I wrote the following over 10 years ago, probably nearer 20!
I post it here in its entirety because that's the easiest thing for me to do. It doesn't completely match with what you are doing, but there are some tips in it that you might find useful.
Here you go:-
Do you want to computerise your business?
If you do, and your business is suitable for computerisation, will an off the shelf package do?
What systems do your competitors use?
Are there any vertical applications available for your business or a similar business?
I once asked, “How can I computerise my business?”
The retort was, “What system do you use now?”
No System!
Well the embarrassing thing was I didn’t have a system. A notebook was kept and sometimes notes were kept on scraps of paper. All the work was planned as we went along. It worked OK but mistakes could and did happen. I explained how my “system” worked, or didn’t. I was advised that if I believed that my system could be computerised, then a good step would be to improve the existing paperwork system.
A4 jobs
I was also told that even if I didn’t computerise, then the discipline of a good paperwork system would be good for my business. That’s where A4 jobs come in. An A4 job is where you plan a task and fit the gist of it on to one A4 piece of paper. If the work obviously won’t go on one piece of paper, then divide it until it does. For complicated jobs use an A4 paper as a list or “Menu” of the tasks that make a job.
Why an A4 piece of paper? There are two good reasons: -
Pick up a piece of A4 paper, look at it, if it was much bigger, or a lot smaller it wouldn’t be much use. A4 is just the right size.
An A4 piece of paper is roughly the size of a 14” monitor. If you fit your job on to an A4 paper, then it will transfer easily to a computer based form. This has many benefits; staff will find it helpful when you change from a paper system to the computer. Also if your computer system fails you have a manual backup system.
Now the other major problem is actually sitting down and working out how to systemise your business. If you try to do this you may find it tedious and difficult. The thing to do is do it in small steps, small improvements.
The “Wally seminar”
I went to a seminar recently about a bloke called “Wally” I won’t bore you with the details of his seminar, but basically he said, “Improve your business in small amounts”. Aim to improve as many aspects of your business by 1% yes that’s right, its not a miss print, it says 1%. I’m sure you can thing of a 1% improvement you can make.
For example:
What about a price list of your top 10 products? Photo copy the list and give it to all your staff. Next time the phone rings anyone can give the customer the price.
Or if that doesn’t apply to your business, make notes about all calls you answer today. Now group them so that you identify the ones you need to handle and provide instructions for your staff so that anyone can handle the rest of the calls.
Now if you do a 1% improvement every day, in 100 days you will have a 100% improvement in your business!
First of all you should make forms for the jobs you do a lot. Don’t expect the first forms to be perfect. Plan to adapt and improve your forms. Once you have a good form, photo copy it, or even have a batch printed.
Eventually you will have forms for most of the jobs you do.
One of the best forms I drew up was for pricing a load of gravel. At first I was ashamed to use it. I could price a load of gravel virtually in my head. I was pricing 20 or 30 loads a day. I knew every material price, all the haulage rates, and the relevant mark-ups. Then we installed the computer system. Brilliant! The computer did it all. I came to rely on the computer, and then one day out of the blue, a power cut. I couldn’t remember the material prices, and any way; we had had several price increases imposed on us by our suppliers. So out came the forms. Was I glad of those forms! The paper form based system guided me expertly through the process of generating a quote manually.
As I said before “we installed the computer system. Brilliant! The computer did it all”
The computer worked out the haulage from all the depots that had the required material. It incorporated and allowed for some depots that had the material available at discounted rates. It was accurate, easily as accurate as I was and I had been doing the job for 10 years!
But one of the best benefits was recruiting new staff.
I recon that it would take me 6 months to a year to train someone how to price all of our materials by the manual method. Staffs picked up the computer system quickly and were pricing loads confidently within weeks.
