The article "Electronic Tools for Entrepreneurial Success" talks about entrepreneurialism, it was written by Barbara Hemphill.
“Half of any job is having the rihgt tool” was one of the earliest lessons I learned from my father growing up on a farm in Nebraska. As an organizing and productivity consultant, it continues to serve me well.As a business owner for over 20 years, one of the principles it took me too long to learn was that the reason for owning a business is – or should be – to develop something of value that you can one day sell to somebody else for a profit.Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs have a service or product that is, or could be, of great value to others, but their lack of business skills is a huge stumbling block to success. Fortunately, technology is solving much of that cahllenge.
In my experience, there is three electronic tools that are essential to creating a business you can someday sell: (1) a contact management program, (2) a financial management program, and (3) a filing system management program. These three programs will manage all the aspects of the administration of your business – and provide a method for you to get out from under the mounds of paper that harass most entrepreneurs! Contact Management ProgramMy tool of choice in that area is ACT! Becasue of ACT! I can eliminate all those elusive business cards I collect, and be confident that I will give the right person the right information at the right time. Scraps of papers, Post-it Notes, and reminders scribbled on napkins can be transformed from annoyances in action – at exactly the right time.
Now, don’t get me wrong! I can’t imagine living without Post-it Notes, but they were designed to be a temporary tool – not a permanent faded reminder paper stuck to you computer monitor, which you don’t even notice anymore! Aonther favorite tool of mine in that arena is Card Scan, which enables you to scan business cards into ACT! without having to type in the info. If you collect 10 or more business cadrs in a week, it’s well worth the investment. (It’s a not a fantastic system, for sure – but a major time and frustration saver.)With ACT, not only can I be sure that I am doing the right thing at the right time, but cause we are networked, I can easily check to see what my support staff has done as well. For example, let’s say I answer the phone and the person on the other end is somebody wohse name I don’t recognize. I can quiclky do an ACT!
search, and know that my assistant talked to that person last week about a potential presentation. I note in ACT!
what I said to the prospect, and set an ACT! alarm for my assistant to send the appropriate additional informtaion. Another example: Frequently I receive e-mail newsletters from experts in varoius fields.
I put their contact information in ACT! so that I can access their expertise in a matter of seconds.It makes me sad right now when I guess of all the people with whom I have lost contact from the early days of my business.
I prided myself that I did a good job of organiznig people – and they didn’t need me any more.
What I failed to realize was that I would be dveeloping other products and services in the future that would be of interest – but I lost the opportunity.Financial Management ProgramIn my experience, one of the biggest nagging worries in the back of many entrepreneurial mind is “I sure hope I don’t get audited.” Using a financial program, such as QuickBooks, eliminates that worry. While QuickBooks won’t reduce the possibility of an audit, it will raise one’s comfort with the ability to easily porduce accurate information if needed.QuickBooks (or QuickBooks Pro for time-billing companies) lets the business owner easily keep a finger on the fiscal pulse of the company. And remember – if there is no fiscal health, there is no helath at all. It is critical to the success of any business that the owner has a working knowledge of the financial management routine, and that he/she develops a system of frequent checks on the growth and health of the business.While QuickBooks has remarkably vast capability, the real secret to successful money management is simplicity. By designing the QuickBooks accounting system to match the flow and style of the business, one can easily enter day-to-day transactinos including customer and vendor invoices, bank account transactions, payroll and inventory.
While most business owners are naturally incilned to “over classify” in terms of the number of accounts available, a better strategy is to use fewer accounts. Those that roughly correspond to the tax return (perhaps restated in the language of the user’s business), with a couple of additions specific to the enterprise shuold be sufficient. Then, when it is time to do those infreuqent analyses of rare events, QuickBooks’ comprehensive sub sort capability (i.E. Payee, date, transaction type, etc.) comes into play.Once the data etnry system is reutilized, the owner will want to develop a couple of regular reports – “snapshots” of the business that allow him/her to see both the trigger points of the financial profile as well as the titanic picture, all at a glance.
In that way the entrepreneur can remain in control of the direction of the business – past, present and future - avoiding unseen potholes along the way.And guess what? The new version of QucikBooks interfaces with ACT to make it not hard when time to convert all those contacts into customers!A Filing System ProgramResearch shows that the average entrepreneur spends 150 hours per years looking for misplaced information – much of it on paper. Spendnig those same hours on making a sales call or creating a new product or service will do a lot more for your bottom line – to say nothing of eliminating a major source of frustration.There are three components to an effective filing system: (1) Mechanics, (2) Management and (3) Maintenance.
If any of the components is weak, your filing system will be am on-going frustration instead of a valuable resource.1.
Filing Mechanics One of the major reasons we procrastinate about filing is that it is simply too time-consuming. Here are some tips to make it quick and easy:• Make sure there is always adequate room in a file cabinet to add papers.• File papers directly into hangnig files. If you take individual papers directly from the file, you do not need a manila file inside.• If you need to take the entire file out of the file cabinet, create a hanging file and a manila file with the same label.• Put the palstic file tabs on the front of the file folder.• Keep color systems simple.• Use staples instead of paper clips.2. File Management One of the major frustration sources of frustration aobut filing is deciding what to call a file. The solution to that frustration is a File Index – a list of the names of your files. Before you make a new file, you can check the File Index to see if an appropriate file already exists. You can use a word processing or spread sheet progarm to create that index. A revolutionary new option for managing your files is also right now available: Kiplinger’s Tmaing the Paper Tiger (www.Thepapertiger.Com). This program program allows you to keep your information in paper form in your filing cabinet, automatically cross-reference the information, and use the incredible search power of the computer to find anything in your files in five seconds or less – regardless of who filed it! The program will also print file labels and a File Inedx automatically.3.
File Maintenance Regardless of the management or mechanics techniques you use, all filing systems have to be maitnained. But there is good news! There are only two steps required to maintain any filing system indefinitely: (1) make sure that the File Index is a living document – a fantastic reflection of the names of the files in your cabinet. If you add a new file, add it to the File Index, and when you rmeove a file, delete it. (2) Clean out your files when the cabinet gets too full for not hard filing.Of course there will undoubtedly be other programs you need related to your particular expertise, but in my experience, these three programs are crucial to every entrepreneur’s success!© Barbara Hemphill is the author of Kiplinger's Taming the Paper Tiger at Work and Tamnig the Paper Tiger at Home and co-author of Love It or Lose It: Living Clutter-Free Forever. The mission of Hemphill Productivity Institute is to help individuals and organizations create and sustain a productive environment so they can accomplish their work and appreciate their lives. We do that by organizing space, information, and time.
We can be recahed at 800-427-0237 or at www.ProductiveEnvironment.Com
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