Media headlines are meant to attract attention and this recent one certainly caught mine.
“All firms are vulnerable to IT theft”
small business systems and processes
The business impact of the recent earthquake and aftershocks
Some interesting snippets coming out of the aftermath of the recent earthquake and aftershocks.
Forsyth Barr were caught out in Christchurch in 2011 when they couldn’t get back into their building to access paper documents that were not in electronic form. As a Forsyth Barr director said” you have to assume you will never get back in.” Forsyth Barr arranged for computers and a place for their staff to work but couldn’t replace the original documents stuck in their condemned building in Christchurch. They did however put a plan in place that worked for them this time when their Lower Hutt office was closed after the 14 November earthquake.
Some legal firms in Christchurch only had paper copies of wills and lost them in 2011. How embarrassing!
Leaving a secure day job
Just over 14 years ago I left my secure day job with a growing consultancy firm and started Terrace Consulting Ltd. Five years before that I left my very secure public sector job as Information Services Manager (now called Chief Information Officer) to go into consultancy. What a ride.
Since 2002 I’ve undertaken a number of roles with a variety of organisations – from large public sector agencies to one person businesses – and a whole lot in between.
My focus has remained the same throughout – making information readily available to those who need it.
Evolution of the Desk
This video was published on YouTube on Nov 18, 2014. It is a lightearted and thought provoking view of technology changes over time.
Geriatric care and business information : commonalities
My mother is 93 and living in a rest home. I’m not terribly happy with her situation and I’ve been reading Atul Gawande’s book “Being Mortal” looking for better options for people like her. I was surprised in the first few chapters to find some similarities with business information systems.
The value of document management systems
I’ve never been a great fan of electronic document management systems. I can see how they can be useful but I’ve seen a lot that, in spite of hundreds of thousands of dollars paid to install them, are not used effectively because the people who are expected to use them find them too hard.
Now there are many reasons for this and it’s not always the fault of the system itself.
Inbox Zero
Some time ago I came across an article by Rebecca Corliss about managing her email inbox. Given my liking for anything that helps people manage their inbox, naturally I was curious to find out how did this. Her article is not available any more but her method is still worth considering.
You may think her method looks a bit complicated. However please stay with her as it is quite simple really.
Each email package will have the ability for you to create a new mailbox folder so while you are on holiday all your email will go into that folder instead of sitting in your inbox. Each package will work a little differently though the process to set up folders and filters will be similar.
You may think “so what” the email is all going to be there still when you get back from holiday.
However the beauty of this little ruse is that when you get back and your inbox starts to fill up with new messages, you can deal with them straight away and know they are current instead of having them at the top of several screens full of email that built up while you were away.
If you also set up an “out of office” message to let people know you’re away they will know not to expect a reply from you. Or you can ask them to contact someone else in the office.
Though it might take a bit to time to set it up in your email package, it will be worth is as it will save you so much time when you get back and you will feel more in control.
As Rebecca says “when I return from vacation, I strategically handle unread emails. … Once the more time-sensitive messages are addressed, I’ll simply allocate a couple hours a day to respond to the remaining emails in this vacations folder. That way, I’m not only back-on-track quickly, but am able to immediately start helping my team without all “email catch up” time getting in the way. No email overload to overwhelm me.
If you would like some help to set up your holiday email folder and filters, let me know and we can work on it together.
End-of-year tax advice
I’ve researched tax information in various countries to offer you the following links to help you to prepare your records so your accountant can prepare your annual accounts in the most efficient and cost-effective way.
Shoebox filing
Recently I’ve noticed a number of accountants offer their services to do a one-off service to sort out the shoe boxes of paper records their clients bring to them. It seems that a lot of small business owners still put all their receipts and invoices into a box or maybe a folder or envelope and don’t bother to look at them again.
Cost-effective administrative support for small businesses
Did you read Lisa Martin’s story in the DominionPost recently? Her business GoFi8ure provides everyday bookkeeping and accounting support to small businesses before they get to the point of needing a full time office manager. GoFi8ure provides bookkeeping and other administrative services to free up small business owners to do what they do best – run the business.