are ways we can profit from chaos. There are unethical ways like price gouging. On the other hand, there are ways to further society, such as creating tools needed during changing times. A good example is the increase in mobile and remote work solutions during COVID lockdowns. Those problems existed before. However, the need was not as great.

    Find The Core Problems To Profit From Chaos

    Tough times may come from a myriad of events or situations. Each one of these is an opportunity. While some may be out of your sphere of control (e.g., global politics), but some may not. The best thing about these challenging times is that when you reduce great pain, even minor improvements are greatly desired. For example, when fuel is unavailable, then getting it to people even at higher costs than average is still a step in the right direction. The dynamics and numbers around solutions change when the environment is in flux. Thus, solutions that would be unrealistic in normal times can be exactly what is needed. There is also the momentum of a product to consider. Sometimes, a solution requires a groundswell, or momentum, to get off the ground before it has long-term viability. Maybe tough times and chaos are precisely what is needed to get that product off the ground.

    Your Chaos List

    An excellent way to take advantage of difficult times (whether on a global scale or within your organization) is to avoid throwing away ideas that are not ready for prime time. There are those ideas that we come up with and might even run up a flag pole that get shot down for a good reason. They may not be cost-effective, may not have a market, or may be too far out in left field. These are all reasons that can change in a heartbeat and may offer short windows for ideas to be implemented. Therefore, it is helpful to keep a list of those ideas that need a different time and place. Better yet, label or categorize ideas so it is easy to find the ones that need a specific budget or margin, as well as those that need resources that might come free amidst the chaos. These options may not require a full pandemic to become viable. Sometimes a short period of a business downturn is enough to free up some needed resources you are already paying for.

    The Fail Fast Approach

    A benefit of trying out ideas during these times is that they typically have a short window before things return to normal. You will know the viability quickly during chaotic times as those times will pass. You also will often have a higher risk tolerance as there is less to lose. When business is dead, it is hard to make things worse. That means it is a perfect time to take a chance on those riskier ideas. Think of it as playing with house money. That is not exactly the case. However, it is close enough.