Once again I turn the microphone over to Jeff Becker. Take it away Jeff......
If you are reading this, then Frank may have run out of topics to apply his snarky humor too. That really sucks, because I enjoy his writing over mine. So here we go. Prepare to be bored!
Software, why do we still need so many different programs that ultimately hold our information hostage from other programs? There are many reasons, but there are three main reasons in my opinion. They are as follows:
1. Any good piece of software started out small and had a great idea, only to be bought by a larger company and subsequently screwed up. You are left feeling like a hostage.
2. No one was addressing a particular need until a big company showed up…..thought it was a growth area….over sold it….and then screwed it up. You are left feeling like a hostage.
3. Who the hell can talk to a programmer, let alone want too!! I finally kicked the habit of communicating by grunts and clicks! There is no way I am stepping backwards and talking in 1’s and 0’s!
There are many other reasons, but it all boils down to what I believe is the mind set of all big software companies. They know…..once you have stuffed all that information in…..gone through the learning curve of how to effectively use it……they now have you hostage! The entire process of talking to the sales team and listening to how they were going to streamline my business….always left me frustrated. After I committed to the package…..went through the learning curve of using it….it ultimately didn’t work as advertised. Then I had to deal with product support or a consultant! Can you say extra cost? Now this happened over a period of 20 years, so I am definitely carrying some baggage.
I eventually came to understand that I was asking for something that the infrastructure of servers and available networking protocols, just really couldn’t handle it. Meanwhile I was sold that it could. If I had needed free health care at that time...I would have shot the reps and gone to prison. I didn’t think they would understand me there, so I set that idea aside until I got a bit older.
I say watch out software companies! Business owners are getting tired of being guinea pigs or hostages. I wish I had all the money back that I spent on computers and software, thinking that their solutions would simplify my life. They all did in some little way, but the fact that none of them talked to each other just made me feel like a hostage and created a new manual process. Just the act of having to import and export something is a process that takes time and attention.
One good thing came out of all those dollars wasted. It made me really think through and determine what my process needed to be, if such a piece of software existed. Let me tell you a bit about my learning curves and how I incrementally became paperless.
MANAGING CONTACTS
The first area I wanted to streamline were all the contacts I had. I owned a specialty construction company and I worked all over the world. I would subscribe to a bid service…..mine data and manually enter the contacts into a piece of software called Sharkware. It was one of those contact managers like Goldmine. Sharkware was later screwed up by a big corporation. Anyways, it was great. I could talk to a lot of contractors, keep current with all those conversations, make links to people that knew each other, and then I could pick up where we left off at any time. People were amazed with my memory, little did they know! This was in the 80’s.
Outlook eventually became the dominate contact manager, but by no means did they create the market. The problem with the solutions available on the market, to include Outlook is -- they don’t integrate easily into other programs. Outlook now provides some integration, however it still doesn’t play nice with other programs with ALL of its features. So, you are held hostage with some of your information if you leverage it for all its capabilities. Don’t even get me started on what it takes to share this information with other users. Outlook is now reducing the many great features it once had. It’s starting to look like a downward spiral into being broken up into more features that now have to be bought.
They do have some hooks for programmers to push and pull data, but ultimately you cannot leverage ALL of the information it has with other programs. You become a hostage and your systems are separate. We are still at a point where sharing the full power of Outlook or any other contact manager will still require this information to be manually placed into your other systems. Have you ever changed your address with a big company, only to still get your mail sent to the old address? This is why. They can’t just use one system either!! So I simply ask, “Why can’t we change contact information in one place and have it register in other systems?” It makes me start calculating the cost of ammo to accomplish my revenge on all the decision makers at Microsoft.
INVENTORY/PURCHASING/ESTIMATING
Every company has some form of inventory. If you buy something from a manufacturer…or a supplier….then go install it or sell it…you have inventory. All three of the above areas absolutely need to be pulling from the same database. This will tie together the purchasing component when it’s time to re-order.
The problem is that accounting packages don’t do it well and standalone inventory solutions hold some important part of your information hostage. Not to mention the inventory sitting on jobsites, riding in trucks, and the list goes on.
Estimating programs absolutely don’t like to work with other programs. Most employees that are out there creating estimates, are using spreadsheets full of information the way they want to use it. I think a bit differently on this subject. I think we should all go to our Vendors and ask for a spreadsheet of everything they sell. Then simply import this information into your software and have it all in one place for the company to draw from. Use each vendors naming and numbering conventions. This simple act makes talking to your vendor easier and purchasing a snap. The minute you call it something else, you have just made your process less efficient. Now all the estimator needs to do is break up the vendor’s items into the many different units they will need for bidding purposes. They will also need a more flexible calculator and the ability to bundle items up to address the many ways they have to bid cost and units. Easily programmed.
The biggest mistake I have observed is that a common naming convention isn’t used. Therefore your supplier may sell you something called a “Widget”, everyone else in the company calls it a “Thing-a-ma-bob”, and you sell it to the customer as a “pet rock”. Inventory is the #1 contributor to most organizations digital nightmares. The office grind of disputing invoices, returning unused parts, and trying to get this tightened up into a “real time” report is virtually impossible with the solutions today, especially if you re-name what the vendor is selling you. This problem is as much approach as it is the program.
MOBILE COMPUTING
There has always been hope for putting a mobile device into the hands of your employees and having them record their day in “real time”. You can do it now, however anything available today simply doesn’t do everything you need it to….and/or….want to track. They all force you to use the data flow the way they think you need and getting the information to flow requires that you to sometimes enter the information in a format that just doesn’t allow recording the data the way you want. It usually requires you to create a new name for items in order for you to shove your information into how the program was designed.
Mobile platforms have a long way to go. If you consider what is available on a PC today…..after having been around for decades….it’s logical to expect the same from all of these mobile solutions. Why can’t we have some flexibility in creating fields that we need? It’s because all of these mobile solutions are simply an extension of the PC software that is already frustrating you! How many mobile apps did you buy when they first starting coming out? How many do you buy or even use today? I refuse to buy a single app now. They still don’t have what I need.
I once used a custom programmer and created a piece of software, back when Palm Pilots were the rage. It worked great! However we all know the story of Palm. I was not only a hostage, but I became an orphaned hostage. I wish I had that money back. Screwed again by a big corporation’s opinion of what I needed for a phone. I went back to locked down spread sheets in hopes for a better day. However, I did achieve real time reporting!!
I am really excited about the integration of mobile software into the operating systems and cloud computing finally being an option. It really makes the cost of custom programming enter back into the affordable range.
DIGITAL PAPER/IMAGE MANAGERS
A lot has happened here with PDF being the format winner. Making it feel like paper is where the image management software war is still going on. Many years later, they all still have problems. The big problem is….that it is still a piece of paper and still needs data to be entered by a person. I gave up all hope in OCR technology. It just doesn’t work.
I think a paperless office is the best hope for even the dis-organized of the world. However, there has to be a naming convention for it to succeed. At least link it to a transaction, so it even the disorganized can find it.
The other issue is marking up the document like you would a piece of paper. There are some good products for this, but it is critical to pick one that does it well. I have used two in particular. Paperport is the one I have used the longest, but it is getting screwed up by a large organization. I am almost exclusively using Bluebeam right now. But…..I just received news….they were bought by a large organization in Germany. Who knows what my fate will be. The important factor in picking your document manager is to make sure they don’t convert your PDF’s into some proprietary file format. Otherwise you will always need their program to mark it up and read the files. “Neat scanners” is one of those products you should definitely avoid.
I also required all of my vendors to send all paperwork, via email. This established a custody chain, and a secondary backup system just in case. Tell them that they won’t get paid until they do. It is your company requirement. I only received 2 or 3 vendors that griped about it. I allowed them to fax it to me because my faxes were automatically converted to PDF’s and emailed to me.
There is a solution available for PDF’s, however moving to a paperless office will require some changes in how you do things. It may also require you to change some personnel that are going to resist the change. This is the number one place you can reduce the workload your employees currently have or possibly reduce the number of employees. Remember….most employees won’t figure out how to make their job easier…they just chalk it up to what they hate about their job and slog through it each day. PDF’s paired with automated “real time data capture” is the key to a well-functioning paperless office. When done right, it will feel like paper. PDF’s should only be used as documentation…..software should be capturing the digital information ONE TIME…and then making it flow to the many places it needs to go, without entering it multiple times.
I would also like to add, that your office staff should have a second monitor. Since a PDF is still going to be a piece of paper, they will need to be able to view the PDF on one monitor, while reviewing, marking up, or entering the data on the other monitor. This is what makes a PDF feel like paper. Switching back and forth between a screens on a single monitor is what makes the process seem burdensome. I can go on forever about how I work with PDF’s, but this is the basics you have to have.
ACCOUNTING PACKAGES
This challenge was the subject of many nights of Jack Daniels fueled rants! However, it was one of my proudest moments when I finally discovered the solution and broke the code of accounting packages. When I was in a very large growth spurt, I invested in a $40,000 accounting package that was going to do it all. I learned once again, that throwing big money at something didn’t work either. The more expensive software options, still don’t get it right. They can be more confusing than the more basic solutions. They involve more screens and will most likely handle the data differently than you would. If you want to tweak the system, you have to pay a consultant to do it.
Anyways, it was my attempt to combine estimating, purchasing, asset management, and inventory. Then…..after I loaded the information…hired the local supporting consultant….I was still unhappy with it. I just wasn’t happy with how I had to enter the data and how limited it was on the flexibility to crunch the data many different ways. Yep, I had more spreadsheets to export to.
I bought the program knowing that I had to make some changes so my business would fit into the program the way ithandled information and subsequently spit out its reports. BIG MISTAKE!! Never settle for a system that requires you to change the way you want to track your business…..or requires you to rely on a consultant to make customized changes. I eventually threw it out and went back to Peachtree!
So here is the hustle in my opinion. The software companies wrote their software and then made recommendations as to “what size” company needed “what solution”. This was all based on who could afford what price point of course. All a CPA had to do was parrot what the software companies advised about their product. This eliminated risk for the CPA. It then set the stage for the large companies to simply buy up any competing company that carved out too much market share from them. This is why we don’t have many options. CPA’s don’t want to buy a bunch of software in order to perform their tasks for clients. As long as any the big boys buy up the small guys who have a great idea, then they get the CPA as a free salesman. I can’t tell you how many business owners tell me that they use Quickbooks, because that is what their CPA said they needed. Ultimately I feel as though I fell prey to the big software company plan.
Now here is something you need to understand about software. In order for software to work its magic, they use a backend database. A simpler explanation would be to say that they create tables. It is the same as using an Excel spreadsheet. Think of your larger spreadsheets and think of each tab as a programmers table. As you create a new tab within the workbook, you have just created a table of information. When the different tabs need to be combined into a single sheet with totals information, then this is when programming along with backend database beats the flexibility of an Excel spread sheet. They can do the same thing in less tabs and have greater flexibility in accessing the information.
So here is the secret…..wait for it….wait for it…..
Open up your accounting package and count the number of digits your chart of accounts will allow you to enter. I think Peachtree is 17 and QuickBooks is 25. That is a REALLY BIG number. Try typing that number into excel…excel will even choke on it. 2,500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 ….. That’s a big number!
So what does that mean? It means that both processes need to know what you want to track and how…in order for them to work. It also means that programmers have over built their software and we are not leveraging the smaller programs to their full potential. I chalk this up to both sides miscommunicating. How information needs to be organized is a big deal. Programmers keep adding features, however it starts making the software very complicated as they do it. This is a problem for the mobile computing software integration. In most cases, a re-write is necessary for many solutions out there. Remember, you are a hostage and getting them to spend the money to do it will be a difficult. They will instead choose to slowly roll out new versions each year, that give you access to a few more areas you have been screaming for.
Back to that big number in your chart of accounts. If you count the number of customers, number of vendors, number of jobs, number of cost codes for each job, now add the number of items you might buy from each supplier…..add to it all the other GL#’s you put cost to……now come up with a safe number of new GL#’s you will need each year. You will quickly see, that after 4 years you still haven’t maxed out the chart of accounts. Remember that all business owners assign a number to everything we track. So if we have ONE table that can accommodate that many numbers….why not just use the one table and forget about the other modules and its features…..meaning you just eliminated a bunch of tables to inter-relate. Programming becomes easier when trying to integrate a mobile solution. Better yet….why not just write your own and get big business out of the hostage taking business!
The solution is putting all that you track into the 18 or 25 digit number. The software will spit out any report you want as long as you do this. You can actually use a smaller accounting package for a much larger company if you do this. The industry would like you to believe differently. Just roll up the items you want to hide for financial or other reporting purposes.
So another way to say it is you don’t need all of the modules these base accounting systems are selling you. Leverage the chart of accounts differently than an accountant would typically have you organized. Try it out once and you will see what I mean. You have to understand, the accountant is setting up your chart of accounts, so they get the information that theyneed! Why not design your own chart of accounts, so it is something you can make sense of.
Owners need to address this part of their business. They are paying too much for these larger systems and many are not getting as much out of the smaller ones. Accounting packages are a backend system. They only organize information for reporting. I say organize it yourself, but make sure your accountant has the accounts he will need.
THE SOLUTION TO BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER
Real progress has been made in programming. It used to be, that a programmer had to write very large strings of code to accomplish a simple mouse click. Now those programming languages are large pre-written modules that are simply cut & pasted or dropped and dragged to where they belong. Since the operating system now incorporates all the basics, a simple programming tie is all that is needed. So what I am saying is this…..custom programming makes sense today!! I did just simplify the programmer’s job, however it has become a lot simpler than it was. If you leverage the potential of your chart of accounts, create a road map of how you want to track your business, then you just made the programmer’s job easier and less expensive.
The mobile infrastructure is now here as well. Operating systems now have all the features that were considered “custom” simply built into them. Things like GPS, Camera, touch screen, and Cloud computing are all part of the operating system. Moving data and networking is no longer an issue as well. This sets the stage for capturing “real time data” when the work happens or when sales are made. If paired with a backend accounting system that is simplified like I explained above…then the act of stuffing the data in automatically, really reduces the programming costs. You tie this in with PDF’s being able to be tied to a transaction and the storing and sharing of contact information…you have just simplified a large part of your business.
Now here is the catch. Programmers don’t understand your business needs any more than a CPA or lawyer. They don’t want to do your job, nor do they feel like it is their place to advise you on how to do it. They have a job, they do it well, and you probably won’t pay them to run your business.
Custom programming your perfect system is the way to go. You can do it in small steps…or you can take a few years and make the change all at once. You can even make the programs you have now, talk to each other. Then start designing your dream program.
You can even have the systems run in parallel until you are ready to make the switch. The bottom line…explore custom programming to solve the processes that make tasks require multiple people. You may eventually start to believe that your “get it done” employees…can really handle a digital world. The programmer’s job is to make it work before you ask them to use it.
IN CLOSING
If you read my previous post and are now reading this post, you can see the direction I am heading. Helping small business owners fix clunky processes is my future. I have partnered with a programmer that has been doing this for a few decades and we are like minded and know we can fix this issue. He has been listening to these complaints for years and has the bulk of these solutions already written. We just need to tailor them to a business owner’s needs. I am now confident that our business model can compete with the solutions that are out there with me interpreting the client’s needs. I think business owners are ready to really fix the problem.
This was not meant to be a sales pitch. I simply felt as though this was the biggest challenge as a business owner I ever had. I didn’t want an office full of paper pushers that didn’t earn revenue. Having wrestled everything from DOS to windows 8.0, figuring it out consumed too much time and a lot of money. The answer was always there, but I just didn’t know enough about the programmer’s side to see how to communicate my vision without it costing a bunch of money. This exposure to programming has given me the last piece of knowledge I needed to streamline the software problem we all face. I also love to talk business and Frank’s blog is a great place to pass on my experiences to those of you that have the same passion for efficiency.
I never did get to write my dream piece of software, but I did manage to organize my existing software to reduce the redundancy and automate the many processes that I had. It consumed a large part of my time, but I at least got close. I know exactly how my next company will be organized as it grows.
So I think it’s worth the time and money to write your own software. Eliminate or at least, better utilize the office staff you have. Quit paying for software that holds you hostage. At least take the first step and start making the software you already have start to talk to each other.
Good Luck in Business,
Jeff Becker
Jeff@jhbecker.com
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