by: Superman
Part of a new series of blog posts from the Super Heroes on the LMN Support Team.
This lesson can apply to personal life as much as it does to business life. A wise man once said… why is it that someone who drops their pennies would trip over dollars in order to pick them up? The simple answer is… the fear of change. Even though this can be applied to many aspects of life, business situations become better examples as they directly affect a higher number of people. Technology may also be the best example of the ‘fear of change’ in our current times and also better demonstrate the consequences involved.
It doesn’t matter which business industry you are in. The largest pieces of your COGS-account are going to end up being the most important to manage and analyze in order to make proper business decisions for future growth. The question is… why would you also let those aspects of your business slide into that category of ‘the costs that you find the most difficult to manage and analyze’ on a daily/weekly (or even a yearly) basis? The simple answer is that telling yourself things work fine the way the are is easy, but it definitely isn’t a feasible answer to tell yourself, or your staff, if you are ever planning for future growth. Or even just trying to sustain the current level that you are at.
The bottom line is that you need to use any and all resources available to you at this point in time in life in order to gain a competitive advantage over your competition. Similarly, like many types of technologies today… you need to adopt and change your company to fit those new technologies or else you yourself will become extinct. The most important part is that adopting new technology is often much easier than staying with a current (outdated) system. It is moving past that fear of change that is more difficult than the implementation of the new system itself. But what is the first step? I’d say just put on a Nike hat and read their company slogan to yourself in the mirror. It’s really the only thing that is holding you back in most situations. This example of how technology can directly effect growth is simple:
Tripping over dollars to grab your lost pennies:
You give your employees nicely organized pieces of paper to track their time spent working. Is it correct? It may very well be in some cases. Although, the chances are great that you will either take it as it is and pay them without knowing if it is right or not, or you will spend a lot of time figuring out why it doesn’t add up and then try to fit the pieces of the puzzle together (calls, emails, meetings?).
The thing that this creates is more admin time… and not fun admin time (no explanation needed here). Furthermore, many more hours are spent organizing this data and completing payroll. What if your trusted supervisor got distracted and forgot the exact time that they got to the jobsite that day and rounded up by 15 minutes? If you multiply that 15 minutes of hourly pay by 3, 4… 5 employees in their crew how much does that really cost you? Then imagine if this happens once a week with multiple crews. It does add up quickly and this is most likely not an exaggeration.
Making a change and picking up dollars instead:
Without touching on the money you’d save on admin costs which is obvious, what would happen if you did adopt new technology and eliminate this whole problem… saving valuable hours every single week (also eliminating pulling your hair out!). You would probably spend more time on things that you enjoy, like finding new business. Better yet, with new technology you would know where your company does excel so you can focus your effort on landing those new clients that are aligned with your own business strengths. This is exactly what new technology like LMN Time does do for companies… everyday single day.
The main point is that adopting new technology does pay off. Let’s take it further and say you get your supervisor to snap a photo on their smartphone at the end of each workday. In about 3 seconds this can be uploaded to an organized Dropbox or Google Drive file. What does this mean? More of your office time will be spent on business development and less time on site visits and fixing mistakes that should never had happened if you knew about them early on.
The only true barrier to turning any proven system into reality for your own business is that looming fear of change. The positive part is that getting past that fear is actually quite easy… once you realize that the people that have done it themselves actually want to help you, and they will definitely direct you to the resources that made it quick and easy for them. All you need to do is ask.
You can reach the LMN Superheroes for a demo on how you can save admin costs using LMN Time at support@golmn.com.
