Automating Success (Measurement)
My last post (Measuring Success) was on measuring key factors before and after a change to determine if the change had the desired effect.
Just as important, if you want to be sure that measurement is easy and will not get put aside when things are busy; you need to automate the process of generating the measurements.
This follows the agile principle of automation for anything that gets done more than once. It is equally effective for businesses.
If you have managers or staff members whose job description includes manually generating part of all of a report or key performance indicator, you have […]
Measuring Success
To succeed in business, common thinking says you need a vision of where you want to go, then you need a strategy (plan) for getting there, and then you need to take action over the short-term (goals, projects, tactics).
One part missing from this is measurement.
If you make a change to improve on the execution of your strategy, how do you know it has the right impact?
Gut feel or intuition? Anecdotal evidence? Or do you measure the key factors before and after?
For small to mid-size businesses, who often don't have access to a host of expert analysts, this is a difficult […]
Your Web Presence
Every business should have a web presence… it is a no brainer right? Maybe.
Actually, the first thing you need to decide is what you want to accomplish on the web. Whether your goal is: marketing, sales, connecting with customers, or something else….
You need to align your web presence with your company vision and strategies if you want to be sure you are not just throwing money out the window (and as a small business owner that is your money).
Don't spend any time or money developing a web site until you know what you want to accomplish.
Knowledge Is Power
Knowledge is power if you can use it to make better business decisions. The trick is to get the right knowledge in front of the right people at the right time.
Inside a business there are normally three key sources of knowledge:
- Data,
- Information or Document Repositories, and
- People.
Chances are you have a lot invested already in each of these islands of knowledge… but they may not be connected or otherwise delivering the value you want. If the data does not already exist in a usable format, you may need to capture it.
Relying on Bob
Too many small businesses have critical functions that only one person has […]
The Future Is Small and Big
Over the next few months we will be launching a number of software products and services aimed specifically at small to mid-size businesses (depends on how you measure size).
In most cases, small businesses (should) behave and operate differently then their much larger counterparts.
We are very good at certain aspects of technology and understand how small business is different. Working with small business owners is potentially very satisfying… you get to see significant results from your work. Our work with larger corporations is interesting too… it is just harder to see the bottom line impacts.
We are also aligning ourselves with several […]
Sunwapta Message Update
Our latest iteration on messaging for our website.
What We Do For Clients
Data. Innovation. Software. People. Vision.
We bring meaning and life to complex data through innovative software solutions. This allows people to collaborate more effectively and make better decisions; faster and with more confidence.
Software, knowledge and people aligned with strategic vision drives competitive advantage.
We adjust our approach based on the situation and the people involved. Large organizations are inherently different than smaller owner operated organizations, we've worked in and with both.
No matter what your challenges are, we believe there is a better way of maximizing the return on your technology […]
Tide, Things are a Changing
I was watching the breakfast show on TV this morning. Tide had a commercial talking about how environmentally friendly their product was. Their detergent is 2x concentrated reducing plastic in the packaging by 47% and allowing them to use less diesel fuel shipping it.
Yup, these are good things right?
The only problem is that every other detergent is exactly the same. In fact I saw one that was 4x concentrated.
Yet they are implying they are different… better even.
I think the days of putting a "spin" on the routine and calling it differentiation are quickly disappearing.
If you are going to claim […]
Creating Lasting Business Partnerships
Over the past couple of years we decided to start partnering with other companies to broaden our market reach and increase our ability to provide a comprehensive suite of services and products.
There are two keys to forming any lasting relationship; trust and communication. This is especially true in business.
Trust
Trust is built on a foundation of strong ethics. You then have to be genuinely committed to the success of the relationship and for that to happen, both parties need to give. The final component is that you need to be trustworthy… do what you say you will do in a way […]
Web Site Updates
Joomla 1.5
Finding quite a few undocumented "features" embedded in Joomla out of the box. For example, the default WYSIWYG editor does not appear to be generating proper HTML and there are a few 500 series errors generated by the admin site. The search engine optimization feature does not work if you are hosting on IIS instead of Apache, you need to acquire an ISAPI filter.
Don't get me wrong, Joomla has some pretty powerful capabilities and because it is open source, the price is right. But, there is a learning curve and work required to get it right if you […]
Our Company Purpose
As I have mentioned before, we have been working on our corporate web site. It is always hardest to work on your own stuff for some reason. Client projects, proposals and hundreds of other things get in the way.
We've been looking at what we are good at, our past projects for clients and where we want to be. I also wanted something strong that we can get excited about, fits in with where we are going right now with our products and goes with my strong interest in what makes a business succeed. In the end, we have come up with the […]