ã 2001, 2002
By Edward Biesiada

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." When there is a slow economy (a recession), businesses have multiple opportunities to concentrate on improving their internal processes and perhaps take the necessary steps to fix the infrastructure that supports what you manufacture or sell. As you recover along with the economy, the infrastructure repairs should focus on being better at delivering your product or service, be better at customer service and responsiveness, and be more profitable.

One area to critically review is your computer system. How many of the following can you answer, "Yes"?

1. If you have a local area network, are you using a version of the server operating system that is no longer supported by the software manufacturer? Yes _ No _

If yes, look into the available upgrades. You do not necessarily need the latest and the greatest, however an upgrade should make the operating system more reliable and include tools to make management of the network easier and less time consuming.

2. Have you identified employees that should have more advanced training? Yes _ No _

Manufacturing processes have slowed; plant employees may now have the time for additional software training. Sales have slowed, gather your sales staff and aggressively deal with improving how orders are processed. Can steps be streamlined. Are you printing catalogs or is your company’s website the place to go to view the products? Does your sales force submit sales orders via e-mail or across the World Wide Web?

3. Have you stopped mailing invoices? Yes _ No _

In light of the problems with slower mail delivery, reliability and safety due to the "Anthrax problem", send your invoices via e-mail or facsimile. The benefits are faster delivery to your clients, which should speed up the collection process, no postage costs, no envelope printing or purchase costs, and reduced paper costs since you are not mailing a customer copy and a remittance copy.

4. How many different versions of the Windows operating system are spread across your company? Do any of your staff’s individual computers still run under Windows 95? Yes _ No _

Microsoft no longer supports Windows 95. Why are you spending money to support this software internally? At a minimum every computer should be upgraded or replaced to be able to run Windows 2000 operating system. Do not buy the home operating systems like Windows Millennium, as it does not have the stronger security features of Windows 2000. Keeping all staff computers on the same operating system decreases the costs associated with internal training and support of this software. The reasons software company’s stop supporting older versions of their software is because they would have to continue to train their new employees on older less used and sold software. They require you to upgrade so that they can continue their revenue stream.

5. Have you looked into the benefits of Citrix software? Yes _ No _

Basically all software resides on the central server. This software gives you the ability to significantly reduce hardware costs. Your staff’s individual computers do not need their own hard drive, or a floppy disk drive. Software installations are easy and efficient. One install on the server, you are done. You do not have to go around the office and install on every single computer. The timesavings due to reduced administration costs helps pay for the Citrix purchase. Additional benefits are realized when it is time to install a new software upgrade. The upgrade is applied only to the server. As each one of your staff logs on to the network, the new software upgrade is immediately active and working for them.

6. Have all of your internal documents like employee manuals, quality control documents, standard office forms like applications, staff evaluation forms, etc. been published to an employee only access area on your web site? Yes _ No _

One centrally located repository of these documents permits all staff to have access to up to date manuals and forms. Continuing to print these documents is a waste of paper because they are obsolete the minute they are printed. Do you print documents to CD-ROM? Again, the CD-ROM version is obsolete as soon as it is burned.

Does your staff refuse to use e-mail to distribute internal documents or do they print one out, make 50 copies and walk around the office distributing hard copy. Yes _ No _

Is this practice occurring due to inadequate staff training on the e-mail software or laziness? It is obvious that the hard copy distribution method is inefficient and not cost effective.