Summer slowdown strategies

Gershwin is wrong about this particular summer. The livin’ ain’t easy. Besides the normal slowdown many companies feel during the summer months, when you consider the widening recession and skyrocketing gasoline prices, this summer promises more pain than pleasure. It’s like we have a sunburn before we even get to the beach.

Let’s look at three steps and one attitude adjustment you can make this summer to turn slow time into growth time.

First of all, realize technology is no longer “that stuff” that replaced the typewriter and helps you read your e-mail. Technology is now the tent pole for your business: everything hangs off your technology in some way or another.

White collar knowledge worker jobs require hands on technology for almost every function, from e-mail to spreadsheets to collaboration tools to project management software to desktop Web conferencing. Those jobs scream for technology, and it is often used to link people across the Internet the way the water cooler drew them together pre-PC.

Blue collar jobs rely almost as much on technology, but much of it remains hidden to many workers. Yet every small company benefits from computerized accounting, online bill payments, e-mail, fax to e-mail, and some type of collaboration tools to coordinate the increasingly geographically dispersed back office. Field techs use smart phones linked to shared calendars or forwarded from VoIP phone systems. Remote office dwellers connect to the same files as those in the main office, thanks to online collaboration tools or VPNs links between inexpensive home office routers and main office routers. Can you do your job without anything that has an on/off switch and an LCD screen today? Almost certainly not.

As Aberdeen analyst Michael Dortch says, “technology is now too important to be left to IT people.” Technology that doesn’t support your business has no reason to be in your business.

So how do you make technology work for you rather than against you? One way is to make it cheaper. Review “Money saving tips” from last December. You’re welcome to spend between $250 and $400 for Microsoft Office 2007, depending on retailer and the version of Office you buy, but you can get the same features using the free OpenOffice.org productivity suite. Your money, your choice, but I choose OpenOffice for at least four of five computers in companies I help.

For my lab, I use off-lease and refurbished computers bought from Ubid.com. That’s a good way to keep getting PCs with Windows XP rather than Vista. Getting laptops with XP this way also allows you to save money on hardware as well as save time because you don’t have to move to Vista before you’re ready. Each expense dollar saved helps cover the zooming price of gas and materials, or goes to your bottom line.

Another way to increase the value of technology is to get more work done with the technology you already have. One of my favorite 80/20 rules applies here: people use only about 20% of the power of their software.

Think you need a new accounting system? A couple of hours with an accounting software expert will show you ways to better use what you already have, or you can go retro and buy a book and dig into advanced features on your own.

Think you need a new set of smarter phones for e-mail integration? HyperOffice turns iPhones into e-mail and messaging tools worthy of road warriors, and Visto turns hundreds of models of smart phones into e-mail workstations. Darn few users leverage all the tricks, shortcuts, and time-saving features of their primary applications. With a little effort this summer, your company could be one of those darn few.

Finally, don’t look at any slowdown this summer as a negative, but a positive time to rethink your business processes. Try something bizarre that’s not taught in management school, like asking each employee what parts of their jobs are inefficient time sinks that deliver little or no value to customers or other employees. Four of five employees will show you how they can get more done and save the company money, if you just ask them.

So ask. Be prepared for a couple of juvenile jokes, then listen when workers tell you how to improve the business. When you know exactly which step takes the most effort, target that process with new or reworked technology and see what happens. And if no one benefits from that effort-laden step, do away with it and save that much more time and money.

Remember your new mental attitude: technology may be broken but you can make it better. If you don’t believe technology is now the tent pole of your business, turn everything off and unplug all your technology. Tell me how that goes. I’ll be waiting for your e-mail.